“There is something I have to tell you,” Harold said. “I’m awfully sorry but last night the toilet didn’t work properly and so I got the kitchen stepladder and …”
Eugène listened abstractedly to this confession and when it was finished he asked where Harold had put the stepladder. Then he went into the little room where the toilet was, picked up the stepladder, and carried it out to the back landing. With the pliers, standing on the stepladder, he closed a valve in the pipeline out there. He and the concierge and the boy listened. Their faces conveyed uncertainty, and then hope, and then triumph, as the sound of falling water began to diminish. It took some time and further discussion, a gradual letting down of tension and a round of congratulations, before the concierge and the boy left. Eugène put away the stepladder and picked up the mop. As he started mopping up the red tiles, Harold said: “Barbara and I will clean the kitchen up.”
Eugène stopped and stared at him, and then said: “The floor will be dirty unless it is mopped.” They stood looking at each other helplessly. He must think we don’t understand anything at all, Harold thought.
“I’m very sorry that your sleep has been disturbed,” Eugène said.
Harold studied his face carefully, thinking that he must be speaking sarcastically. He was not. The apology was sincere. Once more, with very little hope of a sensible answer, Harold asked if they had caused the trouble.
“This sort of thing happens since the war,” Eugène said. The building is old and needs new plumbing. Now that the water is turned off, there is nothing more that we can do until the plumber comes and fixes the leak.”
“Was it caused by turning the water off in the toilet?”
Eugène turned and indicated the little iron stove, inside which a pipe had burst, for no reason.
“Then it wasn’t our fault?”
For a few seconds Eugène seemed to be considering not what Harold had just said but Harold himself. He looked at him the way cats look at people, and did something that cats are too polite ever to do: he laughed. Then he turned and resumed his mopping.
Standing on the balcony outside their room, Harold lit a cigarette. Barbara was in bed and he couldn’t tell whether she was asleep or not. The swallows were darting over the roof tops. Directly below him, so straight down that it made him dizzy to look, an old man was silently searching through the garbage cans. On the blue pavement he had placed four squares of blue cloth, and when he found something of value he put it on one or the other of them.
The stoplights at the intersection at the foot of the hill changed from red to green, from green to red. The moon, in its last quarter, was white in a pearly pink sky. The discovery that it was not their fault had come too late. They had had so much time to feel they were to blame that they might just as well have been. Too tired to care any longer, he left the balcony and got into bed. A moment later, he got up and took his wallet out of his coat and found a five-hundred-franc note and then returned to the balcony. When the old man looked up he would make signals at him. Though he waited patiently, the old man did not look up. Instead, he tied his four pieces of cloth at the corners and went off down the street, which by now had admitted it was morning.
AWAKENED OUT OF A DEEP SLEEP by a silvery sound, Harold sat up in bed. It was broad daylight outside. The telephone? he thought wildly. The front door? Or the back? Whatever it was, Barbara was sleeping right through it.
He got up and followed his own wet footprints down the gray carpeting until he came to the foyer. This time when he opened the front door someone was there—the concierge, smiling and cordial, with three blond young men. One of them had a brief case, and they didn’t look at all like plumbers. The concierge asked for M. de Boisgaillard, and Harold knocked on the study door and fled.
Ten minutes later, he heard a faint tap on their door.
“Yes?”
As he sat up in bed, the door opened and Eugène came in. Keeping his voice low because Barbara was still asleep, he said: “The people you let in— They just arrived in Paris this morning, from Berlin.” He hesitated.
Harold perceived that Eugène was telling him this because there was something they could do for him. Eugène was not in the habit of asking for favors, and it was painful for him to have to now. What he was going to say would alter somewhat the situation between them and him, but he was going to say it anyway.
“They have no money, and they haven’t had any breakfast.”
“You’d like Barbara to make breakfast for them?” Harold asked, and found himself face to face with his lost friend, Eugène the way he used to be before that picnic on the banks of the Loire.
Bread, oranges, marmalade, eggs, honey—all bought the afternoon before, and with their money. Nescafe in the big suitcase, sugar cubes in the small one. All the wealth of America to feed the hungry of Europe.
“There is plenty of everything,” he said.
“Plenty?” Eugène repeated, unconvinced.
“Plenty,” Harold said, nodding.
“Good.”
The image of a true friend was dimmer; was fading like a rainbow or any other transitory natural phenomenon, but it was still visible. When Eugène left, Harold woke Barbara, and as he was hurriedly getting into his clothes he began to whistle. It was their turn to do something for Eugène. And if they cared to, they could be both preoccupied and moody as they went about it.
When Barbara wheeled the teacart into Mme Cestre’s drawing room, the four heads were raised. The four men rose, and the Germans clicked their heels politely as Eugène presented them to her and then to Harold, who had come in after her. All three were pale, thin, and nervous. One had pink-tinted rimless glasses, and one had ears that stuck straight out from his head, and one was tall and blond (the pure Nordic abstraction, the race that never was) with wide, bony shoulders, concave chest, hollow stomach, and the trousers of a much heavier man hanging from his hip bones.
“Do sit down,” Barbara said.
Herr von Rothenberg, the Nordic type, spoke French and English fluently, and the two others told him what they wanted to say and he translated for them. They had traveled as far as the French border by plane, and from there by train. They had arrived in Paris at daybreak.
“We were very surprised,” Herr von Rothenberg said to the Americans. “We did not expect to find Paris intact. We had understood that it was largely ruins, like London and Berlin.”
He was not entirely happy that Paris had been spared. It offended his sense of what is fair. But he did not say this; it only came out in his voice, his troubled expression.
The Germans politely took the cups that Eugène handed them, but allowed their coffee to grow cold. Barbara had to urge it on them, and point again and again to the bread and butter on their plates, before they could bring themselves to eat. Their extreme delicacy in the presence of food seemed to say: It was most kind of M. de Boisgaillard to offer us these cigarettes, and surely something is to be gained from a discussion of the kind we are having, between the people who have lost a war and those who, for reasons history will eventually make clear, have won it. But as for eating—we do not care to impose on anyone, we are accustomed to being faint with hunger, we have much more often than not, the last few years, gone without breakfast. We would prefer to continue with what M. de Boisgaillard was saying about the establishment of a central bureau that would have control over credit and …
In the end, though, the bread was eaten, the coffee was drunk, and on two of the plates there was a pile of orange peelings. The third orange remained untouched. Barbara looked inquiringly from it to the young man whose ears stuck out, and whose orange it was. He smiled at her timidly and then looked at Eugène, who was telephoning and ignored his appeal. Pointing to the orange, the young man whose ears stuck out said, in halting English: “The first in twelve years.” He hesitated and then, since Eugène was still talking into the telephone and Barbara was still waiting and the orange had not been snatched from him, said: “I have a wife.
And ten days ago a baby is born.… Could I take this orange with me, to give to her?”
Barbara explained that there were more oranges, and that he could eat this one. He put it in his pocket, instead.
Eugène was trying to find a place for the Germans to stay. They listened to the one-sided telephone conversations with a sympathetic interest, as if it were the welfare of three other young men he was devoting himself to with such persistence.
Finally, as the morning dragged on, the Americans excused themselves and left the drawing room, taking the teacart with them.
“Terrible,” Harold said.
“Terrible,” she agreed.
“I didn’t know there were Germans like that.”
“Did you hear what he said about the orange?”
“Yes, I heard. We must remember to send some back with them.”
“But what will become of them?”
“God knows.”
“Do you think they were Nazis? ”
“No, of course not. How could they have been? Probably they never even heard of Hitler.”
At noon, Barbara wheeled the teacart out of the kitchen again, and down the hall to Mme Cestre’s drawing room, which was now murky with cigarette smoke. The men sprang to their feet and waited for her to sit down, but she shook her head and left them. She and Harold ate in the kitchen, sitting on stools. They had just finished cleaning up when Eugène appeared in the doorway.
“I am much obligated to you, Barbara,” he said. “It is a very great kindness that you do for me.”
“It was nothing,” she said. “Did you find a place for them to stay?”
He shook his head. “I have told them that they can stay here. But you will not have to do this any more. I have made other arrangements. The person who comes in by the day when we are all here will cook for them. Her name is Françoise. She is a very nice woman. If you want anything, just tell her and she will do it for you. I did not like to ask her because her son was in a concentration camp and she does not like Germans.”
“But what are they doing in Paris?” Harold asked.
“They are trying to get to Rome,” Eugène said. “They want to attend an international conference there. Arrangements had been made for them to go by way of Switzerland, but they decided to go by way of Paris, instead. They used up their money on train fare. And unfortunately in all of Paris no one knows of a fund that provides for an emergency of this kind or a place that will take them in. Herr von Rothenberg I met at an official reception in Berlin, last year. He is of a very good family. The other two I did not know before.… You have Sabine’s address? She is expecting you at eight.”
THE ADDRESS that Eugène gave them turned out to be a modern apartment building on a little square that was named after a poet whose works Harold had read in college but could no longer remember; they had joined with the works of three other romantic poets, as drops of water on a window pane join and become one larger drop. A sign by the elevator shaft said that the elevator was out of order. They rang Sabine’s bell and started climbing. Craning his neck, he saw that she was waiting for them, six floors up. She called down over the banister: “I’m sorry you have such a long climb,” and he called up: “Are you as happy to see us as we are to see you?”
She had on a little starched white apron, over her blouse and skirt. She shook hands with them, took the flowers that Barbara held out to her, and, looking into the paper cone, exclaimed: “Marguerites! They are my favorite. And a book?”
“A Passage to India,” Harold said. “We saw it in the window of a bookstore.”
“I will be most interested to read it,” she said. “This is my uncle’s apartment—did Eugène tell you? The family is away now. I am here alone. My uncle collects paintings and objets d’art. There is a Sargent in the next room.… I must put these beautiful flowers in water. You will not mind if I am a little distracted? I am not used to cooking.”
She and Barbara went off to the kitchen together, and Harold stood at the window and peered down at the little square. Then he started around the room, looking at Chinese carvings and porcelains and at the paintings on the walls. When the two girls came back with a bottle of Cinzano and glasses, he was standing in front of a small Renoir.
“It’s charming, isn’t it?” Sabine said.
“Very,” he said.
“In my aunt’s apartment there is a bookcase with art books in it— Have you found it yet?”
“In the front hall,” he said. “By the study door. But it’s locked.”
“I know where the key is kept,” she said, but before she had a chance to tell him, the doorbell rang. “Are you comfortable in the rue Malène?” she asked as she started toward the hall.
Harold and Barbara looked at each other.
“Something has happened since I saw you?” Sabine asked.
“A great deal has happened,” he said. “It’s a very long story. We’ll tell you later.”
The young man she introduced to them was in his middle twenties, small, compact, and alert-looking, with hair as black as an Indian’s and dark skin. For the first few minutes, he was self-conscious with the Americans, and kept apologizing for his faulty English. They liked him immediately, encouraged him when he groped for a word, assured him that his English was fine, and in every way possible took him under their wing, enjoying all his comments and telling him that they felt as if they already knew him. The four-sided conversation moved like a piece of music. It was as if they had all agreed beforehand to say only what came into their heads and to say it instantly, without fear or hesitation. In her pleasure at discovering that Sabine had such a handsome and agreeable young man on a string, Barbara was more talkative than usual. She was witty. She made them all laugh. Sabine was astonished to learn of the presence of three Berliners in her aunt’s apartment, and said doubtfully: “I do not think that my aunt would like it, if she knew.”
“But if you saw them!” Harold exclaimed. “So pale, so thin. And as sensitive as sea horses.” Then he began to tell the story of the burst water pipe.
They sat down to dinner at a gateleg table in the drawing-room alcove. The Americans dug out of the young Frenchman that he was in the government. From his description of his job, Harold concluded that it was to read all the newspaper articles and summarize them for his superior, who based his statements to the press on them. This explanation the Frenchman rejected indignantly; it was he who prepared the statements for the press. Looking at him, Harold thought that if he had had to draw up a set of requirements for a husband for Sabine, they would have added up to the young man across the table. Though he must be extremely intelligent to hold down a position of responsibility at his age, there was nothing pompous in his manner or his conversation. He was simply young and quick-witted and unsuspicious. They felt free to tease him, and he defended himself without attacking them or being anything but more agreeable. The evening flew by, and when they left at eleven, they tried to do it in such a way that he wouldn’t feel he had to leave too. But he left with them, and as they were passing under a street lamp in the avenue Victor Hugo, they learned that he was not the person they thought he was; he was Sabine’s brother-in-law, Jean-Claude Lahovary.
“Mme Viénot told us about you,” Barbara said.
“Yes?”
“She told us about your family,” Barbara said.
Oh no, Harold begged her silently. Don’t say it.…
But Barbara was a little high from the wine, and on those rare occasions when she did put her trust in strangers, she was incautious and wholehearted. As if no remark of hers could possibly be misunderstood by him, she said: “She said your mother was hors de siècle.”
The Frenchman looked bewildered. Harold changed the subject. Exactly how offensive the phrase was, he didn’t know, and he hadn’t been able to tell from Mme Viénot’s tone of voice because her voice was always edged with one kind of cheerful malice or another. Trying to cover up Barbara’s mistake he made another.
&nb
sp; “Do you know what you remind me of?” he asked, though an inner voice begged him not to say it. (He too had had too much wine.)
“What?” the Frenchman asked politely.
“An acrobat.”
The Frenchman was not pleased. He did not consider it a compliment to be told that he was like an acrobat. The tiresome inner voice had been right, as usual. Though table manners are the same in France, other manners are not. We shouldn’t have gone so far with him, the first time, Harold thought. Or been quite so personal.
The conversation lost its naturalness. There were silences as they walked along together. They quickly became strangers. As they crossed one of the streets that went out from the Place Redouté, they were accosted by a beggar, the first Harold had seen in Paris. Always an easy touch at home, he waited, not knowing if beggars were regarded cynically by the French, and also not wanting to appear to be throwing his American money around. The future minister of finance reached in his pocket quickly and brought out a hundred-franc note and gave it to the beggar, and so widened the misunderstanding: the French have compassion for the poor, Americans do not, was the only possible conclusion.
They shook hands at the entrance of the Métro and said good night. Still hoping that something would happen at the last minute, that he would give them a chance to repair the damage they had done to the evening, they stood and watched him start down the steps, turn right, and disappear without looking back. Though they might read his name years from now in the foreign-news dispatches, this was the last they would ever see of Mme Viénot’s brilliant son-in-law.
As they were walking home, past shuttered store fronts, Barbara said: “I shouldn’t have said that about his mother, should I?”
“People are very touchy about their families.”
“But I meant it as a compliment.”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t he realize I meant it as a compliment?”