Ben was buried somewhere out in the hills, after a spiritual rite performed over his body by the community. In my late teens I visited these people, wanting to find his grave and reach some kind of closure, but the ones still living there had forgotten where they’d buried him. They were hospitable to me, and remembered a few details of his life, most significantly that he had once owned a brewery and had given it all away in order to embrace their “lifestyle”. He was remembered as something of a sage, and one person went so far as to declare that Ben was Gandalf reincarnated. I left soon after hearing this and spent some time at Dorothy’s gravestone in a Montpelier cemetery. There I remembered her countless acts of kindness to me and my brother, her inexplicable patience, her goodness that had so often lacked focus or direction.
During my high school years I tried to imitate my absent father. Granddad taught me how to sail a little racing skiff, which we rented on weekends during warmer months. I toyed with the idea of joining the navy, but never did. With the small allowance I received from the trust fund my grandfather set up for me from my parents’ estate, I tried my hand at being an amateur broker, operating through a real broker. The investments earned a little money and lost a good deal more, and I gave it up.
Track and field consumed my extracurricular activities, and running became my drug of choice. I ran in the Boston Marathon three times, finishing among the hundred frontrunners. Jeffer Beamish and I were reunited at one. He had finished far in front of me, and I was proud of him for it. Afterward, we shared a coffee together and caught up on our personal histories. He was an honors student and was planning to attend college, majoring in biology. I was lagging in my final year of high school with no plans for the future, and not much else to say for myself. We had become strangers to each other.
When I was eighteen I took an art class, and then as the thing took hold of me I signed up for summer classes offered by local artists. It was landscapes at first, and I discovered I had a flair for it. Little by little the natural talent grew. I won a prize for a watercolor that was a blatant imitation of Winslow Homer (subconscious on my part, understood in hindsight), though no one seemed to notice, or perhaps did not want to discourage me.
Now and then I would take the bus to Washington, D.C., and spend a day in the National Gallery. More often I went to New York City, mainly to spend a few days in the Metropolitan Museum. I was charmed by the Chagalls and passionately loved the Goya collection. I revered Homer’s seascapes and those of the darker, brooding Albert P. Ryder. And I developed a nostalgic attachment to early American folk art, for the pure pleasure of it, which may have been my sole cultural inheritance from the Franklins. I never revisited Bedford-Stuyvesant, and managed to avoid lower Manhattan altogether.
In all my activities I preferred to be alone. Though I had friends, I did not speak to them about my loss, nor did I develop any degree of intimacy founded on trust. I did love Robbie and Helen, actually very much, though with an undercurrent of fear that I would lose them too someday. I chewed endlessly on what Grandpa had meant when he called me an accident, and why he said I had killed my own parents. It took a couple of years before I could bridge the topic with Granddad, determined to face the painful truth, whatever it might be. But my grandfather was as perplexed as me, and conjectured that Ben had blurted the most devastating thing that had popped into his distorted mind, and that it had no basis in truth. It was “catharsis of the most irrational kind,” Granddad reassured me.
He became skilled at engaging me in thoughtful discussions about life and destiny, fate and providence, vocation and suffering, human struggle and religious faith, and so forth. He never lectured. Rather, he probed and pondered and evoked my own thoughts on various matters.
Once, when I captured him in his study for the purpose of making a pen-and-ink portrait of him, he put on his reading glasses and wrote quietly on a tablet while I drew his likeness. When I showed him the finished drawing and gave it to him to keep, he beamed.
“It’s great, Max. . . it’s masterful.”
He handed me the sheet of paper he had been writing upon.
“Not quite a fair exchange,” he said with a smile. “Just some of my jottings, but maybe you could tuck it away for a rainy day.”
He had written:
Men are accustomed to making objective assessments of devastating situations, as long as they are not immersed in them. Rare is he who maintains objectivity in the midst of personal affliction.
*
In a season of high emotions, declarations and avowals tend to become adamant. By such, many a man seeks to reassure himself that a path opens before him through the forest of adversity. He asserts his inner need against a battering of confusions. He becomes resistant to all questioning. Yet in his declarations of certainty he reveals his uncertainty.
For some, this takes shape in the mind as dreams of ambition fulfilled, earthly securities seized at all costs and held at all costs. For the best of men, it is a yearning forward to a better self. In most, if not all, there reign the soundless alarums of fear. By love do we cast out fear. By love do we become who we are.
I thanked my grandfather for what he wrote. Though I did not understand it, I felt no inclination to try to grasp its meaning. But I wondered over the odd use of tenses, which was quite unlike him: Become who we already are?
Grandma Helen was less philosophic and less articulate about life, but she had a lot of wisdom. Hers was primarily the way of the heart, as was my Grandma Franklin’s, though the Davies women were stronger and less anxious. She and Granddad prayed a lot for my conversion, I suspect, but I did not feel ready for any kind of commitment, least of all to an omnipotent God.
I was not blind to the factors in my emerging personality. I sensed that the damage done by the end of my world would have long-term effects, but I felt that I could live with them—with myself. Of course, there were moments of happiness, and yet these were most often the fruit of solitary achievements. I had no human loves, though I felt strong attraction to a few young women in my school and at the local parish, which I continued to attend dutifully until the end of my high school years.
On my twenty-frst birthday, Granddad sat me down in his study and informed me that I had “come of age” and that my inheritance from my parents was entirely at my disposal. It was not a grand sum, he explained, but enough to fund a college education. Since my graduation from high school, I had wandered in a state of indecision through courses at a community college, studying art history, psychology, and conversational French and Spanish. I had also taken a few studio classes under professional artists.
“Have you given any more thought to what you would like to do in life?” he now asked.
I had indeed.
Thus it was that I awoke one morning in a third-floor flat in the rue de Babylone in the Saint-Germain-des-Pres district of Paris. I was not enrolled in any college or institute, but as the privileged recipient of a freedom that very few people on the planet enjoyed, I was determined to develop my art independently, without burdensome debt or anxiety. If I wanted to, I could live the rest of my life, so to speak, in the temple of the Louvre. Where New York’s cultural life had been nearly inexhaustible, the queen of cities was meta-inexhaustible. For four months I soaked it up to the point of saturation, and then I began to paint.
My flat was a two-room affair under the eaves of an ancient stone tenement. One of the rooms contained my cot, hot plate, and sink, and the other was a bare space that I used as a studio. I purchased a tall easel and a stack of canvases, and an arsenal of brushes and oils, and threw myself into becoming what I am, as my grandfather would have put it. Predictably, I tried to be everything at once, the classic American in Paris. I was, of course, infatuated with the pre-Cubism masters of the nineteenth century. I was not above borrowing from the Symbolists and the Fauves, but for the most part I settled into a style that was a mix of my beloved, brooding Ryder and the melancholic end of the Impressionist spectrum. I was, during
that period, constantly happy.
My neighbors in the building were heard but mostly unseen. From time to time, we crossed each other’s paths on the staircase or at the communal toilette down the hall, shared by the other tenants on my floor, most of whom were students at the Universite de Paris. On weekends the air in the hallways was nauseating with the aroma of marijuana. It was not unlike the culture of the Vermont commune, though more intellectual and artistically sophisticated. As a cliché specimen from abroad, young and artistic, I was invited to their parties and encouraged to share a variety of beds, though I managed to decline most of the former and all of the latter. Their jaded romanticism was ostensibly anti-romantic, endlessly playing with revolutionary roles ranging from Marxist to Existentialist to Islamic terrorist to Nouveau Absurdist, though everyone understood that these were personas that people tried on and discarded—a process essential to “finding oneself.” Their exaggerated individualism became tiresome, and I soon learned to excuse myself from their rites of spring. They were not offended. It was understood that artists are a breed apart, to be forgiven everything, even dissent from revolutionary conformities—or worse, isolationism. I bought myself a set of earplugs to reduce the noise of my environment, I kept up a vigorous jogging routine, and I slept deeply every night.
On a morning in the spring of my first year in Paris, I happened to be painting outdoors in the Jardin du Luxembourg. The tulip beds were in a riot of bloom, children and nannies strolled the pathways, the weather was mild and the din of traffic bearable. I was taking a break from visual brooding and enjoying the rendition of a flowering horse chestnut tree, with a nod to van Gogh at the asylum of Saint-Remy. I had set up my mobile easel near the Medici fountain.
Whenever I painted, I seemed to lose all consciousness of time, and, to a degree, awareness of anything outside my subject matter. However, on this loveliest of mornings my concentration was broken by a nagging sense that someone was standing a little too close behind me.
“C’est tres belle,” said a feminine voice, which I tried to ignore.
“Even geniuses must eat,” the woman continued in English. “Are you not hungry?”
It was a young voice, and in a moment of weakness I turned around to look at the one who had spoken.
Before me stood the most extraordinary person I had ever met in my life. She was shockingly beautiful and very much my age, and yet so guileless that I did not suspect her of flirtation. Her blond hair was windblown, cut stylishly short a la parisienne; her clothing was comfortable but chic, a cream-colored jacket and skirt, high black boots. Without any loss of elan, she carried a frumpish leather valise, which appeared to be bulging with whatever it contained.
This is not real, I told myself. This is an apparition.
I suppose I was standing completely still, staring at her with my brush suspended in midair, my mouth hanging open.
She smiled at me, and I was lost forever.
“Bonjour, Monsieur l’Americain,” she said with a little laugh, a mixture of amusement and affection.
“Bonjour,” I said in a throttled voice.
“Would you like me to sing for you ‘La Marseillaise’?”
“Pardon, mademoiselle?”
Again she laughed and I lowered my brush, still unable to take my eyes off her.
“How do you know I’m an American?” I asked.
“It is extremely obvious,” she said, in English.
“Extremely?”
“Oui. Extremely. Would you care to join me for a simple repast? My maman packed far too much for me.”
She turned and proceeded to an empty park bench a few steps away. I followed her meekly. We sat down side by side.
Is this really happening? I asked myself.
She opened her valise, a battered thing as wide as a suitcase. Inside were notepads, books and binders, and a laptop computer. A woven wicker box filled the rest of the space. She pulled it out and busied herself untying its clasps. Imprinted on its lid was the logo of a champagne company, Pommery et Greno, Maisonfondee en 1836 ~ Reims. It contained four neatly packed sandwiches, a glass container of vegetables, a single wine glass wrapped in a cloth napkin, and a quarter-liter bottle of red wine, rolled in a thicker table mat.
“The sandwiches are Normandy Camembert and Brie,” she said. “That is, two are one kind and two are the other. If your tastes are not discriminating, may I make a selection for you?”
“Please,” I murmured.
“Tiens, le camembert is yours, monsieur, for it is stronger and more flavorful.”
She handed me a package, which I unwrapped. Inside were inch-thick slices of white bread, heavily buttered, with a half-inch-thick slab of soft yellow cheese in its characteristic white rind. The woman was now setting the mat on the stone bench between us, opening more packages, popping the cork from the wine bottle, clinking the little glass against it.
“The wine is for you, Monsieur l’Americain. You may proceed.”
I remained somewhat immobilized, dealing with confused emotions. I took a large bite from the sandwich without taking my eyes off her. She poured the wine and offered me the glass. I took a sip.
“Merci, mademoiselle.”
“You are silent, after the manner of the authentic artist,” she mused. “There are numerous ones in this city who are not so genuine. They speak much theory and create little art.”
She took a bite of her sandwich, not taking her eyes from me. Oddly, her manner or approach, or whatever it was, did not seem predatory. If anything, I sensed, she was an unusually open person engaged in a moment’s curiosity or kindness. I fully expected her to pack up the remains of the lunch, after it was completed, and to disappear forever. At this point she stood and walked to my easel. Carefully she carried it over and set it up beside the bench. She sat down again and examined my partly completed painting.
“You understand light,” she said. “But you understand it as a mariner would—yes, I am certain this is an ocean light you have used. Even so, monsieur, you have been faithful to the being of the tree. The esse—l’être. Do you know what I mean?”
“Are you an artist?” I asked her.
“No, I am a student at la Sorbonne. Do you know it?”
She pointed to the roof of a large old building, its upper stories just visible above the treetops.
“What do you study?” I asked.
“Psychology. Also philosophy.”
It struck me that there was nothing for me to lose.
“It seems I cannot stop looking at you,” I said. “I am sorry if I seem rude.”
“You are not rude, not the way your eyes are. I can see you are not a selfish person.”
“I hope that is true. You are extremely beautiful.”
She blushed and dropped her eyes. Looking up at me she said:
“To contemplate beauty is natural and good. It is what we were made for.”
“Some ways of looking are not so good.”
As if startled, she gazed at me without blinking. Then she said, “Yes, this is true.”
“It is admiration on my part, I hope you know. It is not. . . it is not anything base that would dishonor you.”
“You do not need to explain yourself or apologize. What century have you come from, young man?”
Young man?
“This one. And you?”
“The same.”
I stood and brushed crumbs off my lap.
“I cannot finish the wine,” I said. “It is very nice, but I am not much of a drinker.”
“That is a pity. I will drink it for you, then.”
“You are exceedingly kind, mademoiselle. I will remember our meeting all my life.”
“I will remember it too.”
“If life were different. . . ,” I said, my voice trembling. “If life were different, I would propose that we choose a path on which we might frequently remind each other of this encounter.”
“But why should we not!” she exclaimed with a smile.<
br />
Because life does not give us paradise, I thought. Never does it give us paradise.
“Because life is not so simple,” I said.
“We make life too complicated,” she replied.
I stood looking down at her upturned face. To venture is to risk loss, I told myself; and to seek a treasure that is beyond valuation is to risk monumental, devastating loss.
“W-would you c-care to see more of my work?” I asked. “My p-paintings?”
“I would be very happy to. May I ask what is your name, monsieur?”
“It is Maximilian.”
“I am Françoise.”
Françoise, Françoise, Françoise.
She stood and glanced at her wristwatch.
“Oh, I will be late for a lecture,” she said. “I must go.”
I have lost her, I thought. I have lost her forever.
“Can we meet later?” I asked.
“Oui, c’est possible. Where may I meet you?”
“Anywhere!”
“Do you know the little cafe by l’Odeon Theatre?”
“I will find it.”
“It is in the rue de Vaugirard, just behind the Palais. I will meet you there at five o’clock, if this suits you.”
It suits me.
“I will be there.”
“C’est d’accord. Agreed. A bientot, Maximilian.”
The Fool of New York City Page 14