by Louis Begley
His mood changed; he paid for his seat and headed for lunch at the Lipp. The place was still crowded—fortunately, Ben thought, it’s not Sunday; one need not stare at divorced fathers feeding steak and frites to bored offspring—but the owner’s nephew who stood guard that day led him to a table in the back room. Ben welcomed the cool after the walk. The indifferent boiled beef was what he had expected. He drank his bottle of wine and, realizing the emptiness of the rest of the day, ordered an eau-de-vie. The nephew was already having his own solitary lunch at the accustomed table. Ben paid the bill, got into a taxi, and drove home.
It was dark when he woke from his nap. He remembered that he was to go to the Decazes and his previous perplexity at an annoying aspect of their invitation: it was for ten-thirty, but they had not invited him to dinner. That was fair enough if one lived near Arpajon, but why did they expect him to travel all the way from Paris if there was nothing for him to do until that hour? In the event, he didn’t mind; it was already close to ten, but he considered it normal that, if the hostess had not asked one to dine at her house before a dance, she should arrange to have someone living nearby do it. Could it be that they did not seriously expect him—he found that difficult to reconcile with Paul’s officious telephone reminders—or did different rules prevail in the region between Fontainebleau and Rambouillet? It was also odd that Guy Renard had not telephoned. If Paul and Véronique intended to make a show of politeness, a reasonable hypothesis, given Paul’s avidity—the word was not too strong—for the assignments Ben caused to come his way, then the correct thing was to invite their mutual friend also. In that case, one might have thought Guy would have said either that he had accepted or that he would not be seeing Ben at the party. On the other hand, it was true that it was some time since Ben had last heard Guy mention the beautiful Odile and the Montorgueil château. Perhaps the answer to this puzzle was that Guy was no longer welcome at the Decazes’ neighbors and Véronique had found it more tactful not to have him at her party. Inductive reasoning produced no answer to these questions. Ben decided to dress and make his way to the Decazes’, if indeed he was able to understand the directions they had sent. He would look over the situation at the party from the outside, and thus deduce the correct answer and what further action he should take.
By the time he had opened the street gate with the aid of Madame Hamelin’s husband, maneuvered the car in reverse gear out of the courtyard and through the porte cochère, rushed back upstairs to get the forgotten directions from his dressing room, and was finally navigating toward the Porte d’Orléans, real night had fallen. Ben turned on the radio and found the news. A crowd of a hundred thousand (was it possible?)—Norman Mailer and other representative great Americans among them—had marched on the White House. But, previous to that, by the dawn’s early light, Nixon had held a meeting with students at the Lincoln Memorial, and no harm came to either side; was a new age of miracles about to begin?
The need for an immediate decision interrupted his meditation. He had thought he knew how to reach Corbeil, which was not far from Arpajon. Should he stop to look at the map or rely on right reason? His sense of adventure prevailed: essentially, it was like going past Orly, only a little different; before or after Corbeil, he would turn west, probably after following some sign to Centre Ville. He realized that he had forgotten to have a drink before setting out and that it was many hours since lunch. Also, he was going too fast, but if he slowed down, other drivers on this three-lane highway passed him unpleasantly, as though intent on penetrating his anus as well as his car trunk, and, for good measure, blinding him before they darted, klaxons blaring, toward the headlights of an approaching car. It was better to stay ahead of them. Chalky villages and towns appeared and vanished; the streets were deserted; sooner than expected, he saw a monument to the World War I dead and the sign that said he had entered Corbeil.
Now Ben pulled over to the side of the road and rummaged in the glove compartment. The flashlight battery was dead or the thing simply refused to work. In the light of the overhead lamp he examined the Decaze directions: there was no mention of Corbeil; they had assumed one would be coming through Rambouillet, which he realized was nowhere near; inexplicably, the road map was not in its accustomed place; guided by right reason he decided to head in the direction of Chartres and hope for the best.
Creamy fog in orderly rolls like barbed wire intermittently cut the road; it rose in barricades on both sides. Ben liked to motor in conditions of adversity. He turned on his fog lights, rejoicing in the yellow hues they imparted to the night. Arpajon! He had made it; it remained to find the village immediately beyond, then the Decazes’ manoir or whatever else it might turn out to be. Another roadside stop revealed the remainder of the problem. Not only was the basic approach to Arpajon organized for drivers coming from Rambouillet, but so were the more arcane instructions. The fog thickened. According to the car clock, it was almost midnight. Ben was hungry. A great wish to floor the gas pedal and rush back to Paris and the welcoming arms of the headwaiter at the Coupole came upon him. He decided to give the Decazes another five minutes, and they had almost lost when abruptly, on the right, an arrow appeared, indicating a communal road—hardly a road at all—to Montlhéry. That name figured in the directions, just the sort of slight hint that the trained mind of a reserve marine officer needed to solve a problem on patrol.
In the interval between two banks of fog he made out a shape on the right that could indeed be a château, with its obligatory wall and multiple entrances for different grades of visitors. That would be the Montorgueil place. He drove to the end of the wall: again to the right, between ditches and rows of willows on either side, was a track wide enough for a car; presumably, he was again following a wall of the Montorgueil property. Another two hundred meters, yet another entrance to the right and, at last, a ridiculously long row of parked cars. He drove to the head of it; he had arrived; in Michelin terms, it remained to be seen whether what awaited him could justify the voyage.
There was light in every window in the house. Torches burned in iron holders outside the door. The undistinguished form of this brick building and the modern look of the bricks made Ben suppose it had been originally intended to lodge the régisseur or a relative with a disputed title claim to part of the property. On one side lay structures that might be stables or carriage barns. On the other, attached to the house, was a glass hothouse also glowing with light. There was no point in tugging on the bellpull. He opened the moist front door and, eyes blinking, entered the house. Paul was at the end of the hall, with a group of florid men wearing evening clothes a size or two too small; as he came forward to greet Ben, he raised his arms in a gesture that could imply thanksgiving or despair. They had given up hope of seeing him; Véronique was in the conservatory; drinks were in the dining room he would pass on his way, so was the Camembert and probably also Guy Renard; dancing was to the right. Indeed, the thud of feet shifting to the beat of the monkey came from that direction. Ben heard the florid men say their last names; either he was right, and they were all of them notaires, or Paul had assembled skilled impersonators. Ben gave both his names, on principle, à l’américaine, and rapidly decided it was time to move on in search of drink, food, and my cousin Véronique.
She was wearing a long dress of very dark green pleated silk. Her arms were bare, thin, and, for this season, extraordinarily white. When he bowed to kiss her hand—she was perching, on the edge of a large cement tub planted with white flowers, alongside another young woman he did not recognize—he smelled her perfume. It seemed heavy for someone her age and had been liberally applied. Véronique addressed him in French: the young woman was Lavinia, Paul’s unmarried half sister who worked for French Vogue. They had been in the same convent school; she had met Paul at Lavinia’s house; they were best friends. A man passed with a tray of drinks; Ben asked if he could have two whiskeys, one for immediate consumption and one to nurse when he had finished. They laughed. Véronique said he had b
etter sit down beside them, a man so thirsty must be tired. He even looked tired. They would take care of him. All Americans liked Virginia ham. Lavinia would bring him a plate. Now that Véronique had at last lured him into her private jungle she would not let him get away. Ben wondered if her dress was by Fortuny. She put her hand on his shoulder—the gesture surprised Ben—and said he was right: her American grandfather, Jack’s great-uncle, had taken long to recover from his wounds; endless months of the convalescence were spent in Venice. At the time, he was rich and bought a number of these dresses for his wife, whom she, Véronique, resembled. Her own mother was short and round. It was lucky her mother had not sold them. Now they all belonged to her. She asked if he knew how one rolled these sheaths into serpents of silk to put them away in a drawer or into a suitcase. But they made her feel she was a serpent, they were her skin. Had he thought, she asked, about how there was nothing between a serpent and its skin, and yet the serpent sheds it?
Lavinia returned and so did the man with drinks. Véronique asked him to put a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of soda and some ice beside them. She stretched her arms before her and said she was tired of the party and her other guests; Paul could look after them. After all, except for Lavinia and Ben they were Decaze friends. It occurred to Ben that my family’s drinking genes had been transmitted by my great-uncle Hugh to Véronique and more mysteriously to Lavinia—or was it the result of a Vassar education in the case of Véronique and of the frequentation of Condé Nast colleagues in the case of the sister-in-law? They asked him to tell his life story. Paul claimed Ben was a man with a mysterious past he did not like to reveal. In fact, telling the story of his life at parties was not Ben’s preferred occupation. He decided that the abridged, ironic version would do. As always, it was like hearing another man speak. They said he must write a book; had he read The Painted Bird? Ben replied he had, as soon as it was published; it was one of the reasons why he was proof against literary temptations that might distract him from making money. What about their lives? Lavinia pouted—before she was eighteen, it was all about how to lose her virginity, now it was about how to find a decent apartment for less than five hundred dollars a month.
And Véronique? Lavinia already knows the story, replied Véronique, I will tell it to you only if you ask me to lunch or dinner.
Lavinia interrupted, saying, He can’t do that, Paul is much too jealous.
Once more he heard Véronique laugh—a cascade of triumphant sound. Ben thought he would never forget it. Miraculously, it lifted his spirits. He felt things might go better in some form he could not yet recognize.
But he can do it when Paul is away, she said, turning to Lavinia. Don’t you know that he will be sailing during the Pentecostal weekend and the following week as well? Ben can’t possibly know it. Paul likes clients to think he never leaves the office.
Later, on his way to say good-bye to Paul—it seemed he would have to make an effort to look for him, the group in the entrance hall having dissolved probably long ago—Ben saw Guy on a low sofa in the corner of a room, half dining room and half library, where the bar was set up. He was speaking with habitual intensity to a girl Ben didn’t know. Perhaps it was the obliging Odile. Thinking it might be discreet not to give a sign of recognition, Ben concentrated all his attention on the hunting scene above the sideboard and was about to exit, feigning distraction, when he heard Guy’s deep, courteous and teasing baritone: At last the only elegant American in Paris has appeared, one who qualifies as American only because his list of good addresses in Paris is better than any Parisian’s. Guy wanted to know where Ben had gone in the morning. He had called, he said, in the hope they would drive out to the Decazes’ together, stopping for dinner on the way, in Rambouillet, at the Maison des Champs, with an after-dinner pause at the house of Odile’s aunt next door. Did Ben have plans for lunch, in just a few hours? They would pick him up; he was sure to know a bistro that was open on Sunday.
For no particular reason, thanking Paul for the party had begun to seem less necessary. Ben found his car with some difficulty. There was nobody there to see him; he urinated against a bush. Before he reached the highway, the fog had lifted and the sky was streaked with light. Those two beautiful young women had found him interesting—there might be more to it than that. They were of a milieu he thought he understood. Although drunk, he had done nothing to botch it; he had, in fact, behaved well. He could, if he wanted, hear Veronique’s crystal laughter again.
Looking at the brightening sky, he remembered a coming-out party in Bar Harbor for the Parkers’ third daughter. The night had been unusually mild. On the way to the Parkers’ from a prefatory dinner, there was a violent scene with Rachel. She had shrieked, opened the car door just as he was accelerating into a long curve, threatened to jump out. It related somehow to money. When they finally arrived at the party, his hands were trembling. Rachel went into the house—to dance? to get away from him? He stayed outside, talked for a while with portly, beautifully shaved Charlie Parker, face pink above his white tie, beaming at the guests and his own prosperity, and then sat down on the stone edge of a raised flower bed near the side porch and listened to the orchestra work its way through Irving Berlin. The eldest daughter, Maggie, passed by, asked him to dance, and when he declined wanted to know what was the matter. He said he was unhappy. She sat down beside him. They remained there until it was almost dawn; after a while, she held his hand. Then Rachel, as though nothing had happened, came out of the house and announced she was tired—it was time to take her home. So he gave Maggie a kiss on the cheek and trudged off across the lawn to get the station wagon. Life went on in its preset way. There was no need for that now. At least he was free to set his own course.
He returned to Paris through Corbeil, as he had come—why look for Rambouillet at this hour? The road seemed miraculously short. When he arrived at the corner of Montparnasse and the rue de Vaugirard, where he decided he would leave the car instead of struggling with the gate, Ben saw that the metal curtain of the epicene had been cranked halfway up; the owner was on the sidewalk outside, prying apart with a hammer the slats of a crate of bananas. Ben bought two and ate them at once, voraciously. They would stave off his hangover. He threw the peels into a basket filled with discarded lettuce leaves and onions.
IV
TWO DAYS LATER, on the Monday after that weekend of exultation, I telephoned Ben to tell him that my daughters and I had marched in Washington—Prudence was sick with a bad throat—linking arms with strangers, singing at the top of our voices, and also to ask whether he could get away from Paris over the Memorial Day holiday and join us in Vermont. I said he didn’t need to fear landing in the midst of one of our family reunions. It would be just the five of us, lots of bad tennis, and no organized activities. For once, in a matter of this kind, Ben did not chill me with his “European” point of view. He understood what was happening in America. The French television had played clips of the march; he had watched them on Sunday. As for the visit I proposed, he said he would try to come but couldn’t make any plans. The office was busier than ever. Then he told me he had been to the Decazes’ party.
You see the effect of living in different time zones, he said. Events never coincide. While you were still marching I might have been on the dance floor. Instead I talked to Véronique. That was a momentous occasion in its own way. It’s possible that thanks to you I am now in a more cheerful landscape.
In fact, when Ben looked back on it during the days that followed, Véronique’s flirtatious manner and what he took to be a proposal that he invite her in her husband’s absence troubled him. They seemed too bold and provocative for the circumstances, but he wasn’t sure his assessment was correct. Possibly it was nothing more than a high-spirited way of ending a long and too personal conversation that had begun to bore her. Something akin to the way she laughed. That her husband’s half sister had been present supported this interpretation. But, on the other hand, wasn’t Lavinia’s presence a cover of
which Véronique skillfully took advantage rather than a constraint? The latter interpretation was reinforced by Ben’s conviction that a current of sorts had surged between them when he described his paltry wartime miseries—could it be that “She lov’d me for the dangers I had pass’d”?—as it had earlier when, unexpectedly, she had touched his arm. But if she was attracted to him and tempted by the prospect of an adventure, should he not avoid involvement with this temperamental married woman?
Ben’s dislike of entanglements, and a closely allied consideration—his reluctance to have disorders of his personal life seep into the neat, protected space in which he conducted official business, the bank’s and his own—were deeply rooted. The Cockney, Dolores, and her shipowner husband did not count—he considered them commedia dell’arte figures and dealt with them accordingly—but although he hardly knew Véronique or Paul, she was my cousin and a “nice” woman, mother of a five-year-old boy and wife of an equally “nice” man. Why should Ben let his shadow pass over their happiness? In addition, according to all reports, the legal work Paul was doing for Ben’s firm was valuable. He had in a sense become a part of the office, and Ben despised office romances as threatening to discipline, objectivity, and concentration on servicing the interests of the bank. During the period immediately following his separation from Rachel, when friends’ wives like so many curious social workers rushed to care for this elusive, strangely correct, and wounded man, he had scrupulously declined offers of solace from spouses of partners and junior colleagues—those offers so often communicated by the lady’s surprising substitution of a moist kiss on the lips for the previous handshake or chaste peck on the cheek.