17

BORDEAUX

BORDEAUX WAS THE LAST THING on Haussmann’s mind, so it was with a little surprise that he found himself traveling there the next morning. But here he was on a train, watching brown and uniform fields hurry northward under a November drizzle. He was not running away. He had woken up just after dawn, as he did every morning, and got his coffee and a précis of the day’s papers. He felt calm, better in fact than he had in weeks. His stomach was settled, his mind awake. Everything he wanted was possible, and everything possible was within his power. He smiled at his reflection in the coffeepot. The odd thing was that he wanted nothing at all. When the servant came in to take breakfast away, he said,—Pack my bags. An hour later he leaned back happily into his cushion as Paris dissolved behind him in puffs of steam. But he was not running away. The doctors had advised him to get rest and fresh air, unless he wanted the cholera to hang a retrospective in his weakened body; they warned him he wouldn’t survive that great exhibition. Therefore: he was resting. Certainly he wasn’t running away from Madeleine. De Fonce’s joke about fathers in and out of law was in poor taste, but de Fonce was an old friend and he could excuse the occasional lapse of taste. And Fillier … but he would think about that when he got back to Paris. And Madeleine pregnant, and the child. He could see no end to the fear that someone would find him out, and what was he going to do? He turned to the window. His breath made flowers on the glass, and then his fear seemed no more substantial than that, an exhalation, a mist, a hot circle which faded and then you could see out again. He settled into the cushions with a little of the stubbornness of a child pretending to sleep in the hope of stealing, somehow, an extra dream.

He arrived after dark and went unannounced to the Laharpe house, where a number of carriages were gathered. He had not telegraphed that he was coming and no one expected him. The house was quiet the way woods are quiet after a snow. He stirred the fire in the parlor and brought it back to sputtering life, then went upstairs to Mme Laharpe’s bedroom. Everyone was there: Octavie and her brother Jean, whom he hadn’t seen in years, a half-dozen family friends, and a minister who sat by the bedside mumbling something about the permanence of the idea of life. Mme Laharpe lay on her deathbed with her eyes closed. There was a stir when Haussmann came in: the others had been waiting so long for her to die that, when the door opened, they turned to look at him as though he were Death itself; then they saw that it was only the Baron—only the Baron! Jean smiled and Octavie came forward in silence and took his hand.—You’re just in time, she said.—But why didn’t you let me know you were coming?

—I didn’t know myself.

Octavie looked at him again.—Are you well?

—Tired. The train …

—You’re pale.

—I’ll say hello to your mother.

Haussmann stood by the bed and looked down at old Mme Laharpe. In life—she was not in life, now, although the covers still rose and fell over her thin chest—she had been a kind woman, if childish and overly willing to be waited upon by her children. A woman who had trouble letting go, a difficulty which she evidently still had, as, according to Octavie, she’d said her last words three days ago and still she breathed.

—Hello, mother, he said. It’s Georges. Your son out of law.

The minister looked up, surprised. Haussmann winked at him.—A little joke.

—Come downstairs, Octavie said. I’ll get you supper.

—Go in peace, the minister said.

He followed Octavie downstairs.

In the parlor she wanted to know, was something the matter? Because really he looked not well. Haussmann denied that anything was the matter. If anything was the matter it was that he hadn’t come sooner. He would have come sooner if he’d known … what? If he’d known how badly off she was, he said, then regretted saying it.—Not that she’s so badly off, I mean.

—She’s dying, Octavie said.

—Poor woman.

Octavie corrected him:—Not poor. Old. Then she said:—I’m glad you came. In the end.

—Of course I came. How could I not come?

—Well, but your work …

—Can wait! He kissed Octavie.—You are a lovely woman.

She shook her head and went into the kitchen to find something for him to eat.

*   *   *

The next morning he went hunting with Jean. The last of autumn’s flags snapped and twisted in a strong easterly wind. Everywhere Haussmann looked there were blotches of color, as though the pieces of an enormous jigsaw puzzle had been hung up to dry in the trees. The land rose and fell with abandon; the pines and holm oaks grew of their own accord to be as tall as they liked, and the sky began right above them, and rose, unobstructed by clouds or buildings, what seemed forever. The air smelled of leaves and leaf skeletons and things burning far away, and of cold, a sharp nonsmell which made the Baron’s head ring like the silence after a concert. The smell of winter approaching. Patches of frost covered the fallen leaves; their horses left practically no tracks in the road’s half-frozen dirt. On either side of the road the trees grew so thick that you couldn’t tell whether they belonged to a forest or a copse, whether on the other side of their black boles the land might open up again in farmers’ fields, where, according to the season, the last crops ought just now to be coming down. Five hundred kilometers to the north the first Parisians were getting out of bed, yawning, scratching under their nightshirts, stirring the fire, setting pots to boil, drinking coffee, opening their doors to the cold morning’s first carriages, blue in the light of the not yet risen sun, slow, like blood returning to a sleeping limb, the business of the city getting under way. Ahead of him and on either side the sound of gunfire. How good it was to be out of Paris! Here, atop a chestnut mare with the grace of the ocean in her step, Haussmann was sure he wasn’t running away. Surely he was running toward this, and surely, now that he was here in the middle of it, there wasn’t any reason to ask why? He spurred his horse ahead and looked back to see if Jean was following.

—Don’t look so sad! he called to Jean.

Jean smiled at him, puzzled.

—After all, everyone has to die.

—What?

—Everyone has to die!

Jean said something he couldn’t make out.

—The parents die and the children live on. That’s natural!

—Wait up! Jean called, but Haussmann would not. He wanted to ride fast into the trees, to see what was ahead.

*   *   *

Jean was soon out of sight, but never mind. The air was good, and the light had resolved itself into a high hazy glow, and the mare’s gait lulled Haussmann into a kind of still wakefulness. The forest rustled with the movement of living things. Now that he was out of Paris, he could see how ridiculously he had been behaving there. All that worry about reputation, and posterity! As if the dead mattered, as if they mattered. This was what mattered: the uneven ground, and the regular breathing of his mount, the clouds of her breath like the woolly, globular winds inked in the corners of some maps. There is no such thing as the dead, Haussmann told himself. There is only what we see before us. And all of it is living: look at those birds! When he was younger he knew what kind of birds they were, but long absence from the forest had stripped that knowledge away. Everything that matters is before you, and everything else exists only as long as you think about it. What a relief! He laughed aloud—but softly, as befit a man in possession of himself. Haussmann rode into unfamiliar hills and valleys broken by streams where water whispered around black wood. The consciousness that he had left behind a situation, between himself and de Fonce and Madeleine, which was dangerous to say the least, remained dully present at the center of his mind, like a spot of skin gone numb with too much rubbing. But even this thought faded as he fathomed the forest, his rifle forgotten along with any thought of hunting or even of what, if he were hunting, he would be hunting for.

Haussmann came back late to the Laharpe household. He was singing a tune that had been in his head all afternoon, with words of his own devising—a hidden talent, he thought, but he would not keep it hidden forever; he was Haussmann and sooner or later the world would know the full import of that. All in all, he sang, I wanted to know gaily,

That pleasure’s not enough for man, but daily,

He must have at least the semblance of

Undying love.

He stopped short when he saw Octavie on the threshold, her face as improbably still as if the moon itself had announced that it would no longer turn.—My dear, he said, what’s wrong?

*   *   *

—Madeleine?

—Yes, my love?

De Fonce sat on the edge of her bed.—When did you see the Baron last?

—You know when.

—Do you think he’s angry at you?

—He’s gone away somewhere.

—You’ll see him soon, though?

—Tomorrow night, he says.

—Good.

—Is something wrong?

—I don’t think so. But treat him gently, will you?

—You make him sound like a broken vase held together with glue.

—Not far from the truth, I think. Does he look well to you? The last time he was here, I could swear I saw cracks in his glaze.

Madeleine laughed.—I won’t drop him, if that’s what you mean.

—That’s just what I mean. De Fonce kissed her cheek.—I wonder if you aren’t too good for him.

—Oh, he’ll do.

He kissed her neck.—Far too good.

—Not too good for you, though.

—Oh yes. Too good for me also.

—Well, don’t let that stop you.

—Don’t worry. If I let that sort of thing stop me I’d still be selling scissors in the Auvergne.

—Mm.

—Perhaps you’d like that better, though? Very romantic, scissors selling.

—Of course I’d like it better.

—We can begin tomorrow, if you want. I’ll tell the servants to close up the house and give the money away.

—Do. In the meanwhile, will you—ow!—get off my arm and go blow out the light?

*   *   *

A great transformation had taken place in the apartment on Headless Woman Street while Madeleine was away. The griffon-footed armoire was gone, and the old table, and the candelabra, and indeed practically everything which had belonged to the Old Regime of their affair, as she referred to it now. She had replaced all of it with furniture of her own choosing, paid for by Georges. Even the wallpaper in the nursery was her design: it had a pattern of flowering vines interwoven with trees and waves and tongues of flame, horses and birds and fish in blue and gold, which she had copied from Nasérie’s robe. Madeleine wondered whether she would tell Georges that story, and thought she might, in time. Where was he? Everything else was ready. The room had chairs, there were two of them, large enough and pleasant to sit in. Madeleine sat in each of them in turn and found they hadn’t changed since morning. The rug was soft under her feet; it was a good rug, which would stand the oppression of shoes and bare feet equally. If different pieces of furniture have different characters then rugs are the saints of the inanimate. They bear what must be borne and hide what must be hid; and though they are lowly, their faces are turned always upward to the ceiling. The rug, bless it, came on time, but not the Baron. She expected him at eight, which meant that in the ordinary course of things he would arrive at nine, or at the latest nine-thirty, and here it was almost ten, and Madeleine was going to wear the rug out on its first day with her walking back and forth.

She settled in a chair—still good, still good, where was he?—and picked up a history of the Middle Ages, which she’d brought from de Fonce’s. “With the loss of the alphabet a spiritual darkness fell upon the land,” it told her, but the words meant nothing. What was a spiritual darkness? Was that when the spirit couldn’t see? and, if so, what did it see ordinarily, when there was spiritual light? As the author of the history was not present to explain, Madeleine put the book away—out of sight, so that Georges wouldn’t think she was interested in anything so old—and picked up the Turkish bird. She wound its spring and the bird hopped and sang. It brought the apartment to something like life, and that was good, because life has gravity, Madeleine thought; it attracts other life, and if things get lively enough then Georges will be here soon. If only he were here, she thought, then she would not feel, as she did, waiting for him, dissatisfied and a bit insubstantial, as though what she had arranged in the apartment was the decor not for her life but for a play. Why was it that everything seemed less real when she lived it than when she imagined it beforehand? If only Georges could be on time for her as he was for everything else, she thought wearily, she would have no need to ask such questions.

The bird hopped to the edge of the table, then hopped off, attempting its first flight. Whether because its wings weren’t made for that sort of work or because the mechanism of its voice overloaded its little body, the bird tumbled, landed on one of its wings, and lay still. Madeleine picked it up. The wing was bent out of shape, and the beak, which opened and closed as the bird trilled, hung askew. She wound it again and let it loose, but the mechanism of its legs must have jammed, for it walked unevenly a step or two, lifted its wing, and froze. Its voice did not come out at all. After a moment the bird shuddered and fell over on its damaged side.

Just then footsteps came up the stairs; the bell outside rang (why did he use the bell? Madeleine wondered), and she opened to a grin atop a dripping armful of red and blue flowers.—Mamzelle de Fonce? said the delivery boy (a man, really, thin-faced, with the uneasy eyes of a burglar).

—Yes?

—For you. Where do you want ’em?

The messenger set the flowers in the kitchen. There were a great many of them—they covered the counter, threatened to tumble into the washbasin.—Don’t know what you’ll do with ’em there, but it’s not my business. Oh: before I forget:

He took a sealed envelope from his wallet.

—Will that be all? It’s cold out tonight. Only November, but it feels like February! Why, walking around as I do, a man gets a chill … thank you, thank you, you’re very kind. And I’m off! A good night to you, Mademoiselle!

Was that a wink? The messenger was gone, his boots clattering down the stairs. Outside, he rejoined a fat, cloaked friend, and the two of them ambled off, the messenger jingling Madeleine’s coins in his hand.

The note read:

Madeleine,

Business has kept me here longer than I expected—but I hope you’ll take these flowers as a promise of my prompt appearance, and as some slight consolation for its (unavoidable) delay.

Did that mean that he would be along soon? Madeleine thought so. She settled into the sofa again, holding one of the flowers—she’d left the rest in the kitchen, for they had no vases. She twirled the flower in her palms, sniffed it—what were these blue things called? and set it down beside the broken bird. She watched the street, watched the curtains rustling in the wind, which had, indeed, got a little cold; she closed the windows and waited in the apartment, silent now, for Haussmann.

But he did not come.

*   *   *

Madeleine to Haussmann (delivered by hand the next day):

Where are you?

Haussmann to Madeleine (by post, the day after, and addressed to Mlle Madeleine de Fonce):

Dear Mademoiselle,

I received your note of the 6th inst. Unfortunately I am unable to see you now, indeed, I do not know when I will be able to see you again. However great my power may appear to you, yet it is fragile as the glass bell under which some specimen of the natural world might be preserved: one tap from the hammer of Public Opinion and it shatters, and all the beauty encased within soon crumbles in the noxious outward air. This glass must be preserved no matter what the cost, as I’m sure you understand, for you have a reputation of your own to protect. Therefore I hope you will be understanding and above all patient. In the meantime I beg you to accept, Mademoiselle, the expression of my most sincere admiration, and my most vivid regret.

G-E HAUSSMANN

—What am I supposed to do? she asked de Fonce, and de Fonce replied,—Wait.

Madeleine finished the history of the Middle Ages, which ended badly; then she read about the steam engine and the Romance of the Rose, mechanics and minotaurs, until everything became a blur; the staff Yseult planted in the ground became a coal mine run according to the most modern principles and then became dragon’s teeth in a blast furnace of flame; Cadmus sowed the teeth in the bosom of the earth and got cadmium, a bluish white metal obtained from furnace deposits, and made from it swords and shovels to do the dragon in. All history, Madeleine thought, was more or less the same story: people tearing things from the ground and making them sharp, people doing violence to one another and sticking each other in the ground again. She suspected that Haussmann had found another mistress: some slender girl with a better voice and no child on the way, or a child with no voice, or a girl with a childish voice and hips which promised nothing. She told de Fonce her idea about the mute; he laughed and told her to be patient.

She picked up Passerelle’s History of Natural Fortifications. “Vauban once remarked that Nature is the greatest engineer of all. Accordingly the highest degree of the engineer’s art consists in building nothing, but in choosing those places where Nature herself keeps one’s enemies at bay.” The book described cliffs and other heights, Natural Moats and Shifting Sands, Brush and Mud; there was a chapter devoted to Thickets and another to Streams. Passerelle noted that the seasons each have their defensive value: Spring and Fall are suited to campaigns on forested land, while Summer and Winter lend themselves more to open ground, to rolling hills and running battles. Despite herself Madeleine was caught up in the history of a Persian general whose only fortification was a weather witch, who foretold the periodic rains that turned the Persian plains to mud: “for the genius of Natural Fortifications is not in stillness but in movement, which accords itself with the endless variety of natural hindrances.” Madeleine fancied herself the general, circling on a sodden field. She loosed volleys of arrows at her mired foes and retreated, the better to charge and to emerge victorious, just as she’d done among the river reeds in the days when she governed an empire of mud. How dare Haussmann keep her waiting? Madeleine felt something strange and hot animate her; it pulled her from her chair and sent her pacing across the room. How dare he put her off? This new emotion clenched her hands and opened her eyes; it made the book, the chair, the window, everything around her seem more worthy of attention than it had previously. Each object wore a halo of importance, of reality, like the ring around a street lamp when you look at it through tears. Where this feeling had come from, and why it had come now, Madeleine could not say, but she could give it a name: it was fury. She had waited enough. While de Fonce was out buying and selling parcels of whatever he sold now, Madeleine got dressed, called for a carriage, and told the driver to take her to the Hôtel de Ville.