“I know, we’re good for a new carpet in the hallway. They’re delivering it tomorrow. No harm done there, the other one was dreadful.”
“You know,” says Manuela, “you can keep the dress. The lady’s daughter said to Maria, Keep everything, and Maria told me to tell you that she’s giving you the dress.”
“Oh, that’s very kind, but I can’t accept.”
“Don’t go on about that again,” says Manuela, annoyed. “In any case, you’ll have to pay for the dry cleaner’s. Just look at that, it looks like an orange.”
The orange, it would seem, is a virtuous type of orgy.
“Well then, please thank Maria for me, I’m really very grateful.”
“It’s better like this. Yes, yes, I’ll thank her for you.”
Two sharp knocks at the door.
6. Baby Porpoise
It is Kakuro Ozu.
“Hello, hello,” he says, bursting into the loge. “Oh, hello, Madame Lopes,” he adds, upon seeing Manuela.
“Hello, Monsieur Ozu,” she replies, almost shouting.
Manuela is a very enthusiastic sort.
“We were having tea, will you join us?”
“Ah, with pleasure,” says Kakuro, grabbing a chair. And when he sees Leo: “Oh, what a fine specimen! I didn’t see him properly the other time. A regular sumo!”
“Have a madeleine, they’re made with orgy,” says Manuela, who is getting everything mixed up, as she pushes the basket in Kakuro’s direction.
The orgy, it would seem, is a vicious type of orange.
“Thank you,” says Kakuro, as he takes one.
“Marvelous!” he exclaims, the moment the madeleine has disappeared down his throat.
Manuela wriggles on her chair, blissfully happy.
“I have come to ask your opinion,” says Kakuro, after four madeleines. “I am in the midst of an argument with a friend over the issue of European supremacy in matters of culture.” He sends a graceful wink in my direction.
Manuela ought to be more indulgent with the Pallières boy in future: she is sitting there gaping.
“He leans toward England, and obviously I am for France. So I told him I knew someone who could settle the matter between us. Would you mind being the referee?”
“But I’m a judge and being judged at the same time,” I say, sitting down, “I can’t vote.”
“No, no, no, you’re not going to vote. Just answer my question: what are the two major inventions of French and British culture? Madame Lopes, I’m fortunate indeed this afternoon, you can give me your opinion too, if you would.”
“The English . . . ” Manuela begins, in fine fettle; then she pauses. “You go first, Renée,” she says, suddenly remembering, no doubt, that she is Portuguese, and that she ought to be more careful.
I reflect for a moment.
“Where France is concerned: the language of the eighteenth century, and soft cheese.”
“And England?” asks Kakuro.
“Oh, England will be easy,” I say.
“Pooding-ghe?” says Manuela, spicing the dessert with her accent.
Kakuro bursts out laughing.
“No, we need something more.”
“Then the roog-eby,” she says, savoring every syllable.
“Ha, ha,” laughs Kakuro, “I totally agree with you! And you, Renée, what do you suggest?”
“Habeas corpus and lawns,” I laugh.
And this sends us off into another fit of giggles, including Manuela, who heard ‘baby porpoise,’ which is strictly beside the point, but it makes her laugh all the same.
At that very moment, someone knocks at the loge.
How extraordinary that this loge which yesterday was of no interest to anyone seems today to be the focus of global attention.
“Come in,” I say without thinking, in the heat of the conversation.
Solange Josse looks in around the door.
All three of us look at her questioningly, as if we were guests at a banquet being disturbed by an ill-mannered servant.
She opens her mouth, then thinks better of it.
Paloma looks in around the door at the height of the lock.
I remember myself and get to my feet.
“May I leave Paloma with you for an hour or so?” asks Madame Josse, who has recovered her composure, albeit her curiosity needle has gone right off the gauge.
“Bonjour, Monsieur Ozu,” she says to Kakuro, who has risen to his feet and come to shake her hand.
“Bonjour, chère Madame,” he says kindly. “Hello, Paloma, how nice to see you. Well, dear friend, she’ll be in good hands, you can leave her here with us.”
How to send someone gracefully on their way, in one lesson.
“Okay . . . well . . . yes . . . thank you,” says Solange Josse, stepping slowly back, still somewhat stunned.
I close the door behind her.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” I ask Paloma.
“I’d love one.”
A true little princess among high-ranking party members.
I pour her half a cup of jasmine tea while Manuela plies her with the few remaining madeleines.
“What did the English invent, do you think?” Kakuro asks her, still at it with his cultural contest.
Paloma sits lost in thought.
“The hat, as a symbol of stubborn resistance to change,” she says.
“Excellent,” says Kakuro.
I note that I have probably greatly underestimated Paloma, and that I will have to dig deeper but, since destiny always rings three times, and since all conspirators are doomed to be unmasked some day, there is once again a drumming at the window of the loge, and I am distracted from my thoughts.
Paul Nguyen is the first person who does not seem to be surprised by anything.
“Good morning, Madame Michel,” he says, then, “Hello everybody.”
“Ah, Paul,” says Kakuro, “We have definitively discredited England.”
Paul smiles gently.
“Very good,” he says. “Your daughter just rang. She’ll call again in five minutes.”
He hands him a cell phone.
“I see,” says Kakuro. “Well, ladies, I must take my leave.”
He bows.
“Goodbye,” we offer in unison, like a virginal choir.
“Well,” says Manuela, “that’s a job well done.”
“What job?” I ask.
“We’ve eaten all the madeleines.”
We laugh.
She looks at me thoughtfully and smiles.
“It’s incredible, isn’t it?”
Yes, it is incredible.
Renée, who now has two friends, is no longer so shy.
But Renée, with her two friends, feels a sudden undefined terror welling up inside.
When Manuela has gone, Paloma curls up in Leo’s armchair in front of the television, quite at home, and looking at me with her big serious eyes she asks,
“Do you believe that life has meaning?”
7. Deep Blue
At the dry cleaner’s, I had had to confront the wrath of the lady of the premises.
“Spots like this on such a quality item!” she had grumbled, handing me a sky blue receipt.
This morning I hand my rectangle of paper to a different woman. Younger and dozier. She hunts endlessly through the serried rows of hangers, then brings me a lovely dress in plum linen wrapped tightly in transparent plastic.
“Thank you,” I say, picking up said item after an infinitesimal hesitation.
To the chapter of my turpitudes I must now add the abduction of a dress that does not belong to me, in place of one stolen from a dead woman, by me. The evil is rooted, moreover, in the infinitesimal nature of my hesitation. If my vacillation had been the fruit of a sense of compunction linked to the concept of ownership, I might yet be able to implore Saint Peter’s forgiveness; but I fear it is due to nothing more than the time needed to ensure the feasibility of my misdeed.
A
t one o’clock Manuela stops by the loge to drop off her gloutof.
“I wanted to come earlier, but Madame de Broglie was looking at me out of the corner.”
According to Manuela, the corner of her eye is a superfluous clarification.
As far as gloutofs are concerned: nestled amidst a profusion of rustling deep blue tissue paper are a magnificent Alsatian cake, succulent with inspiration; some whiskey tarts so delicate you hesitate to touch them for fear they will break; and some almond tuiles crisply caramelized on the edges. The sight of these treasures instantly causes me to drool.
“Thank you, Manuela,” I say, “but there will only be the two of us, you know.”
“Well then, just start in right away.”
“Thanks again, really, it must have taken you a lot of time.”
“Fiddle-dee-dee. I made two of everything and Fernando has you to thank.”
Journal of the Movement of the World No. 7
This broken stem that for you I loved
I wonder if I am not turning into a contemplative esthete. With major Zen tendencies and, at the same time, a touch of Ronsard.
Let me explain. This is a somewhat special “movement of the world,” because it’s not about a movement of the body. But this morning, while having breakfast, I saw a movement. The movement. Perfection of movement. Yesterday (it was Monday), Madame Grémont, the cleaning lady, brought Maman a bouquet of roses. Madame Grémont spent Sunday at her sister’s, and her sister has a little allotment garden in Suresnes, one of the last ones, and she brought back a bouquet of the first roses of the season: yellow roses, a lovely pale yellow, like primroses. According to Madame Grémont, this particular rosebush is called “The Pilgrim.” I already like that for a start. It’s loftier, more poetic, less sappy, than calling a rosebush “Madame Figaro” or “Un amour de Proust” (I’m not making this up). Okay, I won’t go into the fact that Madame Grémont offers roses to Maman. They have the same relationship that all progressive middle-class women have with their cleaning ladies, although Maman really thinks she is the exception: a good old rose-colored paternalistic relationship (we offer her coffee, give her decent pay, never scold, pass on old clothes and broken furniture, and show an interest in her children, and in return she brings us roses and brown and beige crocheted bedspreads). But those roses . . . they were something else.
I was having breakfast and looking at the bouquet on the kitchen counter. I don’t believe I was thinking about anything. And that could be why I noticed the movement; maybe if I’d been preoccupied with something else, if the kitchen hadn’t been quiet, if I hadn’t been alone in there, I wouldn’t have been attentive enough. But I was alone, and calm, and empty. So I was able to take it in.
There was a little sound, a sort of quivering in the air that went, “shhhh” very very very quietly: a tiny rosebud on a little broken stem that dropped onto the counter. The moment it touched the surface it went “puff,” a “puff” of the ultrasonic variety, for the ears of mice alone, or for human ears when everything is very very very silent. I stopped there with my spoon in the air, totally transfixed. It was magnificent. But what was it that was so magnificent? I couldn’t get over it: it was just a little rosebud at the end of a broken stem, dropping onto the counter. And so?
I understood when I went over and looked at the motionless rosebud where it had fallen. It’s something to do with time, not space. Sure, a rosebud that has just gracefully dropped from the flower is always lovely to look at. It’s so artistic: you could paint them over and over! But that doesn’t explain the movement. The movement . . . and we think such things are spatial.
In the split second while I saw the stem and the bud drop to the counter I intuited the essence of Beauty. Yes, here I am, a little twelve-and-a-half-year-old brat, and I have been incredibly lucky because this morning all the conditions were ripe: an empty mind, a calm house, lovely roses, a rosebud dropping. And that is why I thought of Ronsard’s poem, though I didn’t really understand it at first: because he talks about time, and roses. Because beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. It’s the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you can see both their beauty and their death.
Oh my gosh, I thought, does this mean that this is how we must live our lives? Constantly poised between beauty and death, between movement and its disappearance?
Maybe that’s what being alive is all about: so we can track down those moments that are dying.
8. Contented Little Sips
And now we are Sunday.
At three in the afternoon I make my way to the fourth floor. The plum-colored dress is slightly too big—a godsend on a gloutof day—and my heart feels as tight as a kitten rolled into a ball.
Between the third and fourth floor I find myself face to face with Sabine Pallières. Over the last few days whenever she has run into me she has openly and disapprovingly scrutinized my puffy hair. Might I mention that I have abandoned the idea of hiding my new appearance from the world. But such determination puts me ill at ease, however liberated I might be. Our Sunday encounter is no exception to the rule.
“Good afternoon, Madame Pallières,” I say, carrying on up the steps.
She answers with a stern nod as she considers my sconce and then, noticing how I am dressed, she stops short on the step. A wave of panic assails me, deregulating my sudatory glands and threatening my stolen gown with the infamy of underarm rings.
“As you are headed that way, would you water the flowers on the landing?” she asks in an exasperated tone of voice.
Must I remind her? It is Sunday . . .
“Are those cakes?” she asks suddenly.
On a tray I am carrying Manuela’s masterworks wrapped in navy blue tissue paper, and I realize that in Madame Pallières’s eyes this far surpasses my dress and that it is hardly my pretension to elegance which is arousing Madame’s condemnation, but some wastrel’s greedy appetite.
“Yes, an unexpected delivery,” I say.
“Well then, take advantage of it to water the flowers at the same time,” she says and resumes her irritated descent.
I arrive at the fourth floor and find it somewhat awkward to ring the bell, as I am also carrying the video cassette, but Kakuro opens diligently for me and immediately relieves me of my cumbersome tray.
“Oh my goodness,” he says, “you don’t mess around, my mouth is watering already.”
“You’ll have to thank Manuela,” I say, and follow him into the kitchen.
“Really?” He removes the gloutof from the mass of blue tissue paper. “It’s an absolute gem.”
I suddenly realize that there is music in the background.
It isn’t very loud, and it is coming from some hidden speakers that diffuse the sound throughout the kitchen.
Thy hand, Belinda, darkness shades me,
On thy bosom let me rest,
More I would, but Death invades me;
Death is now a welcome guest.
When I am laid, am laid in earth,
May my wrongs create
No trouble, no trouble in thy breast;
Remember me, but ah! forget my fate,
Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
This is the death of Dido, from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. In my opinion, the most beautiful music for the human voice on earth. It is beyond beautiful, it is sublime, because of the incredibly dense succession of sounds, as if each were linked to the next by an invisible force and, while each one remains distinct, they all melt into one another, at the edge of the human voice, verging on an animal cry. But there is a beauty in these sounds that no animal cry can ever attain, a beauty born of the subversion of phonetic articulation and the transgression of the careful verbal language that ordinarily creates distinct sounds.
Broken steps, melting sounds.
Art is life, playing to other rhythms.
“Let’s go,” says Kakuro, who has set cups, tea pot, sugar and little paper napkins
onto a big black tray.
I precede him down the corridor and, following his instructions, open the third door on the left.
“Do you have a VCR?” That had been my question for Kakuro Ozu.
And he had replied, “Yes,” with a cryptic smile.
The third door on the left opens onto a miniature movie theater. A large white screen, a host of mysterious shiny devices, three rows of real seats covered in deep blue velvet, a long low table opposite the front row, and walls and ceiling covered in dark silk.
“Actually, it was my profession,” says Kakuro.
“Your profession?”
“For over thirty years, I imported high-end audio equipment to Europe, for luxury establishments. It was a very lucrative business, but above all marvelously entertaining for someone like me who is enchanted by the least little electronic gadget.”
I settle into a wonderfully plush seat and the show begins.
How to describe such moments of bliss? To be watching The Munekata Sisters on a giant screen, in gentle darkness, nestled against a soft backrest, nibbling gloutof, and drinking scalding tea in contented little sips. From time to time Kakuro pauses the film and we both begin to talk about this and that, camellias on the moss of the temple and how people cope when life becomes too hard. Twice I go off to greet my friend the Confutatis and return to the screening room as if to a warm cozy bed.
This pause in time, within time . . . When did I first experience the exquisite sense of surrender that is possible only with another person? The peace of mind one experiences on one’s own, one’s certainty of self in the serenity of solitude, are nothing in comparison to the release and openness and fluency one shares with another, in close companionship . . . When did I first feel so blissfully relaxed in the presence of a man?
Today is the first time.
9. Sanae
At seven o’clock, after much conversation and drinking of tea, I am ready to take my leave, and as we are passing through the living room I notice, on a low table next to a sofa, the framed photograph of a very beautiful woman.
“She was my wife,” says Kakuro quietly, seeing that I am looking at the picture. “She died ten years ago, from cancer. Her name was Sanae.”