Fire and smoke and a bone stuck in the throat. A mote in the eye. A boulder on his shoulder. Antonio overwhelmed me with his intensity. Heinrich, how did you know what would happen? Despite the fact that the two of you look so different—Antonio is slender, nervous, with penetrating blue-grey eyes, and a dashing smile that reminds me of Frank’s—while you are portly and your manner is that of the understanding father—inside you’re like the screaming, anguished rat you used to sketch over and over again.
All my life I’ve searched for someone to provide magical filaments of connection and understanding. To decipher who I am and who I might become. When I met Antonio, perhaps unconsciously I hoped he could do this.
Rosa, you believe in karma, in reincarnation. What would you make of all this? I’m ashamed, frightened. Yes, I loved him and feared and pitied him.
Years later his words would sift themselves out. Once the whirlpool of his presence was gone, the words settled like stones in the clear water of a stream.
I took photos of you all in Paris. Once I forgot to move the forward lever, and two snapshots of Antonio merged into a double image. One was angelically handsome. The other was sinister.
Their heels clicked against the pavement. Eleanor shivered in the cold. She pulled her fur coat more tightly around her and adjusted her silk scarf. A few drops of rain were falling. Midnight at Les Halles. Streetlights illumined everything with a pale greenish-golden glow. Vendors were setting up their wares for the early morning. Huge mounds of green and purple cabbages. Gleaming apples. Brilliant oranges and grapes. Enormous wheels of cheese. Wagons heaped with lettuce, carrots, radishes. Raw slabs of meat hanging on hooks. Smells of fresh bread, onion soup, and wine. How earthy it all was. A cry of happiness escaped Eleanor.
Men were unloading trucks and pushing carts full of produce. They shouted and laughed and cursed each other. Whores with hair tinted red and peroxide blonde lined the streets, purses clutched in their hands. Full-breasted like pigeons, Eleanor thought. They stood on fragile high heels, calves swelling above their ankles in the bitter cold.
“Workmen fuck the putains standing up in the doorways if they’re in a hurry. A quickie à I’Americaine it’s called.” Antonio gave an exultant laugh. “Everyone. All the putains, the people of Paris, they accept sensuality here. They are not like the American Puritains! Your daughter is foutue, Madame. Foutue with the American puritanism!”
“Oh, what lovely asparagus!” Eleanor cried.
“You are folle, Eleanor. More folle than Rosa. You want to pretend everything is fine.” He laughed raucously again. “That is how people get fucked up.”
He lurched along, gripping her arm, and led her into an all night café. The air was thick with cigarette smoke. Mirrors hung on facing walls, as they did in most Parisian restaurants. She could see both of them reflected in the mirrors. His high cheekbones, she thought, were like a Slavic dancer’s. A shock of hair fell across his forehead as he lit his cigarette and then hers. The waiter brought them a carafe of red wine. Ruddy-faced men spooned soup into their mouths. One with a thick mustache winked and smiled at her. She smiled back.
“Do you have a lover?” asked Antonio.
“That’s a private matter.”
“Tell me about him.”
“How do you know I have one?”
“A woman as complex as you must have a lover.”
“You raped me.” She spoke the word for the first time.
“I perceived that for you the way to communicate is through sex.”
She downed the rest of her wine. The room swirled around her. She felt nauseous. “Was it money you wanted? To be able to blackmail me?”
“Bah! Money is energy.”
“You are diabolic. Afterwards, I wanted to kill myself.”
“Eleanor, is nothing for to kill yourself. Bodies are only sacks of skin.”
“Is not necessary,” he said. “When we fucked—baiser—to kiss as they say in French, we broke down the barriers to communicate.”
“Rosa must never know.”
“Bien sûr. She needs to be tranquil.”
Eleanor sighed. Inhaled on her cigarette. “She is difficult.”
“Madame, perhaps I am only passing through her life. But you are her mother. Why you not defend her?”
“She has always been…” Eleanor’s words became inaudible. A swarm of thoughts arose within her. Rosa shouting at her. Rosa as a child, who shrank from people’s touch. Rosa saying things no one wanted to hear.
“You are angry with her because she is the daughter of Aaron.”
“I don’t understand”
“You do not have orgasms with him very often, no?”
“He climaxes too quickly,” said Eleanor, not repressing her words.
Antonio stubbed out his cigarette.
“He thinks only of himself.”
“How can you say that?” She was angry. “You’ve never met him.”
“I know.” He was emphatic. “You are married to a child. As for Rosa and your sons, I think they have no real father.”
“Of course they do!”
“Rosa has no idea of her possibilities. I begin to show her. She has talent from you … all the poems you do not write. You have the spirit of an artist, but you do not create.”
“I beg you, Monsieur, to be more quiet,” said the manager, who suddenly appeared at their table.
“Excuse me, Eleanor. I have to piss.”
When she thought about it afterwards, his harsh judgment of her husband very much disturbed her. Yet there were kernels of truth. She felt a sense of enormous relief that at last someone—although he hadn’t even met Aaron—perceived aspects that lay beneath the surface.
They spent the next few days shopping: a bassinet, a baby carriage, tiny pajamas, undershirts, booties, plastic pants, diapers, a bottle warmer. He was surprisingly practical. When she fingered a bamboo crib at Galeries Lafayette, he shook his head. “No, that won’t do at all. It’s too fragile.”
For Eleanor, their expeditions had an exciting, even erotic quality. (Aaron considered shopping to be purely women’s work.) She bought Antonio a soft cashmere scarf to replace the one he’d given away. They picked out a bathrobe for Rosa.
At lunch, she talked about her time in Europe as a young girl. While in Paris, her mother arranged for Valentino, who was not yet well known, to make her a dress. “First he draped me in brown paper from which he made a pattern. The dress was beautiful—a dark clinging velvet. It has hung for years in the closet. Since I burned a cigarette hole in it at a party, I haven’t worn it.”
“It’s a dress for the person you are no more,” he said.
Suddenly she wanted to cry.
“Dresses are like the skin of a woman,” she murmured. “Does a five-year old girl’s organdy dress belong to the same person as her widow’s garments?”
He gave her an inscrutable look.
Attempting to overcome her mood, she added gaily, “Mother used to buy me handmade muslin underwear, which girls of good family wore at that time—this was before we went to Paris. I used to throw those things out and spend my allowance on filmy lingerie trimmed with lace.”
He blew out cigarette smoke.
“You must buy Rosa clothes,” he said. “She needs beautiful clothes.”
At Le Printemps that afternoon he picked out a black velvet suit, an ivory silk blouse, a blue sweater of merino wool for her to buy Rosa.
“For Rosa, beautiful, yes?”
“Yes,” she said weakly.
He introduced her to his friends—painters, writers, a Moroccan handyman, a filmmaker. They walked and walked along the cold pavements. Eleanor loved Paris. She loved the ancient buildings, the dark flowing Seine, the smells of fresh baked bread. Here she felt a desire to open all her senses and absorb. Despite what she had heard about the rudeness of Parisians, they responded to her with warmth. The concierge would invite her for a cup of tisane in the evening and talk about her life, her lover, who had been killed long ago by the Germans.
“Mon ami, you need a homosexual affair. It is repression that is the source of all neurosis,” Antonio was saying to a gentleman with a gray beard who was writing amidst a sheaf of papers.
“You’re insane!” The man glared at him, then gathered up his papers from the table, along with his cup of expresso, and moved off.
“Quel con!”
Eleanor smiled. “You’re lucky he didn’t hit you.” She yawned. “It’s past midnight. I’m exhausted. I should be in bed.”
“How often do you visit Paris, Madame? Is not every day. Come, I will take you to another café.”
She let herself be led, feeling young once more and in the mood for adventure.
One day he took her to meet a countess who lived on the Isle de Saint Louis. Her apartment was luxurious, with parquet floors, furniture upholstered in satin, and a view of the Seine. As for the countess, she had the fresh beauty of a peasant girl. When she greeted him with an embrace, he fondled her derrière. “No, Antonio!” But she smiled, even while she protested.
She served them tea, and afterwards he read her palm. “You will have a child.”
“Only one?” she looked disappointed.
“I see one child.”
“We’ve been trying to conceive.”
He lightly traced thin lines in the hollow beneath her thumb. “These are lines of frustration. Perhaps your husband needs his sperm count checked. Be discreet.”
The countess flushed. “Who have you spoken with?”
“No one. I just propose caution.”
The countess laughed, breaking the spell. “You’re outrageous!”
Afterwards he dragged Eleanor from café to café, drinking cafés royales. “The Countess’s uncle is editor at Gallimard. I want her to introduce me.” His voice grew anguished. “I need to obtain decent work. This life—cleaning the stairs of our building, painting apartments for friends—it is no life for a writer.”
His fingers shook as he lit yet another Caporal. “I have always been poor,” he said. “In Santiago, there were times I could only afford one meal a day. Beans and rice. But for me, money is not important. Sometimes I gave away what I had to friends. Money means nothing to me, but is important for Rosa and the baby.” He inhaled, blew out, stared past her, involved in his thoughts. “You don’t know how difficult the life can be,” he said. “My friend Fernando … you meet him the other night. He is so desperate for money. He go to the butcher to beg for scraps of meat for his dog. But he is the dog. Last week I give him the money I receive at last from Chile for a newspaper article!”
“You’re too generous.” She felt so tired. His voice kept eating into her.
“Tell me, Eleanor, would there be opportunity for me in the United States? I can work as a photographer. I can learn new skills.”
“I don’t know.”
“Life with Rosa and the baby will be too difficult here. She has no idea how to run a household or cook economically or sew. You have not prepared her.”
“She was never interested.”
“Is the duty of a mother to prepare her daughter.”
“It’s all my fault?” Her lips quivered, and tears welled up.
“Life hurts, Eleanor. You must listen.” His voice rose louder. The café owner behind the counter turned his glance on them. “I am waiting now for months for the job with Paris Soir to come through. If it doesn’t, then we must go to America. May the good God help us.
“Rosa needs me. I cannot resist when someone needs me so much. But you understand I need your help.” If you want me to stay with Rosa, you must befriend me. He was handing her the obligation of keeping them together. If he abandoned Rosa now, Eleanor would feel responsible. Somehow it was all bound up with the rape.
At the next table, a young man and a girl with long brown hair were kissing, their mouths like soft mollusks, their bodies glued together. If only Antonio and Rosa shared this kind of happiness.
But meanwhile, he was with her.
“I dread going back to Westbury,” she said. “Here I feel freer in my thoughts. It’s as though Aaron and even Heinrich, all the web of familiar things around me at home seemed to constrict me.”
“With me, you are more free.”
“Yes,” she murmured.
He put down his glass of wine and gazed at her, but she looked away. She had stepped out on an invisible ledge.
The man and girl with the long hair were getting up from their table.
One day she talked about different houses in which she had lived. “Each place has affected me so strongly. I don’t think it’s the same for a man.”
They were eating a lunch of lentils and roast lamb in a café near her hotel.
“For a woman,” he said, “a house is like a womb, while for most men a house is simply a place to sleep, eat, shit, piss, and make love.”
Her passion for her house was diffuse, she reflected. It was scattered into bits and fragments of the universe, buried in the earth with the seeds of her geraniums and roses. Buried in the timbers of the house. The house was like a second skin. It was part of her and part of Aaron.
“The house in Ohio where you lived as a child, it was like mine,” he said. “He speared a piece of meat with his fork. “Ten children. Four servants. Our Aunt Luisa never married. She devoted herself to us, and she ran the house while my mother spent hours each day playing the piano.
“After my father died, each child under law received an inheritance from the estate. Still, we were poor. There were many unpaid bills, and my mother was having a difficult time. I gave her my portion—I was the one child who did. But she treated me the worst! She put me into the coldest and dampest room in our house. I came down with arthritis. Aunt Luisa took care of me, because my mother had no time. She was too busy with her social life and with the Church—she was a strict Catholic. For two years I could only walk with a cane.” His face hardened. “I was too strong for her to love. She could not dominate me. She could not break me, as she did the others. … When she dies, I will dance on her grave!” he said, his eyes flashing.
“Always I help others, but I do not help myself. With the right woman, I could be formidable.” His eyes met hers. She glanced away, feeling as stirred up as if she were a young girl.
Late that night he knocked at the door of Eleanor’s hotel room. His stance was unsteady, and his voice had a fanatic quality which it took on after he drank too much.
“Eleanor, let me in.”
She opened the door. She was in a long nightgown, just about to slip into bed. “Get dressed,” he commanded. He seemed in such a volatile, fragile state that she did not dare refuse.
She went into the bathroom to dress, while he helped himself to the contents of the flask on her bedside table.
At the Deux Magots, filled with late night customers, he ordered cognac for them both. “I need a woman who is strong,” he said. He paused and sipped from his glass.
“I want to complete a collection of stories I began years ago. But I need tranquility and freedom from financial worries. I am not calm enough. I drink to quiet my nerves. I am like a person without a skin.” His fingers trembled as he lit a fresh cigarette.
“Rosa loves you more than she has ever loved anyone,” said Eleanor.
“She needs me, but she does not know how to love me. All men are children. I am too much for her. A woman can only love a man whom she can see as a child.”
“She does need you very much.”
“And what if you and I ran away together? You are frivole, but you are strong. Together, we might each become formidable.”
“I wish I could run away with you,” she heard herself whisper.
Later that night she felt tempted once again to swallow all her Seconals. Thirteen remained inside her leather travel kit.
To die, ah to die.
To carry out Heinrich’s threat and drift into eternity.
She dreamed she was deep inside a cave where a gnarled old man hunched over a fire. He was chuckling to himself. “You do not see,” he said.
“See what?”
“If you saw, you would not need to ask.”
Rosa, forgive me. Who can dictate to the heart?
What if she had gone off with him? What if she had broken all the taboos, cast herself off from family and friends, and lived with him in Paris or Barcelona?
“You live in dreams, regrets, and anxieties,” said Antonio. “Like a sleepwalker you let eternity … the now … pass you by.”