“How do you know that I have to leave again? Are you following the racing calendar?”
“No. But with us, there’s no telling who is leaving whom.”
“That is going to change.”
“Not before the end of the year!”
“It’s possible to get married earlier, too.”
“Let’s first celebrate our meeting again and farewell. Where do you have to go?”
“To Rome. And then to the thousand-mile race through Italy. Next week. You can’t come along. It’s just driving and driving, nothing more than that, until you can’t tell yourself apart from the road and the motor.”
“Will you win?”
“The Mille Miglia is a race for Italians. Caracciola won it once, for Mercedes, but otherwise the Italians fight it out among themselves. Torriani and I are only driving as third team. In case something happens. May I stay here while you dress?”
Lillian nodded. “What kind of dress shall it be?” she asked.
“One of those I held in captivity.”
She opened the trunk. “This one?”
“Yes. I know it very well.”
“You’ve never seen it.”
“Not on you; but I know it all the same. It hung in my room for a few nights.”
Lillian turned around, a mirror in her hand. “Really?”
“I admit it,” Clerfayt said. “I hung your clothes out like a witch doctor in order to lure you back. I’ve learned that from you. It was black magic, and a comfort. A woman may leave a man, but she’ll never leave her clothes.”
Lillian inspected her eyes in the mirror. “So my shadows were with you.”
“Not your shadows—your shed and left-behind snakeskins.”
“I would have thought it would be another woman.”
“I tried that. But you’ve spoiled me for anyone else. Compared to you, they seem like bad colored prints as against a genuine Degas.”
Lillian laughed. “Like one of those ungainly ballet rats he was always painting?”
“No. Like a drawing Levalli has in his house—a dancer in movement that simply carries you away. Her face is only suggested, so that everyone can project into it his own dream.”
Lillian laid her pencils aside. “There always has to be something left out for that, doesn’t there? If everything is painted down to the last details, there isn’t any room left for the imagination. Is that what you mean?”
“Yes,” Clerfayt said. “We are caught only in our own dreams, never in those of others.”
“Caught or lost.”
“Both. Just as sometimes, before waking, we dream that we are falling and falling into an endless black space. Do you ever have that dream?”
“I’ve had it,” Lillian said. “I used to have it almost every afternoon, back in the sanatorium, when we were taking what the Crocodile would call our siesta—I used to feel like a stone falling into a bottomless pit. Is there any wine left?”
Clerfayt brought her a glass. She put her arm around his neck. “It’s odd,” she murmured, “but as long as we don’t forget that we’re falling and falling, nothing is lost. Life seems to love paradoxes—when we think we’re perfectly safe, we’re always ridiculous and on the verge of a tumble; but when we know we’re lost, life showers gifts on us. Then we don’t have to do a thing—it runs after us like a poodle.”
Clerfayt sat down on the floor at her side. “How do you know all that?”
“I’m just talking. And all the things I say are only half-truths—like everything else.”
“Love, too?”
“What has love to do with truth?”
“Nothing. It’s the opposite of it.”
“No,” Lillian said, getting up. “The opposite of love is death—and love is the bitter enchantment that makes us forget death for a short time. That is why everyone who knows anything about death also knows something about love.” She slid the dress on over her head. “That, too, is a half-truth. Who actually knows anything about death?”
“Nobody—except that it is the opposite of life, not of love, and that, too, is dubious.”
Lillian laughed. Clerfayt was back in his old vein. “Do you know what I would like?” she asked. “To live ten lives all at once.”
He stood up and caressed the narrow shoulder straps of her dress. “What for? It would always only be one life, Lillian—just as a chess player who plays against ten different partners is in reality always playing only one game—his own.”
“I’ve found that out, too.”
“In Venice?”
“Yes, but not the way you think.”
They were standing at the window. A muted sunset hung over the Conciergerie. “I’d like to get my life all mixed up,” Lillian said. “For instance, I’d like to live a day or an hour of my fiftieth year—then one of my thirtieth—then one of my eightieth—all in a single day, just as I happen to feel like it—not one after the other strung along the chain of time.”
Clerfayt laughed. “You change fast enough for me as you are. Where shall we eat?”
They went downstairs. He doesn’t understand what I mean, Lillian thought. He thinks when I say that, that it’s capriciousness; he doesn’t realize that I’d only like to coax the hereafter to let me have a few days that I’ll never live to see. On the other hand, I’ll never be a cranky old woman of eighty, or a man’s aging disappointment, whom he would rather never see again, an old flame who comes as a kind of shock when he runs into her in later years. I’ll remain young in my lover’s memory and so have an advantage over all the women after me who’ll live longer and grow older than I.
“What are you laughing at?” Clerfayt asked on the stairs. “At me?”
“At myself,” Lillian said. “But don’t ask me why. You’ll find out at the proper time.”
He brought her back to the hotel two hours later. “Enough for today,” he said smilingly. “You need sleep.”
She looked at him in astonishment. “Sleep?”
“Rest. You told me you’d been sick.”
She searched his face for the hidden joke. “Do you really mean that?” she asked finally. “I suppose you’re going to tell me next that I look tired.”
The night porter appeared, wearing a knowing grin. “Salami tonight? Caviar? The patronne has left the caviar out.”
“A sleeping pill,” Lillian declared. “Good night, Clerfayt.”
He held her fast. “Do understand me, Lillian. I don’t want you to strain yourself and perhaps have a relapse.”
“You weren’t so anxious at the sanatorium.”
“In those days I thought I’d be driving away and never seeing you again.”
“And now?”
“Now I am sacrificing a few hours this evening because I want to keep you as long as I can.”
“How practical!” Lillian said spitefully. “Good night, Clerfayt.”
He looked at her sharply. “Bring up a bottle of Vouvray,” he said to the porter.
“Very well, sir.”
“Come.” Clerfayt took Lillian’s arm. “I’ll take you up.”
She shook her head and pulled free. “Do you know the last person I had such an argument with? Boris. But he was better at it. You’re right, Clerfayt. It’s an excellent idea for you to go to bed early; you have to be well rested for your race.”
He glared at her. The porter came with the bottle and two glasses. “We don’t need the wine,” Clerfayt said coldly.
“Oh yes, I need it.”
Lillian took the bottle and one glass. “Good night, Clerfayt. Let’s not dream of falling tonight—into endless space. Dream of Toulouse instead!”
She flourished the glass and started up the stairs. He stood until she was out of sight. “Cognac, sir?” the night porter asked. “A double?”
“For yourself,” Clerfayt said, thrusting a few bills into his hand.
He walked along the quai des Grands-Augustins as far as the Restaurant La Périgordine. Through the lighted windo
ws, he saw late diners enjoying the specialty of the house, truffles roasted on embers. Two people, obviously long and serenely married, were paying their check; a pair of young lovers were ardently telling each other lies. Clerfayt crossed the street and walked slowly back along the closed stalls of the booksellers. Boris, he thought furiously. That topped it off! The wind brought the smell of the Seine. A few scows loomed black in the plangent darkness. From one of them came the wail of an accordion.
Lillian’s windows were lighted, but the curtains were drawn. Clerfayt saw her shadow moving back and forth across them. She did not look out, although the windows were open. Clerfayt knew that he had behaved like an idiot, but he could not help it. He had meant exactly what he said. And Lillian had looked very tired; in the restaurant, her face had suddenly looked so worn. As if it were a crime to be solicitous, he thought. What would she do now? Pack? It occurred to him that she must know he was still there since she had not heard Giuseppe roaring away. Quickly, he crossed the street and sprang into the car. He started it, stepped unnecessarily hard on the gas, and shot off toward the place de la Concorde.
Lillian carefully placed the bottle of wine on the floor beside the bed. She heard Giuseppe drive away. Then she found a raincoat in her trunk and put it on. It scarcely went with the dinner dress, but she did not feel like changing; the coat covered her dress fairly well. She did not want to go to bed. She had had enough of that in the sanatorium.
She went down the stairs. The night porter sprang to attention. “Cab, Madame?”
“No, thanks, no cab.”
She went out on the street, and got as far as the boulevard Saint-Michel with scarcely an encounter. But then came a hail of propositions, white, brown, black and yellow. It was as though she had stepped into a swamp and the gnats were falling upon her. In a few minutes, she received a brief but intensive course of instruction in whispered eroticism of the simplest kind—compared to which a pair of street curs were a couple of romantic lovers.
Somewhat stunned, she sat down at a sidewalk café table. The professional whores scrutinized her sharply; they had their beat and were prepared to defend it tooth and claw against any competition. Her table immediately became a center of attention; women of her type did not sit alone in these cafés at this time of night. Even American girls were usually in pairs.
Here Lillian was the target for new propositions—she was offered indecent photographs, cheap jewelry, and terrier pups. Someone volunteered to protect her, someone else to take her for a drive. Was she interested in meeting young Negroes? Would she like to know a few Lesbian ladies? She did not become flustered, but gave the waiter a tip in advance. He looked at the amount, and bestirred himself to drive the worst of the rush away. This gave her a chance to drink her Pernod in peace and look around.
A pale man with a beard at an adjoining table began to draw her. A rug peddler tried to sell her a grass-green prayer rug, but was chased away by the waiter. Finally, a young man approached and introduced himself as a garret poet. Realizing that her only defense was to have someone with her, she invited the poet to have a glass of wine. He wondered if he might take a sandwich instead. She ordered a roast beef sandwich for him.
The poet’s name was Gérard. After eating his sandwich, he read her two poems and recited two others from memory. They were elegies on death, dying, transitoriness, and the meaninglessness of life.
Lillian grew cheerful. The poet was thin, but a hearty eater. She asked him whether he could take care of another roast beef sandwich. He most certainly could, he declared, and he thought that she understood poetry; didn’t she feel with him that life was dreary? Why did one want to bother with it? He ate two more sandwiches and came forth with even more pessimistic verse. He began discussing the problem of suicide. Tomorrow, of course, not today, not after such a big meal. Lillian felt gayer and gayer, the poet was skinny, but he looked healthy enough to live another fifty years.
Clerfayt sat around the Ritz bar for a while. Then he decided to telephone Lillian. The porter answered. “Madame is not in the hotel,” he said, when Clerfayt identified himself.
“Where is she?”
“She went out half an hour ago.”
Clerfayt calculated. In so short a time, she could not have packed. Nevertheless, he took the precaution of asking: “Did she take suitcases with her?”
“No, sir. She was wearing a raincoat.”
“Good. Thank you.”
A raincoat, he thought. It would be just like her to go to the station without baggage and leave—to go back to her Boris Volkov, who is so much better than I.
He ran to the car. I should have stayed with her, he thought. What the hell is the matter with me? How clumsy you get as soon as you’re really in love! How the veneer of superiority drops away. How alone you are, and how all the skills of experience evaporate! You go about in a fog making nothing but mistakes.
He had the night porter describe what direction she had taken. “Not toward the Seine, sir,” the man said reassuringly. “To the right. Perhaps she just wanted to walk a little and will be back soon.”
Clerfayt drove slowly along the boulevard Saint-Michel. Lillian heard Giuseppe, and a moment later saw him. “What about death?” she asked Gérard, who was doing justice to a plate of cheese. “Suppose death is even drearier than life?”
“Who can say,” Gérard retorted, chewing despondently, “whether life is not a punishment we must endure for a crime we committed in another world? Perhaps this is hell and not what the Church foretells for us after death.”
“It also foretells heaven.”
“Then perhaps we are all fallen angels condemned to a number of years of penance on earth.”
“We can shorten the sentence if we want to.”
“Suicide!” Gérard nodded enthusiastically. “And we shrink from it. Yet it is liberation! If life were fire, we’d know what to do. Jump out of it! The irony—”
Giuseppe came by again, this time from the direction of the place Edmond-Rostand. Irony, Lillian thought, is all we have, and sometimes it has a certain allure; that’s the case now as I sit listening to this lecture. She saw Clerfayt searching the crowd on the street so intensely that he did not notice her a few yards out of range.
“If you could have your wish, what would be the supreme demand you would make on life?” she asked Gérard.
“The unfulfillable,” the poet replied promptly.
She looked gratefully at him. “Then you don’t have to wish for anything more,” she said. “You have your wish already.”
“And also for a listener like you!” Gérard declared with gloomy gallantry, shooing away the artist who had completed Lillian’s portrait and was skulking around the table with the sketch. “Forever. You understand me!”
“I’ll take that picture,” Clerfayt said to the crestfallen artist.
He had come up behind them on foot, and was looking Gérard over with little cordiality. “Beat it,” Gérard told him. “Don’t you see we’re talking? We’ve had enough disturbances. Garçon, two more Pernods. And send this gentleman away.”
“Three Pernods,” Clerfayt replied, sitting down. The artist stood beside him, eloquently mute. “It’s lovely here,” Clerfayt said to Lillian. “Why haven’t we come here more often?”
“And who are you, unbidden stranger?” Gérard asked, assuming that Clerfayt was some kind of pimp who was trying one of the usual tricks to make Lillian’s acquaintance.
“Director of the insane asylum of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, my boy. This lady is one of our patients. She has a pass for this evening. Has anything happened? Have I come too late? Waiter, take this knife away. The fork, too.”
As a poet, Gérard liked to believe in the astonishing. “Really?” he whispered. “I’ve always wanted to—”
“You don’t have to whisper,” Clerfayt interrupted. “She knows she is a lunatic and loves being one. It gives her complete irresponsibility. Immunity from any law. She could commit murder and nothin
g would happen to her.”
Lillian laughed. “It’s just the other way around,” she said to Gérard. “This is my former husband. He seems to have run away from the asylum. It’s characteristic that he should call me mad.”
The poet was no fool. Moreover, he was a Frenchman. He saw the situation, and rose with a winning smile. “Some go too late and some go too early,” he declared. “Go at the right time—thus spake Zarathustra. Tomorrow, Madame, a poem will be waiting for you here in the charge of the waiter.”
“It’s nice that you came,” Lillian said. “If I had gone to bed, I would have missed all this. The green light and the sweet rebellion of the blood. The mud and the swallows above it.”
“Sometimes you’re too quick for me, Lillian,” Clerfayt replied. “Forgive me. You do in hours what other women need years for—like the plant that grows up in minutes under the hands of a yogi, and blossoms—”
And dies, Lillian thought. “I have to, Clerfayt,” she said. “I have so much to make up for. That’s why I’m so superficial, too. There’s time enough to be wise later on.”
He took her hand and kissed it. “I’m an idiot. And getting worse every day. But I don’t mind. I like it. If only you are with me. I love you very much.”
A furious, rapid quarrel sprang up in front of the café. In seconds, a policeman was there, several Algerians were gesticulating, a girl was railing, newsboys were running and shouting.
“Come,” Lillian said. “There is still that wine in my room.”
Chapter Seventeen
“AND WHEN CAN I HAVE THEM?” Lillian asked.
The saleswoman at Balenciaga smiled. “As soon as possible.”
“In a week?”
“In two weeks. They are difficult dresses. We cannot make them any faster. We’ll start today.” The saleswoman entered the measurements in her book. “You’ve become somewhat thinner, Mademoiselle.”
“Yes, I have become thinner. No matter what I do, I don’t gain.”
“How fortunate!”
“Yes,” Lillian said, “for a lot of women it would really be fortunate.”