Distant Relations (7 page)

But whatever Heredia's intentions—and Branly began to suspect that Heredia hoped to distract him, to involve him in a banal conversation, to challenge his honor, to provoke a long but courteous silence like the one that must have motivated the bizarre words Heredia had tried to thrust like banderillas into the neck of his guest—Branly freed his mind of the implications of this new and unexpected development, realizing with lucid clarity that a man like Heredia would not ordinarily worry about a chauffeur. Normally, he would not lift a finger for him, or go out of his way to offer him aid. Heredia had made up his mind, had acted, telephoned the hospital, before he knew who Branly was. His attentiveness toward Etienne did not spring out of compassion for the servant or adulation of the master, but from some other motive that Heredia had deceitfully hoped to obscure by proudly exhibiting the most repulsive emotion my friend and I know: resentment.

Branly did not hesitate for a moment. The instant Heredia got out of the Citroën, my friend slammed the door and threw the car into reverse. The lights of the ambulance blinded him, but they also blocked out the astounded Heredia standing on the sidewalk with one hand to his eyes, protecting himself from the luminous lances of the ambulance and the Citroën crossed in blinding white combat that terrified my friend, until, still in reverse, he found space in which to turn the car, and, shifting into high gear, followed the signs that would lead him away from the hospital, away from Heredia and Etienne—standing like statues, watching his desperate struggle to reverse the car and drive off in the direction of the Clos des Renards. He knew now that Heredia had wanted him away from there—why? He had wanted to lure him away and keep him away, but he would not succeed. The dazzle of the headlights did not prevent him from seeing a truth spawned in darkness, untouched by any light except a psychic certainty: if the French Victor Heredia was not interested in him or his chauffeur, then he could be interested only in the person who bore his name, the Mexican Victor Heredia.

My friend says he felt as if black shadows had congealed in his throat. The signs led him from the center of Enghien toward the highways that were the source of his night terrors, and in the prison of glass and lights surrounding him, the vision of his fatal accident and that of a park filled with children who no longer recognized him blended together like two crystalline rivers that for years had flowed side by side, finally to be silently joined that night. Victor needed him, he was in danger. That is why Heredia had lured him from the Clos des Renards, Branly tells me now, and adds that was all he knew—rather, all he needed to know—at this incredible moment in his life. He drove blindly, recklessly, certain that he was racing toward an encounter with his recurrent nightmare of death on a night highway. But, above all else, he felt that he was the object of an implacable hostility.

He could not identify its source. He did not want to consider Heredia capable of transmitting such sovereign hatred. Besides, he had left the Frenchman standing on the sidewalk of the hospital on the Boulevard d'Ormesson just now, blinded by actual lights. The blast of malice directed against Branly, Branly's vital juices informed him, his viscera, the shadowy taste in his mouth, sprang from a different place and a different time, a faraway time and place as distant in origin as the dead leaves swirling in the wake of the automobile racing along the avenue of the Clos des Renards—leaves my friend feverishly knew were alien to that place; they had not fallen from any tree in these woods, and who could say who or what had carried them here, or when or where they had actually fallen, in what dense forest.

7

Branly is an inveterate traveler. It is not unusual to see him one day, as today, in the dining room or swimming pool of the club housed in Gabriel's magnificent
pavillon
facing the Place de la Concorde, and then lose sight of him for months. He may wish to see his favorite Velázquezes in the Prado or the magnificent Brueghels in Naples, the diamantine lakes of southern Chile or the endlessly golden dawns over the Bosporus. The wish is father to the deed; wish, not caprice, he explains. Because he had known the innocent world before Sarajevo, he believes it would be absurd in this day of instant communications for men not to claim their right to use transportation to their own advantage, to fulfill their slightest whim, knowing that, like every new conquest, such privilege is also a notification of what we have lost: the visa-less intercommunicating universe he had enjoyed when one traveled to Kabul not in a Caravelle but in a caravan. The witticism attributed to Paul Morand could easily apply to my friend: he so loves to travel that his will stipulates that his skin be made into a suitcase.

So no one among Branly's friends is surprised by his sudden absence. He might be visiting the Countess at nearby Quercy, or be as far away as the Toltec ruins at Xochicalco. Neither will ever be dislodged from its site, and so, in keeping with a life based on civility and social niceties, my friend willingly goes to the mountains that will not come to him.

And such idiosyncratic habits serve a different end as well. They permit him, in keeping with his desire, to avoid any mention of occasional illness. Nothing irritates him more than the solicitous—sincere or feigned, though almost always hypocritical—attentions given the ailments that beset the elderly. He is no hypochondriac, and he detests the idea that anyone should see him reduced to querulousness or debility. When Branly finds himself in bed against his will, Florencio and José are well trained in informing callers that M. le Comte will be out of town for a few weeks, and if they want to communicate with him they may do so by writing in care of the prefecture of Dordogne, or perhaps by poste restante to the island of Mauritius. M. le Comte will undoubtedly be dropping by one of these days to pick up his mail.

Even those of us who suspect the subterfuge in all this are quite happy to attribute it to the combination of fantasy and reserve which in the Count are good and sufficient proof of his independence. In this way he cautions us to respect his privacy as he respects ours. It is only this afternoon, for instance, that I learn of the several days he spent in bed following the accident he suffered the evening he ran into one of the oak trees lining the avenue to the Clos des Renards. I acknowledge my appreciation of his confidence, though a barely perceptible gleam in his small eyes reveals that if he has told me, it is only because the incident is indispensable to the story, the result of an automobile accident—not uncommon in the life of one who travels so frequently—and not a common cold.

“I am convinced that there are events that occur only because we fear them. If they were not summoned by our fear, you see, they would remain forever latent. Surely it is our imagining them that activates the atoms of probability and awakens them, as it were, from a dream. The dream of our absolute indifference.”

What awakened him was the whistled melody of the madrigal of the clear fountain. He opened his eyes to the shattered windshield of the Citroën and imagined himself a prisoner in a crystal spiderweb before he verified the pain in his leg and his head, before he put his hand to his brow and felt his fingers sticky with blood, before he again felt himself slipping into unconsciousness.

He remembers that when he again awakened he was lying on a canopied bed. Automatically, his hand went to his aching head.

“Don't worry, M. le Comte,” said the French Heredia, beside him. “You have been well looked after, I can swear to that. I found you as I returned from the hospital. Why did you do such a foolish thing? So many mishaps in a single evening. My son André and your young friend helped me bring you here. The doctor came, you were slightly delirious. He gave you a tetanus injection, just to be sure. Your wounds are only superficial, nothing is broken. Your bad leg is a bit worse for wear, and the doctor put a patch on your head. He wants you to stay in bed for a few days. It's the shock more than anything, you know. And at your age you can't be too careful.”

Branly waved away any concerns about his person and inquired about Etienne.

Heredia laughed disagreeably. “Noble to the end, eh? Your vassal is doing well, and is grateful for your concern. He spent the night in the hospital, and will be released today. He wanted to come by here, but I told him no, that you needed to rest. You're not really up to par, so here I am to carry out your orders. You just say the word.”

As he tells me today, my friend was convinced that Heredia was again anticipating an unyielding silence, a reaction against the ever-increasing impertinence of the person in whose hands he was now virtually captive, and who intended to put to the test the limits of Branly's innate courtesy, challenging him to maintain his civility from a sickbed, especially now that he was dependent on the services of the man with the pale eyes, straight nose, and white mane of hair, who was caring for him in this bedchamber redolent—like the entire residence, and not just the foyer as he had first thought—of leather. The canopy of his bed was leather, as well as the chairs of this shadowy chamber closed in by heavy velvet curtains that made it impossible to tell whether it was night or day.

Yet, he told himself, it would be immature to refuse this disagreeable man the perverse pleasure of serving his guest, simply because, in serving him, the Frenchman would find further proof of Branly's feudalism, and a view of a world—which might actually be a relief for Heredia, as it was more Heredia's desire than Branly's—populated with serfs.

Unaided, my friend pulled himself to a sitting position against the leather-covered headboard of the castored bed, but he asked Heredia to arrange the pillows to make a more comfortable support for his arms. Then he asked if he might make a telephone call. He had begun to devise a policy of sorts for dealing with his unexpected and unsought host: he was beginning to realize that nothing would be more disconcerting than the continuing evidence of his courtesy, more than a counterpoint to the Frenchman's crudeness, a cool civility Heredia would find difficult to distinguish from aloof politeness, as in a rosary of identically colored baroque pearls gradations in size may not be readily apparent to the naked eye.

Heredia hesitated a moment, staring at my friend with curiosity. He folded his arms across his dirty white quilted silk dressing gown and finally informed Branly that there were no extensions upstairs, the only telephone being on the first floor. He would help Branly down the stairs, if that's what he wanted; however, he had noticed that the Count had been limping even before the accident. He didn't want to be held responsible, in case Branly should decide to file a claim for the second accident. Lucky for him, wasn't it, that the first had happened outside and that the boy was responsible.

Branly nodded, and asked Heredia to call Hugo, the boy's father. But, as his host was about to leave the room, my friend said: “No, on second thought, don't bother Señor Heredia; he might worry about his son, and there is no reason for that. Also, he is quite involved with his conference. If you don't mind, speak with my servants. They are Spanish, so they will have no difficulty understanding you. Yes, that's it, that way Señor Heredia will know where his son is, but will not worry about him. Could I trouble you, Heredia, to push my bed to the window? You can't tell the hour in this gloom. And ask the boy to come up later and visit. I am not at all tired.”

Without a word, Heredia pushed the bed closer to the window. Branly smiled; he commented to his host that he was indeed a sturdy fellow. He took the cane Heredia had propped against the bed and pulled aside the curtain to allow the sun to shine in.

“Ah,” he exclaimed with delight, and with a sincere impulse to share with Heredia his fundamental pleasure in life, the morning, and the sunshine. But the owner of the Clos des Renards had brusquely left the room. So, instead, instinctively seeking the signs of life his spirit had clamored for throughout the night, Branly looked out the window. His eyes took in the rational garden. He shook his head as he saw the spectacular evidence of his automobile's collision with the oak tree, and only when his quite contented invalid's eyes wandered toward the woods did he see the two figures standing hand in hand in the chiaroscuro of the birch trees. They stood so quietly they were barely visible; anything stationary in a natural setting succumbs to the universal law of mimesis.

He dozed, thinking that perhaps his host had been right, perhaps he was not yet ready for strong emotion; the world had deceived him through the years by leading him to expect the respect he felt he deserved. A resentment as flagrant and gross as Heredia's mounted in Branly's breast, an indication of the existence of a world that he had vaguely known existed but had never known. How long had it been since anyone had had the effrontery to thwart his wishes? How long since anyone in his presence had interrupted the priestly murmur of conversation typical of the French; in fact, of any civilized people?

Dusk was falling before his eyes, and as night approaches, the woods look like the sea. Vast, serene, inexhaustible, renewed in every breath. He felt suddenly suffocated, uncomfortably aware of the smell of tanned leather, and with a movement he then thought natural, but now, telling me, he recalls as violent, even desperate, he reached out with his cane and pushed open one of the casements of the window. As it swung open, he could hear the happy voices of the two boys, who obviously were playing beneath his window on the terrace guarded by lions.

Their voices, Branly says, dissipated the asphyxiating odor of hide and filled the room, as if it were a delicate, tall-stemmed goblet, with tremors of the beautiful, melancholy twilight, and also with the ineffable, the quintessential, joy of the boys, who were laughing and singing—now he could hear it—the madrigal of the enraptured nightingale:
Chante, rossignol, chante, toi qui as le coeur gai.