The Chateau

by William Maxwell

  While they were waiting for the guide, she bought and presented to Harold and Barbara a set of miniature postcards of the rooms they were about to see. She called Barbara’s attention to the tapestries in the Salon du Concert before the guide had a chance to speak of them. Confronted with a glass case containing portrait medallions by the celebrated Italian artist Nini, she said that she had a passion for bas-relief and could happily spend the rest of her life studying this collection. They were shown the dressing table of Catherine de Médicis, and Mme Straus insisted on climbing the steep stone staircase to the tower where the Queen had learned from her astrologer the somber fate in store for her three sons who would sit on the throne of France: one dead of a fever, within a year of his coronation, one the victim of melancholy, and one of the assassin’s dagger. As Mme Straus listened to this story, her sensitive face reflected the surprise and then the consternation of Catherine de Médicis, whose feelings she, a mother, could well appreciate, though they were separated by four centuries. Mme Viénot congratulated the guide on his diction and his knowledge of history, and Mme Straus-Muguet congratulated him on the view up and down the river. She was reluctant to leave the stables where the elephant had been housed, but perfectly willing to return to the river bank and for the second time in one day risk death by drowning.

  The taxi was where they had left it. It had waited all afternoon for them, time in Brenodville being far less dear than gasoline. Mme Viénot’s errand took them a considerable distance out of their way but gave them an opportunity to see the villages of Chouzy and Onzain. The grain merchant at Onzain was away, and his wife refused to let Mme Viénot have the laying mash she had come for. They rode home with two large sacks of inferior horse feed tied across the front and back of the taxi.

  That evening before dinner, Harold heard a knock and went to the door. Mme Straus entered breathing harshly from the stairs. “What a charming room!” she exclaimed.

  She was leaving tomorrow morning, to go and stay with friends at Chaumont, and she wanted to give them her address and telephone number in Paris. “When you come,” she said, squeezing Barbara’s hand, “we will have lunch together, and afterward take a drive through the city. It will be my great pleasure to show it to you.”

  She had brought with her two books—two thin volumes of poetry, which they were to read and return to her when they met again—and also some letters. They lay mysteriously in her lap while she told them about the convent in Auteuil where she now lived. She was most fortunate that the sisters had taken her in; the waiting list was long. And the serenity was so good for her.

  She looked down at the letters in her lap. They were from Mme Marguerite Mailly, of the Comédie Française, whose Phèdre and Andromaque were among the great performances of the French theater. Mme Straus considered these letters her most priceless possession, and took them with her wherever she went. Mme Mailly’s son, such a gifted and handsome boy, so intelligent, was only eighteen when his plane was shot down at the very beginning of the war.

  “I too lost a son in this way,” Mme Straus said.

  “Your son was killed in the war?” Harold asked.

  “He died in an airplane accident in the thirties,” Mme Straus-Muguet said. The look in her eyes as she told them this was not tragic but speculative, and he saw that she was considering their chaise longue. Because she knew only too well the dangers of giving way to immoderate grief, she had been able, she said, to lead her friend gently and gradually to an attitude of acceptance. She opened her lorgnette and, peering through it, read excerpts from the actress’s letters, in which Mme Mailly thanked her dear friend for pointing out to her the one true source of consolation.

  Harold read the inscription on the flyleaf of one of the books (the handwriting was bold and enormous) and then several of the poems. They seemed to be love poems—incestuous love sonnets to the actress’s dead son, whose somewhat girlish countenance served as a frontispiece. But when would he ever have time to read them?

  “I’m afraid something might happen to them while they’re in our possession,” he said. “I really don’t think we ought to keep them.”

  But Mme Straus was insistent. They were to keep the two volumes of poetry until they saw her again.

  The next morning, standing in the foyer, with her suitcases around her on the black and white marble floor, she kept the taxi waiting while she thanked Mme Viénot elaborately for her hospitality. When she turned and put out her hand, Harold bent down and kissed her on the cheek. Her response was pure pleasure. She dropped her little black traveling bag, raised her veil, said: “You have made it possible for me to do what I have been longing to do,” and with her hands on both his shoulders kissed him first on one cheek and then on the other.

  “Voilà l’amour,” Mme Viénot said, smiling wickedly. The remark was ignored.

  Mme Straus kissed Barbara and then, looking into their eyes affectionately, said: “Thank you, my dear children, for not allowing the barrier of age to come between us!”

  Then she got into the taxi and drove off to stay with her friends at Chaumont. In order that her friends here should not be totally without resource during her absence, she was leaving behind the box of diamonoes.

  THAT AFTERNOON, Barbara and Harold and Alix took the bus into Blois. The Americans were paying still another visit to the château; Harold wanted to see with his own eyes the rooms through which the Duc de Guise had moved on the way to his death. They suggested that Alix come with them, but she had errands to do, and she wanted to pay a visit to the nuns at the nursery school where she had worked during the early part of the war. They would gladly have given up the château for the nursery school if she had asked them to go with her, but she didn’t ask them, and she refused gently to meet them for tea at the pâtisserie. They did not see her again until they met at the end of the afternoon. She was pushing a second-hand baby carriage along the sidewalk and they saw that she was radiantly happy.

  “It is a very good carriage,” she said, “and it was cheap. Eugène will be very pleased with me.”

  The baby carriage was hoisted on top of the bus, and they took turns pushing it home from the highway. Alix pointed out the house of Thérèse’s family, and in a field Harold saw a horse-drawn reaper. “Why, I haven’t seen one of those since I was a child!” he said excitedly, and then proceeded to describe to Alix the elaborate machine that had taken its place.

  It was a nice evening, and they were enjoying the walk. “I hope you will decide to stay in our apartment,” Alix said suddenly. “It would be so pleasant for Eugène. It would mean company for him.”

  They did not have to answer because at that moment they were passing a farmhouse and she saw a little boy by the woodshed and spoke to him. He was learning to ride a bicycle that was too big for him. She left the baby carriage in the middle of the road and went over to give him some pointers.

  When they got home, the Americans went straight to their room, intending to rest before dinner. Harold had just got into bed and pulled the covers up when they heard a knock. Barbara slipped on her dressing gown, and before she got to the door it opened. Though one says the nail is drawn to the magnet, if you look very closely you see that the magnet is also drawn to the nail. Mme Viénot had come to tell them about her visit to the mayor of Brenodville.

  “… I said that the ferry at Chaumont was extremely dangerous, and that some day, unless something was done about it, a number of people would lose their lives.… You won’t believe what he said. The whole history of modern France is in this one remark. He said”—her eyes shone with amusement—“he said: ‘I know but it’s at Chaumont.’ … How was your afternoon?”

  She sat down on the edge of Harold’s bed, keeping him a prisoner there; he was stark naked under the covers.

  Since she did not seem concerned by the fact that his shoulders and arms were bare, he did his best to forget this, and she went on talking cozily and cheerfully, as if their intimacy were long established and a source of
mutual pleasure. He realized that, with reservations and at arm’s length, he really did like her. She was intelligent and amusing, and her pale-blue eyes saw either everything or nothing. Her day was full of small but nevertheless remarkable triumphs. In spite of rationing and shortages of almost everything you could think of, the food was always interesting. Though the house was cold, it was also immaculately clean. And there were never any awkward pauses in the conversations that took place in front of the empty Franklin stove or around the dining-room table.

  She told them how she had searched for and finally found the wallpaper for this room; and about the picturesque fishing villages and fiords of Ile d’Yeu, where, in happier circumstances, the family always went in August, for the sea air and the bathing; and about the year that Eugène and Alix had spent in Marseilles. Rather than be a fonctionnaire in Paris, Eugène chose to work as a day laborer, carrying mortar and rubble, in Marseilles. They lived in the slums, and their evenings were spent among working people, whom he hoped to educate so that France would have a future and not, like Italy, merely a past. He was not the only young man of aristocratic family to dedicate himself to the poor in this way; there were others; there was, in fact, a movement, which was now losing its impetus because the church had not encouraged it. Eugène should perhaps have taken holy orders, as he once thought seriously of doing. It was in his temperament to go the whole way, to go to extremes, to become a saint. Shortly before the baby was born, they came back to Paris. Alix did not want their child to grow up in such sordid surroundings. He was not very happy in his job at the Ministry of Planning and External Affairs, and Mme Viénot could not help thinking that both of them were less happy than they had been before, but the decision was, of course, the only right one. And after all, if one applied oneself, and had the temperament for it, one could do very well in the government. Her son-in-law, for instance—“I hope you didn’t repeat to M. Carrère what I said about his being talked about as the future Minister of Finance?”

  Harold shook his head.

  “I’m afraid it was not very discreet of me,” she said. “Jean-Claude is quite different from the rest of his family, who are charming but hors de siècle.”

  “Does that mean ‘old-fashioned’?”

  “They are gypsies.”

  “Real gypsies? The kind that travel around in wagons?”

  “Oh mercy no, they are perfectly respectable, and of a very old family, but— How shall I put it? They are unconventional. They come to meals when they feel like it, wear strange clothes, stay up all night practicing the flute, and say whatever comes into their minds.… Is there a word for that in English?”

  “Bohemian,” Barbara said.

  “Yes,” Mme Viénot said, nodding. “But not from the country of Bohemia. His mother is so amusing, so unlike anyone else. Sometimes she will eat nothing but cucumbers for weeks at a time. And Jean-Claude’s father blames every evil under the sun on the first Duke of Marlborough—with perhaps some justice but not a great deal. There are too many villains of our own époque, alas.… I am keeping you from resting?”

  Reassured, she stayed so long that they were all three late for dinner. The box of diamonoes remained unopened on Mme Viénot’s desk in the petit salon, and the evening was given over, as before, to the game of conversation.

  ON WEDNESDAY MORNING the cook prepared a picnic lunch and the Americans took the train to Amboise. There was a new bridge across the river at Amboise, and so they did not have to risk their lives. After they had seen the château they went and peered into the little chapel where Leonardo da Vinci either was or was not buried.

  Down below in the village, Harold saw a row of ancient taxis near the Hôtel Lion d’Or, and arranged with the driver of the newest one to take them to Chenonceau, twelve kilometers away. After they had eaten their lunch on the river bank, they went back to where the row of taxis had been and, mysteriously, there was only one and it was not their taxi, but the man Harold had talked to was sitting in the driver’s seat and seemed to be waiting for them. It was a wood-burning taxi, and for the first few blocks they kept looking out of the back window at the trail of black smoke they were leaving in their wake.

  Crossing a bridge on the narrow dirt road to Chenonceau, they passed a hiker with a heavy rucksack on his back. The driver informed them that the hiker was a compatriot of theirs, and Harold told him to stop until the hiker had caught up with them. He was Danish, not American, but on finding out that he was going to the château, Harold invited him into the car anyway. He spoke English well and French about the way they did.

  The taxi let them out at an ornamental iron gate some distance from the château itself. They stayed together as far as the drawbridge, and then suddenly the Dane was no longer with them or in fact anywhere. Half an hour later, when they emerged from the château with a dozen other sight-seers, they saw him standing under a tree that was far enough away from the path so that they did not have to join him if they did not care to. The three of them studied the château from all sides and found the place where they could get the best view of the inverted castle in the river. The formal gardens of Catherine de Médicis and Diane de Poitiers were both planted in potatoes. A small bronze sign said that the gardens had been ruined by the inundation of May 1940, and since the river flowing under the château at that moment was only a few inches deep, they took this to be a reference to the Germans, though as a matter of fact it was not. They rode back to Amboise in the wood-burning taxi and, sitting on the bank of the Loire, Harold and Barbara shared what was left of their lunch and a bottle of red wine with the Dane, who produced some tomatoes for them out of his rucksack and told them the story of his life. His name was Nils Jensen, he was nineteen years old, and he had cut himself off from his inheritance. It had been expected that he would go into the family business in Copenhagen and instead he was studying medicine. He wanted to become a psychiatrist. He could only bring a small amount of money out of Denmark, and so he was hiking through France. Harold saw in his eyes that there was something he wanted them to know about him that he could not say—that he was well bred and a gentleman. He did not need to say it, but he was a gentleman who had been living largely on tomatoes and he badly needed a bath and clean clothes.

  He had not yet decided where he was going to spend the night; he might stay here; but if he went on to Blois he would be taking the same train they were taking. He had not yet seen the château of Amboise, and so they said good-by, provisionally. The Americans went halfway across the bridge and down a flight of stairs to a little island in the middle of the river, and there they walked up and down in a leafy glade, searching for just some small trace of the Visigoths and the Franks who, around the year 500 A.D., met here and celebrated a peace treaty, the terms of which neither army found it convenient to honor.

  At the railroad station, Harold and Barbara looked around for Nils Jensen, and Harold considered buying third-class tickets, in case he turned up later, but in the end decided that he was not coming and they might as well be comfortable. When the train drew in, there he was. He appeared right out of the ground, with a second-class ticket in his hand—bought, it was clear, so that he could ride with them.

  The god of love could be better represented than by a little boy blindfolded and with a bow and arrow. Why not a member of the Actors’ Equity, with his shirt cuffs turned back, an impressive diamond ring on one finger, his long black hair heavily pomaded, his magic made possible by a trunkful of accessories and a stooge somewhere in the audience. Think of a card—any card. There is no card you can think of that the foxy vaudeville magician doesn’t have up his sleeve or in a false pocket of his long coattails.

  The train carried them past Monteux, past Chaumont on the other side of the river. There was so much that had to be said in this short time, and so much that their middle-class upbringing prevented them from saying or even knowing they felt. The Americans did not even tell Nils Jensen—except with their eyes, their smiles—how much they liked being w
ith him and everything about him. Nils Jensen did not say: “Oh I don’t know which of you I’m in love with—I love you both! And I’ve looked everywhere, I’ve looked so long for somebody I could be happy with.… ” Nevertheless, they all three used every minute that they had together. The train, which could not be stopped, could not be made to go slower, carried them past Onzain and Chouzy. At Brenodville they shook hands, and Angle A and Angle B got out and then stood on the brick platform waving until the train took Angle C (as talented and idealistic and tactful and congenial a friend as they were ever likely to have) away from them, with nothing to complete this triangle ever again but an address in Copenhagen that must have been incorrectly copied, since a letter sent there was never replied to.

  Walking through the village, with the shadows stretching clear across the road in front of them, they saw windows and doors that were wide open, they heard voices, they met people who smiled and spoke to them. They thought for a moment that the man returning from the fields with his horse and his dog was one of the men who were sitting on the café terrace the day they arrived, and then decided that he wasn’t. Coming to an open gate, they stopped and looked in. There was no one around and so they stood there studying the courtyard with its well, its neat woodpile, its bicycle, its two-wheeled cart, its tin-roofed porch, its clematis and roses growing in tubs, its dog and cat and chickens and patient old farm horse, its feeding trough and watering trough, so like an illustration in a beginning French grammar: A is for Auge, B is for Bicyclette, C is for Cheval, etc.