Paris Is Always a Good Idea (28 page)

It had been a glorious summer day, and it was hard to imagine that it could ever end, it was so perfect. You could almost grasp the joie de vivre that filled the air with your hand. And suddenly Max felt his heart becoming light. So light that it could fly.

He opened his eyes and felt a long-forgotten love of life reviving in him. Yes, he loved this life, which was sometimes so much and sometimes less than nothing. But it was all there was.

He picked up the photo. Then he turned it over and looked at the note penciled on the back:

Bois de Boulogne, 22
nd
July, 1974

For a long time he just sat there, staring into the twilight. And a thought that had touched him that afternoon as gently as a young woman's hand suddenly became overpowering.

 

Twenty-eight

“Did you have to kick my shin like that?” asked Robert, as they drove along the narrow lane leading away from the old villa. “Is that the elegant touch you're always talking about?” He raised his pant leg to examine a bruise of considerable proportions.

“I thought an American feels no pain,” replied Rosalie.

“An Indian, an Indian,” corrected Robert. “I'm just another sniveling Yankee.”

“Anyway, that was the only way to stop you. All I wanted to do was make sure you didn't beat each other's brains out.” Rosalie smiled. She suddenly found the familiar
tu
tripping easily from her lips. While they were clearing the dishes together and carrying them into the kitchen, they had both moved to the familiar form without much ado. After that crucial afternoon, after everything they'd been through together, it would have been strange to continue using the formal
vous
.

Robert grinned. “Your Max Marchais isn't so bad after all. In fact he's actually quite nice. Though it's quite strange to suddenly come across an old man who … well … who was once in love with your own mother.” He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

“Even more when your own mother never said a word about it,” added Rosalie. “On the other hand, she was already engaged to Paul of course; perhaps it was just a bit awkward for her. Or the whole thing just felt unreal when she was back in America in her familiar surroundings.”

“So unreal that she later told me the story he'd written for her every evening?”

“Well, that's really kind of romantic. I mean, most people would ultimately like to look back at such an unusual story. And perhaps the special magic was due to the fact that their love was never fulfilled. And anyway
The Blue Tiger
is simply a very good story. At least, it moved me deeply when I first read it. Even if I didn't know the secret behind it. And even if the whole thing must have been very sad for Max back then—in a way he started writing because of your mother. Writing proper stories, I mean. You could say that Ruth was his muse.” She glanced quickly at Robert. “Max has written a lot of other great books. You ought to read them. I used to devour them when I was a child.”

“Hmm,” said Robert. His eyes were half shut. Either he was too tired to answer, or he was lost in his own thoughts. At any rate he suddenly seemed to be far away, and Rosalie decided not to disturb him.

As she steered the car into the Nanterre tunnel, she could feel the last traces of tension vanishing.

She was glad, and relieved that the meeting between the two men had run so smoothly, which was by no means a foregone conclusion. Thank heaven the whole business had ended up being very friendly. After their first heated exchange, Max, who had been deeply moved by his memories and the sad fact that Ruth was already dead, had been genuinely glad to meet Ruth's son. As they left, he had hugged them both.

Rosalie had to admit that it would have made her sad, too, if Max and Robert could not stand each other. After all, she realized with surprise, they were both dear to her heart.

She signaled a turn, pulled out onto the expressway, and thought with horror of the hostile atmosphere that had prevailed at first. How the two of them had sat facing each other and accused each other—with anger in their faces and sparks in their eyes—of French arrogance and American ignorance! For a moment she'd actually thought that an outraged Max would throw them out before anything had been cleared up. But at the end of the day she had gained the impression that mutual concern and sympathetic candor was what had finally brought Max and Robert closer. Otherwise Robert surely would not have suggested that they meet the next day.

She was excited at the thought of their trip to the bois de Boulogne, where they would follow in the footsteps of Mrs. Sherman—or rather, of Miss Ruth Trudeau—who linked these two so very different men in a fateful way.

She looked over at Robert again as he sat silently beside her. These night drives with the “Shakespeare Professor” were gradually becoming a pleasant habit. But this time there was no uncomfortable silence separating them: this silence was companionable and a little exhausted.

All their misunderstandings and disputes, all the mysteries and speculations had led to that afternoon in the villa of an aging children's writer, who had told them his story. The story of a long-ago love that produced both joy and great sadness.

Rosalie leaned back on the headrest of the car and rolled her head back and forth. The car traveled through the darkness with a regular hum. As the cold lights of the tunnel flashed past her at regular intervals, blinding her for fractions of a second, she reviewed
The Blue Tiger
in her mind, trying to find further clues in the individual sentences. Although she had illustrated the book herself and knew it almost by heart, she would never have hit upon the idea that the heroes of the fairy-tale fable were in reality two lovers who should not have come together and who were left in the end with only longing—and memory.

She drove out of the tunnel and soon afterward reached the traffic circle that led onto the Champs-Élysées. She merged with the traffic and saw the black obelisk on the Place de la Concorde sticking up into the sky at the end of the broad avenue like a warning finger.

The search was at an end, the problem solved. But how would it continue? Would it continue at all? Rosalie caught herself wondering if the following day would also mean the end of their story.

At a red light she looked over at Robert, who had now opened his eyes again and was looking pensively out of the window, and studied his expression carefully. What could be going through his mind? The truth about his mother must have churned him up. Rosalie saw him frown and continuously tense his jaw. She would have liked to take him in her arms. She would have liked to say something that was appropriate to the situation, but unfortunately she couldn't think of anything.

“It's strange, the things that can happen in life, isn't it?” she finally said. “It must be funny for you.” Without thinking, she took his hand and squeezed it.

“It's okay—it's not all that bad,” he replied, holding her hand in his. It felt firm and warm. Like his kiss that time in the garden. “It's not bad at all, just … different,” he continued. “It casts a new light on so many things.” His fingers wrapped around hers as if their hands had discovered a language of their own. “Now it seems to me almost as if my mother wanted to give me a clue—with the story of the blue tiger and what she always said about Paris.”

“And what did your mother say about Paris?”

“That it's a good idea?” He couldn't help grinning.

“You can leave out the question mark,” replied Rosalie with a smile. “You know how it is: Paris is always a good idea.” Regretfully, she took her hand away and changed down into second gear as she turned off the boulevard Saint-Germain onto a little side street, peering searchingly though the window. “That is, unless you need somewhere to park.”

*   *   *

THIS TIME ROSALIE HAD
not dropped him at the hotel. After she had succeeded, contrary to his prognosis, in squeezing the car into such a tiny space that there was not an inch of room left—naturally not without touching the cars in front and behind several times as she did so (“but why else do we have bumpers?” she had asked in astonishment)—they had gotten out of the car and he'd accompanied her to the rue du Dragon. Behind the door of the store they heard William Morris give a short bark and then whimper with delight.

“Would you like to come up for a glass of wine?” Rosalie asked as she unlocked the door. She tried to make it sound as casual as possible. “Or are you afraid of my little dog?”

Robert shook his head. “No, no. William Morris and I are the best of friends now.” He twisted his mouth into a wry smile. “And what about your personal bodyguard? I don't want him to challenge me to a fistfight again.”

René! Rosalie felt herself going red and hoped that it couldn't be seen in the weak street lighting. In all the excitement she had forgotten to think about her boyfriend, though he—fortunately, as she immediately realized—was no longer her boyfriend.

She smiled like a sphinx. “My personal bodyguard has apparently found a long-distance runner in San Diego and prefers to guard her now,” she replied curtly.

“Oh … what?!” Robert raised his eyebrows and smiled like the cat that's got the cream. “How did that happen?”

She left him without answering and he followed her up the spiral staircase to her little apartment. Upstairs he looked around curiously and stood for a moment by the big table to look at a couple of drawings that were lying there.

“Take a seat.” She switched on the floor lamp and pointed to the armchair beside her bed. “I'll get us some wine from the kitchen.” She took off her sandals, and he dropped his shoulder bag on the chair and wandered around the room, finally stopping in front of the framed photograph of her father that hung on the wall behind her desk.

“Your father?” he asked. She nodded.

“You can see that right away.” He studied the photo. “The brown hair, the prominent eyebrows, the wide mouth. I like the look of him.” Robert turned round toward her and ran his hand through his hair. “I take more after my mother.”

“Of course.” Rosalie smiled. “The
golden
hair!” The faded color photo of Ruth shot into her mind. Then she made an advance. “And who do you get those incredibly blue eyes from?”

“Oh, thanks a lot.” He grinned and tried to conceal his embarrassment with a joke. “A historic moment!”

“In what way?”

“I think that's the first compliment I've ever received from a certain Rosalie Laurent.”

“Could that be because a certain Robert Sherman hasn't so far given me much cause to compliment him?” she riposted. “But I bet you don't suffer from a shortage of compliments. I'm surely not the first woman to have noticed your blue eyes.” She still remembered clearly how he'd stood at the store window and the color of his eyes had just knocked her out.

“Oh … well … I suppose…” He made a throwaway gesture and put on an expression of false modesty. “Not that many. About a hundred, maybe.”

“Compliments—or women?”

He smiled in amusement. “Compliments, of course. I'm no Casanova, after all. But to answer your question—I don't have either my father or my mother to thank for my eyes. I get them from my maternal grandfather, whom I sadly never met. At any rate, our whole family was thrilled to bits with this”—he made quotations marks in the air with his fingers—“cute little Sherman with the blue eyes.” He laughed, and Rosalie tried for a moment to imagine this big man in his blue-and-white-striped shirt as a little boy. “I think my aunt already had me set on a movie career—a kind of poor man's Robert Redford.” He chuckled. “But I'm afraid I'm not that handsome.”

“Oh, you know…” Rosalie tilted her head to one side. “Beauty isn't everything. I'd say there's enough for a professor of literature.”

When she returned a few minutes later with two large, brimming glasses of red wine, Robert was still standing in the middle of the room looking around.

She pressed a glass into his hand, and clinked hers against it.

“What are we drinking to?” he asked, the red wine swirling temptingly in his glass.

“How about: To the end of our search together?” she suggested.

“Yes, let's drink to the end of our search,” he repeated, but in a way that suggested he meant something completely different. “And to the fact that after a rather unfortunate beginning we have still managed to become good friends,” he added.

They both took a large sip. Rosalie felt the effect of the red wine straight away. No wonder: apart from a little piece of the tarte tatin she hadn't eaten anything since lunchtime. What had he meant by “good friends”?

“Is that what we are, then? ‘Good friends'?” She quickly took another deep swallow and felt a relaxing warmth permeating her limbs.

Robert emptied his glass halfway and looked at her over the rim. “Perhaps,” he said slowly, “we're more than that.”

Rosalie smiled nervously, feeling slightly giddy. She watched Robert as he put his glass down on the little round table next to his chair.

“So this is where you disappear to when you're not down in the store,” he said. “Very cozy.” His gaze lingered involuntarily on the French bed with its blue-and-white Granfoulard bedspread and scatter cushions of all possible sizes and every shade of blue.

“Yes. My little refuge from the world.” Rosalie threw open the window that led to the roof. “
Et voilà
—here is my second room.” She put her wineglass down on the low bookshelf beside the window and looked out into the night. A cloud had passed in front of the sickle moon, and with a lot of imagination you might have seen a tiger in it. She remained by the window, took a deep breath of the cool air, and suddenly felt an overwhelming need to smoke a cigarette.