by Louis Begley
It’s your fault, you bastard, she hissed at Ben, you broke me, you made me do it. He was nothing, just a monstrous machine you sent. He smeared and mashed me and now it’s your turn and you are so small you don’t even fill me.
She left the bed and rushed from one end of the room to the other, with her hands twisting the ends of her breasts or pounding her stomach.
Abruptly, she became completely calm, sat down beside Ben, and stroked his face. The child is that man’s, she said. I hadn’t been sleeping with Paul. As soon as I realized I was pregnant, though, I got him to do it. I said I wanted it so badly I couldn’t sleep; he could pretend I was someone else if he was still angry at me. It takes time with him, but I can always make him do it when I want to. Now I will make you do it and when you go soft I will make you do it some more. I want to be pink again, like underdone veal.
Note on Crillon stationery (undated):
Ravaged bed, inexcusable stains on the blanket. Called the housekeeper, had it all changed. Flowers too. In the mirror, weary face, leech marks on sides of neck and arms. Quite unpresentable, but am I going anywhere?
Awake at last she says, as though a sponge had passed over the blackboard: Was it all right?
Later, What now, Ben? Will you take me, with the baby? Don’t forget: you made this child, that man only laid me.
Once more calls me a bastard and latches on—hard.
Still later, sky turning white, she asks me to order tea. What about my question, Ben?
She is wearing my suit trousers and pajama top; unbuttons the top; says soon she will have milk; will I want her to squeeze it in my tea?
Her question. It occurs to me that the answer will make no difference. It might as well be yes so that is what I say.
Howls of laughter—wish it had been demonic, but no, just laughing her head off. Just barely manages to get the words out, she is shaking so hard all over: You are late, Ben, seven months late!
She took the night train to Biarritz.
X
AND AFTERWARD?
It would be pleasant to report that Ben traveled widely, visited countries difficult and perilous of access, paused before exotic landscapes and celebrated ruins, knew other loves and other disappointments, until at last, weary and yet, in his growing indifference, more tolerant, he learned to accept from a companion the viaticum of serenity—perhaps even happiness. That is not how it turned out.
He left Paris for Geneva the next day, took care of his business there, and returned briefly to New York. I was still in the city, alone. It may be that he tried to reach me at home while I was out; certainly he left no message at the magazine. One more trip to Geneva took place in July. He passed through Brussels, for meetings in his clients’ ornate, almost deserted headquarters building. All he had done on their behalf in the previous meetings with the Japanese parties—the concessions he had proposed and the ones he had obtained—gained approval. The talk was slow, with endless summaries of what had already been exposed, as specialists were called in successively to state their opinions; out of ingrained habit, and to prevent his eyelids from closing, Ben scribbled in his notebook. During pauses in the deliberations, he stood before the huge windows of the boardroom and stared at the royal palace on the other side of the avenue. The Belgian flag was high on the mast. Somewhere inside that building, therefore, were the childless king and queen and their courtiers with complicated, harsh-sounding names, just like the names of these cordial bankers, reminders of lost provinces and tales of chivalry.
In Geneva, he found the Japanese group less certain of its positions than before—evasive, seemingly ready to put all previous informal agreements in question; a New York lawyer, unknown to Ben, had been added to the Japanese team. During an acrimonious negotiating session, while his employers chattered among themselves in Japanese, he challenged Ben’s tax assumptions, and, what seemed more grave, the relationships to be created after the settlement took hold, all of which Ben had considered adopted, at least in principle. These were the essential elements of the settlement. But Ben had had his bank’s law firm study the tax issues the New York lawyer seized upon, and his understanding of them had been confirmed; he thanked his stars and his solid early training for having taken that precaution. Telephone conversations ensued with New York and then among teams of lawyers assembled in New York; the work in Geneva was suspended, yet no one dared leave lest departure be taken to signal the collapse of the negotiations. Ben watched over his clients and their morale, determined to prevent premature compromises.
Several days passed in this manner. It was very warm. Toward the evening, Ben visited antique shops in the Grand’Rue and along the streets adjacent to the cathedral, knowing there was nothing he wished to see or buy. He kept thoughts of Véronique at bay, until her image appeared only at an impossibly vast distance, as though of a dancer trembling, on pointed toes, at the center of a brilliant and icy stage, perceived through the converging lens of opera glasses. Finally, the New York lawyer declared himself satisfied with Ben’s initial construct; the feeling of relief was general, and plans were made for meetings at which all remaining outstanding items would be resolved and the final documents signed. The meetings would begin on August 3. That left enough time for Ben to spend a few days in New York. The bank’s lawyers would come to Geneva to work on the documents; he needed to see them beforehand to go over various problems. In addition, he wanted van Damm, from his Paris office, to be present, as well as a financial specialist to verify projections both parties had been making. In van Damm’s case, this implied finding a New York partner to replace him in Paris while he helped Ben. Europe was changing. One could no longer confidently leave an office unattended in August, counting on the month-long sleep of finance and industry.
This time, I was at home when Ben telephoned. I suggested that we meet for dinner, but he said that was impossible. It occurred to me that he was with Marie-France in the evenings and preferred not to have me tag along. Surely that was what I hoped. We settled on lunch at the Veau d’Or. The place was uncharacteristically empty. It would be closing for the summer vacation in a few days; Gerard, in fact, had already left for France. We were greeted by a nod and some inaudible phrase of welcome from Gerard’s mute partner. A harassed and badly shaved waiter showed us to the same table as on the previous occasion. I asked Ben whether he had seen Véronique in Paris. He replied, Yes, but that was weeks ago, and offered no comment. As I had not heard from her at all, I might have pressed for some hint of what had taken place, but Ben abruptly changed the subject.
Have you by chance read any Jouve? he asked. I don’t know if he has been translated. The novels are beautiful and transparent. You won’t have any difficulty. Read Le monde désert: it’s the last word on what may happen when one has been soiled.
I told him I had not even heard of Jouve and wondered what he meant by this subject at which this author excelled.
A condition worse than dishonor or disgrace, Ben replied. You always make me correct my English, and quite rightly so. In English, “soiled” is probably the wrong word, because it suggests dirt at the surface. I should have said “defiled.”
There was a silence. A feeling of shapeless worry—but it may have been only curiosity and the pleasure I had always taken in talking with him about books—impelled me to return to Jouve. Why should you and I be particularly interested in defilement and works on this subject? I asked.
I am not ready to tell you that, Ben replied, but I will tell you something about this novel.
Imagine a writer with a head like a large egg, just a bit darker than the usual sort of supermarket white, on which a clever hand has drawn eyes, wire-rimmed glasses, and a long nose—really a Jouve look-alike, called Pascal. Luc Pascal, not Blaise. Enviously, secretly, Jouve lurks also in the protagonist, Jacques, the son of a great Geneva divine. Jacques is gorgeous, a Nordic Narcissus who can’t keep his hands off little boys. The feeling between Luc and Jacques is very strong—the sort of exaggerated
pre-World War I friendship that leads two men to spend long summer holidays in Alpine chalets or cottages on the seashore, with room enough for one to write and the other to paint or compose music. Although it might have fitted the story, there is no sexual attraction between them; none anyway we are authorized to infer. Ostensibly, it’s because Luc loves only women; I think the better reason is that Jouve will not allow himself to be on view.
As the genre requires, between the two friends stands a woman, Baladine, Russian of course, beautiful and large breasted. To Jacques she is mother, sister, and wife. Luc desires and then loves her. She will yield to his desire, but he does not possess her until it is no longer a seduction; he waits for her to accept the act entirely. Jacques has a presentiment that the irreparable is about to happen: treason, the gravest sin God is called upon to punish.
So Luc and Jacques are defiled by Luc’s treason and his jubilation in it. Now comes Jacques’s turn to defile Baladine. Although for him women are nothing but a repugnant sack, he takes her. He uses her money; he buys refined, provocative clothes—to attract boys—and after the boys he returns to her.
You do know Geneva? he asked me. I had been listening in silence and replied that I did.
Then you will remember the cliffs between the place where the Rhône pours itself into the lake and the junction with the Arve. Imagine a night in November. Turbulent, black water, the bise blowing very hard. Jacques is running toward the great bridge. Jouve has him make a funny noise: Tsic-Tsic. Djag-Rag. Perhaps Jacques only hears it. He halts just beyond the bridge; measures the height of the parapet. It’s a good place. He will attain Unity with God. A few days later, his bloated body is found on the herse that guards the river turbines.
Although the book is a small masterpiece, I find what comes after the death mannered and not very interesting. No wonder; what was there left to say? Even Tolstoy doesn’t have an easy time sustaining the story after Anna has jumped under the train.
I will read Jouve’s book, perhaps this summer, I told him.
Do, he said, if I have time I will send it to you so that you will have it in Vermont.
The rest of the conversation was about my wife and daughters and the small incidents of their summer in the country. That was the last time I saw Ben. A few days later, he left for Geneva.
Note on Swissair stationery, dated August 1, 1971:
Véronique thinks she has been defiled by her neighbor on the airplane; she takes me for the effective agent of that event. That’s perfect nonsense. Distress over my letters, confusion about the future, even my behaving like a cad (if in fact I did)—none of that should have caused her to submit to that man’s caresses (all she had to do was slap his face and call the stewardess), or to follow him to the Hilton, or, strangest of all, to bear his child in order to bring him up as Paul’s. She told me that once—before Paul—she had had an abortion. To be sure, she spoke of it with resentment—at the French legal system that denies women contraceptives—but not as if the event had a tragic quality.
In fairness, it is I who have reason to feel defiled: by the role she has cast me in, and by the way she used me during that afternoon at the Crillon.
There is no consolation to be gotten from logic or rules of fair play. The point is, I have thrown away my chance with her. It’s beyond repair. Suppose she changes her mind: Would I, who had not begged her on my knees to come to me with Laurent (never mind whether my tergiversations were really about him), take her with the little Hilton she is carrying now? Never. Would she want any such thing? No. That child’s destiny has been traced: to be her secret ally in unending revenge she will take on Paul and on me.
It need not have happened. While she lost her head, I kept mine. What was the use of being so cautious about what I might think of her and she of me in the future? As it is, I have thrown away a pearl richer than all my tribe. Ever mocked by metaphors. Othello had no tribe, just a goddamn handkerchief; I have nothing and nobody. Such as Véronique was, she made me happy as no one has except Rachel. Before she began to press me to act like a normal man, she made me a good deal happier. The poor dummy actually loved me. Rachel knew better: her idea was that, for a time, I could love her on a live-in basis. Probably that is all I am good for, although for a while, with Véronique, I made progress—I was beginning to be able to bear it, without wincing, when she was nice to me. No mean trick, as Marie-France and her many colleagues would attest.
What does Jouve have Jacques say? Je suis dans le désert. Le monde se sépare de moi. A cause de mon péché.
Phil Norris’s law firm had always served Ben’s bank. He was the partner who joined Ben in Geneva; they had often worked together in the past. I have known Phil since Exeter; during my last year in school he used to come up from Cambridge together with other alumni who had gone into the war directly after graduation and then in ’45 or ’46 were freshmen in college. Within limits imposed by his professional discretion, it was easy for me to ask what he remembered about Ben in Geneva. I have also had long talks with Scott van Damm about those meetings and related subjects. They agreed that Ben’s was a virtuoso performance.
That he should have a complete grasp of the structure of the settlement and the new undertakings the parties were embarking upon was not surprising; he was their principal architect. They were both struck, however, by his mastery of technical details buried in the hundreds of pages of legal writing that gave effect to the agreements and by the penetration with which he assessed the consequences of changes developed in the course of laborious drafting sessions. The work went on late into the night, each day, without stop, including the weekend. It was normal—indeed necessary, given his high personal standing and role as the originator of the settlement—for Ben to break off for some hours in the evening. Depending on where he was needed more, he would either dine alone with his Belgian clients to review the day’s progress and prepare the positions to be taken on open issues, or bring the leaders of the two groups together over a meal in an effort to find solutions, in relative privacy, for problems too delicate for discussion in general meetings. There translation into Japanese interrupted the flow of ideas and the presence of a larger audience incited negotiators on both sides to advance rigid and unrealistic proposals. After dinner, however, he invariably returned to join the working group and did not leave until he was satisfied that the day’s decisions had been accurately reflected in the papers and that all difficulties and inconsistencies encountered during the process of drafting, which did not require additional substantive negotiation, had been resolved. Ben had a reputation—on the whole deserved, according to both Phil and van Damm—for a sort of fastidious remoteness and impatience, which, again according to them, did not endear him to younger colleagues and lawyers obliged to work on his transactions, however much they might respect his talent. During this period he showed the other side of his nature, so well known to me: he was, as Phil put it, gentle and affectionate with the working group, quick with praise, tolerant even when, with an uncanny instinct, he went straight to errors in drafting or calculations, displaying a hitherto unknown irreverent gaiety that lifted their spirits. Upon the closing of the settlement, the sense of relief, mixed with wonder at what had been accomplished, was general. After congratulatory speeches, as champagne corks were beginning to pop, a long round of applause for Ben came spontaneously. He had become everyone’s hero.
This was on the morning of August 11. It was therefore possible for the Belgians, for van Damm, and for his assistant, to get away to join their families for the crowning weekend of the summer. The Japanese group was bound for Tokyo, Phil for Wyoming, to resume an interrupted vacation. By lunchtime, like guests at a party that had gone on too long past midnight, seeing the waiters finally move bottles and glasses off the bar, they scattered.
Ben lingered in the hall of the Hôtel des Bergues. After the last handshake, when he had seen all of them off, it occurred to him that willy-nilly he would have lunch alone. As there was no hurry, he went
upstairs first, to his room in the corner of the second floor, and looked out at the trees and the river glistening blue and white in the sun. Even his room was warm; he supposed that outside, in the city, the heat was intense. On the table and on the chest of drawers lay drafts he had worked on the night before and first thing that morning. They were no longer needed; their arid presence in the room suddenly irritated Ben. He rang for the chambermaid and asked her to take the documents away and to see to it that they were thrown into the trash at once—he remembered that they were confidential and that, in theory, he should have given them to one of the young lawyers charged with retrieving every scrap of paper. Faced by the newly unencumbered surfaces, the woman began to arrange on them the customary publicity display: visitor’s guides to Geneva, advice about the opening hours of the two hotel restaurants, and an invitation to deposit valuables in the safe. He stopped her brusquely with a reminder that it was his habit to throw such things daily into the wastebasket. The room was becoming intolerable. The chairs and side tables crouched on the pale pink rug in a circle—beasts ready to leap as soon as he turned his back, the odiously small colored engravings of the Alps hung too high and crooked. He felt his skin tingle with nervousness, tension, and fatigue. It was like the torment of long insomnia. He called the chambermaid again, gave her a tip, and told her to put flowers in place of the papers she had removed.
A German couple was seated at one of the tables in the windowless bar, where he stopped on his way to lunch; he chose a bar stool from which he could watch them. They were married. Both had new, expensive clothes and leather accessories that were somehow similar; had they been bought at the same store? He studied the woman’s maroon pocketbook, odd for August, and matching pumps, never walked in, like Dr. Durer’s. The man smoked. His cigarette holder, case, and lighter were gold; he wore a suit of pistachio gabardine. From time to time, he stroked the woman’s calf. They were drinking brandy. Obviously, they had eaten an early lunch. Ben supposed this was the prelude to a siesta. The way they spoke about Geneva, they could not have known each other very long. Most probably a second marriage: comfortable people, with money in their pockets, glad to be in this very comfortable hotel. There was no use drinking a second martini in order to outwait them. What would he find out? Follow them upstairs, discover which room they were in? Childish games for lonely travelers, he thought, played too many times. Having lunch in the more formal of the two restaurants, which adjoined the bar, similarly windowless and serving resolutely French food, repelled him. He decided to eat in the hotel café, which opens on the quai des Bergues, and to drink a bottle of Valais red with the meal. Later, although alone, perhaps he too could sleep.