by James Salter
In a café she happens to meet a boy who knew her. He is amazed. You’ve changed a hundred per cent, he tells her. She smiles. Afterwards Dean asks,
“Who was that?”
The brother of a girl she knew. Dean is looking towards the door as if he might return. It annoys him.
The evening is warm. The place reminds her of the one where, all that summer, she went to dance. They must go there sometime, she says. There were two waiters who liked her. One was Italian. The other was very young and sent her flowers, but he was shy. She never went out with him. She never even thought of him until now, this evening, by chance. It was the Italian with whom she spent those noisy hours, who had her for the first time. But the young waiter, how well I know him. He saves his money. His clothes are neat. He walks quietly through town, his eyes lowered. Sometimes at night he stands in the crowd. He sees her smile and his heart falls out of him. Among the dancers turning in the orange light his eyes can find her in an instant. He knows her calves, the shape of her body better than her lover, and those high-heeled shoes with their thin straps, as they move around the floor they are ripping his dreams.
The theatre is half empty. It’s a white building cold as a meat plant. Inside, the ceiling is blue, the walls are hung with pleated cloth, like a skirt. The floor is tilted backwards. Everybody sits in back, staring at advertisements on the drop that covers the screen. Suddenly, having come down the aisle, a man mounts the stage. He has a small beard, like Lincoln. His voice is alarming and clear.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he begins. “It’s with great pleasure that we are able to present to you tonight one of the most remarkable women in Europe. She is able–I promise this without exception or hesitation–to read the mind of anyone in this room, to describe them without seeing them, to answer questions she cannot hear, to reveal secret longings. Don’t be afraid. There is nothing embarrassing, nothing unnecessary. It is a demonstration of a unique mental power, a communication known to the Hindus, to the peoples of the East. I present to you: Yolande!”
He summons her. She comes up on the stage and stands beside him in a black, Spanish hat, a gold dress, her hair in little ringlets. She bows. The audience is too stunned to applaud, too cautious. She turns to face the screen. Her partner walks back to where the first row of people are sitting. He begins to ask her questions which she answers with her back turned.
“This person…”
“Monsieur…”
“Is it a man or a woman?”
“A man.”
“The color of his hair?”
“Brown.”
“His suit…”
“Grey.”
“His shoes…”
“Black.”
“Voilà!” he says.
He moves on.
“These first three…” He leans over and whispers to them. Their heads are close together. He nods, nods, then stands erect once more. “Can you give me their names?”
Her voice is curiously mechanical. It’s as if she is reading a list.
“Robert. Gilbert. Jean-Paul.”
“Their occupations, please. In order.”
“Teacher. Clerk. Mechanic.”
“Is that right?” he asks them.
They nod. He takes the wrist of a man behind them. He holds it up.
“And here…?”
“A watch.”
“The make?”
“Intra.”
“Is that right?” he asks the man. Yes. A nod. “And now, please, Yolande, the exact time…”
“Eleven minutes after nine.”
“The seconds?”
“Thirty-five.”
He allows the owner to look.
“Voilà!” he cries.
Some applause. It’s just the beginning. She reads the serial number on franc notes, identifies objects in people’s hands, perceives missing buttons, tells dates of birth, hours. The dialogue is sharp and fast.
“This gentleman…”
“Monsieur…” she cries.
“Is holding …”
“A ticket.”
“Yes?”
“A railroad ticket.”
“To where?”
“To Chalons!”
“Voilà!”
The audience is whispering. He strides back to the stage, arm extended in triumph, fingers curved. Now Yolande herself turns around. She is prepared, she announces, to answer, individually and privately, all questions.
“Your most secret questions,” she says as she coolly straps on a leather belt that has a purse attached. For two francs, she will give a personal response. She begins to circulate, asking only the first name before she selects, with great speed, an envelope from the basket she carries. Her partner walks ahead, encouraging people to concentrate on the question they want answered.
“Can I ask her?” Anne-Marie says.
“Go ahead.”
He sorts out his change. She raises her hand. Yolande sees her immediately.
“Mademoiselle…”
“Oui.”
“Your first name.”
“Anne-Marie.”
“Born,” Yolande says, holding out her arm, indicating one moment, “born…in the month of October. Correct?”
Anne-Marie smiles dazedly. She nods.
“Voilà!” the man cries. He moves ahead. “Who else? Raise your hands, please.”
It’s a pale blue envelope, unsealed. Inside is a single sheet of paper, numbered 7. In the top corner, a constellation. At the bottom, a red star. Some of the phrases are underlined in red. She begins reading it quickly.
“Let me see,” he says.
There’s no answer to any question. It’s printed in a style to look like handwriting.
Your nature, it says, predisposes you to dream. You are capable of deep feelings… Some words he cannot read…at the moment, you are not very lucky, but don’t fall into despair. Your destiny will soon be revealed. Courage! Belief! Her scent is Iris. Her lucky day Monday. He was wrong–at the very bottom there is a response to her thought: Your desire will be realized if you open your heart.
“Is that right?” Dean asks.
“No,” she says. “It’s printed.”
“Let me read it again,” he says. “Maybe she gave you mine.”
“But how did she know the month I was born?” Anne-Marie says.
“She smelled your scent. Iris.”
“What do you mean?” she says.
They drive home at midnight. It’s not often they’re out so late. Usually their evenings are quite simple. A meal somewhere. A stroll from which they return after dark. The trees above them are rich with silence. From the radio stations of Europe music pours forth faintly in the cheapest rooms. Her portable is on the floor. The dial is illuminated. It glows mysteriously. Luxembourg is on. Geneva. The orchestras of the world beat softly. The muscle in her behind is tight. It feels like a string around the shaft. He pushes in slowly and then, at last, plunges, like the bottom dropping out. Anne-Marie moans, her head buried in her arms. After he was dead I thought often of these moments, of this one. Perhaps it is her moan, her face pressing against the sheet. He can feel her tight around him, like a noose. He closes her legs and lies there contented, looking out the window, feeling the tender spasms.
“Es-tu contente?” he asks after a while.
Her voice, her very presence, seems summoned from afar. She answers quietly.
“Oui.”
[26]
“DON’T YOU GET TIRED of being down there for months on end?” Cristina says. “God!”
I don’t know what to say. They’re all looking at me. I’m really not sure. It’s not a question of being tired of something. It really can’t be compared.
“What on earth do you do there?” Alix says.
“Well, I’m doing some work.” A pause. “I’m doing a lot of reading–I know that sounds funny.”
“It must be fascinating,” she says. “Whatever you’re reading.”
They laugh.
“What is he really doing?” she asks. “It’s all so secretive. It must be something marvelous.”
I can’t tell whether she means it or not. They’ve asked her to dinner because of me. I’m uncertain how to take her though. She’s beautifully dressed in a blue silk suit, and she seems to be completely unaffected by my presence. At first, in fact, she ignored me, but her attention is worse. Billy asks if I want another drink.
“How long are you here for?” Alix says.
“Just a few days. You don’t mean in France? Altogether?”
“Yes, in France.”
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “I’ve already stayed longer than I expected.”
“Um,” she says. “You like it then.”
I can’t answer that. Finally I nod. I say,
“Yes.”
She turns to Cristina.
“He’s rather nice,” she says and then, talking to them, abandons me.
By the time we go to dinner, I am nervously trying to play this game with her. It’s exciting to be in her company, but I’m always a little afraid of what she might say next, and this fear causes me to be helpless. She’s as tall as I am with a very beautiful complexion, not at all pale. I can’t tell how old she is. Twenty-six perhaps. I can’t very well ask. When Billy and I go down for the car, he tells me she’s been married. This puts me more at ease for some reason.
“She was married to Teddy Leighter,” he says.
“Who?”
“Teddy Leighter. Don’t you know him?”
“I’m not sure. Who is he?”
“Oh, you know him,” Billy says.
“I do?”
“Sure you do,” he says. “He played hockey.”
Then he says something I don’t hear. But we’ve arrived at the level of the garage.
We have dinner at the Calvados in a room filled with candles. I notice she reads the menu carefully, even with interest, but she practically ignores the food when it arrives. In the middle of the meal she tells me she’d like some Evian water. She goes on talking to Cristina while I try to find a waiter. A night, a long night in which I am captive, is beginning. It will end with a determined search for the negress we saw last time in the club near the Champs. Alix and I have to see her, Billy decides.
“I’ve seen her.”
“But Alix hasn’t,” he says.
Billy looks like a bullfighter, Alix says. She’s jealous of him. He’ll always be beautiful. She stares at him very directly, her chin in her hand. No, he says and orders more wine. He even moves like a bullfighter, she says. Cristina seems to think it’s funny.
The negress cannot be found. Paris is filled with the fresh smell of trees as we go from place to place. She cannot be found, but finally there is another in a dress made of flowers. The room is crowded. Alix dances very close to me.
“Have you really been down there all winter long?” she says.
“Yes. Why?”
“I’ve been thinking about it, that’s all.”
“You’re embarrassing me,” I say. “It’s not that interesting to talk about.”
“You like it though.”
“Yes.”
“You must have fallen in love,” she says.
“No.” Perhaps there was a slight pause.
“Ahh,” she says. “That’s it. You have a girl.”
She smiles at me for the first time. At last we have found each other.
“That’s right, isn’t it?” she says.
“No.”
“Oh, you’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“You have a little French girl.”
“I’m ashamed of it, but I don’t.”
“They can be very nice,” she says.
“I’m sure.”
Back at the table she tells them I’ve confessed. Carrying on a wild affair, she says.
“It’s not that woman across the street?” Cristina says.
“Madame Picquet?”
“Is that right?” Billy says happily.
“No, no. She’s getting married.”
“I thought she was married,” Cristina says.
“She’s divorced.”
“The town whore,” Cristina explains.
“Who’s she marrying?” Billy says.
“Oh, some student. I don’t know. I’ve never seen him.”
“How about you?” he says.
“It’s nothing. Alix invented it.”
“Come on.”
“No. Really.” I feel like an idiot.
Alix is smiling. The show comes on again.
“I don’t like this singer as much as the other one,” Cristina says.
When we finally come out the sky is still dark, but its authority is gone. The night has passed. We drive back to their house. Billy turns on all the lights. He insists on preparing breakfast. He wanders around the kitchen with a huge pan in his hand. He begins to break a dozen eggs into it.
“How about making the toast?” he says.
I’m not even hungry. He gives me a dish with a big square of butter on it, right out of the refrigerator. It’s too hard. When I try to spread it, I tear the toast. He is pouring milk into the eggs, then Worcestershire sauce.
“How do you like them?” he asks me. “Hard or soft?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He looks at the color.
“They need more milk,” he says.
In the long, richly furnished salon, the women are sitting on the sofa. It’s almost light outside. The brightness of the room and the windows paling makes it seem like the end of a long crisis. Their hands are moving. I can hear their palms against their wrists. I sit near them.
“What are you doing?”
“Flipping,” Cristina says.
They compare coins. Their attention to the game is solemn, unreal.
“We’re flipping for you,” she says. A pause. “It’s one up.
Neither of them looks at me. They match again and hold their wrists near each other. Cristina breaks into nervous laughter.
“Who won?” I ask.
No answer.
“Three out of five,” Alix suddenly says.
“All right.”
The coins flicker in the air. Cristina drops hers. It doesn’t seem right for me to help her find it. She searches the dark, Oriental rug on which it has disappeared.
“It’s by the coffee table,” Alix says.
“Where?”
“Just inside the leg.”
Cristina’s on her hands and knees.
“It’s heads,” she says.
Billy comes in to announce everything is ready.
“What’d you drop?” he says.
“Hm?”
“Where’ve you been?” Alix says.
We sit in the dining room in the five o’clock light of a Paris morning. Against the wall is a huge, mahogany buffet. Mirrors which reflect the dawn. The table is large enough for twelve. Billy brings in the platter heaping with eggs that smell alarmingly strong.
“What are these?” Alix says, taking a small portion. “Eggs?”
Billy is sitting at one end of the table. He stares at her. He becomes serious when he drinks. Cristina begins laughing. She can’t stop. She laughs as she tries to serve herself, and Alix starts in, too. They laugh insanely; helpless, crying laughter. Eggs have spilled from the serving spoon onto the table, and Cristina tries to pick them up. By now she can’t even control her hand. She can’t look at Alix. They slowly fall into silence, but the slightest sound from either of them starts it again.
“What’s so funny?” Billy says. He hasn’t even smiled.
“Nothing.” The last syllable explodes. They are laughing so much it hurts.
“Aren’t you going to eat any eggs?” he finally says.
“What?” Cristina forms the word cautiously.
“I said aren’t you going to eat any eggs?”
She shakes her head slowly, no, then yes.
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“They’re very interesting,” she says.
“Are they? Why?”
“I’ve never tasted eggs quite like these,” she says. She tries to become serious. Alix is laughing.
“Is that so?” he says.
“Did you make them, dear?”
“You’re very funny,” he says.
She gets up and begins opening drawers in the buffet, looking for napkins. Billy hands me the platter. The eggs are very dark, almost brown. They look curdled.
“I don’t think they’re bad,” he says.
Behind him, Cristina suddenly performs an obscene gesture, one hand in the bend of her white arm. It’s so deliberate I can’t think. Billy is bent over his plate.
“Keep it up,” he warns.
“What’s that, sweetheart?” she asks.
“You’re going to get it,” he says.
As she comes back to the table she begins to sing. Somehow it frightens me. I’m exhausted. I don’t know how to smile.
“Aren’t you even going to try them?” he says.
“Of course,” she says. “I love them.”
“There’s nothing wrong with them,” he says flatly. He eats methodically, watching her. He takes a sip of coffee.
I try the eggs. They taste like salt. Cristina strolls around the table humming as she gives everyone a napkin.
“Alix?” she asks sweetly. “More eggs?”
“Sit down, will you, Cristina?” he says. “Aren’t you going to eat?”
“You’re beautiful,” she says. “I love you.”
“Just keep going.”
“I love the eggs. Some more eggs?” she asks me.
Everything is left on the table, the plates with their uneaten portions, the cups of coffee, the toast. The servants will take care of it all when they get up.
I drive Alix home in a taxi in the bright of morning. It’s not very far. The dawn smells cool and pure as we cross the sidewalk. She is very sleepy. She releases me with a word or two, a tired smile. The door closes. The lock sounds like a well-ordered life.
I walk back. In the streets there is an absolute silence, not a car moving, not a person. In the pale sky there are no birds. It’s like entering the past. Nothing is altered. Nothing makes a noise. On the corner, in the window of a café they sometimes go to, a cat is sleeping, a huge cat, soft as a dream. I pause there, awake before the city. I think of walking along the river, but my whole body is like dry wood. I turn down the street on which they live, a wide street, blue and empty, empty sidewalks as far as I can see.