Almost Pure Joy

There was Braudel which I’d never gotten around to reading. And Middlemarch. A senior editor at Viking long ago had told me that he reread Middlemarch every year. I could at least do it once. And Parade’s End. The Great War and Modern Memory, plus three or four issues of The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, which weighed almost nothing. All this and more was spread on the bed when Kay wandered in.

“Are you going to have room for any clothes?” she asked innocently.

“These are just some possibilities. I haven’t decided on anything.”

“There are bookstores in Paris, you know.”

“I don’t like to take chances,” I said.

We were going over for ten weeks: the two of us, the dog, and Bill, a close friend. All going together. We’d been many times to France, and so had the dog, but Bill, though an art dealer and a prodigiously read man, had never been there. He loved Paris as much as anyone did—he had just never seen it. That was going to be remedied.

In the end I got everything into two bags and Kay had two of her own. In a carry-on bag I also had a bottle of 1976 Château Latour, “the most consistent great wine in Bordeaux and probably the world,” to quote Hugh Johnson, for a special occasion. Château Latour 1976, then nine years old, was probably available in France, but as I said, so as not to take chances . . .

We had planned the trip for a long time and had even taken a brief earlier trip as a kind of reconnaissance. We had rented an apartment in the 16th arrondissement, the silk-stocking district of Paris, on a street called Belles Feuilles—beautiful leaves—just off Avenue Victor Hugo and not far from a brasserie called the Stella, which turned out to be the canteen of the 16th, filled on Sunday evening with chic couples back from the country, the women in mink coats and blue jeans.

Away from the avenue, in the opposite direction, was Avenue Foch, immensely wide and bordered with embassies and houses with iron-fenced gardens.

A friend in Paris had looked at the apartment for us—we had taken it sight unseen—and given it an okay. It turned out to have a terrace and, on the first floor, a German shepherd that broke out in terrific barking whenever we passed with Sumo, our dog.

Sumo was a Welsh corgi, nine years old at the time, intelligent, imperturbable, and slightly lame, although he could run like a hare when necessary. “Oh! Le pauvre petit!” the French women would cry upon seeing him limping along, some of their sympathy spilling over onto me. There were not many corgis in Paris, a city otherwise rich in dogs, so there were also frequent questions as to Sumo’s origin. My dog vocabulary gradually grew stronger.

On the way down to the wide green borders of Avenue Foch, past the hospital, Belles Feuilles ran into Avenue Bugeaud, the street on which Louise de Vilmorin lived with her American husband and their three children before the war. Aristocratic, literary, and a famous beauty, she was one of the goddesses of her generation. The apartment building she lived in is still there, of course—that is the way Paris is constructed—and the small tabac near the corner is there as well. Louise de Vilmorin, restless and bored, told her husband she was going down to the tabac to get some cigarettes but in fact met her lover there, with whom she departed, comme ça, as they say, becoming divorced, later marrying a Hungarian count, and eventually winding up after the war as André Malraux’s mistress and close friend. One can get an idea of her appeal from a photograph in Vogue, and her style from the brief but irresistible novel, Madame De, one of several she wrote.

Walking down to Avenue Foch, I would look up to imagine the windows of Louise de Vilmorin’s apartment where her husband sat with the newspaper as she left and where, legend has it, she could look back up and see him reading.

When we arrived in Paris we went immediately to lunch, for me oysters and white wine. Then we walked or napped, I don’t remember, but when we reached Bill’s hotel that evening, on Rue de Longchamp, and opened the shutters, there, almost at the end of the street it seemed and blazing with light was the Eiffel Tower. It was like some unbelievable fireworks display except that it went on and on. A more dazzling welcome to the city would be hard to imagine.

We rented a car. There was an argument about that—the rental agency had confirmed a small car, but when we arrived all they had was the large touring size which they offered at no reduction in price, accompanied by helpless shrugs. We drove to Switzerland, had some adventures, then back through Germany along the Rhine. The dog went with us, of course, and most of the luggage. A few days after returning to Paris we went out to Versailles for a picnic. Bill, naturally, had never seen it.

The day was sunny and warm. We parked in the huge, cobbled courtyard, strolled at length through the famous gardens, and finished with one of the tours of the great palace itself. In the Hall of Mirrors, Kay began to feel a little funny and a few minutes later, in the gilded theater, said she thought we should be getting back to Paris.

I perhaps have forgotten to mention that she was pregnant, eight and three-quarters months. Despite the most heartfelt advice (You need support, you need family around) and pleas (Oh, please, please don’t have that baby in Paris) and after long, lazy discussions and a final, snap decision, we had come to Paris for the delivery. Why, you may very well ask. Put it down as a romantic idea. We had taken some practical steps, visited the American Hospital in Neuilly, just outside of Paris, and made arrangements with a French obstetrician there. The American Hospital is an old and in some ways elegant institution where English is spoken, generally, and rich people, seeking comfort and dignity until the last, sometimes go to die. Among the many patrons commemorated on bronze tablets is the name Macomber, which I assume Hemingway took for use in his celebrated story.

French medicine is, in some quarters, looked upon as slightly primitive, though in my experience it has proved to be more than satisfactory. In the provinces doctors often have no receptionists, the gorgons whose purpose seems to be to make life difficult for the patient, and answer the phone and make out bills themselves. For a slight, fixed amount in France they will make house calls, and although they approach every diagnosis by way of palpating the liver, in a country of excellent food and plentiful wine, perhaps this is not misguided.

We drove into Paris in the early evening, the lovely twilight hour known as cinq à sept. No city is more beautiful at day’s end. Bill went on to his apartment, which he rented from one of the Nabokovs, on Rue Oberkampf. He had met a Swedish girl a few days before and regained his feet, so to speak. On Belles Feuilles, we nervously timed the contractions. We had been instructed not to come to the hospital until they were three minutes apart.

At nine o’clock we went, past Porte Maillot and out the boulevard. Paris was infinite and alight. The diners everywhere were being served their entrees, the sommeliers were opening the wine.

Admission formalities at the hospital were the briefest. We went upstairs to the obstetrical section. There was only one other woman, Lebanese, I believe, there as a patient.

For an hour or so in the quiet of the labor room the contractions became stronger and more closely spaced. At about eleven, Dr. Bazin arrived. I had the distinct impression he had come from a dinner party and before that had spent a pleasant afternoon on the golf course. Perhaps it was the plaid trousers. Bazin was a slender, poised man, not given to much conversation. He was a Breton and had some of the stoicism of the breed. In his sketchy English he asked if I would mind stepping out of the room for a few minutes while he conducted an examination.

The next thing I knew, they were wheeling Kay out. I went back in to see Bazin. There were a few complications, he explained. The baby was not facing the right way and had the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck. Also there was some dark matter in the amniotic fluid which emphasized we should not delay. I was not to worry, however, he told me.

“Dr. Bazin,” I said, “I am not worried. We have all the confidence in the world in you.”

He nodded in modest acknowledgment and started to leave, but I went on.

“We came to France especially to have this child, in this hospital, and to have you deliver it. It’s exactly as we wanted and planned. There’s just one thing,” I continued.

“Yes?” he said uncertainly.

“When the baby is born, we would like to wet its lips with good French wine so that it will remember the taste all its life.”

This was the romantic climax. In ages past the custom was a birth ritual of French kings. Bazin looked at me for a moment or two with what seemed incomprehension. Then, glancing around, his eye fell on the bottle of Château Latour standing on the glass shelf above the sink. He went over and picked it up.

“Is this the wine?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“This is not entirely a bad wine,” he remarked, reading the label.

I declined his invitation to be in the delivery room and went to telephone Bill. It was surely near H-hour and the Metro closed at about this time. Then I stood in the hall, not far from the delivery room door, and listened to the groans and cries that were Kay’s, the unexcited French voices belonging to Bazin, a nurse and an anesthetist, Bazin’s counsel and instructions in English, the vague sound of instruments and the rest. Then I heard, and it caused a chill to go through me, the sudden, unmistakable wail of a newborn infant.

It had all been a kind of dream, the pregnancy, her tremendous happiness, deciding to go to Paris at the last minute, Belles Feuilles, everything. The baby’s cry was like the sound of an alarm clock. The nurse, a good-looking girl in black net stockings beneath her white smock, came out and said, “You have a little boy.” Almost at the same time, from the delivery room, I heard Bazin call, “Pull the cork!”

After wetting the little boy’s lips—he was already himself, slim, cocky, serene—we drank the rest of the bottle, Kay, Bazin, the nurse, the anesthetist, and I. Real wineglasses had been produced from somewhere. Bill arrived as we were finishing.

Kay was tired, of course, drenched with triumph, the sort there is nothing to compare to. She was soon taken to her room—it turned out to be a corner suite with a white leather couch and clouds painted on the vaulted blue ceiling. They had earlier gone over her choices on the menu for the next day with her. The hospital had a genuine if unpretentious restaurant, the food was very good. French law requires the mother to stay in the hospital or clinic for a full week, in order to completely regain her strength before returning home to face whatever duties. As a foreigner, Kay was exempt from this, though she did luxuriate for days.

Bill and I went to what might be called an after-theater supper at Au Pied de Cochon, which I had first known when Les Halles, the great market of Paris, was across the street. We drank champagne. I was tired and giddy. It had all been a dream and now it was a dream again. Fog had settled in over the city. I dropped Bill off at about four in the morning and got home myself at about five after having wandered around trying to read street signs for half an hour. Dawn was just breaking, the first watery light coming through the bedroom windows. You have a little boy. I may have mentioned that to the dog.

What followed was almost pure joy. We had a list of student nurses who were willing to come in the evening and sit while we went out to dinner. Often one would come for two or three hours at midday as well. I cannot say we danced every night but we came close to it. We named our son Theo. It was the second choice, but the first was even more exotic and sounded to his grandfather like the name of a foreign radio. The franc was ten to a dollar at the time. We took taxis everywhere. We dined at Chez René and the Jules Verne, the Balzar and La Coupole. I often thought of the photograph of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and their daughter, Scottie, dancing all three together like a chorus line in front of the Christmas tree in Paris of the 1920s. It was like that.

It’s too early to know if the application of wine to Theo’s lips did its job, but having been born in Paris means a lot to him. He somehow believes he was born in the Eiffel Tower, and who are we to correct a romantic notion like that?

The Washington Post Magazine

August 13, 1995