The Married Man (17 page)

Julien even found a student, his grandmother’s lover’s great-niece, to live in his apartment for the spring semester and cover his expenses. Julien said she had a perfect upper body but an enormous
butt; she wanted to be a sports instructor and to open her own gym in Nancy; and she appeared to be in love with Julien. She even said she was studying English since she was planning to travel to New York to enroll in a high-impact aerobics course and would arrange to see him there, possibly stay with him. Whereas Austin would have panicked in the same situation, Julien liked having women fall in love with him. He thought it was normal. And he was usually flirtatious in return. Apparently a real love, the unique love, the sort he’d felt for Christine and felt now for Austin, differed in quality as well as in strength from all these other flirtations.

Austin decided to give up his Île Saint-Louis apartment. His landlady’s daughter, a dynamic, warm French businesswoman his age who lived in New York, had been begging him to move out for some time. She wanted to redo the apartment entirely in travertine and with recessed lighting so that she could rent it for five thousand dollars a month instead of eight hundred. But year after year he’d persuaded her to give him another stay of execution until he finished his furniture encyclopedia. He lived surrounded by two hundred reference works, all his books on Martin varnishes, on the
bergère gondole
and the
fauteuil à dossier écusson
, the
chauffeuse
and
duchesse brisée
(a “broken duchess” wasn’t a medieval martyr, just a sectional
chaise longue)
. Now she was audibly relieved when he announced over the phone that he was at last moving out. The books he wasn’t shipping to Providence he gave away to friends; he even had a book party where the guests could raid his shelves. His pictures came down, leaving ghostly dust frames on the white walls. All the sheets and towels and linen were his, as well as half the furniture, including a round drop-leaf table (peasant, eighteenth century, pear wood) and a few Louis-Philippe chairs he and Little Julien had re-covered with a cheeky checked fabric they’d found in London. Austin tried to be indifferent to the loss of his little hold on Paris; such indifference, after all, was appropriate to someone facing death: good training. He called a chatty moving man who’d been recommended to him. The man spoke with a voluble American accent that Austin found ridiculous and reassuring.

Austin had a farewell lunch with Joséphine. She complained of her dull life in which she had to work so hard just to survive that she
had no time left to devote to the illustrated books for children that brought her such pleasure. On an impulse Austin invited her to come to Providence “for a year or two” and stay with Julien and him, rent free.

She kept asking him if it was really a serious offer. When he convinced her it was, she said she couldn’t come until the following autumn—until then she was engaged to teach kindergarten (in a
maternelle)
.

One night after dinner in the half-denuded apartment in which the dust had been so stirred up it made them sneeze constantly, Big Julien made him sit still in one of the Louis-Philippe chairs. He handed Austin a flat, heavy box, wrapped and beribboned. Inside was a picture frame suspended from a brass bar. The frame could be flipped so that one could see the pictures on both sides. On one side was Julien’s pen-and-ink sketch of the great stone volute on the church roof across the street opposite their window; on the other was an old photograph of Julien as a seven year old with his brother, sitting in the back seat of their father’s single-engine plane. In the front passenger seat was their mother, stylishly coiffed (she looked like one of the models of the late sixties with her hair chemically straightened, wrapped around her skull and lacquered in place). Their father, the pilot, was undoubtedly taking the picture. Julien was holding their wire-haired fox terrier in his lap and laughing. He looked cute and innocent. The French had taught Austin to despise innocence as nothing but an impediment to exciting adventures (“In a French novel,” someone had said, “if the heroine is innocent she’s debauched on the second page so the reader can move on to the good part, the scenes of
la volupté
, whereas you Americans can write a whole book about the tragic loss of innocence: what a bore!”). Nevertheless, Austin still was attracted to Julien’s sparkling eyes, his frank, fearless merriment, the absence of all irony in his seven-year-old, plump, round-cheeked face.

Austin was thrilled with this gift. He and Julien had lain in bed so many nights looking at the church roof. Its inward-turning spiral seemed of more mystic significance than other symbols, such as the Crucifix or the Star of David, maybe because it was their very own
emblem. He knew that Julien had taken many snapshots of it and now he understood why. “I’m a lousy draftsman,” Julien said. “I’ve never been able to draw. I worked from the photos. But I did it for you, so you’d always have something—something portable—of the Île Saint-Louis.”

“And the photo of you and your mother and brother!”

“That’s a sacred picture to me,
Petit
. Do you remember that day in Nancy I left you alone for an hour?”

“Yes.”

“I went to visit my mother’s grave. Now I wish I’d brought you along.”

Austin didn’t ask why; he’d learned not to ask too many questions.

Finally Julien said, “Just to introduce you to her.” He paused. “Do you believe there’s … something after all this?”

Out of respect for Julien’s feelings for his mother, Austin said, “Perhaps. How should I know. Possibly.” But then he thought a while and decided he owed him the truth: “No. I’m sure there’s nothing after this.”

Julien swallowed and said, “Probably just as well.”

They went to bed.

Austin could hear Julien breathing in the dark. He didn’t move. Well, he’d said he and his family were all atheists, hadn’t he?

Or had that just been braggadocio?

“I’m very moved by the drawing,
Petit,”
Austin whispered. Julien smiled at the ceiling but didn’t move or even open his eyes, as if he was under doctor’s orders.

Because he had a wart on the head of his penis that wouldn’t go away, Julien went to the Hôpital Saint-Louis, which specialized, among other things, in venereal diseases. The doctor who saw him said he wouldn’t treat him unless he agreed to be tested for AIDS. He wasn’t intimating that Julien seemed
likely
to be positive; it was simply that no man in Paris today with a venereal wart on the head of his penis should go untested. This logic induced Julien to do, six months later, what
Austin’s physician, Dr. Aristopoulos, had failed to persuade him to accept.

The only problem was that Julien wouldn’t have the results until four weeks had gone by, and by then they’d be in America. “It’s just as well,” Austin said, “since if by some chance you should turn out to be positive it would be better if you already had your work visa and were living in Providence.”

“But why should I be positive?”

“God knows, I’m not saying you will be.” Austin paused. “But did you never have relationships with men?”

Julien left the room. Later Austin heard the toilet flush. When Julien reappeared he said, “I can think of two things. When I was a child I always wanted to have a monkey. My parents said no. So I decided to head off for Africa to be a veterinary. I was just seven or eight—”

“The age you are in the photo of the plane?”

“Yes. And the postman found me miles from our house. He was gentle and asked me where I was going. I said I was going to catch a plane for Africa where I’d be a monkey doctor. He drove me home. Anyway, twenty years later when I finally got to Ethiopia, someone gave me a green monkey. At first I was delighted, but then it bit me—look, you can still see the marks, here, on my hand.”

“Don’t they think green monkeys are the origin of AIDS?” Austin asked dutifully, not believing for a moment that this explanation applied to Julien.

“The only other thing I can think of is that once, in Ethiopia, I had an infected ear and the African doctor gave me a shot of penicillin with an old needle that he didn’t even dip in alcohol.”

“Why didn’t you stop him?”

“It’s idiotic, but I didn’t want to be impolite.”

“Ah, that’s your
ancien régime
side,” Austin said, smiling admiringly.

They worked for three days packing up their separate apartments, paying the post office to forward their mail, giving away the electric appliances that wouldn’t work in the States without heavy, clumsy transformers, presenting the little black-and-white television to the
Spanish maid, the set that Austin had bought to improve his French comprehension and which he’d ended up being addicted to, carting the remaining books to the
bouquiniste
on the Left Bank across from the Tour d’Argent, stuffing nine U.S. duffel bags with his scholarly books and paying one thousand dollars extra in overweight at the airport. The talkative mover came for his furniture and his trunk, which was so heavy that four men (including Austin) were needed to drag it downstairs.

They decided to leave France in mid-January so they’d have two whole weeks to settle in before Austin had to start teaching. Julien, of course, would be going out for job interviews.

They staggered onto their plane without having slept a full night’s sleep in a week. Following Austin’s suggestion, Julien dressed conservatively, in a dark jacket, white shirt and silver tie. “That intimidates them,” Austin said. “They feel like saluting someone who looks like a gentleman. It sets you apart from all these tourists in gym clothes. Or from the homeboys.” Austin had just read an alarming article in
Newsweek
about this new phenomenon, homeboys, and was ready to lecture a wide-eyed Julien: “The States is very dangerous. It’s not like Paris—”

“The métro can be dangerous after midnight in the suburbs,” Julien objected.

“America is dangerous
all
the time. Or can be. You never know. Homeboys are black teenage guys who wear baseball caps backwards—”

“And do breakdancing.”

“Julien, I’m not joking! They wear gold chains and slinky basketball shirts and huge gym shoes untied and they travel around in their cars in gangs with sawed-off metal pipes in their hands and play the radio loud and beat white people.”

Julien rubbed noses with Austin and said, “Mon
petit
homeboy.” He loved it when Austin exaggerated.

At the Boston airport they were separated. Julien had to go through the line for foreigners. He was carrying his big black artist’s portfolio, five feet by three, zipped up. In it were plans for all his major architectural projects. He looked very respectable, if pale. Austin, of course,
had been waved through Immigration and he waited impatiently just on the other side for Julien before they went down to pick up their luggage.

To Austin’s horror Julien, whose English was still very approximate, was held at the Immigration desk for many long minutes. The stony-faced guard kept typing numbers or letters into his computer and studying the screen. He then asked Julien to step aside for a moment. Julien was smiling and nodding, even bowing, but he looked deadly pale. Another man in a business suit, tall, slightly balding, thin, finally appeared and led Julien into an office. There were no windows in the office; Austin couldn’t see what was going on.

Peter’s sister Meg had driven over in her station wagon to meet their plane. She was going to load up the back of her car with their things and drive them the fifty or sixty miles to Providence. Austin had met her just once. He went downstairs to the baggage room and piled high two carts with the duffel bags. He didn’t touch Julien’s luggage, since he thought he might have to identify his bags to the authorities. Maybe they’d mixed him up with someone else, a smuggler.

Austin worried that once he went past Customs he wouldn’t be allowed back into the Immigration area, but he couldn’t keep Meg waiting, either; she’d see from the “Arrivals” monitor that their plane had come in on time. As soon as he went through the last doors, which swung open automatically, Austin spotted Meg, a young woman as handsome as Peter but younger, less careworn. She was entirely healthy in appearance, the sort of sporty New England girl who looks uncomfortable in heels and as embarrassed as a boy in make-up. She wasn’t masculine; there was even something fawnlike about her narrow face and big gray eyes; but she would have appeared more relaxed with a hockey stick in her hands than in her camel-hair coat with a black leather handbag dangling from her forearm.

Austin said, “I don’t know what’s happening. They’re interrogating my friend Julien. You shouldn’t hang around. We can always get a taxi.”

“A taxi? That will cost you a hundred dollars!”

Six hundred francs, Austin thought. “That’s okay. This could go on for hours.”

“I’ll stay here with you for a while, at least.”

Austin thanked her. Shaking all over, he told himself to stay calm. Meg guarded his two carts and nine duffel bags while he went over to a Bureau de Change and cashed three one-hundred-dollar traveler’s checks. He’d need money in any event. The people who were letting him their house had mailed him a map and the keys; he’d bought their car from them, sight unseen. Once he got there he’d have the car—

But what about Julien? He suddenly saw the balding man in the business suit hurrying along and Austin rushed up to him. He explained that he was traveling with the Frenchman who was being detained. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Well, will he get through?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“When will I know something? I left his baggage on the carousel.”

“The luggage has been brought up to my office. It’s safe.”

“That young lady is waiting to drive us to Providence. What should I tell her?”

“She’d be best advised to leave. This could take some time.”

“That means he will be coming on through in a few hours?” Austin raised his eyebrows and produced what he thought was a faint, ingratiating smile.