The Women (72 page)
In the morning, the sun rose out of the hills in a dark bruise of clouds and the clouds spread over the valley like a stain in water. By noon, it was like dusk. He felt the humidity the moment he rose from his sweated sheets, heavy air bearing him down and his shirt wet before he put it on. He’d fallen into a dreamless sleep sometime in the early hours, listening to a solitary bird—a whip-poor-will—riding up and down the glissando of its liquid notes till he’d gone unconscious along with it. He didn’t know how long he’d slept, but when he woke he was fully and immediately present. He knew where he was and why he’d come and that his loss and misery were continuous and that he wouldn’t taste his breakfast or his lunch or his dinner either.
He tried to comb his hair, but it was a snarl, and when he lifted his arms to smooth it back he was assaulted by his own odor. He smelled of yesterday’s sweat, a deep working stench of fear and uncertainty that no soap or eau de cologne could ever drive down. For a moment he thought of going down to the lake for a swim, but that wouldn’t be right either, not if Mamah couldn’t join him or her John and her Martha—no, he would wear his odor, deepen it with the sweat of digging, the pickaxe riding high over his head as he stabbed at the earth and loosened the teeth of the yellow rock that lay clustered there along the black gums of the soil, because every grave was a mouth that opened and closed and swallowed till there was nothing left.
There was breakfast. A hush of voices, people tiptoeing round the house like ghosts of the departed. He sat for a moment with Fritz—the hair gone, the scalded scalp, gauze pillowed up like a spring snowstorm—but the boy didn’t seem to recognize him. Then he went out into the yard to smell the thin poisonous odor of the smoke that still rose from the ruins across the way, and there were people here as well, too many people, and so he walked down the hill and back up again to Taliesin and into the burned-out courtyard. That was where Billy Weston was, both his hands bandaged and a white surgical strip wrapped round his skull so that he looked like a casualty of the war. Frank saw the blood there, a slow seep of it accumulating at the temple, a wound that would never heal. “Billy,” was all he could say, and Billy, a rake in one hand, the streaming hose in the other, could only nod in return. For a long while they just stood there, side by side, and then they bent forward and began to rake the ashes.
In another place, all the way across the world in Paris, where the talk was of nothing but the war—the insuperability of Plan 17, the fierceness of the French cavalry and the defects of the German character—Maude Miriam Noel was just sitting down to breakfast at the Café Lilac. She’d chosen a table under the awning, out of the sun, though the day was lovely, so tranquil and warm you’d never know a war was going on not a hundred and fifty kilometers away. It was her skin. She’d been out for a walk along the Seine the day before, and though she was wearing her hat and carrying a parasol, she hadn’t bothered with gloves because of the heat, and now the backs of her hands were red—or worse, brown. She’d rubbed cold cream on them, but she couldn’t help noticing the faint rippling of the flesh there—wrinkles, they were wrinkles—and that worried her, worried her deeply. Old women had wrinkled hands, parchment hands (“Lizard skin,” as Leora used to joke all those years ago when they were both young and could barely conceive of what a wrinkle was, at least in relation to themselves), and she wasn’t an old woman. Not in fact or by any stretch of the imagination. Men stopped to stare at her as she went down the street, and not simply men of middle age, but young men too.
But here was the waiter. A little man—so many of them were little men, not simply among waiters or the French, but men in general, so very pinched in spirit and disappointing when you most needed them. This particular waiter—Jean-Pierre Something-or-Other—had stared into her face on innumerable mornings through all the seasons of the year, at least since she’d moved into her little apartment at 21 rue des Saints-Pères, with the window boxes trailing blood-red geraniums above the
antiquités
shop so crammed with marble and pictures in gilded frames it could have been a museum itself, and yet each time he presented the menu with a
“Bonjour, madame,”
it was as if it were the first, as if he’d never laid eyes on her before, as if she were a mere tourist and interloper. Which infuriated her. She’d complained about him to the management on more than one occasion, but the management, which consisted of a terminally weary old lady in a stained blue kerchief (yes, with lizard hands and an eternally dripping nose) and her entirely deaf husband, hadn’t seemed moved to do anything about it. And so here he was. And here she was. Because she’d be damned if she’d go even half a block out of her way to the next café—this one was hers, her
territoire,
and she was willing to fight for it. Or at least endure a certain degree of rudeness, day after day, meal after meal.
antiquités
shop so crammed with marble and pictures in gilded frames it could have been a museum itself, and yet each time he presented the menu with a
“Bonjour, madame,”
it was as if it were the first, as if he’d never laid eyes on her before, as if she were a mere tourist and interloper. Which infuriated her. She’d complained about him to the management on more than one occasion, but the management, which consisted of a terminally weary old lady in a stained blue kerchief (yes, with lizard hands and an eternally dripping nose) and her entirely deaf husband, hadn’t seemed moved to do anything about it. And so here he was. And here she was. Because she’d be damned if she’d go even half a block out of her way to the next café—this one was hers, her
territoire,
and she was willing to fight for it. Or at least endure a certain degree of rudeness, day after day, meal after meal.
The waiter handed her the menu as if he’d just found it in the street, and she waved it away—they both knew perfectly well that she’d all but memorized it and wanted only
deux oeufs,
poached, accompanied by a pair of those little English sausages and the sauté of tomatoes,
avec café noir sans sucre.
They both knew, and yet every encounter was played out as if it were the first, as if they were players in an Oscar Wilde farce. Then the waiter was gone and at some point the coffee appeared and she reached beneath the table for her bag and the newspapers Leora had sent her from Chicago. She liked to keep up on events in the States, especially now that the war had broken out, but she always had, because as Frenchified as she’d become she was still an American girl at heart, Maude Miriam Noel, the Belle of Memphis. Just the other night, at a gathering in her flat over a very nice Beaujolais and croquettes of crab she’d produced herself, an Englishman by the name of Noel Rutherford—
Noel,
and wasn’t that a cozy coincidence?—had told her how utterly charming her accent was. “You’re from the South, I presume,” he’d said—“Richmond, perhaps? Or perhaps deeper? Let me guess: Charlotte? Savannah?” And she’d smiled up at him—he was tall, lean, with that constricted muscular energy so many of the English seemed to cultivate, his hair as sleek and dark as an otter’s, and she’d begun to see real possibilities in him—and positively drawled, “Oh, no, honey, you’ve got me awl wrong. I’m a Memphis girl.”
deux oeufs,
poached, accompanied by a pair of those little English sausages and the sauté of tomatoes,
avec café noir sans sucre.
They both knew, and yet every encounter was played out as if it were the first, as if they were players in an Oscar Wilde farce. Then the waiter was gone and at some point the coffee appeared and she reached beneath the table for her bag and the newspapers Leora had sent her from Chicago. She liked to keep up on events in the States, especially now that the war had broken out, but she always had, because as Frenchified as she’d become she was still an American girl at heart, Maude Miriam Noel, the Belle of Memphis. Just the other night, at a gathering in her flat over a very nice Beaujolais and croquettes of crab she’d produced herself, an Englishman by the name of Noel Rutherford—
Noel,
and wasn’t that a cozy coincidence?—had told her how utterly charming her accent was. “You’re from the South, I presume,” he’d said—“Richmond, perhaps? Or perhaps deeper? Let me guess: Charlotte? Savannah?” And she’d smiled up at him—he was tall, lean, with that constricted muscular energy so many of the English seemed to cultivate, his hair as sleek and dark as an otter’s, and she’d begun to see real possibilities in him—and positively drawled, “Oh, no, honey, you’ve got me awl wrong. I’m a Memphis girl.”
She spread the papers out before her. Took a sip of her coffee. Of course, the past year had been hard on her, what with the way she’d been thrown over by René and that unfortunate incident with the carving knife—and she would have stabbed him, she really and truly would have and gladly gone to the Santé Prison for it, if he’d only stood still long enough. And there was her cat. Mr. Ribbons—or Monsieur Ribbons, as she liked to call out from the door and watch him scamper across the street, his tail held erect above him. When he’d begun to spit up blood, she immediately suspected the crabbed odious horse-faced woman downstairs of poisoning him, and there’d been another regrettable incident over that, though the veterinarian assured her that the animal had died of natural causes. Yes. Certainly.
Natural causes.
What else could it be? At the thought of it she looked up sharply over her reading glasses, riveting the waiter with a look, which he ignored, and where were her eggs? Had they sent out to the provinces for them? Did it take a Cordon Bleu chef to set a pot of water boiling and dice a few tomatoes over a pan?
Natural causes.
What else could it be? At the thought of it she looked up sharply over her reading glasses, riveting the waiter with a look, which he ignored, and where were her eggs? Had they sent out to the provinces for them? Did it take a Cordon Bleu chef to set a pot of water boiling and dice a few tomatoes over a pan?
She was irritable, and she would have been the first to admit it. It was the war, the uncertainty, the rumors. Everyone said it would be over in six months, but what if it wasn’t? What if the Germans pushed through and marched into Paris? What if there were shortages, rationing? Would the cafés be deserted? Would her landlady raise her rent? She’d thought of going back to Chicago, to Norma, but that was distasteful to her in so many ways she could hardly count them. So many of her friends—the Americans and English, at any rate—had already left, the Belknaps, Clarissa Hodge, the Payne Whitneys. Even her closest friend and confidante, Marie-Thérèse, had gone away to the country, deserting her when she most needed someone to confide in, and not just over René but the creeping fear that started as a kind of upset of her stomach and radiated all the way down to her toes and back up her spine to the nape of her neck, the fear that everything she knew and loved was wearing down and coming to some awful end.
The waiter sauntered up with the heavy ceramic plate and slipped it onto the table as if he were placing a bet at Auteuil before vanishing like a magician, only to reappear in the depths of the café, a freshly lit cigarette jutting from his mouth. She spread her napkin across her lap, adjusted the newspaper and her reading glasses, and cut into one of the sausages. It was then that the headline caught her eye: SEVEN SLAIN AT TALIESIN. And under it:
Love Bungalow Murders.
She set down the fork and began reading—the story was so horrific, so compelling and awful, she couldn’t help herself; it was like a novel, a romance, and here was the hero of the affair, Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright, in half-profile, staring out nobly across the continent and the sea too. Her breakfast went cold. The coffee sat untouched. The waiter never so much as glanced at her.
Love Bungalow Murders.
She set down the fork and began reading—the story was so horrific, so compelling and awful, she couldn’t help herself; it was like a novel, a romance, and here was the hero of the affair, Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright, in half-profile, staring out nobly across the continent and the sea too. Her breakfast went cold. The coffee sat untouched. The waiter never so much as glanced at her.
She read through the article twice and then sat for a long while studying the photograph. Very slowly, as if she couldn’t control it, she began to shake her head from side to side even as the tremor crept up her spine one vertebra at a time, as if a series of individual fingertips were poking at her in succession.
The poor man,
she was thinking.
The poor, poor man.
she was thinking.
The poor, poor man.
1
Wrieto-San in the original.
2
Unidentified male; perhaps one of his acquaintances from earlier, happier days in Chicago society.
3
Call him Albert Bleutick for convenience’s sake, a man of median height, median coloring, with a medial swell of paunch and a personality that was neither dominant nor recessive, a companion of the second stripe, one who could be relied upon to pick up the tab at lunch and actively seek out tickets to the ballet, the symphony, the museum. His was the fate of all minor characters in a major life: to perform a function and exit, as colorless as the rain descending on the dreary gray streets on a day that might as well have rinsed itself down the drain for all anyone cared.
4
I knew her at Taliesin as a sour, thin, humorless woman, tubercular in that first year, busy, always busy with the work of the place, scrubbing, hanging out clothes, hoeing in the garden and splitting wood for the stove, the furnace and the seventeen fireplaces we kept going eternally for the poor heat of them in that cavernous edifice, but she was a girl once, and in love. Grant her that.
5
Wrieto-San in the original, and ff.
6
Georgei Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, 1866 (?) -1949. Philosopher, composer, shaman, hypnotist. Magnum opus:
Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson
. Espoused lifelong doctrine called “The Work,” a muddled philosophy of being with its own mythos and cosmology that attracted to him a ring of disciples whom he arbitrarily embraced and cast out of the fold. He was at Taliesin in 1938, I believe it was, a shambling ancient Armenian Turk or Gypsy of some sort with an accent so impenetrable he might as well have been talking through a gag. I remember seeing him off in the distance each morning, a bundle of animated rags conferring with Mrs. Wright while Wrieto-San fumed in the studio.
Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson
. Espoused lifelong doctrine called “The Work,” a muddled philosophy of being with its own mythos and cosmology that attracted to him a ring of disciples whom he arbitrarily embraced and cast out of the fold. He was at Taliesin in 1938, I believe it was, a shambling ancient Armenian Turk or Gypsy of some sort with an accent so impenetrable he might as well have been talking through a gag. I remember seeing him off in the distance each morning, a bundle of animated rags conferring with Mrs. Wright while Wrieto-San fumed in the studio.
7
One of those curious overheated phrases of O’Flaherty-San, which we will let stand.
8
Zona Gale, author of popular appeasements such as
Miss Lulu Bett,
who was then at the height of her fame, and more marginally, her beauty. But she kept cats and had claws of her own. And, of course, like all novelists, she had unrealistic expectations.
Miss Lulu Bett,
who was then at the height of her fame, and more marginally, her beauty. But she kept cats and had claws of her own. And, of course, like all novelists, she had unrealistic expectations.
9
Officially, the Gurdjieff Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, an oxymoronic designation, it seems to me.
10
Vlademar Hinzenberg. An architect. A Russian.
11
Wrieto-San was a great one for holidays—Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas—and if there was no holiday in sight he would invent one to suit him, the Fundament of June, Midsummer’s Eve, the Pillars of March, the stronger the whiff of paganism the better. He was an inveterate arranger too, forever fussing over his furniture and objets d’art, and he threw himself into holiday decoration with all the fierceness of his unflagging energy (an energy, unfortunately, that often manifested itself in a sort of superhuman volubility that made it difficult to be around him for more than an hour or two at a time).
12
“The Elf King.” And what could be more appropriate?
13
Maude Miriam Noel, 1869-1930. Southern belle, sculptress, dilettante. Wrieto-San’s second wife. I never met her personally, but Billy Weston described her to me in some detail. “She was trouble,” he said. And then he used one of those peculiarly apposite American expressions—such a trove, the English language—“She was,” and he paused a moment to stare off into the distance, as if his brain, the actual organ, were being radically compressed by the squeezebox of the memory, “real hell on wheels.”
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