Other Men's Daughters (11 page)

Their French day began at breakfast with the night's dreams. She was a beautiful dreamer. An electron was trying to get through the dusty layers of the moon, the moon was a proton, the proton a plane. The electron flew it.

“That's you flying me.”

“Creep.”

“You're one of those people who live to dream.”

“At least I'm on my own there. Awake, I have to depend on you.”

Sunday was a day to fill. Swimming was out. Cynthia was used to empty shore beaches. The Riviera beaches stank and were full of stones. (On every stone reposed a huge hunk of adipose tissue. The biggest deposits were American. In cafés, she and Merriwether guessed the nationalities of rear-ends. She was right. American girls, from fifteen on, had fat rear-ends. Her own, much worried about, was almost French in firmness.) They drove to Renoir's house in Cagnes, to a perfume factory in Grasse, to Vence to see Matisse's chapel. Mostly they walked in the hills, but of late Cynthia tired easily. For a girl who'd been a dancer, acrobat, tennis player, a rider of horses and motorcycles, it was unsettling. Her breath got choppy, her system sluggish; it was not just low blood pressure. He worried about her.
Is it a kind of imitative senility
, he asked his
cahier. To equalize us?

He also worried about his children. Letters weren't enough. He wanted to kiss them, talk with them. When he missed them like this, he grew numb with anxiety, the sun gave black light. He could be finishing up some terrific fishstew in the old market of Nice, listening to one of the wandering musicians playing some heartbreaking Fritz Kreisler song, when the thought of George and Esmé, and then Priscilla and Albie would fix him where he sat. Cynthia would pick up the
bad vibes
, and within ten minutes there'd be an argument which was not playful. They would drive home in silence, his heart a rock, feelings anesthetized.

“You're an ice-man. You're inhuman.”

“It's the way I am.”

He'd sleep alone in the small bedroom. Or wouldn't sleep. One look, one word activated an arc of misery in her. “The way I am,” the way she was. Which put them in separate beds. Knowing her state was rockier, deeper, more miserable than his, he forced himself over his coldness to kiss her, to say he loved her, to make funny noises. Five minutes, and she melted. The waters ran back, and he felt the love he had pretended.

The first day he drove down to the Zoological Laboratory, the Rector, Dieudonnet, showed him around.

“I wish we had more space for you,” said Dieudonnet. He was stiff, dark-eyed, ironic. Square-feet-of-laboratory-space was a professional caste mark. “We do offer you an assistant who knows your work. And knows English as well. Though I see that is superfluous.”

The ironic play in the Rector's face prevented Merriwether from knowing whether or not his French came up to snuff.

“You're extraordinarily generous,” he said.

Merriwether's assistant was Georges Pecile, a solid, handsome, in-drawn man of twenty-three. Merriwether sat on a table and told him what his project was, what he needed, what he hoped to do. Pecile understood perfectly, even seemed interested in the work. They got along. Not perfectly, for there was the tension of two intelligent researchers, twenty years apart, one enjoying privileges, the other serving what he regarded as unnecessary apprenticeship.

Pecile was from Nice. He said he'd show Merriwether the city.

“That would be fine. I'm here with a friend.” The “e” of
amie
is silent, but the look and tone were clear. “We would like to see what's going on.” Though even saying it, he felt a constriction. Cynthia was Pecile's age, Pecile was attractive and intelligent. Merriwether wanted no strain. They drove down to a café near the old market, and sat talking for two hours over coffee. They talked in both languages, often in the same sentence. Shop talk. Very pleasant. “You claim maturation is there for the asking?” said Pecile.

“The baby girl has her 200,000 ova in her, the enzymes are all there. Who is to say that the physical theater of the chemical play isn't significant? If the theater's too small, the temperature, the actual velocity of command-response must differ.”

Pecile is surprised by this American with the mild face. An alert type, yet filled with Anglo-Saxon wind. Hands expressed French disgust with metaphysics; Pecile knew the proper boundaries of discussion.

Merriwether did have a recent passion for the metaphysical. (And wondered if this meant his scientific menopause.) “It's my dessert,” he said.

He drove up the hill.

The sun is boiling color out of the flowers. Cynthia was in the garden in her yellow bikini, reading
Fort Comme la Mort
. They kiss, he tells her about Pecile, she tells him that the painter has just fallen in love with his mistress's daughter. “Disgusting,” says Dr. Merriwether.

He changes into his shorts, pours two glasses of white wine and reads
Nice-Matin:
Eddy Merckx is humiliating his Tour de France competitors; a firebug is arrested in Villefranche; there is trouble in Nigeria; new films. He goes for his
cahier
and sketches the villa, the flowers trained over the eaves, the bird-cage lamps, the wood strips glued on the stucco, the scalloped roof, the porcelain urns, Cynthia reading near the medlar tree, feet, ankles, knees, thighs, the strip of yellow cloth. He crosses out the sketch, takes up a
Que sais-je
book,
Sacred Scriptures of the East
(Cynthia's choice), and returns to a passage he thought of using as epigraph for his Conference paper. A Genesis story: The Primeval Being, Aditi, Thirst, which moved over No-thing until it created
ar-ka
, Sanskrit cousin of
aqua
. “What was neither existent nor inexistent, out of darkness concealed in darkness, born from the force of contemplation, out of which rose Kama (Desire), the Germ of Mind.”

Amidst the tiger-colored bees, the humming birds, the blazing flowers, five yards from his beautiful companion, Merriwether melts with this antiquity. These beautiful texts survive by miracle. The Genesis story had been carved on a grindstone. Grains of millet were found in the cuneiform grooves.
The fragility of what's precious
, “Cynthia.”

She looks up, sees him looking at her, smiles, stretches her legs, sticks out her tongue.

The other American at the Conference was John Brightsman of the University of North Dakota. A student of mosaic and regulatory propagation in molluscs, Brightsman did pioneer work that had been disregarded for many years. Soured to the point of mania, he showed up at conferences, but his papers were badly phrased and organized. Very few understood what he was getting at. He, in turn, sneered at men who went on doing work his own made redundant. He became more and more of a troublemaker, burst out during the presentation of papers, corralled authors in the lobbies and told them they ought to take up plumbing. On the other hand, he was generous about work which pleased him. Merriwether had once received a wonderful note from him, full of praise and useful suggestions.

After the first session of the Conference, he came up to Merriwether. “Remember me? Met you in Detroit.” He wore a Palm Beach suit, rope-soled sandals, no socks.

“Glad to see you.”

Brightsman suggested they have supper together.

Merriwether said he'd like to, but he was staying way back in the hills with a friend who expected him.

Brightsman's diction and syntax were irregular, even shattered, as if he were gathering thought bits in broken containers. “I get you,” he said. “I guess I get you. Or maybe I got you.”

One evening, eating with Cynthia at an Alsatian restaurant on the
Rue de Suisse
, Merriwether spotted him looking at them through the window. Caught, he smiled and waved. Brightsman came in. He was wearing a dark tweed suit, the only one in sight not in summer clothes. It was like a coffin coming through a circus. “You been hiding this,” he said. “Where did you keep it?” The eyes, mottled and glittering, rolled back as if summoning Cynthia into his cranial cave. “Such a sly boats. Well, we gottcha.”

“Have you eaten, John?”

“More more than less.”

“We're finishing.” There was coffee, cheese and fruit to come.

“I've got nothing better in the chute.”

“Will you take a little of this?” Merriwether held up a bottle of Anjou rosé.

“No point drinking vinegar.” He summoned the waiter like a dog. “
Y-a-t'il un Montrachat Soixante-Cinq?
” The waiter said he'd look. “That's
vino
. I hate this country.” This was said in the decibels of his summons; half the patrons looked their way.

“I think these people understand English, John.”

“I detest the south of any country. Southerners have the temperament of equatorial animals. Violent posturers.” The speech was clear of twists. Maybe hatred was the right gear for his tongue.

“I'm from North Carolina,” said Cynthia.

“That changes nothing. But you're a terrific looking person.”

“Thank you.”

An old man, carrying a violin case, came into the restaurant.

“What's with Heifetz?”

“He comes around at dinner and plays for money.”

“He's wonderful,” said Cynthia. “We've heard him before.”

The violinist played Kreisler's
Liebesleid
.

“I do love chocolate syrup in my soup,” said Brightsman. The piece wasn't over.

“Give him a break, John.”

“I come to get fed, not to swallow chocolate schmaltz.”

Merriwether and Cynthia clapped loudly, stimulating applause that was hard to come by from the experienced victims of these café artists. The violinist played at the Mendelssohn Concerto. Brightsman groaned, triple forte.

Said Merriwether, “I'd appreciate it if you'd stop groaning, John. I want to hear the music.”

Brightsman sat up. “You're joking.”

“I am not joking. This is a decent old man. This is his living. Even if it weren't, I enjoy his playing.”

“You're a musical ass, Merriwether. A cocksman maybe, but an ass.”

“Take yourself out of here, please.”

“Says who.”

“Get off now, or I'll take you out by the collar.”

Brightsman said to Cynthia, “I pity you with this Harvard prick,” and walked out.

Mademoiselle brought them the mail at breakfast, the standard prologue for an aria of despair. This morning, still shaky over Brightsman, they wanted peace, and said “
Merci
” and “
Au revoir
, Mademoiselle.” “I can't face those red toes before three cups of coffee,” muttered Cynthia. “Who's your letter from?”

“Priscilla. And one inside from Esmé. Excuse me.” He read: Dear Dad,

Missed you in the news pictures of the Baron de Villemorin's party. Expected to see my handsome père chiding Elizabeth Taylor for being forward with him.

He smiled and Cynthia, eyes up from her letter, asked him what was so funny.

“Priscilla has a pleasant style.”

“Let's hear,” she said.

“Dear Dad,” read Merriwether aloud.

Missed you in the news pictures of the Baron de Villemorin's party. Expected to see my handsome père chiding Elizabeth Taylor for being forward with him. (Or were you that shadow in the corner handing Madame Onassis a glass of champagne?)

All quiet, desperately quiet, on the “
American Scene
.” (I'm reading that book. Why does such a smart man have to use such fancy foil???!!!) Read it? Don't. Tho it is, I know, brillllliant.

Work is gross. The lab is steamy—who said it was air-conditioned?—and though Mr. Davison is very nice to me, I get the feeling he has trouble distinguishing me from his rats. I might do worse than share their fate. Occasionally I hear what can be called screams of rat pleasure.

No one is here. Only Dasha, Mark, Mark W. and Sally Okanobu. Fred left last week. A relief to me. I was becoming his nightly toddy. Did see
City Lights
at Carpenter the other night, and that lifted me up for hours. I would trade a year of my life to get a look like Charlie Chaplin's from someone.

Forgive the empty letter. Esmé was writing, and I thought I'd give the envelope some weight. Lightweight weight.

Have a good time (but not too good).

ooo and xxx,

Priscilla

Esmé's letter was written in purple ink.

Dear Dad,

Between-ugh-camps. Cheerleaders Camp was, believe it or not, great. Great people, great spirit, and you do learn a lot, though I'm ashamed to tell people I was in “Cheerleaders Camp.” (It is, in a way. Boastful Esmé.) I am looking forward to riding camp, though I know I'll be the worst one there. Mom has been giving me pointers. Also a book called
Saddle Up
which tells you what the pastern is and how a horse can kick you to death, what to feed him (ugh) and how to dress and comb him (also what lipstick a she-horse likes), but between all this HELP and my tender whatsis, I dunno. Anyway, if you have to come home and treat a broken esmé-bone, don't hate me.

I miss you a lot. Not that I don't hope you're having a gooey time and wowing other people with your discoveries. But don't forget the land Columbus discovered. It contains your boastful, fearful, horselady daughter,

Esmé Tipton Merriwether

XXXXXXXXOOOOOOOO

“I prefer Esmé's,” said Cynthia. “They both write well.”

“Albie writes better than anyone in the family. When he writes. It's his one non-athletic gift. Unless you count refinements in time-passing.”

Cynthia is in a man's shirt—not his—which covers what pants would cover. Her “face” is not on, she looks a bit snubby, but beautiful. She tells him the night's dream. She was a fly just getting out of a cocoon before the moth which belonged there grew and crushed her.