Nothing That Meets the Eye (16 page)

“I certainly did not,” she assured him sincerely.

“If I could remove every artificial part of myself including the silver shin of my other leg and my plastic ribs, there wouldn't be much left of me, would there? Except the spirit. There would be that even more than now, I think! Does it seem strange to you that I speak of the spirit, Mlle. Duhamel?”

“Not at all. Of course it doesn't.”

“I knew it wouldn't. There was no need to ask. You, too, are among the great in spirit, who respond to challenge and make nature appear niggardly. Your hours of tortured practice at the piano are not lost, mademoiselle. Not because of these words I say to you, but because you gave pleasure to a score of people this afternoon. Because you are able to give pleasure!”

Mlle. Duhamel looked down at her hands again, but now there was a flush of her own pleasure in her cheeks.

“The critics and the art dealers call me a dilettante, the idiots! That I am an artist escapes them, of course. Let it! They are the real dilettanti, the do-nothings. You understand me because you are like me, Mlle. Duhamel, but all those who sneer, who stare, who laugh at me and envy and admire me at once because I am not ashamed to confess what I love— And here they are now!”

Someone had rapped on the door.

Lucien glanced at his watch. François was having trouble finding the right kind of pâté, perhaps. Lucien did not like to answer his door himself.

Mlle. Duhamel stood up. “May I open the door for your guests?”

Lucien stared at her. She looked taller than before, and almost—he could hardly believe it—happy. The glow he had seen in her gray eyes seemed to have spread through her entire body. Lucien, too, felt a happiness he had never known before. Perhaps the kind of happiness an artist feels after creating something, he thought, an artist whose talent is given by nature.

“I should be honored,” Lucien said.

Gaston had come, and with him four other dealers, one of whom carried a picture which Lucien recognized as Giotto's Magi in Bethlehem from a private collection. Lucien greeted them hospitably. Then more people arrived, and finally François with the refreshments. The man with the picture set it next to Lucien's against the divan, and all got out their magnifying glasses.

“I assure you, you possess an original,” Gaston said cheerfully to Lucien. “Not that you didn't pay a fitting price for it.” All of Gaston's confidence had returned.

Lucien gestured with his false hand at the group beside the divan. “The experts have not said so yet, have they? Let their magnifying glasses discover what I can see with my naked eyes.” He strolled off toward Mlle. Duhamel and M. Palissy, who were talking in a corner of the room. How charming she looked, Lucien thought. A half hour ago, she would have been afraid to use her beautiful hands to gesture as she spoke.

Gaston intercepted Lucien before he reached Mlle. Duhamel. “You agree that this picture is genuine, Lucien?” he said, pointing to the picture the dealer had brought.

“Certainly,” said Lucien, “That Magi—a careless piece of work, I've always thought, but certainly genuine.”

“Examine the brushstrokes, Lucien. Compare them with the brushstrokes on your picture. It's so obvious, a child could see it. There is a fault in the brush that he used to paint the backgrounds of both pictures, a couple of bristles that made a scratch here and there. Evidently these pictures were painted at about the same time. It's the general opinion that they were, you know.” Gaston stooped down beside the pictures. “One doesn't even need a magnifying glass to see it. But I had some photographs made and enlarged, just to be sure. Here they are, Lucien.”

Lucien ignored the photographs on the divan. He could see it, with his good eye; a hair-line scratch here and there with an even finer scratch beside it, the scratches of a single brushstroke, made by the same brush. It was the same in both pictures, like a pattern, obvious enough when one looked for it, yet not obvious enough to be worthy of forging. Lucien's head grew swimmy. For an instant, he felt only a keen discomfort. He was aware that the eyes of everyone in the room were upon him as he bent over the two pictures. Most painfully of all, he was aware of Mlle. Duhamel. He felt he had failed her. He had been proven fallible.

“Now you see,” said Gaston calmly, without malice, merely as if he were pointing out something that Lucien might have seen from the first.

Lucien felt as if a house of cards were tumbling down inside him, all that was himself, in fact. He could see now, looking at the picture he had believed to be false, that a misconception—a quick, initial misconception—was possible. Just as it would have been equally possible to judge the picture correctly, as he did now, and to sense that it was genuine. But he had made the misjudgment.

Lucien turned to the room. “I admit my error,” he said, his tongue as dry as ashes.

He had expected laughter, but there was only a murmur, a kind of sigh in the room. He would rather they had laughed at him. No, at least there was one exchange of smiles, one nod of satisfaction from Font-Martigue that Lucien Montlehuc could be wrong. Lucien would have felt quite lost if he had not seen it. Yet no one seemed to realize the catastrophe that was taking place inside him. The great cardhouse was still falling. For the first time in his life, he felt near tears. He had a vision of himself without his artifices, without his arrogant faith in his infallibility—a piece of a man, unable even to stand upright, a miserable fragment. For a few moments, Lucien's spirit bore the full weight of reality, and almost broke beneath it.

“If you'd like to sell it back, of course, Lucien,” Gaston's voice said kindly, distantly, whispering into the false ear, “I'll pay you the same price—”

“No. No, thank you, Gaston.” Now he was being unreasonable to boot! What did he want with a genuine painting? Lucien stumbled toward Mlle. Duhamel. He stumbled on his artificial leg.

Mlle. Duhamel's face was as calm as if nothing had happened. “Why don't you tell them you were pretending?” she asked him, out of hearing of the others. “Why don't you pretend the whole afternoon was a great joke?”

Her face was even victorious, Lucien thought. He looked at it for a long moment, trying to draw strength from it, and failing. “But I wasn't joking,” he said.

Then the guests were gone. Only he and Mlle. Duhamel remained. And the genuine Giotto. François, who had witnessed his master's defeat, standing in the background like a silent tragic chorus, had excused himself last of all and gone out.

Lucien sat down heavily on the divan.

“I shall keep the painting,” Lucien said slowly, and with quiet, profound bitterness. He did not recognize his own voice, though he recognized that it was his real voice. It was the voice of the fragment of a man. “It will be the one original that will spoil the purity of my forgeries. Nothing in life is pure. Nothing is one thing and nothing more. Nothing is absolute. When I was a young man, I believed no bullet would ever touch me. And then one day I was struck by a grenade. I thought I could never misjudge a painting. And today a public misjudgment!”

“But didn't you know that nothing is absolute? Why, even my kitten knows that much!”

Lucien glanced at Mlle. Duhamel with the fiercest impatience. He had scarcely been aware of her the past few moments. Now he resented her presence as much as he had when she had spoken to him first in Gaston's salon.

She was standing by the little three-legged console table where lay her green string gloves and her big square pocketbook that was as flat as her own body. She looked at him anxiously, as if she were puzzled for a moment as to what to do. Then she came toward him, sat down beside him on the divan, and took his hand in hers. It happened to be his false hand, but she betrayed no surprise, if she felt any. She held his hand affectionately, as if it were real.

Lucien started to take his hand away, but only sighed instead. What did it matter? But then, with the touch he could not feel, he realized another misjudgment, a much older one. He had thought he could never feel close to any human being, never allow himself to be close. But now he did feel close to Mlle. Duhamel. He felt closer to her than François, the only other person who knew of the great cardhouse that was Lucien Montlehuc. François had not suffered as Mlle. Duhamel had suffered, the idiot. It was a tenderness he felt for Mlle. Duhamel, and admiration. She lived within a cardhouse, too. Yet, if nothing was absolute, a cardhouse was not absolute, either. He might rebuild it, but it would never be perfect, and had never been perfect. How stupid he had been! He who had always prided himself that he knew the imperfections of everything, even art. Lucien looked down in wonder at his and Mlle. Duhamel's clasped hands. It had been so many years since he had had a friend.

His heart began to thump like a lover's. How pleasant it would be, Lucien thought suddenly, to have Mlle. Duhamel in his home, to have her play for him and his guests, to give her luxuries that she had never been able to afford. Lucien smiled, for the thought had only flitted across his mind like the shadow of a bird across the grass. Marriage, indeed! Hadn't he just realized that nothing was ever perfect? Why should he try to better what couldn't be bettered—the happiness he felt with Mlle. Duhamel at this instant?

“Mlle. Duhamel, would you consider being my friend?” Lucien asked, more seriously, he realized abashedly, than most men ask women to be their wives. “Would you consider friendship with a man who is sincere only at the core of his ambiguous heart and in the way he wishes to be a friend to you? A man whose very right hand is false?”

Mlle. Duhamel murmured adoringly, “I was just thinking that I held a hero's hand.”

Lucien sat up a little. The words had taken him completely by surprise. “A hero's hand,” he said sarcastically, but not without contentment.

THE CAR

“I
had Carlos wash the car today,” Nicky said as he sat down at the table.“I saw it. It looks beautiful.” Covertly, she removed a bewildered ant from the tablecloth. “It was sweet of you to remember.”

“Oh, you'll find I have a very good memory.”

They smiled at each other, a little shyly, and with the intent concern of newlyweds. Actually, they had been married a year, but they thought of these last two weeks as their real honeymoon. In the last year, their marriage had been a matter of his flying up to San Francisco on rare weekends to see her, and of her going down to Mexico for the summer to see him. But now Florence had given up her teaching job and had come to live with him in San Vicente.

“It's nice I can see the car from the porch,” Florence remarked, as she did almost every evening.

She gazed below her, half across the town, at the parking lot behind the Hotel Estrella del Sud. The Estrella del Sud, the best hotel in town, was where she had been staying when she met Nicky a year and a half ago on her summer vacation. The farthest car of the three in the lot, the big aquamarine Pontiac, was hers. It was the first car she had ever owned. She had bought it with her own money, saved over a period of years. The car was more than a year old, but still looked brand-new, because she was meticulous about its weekly washing and she had never gotten a scratch on it.

“I wish you could drive it, too, Nicky.”

“Oh, I don't mind. I'll enjoy it enough.” He could not drive because of his weak eyes.

“Have more soup, Nicky.”

“No, thanks, I couldn't. It's awfully good, though.”

She went into the kitchen and came back with a platter on which sat a well-browned roast surrounded by braised potatoes, carrots, and peas. She set it down modestly.

“Boy!” Nicky exclaimed, though he took little interest in food. “You're feeding me much too well, Florence.”

“I got the roast yesterday in Mexico City. I wanted to surprise you.”

“You certainly did.” He began carving.

“The meat markets in this town are a sight, Nicky. They're so smelly, I can't even get through the door. I've decided once a week I'll drive to Mexico City for fresh butter and meat.”

“The meat's not as bad as it looks, you know.” He smiled at her as he sat down. “The natives look pretty healthy, don't they?”

Florence nodded agreeably. It was what he always said whenever she questioned the cleanliness of anything in Mexico. She gave a start, and under the table drew up one foot and pinched at her ankle. There was a flea inside her sock, but it was foolish to try to kill it by pinching, she knew, because only a pair of thumbnails were of any use. She could tell a flea easily from an ant now. Fleas moved in stealthy jerks, while ants went steadily in one direction, even if it was a wrong one. Compared to fleas, ants were innocent, friendly little creatures.

She helped Nicky to more and more food, despite his protestations, but otherwise they said little to each other. She listened to the tinkling music of the cantinas' jukeboxes that were starting up here and there with the fall of night. From the hill where they lived, they had a splendid view of pink-roofed houses spilling one atop the other down a hillside, of a small, bushy valley just below where pigs and chickens wandered, of the dark green treetops in front of the cathedral's yellow towers, and finally of the mountains that lay in no range but loomed up everywhere, around the full circle of the horizon. She felt very happy here with Nicky.

“Would you like some more tea?” she asked when they were starting on the chocolate layer cake she had baked. Nicky did not drink coffee except in the mornings, and she had adjusted her habits to suit his.

“I would if it's convenient.”

While she was in the kitchen, Nicky stood up and strolled to the balustrade of the porch. He was a slightly built man of about forty, hardly taller than Florence, of Belgian birth and Swiss and German descent. Usually his face had an expression of impersonal amiability, an expression sometimes seen on the faces of people whose business it is to be pleasant to everyone. He was manager of the second-best hotel in the town.

He put his lean hands on the porch rail and tested its steadiness. He had built the porch himself the week before Florence arrived. The two-room house he had rented would have been nothing without the porch. They were saving all the money they could to buy a house on the other side of the cathedral. The new house cost twelve thousand pesos in down payment, but they had forty-five thousand now, counting the four thousand dollars Florence was going to draw from her bank in the States. Nicky wanted very much to own a house, because he felt that no one was anything in San Vicente unless one did. He was looking forward to spending the rest of his life in a comfortable house with a comfortable wife.

“Nicky, what's the matter with the water?” Florence called to him. “It won't run.”

Nicky came into the little galley of a kitchen. A thin trickle of water wheezed into the dishpan Florence held.

“I've been waiting a long time. It's on full force.”

“Couldn't be the drought already,” Nicky said, half to himself. “I guess it is the drought starting, all right. It's early yet—but we'd feel it first up here on the hill.”

After a few days, the water stopped running in the daytime, but came on mysteriously for a few minutes around ten in the evening. Hearing it belch through the taps they had left open, Nicky and Florence would hurry and fill all the buckets and pans in the house. A week later, there was no more water at any time, and they were forced to haul it, pairs of buckets by pairs of buckets, from the nearest fountain, which was at the foot of the hill. The distance down to the fountain was only a few hundred yards, but the climb back made the chore exhausting and even dangerous. The cobblestone lane was steep, and it was a common thing to see people slip and take bad falls.

Since Nicky had little time to wait in line at the public fountain and Florence was rather weakened by diarrhea, they hired a woman to work half days for them. It was an extra expense, but under the circumstances a necessary one. Nicky knew they would have no water until June when the rains came, and this was only the middle of March.

In saddle oxfords and socks, a blouse and tweed skirt, Florence walked self-consciously past Pepe's Bar into the shade of the plaza's trees. She looked up at the open balcony of Pepe's, where the usual six o'clock crowd jammed the little tables. The balcony was bright with sports clothes, and through the brassy din of the four-piece Mexican band, she could catch American phrases.

“Oh, Freddie, you didn't!”

“I did! Lord knows what was in it, but I ate it!”

A shriek of laughter that could only be American laughter.

She longed to be up there with them, and yet she wondered if she would be happy even then. Nicky had taken her up to the balcony one evening, but he hadn't known anyone. “Oh, these are mostly new tourists,” he had said. And all of them had been so much better dressed than they that Florence had felt subdued and uncomfortable. Besides, she didn't like to drink, not even beer.

She bought some peanuts in a newspaper cornucopia for fifty centavos, and took them to a bench. She broke the shells slowly, eating the nuts one at a time, watching the balcony with the wistful expression of a child who is there and yet not there, listening at the same time for the car that would come up the narrow street at the corner of the plaza. Nicky had taken the car yesterday with his friend Mr. Sigismundo to drive to Mexico City, as they both had business to do for the hotel. It was the first night she had spent alone in Mexico, and now she was eager for Nicky's return. The peanuts were nearly gone when she heard the familiar motor, and the change to first gear for the climb to the plaza's level.

“Nicky!” She stepped into the road and waved as the car crept toward her. Here was one thing she needn't feel ashamed of before the people on the balcony. Not many of them had a car as beautiful as hers.

“Hi, Florence!”

Florence started to open the door on Nicky's side, when she saw that the backseat was full of Mexicans. They were not Mexicans like Mr. Sigismundo, but Mexicans in sombreros and dirty shirts, four or five of them.

“It's all right. Get in.” Nicky made room for her in front.

Then one of the Mexicans opened a rear door, and there was a squawk of chickens. One by one they got out, two with chickens' legs in each hand, one with a tiny white goat in his arms, and with bowing and tipping of hats they bade their adieus to Nicky and Alfredo.

“Adíos, señor! Muchas gracias!”

“Por nada! Adíos!—Adíos, señor!” Nicky smiled and nodded to each in turn.

“Who are they?” Florence asked.

“Oh, we picked them up this side of Puebla,” Nicky replied. “How've you been?”

“All right.” Florence twisted around, and inspected the back of the car. There was a swipe of mud on the edge of the seat, marks of dusty feet on the floor, a blob from a chicken. “Nicky, why'd you let them bring a goat in here?”

Nicky gave the backseat a glance. “Oh, I'll clean that, Florence.”

“Did they mess it?” Alfredo Sigismundo asked. He pulled into the parking lot and stopped.

“Not much,” Nicky said. “Buena noche, Carlos!” he called to the caretaker.

Florence didn't trust herself to speak until Alfredo left them. Then she said, “Nicky, promise me you'll never pick up people like that in my car again.”

Nicky smiled. “Why, Florence, they were stuck on the road with a broken cart axle. You couldn't just pass them by.”

Florence sat tensely in the leather chair, her Spanish lesson book open on her lap, watching Maria, the cleaning woman, moving about on the porch. In a minute, Florence thought, Maria would come to the threshold and jabber something about going home, and at that instant something inside her was going to burst in a million pieces.

The woman moved more and more slowly, idly readjusted a plate, whisked an ant off the tablecloth, because everything was ready and had been for nearly an hour. But Nicky had not arrived. Florence knew he was in one of the cantinas, drinking beer, talking on and on with Mr. Sigismundo and a lot of other Mexicans. It was the fifth time he had been very late. The third time, she remembered, she had gone down to get him, but it had been an embarrassing experience. Women were not supposed to set foot in the ordinary cantinas, so she had stood in the street in front of the open door until Mr. Sigismundo had seen her and poked Nicky. Then she had moved into the shadow by the wall and waited until Nicky had come out. Nicky was never really drunk but he could get tipsy enough not to realize or care that he kept her waiting. What annoyed her most was that when he came home on such evenings, he would invite Maria and her dirty little daughter, if they were around, to have dinner with them. Imagine! Mexican help eating their good food at their own table!