Le Divorce (16 page)

“At the time we completely sympathized with the bombing of Cambodia,” he was saying. “You imagine you can tear down things and start afresh. We know you can only rebuild on the ruins of what has gone before. Each new edifice must use old bricks, old stones, the rubble of old sites.” I remember he said this, as the conversation ranged among the various errors and miscalculations of history, and the peculiar inability of Americans (in Edgar’s view) to deal with it.

“Baggage is another metaphor,” Roxy said. “We are always told to get rid of our old baggage.”

“That’s what’s the matter with you Americans. In your baggage was some nice old stuff. Old family recipes, say. Why assume the old baggage was filled with triste mementos and dirty socks? French people have no such delusions. They know that if you throw away your baggage you will be bare.”

“Optimism, illusion, are good qualities all the same,” Roxy said.

“I don’t really agree,” said Mrs. Pace. “They have a fatuous side.”

“Nor I,” said Edgar. “When he is disappointed, the American goes into a rage. As you did in Somalia, say. A fit of childish impotence. While realism—if you expect what is likely to happen, you are never disappointed.”

That’s right, I thought. That is my philosophy. Maybe it’s why I’ve begun to feel at home in France. Roxy is the American, after all. All the same I felt obliged to say that I myself had had nothing to do with Somalia, why lump all Americans in together, Europeans were always doing that.

“This is beautiful, Olivia, what is this?” Edgar asked. He was looking at her handsome soup tureen, which occupies in a queenly way the top of the sideboard in her dining room.

“Old Nevers. You might think Rouen, from the glaze.”

“No, I didn’t think Rouen, because of the underglaze,” he said. “But those must be Rouen,” he said, indicating a pair of vases.

“Levasseur, Rouen. ‘Aux Oiseaux,’ ”
said Mrs. Pace happily.

I was feeling a blaze of negative emotion this particular night, an unworthy, petulant unhappiness I would not have liked to admit to. Part of me understood why Edgar would rescue the heavily pregnant Roxy, but part of me was hurt that he had not so much as looked my way. I know I am not the sort of person who gets rescued, because I am not, in the mind of others, the sort of person who gets hurt. Only in my own mind does this possibility arise with, I have to admit, increasing frequency. That I will get hurt.

So I felt jealous that Edgar had seen to Roxy with not a glance for me, and jealous of an imagined past in which Mrs. Pace had had a part, however slight, that they could speak of now, jealous of their two minds stuffed with political facts and the confidence of their opinions, of their right to have opinions. I was even jealous of their age, and of their knowledge of the past—of the past I had never thought of—Vietnam, the Balkans, World War Two, all the things that had made people smash up the Town Crier. Why had these things not come to my notice in California? Where was California? Why was I so outside the life of the world?

Much later, I asked Cleve Randolph about this night. I was helping the Randolphs cut little squares of bread to make into canapes, and skewering bits of bacon and chicken liver together for their cocktail party. “Why was it so important to have gone to Vietnam but not important to stop the forces of evil in Bosnia?”

“Vietnam was going Communist,” he said.

“So what was so bad about Communism?” I asked. No one had ever actually said. Grayness was all I had figured out. Just as no one had ever actually explained what exactly the Europeans had against Jews. The Communists didn’t seem to me nearly as bad as the Serbs. “I mean, they didn’t have rape camps.” I still think the answers to these questions are not self-evident.

“The Communists killed many more people than Hitler,” he finally said, tersely. “Stalin killed millions.”

“But he’s been dead for years,” I pointed out.

Edgar had actually answered my question with something he had said on the radio. The point is to resist despotism in all its forms; all despots are alike or become alike, and their poison spreads. Which, today, meant Serbs. I could see that I have much to understand about history and, specifically, how it is transmitted in such a burning form.

The magic of love—who could ever describe it? Certainty of having found the one being destined for us by nature, sudden light shed upon life itself and apparently explaining its mystery, unsuspected value conferred upon the most trifling circumstances, flying hours whose details elude the memory through their very sweetness. . . .

—Adolphe

I
WAS CHANGING
, in my blood and energy, and it had to do with Edgar, though I could not have said how. In part it was the excitement of political consciousness. Perhaps in other circumstances I could have been turned on to something else. Perhaps if Edgar had been a stockbroker, I would have thrilled to the thrum of the ticker tape and learned to read the Dow.

Behind my wish to give Edgar an expensive present was a wish to be thought of as someone sexy and generous, with perfect taste. Someone to be missed, regretted, and never forgotten. I had given the matter a lot of thought, made inquiries, and now had decided to give him a piece of faience, Old Nevers or Rouen or whatever. I had heard Mrs. Pace and Edgar discuss their collections, and I had heard Stuart Barbee admire Roxy’s dishes when he came to appraise her painting, so it was Stuart I had asked, about dealers and such, and where I might find something not too expensive. Of course he knew a dealer at the Marché aux Puces who specialized in the kind of thing I had in mind.

I had the address in hand. Stall H. Martin, which had a look of permanence and expertise, was clearly one of the stationary
establishments of the flea market which deal in objects of great price. There were beautiful platters and tureens in the window. I had copied the markings on the bottom of Mrs. Pace’s tureen, and thrust this at the man—a plump type in his forties, turning bald—and said,
“Je voudrais, je cherche, un cadeau,”
and so on, whereupon he immediately switched to English, as they usually do. He had an English accent, might even have been English, had that raddled, run-down English look too, of people who smoke too much and eat too much sugar and meat.

“It’s a present for a friend who has a collection,” I said. “I’d like to get him something nice.” The man looked at me pityingly, I guess knowing I was in for a shock when he revealed his prices.

“These things are dear,” he said. “They don’t come cheaply.”

“I know,” I said. I had realized at least that much from the general reverence surrounding them.

He studied the markings on my piece of paper. “I don’t have many pieces of this kind. I have a friend, there are dealers who do. My friend can sometimes lay hands on things like this—he knows the collectors. I could take your name. Are you American?”

“Yes, American. I need—it’s for Christmas, I need it soon.”

“Why don’t you look at these little
assiettes
, they’re Quimper, about a hundred years old, anyone would like them, what beauties.” He drew me to the window, to a set of small plates arranged like the most charming painting. I could see why people like dishes, so tangible and inviting to the fingertips. These had smiling birds on olive branches tied with bows.

“A pitcher? Or a little vase?” I asked, thinking of something more important, rounder.

“Where in America?”

“Santa Barbara.”

“Lucky you. Does your friend like Delft? I also have a charming little cow. Look at this,” he said, lifting down a platter. “This is late seventeenth century, one of the earliest pieces I have. Just a little repair here.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just know he was swept away by Old Rouen.”

“I perhaps could get something,” he said. “My friend might.
I have some photos, if you’d like to look at those. Mind, these are important objects, big money. Do you know what you’d like to spend?”

“Not exactly,” I said. Now, for the first time, it occurred to me that if Roxy’s picture sold well, some of the money ought to be mine. Then I could buy anything. I know it sounds goody-goody to say you haven’t thought of money, but I hadn’t, until then, where the picture was concerned, it had always been so thoroughly Roxy’s. Plus it had been hard to think of selling something that had always been on the wall of your house, it was like selling the doorknobs. But now I understood avarice, and my soul burned with the thought that I ought to have some of the picture money, and I relished the idea of buying something hugely expensive for Edgar, something, specifically, that cost as much as a Kelly.

“Sometimes collectors put things on consignment—here are some pictures,” he said, bringing out a fat envelope of photographs. “What they are, dates and so on, are on the back.” Since I didn’t have much idea of what I wanted, there wasn’t much point in looking at them, but I turned them over out of politeness—tureens, platters, vases, little porcelain statues, all more or less important-looking, large and elaborate, and I was pretty sure out of my price range. One thing that struck me was that all these objects were photographed in rooms, on tables or sideboards, shown off to advantage.

It was thus that I recognized Mrs. Pace’s tureen, because it sat on her sideboard in the dining room I knew very well. Unbelieving, I turned the photo over. Old Rouen, and all the same markings. It was all I could do to dissemble and pass on to the next photograph. Then came back to it, as if weighing it, to be sure I wasn’t mistaken. How could this be?

“That one? One like that?” the man asked.

“Yes, like this,” I said. “This is what I want.”

“That is a major piece,” he said, taking the photo and studying it. He handed it back. It was now I realized that this could easily be a photograph I myself had taken; I had taken just such views of her rooms, and given the film to Stuart Barbee.
One in particular had been just this shot, of her specially prized tureen, the candlestick moved to one side.

“Something on that order,” I said.

There are some things that defy explanation, and are too odd, too creepy, to think about directly. I thanked the man and rose, said I would be thinking about what exactly I could pay, what I wanted, I would come back. I must have rushed off in a manner he thought odd. There were lots of explanations, of course, the most obvious being that Mrs. Pace had thought of selling her tureen. Somehow, though, I think I would have known about that.

“Thesis, antithesis, synthesis,” says Mrs. Pace. “That is the characteristically French way of thinking about anything.” My thesis was that some sort of scam involved Mrs. Pace’s tureen. The antithesis was that she planned to sell it, and had somehow entered it into the world list of salable items through which it had become known to this guy. There was something I was missing, but I never got it. One night I dreamt a synthesis, but it was too odd to survive the morning review.

I decided not to mention any of this to Mrs. Pace for the moment. All the same, a few days later, I called the guy and told him I wanted the tureen in the photo, or one just like it. He said it might take a few weeks.

About Bosnia, there was the difference between Roxy and me that whereas hers was the indignant sympathy of a bleeding heart, mine was an awakened life of the head, if you like, a fascination with the great board game of realpolitik, and my own part in it, humble as it was, setting up chairs. Had I cared about the USC football team? Had I been excited by the slimy creatures in freshman Marine Biology? Possibly. I had a memory of other excitements but they had been paltry compared to this.

Sex was part of it. If desire is electrical energy charging up your cells, which is what it feels like, then not having sex would be to produce something corrosive in you, like what leaks out of old batteries. So whereas our affair was at first, for me, about politics, about the romance of political morality, it became
about sex too. Appetite comes with eating, said Rabelais. A very experienced man knows things I didn’t know.

Once, giving in to my demands, Edgar said, “Dear God, think how funny everyone thought the fate of your Nelson Rockefeller.” Nelson Rockefeller was a New York governor, apparently, who died at the home of his young mistress, everyone said while doing it.

Perhaps this is just a hot-blooded time in life. Or perhaps I had the extra interest in lovemaking that went with political involvement. But it also went along with the rest of life being a little boring, for I found my walks with Gennie or Scamp or the two of them boring, found helping Stuart Barbee and Con empty their
cave
boring, painting their dining room boring. I had an overqualified feeling, whereas an affair with a sophisticated man of state is a challenge. And Mrs. Pace was a challenge.

But basically, it was the mysteries of heavy Serbian matériel that absorbed me, and also those of
la foufoune
and
la bite
—the pussy and cock—and the dinner that followed the mysteries, with its own elaborate rituals and elaborated refinements, works of genius in cabbage
(Saint Jacques aux choux à l’orange, chou farci)
. And now, my little cabbage . . .

La foufoune
, a word I learned from Yves, made Edgar laugh when I used it, though shortly afterward he inquired, peevishly, where I could have heard such words. I could see that his impulse was to make me explain, and that he mastered the impulse.

We had agreed to be discreet, so it surprised me that we went everywhere in public—movies, meetings, restaurants. Perhaps there was a convention by which, if you didn’t live in Paris, what you did in Paris was overlooked.

At a certain point, making love, you stop thinking about the other person and think of yourself, or if think is not the right word, feel—but not emotion, I mean sensation—when you want the feeling to go on and on, sensations of the hand, the lips, the cock. I began to want it in the mornings when I woke up, only he was of course not there. I was a cat in heat. I even slept a time or two with Yves, which seemed easier than breaking off with him, and made me feel better, too, which was odd, because you
would think that being in love, as I was with Edgar Cosset, would make one less, not more, inclined to do flighty stuff like that.

I knew I was changing. I also began to have vulnerable emotional feelings, like a woman, and could understand Roxy’s ravings about destiny and luck. I never used to exert myself with men to be amusing or even nice; being pretty and doing it with them was enough. But now I was really trying. With my dictionary I labored through accounts of the war in
Le Monde Diplomatique
, and love advice in
Frou-Frou
magazine.

Le sexe n’est pas l’unique zone érogène de l’homme. Le plaisir érotique, c’est aussi une question de technique . . . Prenez l’initiative! On peut prendre son pied en s’empalant sur la partie de son anatomie que . . . Goutez chaque centimètre de peau. . . . il faut l’étonner. . . .

I learned, for instance, that if you drink a little tisane of orange and rosewater or mint, it perfumes your own juices. I feel I never would have found that out in Santa Barbara. I learned this French erotic secret from Janet Hollingsworth, with whom Roxy and I had coffee one afternoon. “I’ve ferreted out a good one,” she said. “Did you know that . . . ?” Quite a lot of tisane, though—a whole teapotful is required, she said.