A Fleeting Sorrow

  “I see you have as high regard for contemporary architecture as I do,” Paul said with a laugh. And he reached across the desk and handed him a cigar, a mark of esteem and also a sign to his fellow architects, should he summon one or more of them in, that this was a serious new client who should be treated with deference.

  “I’ve already given some thought to your project,” Paul said regretfully. “My approach was to do as little damage as possible. All of which of course depends on what kind of material you envisage, what size and shape you see the buildings, and how many you want to construct.”

  All of a sudden he was relaxed, focused, curious. All of a sudden he wanted to turn this superb area into something absolutely wonderful. As romantic and seductive as he remembered it as a young man madly in love thirteen years ago. Or was it twelve? It was someone like Saltiery he would have needed to confide in rather than a guy like Gaubert.

  “In fact, I’ve already made some preliminary sketches,” he said. “Here, let me show you.”

  And he opened his drawer, pulled out a bunch of drawers, and tossed them pell-mell onto the top of the desk, thus violating all the unwritten rules of his profession, which obliged an architect to display the fruits of his or her imagination sketch after sketch, slowly and in a specified order, and to do that only when the contracts had been signed or virtually signed. But there they were, all the creative ideas and plans and drawings that Paul’s imagination and training had come up with. Work that the gentleman across the desk, if he so desired and was not in good faith, could easily visualize and pilfer for his own ends.

  But today what did that matter? Everything seemed light and inconsequential to Paul; since there was no future, there was no continuity. In a way that made life easier, knowing your every act was gratuitous or, rather, knowing life would soon be over. There was no longer anything to exploit, to keep, to make use of. Nothing was any longer salable, productive, or positive. Interesting: these words had always rung hollow to him as far back as he could remember. At long last he felt he could offer himself, or his work, without regard for the amount of effort that had gone into it or the financial gain he or his firm would derive from it. The truth was, his life had taken on a whole new dimension, a value system that till now had been sorely lacking. Not only lacking in him, he thought, but in his entire generation, maybe throughout the world.

  “Television,” Saltiery was saying, waving his large, bony hands for emphasis. “I want each bungalow to be equipped not only with a television set but also a VCR.” He saw that Paul was eyeing him warily, so he hastened to explain: “I’ll equip each cabin — excuse me, each bungalow — with a pile of films with a hunting plot — Gregory Peck just before he’s torn to pieces by a tiger, Robert Redford” — quickly updating his film stars to show he was of the Redford rather than the Peck generation — “setting free the elephants, that kind of thing.”

  Paul wasn’t quite sure he got the point but he held his tongue, suspecting the rationale would follow.

  “These weekend hunters,” Saltiery went on, “they’ll leave a wake-up call for four a.m. so they can go shoot some ducks. But worn-out as they’ll be by their nighttime frolics with their mistresses or girlfriends, they’ll all roll over at four a.m. and go back to sleep. So they won’t get to shoot any ducks, but they’ll come away from the weekends filled with hunting action thanks to the VCR and, believe me, they’ll think they’ve had a great weekend.”

  “I can see that you’re not exactly crazy about your customers either.”

  “For ten years I’ve been catering to these rich and famous assholes,” Saltiery said, shrugging his shoulders. “What can I tell you, it’s a living. A good living in fact. What I’ve learned is that the more vulgar my projects are, the more they cater to the herd instinct, the better they work. That is, assuming my groups all come from the same income bracket . . .”

  No way I’m going to finish my career in a sadomasochistic project such as this, Paul said to himself. But the guy is more than half decent. Slightly bitter, but a nice enough sort.

  “What kind of buildings would you put up if you really liked your customers?” Paul asked. “The kind of primitive cabins that were there before?”

  “Hell, no! I hated that spot, and I’ll tell you why. I used to lend the cabin you know to Mathilde for the weekend, with no strings attached. I was hoping of course she might reward my generosity by spending one of her weekends with me. But of course that was not to be: she always showed up with a rugged, well-built guy, the same guy weekend after weekend. But I don’t have to tell you. . . . Anyway, after you two broke up I still had high hopes she might give me the nod. But not for long . . .”

  “Why, did she show up with someone else?”

  “No, she simply returned me the keys and said she wouldn’t be needing the place anymore. She’s a sensitive soul, but she’s got the willpower of a mule.”

  Speaking of Mathilde in the present bothered Paul almost as much as hearing the hamster doctor talk about him in the past.

  “You have any idea what’s become of her? I know she moved out of her old place. . . .”

  “Yes. She still lives on the rue de Tournon, up near the Senate. It’s a door or two from the building that has that famous cafe on the ground floor, you know the one, the cafe where all those expatriate Americans and Brits from Merlin and the Paris Review used to hang out after the war.”

  “Long before my time,” Paul murmured. “But I go there a lot.”

  “Long before my time, too,” Saltiery said, not wanting to be outdone in the age war. “Anyway, she married some rich English guy. Then divorced him. I see her once in a while. Every three months or so we have lunch together.”

  “How is she?

  “Beautiful. As beautiful as ever. Anyway, that’s the way I see her. You see, I’ve never had her, and a woman you haven’t gone to bed with always retains a certain attraction, don’t you agree?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Paul said, then caught himself. “I don’t mean to say that I’ve had every woman I desired,” he said, “but I’ve always chosen women who liked me from the start. Maybe it simply means I’m lazy. Or that I prefer to take the low road to happiness. Or maybe I’m just the cautious type. I don’t know.”

  All of which was true, though in fact he’d never given it any thought till now. Strange, no? As if he were only aroused by what he knew he could have. What did that mean? Maybe he should ask Saltiery, who seemed to be a pretty sharp guy. He would have liked to open up to him. Say to him: “Look, I’m going to die. What do you think I should do about it? What would you do if you were in my shoes?” But of course he didn’t. He couldn’t. This poor guy, he’s clearly already had it up to here with his boring profession — one that in any event seems to bore him out of his mind — does he need my heavy-duty problems to boot? Obviously not. Besides, he, Paul, already had a close friend, the one and only Robert Gaubert. They didn’t come any better. A bosom buddy. All heart. And despite himself he began to laugh sarcastically, much to Saltiery’s surprise.

  “I’ve decided not to take on your project,” Paul said. “I like you a lot, but I’d like to take on a project my client really likes. Does that make any sense?”

  “All sorts of sense,” Saltiery said, which endeared him to Paul even more. “I confess that I only wish I liked my own project more myself . . . what can I say? Maybe next time, when I come up with something really fun or interesting or difficult I’ll give you a call. . . . By the way, I really liked that motel you built in Barbizon a lot. It really turned me on.”

  They parted on the friendliest of terms, but all Paul could think as he escorted Saltiery to the door was that he would never see him again. The thought saddened him, and he realized that his new mind-set had also made meeting Saltiery all the more poignant.

  Stepping back into his office, he saw on his notepad Mathilde’s phone number, which Saltiery had scribbled there. But his own phone was ringing. It was Gaubert, Irene told him, a
dding that he had already called five times. “I’m sorry, but I forgot to tell you,” she added, without a trace of remorse, for (he already knew) she detested Gaubert, whom she found “brutal and heartless,” whereas he, Paul, considered him no more than awkward and secretive. In any case, he did not take this sixth call, which seemed to delight Irene.

  He now realized that he had always had a slight superiority complex vis-a-vis Gaubert, but that their meeting this morning — or was it this noon? — had masked it with a sarcastic indifference or, rather, unmasked it, stripping it of all affection, all esteem. Their relationship, thus laid bare, seen in the cold, harsh light of reality, simply was nonexistent. Even assuming that he was ever truly part of my life, Paul mused, it is safe to say that as of this morning he’s out of it. Gone! And that was fine as far as Paul was concerned, since he would shortly be out of his own life as well. The fact was this condensed magazine entitled The Life and Death of Paul Cazavel would leave behind no mourners.

  Meanwhile, he continued to be amazed by how perceptive Irene was. She was blessed with the kind of intuitive powers granted only to secretaries who have lived with (and been in love with, to be sure) their bosses. Still, it was astonishing to see, as one grew older — no, as one inched slowly toward adulthood — how accurate cliches and proverbs were.

  The back of his mind was beset by a flood of quick, cold — and insignificant — thoughts, flitting to and fro as they damn well pleased, without his paying them much heed, since all the foreground of his mind could really think about was the eight figures on his notepad that made up Mathilde’s phone number. The phone number of today’s Mathilde; the living, breathing Mathilde; Mathilde who lived on the rue de Tournon not far from the famous — or infamous — literary cafe that he knew like the back of his hand; Mathilde who till recently he had thought lived at the other end of the world, or in any case “somewhere else”: for he could not have long endured the thought that she lived close by and was living without him. As he would not have been able to put up with the idea that she was available to him — at least in his mind. Because these figures that stared up at him from the corner of his desk, which were the road leading to her, were especially seductive: a telephone number with three 4’s, two 0’s, and three 8’s. A well-orchestrated, harmonious phone number, like everything she touched. Because he already knew the number by heart: 48-00-48-84. The number of his great love. Because he could remember her old number, too, the number in his time, his number in fact; 229-29-92, as he remembered how much these neutral numbers were exotic to him. They had a pleasant echo to them; they were lucky numbers, almost sensual. Because Mathilde’s street had been Bellechasse, and her exchange the stunning “Babylon.” Exchange: how exotic that notion seemed today, when all the old names had been wiped away as if they had never existed. Yes, it was high time that he, Paul, left his fellow creatures behind, left behind the slow, dismal distraction of the planet that he saw taking place inexorably every day. Not to mention the extinction of the best and the brightest of his generation.

  While he was on his latest nostalgia trip, he began calling up in his mind the names that in his youth had been given to the various telephone areas of the city. The postal authorities — sorry, the telecommunications conglomerate — had killed off Carnot, Danton, Macmahon, and Kleber, all heroes in their own right, as they had swallowed up the Pyramids, the Pyrenees, and Wagram. And how could you not love someone whose telephone number began with Jasmin? For consolation, all the telecommunications thugs came up with was the number 4. And then he thought: Good God, all that is going to be taken away from me. Life will go on without me. People will exchange phone numbers — even if they’re no longer exotic and poetic — and words of love. New inventions will come to replace the old, new inventions of which I’ll never be aware. Life will go on, people will laugh, call each other, fall in love. . . . Without me?

  Without him? They would live without him? Irene would go on without him, would fight her way into the city, walk across the Paris bridges he loved so much. Late to work as usual . . . And all this would go on with him ensconced in a wooden box. Alone, cold, slowly turning to dust . . . It was unthinkable . . . un-bear-able . . .

  Again, the horror of it all caused him to slump into an easy chair, his body still, his hands gripping each other tightly in front of him like some old man. No! No? . . . This had to stop, somehow he had to get this idea out of his head or else he’d have to start taking tranquilizers nonstop till the end. It was just too impossible . . . and he moaned out loud as a wave of revolt, of refusal, flowed over him and enveloped him in its banality, its cruelty, unbreakable and insipid. . . .

  He take tranquilizers? You mean, like Sonia’s girlfriend? Thanks but no thanks. Better resort to the trusty old rifle. As a matter of fact, he had seen a number of people in the last stages of cancer, and fear was among the least of their concerns. For they no longer believed in their own death. Their minds refused to accept it: the imagination was too lively, memory too vivid, the heart too vulnerable to look death straight in the eye, challenge the dark hole, the yawning void, that lay before them. . . . He’d doubtless do the same: like them he would pretend it was not going to happen. And however humiliating the notion of his intelligence forsaking him, of panic besetting him, he could not imagine holding his weakness in contempt. To be sure, he had never been as indulgent, as debonair with himself: but then on the other hand his life had never been very tough, either.

  The wave of horror had receded now but was, he knew, lurking there somewhere: behind his back, in front of him, outside, in the distance, in any case biding its time, waiting to return. And his mind was poised to flee. . . . Anything, anybody, any tranquilizer, any dose of morphine, any kindly doctor however sly or slippery, any doctor however conniving and moneygrubbing — whatever it might take to get the job done — books, credulousness, goodness, interest, sadism, anything and anybody will be welcome. Anything that would help him forget, help him escape, make him love or laugh. Anything and everything that might offer him a minute’s peace, give him back again his old zest for life, provide even a smidgen of courage (not that he’d ever had very much). He would grab and hang on to the slightest desire, the dimmest memory, the barely remembered refrain of jazz, he would focus on them as if they were so many lighthouses pointing the way, as if they were the quiet bays and backwaters where, after the terrible tempest had abated, the few surviving ships would go to tie up.

  VII

  IT WAS PAST SIX O’CLOCK, and the evening breeze, filled with the smell of earth and rain, a chill breeze that carried with it the smell of woodsmoke and gas — in short, the smell of Paris — seeped in through the half-open office window. Paul took deep breaths, gulped the air down as a thirsty person gulps down water; his head was still thrown back, his long legs stretched out in front of him; below his rolled-up sleeves his arms dangled down from the sides of his easy chair. He must look as if he were already dead, he said to himself; and the deep-blue veins that ran like so many tiny canals the length of his arms, still tan from the summer sun — this deceitful evidence of his health and vitality reminded him of a child’s drawings. And the sight also filled him with a slight feeling of disgust.

  The gusts of wind and their attendant odors came and went, flooding him by slow degrees with a new feeling that was neither horror nor vertigo; nor was it the refusal to accept the situation. No, it was on the contrary a premature feeling of sadness, of overwhelming regret for his planet. The planet earth, whose seasons he had known and savored, earth with its verdant grass, its glorious sunsets, its foaming, bright blue seas . . . this earth, friendly even in the fall when its warm rains turned the world gray, even during the winter’s coldest days, its days of snow when it showed itself at its most fragile. Everything about this world he had discovered in the course of his childhood and youth was going to be taken from him — not taken, wrenched. This still bright and beautiful world, which man, despite all his efforts, had still not managed to ruin. This ab
undant, swarming planet, filled with all manner of fauna — faithful, naive animals that helped you put up with your fellow man, or helped you ignore him. A dog! For months he had wanted to buy a dog, but he had kept on putting it off. Each time he had mentioned it to Helen she had resisted: can you imagine what a dog would do to my furniture? Not to mention these rugs! But now there was no point: why buy a dog, which would probably become his best friend, if he was going to leave it bereft a few short months later — probably just as the dog had grown to love him? A dog that would suffer because of Paul, who would be living a dog’s life. No, would die like a dog. That’s not funny, Paul. . . . He should have made up his mind sooner. If he had, if he had bought a dog, he’d have someone to confide in and commiserate with now, plus the sure knowledge that the animal would truly miss him. Whether it was a two-legged or four-legged earthling mattered little. Just so there was some creature who cared.

  They’d never had a child. It was Helen’s fault, though she didn’t know it. When she didn’t get pregnant, she suggested they both have fertility tests, but he adamantly refused, claiming the tests were too humiliating but knowing that the problem was hers, that she’d be devastated when she found out. Paul knew he was fertile because he already had a child, a little girl who looked so much like him he couldn’t bear to see her. He’d carefully refrained from telling Helen, who as a result constantly blamed him for her not being able to get pregnant, for the fact they’d always be alone.