“Who?”
“Life. It spends you and me and everybody else.”
“Stuff and nonsense. That’s parlor Bolshevism! Time you cleared your head of that stuff. Life is too serious for that.”
“It certainly is. Bills have to be paid. Give me money. And don’t act as if it’s your own. It belongs to me.”
“Money! Money! That’s all you know about life.”
“No, Uncle Gaston, that’s all you know.”
“Be thankful if it’s so. Otherwise you’d have been without a cent long ago.” Reluctantly, Gaston wrote out a check. “And what about later?” he asked bitterly, waving the slip of paper in the air to dry the ink. “What are you going to do later?”
Lillian gazed at him in fascination. I think he’s actually saving on blotting paper, she thought. “There is no later,” she said.
“That’s what they all say. And then, when they have nothing left, they come begging, and out of our little savings we have to—”
Her anger returned, clear and violent. Lillian snatched the check from her uncle’s hand. “Stop your wailing! And go and buy yourself American stock, you patriot!”
———
She walked along the wet streets. It had been raining while she was at her uncle’s, but now the sun was shining again, and reflecting from the asphalt and the puddles at the curb. Even in puddles the sky is reflected, she thought, and found herself laughing. In that case, perhaps God was reflected even in Uncle Gaston. But where in him? God was harder to find in her uncle than the blue and glitter of the sky in the filthy water that flowed into the sewer openings. God was hard to find in most people she knew. They sat in their offices, behind their desks, as though they were all going to be double Methuselahs; that was their dreary secret. They lived as if death did not exist. But they did it like shopkeepers, not like heroes. They had repressed the tragic knowledge of the end and played ostrich and cultivated the petty-bourgeois illusion of Eternal Life. They went on trying to cheat each other on the brink of the grave and to pile up the things that soonest made them slaves of themselves: money and power.
She took a hundred-franc note, studied it, and tossed it into the Seine. It was a childishly symbolic gesture of protest, but she did not care. In any case, she did not throw away Uncle Gaston’s check. She walked on and reached the boulevard Saint-Michel. Traffic roared around her; people ran, jostled, hurried; the sun flashed upon hundreds of automobile roofs; motors roared; everywhere were destinations which had to be reached as quickly as possible, and each of these petty destinations concealed the last one so thoroughly that it seemed as if it did not exist.
She laughed and crossed the street between two quivering rows of hot monsters, momentarily spellbound by a red light, as Moses had once crossed the Red Sea with the people of Israel. In the sanatorium it had been different, she thought; there, the final destination always glowered like a black sun in the sky. You lived under it, and in spite of it, but you did not repress it; that gave you deeper understanding and deeper courage. To know that you were to be slaughtered and could not escape, and to face it with this ultimate understanding and courage, was to be no longer entirely a sacrificial animal. The victim had surmounted the butcher to that small extent.
She reached her hotel. Her present room was again on the first floor, so that she would have only the one flight of stairs to climb. The shellfish seller was standing at the door of the restaurant. “Wonderful shrimp, today,” he said. “Oysters are almost past. They won’t be good again until September. Will you still be here then?”
“Certainly,” she replied.
“Would you care for some shrimp for lunch? The gray ones taste better. The pink ones only look nice. Gray ones?”
“Gray ones. I’ll let the basket down. And ask Lucien, the headwaiter, for a half-bottle of vin rosé, very cold.”
She slowly climbed the stairs. Then she let down her basket and drew it up again. The wine was uncorked, and so cold that the bottle was misted over. She sat down on the window seat, feet drawn up, leaning against the frame, the wine at her side. The waiter had packed a glass and napkin into the basket. She drank, and began shelling the shrimp. Life was good like this, she thought, and did not want to pursue the thought any further. Dimly, she felt a consciousness of some compensation, but she did not want to know anything about it now. Not at this moment anyhow. That her mother had died of cancer, after drastic operations, had something to do with it. There were always things worse than what you yourself had. She blinked into the sun. She felt its light upon her. That was how Clerfayt saw her when, altogether without hope, he came by the Bisson on patrol one more time.
———
He wrenched open the door. “Lillian! Where have you been?” he cried.
She had seen him crossing the street. “In Venice, Clerfayt.”
“But why?”
“I told you in Sicily that some day I wanted to go to Venice. I thought about it again in Rome.”
He closed the door behind him. “Why didn’t you telegraph me? I would have come. How long were you there?”
“Are you interrogating me?”
“Not yet. I’ve looked everywhere for you. Who was with you?”
“You say this is not an interrogation?”
“I’ve missed you! My God, I thought all sorts of things. Can’t you understand that?”
“Yes,” Lillian said. “Would you like some of these shrimp? They taste of seaweed and the ocean.”
Clerfayt took the paper plate and the shrimp and threw them out the window.
Lillian watched them flying. “You hit a green Citroën sedan. If you’d waited a second longer, they would have landed on the head of a fat lady in an open Renault. Please give me that basket with the string. I’m still hungry.”
For a second, Clerfayt looked as if he were going to throw the basket after the shrimp. Then he handed it to her. “Tell him to send up another bottle of rosé,” he said. “And come away from the window so that I can take you into my arms.”
Lillian slid down from the window seat. “Have you brought Giuseppe with you?”
“No. He’s standing on the place Vendôme sneering at a dozen Bentleys and Rolls-Royces parked around him.”
“Get him and let’s drive into the Bois.”
“Sure, we can drive to the Bois,” Clerfayt said, kissing her. “But we’ll go out together and get Giuseppe together; otherwise you’ll be gone when I come back. I’m taking no more risks.”
“Did you miss me?”
“Now and then, when I wasn’t hating you or stewing for fear that you were the victim of some sex murder. Who were you with in Venice?”
“I was alone.”
He looked at her. “I suppose it’s possible. With you, one never knows. Why didn’t you let me know?”
“We don’t do that, do we? Don’t you go to Rome sometimes and not turn up again for weeks? And even come back with a mistress?”
Clerfayt laughed. “I knew that would be coming sooner or later. Is that why you stayed away?”
“Of course not.”
“Too bad.”
Lillian leaned out the window to draw up her basket of shrimp. Clerfayt waited patiently. There was a knock at the door. He answered, took the wine from the waiter and drank a glass while listening to Lillian call out the window that she wanted a larger portion of shrimp. Then he looked around the room. He saw her shoes standing about, a slip lying on a chair, and her dresses hanging inside the wardrobe, whose door was ajar. She was back again, he thought, and a profound, unfamiliar, and stirring peace filled him.
Lillian turned around, basket in hand. “How good they smell! Will we go to the ocean again some time?”
“Yes. To Monte Carlo. There’s a race there in the summer.”
“Can’t we go before?”
“As soon as you like. Today? Tomorrow?”
She smiled. “You know me. No, not today or tomorrow.” She took the glass he held out to her. “I didn’t int
end to stay so long in Venice,” she said. “Only a few days.”
“Why did you stay on then?”
“I didn’t feel well.”
“What was the matter?”
She hesitated. “I had a cold.”
She saw that he did not believe her. That pleased her. His incredulity made the hemorrhage seem more improbable to her, too; perhaps it had, after all, really been less important than she thought. Suddenly she felt like a fat woman who had lost twenty pounds without noticing it.
She leaned against him. Clerfayt held her tightly. “And when are you going away again?” he asked.
“I don’t go away, Clerfayt. It’s just that sometimes I’m not present.”
A barge on the river tooted. On the deck, a young woman was hanging colored wash on lines. At the door to the galley, a girl was playing with a dog. The captain stood at the wheel in shirt sleeves, whistling.
“See that?” Lillian asked. “I always feel envious when I see that kind of thing. Domestic peace. What God meant us for.”
“If you had it, you’d steal away from the boat the next place it anchored.”
“That doesn’t prevent me from being envious. Shall we go to get Giuseppe now?”
Carefully, Clerfayt lifted her in his arms. “I don’t want to get Giuseppe or drive to the Bois now. We can do that later.”
Chapter Sixteen
“IN OTHER WORDS, YOU WANT TO LOCK ME UP,” Lillian said, laughing.
Clerfayt did not laugh. “I don’t want to lock you up. I want to marry you.”
“Why?”
Lillian bent from the edge of the bed and held the bottle of rosé toward the light. The window shimmered through the wine as if blood had been poured over the panes. Clerfayt took the bottle from her hand. “To make sure you don’t again vanish without a trace some day.”
“I left my trunks in the Ritz. Do you think that marriage is a better guarantee of return?”
“Not return. Staying. Let’s approach this from a different angle. You don’t have much money. You don’t want to take any from me—”
“You haven’t any yourself, Clerfayt.”
“I have my percentage share of two races. Besides that, there’s what I had left and what I’m going to make. We have plenty for this year.”
“Good, then let’s wait until next year.”
“Why wait?”
“So that you’ll see it’s nonsense. How would you pay for my wardrobe next year? You said yourself that your contract runs out at the end of this year.”
“They’ve offered me an agency for our cars.”
Lillian lifted her leg and studied its lines. They’re getting too thin, she thought. “You mean to say you want to sell cars?” she asked. “I can’t imagine that.”
“Neither can I, but I’ve done lots of things that I couldn’t imagine myself doing. For example, wanting to marry you.”
“Why do you always want to do everything at once? Like becoming a respectable automobile dealer and marrying?”
“You act as if both were a national disaster.”
Lillian slid out of bed and reached for a wrapper. “Where would you sell cars?”
Clerfayt hesitated. “The Toulouse franchise will be open.”
“Good Lord!” Lillian said. “When?”
“In a few months. In the fall. Or end of the year at the latest.”
She began combing her hair. “I’m getting too old to win races,” Clerfayt said, still lying on the bed and talking to her back. “I’m not Nuvolari or Caracciola. I suppose I might try to become a manager somewhere, but then I’d have to keep moving all the time from one track to the next, like our fat Cesare—he will not even see his wife in the winter, now that they’re starting to hold races in Africa and South America. No, I’ve had enough of it. I want to change my life.”
Why do they always want to change their lives? Lillian thought. Why do they want to change the very thing about them that has made an impression on a woman? Doesn’t it ever occur to them that by doing that they’ll probably lose the woman? Even Mario on the last day was ready to give up his career as gigolo and start an honorable life with me. And Clerfayt, who thinks he loves me, and whom I loved because he seemed to be just as much without a future as myself, wants to change course now, and actually thinks I’m bound to be glad about it.
“I’ve often thought about whether people like us ought to marry,” she said. “None of the reasons convinced me. The best was still one a tubercular chess player mentioned: that it’s good to have someone with you at the moment of death agony. But I don’t know whether at that time you’re not so hopelessly alone anyhow, even if hordes of people who care about you are standing around your bed, that you may not even be aware of it. Camilla Albei, who used to be at the sanatorium, was always very concerned about having a lover to be there at the end. To be on the safe side, she went to great lengths to keep up relations with three men at the same time. She dragged out her last affair with a disgusting, arrogant man beyond all reason, simply to have him available that way. Then she was run over by a car on the village street and died half an hour later. Not even the disgusting man came to her side—he was sitting in Luft’s pastry shop eating Mohrenköpfe with whipped cream. The village policeman, whom she’d never seen before, held Camilla’s hand, and she was so grateful that she tried to kiss it. She didn’t have the strength to, though.”
“Lillian,” Clerfayt said quietly. “Why are you always dodging me?”
She put down the comb. “Don’t you understand why? What has happened, Clerfayt? We’ve met by chance—why won’t you let it remain that way?”
“I want to hold on to you. As long as I can. That’s simple, isn’t it?”
“No. It isn’t the way to hold on to anyone.”
“All right. Then let’s put it differently. I don’t want to go on living as I have been doing.”
“You want to settle down?”
Clerfayt looked at the rumpled bed. “You infallibly find the most horrible word for things. Let me put it this way. I love you and want to live with you. Laugh at that, for all I care.”
“I never laugh at that.” She looked up. Her eyes were filled with tears. “Oh, Clerfayt, what silliness all this is!”
“Isn’t it?” He stood up and took her hands. “We were so sure it could never happen to us.”
“Let it be as it is. Let it be. Don’t destroy it.”
“What is there to destroy?”
Everything, she thought. You cannot build domestic happiness in Toulouse on butterfly wings, even if you set them in cement. How egoism blinded people! If this concerned some other man, Clerfayt would understand exactly how I felt; in his own case, he’s blind. “I am sick, after all, Clerfayt,” she said at last, hesitantly.
“That’s one more reason not to be alone.”
She did not answer. Boris, she thought. Boris would understand me. Clerfayt is now talking like him; but he is not Boris.
“Shall we get Giuseppe now?” she asked.
“I can get him. Will you wait here?”
“Yes.”
“When do you want to go to the Riviera? Soon?”
“Soon.”
Clerfayt stood still behind her. “I own a wretched little place on the Riviera.”
In the mirror, she saw his face and his hands on her shoulders. “You really are developing unexpected qualities.”
“We could fix it up and make it nicer,” Clerfayt said.
“Can’t you sell it?”
“Take a look at it first.”
“All right,” she said, suddenly impatient. “When you get to the hotel, send my trunks over.”
“I’ll bring them with me.”
He left. She remained at her dressing table, looking into the fading dusk. Anglers were sitting on their heels along the river’s edge. A few clochards were preparing their supper by the wall of the quay. What strange paths what is called love can take, she thought. Had not Levalli said that behind every
young bacchante there lurked the housewife, and behind the reckless conqueror the sober bourgeois with his instinct for possession? Not for me, she thought; but what had happened to Clerfayt? Had she not loved him because he reached out for life as if every moment were going to be his last? Toulouse! She began to laugh. She had never wanted to speak of her illness because she had thought that the sick must always be somewhat repulsive to the healthy. Now it seemed to her that the reverse could also be true: the healthy could sometimes seem almost vulgar to the sick, like a nouveau riche to an impoverished aristocrat. It seemed to her that Clerfayt had abandoned her in a strange fashion today and had shifted over to the big, bustling majority, to the side that was unattainable to her. He was no longer one of the lost; he suddenly had a future. To her surprise, she became aware that she was crying, gently and noiselessly; but she was not unhappy. It was only that she wished she could have held on to everything a little longer.
Clerfayt came with the trunks. “How did you manage so long without your things?”
“I ordered new ones. That’s always possible to do with clothes.”
It was not true; she had only decided at this moment to pay another visit to Balenciaga tomorrow. There was a double reason to do so, she thought; she had to celebrate having escaped with her life in Venice, and she had to be extravagant as a protest against Clerfayt’s offer to marry her and live in Toulouse.
“Can’t I give you a few dresses?” Clerfayt asked. “I’m fairly rich at the moment.”
“For my wedding trousseau?”
“On the contrary. Because you went to Venice.”
“Good, give me one. Where are we going tonight? Is it possible to sit in the Bois yet?”
“If we take coats. Otherwise it’s still too cool. But we can drive through. The woods are bright green and enchanted with springtime and blue exhaust fumes. The side roads are practically solid with parked cars every night. Love is hanging its banners out of the windows everywhere.”
Lillian snatched up a dress of black filmy material with a ruche of Mexican red, and waved it out the window. “To love,” she said. “Divine and earthly, small and great! When are you leaving again?”