Heaven Has No Favorites: A Novel (24 page)

“Where is the Taverna?” she asked.

“Near the theater.”

“Does it have a terrace?”

“Yes. Have you been there?”

“Very briefly. Not to eat. I passed by.”

“It’s an excellent restaurant.”

She heard the rattle of dishes and the voices before they turned the corner.

“You’re smiling,” de Peystre said. “Why?”

“That is the second time you’ve asked me that. Because I’m hungry. And because I know I am going to be fed.”

The proprietor personally waited on their table. He brought sea food, fresh, broiled, and poached, and an open white wine.

“What brings you here all by yourself?” de Peystre asked.

“A whim. But I am going back.”

“To Paris?”

“To Paris.”

“To Clerfayt?”

“So you already know that? To Clerfayt.”

“Can’t that wait a while?” de Peystre said cautiously.

Lillian laughed. “You are persistent. Are you making an offer?”

“Not if you don’t want me to. And if you do want it, without conditions. But why don’t you take a little time to, let us say, to look around?”

A man with toys came over to the table. He wound up two plush Scotch terriers and set them walking over the table top. “I don’t need to look around any more,” Lillian said. “I have no time for repetitions.”

De Peystre picked up the plush dogs and handed them back to the peddler. “Are you so sure that things will always be repetitions?”

Lillian nodded serenly. “For me, yes. Changes in detail are unimportant. Variations do not interest me.”

“Only the essence?”

“Only what I make of it. And that would be the same even if the man were different. That is what you mean, isn’t it? I have very simple reactions, it seems to me.”

The toy peddler set down a whole poultry yard on the table. The proprietor came over, pushed the man away, and served peaches flaming in rum and
espresso
. “Do you never have the feeling that you might be missing something?” de Peystre asked.

Lillian looked at him for a moment. Then she asked: “What, for example?”

“An adventure. A surprise. Something new. Something you do not know.”

“I had that feeling when I came here. I felt that I was missing New York, Yokohama, Tahiti, Apollo, Dionysus, Don Juan, and Buddha. Now I no longer feel that.”

“Since when?”

“Since a few days ago.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have learned that one can only miss oneself.”

“Where did you learn that?”

“At the window of my hotel.”

“Now I will ask you for the third time why you are smiling,” de Peystre said.

“Because I’m breathing. Because I’m here, because it’s evening and because we’re talking nonsense.”

“Is it nonsense?”

“It’s always nonsense. Do they have cognac here?”

“There’s grappa, aged and very good,” de Peystre said. “I envy you.”

Lillian laughed.

“You’ve changed,” de Peystre said. “You’re different from the way you were in Paris. Do you know what the difference is?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps it’s because I’ve given up an illusion—the illusion that we have a claim upon life—and with that the illusion that life has been unjust and hasn’t granted our claims.”

“Highly amoral.”

“Highly,” Lillian repeated, finishing her grappa. “I hope I can stick to it. At least for a while.”

“It seems that I have come too late,” de Peystre said. “A few hours or a few days too late. When are you leaving? Tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“It sounded as if you were. Alas.”

“ ‘Alas,’ ” Lillian said, “is by no means as sad a word as people think.”

“Is that another of your new insights?”

“One that I learned today.”

De Peystre drew her chair back. “I shall live in hope of your insights of tomorrow.”

“ ‘Hope,’ on the other hand,” Lillian said, “is a much sadder word than people think.”

CLERFAYT HAD LOOKED
for her in Paris; then he had assumed that she had returned to the sanatorium. He telephoned, and discovered his error. He had gone back to hunting for her in Paris, and found her nowhere. At last he had concluded that she had wanted to leave him. Even Uncle Gaston had crossly informed him that he did not know where his niece was, and did not care. Clerfayt had tried to forget her and to go on living as he had done before; but it was like trying to dance in glue.

A week after his return, he ran into Lydia Morelli. “Has your swallow left you?” she asked.

“She really must have got under your skin. You never used to ask about other women.”

“Has she left you?”

“Left!” Clerfayt replied, smiling. “What a silly word.”

“One of the oldest in the world.” Lydia studied him.

“Are we playing a conjugal scene from the eighteen-nineties?”

“So you’re really in love?”

“And you’re jealous.”

“I am jealous; but you are unhappy. That’s a difference.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I know whom I’m jealous of; you don’t. May I have a drink?”

Clerfayt went to dinner with her. During the evening, his feelings about Lillian condensed into the old chagrin of the man who has been left before he himself was able to leave. Lydia had pricked his sensitive point with a sharp needle.

“You ought to get married,” she said later.

“To whom?”

“I don’t know. But it’s time that you did.”

“You?”

She smiled. “I wouldn’t want to do that to you. Anyhow, you haven’t nearly enough money for me. Marry someone with money. There are plenty of women with money. How long do you count on going on racing? That’s a job for young men.”

Clerfayt nodded. “I know that, Lydia.”

“Don’t look so glum. We’re all growing older. The thing is to provide for the future before it’s too late.”

“Is that really so essential?”

“Don’t be a fool. What else?”

I know someone who does not want to provide for the future, he thought. “Have you considered whom I ought to marry, Lydia? You’re so solicitous all of a sudden.”

She looked keenly at him. “We might discuss the matter. You’ve changed.”

Clerfayt shook his head and stood up. “So long, Lydia.”

She came close to him. “You’ll be back, won’t you?”

“How long have we known each other?”

“For four years. With many holes in between.”

“Like a brocade that has been eaten by moths?”

“Like two people who have never wanted to assume a
responsibility—who have everything and don’t want to give anything away.”

“Neither the one nor the other is true.”

“We’ve fitted each other well, Clerfayt.”

“Like all people who don’t fit in anywhere?”

“I don’t know about that. Shall I tell you a secret?”

“That there are no secrets, and that everything is one?”

“No, that’s for men. This secret is about women. It’s that nothing is altogether as bad and nothing is altogether as good as we think. And nothing is final. Come tonight.”

He did not go. He was down at the mouth and felt vile. It was not the way it usually was in such cases. He not only missed Lillian, he missed something in himself. Without noticing, he had absorbed something of her way of life. A life without a tomorrow, he thought. But you couldn’t live that way; there was a tomorrow, at least for him, and in spite of his occupation; there had to be one.

She has isolated me, he thought with anger. She has made me twenty years younger, but also more foolish. In the past, I would have looked up Lydia Morelli and spent a few enjoyable days with her, and that would have been that; now I would feel like a high-school boy if I did and I’d have a hangover as though I’d been drinking bad wine. I ought to marry Lillian, he thought. Lydia is right, though not the way she thinks. Suddenly he felt liberated, and was amazed at feeling so. He had never before thought he would ever marry. Now it seemed to him perfectly natural. He could no longer imagine his life without Lillian. That was neither tragic nor romantic nor sentimental; it was simply that life without her seemed nothing but a monotonous succession of years, like rooms all alike in which the lights had gone out.

He gave up looking for her. It was pointless; if she returned, she would either come to him or she would not. He had no idea that she was already back in the Hôtel Bisson. But she stayed there alone for several days more. She did not want Clerfayt to see her until she felt well enough to appear healthy. She kept to her room and slept a great deal. While Clerfayt watched over her trunks in the Hotel Ritz, she lived out of the two suitcases she had taken to Sicily.

She felt as if she had come back into port after a great storm, but as if the port had meanwhile changed. The set had been shifted; or, rather, the set had remained the same, but the lighting was different. It was clear and definite now, merciless but without sadness. The storm was over. So was the rose-colored deception. There was no escaping. And no complaint either. The noise was dying down. Soon she would be able to hear her heart. Not only its call—its answer also.

The first person she looked up was Uncle Gaston. He was surprised, but after a few minutes exhibited something resembling a prudent degree of pleasure. “Where are you staying now?” he asked.

“I’m back at the Bisson. It’s not expensive, Uncle Gaston.”

“You think money multiplies overnight. If you go on the way you’ve been going, you’ll have nothing left before long. Do you know how long your funds will last if you go on spending at the rate you’ve been doing?”

“No. I don’t want to know either.”

I must hurry up and die, she thought with a touch of irony.

“You’ve always lived beyond your means. In the old days, people used to live on the interest of their principal.”

Lillian laughed. “I’ve heard that in the city of Basel on the Swiss border a person is considered a spendthrift if he doesn’t live on the interest of the interest.”

“Ah, Switzerland,” Gaston said, as if he were speaking of the Venus Kallipygos. “What a currency! A fortunate nation!” He looked at Lillian. “I could fix up one room in my apartment for you. That would save you hotel bills.”

Lillian looked around. He would spin his little intrigues and try to marry her off, she thought. And keep watch on her. He was afraid that she might cost him some of his own money. Not for a moment did it occur to her to tell him the truth. “I won’t be an expense to you, Uncle Gaston,” she declared. “Never!”

“Young Boileau has often asked after you.”

“Who is he?”

“The son of the watch-company Boileaus. A very fine family. The mother—”

“Oh, he’s the one with the harelip?”

“Harelip! What coarse expressions you use. A little blemish that often occurs in old families. Besides, it’s been operated on. You hardly notice it. Men aren’t fashion models, after all.”

Lillian regarded the self-righteous little man. “How old are you, Uncle Gaston?”

“Are you harping on that again? You know perfectly well.”

“And how old do you think you will live to be?”

“That’s a totally tactless question. You do not ask that of elderly people. It’s in God’s hands.”

“Many things are in God’s hands. He will have a lot of questions to answer someday, don’t you think? I have a few to ask him, too.”

“What?” Gaston’s eyes flew wide. “What’s that you’re saying?”

“Nothing.” Lillian had to check a brief surge of anger. Here this indestructible molting old rooster stood before her, victorious, champion on a racecourse one foot long; old as he was, he would certainly live at least several years longer than she; he knew everything, had an opinion on everything, and was on intimate terms with his God.

“Uncle Gaston,” she said with an effort, “if you could live your life over again, would you live it differently?”

“Of course!”

“How?” Lillian asked, a faint hope rising.

“I certainly wouldn’t get caught again in the devaluation of the franc. Back in 1914, I would have bought American stocks—and then in 1938, at the latest—”

“All right, Uncle Gaston,” Lillian interrupted. “I understand.” Her anger had evaporated.

“You understand nothing. Otherwise you wouldn’t be so reckless with the little money you have left. Of course, your father—”

“I know, Uncle Gaston. A spendthrift. But there is an even bigger spendthrift than he was.”

“Who?”

“Life. It spends you and me and everybody else.”

“Stuff and nonsense. That’s parlor Bolshevism! Time you cleared your head of that stuff. Life is too serious for that.”

“It certainly is. Bills have to be paid. Give me money. And don’t act as if it’s your own. It belongs to me.”

“Money! Money! That’s all you know about life.”

“No, Uncle Gaston, that’s all you know.”

“Be thankful if it’s so. Otherwise you’d have been without a cent long ago.” Reluctantly, Gaston wrote out a check. “And what about later?” he asked bitterly, waving the slip of paper in the air to dry the ink. “What are you going to do later?”

Lillian gazed at him in fascination. I think he’s actually saving on blotting paper, she thought. “There is no later,” she said.

“That’s what they all say. And then, when they have nothing left, they come begging, and out of our little savings we have to—”

Her anger returned, clear and violent. Lillian snatched the check from her uncle’s hand. “Stop your wailing! And go and buy yourself American stock, you patriot!”

———

She walked along the wet streets. It had been raining while she was at her uncle’s, but now the sun was shining again, and reflecting from the asphalt and the puddles at the curb. Even in puddles the sky is reflected, she thought, and found herself laughing. In that case, perhaps God was reflected even in Uncle Gaston. But where in him? God was harder to find in her uncle than the blue and glitter of the sky in the filthy water that flowed into the sewer openings. God was hard to find in most people she knew. They sat in their offices, behind their desks, as though they were all going to be double Methuselahs; that was their dreary secret. They lived as if death did not exist. But they did it like shopkeepers, not like heroes. They had repressed the tragic knowledge of the end and played ostrich and cultivated the petty-bourgeois illusion of Eternal Life. They went on trying to cheat each other on the brink of the grave and to pile up the things that soonest made them slaves of themselves: money and power.