“No running water or electricity – kerosene lamps. You could hear the waves and the wind day and night. There’s no sleep like sleep lulled by the waves. Other families vacationed in nearby shacks. The fathers were street cleaners, road workers. Our daughter played with their children, we shared fish that we caught, and we watched out for each other. It was a kind of paradise, and if you compare it to a five-star hotel in Nice or Saint-Tropez it would rank so much higher in every way that is truly good that it would make you wonder why people try so hard to dress up and impress – when heaven is to be had in simple things.”
She knew that his difficulty in getting to what he wanted to say was because of her. It was wonderfully dangerous.
“I still don’t understand why you have no boyfriend,” he said from out of the blue – awkwardly, insultingly – hoping and yet not hoping that she would contradict him and say that she did. “Why?”
Her answer was mysterious. “Facial hair.” But then he got it.
“You mean the studied, three-days’ growth, as if they think it’s what makes a man? I suppose it hides their callowness. Instead of pretending, they should wait until they’ve suffered and endured. Until they’ve raised a family, faced death, lost the ones they loved. Then, effortlessly, their faces would show character. Hair is not character.”
“Exactly,” Élodi said.
“But they’re young, and you’re young.”
“I prefer character. Life is short. I’m not interested in a man who has to costume himself as a man. Besides, it strikes me as dirty. Did it used to be like this?”
“No. People looked like that only when they were shipwrecked or in battle, which is, I suppose, the look young men who have hardly lived want desperately to cultivate.”
“I mean everything: civilization.”
“Yes, more or less. It’s not worse, but it’s not better. It depends on the duration of the sample. With a broad enough perspective, things seem to stay the same: periods of advance and decline, peaks and valleys. It’s as if we’re in an exquisite jungle with pools of fresh, aerated water beneath white waterfalls, colorful and fragrant flowers, calming greenery, fruit on the trees. But there are also tigers, jaguars, and snakes lying in wait. To forget that they’re there and may at any moment rip you apart is to live in an illusion. And for fear of them not to see the paradise all around is a greater illusion still. The white froth of the falling water, the fragrant blooms, the tiger burning bright, waiting in the tangle of waxy green, are together necessary and complete. In the gap between them is the spark that makes life.”
She looked at him for a moment in which nothing was spoken. “I‘d like to go to Contaut someday, and live as you describe.”
“You can’t. The shacks are gone. It’s a national reserve, regulated for the public good. Those days are over for me, but you’ll find other places.”
“Is that what you wanted to tell me?”
“In a way, yes. But, as difficult as it may be, I have to be more specific.”
“You don’t, really. I think I understand.”
“I know, but I’ve said it so many times to myself – and I’m so practiced – that I want to tell you.” He paused. “You know about votive candles?”
“Of course.”
“Have you lit them?”
“When I was little. Not since.”
“I noticed this about how a candle in a glass jar will burn. For ninety or ninety-five percent of its ever-diminishing life, the paraffin is white and opaque. But at the end, just before it burns out, it becomes entirely transparent. Just before the end, everything clarifies.”
“That’s true, as I remember.”
“To tell you exactly would be the right thing. I want to.”
She waited. He couldn’t divine anything about what she thought, except that she was still, and breathing lightly. He tried to remember that she was so much younger, and probably would be in uncharted territory, but on the other hand he himself felt a certain terror. “I’ll be matter-of-fact,” he said.
“The first instant I saw you I fell in love. It’s not right that I did. I don’t deserve it, and nothing can or should come of it. I’m three times your age. My own child is much older than you. I’ve always had contempt for men who reach for life through the agency of a young woman. It’s understandable that they would as their lives are rapidly vanishing. But it’s unmanly, I’d even say cowardly. Better to tie yourself to the mast of your convictions and loyalties and receive your death without trying to escape in the arms of someone as fresh and beautiful as you, because there is no escape.
“But I wanted you to know, just so that you would know, that when we shook hands when we first met, I didn’t want to let go. I saw you extend your hand – do you remember? You were wearing this dress – I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as beautiful. That I wanted it to last forever is not just my own lunacy, but a testament to you.”
“But it happens all the time,” she said.
“People falling in love with you when they touch your hand?”
“Love between people of vastly different ages.”
“It’s a mistake and it doesn’t work.”
“You could have twenty-five years.”
“Really? Have you ever seen a hundred-year-old man, naked?” She laughed, sadly, but she laughed. “Taking it to an even further extreme, my father’s great grandfather lived to a hundred and six. That was deep in the nineteenth century. So, if I were a hundred and six, you’d be fifty-six. You’d still have a beautiful, lithe body, and could run and leap, and make love for hours. Besides, I’m not going to live to the year twenty forty-six. Hardly.”
“Maybe ten good years?” she asked.
“Unfortunately, it’s not a negotiation. I’m not even going to see September.”
“You’re ill?”
For fear of statements that might be subpoenaed and prejudice the insurance payments, he could say only, “No.”
“Then how do you know? At first I thought you were fifty.”
“Very kind of you.”
“Really.”
“Even so. I know because … How can I explain it?” He sought something to say other than the truth, but what he did say turned out to be truth that he had felt but not recognized. “It hangs over me. Certain things I’ve done.”
“In the war? Have you killed anyone?”
What he said was, by necessity, veiled. “I think that one would only kill another man if it were to protect the innocent from evil. And that God would forgive saving lives by taking others, if the lives taken were those of the aggressors. And if one doesn’t believe in God, then it must seem strange that conscience acts just like Him. But no matter how morally correct or urgent killing may be, you can’t escape having done it. The way the world is may have forced you to it, but although you may try, you can’t wash away the sin. Good deeds afterward don’t compensate. You’ve ended a life that God has given, extinguished it. You’ve put paid to a soul that by definition is far beyond anything you can comprehend, and nothing you can do or think can make up for it. If something like this were so, if it were with me all the time, how could I ever bring someone as lovely as you into it?”
“What if you were loved back? Couldn’t that hold it in abeyance?”
He thought, she’s young. Any feeling she might have for me can vanish in a day or two, which is as it should be.
“What if you’re loved in such a way that it doesn’t matter how old you are, or if and when you die?” she persisted. Her generosity was beautiful in itself, but he had to answer the question honestly.
“It would be the same,” he said, expecting her to dissolve in hurt or anger, especially when he went on to say, “There’s a tradition in this faculty of young, magnificent girls who get involved with decrepit old musicians like me. It’s not right.” Now he was sure he had been cruel, and he expected anger.
But Élodi was most unusual. Without either giving way or showing signs of confusion – emotion, yes, you
could see it in her face – she said, “I see. I switched over to Levin when I felt you didn’t want me to come. Frankly, I play better than he does, because he has no feeling. He’s great for pure, technical musicianship, and I do have to finish up with him.”
Jules was taken aback by her calm. “After how I just said what I just said, I expected something else, maybe an explosion.”
“From me?”
He nodded.
“Not from me. I don’t explode. But I want to resume with you, privately. At your house, through the middle of July, when I leave Paris for Lyon. You may remember that I came to you. That I wanted you to teach me. I still do. I can pay, but I won’t offer to, because I know you wouldn’t accept.”
“I was surprised that you came to me.”
“And why do you think that was?”
“I don’t know. Scheduling? Someone said I was a good teacher?”
She shook her head to indicate that it was something else. “I heard you play. Then I saw you one time as you left the building in the Cité de la Musique. I was on the corner, ten meters away. You stopped to stare at a tree as the wind was shaking its leaves in the sunlight. I was amazed to see that because of this you missed the bus. It was then. I understand what you’ve told me. You’re right. Nothing will happen between us except the music. But some people fall in love with a touch while shaking hands, and others, just as inexplicably, in other ways.”
If, at Its End, Your Life Takes on the Attributes of Art
AS IF SHE WERE talking not to her father but to a splinter she was digging out of her flesh, and with a bitterness such as he had never directed toward her in all her life, Cathérine lashed out at Jules. “It’s spring,” she said, “it’s not close to Christmas, and we’re Jewish.”
“I know that,” he answered, slightly afraid, because he knew the danger when a woman with red hair is angry. “In fact, I knew it decades before you were born, and, believe it or not, I had something to do with it.”
“So why this? He can’t even do puzzles.”
“Yes he can. He’s doing it. Okay, it says ‘three and up, twenty-four giant pieces’. But look, he’s got half of it done already.”
Oblivious of his mother and grandfather, Luc removed puzzle pieces from the box one at a time and, as slowly and carefully as someone assembling a hydrogen bomb, fitted them – though not always at first – into the right place.
“‘Babar et le Père Noël’,” Cathérine said resentfully as the charming, gentle elephant, airborne in the blue and costumed in the red suit of Père Noël, took shape.
“I also got the fishing game. It’s not specifically Christian,” Jules said.
“Fish?”
“Well, not ‘loaves and fishes’ anyway, and look at that elephant’s face. It’s what every child needs – so kind, unthreatening, and colorful. Another world, and a good one. So what if he’s Père Noël?”
“It’s not appropriate,” Cathérine said, weakening as she saw Luc warmly entranced by the gravity-less Babar.
“It is appropriate. What’s not appropriate was the Peter Pan.” He was immediately sorry that he had said this, and expected a hail of anger from Cathérine. But instead, even as she held herself stiffly and controlled her breathing, her eyes filled with tears, which she did not want Luc to see. Jules held out his arm, and, after a moment of hesitation, she sat down next to him and buried her face against his shoulder so Luc would not hear her cry. Soon it was over.
A few weeks before, as they were waiting for dinner, she had put on a Peter Pan movie in English. Her command of English was not strong enough to allow her to comprehend the song lyrics. They bothered Jules, but he said nothing until, as he thought about it, he had to turn off the movie even though Luc was literally wide-eyed. And Jules did turn it off, despite making Luc cry as if he had fallen. The combination of Never Never Land and the repetition of the lyric, “I won’t grow up …” was what did it for Jules. Of course, Luc didn’t understand, which somehow made it all the worse, and even Cathérine hadn’t understood until it was explained to her, but then she did, and she said, “Okay. Okay, we can’t have this in our house. Not now.”
So it was, in their house, and their household, where the real danger came from within, mysteriously and improperly choosing as its target the most vulnerable and innocent. Fighting it was not made any easier by a sense that there was a battle outside as well, a danger that seemed to be everywhere in the air.
When, only months before, the massive crowds had marched in Paris, chanting “Death to the Jews,” many of the demonstrators were smiling and laughing. This was easy for some to dismiss. Other than in rare exceptions, in France death was not brought expressly and en masse to the Jews as it was at the beginning of Jules’ life. In fact, despite his history and despite his defense of the Orthodox Jewish boy on the bridge, Jules himself felt unthreatened. The high national unemployment, crime, riots, and the occasional massacre in France notwithstanding, the center of Paris and regions west were welcoming and safe.
Even during the war, the theaters had been open, bakers baked, waiters hustled, mothers took their children to the park, and pigeons washed their wings in puddles. Now, as everyday life continued, even Jews could easily forget the chant of “Death to the Jews,” which was anything but ever-present. This was especially true if like Jules one was blond and looked German, English, or Scandinavian. From his appearance alone, no one had ever taken him for a Jew. So, like Marcel Marceau in a film Jules had seen as a boy, he could walk through walls, or be invisible. And, besides, for him death was not feared, but what he sought. Not only would it correct being alive, which he had always thought a betrayal, but now it had other purposes as well.
Alone, he was immune to the chant, but not when he visited Cathérine and her family. They were young, identifiable, and, most of all, beleaguered from within. The angel of death fluttered against their dwelling like a bird stubbornly beating its wings against the window, and all they could do was watch it quietly, hardly taking a breath, hoping that the glass would not give way.
THE EVENING OF the Babar et le Père Noël puzzle – which lay ninety-percent finished as Luc slept in Jules’ arms, his body limp and conforming, his skin sweet despite the almost marine smell of his medications – Jules wanted to recommend a movie to Cathérine and David. They were eager for that, because he often came up with interesting choices and because, as they never went out and were so often too exhausted to read, they watched a lot of movies.
Jules could not, however, think of the title. Nor could he remember the names of the actors, all of whom were famous and many of whom were his favorites. “You know,” he said. “I can’t … I just can’t think of his name.” He was obviously disturbed by this. And more so when he found himself unable to recall the name of a single person in the cast.”
“Who’s the director?” David asked.
“It’s …. I know who it is, but I can’t summon it.”
It was then that Cathérine said, “I don’t know why we’re acting like idiots, bookmarking pages from the MD Anderson Cancer Center, apartments in Geneva, houses in Geneva. Why are we doing that, when you can’t even remember Fabrice Luchini?”
“It wasn’t Fabrice Luchini.”
“Who was it?” she demanded.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You don’t know the title, you don’t know anything. Why do we let you direct us?”
“One thing has nothing to do with the other, and I’m not directing you. As far as Switzerland and the rest, I’m begging you to trust me.” A moment passed. “And I’m grateful that you have.”
“What I’m saying,” Cathérine let fly, now not so much in anger as in sadness, “is that you’re not all there.”
“Of course I’m all here,” Jules told her, smarting at first. “Memory has nothing to do with judgment. Don’t you understand what happens with memory? I can remember every note and rest in a long piece. I can remember exactly certain things
that happened more than seventy years ago.”
“But you can’t remember something that happened yesterday.”
“I’ll tell you why, Cathérine, and maybe you can learn something.”
“Go ahead,” she challenged.
“The Internet,” he said.
“The Internet,” Cathérine echoed mockingly. “That explains it.”
He forgave her. He would always forgive her. It was all right if she gave whatever it was that she could not handle, to him. This was his job after all. He was supposed to be the redoubt in which those he loved could find protection. If not admirable, it was okay that she was angry.
“Bandwidth,” he continued.
“Bandwidth?”
“Yes. You know how politicians brag about bringing bandwidth to poor people and out-of-the-way places?”
“So?”
“It costs a lot of money. But what part of bandwidth is used for text – all the emails, chatting, encyclopedias, books, etcetera – on the Internet?”
“I don’t know,” Cathérine answered.
“About one percent.”
“What are you getting at?” she asked, more convinced than ever, and more upset and alarmed, that he was losing his mind.
“The rest is visual: movies, television, games, photographs. Why do you think that is? It’s because the densest form of information perceptible to humans – other than the spiritual and metaphysical, for which there is no proof within the realm of reason – is visual.
“What does this mean, in turn? With your eyes open you can look at this room and perceive, down to the smallest detail you are able to resolve, everything that’s in it. Close your eyes, and you have only an approximation, notes. Now, think of all the visuals you take in within a few seconds, walking from room to room, or watching television, or flying above the city and looking down at its ten million lines, colors and angles, all of which you can remember only as a sketch, and only an instant later. Take the train from Paris to Marseille, and through the window, because you can receive the image of every blade of grass and every stone in a stream, you take in more discrete information than can be packed into a thousand – ten thousand – national libraries. Think of all you’ve seen, in full color, high resolution, and motion, in your entire life. Do you remember it? Only imprecise sketches of a very limited part of it.