Overhead in a Balloon (16 page)

“Research might have better luck at the University of Zurich,” writes Grippes, at Miss Pugh’s Louis XVI period table. “A tireless Swiss team has been on the trail of Miss Pugh for some time now, and a cowed Swiss computer throws up only occasional anarchy, describing Pugh M. M., Pullman G. M., and Pulitzer J. as the same generous American.”

Prism’s quiet collaboration with Zurich, expected to culminate in a top-quality volume,
Hostess to Fame
, beige linen cover, ended when he understood that he was not going to be paid anything, and that it would be fifteen years before the first word was transferred from tape to paper.

Grippes says he heard one of the tapes:

“Mr. Prism, kindly listen to the name I shall now pronounce. François Mauriac. The thin, sardonic gentleman who put on a bowler hat every morning before proceeding to Mass was François Mauriac. Right?”

“I don’t remember a François.”

“Think. François. Mauriac.”

“I don’t remember a bowler hat.”

A
t the centennial commemoration, Prism stood on a little dais, dressed in a great amount of tweed and flannel that seemed to have been cut for a much larger man. Grippes suspects that Prism’s clothes are being selected by his widowed sister, who, after years of trying to marry him off to her closest friends, is now hoping to make him seem as unattractive as possible. Imagining Prism’s future – a cottage in Devon, his sister saying, “There was a letter for you, but I can’t remember what I did with it” – he heard Prism declare he was happy to be here, in a place obligingly provided; the firm’s old boardroom, back in the days when Paris was still; the really fine walnut panelling on two of the; about the shortage of chairs, but the Committee had not expected such a large; some doubtless disturbed by an inexplicable smell of moth repellent, but the Committee was in no way; in honour of a great and charitable
American, to whom the cultural life of; looking around, he was pleased to see one or two young faces.

With this, Prism stepped down, and had to be reminded he was chairman and principal speaker. He climbed back, and delivered from memory an old lecture of his on Gertrude Stein. He then found and read a letter Miss Pugh had received from the President of the Republic, in 1934, telling her that although she was a woman, and a foreigner, she was surely immortal. Folding the letter, Prism suddenly recalled and described a conversation with Miss Pugh.

“Those of us who believe in art,” Prism had started to say.

Miss Pugh had coughed and said, “I don’t.”

She did not believe in art, only in artists. She had no interest in books, only in their authors. Reading an early poem of Prism’s (it was years since he had written any poetry, he hastened to say), she had been stopped by the description of a certain kind of butterfly, “pale yellow, with a spot like the Eye of God.” She had sent for her copy of the Larousse dictionary, which Rosalia was using in the kitchen as a weight on sliced cucumbers. Turning to a colour plate, Miss Pugh had found the butterfly at once. It turned out to be orange rather than yellow, and heavily spotted with black. Moreover, it was not a European butterfly but an Asian moth. The Larousse must be mistaken. She had shut the dictionary with a slap, blaming its editors for carelessness. If only there had been more women like her, Prism concluded, there would be more people today who knew what they were doing.

Grippes says that, for once, he feels inclined to agree. All the same, he wishes Prism had suppressed the anecdote. Prism knows as well as Grippes does that some things are better left as legends.

S
ome men give their children sound advice about property and investment. The elder Pugh had the nerve to give advice about marriage – this to the son of a wife he had deserted. He was in Paris on a visit and had come round to see what Larry was up to. It was during the hot, quiet summer of 1954.

Larry was caretaking for July and August. He had the run of sixteen dust-sheeted rooms, some overlooking the Parc de Monceau, some looking straight onto the shuttered windows of other stone houses. Twice a week a woman arrived to clean and, Larry supposed, to make sure he hadn’t stolen anything.

He was not a thief – only a planner. His plans required the knowledge of where things were kept and what they amounted
to. After a false start as a sculptor he was trying to find an open road. He went through the drawers and closets left unlocked and came across a number of towels and bathmats and blankets stolen from hotels; pilfering of that sort was one of the perks of the rich. A stack of hotel writing paper gave him a new idea for teasing Maggie, his half sister, who also lived in Paris – near the Trocadéro, about eight Métro stops away.

The distance between Larry and Maggie was greater than any stretch of city blocks. He saw it as a treeless plain. It was she who kept the terrain bare, so that she could see Larry coming. He had to surmise, because it would be senseless to do anything else, that Maggie failed to trust him. He wondered why. Total strangers, with even more reason to feel suspicious, gave him the keys to their house. When he looked in a mirror, he felt he could trust himself. A French law obliges children to support indigent parents and, in one or two rare cases Larry had heard of, siblings – a sister or brother. Maggie probably lived with the fear of seeing Larry shuffling up to the front door, palm up. Or carrying a briefcase stuffed with claims and final warnings. Or ringing the bell, in a tearing hurry, with a lawyer waiting in a taxi. Or that she would be called to his bedside at the American Hospital in Neuilly, with an itemized statement for intensive care prepared at checkout. She might even be afraid she would have to bury him, in the unlikely event of his dying first. Maggie’s mother, but not Larry’s, had been crowningly rich. Larry’s generation would have said that he and Maggie had different genes; Maggie’s would have taken it for granted they had different prospects.

Fiddling around with the hotel stationery, he sent Maggie letters from Le Palais in Biarritz, the Hôtel de Paris in Monte
Carlo, Le Royal at Évian-les-Bains, Le Golf at Deauville. Some carried the terrifying P.S. “See you soon!” From the Paris Ritz he counselled her not to mind the number of bills he was having referred to her from Biarritz and those other places: he had made a killing in Portuguese oysters and would settle up with her before long.

He wondered if the tease had worked, and if she had bothered to look at the postmarks. He had sent all the letters from the same post office, on Boulevard Malesherbes. The postmarks should have shown Maggie that it was just a prank, not an operation. But then she probably thought him too old for practical jokes and wholly unsuited for operations. A true trickster needed to have the elder Pugh’s clear conscience – his perfect innocence.

Paris was hushed, eerie, Larry’s father said. That was what he noticed after so many years. He’d gone back to America long before the war. For some time now Maggie had been paying him an allowance to keep away. She lived in Paris because she always had; it did not mean that she kept open house. Larry was here for a different reason: he had been at the Beaux Arts for as long as he could stretch the G.I. Bill. He was just wavering at present: stay or go.

He told his father why Paris was silent. There was a new law about traffic horns. His father said he didn’t believe it.

Here, near the park, in midsummer, there was no traffic to speak of. In the still of the afternoon they heard the braking of a bus across the empty streets. Shutters were bolted, curtains drawn on the streets with art names: Murillo, Rembrandt, Van Dyck.

Larry’s father said, “I suppose you found out there wasn’t much to art in the long run.” From anyone else it would have
been wounding. His father meant only that there were better things in life, not that anyone had failed him.

Larry took the dust sheets off an inlaid table and two pink easy chairs. The liquor cabinet was easy to pry open; he managed with a fork and spoon. They pushed their chairs over to a window. It was curious, his father remarked, how the French never wanted to look
out
. Notice the way salon furniture is placed – those stiff little circles. People always sat as if they weren’t sure what to do with their ankles and knees.

The drawing room was pale in colour, and yet it soaked up the light. Larry was about to ask if his father had ever seen a total eclipse, when the old man said, “Who lives around here? It was a good address before the war.”

Before the other war, he meant – before 1914. He was fine-looking – high-bridged nose, only slightly veined; tough, kindly blue eyes. He seemed brainless to Larry, like Maggie, but a stranger might not have noticed. His gaze was alert as a wren’s, his expression one of narrow sincerity. If there were such a thing as artistic truth, his face would have been more ingratiating; about half his plots and schemes had always died on the branch. He must have seen the other half as enough. Unlike most con men, Larry’s father acted on sudden inclinations. It was a wonder anything bloomed at all.

Larry did not think of himself as brainless. He did not even consider himself unlucky, which proved he was smart. He was not sure whether his face said anything useful. It was almost too late to decide. He had stopped being young.

His father had no real age; certainly none in his own mind. He sat, comfortable and alert, drinking Larry’s patron’s best Scotch, telling Larry about a wonderful young woman who was dying to marry him. But, he said, probably having quite
correctly guessed that Maggie would cut his funds at the very glimmer of a new wedding, he thought he’d keep the dew on the rose; stick to untrammelled romance; maintain the constant delight and astonishment reserved for unattached lovers. She was attractive, warmhearted, and intelligent; made all her own clothes.

Larry refrained from asking questions, partly out of loyalty to his late, put-upon mother. Dead or alive, she had heard enough.

“Marriage is sex,” said his father. “But money is not necessarily anything along that line.” In spite of his wish not to be drawn, Larry could not help mulling this over. His father was always at his most dangerous, morally speaking, when he made no sense. “The richer she is, the lower the class of her lovers. If you marry a rich woman, keep an eye on the chauffeur. Watch out for unemployed actors, sailors, tailors.
Customs
officers,” he said, as though suddenly remembering. He may have been recalling Maggie’s mother. He sighed, though not out of discontent or sorrow, and lifted his firm blue gaze to an oil portrait of a woman wearing pearls Maggie’s mother would have swum the Amazon for. “I was never really excited by rich women,” he said calmly. “Actually, I think only homosexuals are. Well, it is all a part of God’s good plan, laid out for our pleasure, like the flower beds down there in the park.”

Larry’s father was a pagan who regularly prayed for guidance. He thought nothing of summoning God to smile on His unenlightened creations. Maggie, another object of close celestial attention, believed something should be done about the nature of the universe – some tidying-up job. She was ready to take it on and was only waiting to be asked. Larry lived at about eye level. He tried the Catholics, who said, “What would you
like? Jam for breakfast? Eternal life? They’re yours, but there’s a catch.” The Protestants greeted his return with “Shut up. Sit down. Think it over.” It was like swimming back and forth between two crowded rafts.

“I met
your
mother just before I lost most of my money,” his father said, which was a whitewashed way of explaining he had been involved in a mining-stock scandal of great proportions. “Never make the mistake of imagining a dumb woman is going to be more restful than a smart one. Most men crack up on that. They think ‘dumb’ means ‘silent.’ They think it’s going to be like the baaing of a lamb and the cooing of a dove, and they won’t need to answer. But soon it’s ‘Do you still love me?’ and that can’t be left in the air. Then it turns into ‘Did you love me when we got married? Did you love me when I was pregnant? Did you love me last week? Do you love me now?’ ”

Larry said, “I saw Maggie about a year ago. She says she’s leaving everything to an arts foundation.”

“She can’t,” said his father.

“She thinks she can, and she’s got lawyers. It’s her way of wanting to be remembered. But it’s the wrong way. The French never remember anything except their own wars. She won’t even have her name on a birdbath.”

“Now, that’s where you’re wrong,” his father said. “There’ll be a memorial birdbath and Maggie’s name – which, incidentally is yours and mine; I’m leaving you both a good name – and in the bowl of the birdbath there’ll be the Stars and Stripes in red-white-and-blue mosaic. That is exactly what they’ll give Maggie’s memory. Where they will choose to put the monument I can’t predict. No sane man wants to survive his own children, so I won’t say I’d like to see the inaugural
ceremony. You’ll be there, though – well dressed and smiling. Life has been good to me. I hope it’s just as good to you.”

It was true that life had treated the old man gently; it had kept him out of jail and in cheerful company.