Heaven Has No Favorites: A Novel (13 page)

“And how old are you really?”

“Twenty-four and eighty.”

Clerfayt laughed. “A good combination. I was once thirty-six and eighty—when I came back from the war.”

“And what happened?”

“I became forty,” Clerfayt said, shifting into first gear. “It was very sad.”

The car climbed the ascent from the railroad to the highway, and began the long downhill stretch. At the same moment, another motor howled behind them. It was the red sports car that had been hurtled through the tunnel with them. The driver had been lying in wait behind a shed. Now he roared up behind them with his four cylinders as if there were sixteen of them.

“You always run into that kind,” Clerfayt said. “He wants to race us. Shall we give him a lesson? Or let him keep his illusion that he has the fastest car in the world?”

“Let’s let everyone keep his illusions today.”

“All right.”

Clerfayt stopped Giuseppe. The red sports car behind him also stopped, and the driver began to blow his horn. He had plenty of room to pass; but he insisted on his race.

“That’s the way it is,” Clerfayt said, sighing, and started again. “He’s a human being; he seeks his own destruction.”

The red car badgered them as far as Faido. The driver repeatedly tried to catch up. “He’ll end up killing himself,” Clerfayt said finally. “The last time, he almost failed to make the curve. We’d better let him pass.”

He braked, but immediately stepped on the gas again. “That ham! Instead of passing, he almost crashed into our rear. He’s just as dangerous behind us as ahead of us.”

Clerfayt pulled the car to the right edge of the road. The smell of wood wafted toward them from a lumberyard. He stopped Giuseppe in front of some stacked lumber. This time, the red car did not pause. It roared by. The man inside waved contemptuously and laughed.

It became very still. Only the rushing of a brook and the soft patter of the rain could be heard. This was happiness, Lillian felt.
This minute of stillness, full of dark, damp, fertile expectation. She would never forget it—the night, the gentle pattering, and the wet road glinting in the headlights.

A quarter of an hour later, they ran into fog. Clerfayt switched to the dim headlights. He drove very slowly. After a while, they were able to make out the edge of the road again. For a few hundred yards, the mist was swept away by the rain; then they again entered a cloud which was rising from the depths below.

Clerfayt braked the car very sharply. They had just emerged from the fog again. In front of them, wrapped around a milestone, hung the red sports car, one wheel over the edge of the abyss. Beside it stood the driver, seemingly unhurt.

“I call that luck,” Clerfayt said.

“Luck?” the man replied furiously. “And what about the car? Look at it! I don’t have collision insurance. And what about my arm?”

“Your arm is sprained, at worst. After all, you’re able to move it. Man, be glad you’re still standing on the road.”

Clerfayt got out and inspected the wreck. “Sometimes milestones are good for something.”

“It’s your fault!” the man bellowed. “You got me into driving so fast. I’m making you responsible. If you had let me pass and not started to race with me—”

Lillian laughed.

“What does the lady think is so funny?” the man demanded angrily.

“That’s none of your business. But since today is Wednesday, I’ll explain it to you. The lady comes from another planet and doesn’t know our customs down here. She’s laughing because she sees you bewailing your car instead of giving thanks that you’re still alive. The lady cannot understand that I, on the other hand, admire you for it, so I’ll send a tow car up here for you from the next village.”

“Stop! You can’t get away that easily! If you hadn’t dared me to race, I would have driven slowly and not—”

“Too many conditions contrary to fact,” Clerfayt said. “You’d better blame it all on the lost war.”

The man looked at Clerfayt’s license plate. “French! I’ll have a devil of a time collecting my money.” He fumbled with a pencil and a piece of paper in his left hand. “Give me your number. Write it down for me. Don’t you see that I can’t write with my arm like this?”

“Learn to. I’ve had to learn harder things in your country.”

Clerfayt got in again. The man followed him. “Are you trying to duck out of this by running away?”

“Exactly. However, I’ll send you a tow car.”

“What? You mean to leave me standing here on the road in this rain?”

“Yes. This car of mine is a two-seater. Take a deep breath, look at the mountains, give thanks to God that you’re still alive, and remember that better people than you have had to die.”

They found a garage in Biasca. The owner was at his supper. He left his family and took a bottle of Barbera wine with him. “He’ll need some alcohol,” he said. “Maybe I will, too.”

The car glided on down the mountain, curve upon curve, serpentine after serpentine. “This is a monotonous stretch,” Clerfayt said. “It goes on to Locarno. Then comes the lake. Are you tired?”

Lillian shook her head. Tired! she thought. Monotonous! Can’t this healthy specimen of life see that I am quivering all over? Doesn’t he understand what’s going on in me? Can’t he feel that my frozen picture of the world has suddenly thawed and is moving and talking, that the rain is talking, the wet rocks are talking and the valley with its shadows and lights, and the road? Doesn’t he have any idea
that I shall never again be so at one with them as I am now—as if I were lying in the cradle and in the arms of an unknown god, frightened and still as trustful as a young bird, and yet already knowing that all this will exist for me only this one time, that I am losing it even as I possess it and it possesses me, this road and these villages, these dark trucks in front of the roadside inns, this singing behind lighted windows, the guitars, the gray-and-silver sky, and these names—Osogna, Cresciano, Claro, Castione, and Bellinzona—scarcely read and already subsiding behind me like shadows, as if they had never been? Doesn’t he see that I am a sieve losing what it receives, not a basket that collects what is put into it? Doesn’t he notice that I can scarcely speak because my heart is swelling so, and that among the few names it feels, his is one too, but that all of them really mean only one thing again and again: life?

“How did you like your first encounter down here?” Clerfayt asked. “A fellow who wails over his property and takes his life for granted. You will get to know many more such people.”

“It’s a change. Up above, everyone thinks his life frightfully important. So did I.”

“We’ll arrive in ten minutes,” Clerfayt said. “Here is Locarno already.”

Streets were leaping into being before them, lights, houses, blueness, and a broad square with arcades.

A streetcar rattled up and at the last moment blocked their way. Clerfayt laughed when he saw that Lillian was staring at it as if it were a cathedral. For four years, she had not seen one. There were no streetcars in the mountains.

Now the lake lay before them, broad, silvery, and restless. The rain had stopped. The clouds were moving fast and low across the moon. Ascona, with its piazza by the shore, lay still.

“Where are we going to stay?” Lillian asked.

“By the lake. In the Hotel Tamaro.”

“How is it you know this place?”

“I lived here for a year after the war,” Clerfayt replied. “Tomorrow morning, you’ll understand why.”

He stopped in front of the small hotel and unloaded the bags. “The owner of this place has a magnificent library,” he said. “He’s something of a scholar. And another man farther up on the mountain has a hotel that has Cézannes, Utrillos, and Lautrecs on the walls. That’s the sort of thing you run into here. But how would it be if we drove a bit farther to eat?”

“Where to?”

“To Brissago on the Italian border. Ten minutes from here. To a restaurant called Giardino.”

Lillian looked around. “Why, there’s wisteria in flower!”

The lavender clusters of blossoms hung along the white walls of the houses. Over a garden wall, mimosa shook down its gold and feathery green. “Spring,” Clerfayt said. “God bless Giuseppe. He displaces the seasons.”

The car drove slowly along the lake. “Mimosa,” Clerfayt said, pointing to the flowering trees by the lake. “Whole lanes of them. And there is a hill of iris and daffodils. This village is called Porto Ronco. And that one up there on the mountain is Ronco. It was built by the Romans.”

He parked the car beside a long stone staircase. They climbed up to a little restaurant. He ordered a bottle of Soave,
prosciutto, scampi
with rice, and cheese from the Valle Maggia.

There were not many people in the restaurant. The windows were open, the air soft. A pot of white camelias stood on the table.

“You say you’ve lived here?” Lillian asked. “By this lake?”

“For almost a year. After my escape and after the war. I wanted to stay a few days, but I stayed much longer. I needed it. It was a
cure of loafing, sunshine, lizards on the walls, staring at the sky and the lake, and so much forgetting that after a while my eyes were no longer fixed upon a single point; they began to see that nature had taken no notice at all of twenty years of human insanity.
Salute!
”

Lillian drank the light Italian wine. “Am I mistaken, or is the food here amazingly good?” she asked.

“It is amazingly good. The owner could be a chef in any great hotel.”

“Why isn’t he?”

“He used to be. But he would rather live in his native village.”

Lillian looked up. “He wanted to come back—not go out into the world?”

“He was outside—and came back.”

She set her glass down on the table. “I’m happy, Clerfayt,” she said. “Though I must say that I have no idea what the word means.”

“I don’t know either.”

“Haven’t you ever been happy?”

“Often.”

She looked at him. “In a different way each time,” he added.

“When most of all?”

“I don’t know. It was different each time.”

“When most of all?”

“Alone,” Clerfayt said.

Lillian laughed. “Where are we going now? Are there more fabulous restaurateurs and hotel owners here?”

“Many. At night, at full moon, a glass restaurant rises up out of the lake. It belongs to a son of Neptune. Old Roman wines are served there. But now we’re going to a bar that has a wine that is already sold out in Paris.”

They drove back to Ascona. Clerfayt left the car in front of the hotel. They walked over the piazza and down some steps to a bar in a cellar.

“I don’t need any more to drink,” Lillian said. “I’m already drunk on the mimosa. The air is full of it. What are those islands in the lake?”

“In Roman times, they say, there used to be a temple to Venus on that one. Now, someone has a restaurant there. But on nights of full moon the old gods still visit the place. Then in the mornings the owner finds that many bottles have been emptied, with their corks untouched. Now and then, Pan sleeps off his spree on the island and awakes at noon. Then he plays on his pipes a bit, and all radio broadcasts are full of static.”

“The wine is wonderful. What is it?”

“Old champagne, perfectly stored. Luckily, the gods don’t know anything about it, or they would have drunk it up long ago. There was no such thing as champagne until the Middle Ages.”

They walked back. A crucified Christ hung on the wall of a house. Opposite was the door to a restaurant. The Saviour gazed mutely into the illuminated room, from which noise and laughter sounded. It seemed to Lillian that some comment should be made—but there was no comment to be made. It all belonged together.

She stood at the window of her room. Outside were lake, night, and wind. The spring busied itself in the clouds and in the plane trees on the piazza. Clerfayt came in. He put his arm around her. She turned and looked at him. He kissed her. “Aren’t you afraid?” she asked.

“Of what?”

“Of my being sick.”

“I am afraid that I’ll have a front tire blow out on me at a hundred and twenty-five miles an hour,” he said.

Abruptly, Lillian took a deep breath. We’re alike, she thought.
Both of us have no future. His reaches only to the next race, and mine to the next hemorrhage. She smiled.

“There is a story about that,” Clerfayt said. “In Paris in the times of the guillotine a man was being led to execution. It was cold, and the way was long. En route, the guards stopped for some wine, which they drank from the bottle. After they’d drunk, they offered the bottle to their prisoner. He took it, looked at it for a moment, and then said, ‘I suppose none of us has an infectious disease,’ and drank. Half an hour later, his head rolled into the basket. My grandmother told me that story when I was ten years old. She was in the habit of drinking a bottle of Calvados a day. People predicted she would die an early death. She’s still alive, and the prophets have been dead a long time. I’ve brought along a bottle of the old champagne. It’s said that in spring it foams more than at other times of the year. It still feels the life that was once in it, so it’s said. I’ll leave it here for you.”

He put the bottle on the window sill, but immediately picked it up again. “Wine should not stand in the moonlight. The moon kills its fragrance. That’s one of the things my grandmother used to say, too.”

He went to the door.

“Clerfayt,” Lillian said.

He turned around.

“I didn’t leave in order to be alone,” she said.

THE SUBURBS OF PARIS
stretched out gray, ugly, and rain-streaked; but the farther they penetrated into the city, the more the enchantment began. Corners, angles, and streets rose up like paintings by Utrillo and Pissarro; the gray paled until it was almost silvery; the river appeared, with its bridges and scows and budding trees, with the colorful rows of
bouquinistes
and the square blocks of the old buildings on the right banks of the Seine.

“From that spot,” Clerfayt said, “Marie Antoinette was taken away to be beheaded. An extraordinary restaurant is right opposite. In this city, you can combine hunger with history everywhere. Where would you like to stay?”