Since the sale of the Feydeau apartment, Lavinia had seen Jean-Marc only in passing, to hand her a letter and leave. She missed his presence in her day, the comforting sound of him counting whatever was at hand, arranging spoons or matchbooks, the stubby pencils pocked with teeth marks or foreign coins that collected in the back of drawers. She realized how much of a sanctuary the apartment had become in those leisurely afternoons, providing not just a place for the unlikely intersection of their lives, but a reason without which her odd friendship with Jean-Marc felt false.
Gaston was delayed in Bruxelles and Lavinia began to organize her days around the wait for mail in the afternoons. Once in a while she forced herself to go to a matinee with Lorraine Tyson, or to visit Anne Aubretton in Neuilly, or to walk through the Luxembourg Gardens, but mostly she paced in the courtyard, caged until the mailman buzzed the concierge’s bell. Like one of Pavlov’s dogs, as soon as she heard Madame Luberon’s wood heels clack down the cobbled passageway to the building’s entrance, Lavinia felt a rush of excitement. She tried to disguise her eagerness, ashamed of the ravenous way she wanted to snatch the bundle of letters from Madame Luberon’s puffy red hands, chapped and raw and infuriatingly slow at sorting the envelopes.
Not until she had counted to a hundred, or until she had attached Boswell’s leash to his collar or recited “Ode on a Grecian Urn” under her breath did Lavinia allow herself to collect the mail. She made rules and then broke them and made new rules, half-believing that small sacrifices or particular rituals could somehow bring her a letter from Gaston.
Dearest Lavinia,
I am useless without you. I had the bellboy find me Spanish absinthe, but it too was useless.
Answering a letter could take hours. Lavinia had never written love letters before, nor had she ever received them, so she worried that there were conventions she didn’t know. She tried to calculate the different degrees of affection that distinguished Dearest from Darling and My Dear as if there were a hierarchy and she might overstep herself. Her penmanship was not poor but for the first time she felt embarrassed by its lack of distinction, sometimes copying over a letter two or three times trying to give her writing some flair. Often it was only the desire to post the letter on Boswell’s last walk of the day that prompted Lavinia to finally seal the envelope on whatever draft was currently under her pen.
My dear Monsieur Lesseur,
Please return to Paris. The city has never been so gray. I’m half inclined to believe you took all the other colors with you to Bruxelles, along with my heart and all my resolve. If you can’t come soon then write to me until your hand cramps. I am living from letter to letter.
No sooner had the letter slid down the dark throat of the postbox than Lavinia was seized with doubt, chiding herself over certain phrases or regretting her confessions.
Dearest Gaston,
Two days passed without a letter and I cursed you and then three letters arrived all at once and I am speechless. Your words undo me and take all mine away. I am in full swoon.
If her letters contained references to the quotidian aspects of her life, Lavinia worried that Gaston might find them prosaic, but it was the quotidian that was missing from what they shared and what increasingly Lavinia coveted.
My Darling Gaston,
Today at the market on the Rue Monge I saw a man selling mason jars of cigarette stubs. I was quite shocked, despite all that has been said about the shortage. But I know what it’s like to need something so much that pride is besides the point, and the smallest crumb is worth fighting for. There is nothing I have that I wouldn’t give (with the exception of poor Boswell) to have you in my arms right now. When will I see you next? How many hours?
Her questions were often unanswered, left hanging in the ether like the reverberation of a bell dissolving in the distance, or the responses were delayed past usefulness. It frustrated Lavinia that their letters arrived out of sequence and that they did not necessarily reply to earlier missives.
Chère Mademoiselle Gibbs,
I loved what you said about mustard. I love the way you sneeze and the mole behind your ear. Do you have any idea how in love I am? It terrifies me. If I were with you now I would be kissing your eyelids, your elbows, the soles of your feet and the small of your back. I would leave no skin unloved.
Often the letters that were the most stirring were the ones she most doubted. Sometimes she would turn away from his words, searching herself for the beauty that he claimed to see but her eye would find nothing to admire: large hands and square feet, knuckles swollen like knobby bamboo, and a profile that was at best severe. It amazed her that Gaston could feel this way about her.
Darling Lavinia,
It’s been raining incessantly and somewhere near the bank a sewer has overflowed. It smelled awful, even in the President’s office, but of course, no one said a thing. I distracted myself with thoughts of you. I wish I had known you when you were a child. I wish I had been the first to kiss you. I’ll be back by the end of the week for certain. Then I’ll show you how fiercely I have missed you.
In place of the Feydeau apartment, they met by assignation in a hotel on the Rue Jacob. Hôtel Trois Etoiles was a small, undistinguished establishment whose principal appeal was that no carte d’identité was requested at the front desk. Lavinia refrained from asking how Gaston knew about the Hôtel Trois Etoiles; she was aware he’d had other affairs but she didn’t want to know the particulars, especially ones of logistics. If she let herself imagine that he had brought other women there, the whole complexion of the place changed, dissolving what little charm it had, leaving only dinginess, and a history of deceit.
The rooms were cramped, barely accommodating the double bed with a horsehair mattress and bedding that looked as if it had never been fresh, not even when new. The wallpaper in most of the rooms was tanned by years of cigarette smoke, and the carpet, worn thin in paths that led to the bathroom or the bed, held a bitter odor in what little nap was left.
“It’s the stink of cheap disinfectant,” Gaston had said, “but I suppose we should be grateful it was used at all.” Lavinia made a point of not complaining, but to her it was the smell of disappointment, the residue of broken promises and the ghostly trace of everyone who had sat on the lumpy bed and felt how inglorious a location for love this was.
It was always the same: she couldn’t wait to be there and then she was depressed by it. Each time Lavinia told herself that she didn’t care if Gaston usually had to leave before they had time to drowse with their bodies interlocked, talking in whispers, breathing their words on to each other’s skin. But she did.
Later, she would be flooded with things she had forgotten to tell him: why she had been late or the dream that woke her up laughing or the name she had given her rag doll that she had never told anyone, not even Miss Kaye, or how that morning a flock of sparrows bursting into flight had looked just like a gloved hand opening, or how someone had drawn a swastika in chalk in front of Monsieur Abramowitz’s bookstore. There were questions, too, she forgot to ask, such as where had Gaston lost his virginity or how had his nose been broken or had he ever smoked opium or when did he stop believing in God?
She wanted to know which season was Gaston’s favorite and how he had cut his thumb and if he thought Jean-Marc was drinking too much. She wanted to know if he liked licorice or played an instrument or had ever thought he was about to die. Lavinia wanted him to tell her when he had realized he was in love with her. She wanted to know what he thought of Léon Blum and why Céleste had never had children.
Most of all she wanted enough time with Gaston so that it became a currency she could spend without concern, squander on frivolous subjects if she wished or even in silence, knowing there would always be more. The world was teeming with topics, and Lavinia increasingly chafed under restrictions his marriage imposed on their time together.
Dearest Gaston,
I am delighted that Jean-Marc has reinstated himself as our messenger. It�
��s such a luxury—very Victorian too! I am glad too for the passing contact with Jean-Marc. I’ve missed him and so has Boswell. It’s a comfort to know that even as the shadows lengthen I may still hear from you, or put words en route that will find you before you go to sleep.
Your compatriot Anatole France said that lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness. He was wrong. Lovers who love truly cannot help but write down their happiness. Or unhappiness. I think love compels one to find it a voice. I would write to you every hour if I could. You color everything, are everywhere reflected. A thousand times a day I think, “I must show him this; I can’t wait to tell him that.” There is nothing that is not improved by your presence or diminished by your absence. Can you blame me then, for begrudging every other claim on your time or your heart?
Even Jean-Marc, who follows you like a shadow when he is not given busywork to occupy his hours. Even the author who engages your attention before bed. Or the rose for which you bend in admiration. I am jealous of the church bells that wake you and the water you request from your sickbed. Is that folly or the definition of love?
Lavinia wrote things that she would never have been able to say: things that were racy and made her blush, things that Mavis would have called “wonderfully obscene.” When she had first heard Mavis use the phrase it had baffled her. “Isn’t that an oxymoron?” she’d asked. It amazed Lavinia now to realize there had been a time in her life when she was uncomfortable saying the word desire out loud, even uncoupled from any expression of it.
My Darling Gaston,
Sometimes when I am waiting on a line at the post office or to get my papers stamped at the prefecture, or even sitting in a crowded bus, I thrill myself by thinking of you. The faces all around me smile back, unaware of what I am recalling. How shocked they’d be to know. This afternoon, I was remembering when you put my hand between your legs and taught me every slang word in French for cock, making me repeat each one until I had the pronunciation just right.
I remain your eager student, practicing my new vocabulary, shaping the words in my mouth, rolling them on my tongue, under my breath. You have such an astonishing effect on me: even the memory of you can make me shiver. If I think of the way you said my name last night my whole body replies. I miss you terribly.
It’s absolutely freezing now that the heat is only intermittent. Madame Braun says we are not getting all of our fuel allotment. Boswell does his best to keep me warm at night but it’s the thought of you that generates my heat now that the radiator is on strike.
Sometimes when they were lying in bed together Lavinia would run her finger along the dark scar on his thigh, or squeeze the plump pads of his earlobes, trying to memorize all the details of his body, as if knowing which toe was bent or how many freckles he had on his back could somehow mitigate the loneliness she felt in his absence.
“It’s like the scar of Odysseus,” Lavinia remarked once.
“I don’t remember that,” Gaston replied with a yawn.
“Yes,” Lavinia said emphatically, tracing the smooth dark skin of the scar again. “It was the mark by which he could be known. That was what was so lovely: Penelope knew him anyway, without it, and of course, so did the dog.”
“I didn’t know Odysseus played rugby.”
Gaston rearranged the pillow behind his head with his free arm; the other encircled Lavinia’s shoulders, holding her to his chest.
“It was a wild boar, I believe,” Lavinia answered lightly, “not nearly as dangerous,” but she was hurt that her reference to the legendary love story had been so cavalierly dismissed. She turned on her side and extended her arm to the switch that controlled the garish wall sconces flanking the bed. Gaston wrapped himself around her and as she listened to his breath thicken into the ragged song of sleep she felt a kinship with all other lovers, but especially Penelope. Only Penelope knew what it was to live in suspended time, to make a life’s work of waiting.
Gaston’s charm was well suited to the task of distracting women from their grievances, but with Lavinia it only exacerbated her unhappiness. The more he delighted her with his presence the more acutely she suffered his absence. His attempts at levity only further inflamed her if she was already feeling aggrieved, and once when Gaston referred to the Hôtel Trois Etoiles as “our unlikely pleasure pavilion” Lavinia laughed aloud; then she slapped him and burst into tears.
“I have become a cliché,” she wept. “And I hate clichés.”
She wanted to tell him how ironic all of it was, how she was not like this, how in America she had been known for her independence, and for being a good sport. But that too was a cliché. She remembered her mother imitating the Russian émigré society one encountered at Park Avenue parties, saying in a heavy accent that was not particularly Russian, but garnered laughs nonetheless, “In my country, I was king.”
Gaston stroked her hair while she wept on his shoulder. Her nose was running and her face was swollen and splotched. Lavinia knew even with a compress soaked in cold water, her eyes would still be puffy by the time they went to dinner at the Bistro Danton, where they frequently dined before parting for their separate homes.
“Lavinia,” Gaston said softly into her hair, “please stop crying. You’re not a cliché. After all, I’m no longer your boss,” he teased, “and besides, at the Bistro Danton they will think I have been beating you.”
She laughed again and hiccupped but as she pulled herself off of his shoulder, she noticed the wet smear on his beautifully pressed shirt, like the shimmery trail of a slug.
“You shouldn’t make me cry,” Lavinia said, as she leaned over the sink in the corner of the room, examining her face in the mirror. “Only beautiful women can afford to look monstrous.”
Whatever he said in reply, she didn’t hear. The water that had been sputtering and spitting from the mouth of the faucet suddenly gushed into the metal basin with a loud squeal of the pipes and Lavinia plunged her head into the loud rush of water.
Over the next several months, Lavinia made a few fleeting attempts to break off the affair, almost always in the heat of anger, canceling any plans they had and forbidding future contact. In response, Gaston wrote with renewed vigor, sending urgent messages with Jean-Marc, as well as by mail.
Ma chère Lavinia,
How can you say I am untrue? My thoughts return to you unerringly, like a homing pigeon. There is no escape. I am in your sphere of influence and I can feel your pull as surely as the force of a heavenly body. Your heavenly body. My new world. Do not banish me yet.
Last night I pined for you, knowing you were at the opera and not with me. I had no right to expect you to be free at the last minute and yet I felt devastated when Jean-Marc returned with your sweet note and I was very annoyed at Alice Baker for having a season box.
I went to my club to mope and drank too much cognac with Antoine Betrillon. Then I argued with his brother about Germany and played a pitiful game of billiards and finally I just went home and listened to my badly scratched recording of The Magic Flute. I sat in the living room in the dark, listening to Chaliapin and thinking of you. Just knowing we were both hearing the same music made me happier than I’d been all day.
My Sweet Lavinia,
Do not doubt that I am just as impatient as you for our time together, or that I think of you any less than constantly. If I close my eyes and imagine kissing you my knees become giddy. I lose my balance and sway.
Of course I am greedy for you too, but I am also grateful knowing that the handful of moments I have with you dazzle like jewels in an otherwise barren landscape. I know how you feel about my going to La Rêveline for Easter, when you have only just forgiven me for my desertion at Christmas. Don’t you see that one is duty and the other is desire? Doesn’t that matter most of all? Doesn’t our need for each other warrant suffering the compromises circumstance requires? Is it too high a price for this delirium?
Gaston wrote to Lavinia late at night in his kitchen, covering the white
enamel table with pale hydrangea blue notes he scattered like fallen petals in postboxes all over Paris. His letters, some swollen with words and some saying no more than please, were posted from various mailboxes he passed on walks or on his way to work, like a gambler who moves repeatedly to different gaming tables to try to improve his luck. Gaston wrote from his club and he wrote from cafés.
Ma Chère Mademoiselle,
When we argue your words sting me for days. I am morose and ill-tempered; even Jean-Marc has been avoiding my company, attaching himself to the guard at the bank and doing chores that keep him out of sight, or staying at home with Delphine. I would avoid me too, if I could.
On the Rue du Panthéon, near the university, someone has painted the street with the Kafka quotation “There is infinite hope but not for us.” It made me queasy when I saw it. What use is anything then? I suppose that was the point of the prank but my interpretation was personal not political. I don’t know what is served by making us both miserable. Isn’t happiness so rare a commodity that we can’t afford to question how it comes to us, but just be thankful that it has?
Dearest Mademoiselle Gibbs,
Among the several fortunes my father lost, one involved thoroughbreds. From that fiasco he culled only one piece of wisdom, which he imparted to me in lieu of an inheritance. To master a thoroughbred, he told me, one must tame the spirit without breaking it. That’s the first thing most people don’t know.
The second thing is that loving a woman is exactly the same. That’s why, he said, there are so few great horsemen, or great couples. My father died long before I realized he was right. At the time, I discounted anything he said because he was such an ass. Besides, he was not much of an equestrian and his own marriage had ended in a long and bitter divorce. My response was to avoid spirited horses and smart women and whenever possible, the complications of love.
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