Now I’ve done it. I’ve tossed Henri’s things right out the window. The meaning of this will surely not escape Madame DuClos. Christ! The street is strewn with expensive shirts, designer jeans, his precious black bikini briefs.
There’s someone at the door downstairs. It might be him. I’ll just go and have a look… Blast! Damnation! It’s Madame. I don’t dare lean out the window and say, “Good evening, Madame, I thought you might be Henri,” because she’d ask where he was; she’d say she hadn’t seen him in weeks—ever since he left on holiday to… it was Switzerland, wasn’t it? And then she’d laugh that deep down, hearty, malicious laugh she’s got when she’s having a really good time. She likes to see me suffer. Always has. I don’t know why.
Oh she is poisonous, that woman: tiny, menacing, loud. And the pleasure she takes in my present circumstances is out-and-out sadistic. “Monsieur Henri seems to have found himself a new little friend,” she says, “and a huge and beautiful car with a chauffeur,” she says. “How does it happen that you never go with the young monsieur and his new friend, who is foreign, n’est-ce pas?” She thinks she detects a bit of a German or Austrian accent. “Perhaps he is Swiss,” she says.
“He is,” I say, “a business associate of Monsieur Henri.”
“Oh?” she says, and here she raises one eyebrow—I’ve always envied people who can do that, it’s the pinnacle of scorn. “Comme les autres, like the others?” she asks.
Ah, she is vicious, absolument vicieuse. You see she seems to believe I’m Henri’s pimp or something, though she always refers to me as the intellectuel. The man of letters, she calls me. She herself is a worker, she describes herself that way, so when we first moved in, as a Marxist, I naturally tried to engage her sympathies, but she would have none of it.
“It’s all very well for foreign intellectuals,” she says, “but there’s nothing in Marx for the workers. I remember the days of le Front Populaire and the sit-down strikes. I marched. I sang. It was all very exciting, but they didn’t beat the Germans, they didn’t stop les boches, did they? No! It took the Americans and General Charles de Gaulle to do that! And now. See what we have today. Look at my France, ma pauvre France: overrun with foreigners,” and she narrows her gaze right at me.
She’s out there now, shouting up, “Monsieur Edmond! What are all of these clothes doing in the street?”
I don’t see why she assumes they came from our apartment. I mean, we’re not the only ones living here. They might have come flying out of any number of other windows.
“Je sais, Madame, I know. A little mishap. Cleaning. I got a little overzealous. I’ll be right down to fetch them.”
“I should hope so,” she yells. “I should hope so.”
I didn’t toss the photograph. I couldn’t bear to. It’s the one in the Pierre Cardin frame with the mauve mat which sets off Henri’s black hair so beautifully. It’s not bad of me either.
Voici! Henri! L’homme que j’adore.
The serious student of French will, no doubt, take note of the construction, the man I adore. He might well ask why it is not the other way round, l’homme qui m’adore, the man who loves me. But one is never adored by the one one adores. Not ever in the same moment. I think it runs counter to the physical laws of the universe. Though he is, Henri is, really quite fond of me. At least he says he is, usually, or he did, usually, until he went on holiday last summer to one of those fishing villages along the Costa Brava and met—the Baron von.
Henri ne restera pas longtemps chez moi. Henri is not long for this household, I think. Though I’d never chuck him out. Oh no. Not when you’re my age, you don’t. You wait till he leaves on his own, then you give others to believe it was your idea, but you never say that outright. People would come away thinking… something you’d rather they not. At least I wouldn’t want them to, you know, think what they usually think—the worst. And there are worse ways, I suppose, for cher Henri to take his leave from me than on the arm—though it will most likely be in the backseat of the chauffeur-driven Mercedes—of the Baron von.
Henri is really quite bright. Though he is busy living the unexamined life and has not the sort of intellect that is drawn to books, he is very shrewd. Oh yes, he is. He has what the French call intelligence du coeur, which is intelligence of the heart, which is something the French say about the Italians, which is sort of a gentle way of saying they are stupid, which they are not, of course, and neither is Henri. I don’t mean it in that sense. I mean he is so generous, one is just naturally inclined to trust him. I love that about Henri. I do. He has this sense about people when they are needing attention, and he gives it to them freely, and often it’s just the thing that’s wanted. One can tell by their faces, the way they open to receive him.
He has, in addition to this intelligence du coeur, he has what you might call intelligence de la poche, intelligence of the pocketbook. He has this knack of finding people with enough money to take care of whatever it is he is wanting just then. He’s always in the right place at the right time, ready to receive small and not-so-small favors. But that makes him sound like a terrible con, un mauvais type, which he is not at all. He’s quite the sweetest boy you’d ever want to know. Well, boy, he’s twenty-eight, but he’s a young twenty-eight, if you know what I mean. Quite lively. Very inventive. Henri is always spontaneous, a real bon vivant. Comme on rigole quand Henri est là. The trouble is, he’s not often là. Not here, that is, not present, so it’s difficult to laugh as much, c’est tellement difficile to rigoler, because these days he is usually off with the Baron von, who is not actually a baron but a baronet, a fact which I would point out to Henri, did it not seem so petty, for it’s not the title he’s after so much as the… well, you see the Baron has quite a bit of money, and Henri has always liked nice things, and it takes me a long time to earn the money to buy them for him. Sometimes I do four translations in a month, arduous ones, from Russian to German to French and then into English—enough to make your head swim, and mine often does, but oh! the pleasure on that beautiful face when I walk through the front door with a cashmere sweater, gold cuff links, or something delicious to eat like truffles. But with me, he has to wait. Translations take time. Not everyone is always wanting them done. And with the Baron…
Though you mustn’t get the wrong idea. Henri works too. When he can find it. In restaurants mostly. To watch him is to see the mere act of waiting tables elevated to High Art. And I’m not joking. He has a certain genius for it. It helps, of course, that he is very handsome, but that’s only part of it. He is able to make ugly women feel ravishing and old men feel alive all over.
He models occasionally for one of the men’s fashion magazines. And there was that film, though it was not a film; it was pornography without any pretense to art at all. We argued about it bitterly.
“It’s just money,” he said.
“No,” I said, “when people are forced to degrade themselves and others to get it, it is not just money but something pernicious.”
“What is degrading?” he cried.
And I could never explain it to him, so then he’d change tactics and call me a Communist, un euro-communiste, because I am ambivalent about money, I always have been, and so I would quote the head of the French Communist party at him, you know, “A Communist can be a good Catholic, there’s nothing at all contradictory about that”—Henri despises the Church almost as much as he despises Marchais and the Communists—and he would say, “Balls!” or the French equivalent, and I would laugh then because he is such a petit bourgeois, Henri is, and he’s the one who sprang from the loins of the proletariat. Not I. Oh my no. I’m as upper middle class as they come, which is why I’m a Marxist and he is not, you see, for I know the upper middle class for what it is, and Henri only knows it for what it likes to appear to be, and so he is quite conservative, politically. Every bit as bad as Madame DuClos. I’m surrounded by Gaullists and Vichy sympathizers! Why, if General Pétain were alive today, he’d have Henri’s unequivocal support—or worse, his complete devotion. Well, what do you expect? He doesn’t read. He merely parrots what he hears from the men who buy him drinks in the bistros. What I can’t fathom is why they seem to talk nothing but politics in bed.
Yes. He goes to bed with them, and if they are rich Henri is the one who brings home the truffles and a bottle of Château Neuf du Pape. What can I do? I don’t like it, but I can’t exactly tie him to the bedpost—of course I could, one does, one often hears about it, but it’s not the sort of thing that appeals to either of us. So there is nothing to be done. It makes me jealous. He says they mean nothing to him. He always says that, but it gives me a curious feeling, that they mean nothing to him, and I do, and his going off with them makes me suffer, and yet he does it, though they mean nothing to him, and why would anyone go and do something that meant nothing to him, go and do it again and again? Of course the extra money is quite nice, but we do not, we have not ever seen this in the same way.
It has to do with understanding how delicate, how temporary life is and how in the flick of a wrist it can be snatched away, or it can drain off a little at a time as you stand by and watch, helpless to do anything. Perhaps one has to have come nose to nose with death, one’s own, the possibility of one’s own, or someone else’s. But even then, we all know people who do not see it. I mean surely, once one has had that experience, once one sees life turn from one and start away, one can never say it has no meaning.
What, then, can it mean? That he is not here?
Oh! I long for the old days when we were first getting to know one another, and I knew where he was. I like to think of those days, they give me solace, often they do, but sometimes they do not; they make me feel old and unwanted, used up—cast aside. And for what! For whom! A baronet posing as a baron and simply because he has the money to buy cher Henri whatever his little black heart desires. It’s the humiliation I can’t bear. I’ve had him—you know, had him around—for eight years. I must be scared to death of losing him. Just look at me. I’ve broken out all in a sweat. What will I do without him? How shall I live? I’ve grown so used to him, and now—how can I make room for this grief? For it will take up room, more room than I have here in this apartment that’s become so full of associations of cher Henri. Or maybe the grief will fill up the space he has left, fill it up nicely, oh yes, and grow, feeding on the furniture, sucking all the oxygen from the rooms, until it heaves, rising up larger and larger to choke me.
Or I could move—far, far away from Madame DuClos—take a smaller flat, sort of squeeze the grief out of my life, but then the grief might fill it up when I’m not looking, might crowd me out of my own home, and I’d have to take all my meals in cafés and go for long walks to keep myself busy, for there’d be no room in my flat for me. Every cubic centimeter of it would be filled with his absence… and my own sense of failure.
But wait. He hasn’t left yet. There I go jumping to conclusions, when he’s not actually left me. Not yet. I must remember that. Yes. That steadies me. He hasn’t even mentioned leaving me. Of course he isn’t leaving me! How could he? I am his life as much as he is mine. Except that’s not quite true. I’m the one who’s in danger, not Henri. Never Henri. Even so, I must keep things in perspective. He has not yet announced that he’s going off to the Isle of Capri with the baronet—odious little man, he always smokes cigars, with his scarlet cummerbund stretched too tight over his belly full of the world.
Madame DuClos seems to be quite taken with the Baron, despite his German accent. When push comes to shove, she’ll go for the title, no matter what its country of origin. She feels that democracy went terribly wrong somewhere along the line and the only thing left to save us is the restoration of the monarchy. “After all,” she says, “it’s just like what we’ve got now with this bureaucrat above the next, all the way up to the président de la république, but with kings, it’s more amusing, we have more interesting people to talk about, as you have in England, Monsieur Edmond”—and she looks at me, as though she were thinking there might be hope for me if only I liked Queen Elizabeth.
So I think she encourages Henri and his friendship with the Baron. And she flirts with the Baron. She does. I’ve seen her. She’ll notice his car waiting in the street below, and then she runs to put on a dress and one of her old turbans and some rouge, et voilà! There she is, hanging out of her window, screeching, “Bonjour, Monsieur Henri, Monsieur le Baron, you have such a lovely day for your outing”—that’s what she calls them. And anyone can see she’s just aching to have a ride in the Mercedes. Anyone, that is, except the Baron, who never offers. He’s far too obtuse. Besides, he wants to get Henri away as fast as possible because there I am in another upstairs window, sometimes leaning out to wave, and at others, peering through the partly opened shutters.
I make him a little nervous. I like making him a little nervous, just to remind him that I’m still in the picture. So I wave. “Bonjour, Monsieur le Baron. Amusez-vous bien.” Then I ask when they are getting back, or I shout out a time when I’d like Henri to return, and Henri rolls his eyes up at me, the Baron says nothing, and off they go, waving at Madame before they disappear behind the tinted windows—I wonder if they’re bulletproof—and Madame waves and shouts after them and then asks me again why it is I never happen to go with them, and then she smiles that awful smile.
But he hasn’t left me yet, Madame. The gold-plated razor that was my Christmas gift to him last year still sits on the ledge above the bathroom sink. I wonder how he shaves when he’s away.
So we are still together, Henri and I, the only difference being he is never here. This time he’s been gone for weeks. I don’t know what to think. “Think what you want,” he would say. “Pense ce que tu veut, ça m’est égal, it’s all the same.” He might well say that. Isn’t it funny, when a lover’s gone for a time, and not always a long time either, one forgets what he would say, one almost forgets what he looks like, so one consults the photograph, or one is brought back suddenly to the image of his face by the smell of his shampoo on the pillow. “Oh yes,” you say. “I remember, yes, he used to live here, he used to lie right there beside me, and if I close my eyes and concentrate, yes, there is his smile, that particular one, sly, teasing, the one I loved best.”
Of course, one cannot hold onto people. It never works. And I suppose I always knew Henri would be, as it were, buggering off one day. Though I ought not to be so callous. I’m quite sure he has some genuine feeling for the Baron, though I personally cannot see why. The man has not made much of an impression on me. Still, it’s that Henri has not yet removed his personal effects—the ones I tossed out the window—that gives me reason to believe that this thing, this affair of the heart, this whatever it is with the Baron that is supposed to mean nothing actually does. Mean nothing. I mean that it will come to nothing, and Henri will once again come home to me, though he has not actually left.
If he were coming in tonight, I’d know how much supper to cook. If it’s just me, I won’t bother. I’m not eating much these days, but if Henri were to walk through the door and he hadn’t eaten—why, I can’t even think what I’ve got in the larder. Tinned meats mostly, for emergencies. But if I went out to buy food, I might miss him. He might telephone and, finding me not here, assume I’d gone out, which I would’ve done, but I’d have been right back and he’d have no way of knowing that. And if I did go out to do the marketing for the both of us, and Henri didn’t come home, I’d have endives rotting in the fridge, apples moldering in the bowls, onions decaying in the baskets that hang from the kitchen ceiling.
It’s the waiting I hate, the uncertainty. Oh Sweet Mystery of Life at Last I’ve Found Thee, but I wish you’d call to let me know you’re going to be late, telephone or leave me a note when you’re planning to stay away. And yet I dread the note that will read “Cher Edmond—I’ve gone off with the Baron forever. Please send my things. Je t’embrasse. Grosses bisses! Henri.”
If I still had friends, they’d say I was a fool. They’d tell me to get on with my life. They’d insist that I have it out with Henri and force him to make a choice. But they couldn’t know, for I’d never be able to tell them, how frightened I am he’ll make the wrong one. Leaving me is always the wrong choice, though the ones who leave never seem to come round to that idea themselves. Off they go, and all I can ever hope is that they’ll regret it some day, and yet not one has ever come back to tell me that it ruined his life. In fact, one actually had the temerity to approach me at the theatre when I saw him again after we had parted ways, and he said leaving me was the best thing he’d ever done for himself, and then he thanked me, he embraced me and thanked me, and I just stood there in the foyer of the Comedie Française: stunned, dumbfounded—aghast. I couldn’t think of anything to say. So I took Henri by the arm and led him away without introducing him.
Christ! There she is again, caterwauling in the street. All right. All right. “Ça va, Madame. Je viens tout de suite.”
She adores Henri. It’s me she can’t stand. And so she is always spying on us and always a little too polite to me and always giving me veiled threats about Immigration and the authorities: have I remembered to register with the police again this year? “You know they are getting very strict,” she says. “À cause des arabes,” she says—all of whom she believes to be terrorists. So we are rather cagey around one another, she and I.
But what am I to say? How shall I explain the clothes in the street? Well, Madame, Henri is sweet, he’s quite the lovely little morsel, and as he is French he loves the finest things money can buy, and well, it’s evident, isn’t it, that the Baron’s got money, and you can see for yourself, regardes moi, that Henri’s tastes run to older men. Yet you must remember, ma chère Madame, we have, Henri and I, something very special between us. The Baron means nothing to him; Henri says so himself. No, Madame, between me and the jeune Henri there is a history, eight years together, an unbreakable bond. Why, I practically raised the boy, Madame, I helped to create him, he could never turn his back on that, now, could he? He will be back, I know Henri, he’ll come home, and you’ll see, we will be happy again, singing, shaking the rugs out the window, tumbling out of a taxi, home from the bars, drunk and laughing and trying not to wake you, Madame. Surely you understand love. Surely you had in your youth the attentions of some young man, your husband perhaps. And surely you know, Madame, what it is to be no longer young, and how often one’s greatest fear is of growing old alone. I don’t mean to give offense, Madame, I’m sure you make out quite well on your own, but you see it’s something I’d like to avoid myself, so as you may have noticed, I am rather distraught with Henri running off everywhere with the Baron von Deutschemark, the Baron von Mercedes, the Baron von house on Capri. And if this is it, if this is the night he fails to return, if this is the night which marks the onset of a life without love, I doubt, Madame, I shall ever be able to look you straight in the eye again.