Forgetfulness

by Ward Just

  Good, he said in French.

  Keep it like that.

  Then Thomas went to work, drawing at speed. He barely looked at his subject but concentrated instead on line, beginning from the center of the sheet of paper and working out. The face was all in his memory anyway. He intended a credible likeness, some impressionism around the edges but essentially a realistic portrait of the sort sought by actors or impersonators. He spent time on the mouth and more time on the eyes, which now seemed to him expressive of infinite serenity. They were old eyes, the lids wrinkled, deep pouches beneath them. He did not know enough of Yussef's milieu to judge whether his was a face attractive to women; probably it was. There were no obvious defects except a small scar on the chin, and a scar was often an interesting abnormality. When Thomas looked back at Yussef he saw that his eyes were closed once again and that his chin had sagged. It didn't matter. He was almost finished and he knew the chin by heart; not such a difficult chin in any case. Quite an ordinary face until you got to know it well, know it in its range of emotions, and then it became as familiar as your own, more familiar unless you spent your life looking into mirrors.

  Thomas spent a few extra minutes tidying up and then he stepped back and looked at what he had wrought. He had always been proud of his draftsmanship and was proud again. He had set out to make a portrait of a certain kind and had succeeded, and now he was empty of energy and very doubtful that he had succeeded in Yussef's terms; what he could say with confidence was that the drawing was without sentimentality. He had no idea of the shape or aspiration of Yussef's terms. Yussef's terms would be his own. Come to think of it, he did not know Yussef's surname. The man before him was a species of ghost. As quietly as he was able, Thomas turned the paper around so that Yussef could see it. Then he walked silently around the table and stood behind the Moroccan and with a fierce motion pulled his hair. Yussef's eyes popped open and stayed open.

  Florette, Thomas said softly into Yussef's ear.

  I was her husband.

  Thomas took a chair on the other side of the long table, moving it so as to give Yussef an unobstructed view of Florette DuFour. Florette's gaze was open and surprised—as if she had just heard something that interested her—and she was dressed as she was the Sunday afternoon she took her walk on the mountain. Thomas had drawn her head and her torso, careful to preserve the true color of her pink shirt, but the glare from the grilled lights overhead gave her skin a waxy sheen. It broke his heart to look at what he had done but he looked and kept looking nonetheless. Hers was the face he knew better than his own. As the silence gathered, Thomas glanced at Yussef, who was staring intently at the portrait, leaning forward in his chair. His manacled hands were back in his lap. Thomas thought he saw a minute shake of the head but he couldn't be sure.

  I will tell you a little about her, he said in French.

  So that you will have a personality to go with the name.

  Florette was not an ordinary woman, though I suppose that could be said of almost any woman. No one you knew well was ordinary—and if you loved her, then she was not only not ordinary but unique. And you can see some of that in the portrait if you look carefully. Of course what you are seeing is my version. Some of the other men in her life would have a different version. But none of them were artists.

  Thomas described Florette's childhood—her mother, her violent father, her Tante Christine—and her first marriage, to the postmaster, and the postmaster's early death. He described her dream of becoming a couturier in the Place Vendôme. And he described the Place Vendôme, its location in the First Arrondissement, the Ritz Hotel across the way. Thomas told Yussef about the boy in the village, the one with the motorcycle, the one who reminded her of Jean-Paul Belmondo, the actor. Surely you know his work on the screen.

  Yussef seemed to shrug, neither yes nor no.

  Yes, of course you do. Half the women in France were in love with Jean-Paul Belmondo. Moroccan women also, I believe. He was tall and muscular, an athlete, a dangerous presence. Women are often attracted to dangerous men.

  In the end Florette settled for him, Thomas, instead of the Jean-Paul Belmondo look-alike, as she settled for knitting sweaters instead of designing evening gowns fit to be worn by the wife of the president of the republic. She was a woman of great good cheer who nevertheless kept much to herself, as he did. But he had decided after long thought that what she kept to herself was not as important as what she disclosed to him. So that part of her life that she kept to herself was a trifle, not worth worrying about. I was bothered by it for a while and then I wasn't bothered because, as I said, I had my own secrets.

  You, too, have a wife.

  The boy's mother.

  Perhaps your story is not so different from my own. You meet a woman and spend hours talking to her, telling stories, making a narrative of your life. Two narratives merge until they are the same narrative; one story, two characters, and when you are together long enough other characters find their way in, family, friends, children if you are lucky enough to have children ... Thomas paused, unsettled again by the echo in the room and the knowledge that behind the two-way mirror were Antoine, his three investigators, and Bernhard Sindelar. He wished it were only himself and Yussef but there was nothing Thomas could do about the eavesdroppers. That was part of the bargain he had made, and eavesdropping was what they did for a living. Thomas allowed the silence to lengthen; Yussef had not taken his eyes from the portrait.

  I am certain that you, too, have made false starts, participating in actions that had an unfortunate aftermath and which you are not proud of; you are filled with dismay and reproach yourself later. These would include false starts with women, perhaps involving a lack of patience, or of sympathy, or a failure of nerve or intelligence. But you may also be the sort of man who blames people for getting in your way. They should know better. They got what they deserved. There are many such men, from all cultures. And women also. Women are not excluded.

  How old are you?

  I would say forty-five.

  Younger than I am by twenty years.

  So you may look forward to many more false starts, though it's possible you have another outlook on things. You do not make false starts or admit to them when you do. Or you make a point of avoiding compromising situations altogether. In any case, your false starts—your crimes, to make my meaning plain—would differ from mine owing to your nationality, your religion, your politics, and your sense of honor. Or, to be exact about it, your attitude toward them. The crimes remain the same. But you will be judged as I will be judged. Our common fate. No exceptions.

  Thomas stood and walked again around the table so that he was standing behind the prisoner. He watched Yussef's muscles stiffen, his back bowing, his hands palms-down on the tabletop. Yussef expected another hair pull or similar indignity, though more painful because he expected it. Thomas gripped the back of Yussef's chair and spoke softly as they both stared at Florette's portrait. Thomas described his work, how he began in grade school and continued through high school and college, dropping out in his last year, moving to New York, and the four days following John F. Kennedy's death. The assassination was a world event, all the world mourned. But you cannot imagine how it affected us in America. The unthought-of was suddenly thought, in front of our eyes, bright as day. So for those four days and for some days thereafter we thought of nothing else. This one thing crowded out all the other things. Of course there were places in America where he was not mourned but those places were foreign to us, an exception. What a hold John F. Kennedy had on our imagination!

  I expect you were a toddler about that time, perhaps not yet born.

  I believe I became an artist that day, though I'm ashamed to say it. Still, when you are rocked to the soles of your feet by an event you tend to remember it, work it over in your mind, attempt to assimilate it. I mean, when the unthought-of becomes thought.

  Thomas furnished a few details of how he went about finding his subjects—or how they fo
und him—and how he went about looking at heads. Looking for the unspoken thought and searching also for inherited physical traits. He drew Yussef's attention to Florette's full lips, a legacy of her mother. When you are trying to create life on canvas—that is, when you are trying to see life in a new way—these are the qualities you pay attention to.

  I have had an exceedingly fortunate life, he added.

  I was dealt a fine hand and I played it well.

  For the most part.

  The false starts are an exception.

  I was responsible for a man's death. I think he had a great soul. He was a communist, a Spanish communist, most passionate. Spaniards are passionate and Spanish communists are notably, willfully passionate. He was not a saint. Do not mistake him for a saint. He was not a holy man. He was a good man in a bad time, a man of belief. That belief sounds tarnished now, a bit foolish even. Most of us believe that train left the station many years ago, the cattle cars filled with corpses. He argued that he believed in the system, not the men who made the system, and that is surely a distinction of a kind. He lived an adventurous life and it seems likely that blood was on his hands. I did not pull the trigger that caused his death but I was in the vicinity. A friend wanted a message delivered and I obeyed; it is possible my friend was deceived also. And Francisco died, not that day but days later. I made his portrait. It is one of my best and it hangs now in a Madrid museum, "a gift from the artist."

  We all have blood on our hands, from deeds large and small.

  The idea is to atone and go on.

  No regrets is a fine sentiment if you are a cabaret singer.

  So I have had an exceedingly fortunate life.

  Dealt a fine hand, played it well.

  Except for crimes here and there.

  I do regret that I have no children.

  So you have the advantage there. I envy you. He's a fine-looking boy. You resemble one another. You must be proud of him. It's hard for me to believe—and here Thomas walked around the long table and stared into the mirror, his back now to Yussef—that the boy was part of this, the business on the mountain near St. Michel du Valcabrère. Allowing a woman to die. Hastening her death. A woman your boy had never met, a harmless woman on her Sunday walk. I cannot believe he would willingly participate in such a—Thomas sought the word in French and came up with "scandale."

  He would be following your instructions.

  Papa, who is this woman? What does she mean to us?

  How does it help us if she freezes to death?

  Tell me what to do.

  Thomas watched Yussef in the mirror. He had betrayed no emotion at any point in the narrative and betrayed none now. His eyes remained fixed on the portrait, staring at it as if willing it to life; or to disappear, vanish from his sight. Then Thomas heard a noise, a kind of whir. A bumblebee had flown up from the first floor. After a few passes in front of the mirror it landed on the long table and began to circle Yussef's shackled hands. It moved drunkenly, its yellow patch of pelt twitching. Its wings were huge, moving slowly as it reeled here and there on the tabletop. Not air-worthy, Thomas thought; the bee was aerodynamically unsound. Yussef drew in his hands, the first decisive movement he had made since Thomas had pulled his hair, forcing him to look at the portrait. The bee continued its reconnaissance, laboring forward, resting, moving again, always in circles, closing on Yussef's shackled hands. Its hairy body concealed its stinger but Yussef knew it was there. The bee had stopped an inch from Yussef's wrist. Thomas watched Yussef's fingers begin to tremble, and the bee crept forward. Yussef's hands were steady now. He had evidently concluded that fear of the known trumped fear of the unknown, and that to move his hands would be a provocation. The bee rested and seemed about to tumble on its side—and then it rose, hovering a moment, rising and circling until it beelined to the stairwell and disappeared back the way it had come. Thomas had been watching it in the mirror and realized now that the bee was a trick up Antoine's sleeve, an airborne version of Yorick's skull or the iguana under the porch. Full of surprises was Antoine, and pure dumb luck that the bee had landed on the long table.

  Thomas allowed the moment to settle and then, still not turning from the mirror, he said, So the boy went along with your plans. Whatever the plans were.

  But when he said, What does this woman mean to us? what was your answer? How did you identify my wife as your enemy? Was it something she said? She didn't know you. You had never seen her before. She meant nothing to you. She meant nothing to your son. And she meant everything to me.

  But I've said too much.

  We did care for each other. As your wife cares for you, I imagine.

  Did she complain when you took the boy with you? Where are you going with him? He is too young to be involved in such business. Let him grow up before he joins you in your work. Perhaps she said nothing. Perhaps she held her tongue, kept her thoughts to herself, including the prayer that he would return safely.

  Did she know where you were going? And what you intended to do when you got there? That would have been Florette's question. Western women are inquisitive. They are often at their best when in an inquisitorial frame of mind. As they almost always are. They don't give up. Often it's necessary to confess to them in order to keep a good face on things. But perhaps your wife has a different outlook. Perhaps she does not feel entitled to press her questions. And in that case she would be a most unusual personality. I would say a most unusual mother. I'd like to meet her. But, alas, that is an impossibility. We will never meet.

  What exactly is your work? What brings you to this place?

  And with that, Thomas seated himself and lit a Gitane, his first cigarette in fifteen years. His throat caught but the spasm passed and he blew a fat smoke ring into the middle distance, where it hung, well defined, for a surprisingly long time.

  One hour later they were still at the long table, Yussef having said nothing, Thomas deep in thought. He had said what he could say. There was more but he did not choose to give voice to it. This was the last act, and when he glanced at Florette's portrait she seemed to him as mute and lifeless as the Moroccan. He suspected she was as disgusted with the loft as he was. Thomas let his thoughts meander until they settled on the late St. John Granger, his supposed experience in the war and the life he had made because of it. What had brought him to the farmhouse at St. Michel du Valcabrère? What brings us anywhere? You take one turn instead of another, you meet one woman instead of another, you have good health or you don't, luck vies with misfortune, you break down and arrive at Bellevue in your bathrobe on a Saturday morning or—what was his father's antique phrase?—you pulled up your socks and got on with things. Your heart adapted to changing times. Your body did. Or it did not and you passed your days in a muffler of regret. And that was what they called intelligent design.

  Thomas was drowsy in the heat of the room. It seemed to him that he had talked for hours, though in fact it had been little more than thirty minutes. The time was just about up, though he assumed Antoine would not be exact about the time. Thomas believed he had made no particular impression on the Moroccan, who had remained expressionless as he scrutinized the portrait of Florette. Thomas had heard somewhere that Moroccans were an especially handsome people, tall and fine-boned, lithe in their movements, often with vivid blue eyes. They were said to have a subtle sense of humor. Of course that was according to Western norms, Nordic in origin. Yussef was not handsome, not even very interesting; there was something ponderous about him. Thomas wondered if his people were from the city or the desert, if somewhere in his ancestry there were renowned hunters with falcons on their forearms, austere men at home in the sand. Thomas had no idea how he would go about making Yussef's portrait if called upon to do so. But that was a commission he would refuse in any case. Then he was back in the billiards room with St. John Granger, the old man laughing in his dusty way at some gossip he had learned from Ghislaine, mischief in the village. He missed Granger. Granger was, in his problematic way, an a
nchor to windward, a ghostly anchor to be sure, but one that held.

  Thomas wondered if it was wise for him to remain in St. Michel. His wife was gone, his closest friend was gone, and if he remained the face before his eyes would be the Moroccan's. Dead or alive, he would be unforgettable. He decided then to finish the portrait of old Bardèche and after Bardèche there would be other villagers to paint and before long he would have canvases enough for a show. Arthur Malan had been pestering him for a year. Make yourself visible, Thomas. Get out and about. Collectors must be reminded that you are still alive and at work. Thomas lit a Gitane and thought about working again, not in St. Michel but somewhere unknown to him, another country altogether, perhaps someplace near the sea. He could take up fishing. One thing was certain. He wanted no more to do with Le Havre, the loft room, the two-way mirror, or the man seated across the table.

  Yussef made a guttural sound as he tested the strength of the shackles, click-click as he forced his wrists apart just so far and no farther. His forearm muscles stiffened with the effort. He held the pose a moment, then brought his wrists together and let them fall to the table.