Overhead in a Balloon

by Mavis Gallant

  “Shouldn’t I ring for a nurse?” I said, unwrapping the bottle.

  “No one will come. Open the champagne.”

  “I’d better fetch a nurse.” Instead, I made room on the table for the glasses. I’d brought three, because of the roommate.

  Magdalena gasped, “Today is my birthday.” She sat up, apparently recovered, and got her spectacles out from under the pillow. Leaning towards me, she said, “What’s that red speck on your lapel? It looks like the Legion of Honour.”

  “I imagine that’s what it is.”

  “Why?” she said. “Was there a reason?”

  “They probably had a lot to give away. Somebody did say something about ‘cultural enrichment of the media.’ ”

  “I am glad about the enrichment,” she said. “I am also very happy for you. Will you wear it all the time, change it from suit to suit?”

  “It’s new,” I said. “There was a ceremony this morning.” I sat down on the shaky chair kept for visitors, and with a steadiness that silenced us both I poured the wine. “What about your neighbour?” I said, the bottle poised.

  “Let her sleep. This is a good birthday surprise.”

  I felt as if warm ashes were banked round my heart, like a residue of good intentions. I remembered that when Magdalena came back to Paris after the war, she found her apartment looted, laid waste. One of the first letters to arrive in the mail was from me, to say that I was in love with a much younger woman. “If it means anything at all to you,” I said, the coals glowing brighter, “if it can help you to understand me in any way – well, no one ever fascinated me as much as you.” This after only one glass.

  “But, perhaps, you never loved me,” she said.

  “Probably not,” I said. “Although I must have.”

  “You mean, in a way?” she said.

  “I suppose so.”

  The room became so quiet that I could hear the afternoon movie on television in the next room. I recognized the voice of the actor who dubs Robert Redford.

  Magdalena said, “Even a few months ago this would have been my death sentence. Now I am simply thankful I have so little time left to wander between ‘perhaps’ and ‘probably not’ and ‘in a way.’ A crazy old woman, wringing my hands.”

  I remembered Juliette’s face when she learned that her menopause was irreversible. I remember her shock, her fright, her gradual understanding, her storm of grief. She had hoped for children, then finally a child, a son she would have called “Thomas.” “Your death sentence,” I said. “Your death sentence. What about Juliette’s life sentence? She never had children. By the time I was able to marry her, it was too late.”

  “She could have had fifteen children without being married,” said Magdalena.

  I wanted to roar at her, but my voice went high and thin. “Women like Juliette, people like Juliette, don’t do that sort of thing. It was a wonder she consented to live with me for all those years. What about her son, her Thomas? I couldn’t even have claimed him – not legally, as long as I was married to you. Imagine him, think of him, applying for a passport, finding out he had no father. Nothing on his birth certificate. Only a mother.”

  “You could have adopted Thomas,” said Magdalena. “That way, he’d have been called by your name.”

  “I couldn’t – not without your consent. You were my wife. Besides, why should I have to adopt my own son?” I think this was a shout; that is how it comes back to me. “And the inheritance laws, as they were in those days. Have you ever thought about that? I couldn’t even make a will in his favour.”

  Cheek on hand, blue eyes shadowed, my poor, mad, true, and only wife said, “Ah, Édouard, you shouldn’t have worried. You know I’d have left him all that I had.”

  It wasn’t the last time I saw Magdalena, but after that day she sent no more urgent messages, made no more awkward demands. Twice since then, she has died and come round. Each time, just when the doctor said, “I think that’s it,” she has squeezed the nurse’s hand. She loves rituals, and she probably wants the last Sacraments, but hospitals hate that. Word that there is a priest in the place gets about, and it frightens the other patients. There are afternoons when she can’t speak and lies with her eyes shut, the lids quivering. I hold her hand, and feel the wedding ring. Like the staunch little widows, I call her “Lena,” and she turns her head and opens her eyes.

  I glance away then, anywhere – at the clock, out the window. I have put up with everything, but I intend to refuse her last imposition, the encounter with her blue, enduring look of pure love.

  The Assembly

  M. Alexandre Caisse, civil servant, employed at the Ministry of Agriculture, bachelor, thanked the seven persons sitting in his living room for having responded to his mimeographed invitation. Actually, he had set chairs out for fifteen.

  General Portoret, ret., widower, said half the tenants of the building had already left for their summer holiday.

  Mme. Berthe Fourneau, widow, no profession, said Parisians spent more time on vacation than at work. She could remember when two weeks in Brittany seemed quite enough.

  M. Louis Labarrière, author and historian, wife taking the cure at Vichy, said that during the Middle Ages Paris had celebrated 230 religious holidays a year.

  M. Alberto Minazzoli, industrialist, wife thought to be living in Rome with an actor, said that in his factories strikes had replaced religious feasts. (All smiled.)

  Dr. Edmond Volle, dental surgeon, married, said he had not taken a day off in seven years.

  Mme. Volle said she believed a wife should never forsake her husband. As a result, she never had a holiday either.

  Mlle. de Renard’s aunt said it depended on the husband. Some could be left alone for months on end. Others could not. (No one knew Mlle. de Renard’s aunt’s name.)

  M. Alexandre Caisse said they had all been sorry to hear Mlle. de Renard was not feeling well enough to join them.

  Mlle. de Renard’s aunt said her niece was at this moment under sedation, in a shuttered room, with cotton stuffed in her ears. The slightest sound made her jump and scream with fright.

  General Portoret said he was sure a brave woman like Mlle. de Renard would soon be on her feet again.

  Mme. Berthe Fourneau said it was probably not easy to forget after one had been intimately molested by a stranger.

  Mlle. de Renard’s aunt said her niece had been molested, but not raped. There was an unpleasant story going around.

  M. Labarrière had heard screaming, but had supposed it was someone’s radio.

  M. Minazzoli had heard the man running down five flights of stairs. He thought it was a child playing tag.

  Mme. Volle had been the first to arrive on the scene; she had found Mlle. de Renard, collapsed, on the fifth-floor landing, her purse lying beside her. The man had not been after money. The stranger, described by his victim as French, fair, and blue-eyed, had obviously crept in from the street and waited for Mlle. de Renard to come home from vesper service.

  General Portoret wondered why Mlle. de Renard had not run away the minute she saw him.

  Mlle. de Renard’s aunt said her niece had been taken by surprise. The man looked respectable. His expression was sympathetic. She thought he had come to the wrong floor.

  Mme. Berthe Fourneau said the man must have known his victim’s habits.

  Dr. Volle said it was simply the cunning of the insane.

  M. Labarrière reminded them that the assault of Mlle. de Renard had been the third in a series: there had been the pots of ivy pilfered from the courtyard, the tramp found asleep in the basement behind the hot-water boiler, and now this.

  Mme. Berthe Fourneau said no one was safe.

  Mme. Volle had a chain-bolt on her door. She kept a can of insect spray conveniently placed for counteraggression.

  M. Alexandre Caisse had a bronze reproduction of “The Dying Gaul” on a table behind the door. He never answered the door without first getting a good grip around the statue’s waist. />
  Mlle. de Renard’s aunt said her niece had been too trusting, even as a child.

  M. Minazzoli said his door was fully armoured. However, the time had come to do something about the door at the entrance to the building. He hoped they would decide, now, once and for all, about putting in an electronic code-lock system.

  M. Alexandre Caisse said they were here to discuss, not to decide. The law of July 10, 1965, regulating the administration of cooperatively owned multiple dwellings, was especially strict on the subject of meetings. This was an assembly.

  M. Minazzoli said one could arrive at a decision at an assembly as well as at a meeting.

  M. Alexandre Caisse said anyone could get the full text of the law from the building manager, now enjoying a photo safari in Kenya. (Having said this, M. Caisse closed his eyes.)

  Mlle. de Renard’s aunt said she wanted one matter cleared up, and only one: her niece had been molested. She had not been raped.

  Mme. Berthe Fourneau wondered how much Mlle. de Renard could actually recall.

  Mlle. de Renard’s aunt said her niece had given a coherent account from the beginning, an account from which she had never wavered. The man had thrown her against the wall and perpetrated something she called “an embrace.” Her handbag had fallen during the struggle. He had run away without stopping to pick it up.

  Dr. Volle said it proved the building was open to madmen.

  M. Alexandre Caisse asked if anyone would like refreshments. He could offer the ladies a choice of tonic water or bottled lemon soda. The gentlemen might like something stronger. (All thanked him, but refused.)

  M. Minazzoli supposed everyone knew how the electronic code system worked and what it would cost.

  Mme. Berthe Fourneau asked if it would keep peddlers out. The place was infested with them. Some offered exotic soaps, others ivory trinkets. The peddlers had one thing in common – curly black hair.

  M. Labarrière said the tide of colour was rising in Paris. He wondered if anyone had noticed it in the Métro. Even in the first-class section you could count the white faces on one hand.

  Mme. Volle said it showed the kind of money being made, and by whom.

  Black, brown, and yellow, said M. Labarrière. He felt like a stranger in his own country.

  Dr. Volle said France was now a doormat for the riffraff of five continents.

  M. Alexandre Caisse said the first thing foreigners did was find out how much they could get for free. Then they sent for their families.

  General Portoret had been told by a nurse that the hospitals were crammed with Africans and Arabs getting free operations. If you had the bad luck to be white and French you could sit in the waiting room while your appendix burst.

  M. Minazzoli said he had flown his mother to Paris for a serious operation. He had paid every centime himself. His mother had needed to have all her adrenalin taken out.

  Mme. Volle said when something like that happened there was no such thing as French or foreign – there was just grief and expense.

  M. Alexandre Caisse said it was unlikely that a relative of M. Minazzoli would burden the taxpaying community. M. Minazzoli probably knew something about paying taxes, when it came to that. (All laughed gently.)

  Mlle. de Renard’s aunt said all foreigners were not alike.

  General Portoret had commanded a regiment of Montagnards forty years before. They had been spunky little chaps, loyal to France.

  M. Labarrière could not understand why Mlle. de Renard had said her attacker was blue-eyed and fair. Most molested women spoke of “the Mediterranean type.”

  General Portoret wondered if his Montagnards had kept up their French culture. They had enjoyed the marching songs, swinging along happily to “Sambre et Meuse.”

  M. Minazzoli said in case anyone did not understand the code-lock system, it was something like a small oblong keyboard. This keyboard, affixed to the entrance of the building just below the buzzer one pressed in order to release the door catch, contained the house code.

  Mme. Berthe Fourneau asked how the postman was supposed to get in.

  M. Labarrière knew it was old-fashioned of him, but he thought a house phone would be better. It was somehow more dignified than all these codes and keyboards.

  M. Minazzoli said the code system was cheaper and very safe. The door could not be opened unless the caller knew what the code was, say, J-8264.

  Mme. Berthe Fourneau hoped for something easier to remember – something like A-1111.

  M. Labarrière said the Montagnards had undoubtedly lost all trace of French culture. French culture was dying everywhere. By 2500 it would be extinct.

  M. Minazzoli said the Lycée Chateaubriand was still flourishing in Rome, attended by sons and daughters of the nobility.

  Mme. Volle had been told that the Lycée Français in London accepted just anyone now.

  Mme. Berthe Fourneau’s daughter had spent an anxious au pair season with an English family in the 1950s. They had the curious habit of taking showers together to save hot water.

  M. Alexandre Caisse said the hot-water meters in the building needed to be checked. His share of costs last year had been enough to cover all the laundry in Paris.

  Mme. Berthe Fourneau said a washing machine just above her living room made a rocking sound.

  Mme. Volle never ran the machine before nine or after five.

  Mme. Berthe Fourneau had been prevented at nine o’clock at night from hearing the President of the Republic’s television interview about the domestic fuel shortage.

  M. Minazzoli said he hoped all understood that the security code was not to be mislaid or left around or shared except with a trusted person. No one knew nowadays who might turn out to be a thief. Not one’s friends, certainly, but one knew so little about their children.

  Mlle. de Renard’s aunt wondered if anyone recalled the old days, when the concierge stayed in her quarters night and day like a watchdog. It had been better than a code.

  M. Labarrière could remember how when one came in late at night one would call out one’s name.

  General Portoret, as a young man – a young lieutenant, actually – had given his name as “Jack the Ripper.” The concierge had made a droll reply.

  M. Alexandre Caisse believed people laughed more easily then.

  General Portoret said that the next day the concierge had complained to his mother.

  Dr. Volle envied General Portoret’s generation. Their pleasures had been of a simple nature. They had not required today’s thrills and animation.

  M. Labarrière knew he was being old-fashioned, but he did object to the modern inaccurate use of animation. Publications from the mayor’s office spoke of “animating” the city.

  M. Minazzoli could not help asking himself who was paying for these glossy full-colour handouts.

  Dr. Volle thought the mayor was doing a good job. He particularly enjoyed the fireworks. As he never took a holiday the fireworks were about all he had by way of entertainment.

  M. Labarrière could recall when the statue of the lion in the middle of Place Denfert-Rochereau had been painted the wrong shade. Everyone had protested.

  Mlle. de Renard’s aunt had seen it – brilliant iridescent coppery paint.

  M. Labarrière said no, a dull brown.

  Dr. Volle said that had been under a different administration.

  General Portoret’s mother had cried when she was told that he had said “Jack the Ripper.”

  Mlle. de Renard’s aunt did not understand why the cost of the electronic code system was to be shared out equally. Large families were more likely to wear out the buttons than a lady living alone.

  M. Alexandre Caisse said this was an assembly, not a meeting. They were all waiting for the building manager to return from Kenya. The first thing M. Caisse intended to have taken up was the cost of hot water.

  Mlle. de Renard’s aunt reminded M. Caisse that it was her grandfather, founder of a large Right Bank department store, who had built this hou
se in 1899.

  M. Labarrière said there had been a seventeenth-century convent on the site. Tearing it down in 1899 had been an act of vandalism that would not be tolerated today.

  General Portoret’s parents had been among the first tenants. When he was a boy there had been a great flood of water in the basement. When the waters abated the graves of nuns were revealed.

  Mlle. de Renard’s aunt said she often wished she were a nun. Peace was all she wanted. (She looked around threateningly as she said this.)

  General Portoret said the bones had been put in large canvas bags and stored in the concierge’s kitchen until a hallowed resting place could be found.

  M. Labarrière said it was hard not to yearn for the past they were describing. That was because he had no feeling for the future. The final French catastrophe would be about 2080.

  General Portoret said he hoped that the last Frenchman to die would not die in vain.

  M. Alexandre Caisse looked at his watch and said he imagined no one wanted to miss the film on the Third Channel, an early Fernandel.

  General Portoret asked if it was the one where Fernandel was a private who kept doing all the wrong things.

  Mme. Volle wondered if her husband’s patients would let him get away for a few days this year. There was always someone to break a front tooth at the last moment.

  General Portoret was going to Montreux. He had been going to the same pension for twelve years, ever since his wife died.

  M. Alexandre Caisse said the film would be starting in six minutes. It was not the one about the army; it was the one where Fernandel played a ladies’ hairdresser.

  Mlle. de Renard’s aunt planned to take her niece on a cruise to Egypt when she felt strong enough.