The Chateau (54 page)

And was she there to receive them?

They went first to England, and had two weeks of flawless weather. The English countryside was like the Book of Hours, and they loved London. They arrived in Paris on May Day Eve, and by nightfall they were in the Forest of Fontainebleau, in a rented car, on their way south. They spent the night in Sens, and in the morning everyone they saw carried a little nosegay of muguets. After their other trip, they enrolled in the Berlitz, and spent one winter conscientiously studying French. Though that was years ago now, it did seem that their French had improved.

The boy learns to swim in winter, William James said, and to skate in summer
.

From Provence, Barbara wrote to Mme Straus that they would be in Paris by the end of the second week in May. When they were settled in—someone had told them about a small hotel whose windows overlooked the gardens of the Palais-Royal—Harold telephoned, and the person who answered seemed uncertain of whether Mme Straus could come to the telephone. The stairs have become too much for her, he thought. There was another of those interminable waits, during which he had a chance to reflect. Five years is a long time, and to try and pick up the threads again, with people they hardly knew, and with the additional barrier of language … But they couldn't not call, either.…

Mme Straus's voice was just the same, and she seemed to be quite free of the doubts that troubled him. They settled it that she would come to their hotel at seven that evening.

At quarter after six, as they were crossing the Place du Palais-Royal, Barbara said: “Aren't we going to have an apéritif?”

They had only five weeks altogether, for England and France, and there was never a time, it seemed, when they could sit in
front of a sidewalk café, as they used to do before, and watch the people. They were both tired from walking, and he very much wanted a bath before dinner, but he decided that with luck they could do it, in spite of the crowd of people occupying the tables of that particular café, and the overworked waiter. They did it, but without pleasure, because he kept looking at his watch. They hurried through the gardens, congratulating themselves on the fact that it was still only twenty minutes of seven—just time enough to get upstairs and bathe and dress and be ready for Mme Straus.

“You have company,” Mme la Patronne said as they walked into the hotel. “A lady.” There was a note of disapproval in her voice. “She has been waiting since six o'clock.”

The Americans looked at each other with dismay. “You go on upstairs,” he said, and hurried down the hall to the little parlor where Mme Straus was waiting, with two small parcels on the sofa beside her. His first impression was that she looked younger. Could he have misjudged her age? She kissed him on both cheeks, and told him how well he looked. They sat down and he began to tell her about Provence. Then there was an awkward pause in the conversation, and to dispell it they asked the questions people ask, meeting after years. When Barbara came in, he started to leave the room, intending to go upstairs and at least wash his face and hands, but Mme Straus stopped him. It was the moment for the presentation of the gifts, and again they were dismayed that they had not thought to bring anything for her. They were also dismayed at her gifts—a paper flower for Barbara, a white scarf for Harold that had either lain in a drawer too long or else was of so shoddy a quality that it bore no relation to any man's evening scarf he had ever seen. Mme Straus had learned to make paper flowers—as a game, she said, and to amuse herself. “Oeillet,” she said, resuming her role of language professor, and Barbara pinned the pink carnation on her dark violet-colored coat, where it looked very pretty, if a trifle strange.

They left the hotel intending to have dinner at a restaurant in the rue de Montpensier, but it was closed that night, and so Mme Straus led them across the Place du Théâtre-Français, to a restaurant where, she assured them, she was well known and the food and wine were excellent. It was noisy and crowded; the maître d'hôtel received Mme Straus coldly, but at least the waiter knew her and was friendly. “He is like a son to me,” she said, as they sat down.

There were a dozen restaurants in the neighborhood where the food was better, and Harold blamed himself for not insisting that they go to some place more suited to a long-delayed reunion, but Mme Straus seemed quite happy. Nobody had very much to say.

The Vienna Opera was paying a visit to Paris, and during dinner he explained that he had three tickets for
The Magic Flute
. She said: “Quelle joie!” and then: “Where are they?” He told her and she exclaimed: “But we won't be able to see the stage!”

The tickets had cost five times what tickets for the Opéra usually cost, and were the most he felt he could afford. He said: “They're in the center,” and she seemed satisfied. And would they arrange for her to stay at their hotel that night, since the doors of her convent were closed at nine o'clock?

Arm in arm, they walked to the bus stop, and waving from the back of the bus, she was swept away.

“It isn't the same, is it?” he said, as they were walking back to their hotel.

“We're not the same,” Barbara said. “She took one look at us and saw that the jig was up.”

“Too bad.”

“If you hadn't got tickets for the opera—”

“I know. Well, one more evening won't kill us.”

Harold found that Mme Straus could stay at their hotel the night of the opera, and when she arrived—again an hour early—she was delighted with her room. “It's just right for a jeune fille,”
she said, laughing. And did Barbara have a coat she could wear? And wouldn't it be better if they had dinner in the same place, because the service was so prompt, and above all they didn't want to be late.

When they arrived at the Opéra, she introduced them to the tall man in evening clothes who was taking tickets, and they were introduced again on the stairs, to an ouvreuse or someone like that. They climbed and climbed and eventually arrived at their tier, which was above the “basket.” Their seats were in the first row and they had a clear view of the stage and the stage was not too far away. Mme Straus arranged her coat and offered Harold and Barbara some candy. Stuffed with food and wine, they said no, and she took some herself and then seized their hands affectionately. She made them lean far forward so that she could point out to them, in the tier just below, the two center front-row seats that her father and mother had always occupied. She regretted that
Les Indes Galantes
was not being performed during their stay in Paris. A marvelous spectacle.

The Magic Flute
was also something of a spectacle, and the soprano who sang the role of Pamina had a very beautiful voice.

Harold had failed to get a program and so they didn't know who it was. In the middle of the first act, he became aware of Mme Straus's restlessness. At last she leaned toward him and whispered that this opera was always sung at the Comique; that it did not belong on so large a stage. The Opéra was more suited to
Aida
. She found the singing acceptable but the opera itself did not greatly interest her. Did he know
Aida?
It was her favorite. Again she pressed the little bag of candy on him in the dark, and he suddenly remembered the strange behavior of Mme Marguerite Mailly, when they went backstage after her play. A few minutes later, hearing the rustle of the little bag again coming toward him, he was close to hating Mme Straus-Muguet himself. They left their seats between the acts, and as they walked through the marble corridors, he noticed a curious thing: because their French had improved, Mme Straus understood
what they were saying, but not always what they meant, and when they explained, it only added to the misunderstanding. Wherever her quick intuitive mind was, it wasn't on them.

After the performance, she insisted that they go across the street, as her guests, and have something to eat. Harold and Barbara drank a bottle of Perrier water, and Mme Straus had a large ham sandwich.

“I am always hungry,” she confessed.

Worn out with the effort of keeping up the form of an affectionate relationship that had lost its substance, they sat and looked at the people around them. Mme Straus borrowed the souvenir program of a young woman at the next table, and they learned the name of the soprano with the beautiful voice: Irmgard Seefried. Then Mme Straus brought up the matter of when they would see her next. Barbara said gently that they were only going to be in Paris a few more days, and that this was their last evening with her.

“Ah, but chérie, just one time! After five years!”

“Two times,” Barbara said, and Mme Straus smiled. She was not hurt, it seemed, but only pretending.

They said good night on the stairs of the little hotel, and the Americans went off early the next morning, to Chartres; they wanted to see the cathedral again. When they got back to the hotel, Mme Straus had gone, leaving instructions about when they were to telephone her. There were several telephone calls during the next two days and in the end they found themselves having lunch with her, in that same impossible restaurant. She took from her purse a postcard she had just received from her daughter, who was traveling in Switzerland. It was simple and affectionate—just such a card as any daughter might have sent her mother from a trip, and Mme Straus seemed to have forgotten that they knew anything about her daughter that wasn't complimentary.

At the end of the meal, Mme Straus asked for the
addition
, and Harold, partly out of concern for her but much more out of
a deep desire to get to the bottom of things, reached for his wallet. In the short time that remained, perhaps it was possible to discover the simple unsentimentalized truth. At the risk of being crass and of hurting her feelings, he insisted on paying for the luncheon she had invited them to, and, smiling indulgently, she let him. So I could have paid for all the other times, he thought. And should have.

“Now what would you like to do?” she asked. “What would you like to see? Do you like looking at paintings and old furniture?”

They got into a taxi and drove to the shop of a cousin of Mme Straus's husband. It was a decorator's shop, and the taste it reflected was not their taste, in furniture or in objets d'art. Finding nothing else that she could admire, Barbara pretended to an interest in a Chinese luster tea set. “You like it?” Mme Straus said. “It is charming, I agree.” She could not be prevented from calling a salesman and asking the price—three hundred thousand francs. Mme Straus whispered; “I will speak to them, and tell them you are my rich American friends.” She giggled. “Because of me, they will give you a prix d'ami.”

Barbara said that the tea set was much too expensive. As she turned away, her short violet-colored coat swept one of the cups out of its saucer. With a lunge Harold caught it in mid-air.

They went upstairs and looked at what they were told were Raphaels. “Copies,” Harold said, committed now to his disagreeable experiment. “And not necessarily copies of a painting by Raphael.”

The salesman did not disagree, or seem offended. Seeing that they were not interested in what he showed them, he asked what painters they did like.

“Vuillard and Bonnard,” Harold said.

They were shown a small, uninteresting Bonnard and told that there were more in the shop if they would like to see them. Harold shook his head. It was tug of war, with Mme Straus endeavoring to give her husband's cousin the impression that
Harold and Barbara were rich American collectors and might buy anything, and Harold and Barbara trying just as hard to convey the truth.

Mme Straus started to leave the shop with them, and then hesitated. “I have some business to discuss with monsieur upstairs,” she said, and kissed them, and said good-by, and perhaps she would come to the airport.

In the taxi Harold said: “Is that the explanation? All this elaborate scheming so she can get her commission?”

“No,” Barbara said. “I don't really think it is that.… I think it is more likely something she thought of on the spur of the moment. A role she performed just for the pleasure of performing it. But I kept thinking all the time we were with her, there is something about her manner and her voice. I couldn't place it until we were in that shop. She is like the women in stores who try to sell you something. Whatever she is, or whoever she was, she knows that world. I think that's why Pierre disapproved of our being with her.… But it is the young she likes. Now that we are no longer young, it isn't worth her while to enchant us.”

The other reunions were not disappointing. They liked Sabine's husband, and she was exactly as they remembered her. It was as if they had bicycled home in the moonlight from the Allégrets' party the night before. She did not even look any older. The questions she asked were the right questions. They could convey to her in a phrase, a word, the thing that needed to be said. She is all eyes and forehead, Harold thought, looking at her. But what he was most aware of was how completely she took in what they said to her, so that talking to her was not like talking to anybody else. Walking to her door from the restaurant where they had had dinner, he heard their four voices, all proceeding happily like a quartet for strings. Allegro, andante, etc. While he was telling Frédéric about an experience with some gypsies outside the walls of Aigues-Mortes, she began to tell Barbara about the robbers. Harold stopped talking to listen.
Then, turning to Frédéric, he asked: “She's not making this up?” and Frédéric said: “No, no, it all happened,” and Harold said: “I guess when anything is that strange you can be sure it happened.” Looking up at the lamplit underside of the leaves of the chestnut trees, he thought: We're in Paris, I am not dreaming that we are in Paris.…

The next day, they met Eugène and Alix for lunch, and that too was easy and pleasant. Eugène spoke English, which made a difference. And he was in a genial mood. Their eyes had no trouble meeting his. They did not have to make conversation out of passing the sugar back and forth.
We're not the same, are we?
they all three agreed silently, and after that he treated them and they treated him with simple courtesy. And unwittingly, Harold saw, they had pleased Eugène by inviting him to this restaurant. He informed them that Napoleon used to play chess here, and that the décor was unchanged since that time. With its red curtains, its red plush, it was exactly right, and what a classical restaurant should look like.… He enjoyed his lunch as well. And the wine was of his choosing. He was sardonic only once, with the waiter, who urged them a shade too insistently to have strawberries.