Burger's Daughter

by Nadine Gordimer

  Reading in the room that had been waiting for her, Rosa Burger was aware in the afternoons of Madame Bagnelli’s activities down there, the scissors snapping at threads like a dog at flies, the slap and slither of a paint-brush; the striking up of the record she had set playing indoors. The Goldberg Variations, the first side of the Christmas Oratorio, some Provençal songs punctuated by clucks as the needle rode a scratch, and now and then accompanied by a second voice—Katya’s, following and anticipating phrases she knew so well the recording had become a kind of conversation. At some point it would become a real one: that was the masculine croak of Darby and the hoarse patter of one of her cronies. Their voices were changed by age like schoolboys’ at adolescence, so that the one who had been as famous in Paris as Baker and Piaf—people in the village told Rosa again and again: You know that Arnys lives here ? —could not be distinguished from the Lesbians who had perhaps cultivated the lower register or the old Americans, expatriate for thirty or forty years, who had ‘granulated the vocal chords’ (Madame Bagnelli’s attempt at translating a local expression, ‘la voix enrouee par la vinasse’) with deposits from the alcohol they had consumed.—At 33 per cent flat rate he surely might be better off... but if you have a fluctuating income coming in from a dozen different sources ? ...it only makes sense if you’re certain you can’t spread your assets in such a way that you can get into a lower tax bracket—The English comes from Donna, and the wriggling, ticklish laughter means the Japanese girl with the dog.

  —You will be a nice friend for me. We are same age.—The text of a children’s first reader; the Japanese girl said it at one of those daily meetings at the top of steps or on the place, when people ran into each other and stood about talking. The girl prattled to her beautiful dog in some anthropomorphic game—Rosa looked down from her own private roof-top and saw her, so pretty in tight French trousers and high clogs she wore with the close-elbowed, close-kneed femininity of exotic dress, turning up a smiling, wide-jawed face on its frail stem. She lived with an Englishman Madame Bagnelli’s guest hadn’t yet met. He passed below on a morning walk with a stick, the girl and the dog; a white-haired man with the majesty of a slow-grown tree casually carried in the denim egalitarianism first taken over by students from peasants and labourers, and then from the young by the rich. He was a Lancashire shipyard owner—had been, everyone had been something else before they came to live as they wanted to, here—for whom Ugo Bagnelli, whose name Madame Bagnelli continued although she had never been married to anyone but Lionel Burger, had worked.—If Tatsu invites you, you should go—just to see what Ugo did. Everything in that boat’s his idea. He fitted out...must have been three or four—a whole succession of yachts and cabin cruisers for Henry Torren. Oh Henry happened to like him...not many that one does. He’s a solitary. Apart from whatever young woman he marries or lives with. He’s never mixed here. He likes to think he’s not like us... there’re so many failures, you know ? But people who haven’t got money also do what they like, here. I don’t think he approves of that, it spoils things for him, ay ? He would like to think he doesn’t enjoy the things the rest of us do! Not a snob, no, no, you have to know him...we get on all right. A puritan. Ugo never charged him—w-e-ll, so little it was nothing. Ugo loved luxurious things—he lived with them—oh-ho in style!—in his imagination, you know ?—while we were eating nothing but spaghetti. He could design them and make them but he knew he would never have them for himself. In a way it was the same thing...why do I fall for such men ? Rather why did I... And now—The gesture, the face of mock abdication learned from Gaby Grosbois when she talked about Pierre, her husband.

  Madame Bagnelli and Rosa Burger did not deliberately talk about Lionel Burger but did not avoid doing so : he was a fact between them. It changed them, each for the other, at different times and in different contexts. They had not known each other before they became a middle-aged woman and her young guest fortunate to find themselves in a state that could not have been anticipated, arranged for or explained. Compatible: that was enough, in itself; comfortably, they began to exist only at the moment each turned out to be the one the other was looking for on an airport. That fact—the fact of Lionel—when the passing of daily life thinned or shifted to reveal it, made, like a change of light transforming the aspect of a landscape, the two women into something else for each other.

  As Madame Bagnelli was talking, the girl was looking at the woman who had fallen in love with Lionel Burger. The woman felt the way she was suddenly seen, and became Katya.—We were young, all the ideas were so wonderful. You’ve heard it all before, god knows. But they were. ‘We were going to change the world’. When I tell you even now—I could still begin to tremble, my hands...you know? And I thought that was going to happen! No more hunger, no more pain. But that is the biggest luxury, ah ? I must have been a stupid little creature—I was. Unattainable. Not to be achieved in our lifetime; in Lionel’s. He understood that. He was prepared for it, don’t ask me how.—But if it should be never ? What then ? I couldn’t wait, I can’t wait, I don’t want to wait. I’ve always had to live...I couldn’t give it up. When I saw your mother —you remember I told you?—I thought: that’s the end of me.—

  The girl corrected her.—No, you said—you could see she was a ‘real revolutionary’—. A precisely-imposed pause. Smiling. They were skinning big sweet peppers that had been grilled.

  —Yes, that’s what I mean. So that was the end of me. I wouldn’t stand a chance against her. The end of me with him.—The skin of the peppers was transparent when it lifted in finicky curls and the hot flesh beneath was succulent, scarlet; the tips of their fingers burned.—Like this, about half-an-inch, don’t worry if they’re not regular—Rosa watched while she laid strips of flesh in a bowl. —But I was also free of them. That was something. Those bastards. I was wearing a pair of shoes once, summer shoes, very pretty ones. Everyone wore white shoes in summer in those days. I must have innocently let slip the servant girl had blancoed them for me. The next thing, a complaint at a meeting: Comrade Katya was showing bourgeois tendencies not fitting in a Party member. They wouldn’t be specific. Nobody admitted it—I lost my temper and screamed at the meeting—I knew it was the shoes, nothing but a bloody stupid pair of white shoes—Now a little dribble of oil between each layer— Her stained fingers, followed by those of the girl, dripping juice to the wrists, arranged a lattice of gleaming red. The girl looked at her; she answered, prompted:—A sprinkle of salt.—

  In the bar tabac young Swedes and Germans, English men and girls crushed in to drink something labelled La Veuve Joyeuse and in the evenings Madame Bagnelli’s friends moved over instead to Josette Arnys’ bar for the summer season. The old singer was surrounded by young homosexuals as by a large family, affectionate, bored and dependent. Some served behind the bar or were served as clients, indiscriminately; Madame Bagnelli had towards them the easy, bossy, cuffing and teasing manner that all the women in the village who for various reasons had denuded themselves of their own children, adopted towards young men.—Oh pardon! Je m‘excuse—je suis désolée, bien sur...Je vous avais pris pour le garçon... Rosa Burger’s French was beginning to piece together whole patches of talk but comprehension tattered when jokes and insults began to fly between Madame Bagnelli and some distant-faced young man taking up his wrist-strap bag, cigarettes and gilt lighter. One of them cooked for Arnys in the cellar-kitchen off the cove of tiny tables beside the bar. Paper place-mats painted by another advised the choice of spécialités antillaises (among the old recordings that played continuously was the voice of Arnys in the Thirties singing of ‘the island where Joséphine Beauharnais and I were born’). In the white toque worn as a transvestite wears a wig, gold chains tangled with the blond hair on his chest, her chef sat most of the time playing cards with Arnys in her corner under photographs of herself with Maurice Chevalier, Jean Cocteau, and others whose names were not so well known to a foreigner.

  The bar counter was central and majestic as a fine a
ltar in a church. When Rosa Burger lost track of the talk she could follow with her eyes again and again the spiral of magnificent dark oak corkscrew pillars that flanked the mirror where they were all reflected—Darby’s captain’s cap, Madame Bagnelli’s breasts leaning on the mahogany surface, Tatsu’s eyes opaque as molasses, the gaze of one of the homosexuals flirting with himself, the detachment of a French couple dazed by sunburn and love-making, the excited hunch of Pierre Grosbois as he gave his frank opinions, his warnings on this or that subject to Marthe and Françoise, the shrivelled, bright-lipped pair with long cigarette-holders whose flowery courtyard bordering the place was a shop where feather boas, old bathtubs with dragon’s feet, the broken faces of romanesque angels, wore price-tags as trees are named in a botanical garden. The oak pillars—when Pierre explained something to Rosa he considerately used a special, didactically-enunciated French—were screws from old olive presses that had been numerous in the countryside round about, from Roman times (What are you saying! And long before that!—his wife thrust her face over her shoulder) until the end of the nineteenth century (—The ’14-’18 war, Pierre!—).

  Madame Bagnelli had not yet shown her guest Alzieri’s olive oil mill, the last of the old ones still in use, but she and Rosa had taken pan-bagnat and wine and spent the midday hours in the olive grove that was Renoir’s garden. The valley of his view to the sea was raised to a new level with cheerfully ugly flat buildings.—People don’t want gardens they have to work in, they want balconies to tan on, to be just as good as the tourists who can afford to come here only to bronzer. That’s democracy in France—The flesh of Madame Bagnelli, dozing on her back on the grass, wobbled a little with laughter.—But look—the way the light falls on us, it’s the light he painted, isn’t it ?—

  The caretaker came to describe his noises in the head to her; she must have been in the habit of going there often. Rosa fell asleep and woke, under a tree that hung a tarnished silver mesh of foliage over its black trunk and her body.—Were they growing here before the house ?—

  —Oh probably before the revolution. If you live in Europe... things change (a roll of the untidy head towards the cement glare in the valley) but continuity never seems to break. You don’t have to throw the past away. If I’d stayed...at home, how will they fit in, white people ? Their continuity stems from the colonial experience, the white one. When they lose power it’ll be cut. Just like that! They’ve got nothing but their horrible power. Africans will take up their own kind of past the whites never belonged to. Even the Terblanches and Alettas—our rebellion against the whites was also part of being white...it was, it was. But here you never really have to start from scratch... Ah no, it’s too much to take on. That’s what I love—nobody expects you to be more than you are, you know. That kind of tolerance, I didn’t even know it existed—I mean, there: if you’re not equal to facing everything, there...you’re a traitor. To the human cause—justice, humanity, the lot—there’s nothing else.—

  —Had you decided that when you went away ?—

  The older woman sat up slowly, enjoying the leverage of muscles, rubbing upper arms, marked by the grass, like a cat grooming itself after a sand-bath.—Oh I don’t know. I accept it. But there is the whole world... I have forgotten I ever thought of myself like that.—The girl might have been showing curiosity about an old love affair. —To live with a man like Ugo—how can I explain—? He was in his life as a fish in water, with him you just stopped gasping and thrashing around... In Europe they don’t know what conflict is, now, bless them.—

  At the bar Grosbois’ voice was always unmistakable; while he talked he kept his right hand slightly in the air ready to intercept interruptions from his wife.—Thirty years ?—what is that ? Are we all dead ? We don’t remember ? What have we French to be ashamed of that we don’t celebrate what we fought for, any more ? If Giscard was worried about offending the Germans, that’s too bad. I’m not worried. The French people are not worried, êh. They took our food, they moved into our houses. We hid in the cellars and the mountains and came out to kill them at night in the streets. Should we forget all that ?—The little house across the street from us, a boy of nineteen was taken hostage, they killed him—his mother is still living there.—I walk through Paris and see the plaques where they shot down people in ’44—

  —He’s right, he’s right.—

  —Yes, but what does the 8th of May celebration every year mean ? Just another demo in the streets...—

  —Exactly—no public recognition of the glory of the French nation, all that is thrown away—pouf! The President of the Republic finds it vulgar, êh. Thirty years ago we rid our country of the Nazis and that is nothing to go on marching in the streets about. But the students, êh—the clerks from the Banque de France, the PTT—every little man who wants a few francs more a month—that’s a spectacle for Paris.—

  —In Vincennes they’re showing fascist films to the students—

  —Ah, no, Françoise. That’s something different. That’s to warn them—

  —Oh yes ? She’s right—what’s the difference, the kind of film they’ll see and the way they already behave? They smash and destroy their own universities. They—excuse me, êh—they actually piss on the desks of their professors. It can only encourage them—

  —What ? Nazis kicking Jews and dragging women off to the camps—

  —People don’t see anything wrong with violence. Since May ‘68, it’s a general way to get what you want. Am I wrong ? You saw on television last night—that gang in Germany. The trial that’s begun... The Baader-Meinhof lunatics—they are the result of what happened in ’68. People only disapprove of each other’s aims, maybe, nowadays. They all use the same methods, hijacking, kidnapping—

  —What was the name of the boy, the redhead, you should see, he’s become quite fat and middle-aged! (Gaby’s blown-up jowls in the mirror.) Really. There’s an interview with him in Elle—

  —She means Cohn-Bendit.—

  —In your women’s magazine ? What do they dig him up for ?—

  —But of course! Ponia’s lifted the interdiction against him, he’s in Paris autographing some book he’s written.—

  —Pierre, I’ll show you the article. It’s in the bathroom—I was reading while my tint was taking. Nobody’s noticed my hair...isn’t it a sexy colour ?—

  A young man came over to look more closely.—What did you use ? I want to streak mine.—

  —I’ve got half a bottle left, Gérard. Come past tomorrow morning, you’re welcome to it—

  —They charge 60 francs in Nice. And I’m going to have to move out of my room, as it is—

  —No ? But why ?—

  —She can get double for it in summer. She needs the money, too. Her husband’s on pension and the granddaughter’s got herself pregnant, stupid little nana, I could see her asking for it.—

  A man Rosa Burger greeted as she did many people because they passed one another so often in the village, at last came up to her in the bar with the formality with which Frenchmen approach women as a prelude to expectations of intimacy. Would she have a drink or a coffee with him ?

  —You are English ?—Ah ? I had a friend who went down there, in the building trade, like me. He’s making a lot of money. 12,000 francs a month—new francs, I’m talking about. But there’s trouble there, êh ?...I don’t want trouble... And you like France? The coast is beautiful. Of course. There are some good places to go dancing—you’ve been to Les Palmiers Bleus, it’s just near Cap Ferrat ? Don’t your friends take you dancing ?—

  She had seen a man and girl at a café table, tossing a snapped-off flower back and forth between them; the exchange, in any language, was as simple as that to manage.—I’m staying with Madame Bagnelli.—

  —That’s the one in the little house just above the old Maison Commune ? But she’s an English lady.—

  —Only the name’s Italian.—

  —No, no, Niçois, plenty of French people with those names around here.
My name: Pistacchi, Michel Pistacchi—you can say that ? I’ll take you to Les Palmiers Bleus—you’ll like it. Why do you laugh ? You find me funny ?—

  —We won’t be able to talk—you can hear I don’t speak French—

  —I am going to ask Madame’s permission to take you dancing.—

  —Ask her ? What for ?—

  Like most gregarious men, he was drawn to girls who appeared to be set apart from the company in which he noticed them. As if to confirm his instinct for such things, the foreign girl’s face broke with vivid amusement, she was generously promising when she laughed.

  He brought roses for Madame Bagnelli. Wearing an elegant navy blue blazer he came to fetch Rosa Burger in a sports car—Not mine but it’s nearly the same thing, you understand—when my friend finds a good buy in a newer model, I’ll take over this from him.—He ordered an elaborate dinner and expanded volubly in the busy to-and-fro of tasting each other’s dishes.—This’s what I like, to be with a girl who appreciates good food, an atmosphere—I don’t go out if it’s not somewhere first-class. No discos—He danced expertly and his attempted caresses as they danced were as expertly calculated not to exceed the line at which they could, for the time being, be ignored. She understood most of what he said; when she did not follow the words, could follow the dynamo that moved him, the attitudes and concepts turning always on his private needs, fears and desires. He boasted innocently of familiarity with his patron—I’m at his house for casse-croûte every day—at the same time as he complained of the responsibility he was expected to carry in comparison with what he earned, the taxes he paid.