“Where to?”
“To Brissago on the Italian border. Ten minutes from here. To a restaurant called Giardino.”
Lillian looked around. “Why, there’s wisteria in flower!”
The lavender clusters of blossoms hung along the white walls of the houses. Over a garden wall, mimosa shook down its gold and feathery green. “Spring,” Clerfayt said. “God bless Giuseppe. He displaces the seasons.”
The car drove slowly along the lake. “Mimosa,” Clerfayt said, pointing to the flowering trees by the lake. “Whole lanes of them. And there is a hill of iris and daffodils. This village is called Porto Ronco. And that one up there on the mountain is Ronco. It was built by the Romans.”
He parked the car beside a long stone staircase. They climbed up to a little restaurant. He ordered a bottle of Soave, prosciutto, scampi with rice, and cheese from the Valle Maggia.
There were not many people in the restaurant. The windows were open, the air soft. A pot of white camelias stood on the table.
“You say you’ve lived here?” Lillian asked. “By this lake?”
“For almost a year. After my escape and after the war. I wanted to stay a few days, but I stayed much longer. I needed it. It was a cure of loafing, sunshine, lizards on the walls, staring at the sky and the lake, and so much forgetting that after a while my eyes were no longer fixed upon a single point; they began to see that nature had taken no notice at all of twenty years of human insanity. Salute!”
Lillian drank the light Italian wine. “Am I mistaken, or is the food here amazingly good?” she asked.
“It is amazingly good. The owner could be a chef in any great hotel.”
“Why isn’t he?”
“He used to be. But he would rather live in his native village.”
Lillian looked up. “He wanted to come back—not go out into the world?”
“He was outside—and came back.”
She set her glass down on the table. “I’m happy, Clerfayt,” she said. “Though I must say that I have no idea what the word means.”
“I don’t know either.”
“Haven’t you ever been happy?”
“Often.”
She looked at him. “In a different way each time,” he added.
“When most of all?”
“I don’t know. It was different each time.”
“When most of all?”
“Alone,” Clerfayt said.
Lillian laughed. “Where are we going now? Are there more fabulous restaurateurs and hotel owners here?”
“Many. At night, at full moon, a glass restaurant rises up out of the lake. It belongs to a son of Neptune. Old Roman wines are served there. But now we’re going to a bar that has a wine that is already sold out in Paris.”
They drove back to Ascona. Clerfayt left the car in front of the hotel. They walked over the piazza and down some steps to a bar in a cellar.
“I don’t need any more to drink,” Lillian said. “I’m already drunk on the mimosa. The air is full of it. What are those islands in the lake?”
“In Roman times, they say, there used to be a temple to Venus on that one. Now, someone has a restaurant there. But on nights of full moon the old gods still visit the place. Then in the mornings the owner finds that many bottles have been emptied, with their corks untouched. Now and then, Pan sleeps off his spree on the island and awakes at noon. Then he plays on his pipes a bit, and all radio broadcasts are full of static.”
“The wine is wonderful. What is it?”
“Old champagne, perfectly stored. Luckily, the gods don’t know anything about it, or they would have drunk it up long ago. There was no such thing as champagne until the Middle Ages.”
They walked back. A crucified Christ hung on the wall of a house. Opposite was the door to a restaurant. The Saviour gazed mutely into the illuminated room, from which noise and laughter sounded. It seemed to Lillian that some comment should be made—but there was no comment to be made. It all belonged together.
She stood at the window of her room. Outside were lake, night, and wind. The spring busied itself in the clouds and in the plane trees on the piazza. Clerfayt came in. He put his arm around her. She turned and looked at him. He kissed her. “Aren’t you afraid?” she asked.
“Of what?”
“Of my being sick.”
“I am afraid that I’ll have a front tire blow out on me at a hundred and twenty-five miles an hour,” he said.
Abruptly, Lillian took a deep breath. We’re alike, she thought. Both of us have no future. His reaches only to the next race, and mine to the next hemorrhage. She smiled.
“There is a story about that,” Clerfayt said. “In Paris in the times of the guillotine a man was being led to execution. It was cold, and the way was long. En route, the guards stopped for some wine, which they drank from the bottle. After they’d drunk, they offered the bottle to their prisoner. He took it, looked at it for a moment, and then said, ‘I suppose none of us has an infectious disease,’ and drank. Half an hour later, his head rolled into the basket. My grandmother told me that story when I was ten years old. She was in the habit of drinking a bottle of Calvados a day. People predicted she would die an early death. She’s still alive, and the prophets have been dead a long time. I’ve brought along a bottle of the old champagne. It’s said that in spring it foams more than at other times of the year. It still feels the life that was once in it, so it’s said. I’ll leave it here for you.”
He put the bottle on the window sill, but immediately picked it up again. “Wine should not stand in the moonlight. The moon kills its fragrance. That’s one of the things my grandmother used to say, too.”
He went to the door.
“Clerfayt,” Lillian said.
He turned around.
“I didn’t leave in order to be alone,” she said.
Chapter Eight
THE SUBURBS OF PARIS stretched out gray, ugly, and rain-streaked; but the farther they penetrated into the city, the more the enchantment began. Corners, angles, and streets rose up like paintings by Utrillo and Pissarro; the gray paled until it was almost silvery; the river appeared, with its bridges and scows and budding trees, with the colorful rows of bouquinistes and the square blocks of the old buildings on the right banks of the Seine.
“From that spot,” Clerfayt said, “Marie Antoinette was taken away to be beheaded. An extraordinary restaurant is right opposite. In this city, you can combine hunger with history everywhere. Where would you like to stay?”
“There,” Lillian said, pointing across the river at the light façade of a small hotel.
“Do you know the place?”
“How would I know it?”
“From the last time you were here.”
“When I was last here, I stayed mostly in hiding in a greengrocer’s cellar.”
“Wouldn’t you prefer to stay somewhere in the sixteenth arrondissement? Or with your uncle?”
“My uncle is so stingy that he probably lives in a single room. Let’s drive across the bridge and ask whether they have any vacancies. Where do you stay?”
“At the Ritz.”
“Of course,” Lillian said.
Clerfayt nodded. “I’m not rich enough to live elsewhere,” he said.
They drove across the bridge to the boulevard Saint-Michel and onto the quai des Grands-Augustins and stopped in front of the Hôtel Bisson. As they got out of the car, a hotel employee came out the front door carrying bags. “There’s my room,” Lillian said. “Someone is just leaving.”
“Do you really want to stay here? Just because you saw the hotel from across the river?”
Lillian nodded. “That’s just the way I want to live. Without recommendations and prejudices.”
The room was available. The hotel had no elevator, but luckily the room was on the second floor. The stairs were old and dished. The room was small and sparsely furnished, but the bed seemed good, and there was a bathroom. All the furniture was cheap modern st
uff except for a small baroque table that stood there like a prince among slaves. The wallpaper was old, and the electric light inadequate—but in compensation there shone outside the window the river with Conciergerie, quays, and the towers of Notre-Dame.
“You can leave here any time you please,” Clerfayt said. “That’s something people are apt to forget.”
“Where to? To you in the Ritz?”
“Not to me, but to the Ritz,” Clerfayt replied. “During the war, I stayed there for half a year. I wore a beard and went by another name. On the cheaper side, facing the rue Cambon. On the other side, facing the place Vendôme, were the German big shots. It was something to remember.”
The porter brought up the bags. Clerfayt went to the door. “Would you like to have dinner with me this evening?”
“When?”
“Around nine?”
“At nine, then.”
She watched him as he went out. Throughout this day’s drive, they had exchanged not a word about the evening in Ascona. French was a convenient language, she thought. You slid from tu to vous and vice versa; it made the gradations of intimacy a kind of game. She heard Giuseppe’s starting roar and went to the window. Perhaps he’ll be back, she thought, but perhaps not. She did not know, and it was not very important. The important thing was that she was in Paris, that it was evening, and that she was breathing. The traffic lights on the boulevard Saint-Michel turned green, and like a cavalry charge a horde of Citroëns, Renaults, and trucks dashed across the bridge behind Giuseppe. Lillian could not remember ever having seen so many automobiles. During the war, there had been very few on the streets. The noise was intense, but it reminded her rather of an organ on which iron hands were playing a mighty Te Deum.
She unpacked her things. She had not brought much with her; nor did she have much money. She telephoned her uncle. There was no answer. She telephoned again. A stranger’s voice responded. Her uncle had given up his telephone years ago, it seemed.
For a brief moment, she was panic-stricken. Her monthly check had been coming to her through a bank, and it was a long time since she had heard from her uncle. He couldn’t be dead, she thought. Strange, that always occurred to one first. Perhaps he had moved. She asked the hotel clerk for a city directory. There was only the old one, from the first year of the war, nor was there any new telephone book. Even now there was still a shortage of coal. The room grew chilly in the evening. Lillian put on her coat. For safety, she had taken along some heavy sweaters and woolen underthings, with the thought that if they were superfluous in Paris, she could give them away to someone. She was glad that she had them.
The twilight began creeping through the window, gray and dirty. Lillian took a bath to make herself warm, and got into bed. For the first time since she had left the sanatorium, she was alone. She was really alone now for the first time in years. The money she had would, at most, last a week. With darkness, a new form of panic began to grip her. Where could her uncle be? Perhaps he had gone traveling for a few weeks. Perhaps he had had an accident, and perhaps he was dead. Perhaps Clerfayt, too, was already swallowed up in this unknown city, had taken himself off into another hotel, another existence, and she would never hear from him again. She shivered. Romantic daring quickly faded in the face of a few facts, in the face of cold and loneliness. In the warm cage of the sanatorium, the radiators would be humming now.
There was a knock at her door. It was the hotel porter with two packages. She saw that the small one contained flowers. Flowers could only come from Clerfayt. In her gratitude and in the dimness of the room, she gave the man far too large a tip. Quickly, she opened the second box. A woolen blanket lay inside. “I imagine you will need this,” Clerfayt had written. “There’s still not enough coal in Paris.”
She unfolded the blanket. Two small cartons fell out of it. Light bulbs. “French hotels always economize on light,” Clerfayt had written. “Replace your bulbs with these—they will make the world twice as bright.”
She followed his advice. At least it was now possible to read. The porter brought her a newspaper. She looked into it, but after a while she laid it aside. These things no longer concerned her. Her time was too short. She would never know who was elected president next year, nor what party was uppermost in the Chamber of Deputies. Nor did such distant matters interest her; her whole being was filled with the will to live. To live her own life.
She dressed. She had her uncle’s last letter; he had written her from that address six months ago. She would go there and inquire further.
There was no need of hunting. Her uncle was still in his old flat; he had only given up his telephone.
“Your money?” he said. “As you like. I’ve been having your monthly allowance sent to Switzerland; it was hard to get a permit to transfer the funds. Naturally, I can have it paid to you in France. To what address?”
“I don’t want it in monthly installments. I want to have all of it right now, at once.”
“What for?”
“To buy clothes.”
The old man stared at her. “You’re like your father. If he—”
“He’s dead, Uncle Gaston.”
Gaston looked down at his big, bleached hands. “You don’t have much money left. What do you mean to do here? My word, if I had the luck to live in Switzerland!”
“I haven’t lived in Switzerland. I’ve lived in a hospital.”
“You don’t know anything about managing money. You’d spend it in a few weeks. You’d lose it—”
“Possibly,” Lillian said.
He stared at her in consternation. “And what do you do when you’ve lost it?”
“I wouldn’t be a burden on you.”
“You ought to marry. Are you all right now?”
“Would I be here if I weren’t?”
“Then you ought to get married.”
Lillian laughed. It was too obvious; he was anxious to shift the responsibility for her to someone else. “You ought to get married,” Gaston repeated. “I could arrange for you to meet some suitable people.”
Lillian laughed again; but she was curious to see how the old man would go about it. He must be almost eighty, she thought, looking at his ostrich-like head, but he acts as if he has to provide for another eighty years. “All right,” she replied. “And now tell me one thing—what do you do when you are alone?”
He stared at her in astonishment. “All sorts of things—I don’t know—I keep busy—what an odd question. Why?”
“Don’t you ever feel the impulse to take everything you have and go out into the world and squander it?”
“Just like your father!” the old man replied contemptuously. “He never had any sense of responsibility, or foresight either. I’ve a good mind to have you placed under guardianship.”
“You can’t do it. You think I’ll throw my money away—but I think you’re throwing your life away. Let’s leave it at that. And see that I can have the money tomorrow. I want to buy those clothes soon.”
“Where?” the old man asked quickly.
“At Balenciaga’s, I think. Don’t forget that the money belongs to me.”
“Your mother—”
“I want it tomorrow,” Lillian said, giving Gaston a light kiss on the forehead.
“Listen, Lillian, don’t rush into any extravagances. You’re perfectly well dressed. Clothes from those fashion houses cost a fortune!”
“Probably,” Lillian replied. She looked across the dark courtyard at the gray windows of the houses opposite, which gleamed dark as slate in the last remnants of daylight.
“Like your father!” The old man was sincerely horrified. “Just like him. You could have lived without a care if it hadn’t been for his fantastic projects—”
“Uncle Gaston, I’ve been told that there are two ways to part with your money nowadays. One is to save it and have it go in the inflation. The other is to spend it. And now tell me how you have been.”
Gaston made a nervous gesture. “Yo
u can see. Things are hard nowadays. These times! I’m a poor man.”
Lillian looked around. She saw fine old furniture standing about. Sofas and chair swatched in dust sheets, a crystal chandelier tied up in gauze, and a few good paintings. “You always used to be stingy, Uncle Gaston,” she said. “But why are you still?”
His dark bird’s eyes scrutinized her. “Do you want to live here? I don’t have much room—”
“You have plenty of room, but I don’t want to live here. How old are you anyway? Weren’t you twenty years older than my father?”
The old man was irritated. “If you know, why do you ask?”
“Don’t you have any fear of death?”
Gaston was silent for a moment. “You have dreadful manners,” he said at last, softly.
“That’s true. I shouldn’t have asked you. But I ask myself that so often that I forget the question frightens others.”
“I’m still in good shape. If you’re counting on a legacy from me, you might have long to wait.”
Lillian laughed. “I’m not counting on that. And I’m staying in a hotel and won’t be a burden to you here.”
“What hotel?” Gaston asked quickly.
“The Bisson.”
“God be thanked! I wouldn’t have been surprised if you were at the Ritz.”
“I wouldn’t either,” Lillian said.
Clerfayt called for her. They drove to the Restaurant Le Grand Vefour. “How was your first collision with the world?” he asked.
“I have the feeling that I’ve come among people who think they’re going to live forever. At least they act that way. They defend their possessions and let their lives slip by.”
Clerfayt laughed. “And yet while the war was on, they all vowed that they would never again make the same mistake if they came through it alive. Human beings are great at forgetting.”
“Have you forgotten it, too?” Lillian asked.
“I’ve made a great effort to. I haven’t quite succeeded.”
“Is that why I love you?”
“You don’t love me. If you loved me, you wouldn’t use the word so lightly—and wouldn’t tell me.”
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