Anio Szado (16 page)

He paused, a glance to see if I understood. Much was written between the lines of that look: Bernard’s love and care for his friend; his insistence that I know and accept what I was getting into; his unease in weighing the latter against the necessity of betraying confidences.

I could have hugged him then, and shame on me: he was telling me that Antoine was plagued by pain, and all I had listened for was that he wasn’t in another girl’s arms. To be sure, I asked, “You think he’s sick and alone in Montreal?”

“He may be ill.” He picked out the half-melted sugar and brought it to his lips to suck the liquid out. “But I’m sure he’s in good hands.”

“Whose?”

“Try not to worry. Despite what I’ve said, he is absurdly indestructible. And aside from maliciously depriving his friends of sleep, he is never knowingly cruel.” Bernard popped the softened sugar cube into his mouth and crushed it between his teeth. “Eventually he will reappear as you have, out of the blue. He knows where to find us. When he needs someone near him while he works, or someone to tell him at three o’clock in the morning that his writing or his drawings aren’t an embarrassment, I may call him nasty names, but he knows I will open my door. As you’ll open your studio to him if he needs you. Am I right?”

I nodded.

“You are an artist, Mignonne. You know how it is.”

Before I left, Bernard insisted on having me sign his table—a work of communal autography. I had studied it when Antoine had brought me here a year ago; I’d been fascinated by the signatures written deep into the wood. Tyrone Power … Max Ernst … Natalie Paley … Charlie Chaplin … Greta Garbo … Marlene Dietrich … Salvador Dalí … and Antoine, of course. The surface was more crowded than before; Bernard must have hosted some memorable parties in the last year. Among the names, stains, drawings, and a few inset coins, one thing jumped out as new: a doodle in Antoine’s distinctive, effortless hand.

Bernard pushed aside some papers to reveal it in its entirety. “Saint-Ex’s little fellow.”

“I’ve seen this little guy on napkins and on the edges of letters and menus and all sorts of things. Antoine used to scribble him
when I was trying to get some English into his head. I’m not sure he even looked at what he was doing.”

“Exactly. Our missing friend is rarely short on words, but when he can’t find a way to say something precisely right, inevitably he doodles this boy as he speaks. I have pointed it out to him many times. It’s a funny thing, Mignonne. Ask him what he said a month ago and the words will be fresh in his mind, but bring his attention to what his hand has just drawn and somehow he manages to be ridiculously surprised.”

Consuelo picked up her suitcase and moved forward a single step as the line advanced. Tonio had finally called. Consuelo had been waiting almost three weeks. Three weeks for a phone call from one’s own husband! He had telephoned her a few times after his first few days away, and then nothing. When he thought she could be of help, he had sent telegraph after telegraph—
Contact the embassy! Call General So-and-So! Have Hitchcock or Reynal write to all the governments involved! My God, Consuelo, make something happen, please!
—as if she were a modern-day Athena who could rush spears through the chests of any bureaucrat who threatened to get in her way. She had done what she could, but what could she do? Paperwork was paperwork; it moved at the speed of trees. Tonio refused to hear that it was his own fault for crossing into Canada with only verbal assurances that he’d be allowed to return to the States. As if the spoken word were worth anything these days.

Her own documents were all in order; her train ticket for Montreal was in her hand; she needed only to ask the agent if there would be a club car open to civilians and to ladies traveling alone. She might have to find a uniformed gentleman to buy her rum-and-Cokes.

Modern-day Athena—that was a good one! Now another deity was nudging her memory. What was her name? Amphritite … or Amphitrite … another goddess they had discussed in the artists’ colony at Oppède where she had settled upon fleeing from the Nazi rule. Oh, those golden, suspended days of eating vegetables
from their own gardens, making art from whatever they touched, endless exhilarating talk, gestures of adoration made guiltless and gorgeous by loss. Amphitrite, that was it. Wife of Poseidon. The men had voted the goddess, by raucous ballot, the perfect wife. That was men: they had lauded the sea queen for her ready acceptance of her husband’s affairs. Only a man would imagine that “acceptance” summed up the tides of loathing and love that good wives like Consuelo navigated every day.

Tonio’s call had come a full twenty-four hours after that of his impeccably refined and wealthy older mistress, Madame Demarais. It was not the first time Consuelo had received such a message as this phone call of courtesy and concern from Tonio’s other long-entrenched beloved. Women put aside their differences when the need is great enough.

Madame Demarais had reported that her agents had found Monsieur de Saint-Exupéry under medical care in Montreal. (As always, Consuelo wondered what she called him when they were alone.) First he had been held up by border issues. Then his fever had hit with rare force, and he had been hospitalized. He had been too incapacitated by medication to send a telegraph or make a phone call. Madame Demarais had flown to his side and was awaiting his imminent release into her care.

Consuelo had thanked her and had let her return to her vigil. It wasn’t a question of acceptance or nonacceptance. It was something more than sharing a husband or overlooking an affair. Only Madame Demarais could come close to understanding Consuelo’s burden. She had been sharing Consuelo’s ministry for at least a dozen years.

Montreal was quaint.

Consuelo smiled as she dug a few Canadian dollar bills from her purse. She amused herself, she really did. To think she had felt like royalty during her year in the deserted village of Oppède—with
only a kingdom of rocks—but after scant months of living in New York, already she was judging a small metropolis to be provincial and unevolved. Well, but why not? The fact was, the citizenry here didn’t even know how to nab a taxi outside the train station. They waited politely in well-behaved lines; that was fine, it calmed Consuelo’s nerves. As in New York, the handiest cabs were reserved for men in uniform. The complacent Canadians, in their sensible shoes, had evidently accepted that they would walk to their destinations. Good for them; let them walk. Consuelo, on the other hand, had perfected a technique.

When a soldier opened the door to a cabbie’s backseat, Consuelo pressed a handful of bills against the driver’s window. “After you drop him off,” she said, “continue on with me.”

It was a trick that could transport one through any country of the world—and it worked flawlessly here, outside the Montreal station. Soon Consuelo was passing through the noble old streets she remembered from her last visit to the city. What she had forgotten was the ready courtesy of the young men here. The soldier who shared Consuelo’s taxi had insisted that the cabbie deliver her to her destination first; the young man would pay the entire fare. For his trouble, Consuelo put her delicate hand on the fellow’s smooth cheek.

But his response was less than genteel. She hoped it came of an abundance of formality, and not horror at the touch of a woman twice his age.

She had told Tonio to expect her that evening at his Hotel Windsor suite. It went unsaid that Consuelo would find his mistress with him there. Although the two women generally avoided being in public in the same room at the same time, they had certainly seen each other often enough. Back in Paris, the older woman had often called and even visited their various homes. In North America, Consuelo had somehow expected to be beyond
the reach of Madame Demarais. Stupid thought. Nothing was beyond that woman: no borders, no encounters, were a match for the forces of her grace and wealth.

Not the slighted trace of discomposure showed on Madame Demarais’s elegant, narrow face. The woman’s ancestry was in metals and in oil, while Consuelo could claim only coffee plantations, an inheritance of limited depth. Of course, it wasn’t just about the well of the woman’s bank account (though that was important enough—and necessary for treating Tonio to gifts on the scale of his own airplane). There was also her ability to live life as she chose. The Madame Demaraises of the world had so little to worry about. Their ability to get what they wanted wasn’t threatened by the appearance of a few wrinkles on the forehead or by the erosion of their claims on the heart of a famous man.

Indeed, Tonio’s mistress bore her status with a quiet, dignified pride. She seemed content to be a shimmering shadow in the periphery, ever ready to come to Tonio’s aid. Ready to the end of time and from the beginning, yes, for Madame Demarais was no young chinchilla scampering after the tails of this season’s celebrity. She was several years older than Tonio and had been a fixture—and occasional godsend—from the start.

Tonio had long submitted to Consuelo’s insistence that the woman be deemed a mistress, not simply a friend, though he assured his wife that he and his female supporter had never shared a bed, rarely so much as shared a kiss. “What does she get from you?” Consuelo had asked him, to no avail—but she had known the answer then and she knew it ever more piercingly now. Tonio allowed the woman to help him. Others might fool themselves that the arrangement seated all strength in the hands of the recipient, but Consuelo knew firsthand how barren and devalued it made one feel to have one’s aid scorned. To help was to hold power. Madame Demarais had been helping for at least a dozen years.

Madame Demarais didn’t rise from her armchair on the far
side of Tonio’s bed. “Good evening, Madame de Saint-Exupéry. It is well that you’ve arrived. I have a flight to catch, and it’s best that Monsieur de Saint-Exupéry not be left alone for long.”

Tonio was sleeping. He looked peaceful and well rested with Madame Demarais at his side.

“How is he?” asked Consuelo tremulously. She wanted to throw herself over him and sob away what remained of her exhausting fears—but she’d save that for later, when Tonio was awake and Madame Demarais gone. She sank into the leather chair at the desk. How she’d love to kick off her shoes and rub the tautness out of her arches.

“He’s fine. Obtaining his discharge from the hospital was something of an ordeal. The attending doctor had arranged for him to be medicated quite thoroughly. Monsieur de Saint-Exupéry was unable to tell us whether he still had pain. I’m not certain he knew if he still had legs.”

Ah, poor Tonio. He was the claim of every man and woman; he was to the world whatever his writings led them to believe. Whoever had him in their grasp wanted to keep him, to minister to him and fix him; it had always been so. Yet only Consuelo knew how to heal him for good. It was she who had brought him back to life with an ammonia rub when he drowned in his plane, she who had cured him with sips of warm milk when a crash made his head swell to five times its size. If he would only stay by her side, Tonio would be living a healthy and carefree life. Instead, he was forever being torn apart. One day France and America would be fighting over his remains.

Well, not if Consuelo could manage to survive him. She must start taking better care of herself. Eat more vegetables. Stop suppressing her voluptuary impulses. That was how one grew crippled from the inside out: by denying oneself the pleasures that kept one young. For Tonio’s sake, she had to remain beautiful and brave and strong.

Madame Demarais pulled on her ivory kid-leather gloves.
“He was recovered enough to explore the city today, though the effort took a toll. I’ve given him a pill to help him sleep.” She permitted herself to briefly touch the back of Tonio’s hand. “You will take him home soon?”

“I’m going to take him to stay with a colleague in Quebec City for a while. And then … it depends on when there are tickets available for the train.”

Madame Demarais unsnapped her purse. She delved into it and produced a checkbook. She signed a check, made out to Tonio, and placed it on the blanket for Consuelo to retrieve. “Allow me to insist. Please take Monsieur de Saint-Exupéry home by airplane.”

Tonio awoke in the night to find his wife warm and naked in his bed, planting kisses in the thick forest of his chest. Consuelo wished she had gotten the name of the sleeping pills, which were wondrous. Not only had they allowed Tonio a most satisfying slumber, upon waking he only sighed in relief and said her name and rolled over to return to sleep. Consuelo sighed, too—in happiness. What a precious gift it was, this shared night of intimate privacy and peace. They were together at last, away from all that kept him from her. There was no need to rush. She could tell him in the morning where her hands and lips and hungry hips had been.