Please tell our friends in New York that a transfer of power to that clown and his sidekick is simply unthinkable. They must be called off at once. Neither you nor the committee should have any reason to doubt my leadership. I’m deeply grateful that events conspired to land me here. I could call it the work of the Fates, though it seems cruel to blame a continent’s worth of disasters upon poor old Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos; I suspect it’s really the Furies’ doing. But whoever is at fault, this is my mission, and I must finish it out.
He set down his pen to glance back at Grant, asleep in the bed they shared at the Beauvau, one arm flung above his head and the other folded against his bare chest. With a sense of dread and guilt, he lifted the pen again.
Your husband is much changed, Eileen. I wonder if you’ll recognize him on his return, or if he’ll recognize himself. Please know that whatever I’ve done here in France, I’ve done always with painful consciousness of my bond to you. I can’t expect absolution, nor that you’ll understand my reasons. Only that you believe me when I say I remain, as ever, your affectionate
VF
24
L.H.O.O.Q.
It was Breton who proposed that they invite Mr. Allen and Miss Palmer to dinner at Air Bel. Breton was sitting at Varian’s side before a small tight fire in the salon, troubling it with a goose-headed brass poker, as they both half-drowsed with their glasses of whiskey. The mention of Allen’s name made Varian sit up in his wingback chair.
“What are you suggesting? That we invite him here? That we seat him at dinner between Mary Jayne and Jacqueline? What would be the point?”
“To give him a taste of le vrai Marseille!”
Varian caught Breton’s raised eyebrow, the curl of his lip. “Allen’s hardly worth your creative energies, André.”
“Do you not think me equal to the challenge?” He adjusted the vermilion scarf at his neck to a more aggressive angle.
“I consider you equal to anything. But I wouldn’t want to subject you, nor any of our other friends, to an evening of Jay Allen’s big-fish stories. And I don’t want to take him into confidence about Katznelson or Zilberman. The less he knows, the better.”
“Unless he ends up their sole protector.”
“If he ends up their protector, we’re all in trouble.”
“But what about the Flight Portfolio? Oughtn’t he to know of its existence? Should we not induce him to report upon it to our friends in the States? Perhaps we can stage a small exhibition.”
“I’ve already reported on the Flight Portfolio. The New York office knows what we’ve got, and they don’t seem impressed in the least.”
“Don’t you see, Monsieur Fry? You are not yet using your disadvantage to your advantage. Let Monsieur Allen add his admiration to your own.”
“I’m not interested in recruiting Monsieur Allen’s admiration.”
“Then let’s invite him for pleasure’s sake alone. And perhaps we’ll also exhibit some pieces from the portfolio, just to see if he takes note.”
“I’m not interested in Jay Allen’s pleasure, either, to be quite frank.”
“Not his pleasure. Ours. Entendu?”
“Why bother, André?”
“Because he is our favorite type of quarry. The type that considers itself intelligent, yet reveals itself at every turn to be a fool. Also because I’d like to make an entertainment for my friend Max Ernst. He’s just come to the neighborhood, you know, and I’ve been looking for an excuse to bring him to Air Bel. I rather alienated him back in Paris, but the current climate has made my position untenable.”
“So you’re saying I must really shave and dress on Allen’s behalf?”
“I assure you, dear Monsieur Fry, it will be worth the trouble.” Breton spun the goose-headed poker once in his hand, deftly, like a parade marshal’s baton.
“And what will we serve our guests for dinner, when there’s not a turnip to be had in all of France?”
“Mary Jayne’s young man will come up with something, I’m sure.”
“Killer! I wish he’d just be gone. I believe he’s waiting for the right moment to sell one of you out.”
Breton lifted an eyebrow. “He’s quite a useful fellow, when he wants to be. Who do you think procured that whiskey you’re drinking?”
Varian frowned at his glass, then emptied it into the fire. A brief blue-gold flame flared and died.
“Everyone at Air Bel has his place,” Breton said.
“Not Killer. And not Jay Allen, either. He has no place at Air Bel, not even for an evening.”
“Won’t you indulge me, dear Monsieur Fry?”
Varian sighed. “Are you dissuadable?”
“Absolutely not. I have something particular in mind.”
* * *
________
And so, three weeks into the New Year, Varian found himself dressing and shaving for a dinner party in Jay Allen’s honor at the Villa Air Bel—an Exhibition of New Surrealist Works on Paper, according to the invitation. He and Grant, fortified with drinks from the hotel bar, met Jay Allen and Miss Palmer at the tram station closest to the office. Allen had done himself up in pinstripes and a bow tie, Miss Palmer in a filmy gown the color of boiled octopus; its hem must have caught on her heel as she was dressing, and a length of torn lace trailed her like a tentacle. She shivered in a too-thin velvet cape, her head bare.
“Who would have believed it could get this cold in the South of France?” she said. “I might as well be back in Pittsburgh!”
“You won’t find it much warmer at the villa, I’m afraid,” Varian said. “Firewood’s in short supply.”
“Oh, I couldn’t care less,” Miss Palmer said. “I’m so eager to meet Mr. Ernst and Mr. Breton.”
“Grand fellows, both,” Allen said, though Varian knew he’d never met either one. “And Mary Jayne’s a capital girl. Met her in the old days, in Chicago, when she was just someone’s little sister at a party. Wrigleys’ Christmas ball, I think it was. Winked and cocked her hip at me like she’d seen someone do it in a movie. Too bad her folks sent her off to be finished in Italy! She was done to a turn when I met her.”
Grant coughed, hiding his expression behind a pressed linen handkerchief. Varian avoided his eye, but Miss Palmer withdrew a tin of lozenges from her handbag and offered them to him.
“I do hope you’re not getting the cold everyone has,” she said. “I’ve been just mizzerob since I arrived. Tray, tray mizzerob.”
Grant bowed and took a lozenge, and Varian struggled to maintain his composure. Fortunately, the train arrived; they boarded, and the general crush obviated conversation. By the time their car had emptied enough to force them to speak again, Jay Allen had found a new subject: how war revealed who was and who wasn’t a man.
“Now, take Badajoz, for example,” he said. “Some people might have fled when they saw the blood ankle-deep in the bullring. Eighteen hundred Republicans already machine-gunned there, and the Nationalists bringing in more every minute. A lot of guys couldn’t have stomached it, would have lost their lunches.”
A narrow-shouldered pensioner, one who must have known enough English to understand, coughed reprovingly. If Allen perceived the reproof, he ignored it.
“But I had a war to cover,” he said. “I stood my ground. Watched those Nationalist guards lead three dozen Republicans into the ring and line them up against the wall.” He raised an imaginary rifle. “Bang, bang, bang! That was the end of them. Did I turn away? Nope. Never have, did, or will. Wrote it up. Sent it off. Three hundred thousand copies on America’s breakfast tables by the next morning. But now look at someone like your friend Mehring. Calls himself a writer, but he can’t even poke his head out of his room. Scared, shifty little Jew.”
“Pardon me,” Grant said, mildly. “But rumor has it that innocent people are being
arrested in this town. Some of them simply for being Jewish.”
“Must we say that word so loudly?” Miss Palmer said, glancing around the car at the remaining passengers, pulling her velvet cloak closer at the neck.
“What word? Jewish?”
“Perhaps it’s not safe to go broadcasting our—er—sympathies.”
“I’ll have you know, I have no prejudices whatever,” Allen said. “Never have, never will. I must be the least Jew-hating person you’ve ever met. Get along with anyone. But I also tell it like it is. Can’t help it. I’m a truth-teller through and through. Blame me for my honesty. I’m as straight as they come.”
“Well, thank God for that,” Grant said, and Varian had to employ his handkerchief again.
At last they reached La Pomme and the group descended, Varian leading them through the narrow tunnel under the railway and across the road. Allen wished aloud that he had brought his galoshes. Miss Palmer, lamenting the damp and the mud, gathered the skirt of her dress into her arms. Ahead, the windows of Air Bel radiated butter-colored light.
“Hope they have a decent cook,” Jay Allen said. “Haven’t had a proper meal since I landed. And in France, no less! Wartime privations and all that, I guess. Slim down to my fighting weight by the end of it.” He slapped himself on the belly. “Used to throw down a round with Papa, back in Chicago. Cleaned his clock a time or two.”
From inside the villa they could hear someone playing “Tumbalalaika” on the harpsichord, someone else singing along. Meydl, meydl, kh’vil bay der fregn, / Vos ken vaksn, vaksn on regn?/ Vos ken brenen un nit oyfhern?/ Vos ken benken, veynen on trern? Varian employed the knocker and soon the door opened to reveal Madame Nouguet in her black dress and white apron, her face a mask of displeasure: eyebrows compressed into a tight V, eyes slitted, mouth pinched.
“Well, good evening, Madame Nouguet,” Varian said. “May we come in?”
Madame Nouguet stepped aside and held the door open, refusing to meet Varian’s eye. “Vos manteaux,” she demanded.
They surrendered their coats.
“Entrez,” she said. “Monsieur Breton vous attend.”
They walked into the salon, where they encountered a scene almost identical to the one that preceded every Saturday-night dinner party at Air Bel—Jacqueline sprawled on the divan, holding forth to an admiring trio of local surrealists; Mary Jayne smoking and talking amid a cluster of male friends in a corner; Breton and Serge and Zilberman engaged in debate; Vlady and Tobias dueling over the chessboard; Jean Gemähling picking out tunes on the harpsichord while Lena sang; and a couple of new friends—in this case Max Ernst, white-haired and fierce, his pale blue eyes like points of astral fire; and statuesque Peggy Guggenheim, wearing mismatched earrings in the shape of an anvil and a bomb—bearing witness to it all. A scene like any other preprandial gathering at Air Bel, except that everyone in the room was starkly, glowingly nude. Men, women, young and old—all had followed the dress code set, Varian assumed, by Breton, who looked up now to give Varian a nod. Varian’s instinct was to shield his eyes from all that skin, everyone’s skin—Jacqueline’s breasts like two white miche loaves, Lena’s creamy round shoulders, Wifredo Lam’s smooth copper-colored chest, Max Ernst’s freckle-scattered back, Peggy Guggenheim’s dark soft navel. Mary Jayne, who always dressed so carefully, wore her nudity like a Lanvin gown; her midsection had been painted with black labels and arrows, indicating NENES above and MINOU below. She approached them now with the most casual of smiles.
“I see Madame Nouguet has already taken your coats,” she said. “Why don’t you put the rest of your things in the library? I’ll get your drinks meanwhile. What’ll you have, Miss Palmer?”
Miss Palmer stood frozen and agape.
“I believe Miss Palmer takes white wine,” Varian said. “How about you, Jay?”
“What is this, Fry, some kind of sick joke?”
Varian turned to Jay Allen and raised a single eyebrow, a trick he and Grant had perfected before a mirror in Gore Hall. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Go to hell. I’m going to call a car at once.”
“Dear me, there’s no phone here!” Mary Jayne said. “And no car to be had, even if there were. But really, Mr. Allen, you needn’t blush. We’re all friends here. You and I especially, isn’t that right? Though I don’t think we’ve seen each other since I was about fifteen. What a tiresome girl I must have been at that Christmas ball! I was mad about you, as I’m sure you’ll remember. Such a good-looking young man, and oh, how you charmed me with your words! I must have embarrassed you, fawning like I did. But speaking of that, you must meet my friend Peggy. She just arrived a few days ago and knows no one in Marseille except me and Max Ernst. But she read your piece on Badajoz and just worships you.” Mary Jayne motioned to Peggy Guggenheim, who stood half-protected by Ernst. “Peggy, come meet Mr. Allen.”
Peggy Guggenheim extracted herself from Ernst’s embrace and crossed the room on tiptoe. She had been labeled VENUS by the same hand that had marked Mary Jayne; she seemed so deeply at ease that Varian had to wonder how much of her life she spent unclothed.
“Enchantée,” she said to Allen, who stared openly at her pubis. “You’ll forgive me if I stammer. I’m rather overwhelmed to be in your presence. To think that I’d meet you here, in the South of France! Why,” she said, lowering her voice, “don’t tell Breton I said so, but you’re the finest writer in this room. You’re much better than your old friend Hemingway, by the way, and don’t you ever let anyone tell you otherwise.”
Allen stammered that he had not, indeed, ever let anyone tell him otherwise.
“Well, I’m awfully glad to hear it. Won’t you tell me what you’re working on now?”
By this time Miss Palmer had recovered enough to register Peggy Guggenheim’s tone, which apparently contained too much admiration for her liking. She came to attention, straightening the bodice of her octopus-colored gown, and introduced herself to Peggy. With scarcely a pause in the conversation, Peggy seemed to read Miss Palmer’s jealousy and recruited her into the project of praising Jay Allen. While they were engaged in that activity, Mary Jayne leaned in toward Varian’s ear and said, “Why don’t you put your things in the library, darling? All your things.”
“Oh, no,” Varian whispered. “Not a chance.”
“This wasn’t my idea, you know,” she said. “It was Breton’s.”
“You must have had a hand in it.”
“Well, I confess, we did put our heads together,” she said.
“And what is it, exactly, you want me to do?”
“Only what everyone else has already done.”
Grant, meanwhile, had disappeared; when he appeared again he was as nude as anyone in the room, wearing his skin as nonchalantly as he always did. He crossed to the drinks cart and poured two whiskies with water. Jacqueline, seeing him with his back turned, approached him and whispered something in his ear. He nodded, and she retrieved a ceramic bowl of black paint from the sideboard. With a steady hand, she painted the old Dadaist pun, L.H.O.O.Q, just above Grant’s nates.
“Your turn now,” Mary Jayne said.
“Oh, no. The director remains clothed.”
“On the contrary. This game requires that we all participate.”
“That’s how I’m to meet Max Ernst for the first time? Entirely naked?”
“Absolutely. He is, after all.”
“What a thrill Mr. Allen will have, reporting this to the New York office.”
Grant had come to deliver Varian’s drink. “Aren’t you having a good time, Tom? You look rather too hot in that suit.”
“I feel like I’ve walked into a nightmare.”
“Consider how much worse it must be for Mr. Allen.”
“Not nearly as bad as it’s going to get,” Mary Jayne said, smiling
to herself.
Varian glanced toward Jay Allen, who was still bathing in Peggy Guggenheim’s shower of praise; Miss Palmer was holding his jacket and tie in her arms, and he had loosened the top button of his shirt.
“Oh, dear,” Grant said. “He’s getting ahead of you, Tommie. Come along,” he said, and beckoned Varian, taking up in his other hand the small ceramic bowl of black paint. Varian followed Grant to the sitting room on the north side of the house, the one that looked out over Zilberman’s greenhouse-turned-studio; there, Grant divested him of his dinner clothes, taking his time. Varian could not help but close his eyes. He heard himself make a sound, a kind of plea. It seemed to bring him back to himself, and he pushed Grant’s hands away.
“Look,” he said. “Do you want to undo me entirely?”
Grant smiled. “Seems to me you’re already undone. Now turn around.”
“No. Are you going to paint something on me?”
“Mais oui.”
“Grant.”
“Come on now. Tourne-toi.”
Like an automaton he turned, and then there was the excruciating cold lick of the brush against his lower back, and Grant’s hot hand on his hip to steady him. When Grant finished, he stepped back to regard his work.
“What did you write, you bastard? I can’t read it.”
“Just your name. The French version. Vaurien.”
Good-for-nothing. “Perfect, Grant. That’ll raise my profile with the staff.”
“I’ll raise your profile,” Grant said, both hands on Varian’s hips now.
“Please, Grant. Please. Look what you’ve done already. Just leave me alone a minute,” Varian said, and Grant did, winking at Varian over his shoulder. But it was longer than a minute before Varian could rejoin the group in the living room. And when he did, he was relieved to find Grant half-hidden in a circle of other guests. Mary Jayne appeared with a drink for Varian, and he tried to forget that they were unclothed, everything on full display. Breton, master of this game, seemed utterly at ease in his pale and birthmarked skin; he made no move to hide or cover himself. For a moment his gaze rested on Varian’s, and then he beckoned him over.
The Flight Portfolio Page 39