15. He’s not like he used to be

Noget takes my arm and leads me down a little street I know well. It’s Rue Lafayette, which runs straight into ours, just a few minutes away from that strange square I’d never seen in my life. Humiliated, I say nothing of my surprise to Noget.

Once we’re in the apartment, he cries out excitedly, “Just let me put my croque-monsieurs in the oven for ten minutes!”

My mouth suddenly fills with saliva, and I so yearn to eat that I feel a flood of gratitude toward Noget, even though I’m convinced now that his kindness is poisoned, and his cooking somehow infected.

He’s only feeding us to enslave us, I tell myself; he knows his treats keep us quiet, and every mouthful numbs us and binds us. How thrilled he must be to have the two teachers surrendering to his authority, to the force of his virtuosity with butter and fat, those same two teachers who once heaped such scorn on him!

I now think Ange and I misused our superior status, but in our defense might I swear that, if we were sometimes cruel, there was no real malice behind it (oh, we thought far too little of him to feel anything about him at all), no intention of hurting this person, that everything we did we did, I believe, innocently? But in fact, I then ask myself, isn’t that worse?

I look into our bedroom, expecting to find Ange asleep. But his feverish, dilated eyes cling to mine.

I go in, trying to take only cautious little breaths. The stench is beginning to seep into the apartment.

“You want to see my wound?” Ange asks, his tone pathetically hopeful, as if desperate for some way to keep me close by him.

I reflexively jump back as I lift up the sheet. The awful cavity in Ange’s side seems even deeper than before. It must be nearing his liver now, I tell myself, horrified. Mingled with bloody little fibers, the pus is still running into a shallow dish Noget has nestled against Ange’s side. All around the wound, the roll of curled flesh and dried blood looks like an old piece of leather, a bone gnawed by a dog. My lips quiver in anguish and pity. Choking, I murmur, “Does it hurt, my poor love?”

“Terribly,” says Ange.

He nods toward the door.

“He’s going to get hold of some morphine for me,” he softly goes on.

“And how, may I ask, is he going to do that? Get a prescription from Doctor Charre?”

In spite of me, in spite of my resolution to show Ange the most perfect tenderness and indulgence, a cold fury corrodes my words, because I can’t forget what I learned from Noget, and I look at the suffering face of the man I so loved, who was a part of me (but evidently the most secretive part, the most deceitful, the least honest?), and I picture that same face looking down at my granddaughter, the child they named Souhar, and then smiling at my son, smiling at that woman I’ve never met, and then, at bedtime, settling onto the pillow so near my own face, displaying the same utter transparency I still see in him now, even as I know he’s been telling me lies.

Can I really trust Noget? He couldn’t have made up anything that precise, I tell myself.

My only hope is that Ange had reasons both innocent and legitimate for lying to me, the same purity of soul that we had even as we treated our neighbor with such disregard. That’s my only hope, I tell myself, if I want to go on trusting in Ange—that he betrayed me out of an excess of compassion, an excess of sincerity.

“He doesn’t need a prescription to get what he wants,” Ange answers crossly. “Do you realize he knows all about my ideas on education?”

“I think I remember his claiming to, yes,” I say.

“Almost word for word, he recited my latest article, on the importance of self-denial,” says Ange, perking up a little. “He agrees with me.… A good teacher must have…a vocation for sacrifice; as he teaches he must continually remind himself that he could have…done something else, and what that something else is varies from person to person, but it must seem to him preferable in every way.… And yet he casts it aside so he can teach… He’s stifled his other ambitions, his true desire, for that task…a task far finer than any other. He’s given himself entirely…to the school. Noget… Noget shares my opinions, you know.”

I don’t answer, I look away, my lips slightly pursed, because I’ve always found Ange’s ideas on education faintly distasteful, vaguely repellent.

I force my voice to sound lively and bright.

“I saw Lanton this morning, he said to tell you hello.”

“I very much doubt that,” Ange scoffs. “He called just now. Noget gave me the phone, and…let me tell you…your dear Lanton seemed none too friendly to me.”

I almost shriek, “What did he want?”

“Something about a letter you’re supposed to give your son.”

“Yes?”

“Oh, I…I don’t know much about it.”

Ange closes his eyes, looking drained.

“If you don’t give him that letter, I’ll be the one Lanton takes it out on.”

“But how?” I say, desperate. “What will he do? He doesn’t have the right.”

“Of course not, he has no right to threaten an upstanding citizen just because he wants something or other from that citizen’s wife and stepson. Oh, of course…he has no right to do such a thing.”

Ange has fallen back into that mocking tone I can’t get used to. He’s wishing I’d let him go on about the school and those who serve it, wishing I’d sincerely delight in the knowledge that Noget admires and shares his ideas, wishing I was less flagrantly dubious of his crackpot theories.

But soon I’ll be going away, very likely for a long time, so I give Ange’s cheek a caress, and this gesture reminds me of a thousand others, fervidly loving, that Ange and I gave each other over those many years, effusions untouched by any trace of calculation.

Our youth was already behind us when we first met, but we loved each other, I tell myself, with an adolescent freshness of sentiment. There were no secret misgivings in the life we lived together; our enchantment was never sullied by memories and grievances, by recent hurts and past humiliations. I overlooked Ange’s tedious doctrines on the subject of our profession, and he never asked my opinion, so it was just as if he’d never proclaimed any such thing.

But now that this man has discussed those ideas with him, flattered him, Ange has turned vain and touchy, I tell myself; he wants me to approve and rejoice. Ange has lost the ingenuous spirit I loved more than anything else. Desperately sad, I murmur, “You remember I’m leaving next week?”

“Yes,” says Ange, gently squeezing my hand.

“I’ll send for you as soon as I can. I’ll get settled in, I’ll see where things stand, and then, even if you’re not quite recovered, I’ll arrange to have you transported.”

“Yes,” says Ange, almost indifferent.

“Isn’t that what you want?”

“Yes.”

“And Noget, do you think we can trust him?”

“Absolutely.”

I bend down over Ange, I press my mouth to his ear, even though the smell (deeply in love, I liked to lick his ear, smell his skin, not one nook of that poor body repulsed me) makes me gag. Urgently, I whisper, “Are you afraid of Noget?”

Ange jerks his head to one side, as far from me as he can. A grimace of pain contorts his mouth.

“Don’t say such idiotic things! It’s intolerable,” he spits out, exasperated.

Tears come to his eyes.

“You don’t get it, you don’t get it at all, you’re still convinced all you have to do is whisper if you don’t want to be heard, you still think there’s such a thing as privacy and secrecy! Nothing is…private between us anymore.”

Just then the door opens and Noget appears, cradling a platter of huge, steaming croque-monsieurs.

“At least you’ll be here with me when I die,” says Ange, in the teary tone he uses with Noget. “You’ll look after me, won’t you, you’ll look after my soul?”

“I made some of these croque-monsieurs with Emmental and the others with Comté,” Noget says amiably. “As you know, Comté has more flavor, but there’s something to be said for Emmental, which lets the ham come through more.”

“I’m not very hungry,” says Ange.

“Oh,” says Noget, very severely, “you’re going to eat anyway. You must.”