IT WAS Madame Laure’s day off, he learned. She spent Sunday afternoons and evenings as well as Mondays with her married daughter living in Courbevoie, a short distance from Paris, and returned to work early on Tuesday.
I’ve resisted the temptation to give you cold roast beef or cold chicken, Alice added, offering him a drink. Do you like cheese soufflé? You had better say you do, because that’s what you’re having.
He was seeing a different Alice, he thought, relaxed and cheerful—as cheerful as she had seemed when she kissed him leaving his hotel suite—and proud of her accomplishments in the kitchen. The wine she poured seemed if anything better than the wine he had chosen when they ordered from room service, but a Bordeaux, so that the comparison was of doubtful validity. Poor Tim’s cellar, he thought, but she told him that particular bottle was her father’s. He had laid down a great deal of wine and had given her half of his cellar when he sold the apartment on rue du Bac. But Tim balked at drinking my father’s wine, she said, and had to be forced to let me serve even vintages that couldn’t wait. He actually told me I should sell my wine. He was buying, and laying down, more than enough. That actually began as soon as we moved to Paris, before my father found out he was gay, but still I think it was probably his feelings of guilt. There were other ideas he had with the common theme that he didn’t want to take anything from me that I can’t explain otherwise. For instance the way he would sulk when I gave him a present that cost more than the price of a book or a necktie. His presents to me were extravagant. And very beautiful. For instance look at this bracelet!
The bracelet on her wrist looked like black lace.
It’s iron, she said, Berlin Iron Work, made in the first decade of the nineteenth century. They’re rare pieces, but Tim gave me several of them, whenever he found one. It wasn’t a lie that he loved me; he was telling the truth. If only I had been able to turn myself into a man—what am I saying?—if I had been born a man!
I like you better this way, said Schmidt, horrified by his own stupidity as soon as the words left his mouth.
After dinner they moved to the library, Alice having rejected his offer to help with the dishes. We’ll let Madame Laure clean up, she told him. Don’t look so shocked. It would be different if I had a dog or a cat, but I don’t, and she doesn’t mind doing it. She comes back from her daughter’s so early that she has plenty of time for it. But I was going to tell you about my job.
She had sat down on the sofa and motioned for him to take the armchair catty-corner to it.
Alice, he interrupted, I wish you would explain first how you and Tim lived together, or you, Tim, and Bruno, once you knew. Did Tim come home to dinner? Did you speak to each other? Did you entertain—I mean did you for instance invite guests to dinner? Suppose I had turned up. What would have happened?
Schmidtie, don’t be silly. Everything went on as previously, except that I didn’t sleep with Tim, and there was nothing other than kiss kiss on both cheeks when called for. If you had come to Paris, Tim would have invited you to dinner, and unless you had said that you particularly wanted to see us alone we would have also asked other people—from the office or perhaps the embassy. He would have decanted his best wine and made sure that I had ordered the best smoked salmon from Petrossian. Really, our arrangement was corrosive but not that unusual or unpleasant in a day-to-day sense. Don’t forget those wonderful manners of Tim’s. Bruno had them too, and he was more charming than any man I have known except my father. But he is almost as charming. There are many married couples living together very comme il faut, with the understanding that the husband or the wife or both have their sex elsewhere. Tim’s being gay gave it the only touch of originality. No, I’m not turning a catastrophe into a joke, she added, seeing the pained look on his face, I’m trying to give you a clear picture.
Thank you, Schmidt replied, thank you, I do realize that such marriages exist.
But you don’t like them, and knowing that they exist makes you unhappy, she chimed in. Let me cheer you up. I’ll tell you about my job, which got me through the worst period. It let me keep my sanity. I was very lucky to find one at all, and so soon after that summer. It gave me a reason to get out of the house and go to the office. To be with other people. It’s hard to describe how much it meant to me. For the first six months I was part-time, but I’ve been full-time ever since. And it was all right with Tommy; he urged me to do it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have taken the job. He didn’t get home much before me, so it was possible for me to be there most evenings to help with his homework—and just to be there. Of course, I couldn’t help with the math or even supervise, and Tim couldn’t either, but Tommy needed no help!
I do understand, Alice, he told her, truly I do. Apropos of work, I’m not sure I’ve told you that my plane leaves tomorrow late enough in the afternoon for us to have lunch. Would you like that? I was sorry not to have had lunch with you today.
I would love it, she replied, but I can’t. Tomorrow I’m having lunch with my colleague who looks after contemporary American and English literature. He’s more than a colleague: he got me hired! They would never have taken me if he hadn’t made them. I had no work experience in publishing; in fact I had never had a real job! But he had faith in me. By the way, he went to Harvard, and he thinks he knows you. I mentioned your name today. He is Serge Popov, she said smiling.
Serge Popov! The name surfaced from the depths of time like the monster rising from Loch Ness. Yes, he remembered Popov, and remembered disliking him. Oh really, he answered.
A cloud must have passed over his face because she smiled again, this time at him, and said, Don’t be like that, Schmidtie, I can’t change my lunch date. Serge and I aren’t having lunch alone, we’re having lunch with our boss. It’s important. Now stop pouting, and come here—she patted a place beside her on the sofa—and seduce me.
He limped back to the hotel through deserted streets, at the corner of rue Cambon refusing the services of a professional with spiky hair dyed green who offered them at half price in view of the lateness of the hour. Seduction indeed! But who had been the seducer? The awkward and rough-hewn stranger with the beginnings of white stubble on his cheeks or she, who had taken him into her bed and lavished on him such tenderness? From what well did she draw it? Were there words and gestures she had withheld, ones that she would bestow only on a man she loved, treasures that perhaps—no, surely—only Tim had known? In their writhing and caresses, had it been Tim she had sought, Tim such as he had seemed to be when he first introduced her to Schmidt? He did not think he would ever learn the answers to his questions even if they existed. She had accompanied him to the door and, in their last embrace, her bare arms around his neck, her naked body burning through his clothes, had murmured, Yes, that would be very nice, when he told her he would return soon. I will, I promise, he whispered. He would keep the promise. He was certain that, however extraordinary it might seem, he really loved her—the childish phrase pressed itself on him—for keeps.