The Rake (5 page)
Authors: William F. Buckley
Paris, May 1970
Professor Leborcier had gone to Lyon for a meeting of the French Academy of Philology and would be away until Friday. Henri was told firmly by Nadine that suppers would routinely be prepared for her, and that she, Nadine, would be distressed if Henri made plans to eat out. “There is no reason for you to go out to a restaurant, and there are good reasons not to move about the city more than you have to in your condition.”
“What's wrong with my condition?” Henri smiled mockingly, looking over the day's mail on the tray. She reached out for the letter with her name and address handwritten, the envelope bearing an American stamp. “But, Nadine, you are always so kind. All I need is soup and a piece of bread.”
“And a glass of wine. I have a Château Raspail that has just come in. They are practically giving it away, at sixteen francs.”
But Henri was no longer listening. She had slipped into the living room and turned on the lamp on her father's desk.
When, a half hour later, Nadine called her to the dining room, Henri's face was white.
“You are unwell, my little girl?”
“No. I'm fine. But I'm not hungry.” She reached for a piece of
bread to appease Nadine. “I will take this upstairs. I have some reading to do.”
It was just after midnight that Nadine heard the cry. She opened her door and rushed up the stairs to Henri's bedroom. Another cry came as she opened the door. “Nadine, Nadine! The baby is coming!”
Nadine flew out the door. “I have Dr. Hervier's home telephone number.” She was back in the bedroom in moments. “I rang and rang and rang. No answer. I think, chère Henri, I will get an ambulance to take you to Saint-Jean.”
Nadine was gone again to the telephone. Henri closed her eyes and let out another cry of pain.
Twenty minutes later the ambulance was there. A half hour after Henri arrived at the hospital, the baby was born, a month before he was due. Nadine was not back in the apartment until four in the morning. She had telephoned Raymond Leborcier from the hospital but had to settle for leaving a message with the desk clerk. “Tell Professor Leborcier,” she said excitedly, “that he gave birth toâI mean, his daughter gave birth to a little boy. The baby is a month premature but doing well. The professor can call me when he gets this message. Mademoiselleâ
Madame
Durban is at the Saint-Jean hospital, 524.43.64. But it would be better not to disturb her. Monsieur le professeur can call me instead. The number isâ” She was excited, but stopped herself before giving to the desk clerk, to hand on to Professor Leborcier, the telephone number of Professor Leborcier.
Returned to the apartment, she paused to draw breath. She thought to look into Henri's bedroom before going to bed herselfâthere might be bedclothes that needed to be taken away. She looked at the night table, switching on the light. There was only a ripped-open envelope and a letter. She looked at it curiously. It didn't bear the handwriting she had gotten used to, or the return address of “Private Durban.” On the envelope, in the sender's corner, was written, simply, “Monsanto.” The stationery was that of “
Dakota Student
, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, N.D.” Nadine's knowledge of English was insecure, but curiosity drove her to make an attempt to decipher the opening lines. They read: “
I cannot bear to give you this terrible news. When you wroteâ¦
”
“Terrible news”? Nadine did not have the heart to grapple with the lines that ensued. A wise Frenchwoman with experience in life and in tragedy, she knew what it must mean, this “terrible news.” It could only mean that Stephen Durban, the husband of Henrietta and the father of her child, had been killed. It was the shock of getting that news that had brought on the premature birth of the baby.
Beyond telling the professor what had happened, Nadine reflected,
she must not let on that she knew what the letter said
. Not let on to Henrietta, or anybody else. Possiblyâshe gave ground here to her conscienceâshe would tell her mother when she visited her on Sunday. Chère Maman was very old, and would not breathe a word of it, not even to her priest, the holy Père Toussaint.
Boulder, Colorado, February 1987
“Did I tell you I'm on the committee for Thursday evening's speech?” Amy asked.
“Which speech?” Henri replied. “There are usually six speeches you can choose from. My goodness,
everybody
comes to Boulder.”
The boy's young voice interrupted. “Not
everybody
, Maman.
Presque
tout le monde.”
In the small, comfortable apartment, Henrietta looked over at her sixteen-year-old son. Her vision blurred. She was seeing Reuben Castle. That's how old Reuben wasâsixteenâwhen she first laid eyes on him at the Memorial Union in Grand Forks, in 1966. They were both freshmen at the University of North Dakota. But noâReuben had been older than Justin now was, surely? She closed her eyes to do the arithmetic.
âReuben was born in August 1948.
âTherefore, in September 1966 he was eighteen years old. Not sixteen, Justin's age.
“Justin, I have told you not to speak in French except when we are alone.”
Amy interceded. “Oh, come on, Henrietta. It's good for
me
when he speaks in French. And what he said wasn't very difficult to understand.”
“That's right, Mrs. Parrish.” Justin got up from his chair and pulled from the bookcase his watercolor set. He wiped off the brush before continuing. “But it
was
difficult to understand why Maman said that
everybody
comes to Boulder. Do you know, Mrs. Parrish, about the three men in the train who passed the cow? The brown cow?”
Amy reconciled herself to hearing again what the students had been told in Mr. Edwards's trigonometry class at school. She smiled at Henri over her coffee cupâshe understood. She too had a teenage boy.
“No, tell me about the cow, Justin.”
“Well, when they passed the cow, the economist said, âIt appears that the cows in Ireland are brown.' The mathematician said, âNo, John, all you are able to say is that
some
of the cows in Ireland are brown.'”
Justin paused, permitting his mother's guest, the lively middle-aged woman, head of the special-collections division of the Chinook Library, to absorb the lesson thus far. Then he dipped his hand into his pocket and brought out a pair of glasses.
Donning them, he arched his eyebrows and spoke in deep, authoritative tones: “âNo, Rudolph'âthis is the logician speaking, Mrs. Parrishââyou are entitled to say only this,
We know that in Ireland there is at least one cow, of which at least one side is brown.
'”
Justin broke into a smile of boyish pleasure. “You like that, Mrs. Parrish?”
She replied, teasingly, “Je l'aime beaucoup, Justin.”
He went back to his watercolors. “I've got to go to the paint store soon, Maman.”
“Well, you know where it is, Justin. On your bicycle it will take youâ¦not more than twelve minutes.”
“Oh. I thought you might want to drive me.”
“No. What you thought was:
There is a driver. There is a car. So I can be driven to the store.
Me, I thought:
There is a bicycle and a store, and only one brown cow who has a driver's license.
”
“Mrs. Parrish,” Justin turned to her, a little indignantly, “your Allan has a driver's license, and he's only three months older than I am.”
“Justin, I am not here as a family broker on the question of a driver's license.”
Henrietta broke in, addressing a few words in French to her son. To Amy she said that she wanted to wait for the doctor's analysis of Justin's eye problemsâ“He only started wearing glasses a month ago.”
“And I don't really need them, Maman. Only when I'm looking in dictionaries, that kind of thing. Not when I'd be driving a car.”
Amy Parrish accepted another cup of coffee and returned to the subject of the evening speech. “It's sponsored by the Boulder Democratic Caucus. Come to think of it, Henrietta, I don't even know whether you're a Democrat! I simply assumed you were. Everybody who's educated is.”
From Justin: “President Reagan is not a Democrat, and he's educated.”
Amy thought to be cautious. “Well, there are two views on that subject, Justin. But Henrietta, dear, I'm trying to find out whether you'd like to come with me to the talk. Obviously you don't have to contribute anything.”
“Who's the speaker?”
“Senator Reuben Castle. North Dakota. He's supposed to be very good.”
“
Supposed to be.
â¦How many people is that, Mrs. Parrish,
when you're
supposed
to be good? Like one thousand think you're good? Like one million?”
Henrietta Durban rose from her chair. Amy noticed that her face was pale. “You all right, Henri?”
“I'll be right back.”
She was gone five minutes. When she came back her color had returned, and she took up the conversation where they had left off.
“Where are you sitting, Amy?”
“Thursday night? I'm on the committee, so I can sit wherever I want. Would you like to sit onstage? There'll be a lot of people onstage, including our mayor and our governorâat least, the governor promised to come.”
“I have a lot to do. If I go, I'll probably get there late. I'd better sit in the back.”
“Can I go too?” Justin asked.
“Yes,” his mother said. “You can come with me.”
When, soon after her father's death, Henrietta Leborcier Durban accepted the offer from the University of Colorado library, she and her son, just turned fifteen, settled into an apartment near the campus. No one, not even Amy Parrish, her superior at the library, questioned her closely on her marriage or on the circumstances of the death in Vietnam of her husband, Lieutenant Durban. Henrietta didn't bring up the subject; nor did Justin, who had been told as a little boy that his father had died in military service, and that this was why he was fatherless.
Boulder, February 1987
Looking around, Henri estimated that several hundred people were at the Democratic rally in Macky Auditorium. The meeting had begun, or so it had been advertised, at seven-fifteen. Henri arrived with Justin at about seven-thirty. She led him to a seat just in front of the last row, where a half dozen girls were waiting to hoist placards designed to stimulate Democratic passions. As Henri and Justin took their seats, the welcoming speaker was pronouncing a litany of the evil deeds of the Reagan administration. When he was done, the canned music blared in. The apogeeâas alwaysâwas “Happy Days Are Here Again.” That melody evoked the sacred historical memory of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In 1932 he had mesmerized the convention in Chicago and, four months later, the voting public nationwide in his decisive victory over President Herbert Hooverâthe “Prince of Depression.” Tonight's speaker in Boulder had referred to Mr. Hoover using the same words, perhaps the millionth time he had been thus recalled to the memory of Democratic audiences. The speaker waved his hands voluptuously as the music played, jubilant music, happiness-is-ahead-for-us music.
It was several minutes before the Democratic congressman
was introduced, an elderly man who looked lean and hungry and who was very very indignant about everything President Reagan had done, touching on Iran, Nicaragua, and Ollie North.
“But you're not here tonight,” Congressman Atkins said, addressing the house full of Democrats, half of them students, “to rue yesterday's political news. You're here to celebrate
tomorrow's
political news.” Henri found herself gripping the wrist of Justin, who was carried away by the proceedings, clapping boisterously whenever the audience gave him a lead with its applause. “You're here to listen to a young shining star in the Democratic pantheon.” Atkins paused theatrically.
“Now let me tell you about Reuben Hardwick Castle. Going back not that longâjust fifteen, twenty yearsâhe was the most prominent member of his class at the University of North Dakota. Editor in chief of the student newspaper, chairman of the Student Council. He was brave in denouncing the war, but he refused to shield himself from it. He even put off law school, waiting till after his military service to begin law studies at the University of Illinois, all of this so that he could do what he thought was his duty.” The applause had been dutiful, but now was proud.
“He was, fortunately, spared the bloody end so many members of his generation suffered in that terrible war under the leadership of President Nixon. He returned home safely, entering law school the following September. But he didn't complete his studiesâin good conscience he
couldn't
complete his studies while he saw the terrible shape his country was in. He was drawn to public life, to do what any good citizen would doâput
his God-given talents to work in order to serve his country.” There was a ripple of applause.
“Hold your applause, please, ladies and gentlemen, gathered in this hall of this distinguished universityâit gets better. When he was out here in Colorado on a speaking tour for the Democratic Party, he met and soon afterward married a young lady who had been Miss
Colorado
âand then had gone on to become Miss
America
!” There was substantial applause.
“Elle est ici?” Justin whispered to his mother.
“On ne sait pas, Justin.”
“Je voudrais la voir.”
“On verra.” They would soon know whether Mrs. Castle was there.
“Priscilla Castle is the mother of a fine young man, and if he's lucky, one day in just a few years he'll be a student at the University of Coloradoâ” There was enthusiastic applause. “And if he
does
enter this university, I know he'll end up a proud member of the Democratic Caucus.” The applause now was sustained.
“Reuben Castle was elected first as North Dakota's sole member of the House of Representatives, where I am honored to serve as one of Colorado's proud delegation.” The applause had now thinned out. “Only six years ago, he was elected to the Senate, replacing a long-serving Republican. He easily won reelection last fall.
“So! I'm delighted tonight to introduce this great young Democrat. And just to show the special esteem he has for the University of Colorado”âthe speaker was slowing down the words he spoke and augmenting the volume with which he
spoke themâ“he has brought with him
Miss America
âshe is
still
that, always Miss America, as far as the citizens of Colorado are concerned!”
The congressman turned on his heel and gestured to the people seated on the stage behind him.
Justin felt the sudden pressure of his mother's hand. “Qu'estce que c'est, Maman?”
“
Nothing. Quiet.
” Her eyes were fixed on the stage.
Had she spoken too sharply to her son?
She would make up for it.
“Quiet, darling,” she said, her tone softened.