A Sport and a Pastime (17 page)

It’s a local
fête
. There would have been a crowd, but the rain has kept them away. Only a few families huddle beneath the awnings now. Others sit inside cars. The lights go off again. The square is in darkness.

The café is not empty. There’s a table with three men and also, in a raincoat, white legs showing beneath it, the acrobat, who waits at the bar. His face is hard. He’s been there for a long time. After a while, the
patron
offered him a drink.
Merci
. The glass is empty now. He stands there quite alone, a man in his thirties, the coat hung over his shoulders.

In a low voice running like a secret, Anne-Marie begins to describe him. He comes from the city, a poor section of Paris, she knows it well. He has a daughter, she explains, a little girl who travels with him, the mother has run away. They journey all over France together, only the two of them. The cheapest hotels. The little girl has no friends, just her father, and for toys a single doll. She’s always quiet. She never speaks. Dean doesn’t recognize this famous story. He glances at the weary face of the man; upstairs the child is sleeping. It’s all bitterly real to him, a fiction for which a place already existed in his heart.

Outside, they have finished the preparations. They come into the café to say this. Somehow the acrobat seems strangely disinterested, nor do they stay to keep him company. One has the feeling that someone else exists, an impresario, an unseen man whom they all obey.

The acrobat has accepted another drink. Dean watches cautiously, afraid of what he sees. Premonitions of disaster come over him. The entire machinery: strings of colored lights along the guy wires, the slender poles rising high into darkness, the invisible platforms–it is all a death they are arranging. He is certain of it. He can feel it in his chest.

The acrobat has said nothing, not a word. He has hardly moved. One loves him for this passivity, this resignation, and for his face which has a gypsy darkness. If it continues to rain there can be no performance, and the rain falls heavily, seldom shifting, drumming on the drenched cloth of the car outside. Only a few people still wait.

Dean counts out the money for the bill. The franc pieces seem unusually bright. He lays them in the saucer. They make a little clicking sound, like teeth, a clear sound, and in that instant he becomes aware it has been heard by, has awakened the solitary dreamer at the bar–he glances up but no, the acrobat has not noticed. He is gazing into the mirror. His white-stockinged legs, powder white, are crossed at the ankle. His slippers are frayed, but he is more than he seems, this man. He is an agent, an emissary. He has selected a disguise in which he moves nervously, white as a moth in the spotlight above the common crowds, but it is all a conceit. He is far more important than that. Dean knows this. He recognizes it–impossible to explain. It really does not even concern her. It is all meant for him, and when it is announced that the performance has been cancelled, Dean receives the news without surprise. It makes no difference. The performance itself was incidental.

“Wait here,” he says. “I’ll get the car.”

He vanishes into the rain. Anne-Marie stands just inside the door until the car pulls up with that vast, irregular grace, its headlights yellow and reflecting in the windows of the café, the wipers ticking slowly. She runs for it. He leans across the seat to hold the door open. His face is wet, his hair. She gets in hurriedly.

“What rain!” she says.

Dean doesn’t drive off. Instead, he tries to look through the running glass, to see inside the café one last time. The bar is empty. The acrobat has gone.

They drive through the streets of an unknown town. The rain pours down like gravel. In the green light of the instrument panel he feels as homeless, as desolate as a criminal. Gently she wipes his wet cheeks with her fingers. They have nowhere to go. They are strangers here, the doors of the town are closed to them. Suddenly he is filled with intimations of being found somehow, of being seized and taken away. He doesn’t even have a chance to talk to her. They are separated. They are lost to each other. He tries to cry out in this coalescing dream, to tell her where she should go, what she should do, but it’s too complicated. He cannot. She is gone.

A genuine desperation overwhelms him. He hasn’t the money to really go off with her. They are imprisoned in the smallness of Autun, a night or two away doesn’t matter, and now, yes, he knows it, they have been discovered. Dean is sure of this. And I, too, in retrospect, I see he was right. The acrobat has disappeared into the villages of France, into the night of all Europe, perhaps. The Delage is alone on the streets. One need not follow as it crawls through the darkness–it can be recognized anywhere.

Dean is dispirited. In the hotel room he undresses carefully, laying them down as if the clothes are not his, as if they are to be burned. The night is cool with all its rain and a chill passes over his nakedness. He feels lean as an orphan. The past has vanished and he fears the future. His money is lying on the table, and in the dark he goes over to count it, the paper bills only. He lifts the folded notes. The coins spill off, and one falls to the floor, rolls away. He listens but cannot tell in which direction it has gone. Anne-Marie comes up behind him, naked too, and suddenly he is transfixed, like a hare in the headlights of a car. Her arms steal around him. Her body touching him, the points of her breasts, the soft bed of hair, is a virtual agony. They caress one another, pale as embryos in the dark.

She wants to be arranged over a chair. Dean finds one. She bends over it. Her breasts hang sweetly, like the low boughs of a tree, like handfuls of money. His hands slide to her waist which is narrow. He begins slowly, and she breathes as if sinking into a bath. From without is the sound of pouring rain.

In the morning it is calm. He awakens as if a fever has passed. Europe has returned to its real proportions. The immortal cities swim in sunlight. The great rivers flow. His prick is large and her hand moves to it as soon as her eyes open. He searches his clothing for the crumpled, leaden tube. He hands it to her. She looks at it impassively. He kicks the covers away as she unscrews the cap. She begins to spread it on. The coolness makes him jump. Afterwards she rolls over and in the full daylight he slowly inserts this gleaming declaration. Her forehead is pressed to the sheet. Her eyes are closed. Dean barely notices. Finally he is entered all the way. He lies still.

“Would you like to read?” he says.

“
Comment?
”

“Read. A magazine.”

“Yes,” she answers vaguely.

They move to the edge of the bed. There is an old copy of
Réalités
. He reaches for it and pulls it to the floor. Her head leaning down, she starts to turn the pages. Dean looks over her shoulder. It is Sunday morning. Ten o’clock. Only the occasional, soft leafing of paper interrupts the stillness. She has come to an article about the paintings of Bonnard. They read it together. He waits until she has finished the page. Gently he begins.

“Not enough
graisse
,” she says.

He withdraws carefully–she is almost clinging to him, it feels–and she applies a bit more, wiping her fingers afterwards on the sheet. In it goes–she lies calm–and intrigued by a page that shows photographs of the fourteen kinds of feminine appeal (innocence, mystery, naturalness, etc.), he begins to move in and out in long, delirious strokes. France is bathed in sunshine. The shops are closed. Churches are filled. In every town, behind locked doors, the restaurants are laying their tables, preparing for lunch.

[29]

T
HE MORE CLEARLY ONE
sees this world, the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist. It was strange how I found myself almost completely silent when I was with her. There was everything to talk about it seemed, but we simply could never begin. I took her to dinner in May when Dean went to Paris for a few days, and what days they were, summery, vast. The light failed slowly. The world was filled with blue cities, fragrant, mysterious. We dined at the hotel. From time to time I smiled at her, like a stupid uncle, while she talked about Dean. I was really not too interested. The terms of the encounter were all wrong. I knew what she was. I was ready to confess, to fall to my knees like a believer. It would have been a terrible moment. She would have denied it all. More likely, she wouldn’t have understood. What she wants is to know what his father and sister will think of her. Will they find her nice?

I’m sure they will,” I say.

“He doesn’t talk about his father.”

“Well, his father’s a critic–you know that. Rather elegant man, I gather.”

“
Pardon
.”

“I say he’s very elegant, very social.”

“Still,” she says, “he could find me nice.”

“Of course.” Why am I not telling her the truth?

We sit over
salade de tomates
, the rich slices specked with parsley fragments, gleaming with oil. I wonder if she feels herself ordinary. Does she know that his sister wanted to come down here to see him but Dean insisted on meeting her in Paris? Yes, of course she knows. She knows everything, sometimes I am convinced. Anyway, the future doesn’t surprise her. Much of it exists already–I have said that before.

“Some more
tomates?
” she says, offering to serve me.

She helps herself. Her mouth glistens. Across from us is an English couple. They’re both very young. He has dry, red hair. She is thin-faced and shy. Her dress looks like wallpaper, and they sit in an utter, English silence reading the menu as if it were a contract. In an accent so perfect it surprises me, Anne-Marie whispers,

“Did I hurt you, darling?”

“What?”

It’s a line from a joke Dean’s told her. Her face is full of a mischievous joy. But I don’t know the original story. She delivers it with the assurance of a clown. That’s what
he
says, she explains. They’re in bed together. Then
she
says: no, why? And he says: you moved. Her smile is questioning.

“Do I tell it right?” she asks. She looks to see if I am amused. I love her contempt for the sexual life of the English.

Dean is at the Calais, his car parked in the huge square past the corner with a white violation slip already tucked under the wiper. He’s sharing a room with his sister and being very agreeable. He desperately needs money–everything depends on it–and she wants to talk about his life, his future life, that is. She knows he’ll be touchy.

“Now don’t get angry…” she says.

“Oh, Amy…” he begins. He knows exactly how. She plays every card face up like a woman surrendering to love. He’s perfectly ready to face this future life, Dean says. More than that, it’s already appearing before him. These months have made an enormous difference. They’ve been like the wilderness for him, how can he explain it? Suddenly she wants to embrace him. She feels relieved and a little guilty.

“Do you mean it?”

“It’s changed my life,” he says. “It’s changing my life.” He smiles. He loves her. Sometimes she is like a toy.

“But what have you been doing?”

“Seeing no one,” he says. “Living the life of a little town. It’s like saying: stop all this, stop the noise; now, what should it all look like?”

“Yes…” she agrees.

“Life is composed of certain basic elements,” he says. “Of course, there are a lot of impurities, that’s what’s misleading.”

He has always instructed her. She listens gravely.

“What I’m saying may sound mystical, but in everybody, Anne, in all of us, there’s the desire to find those elements somehow, to discover them, you know? Sometimes I think they’re the same for all of us, but maybe they’re not. I mean, we look at the Greeks and say, ah, they built this civilization, this whole brilliant world, out of certain, simple things. Why can’t we? And if not a civilization, why can’t each of us, properly directed, build a life, I mean a happy life? Believe me, the elements exist. When you enter certain rooms, when you look at certain faces, suddenly you realize you’re in the presence of them. Do you know what I mean?”

“Of course, I do,” she says. “If you could achieve that, you’d have everything.”

“And without it you have…” he shrugs, “a life.”

“Like everybody’s.”

“Just like everybody’s,” he says.

“I don’t want that.”

“Neither do I.”

“I can never tell when you’re conning me,” she says.

He shakes his head slowly.

“I’m not,” he promises. “Because I want you to do me a tremendous favor.”

“What?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Later,” he says.

She goes into the bathroom to finish dressing. Dean reads a magazine. She comes out to comb her hair.

“Where shall we go?” she says.

“Shall we have a good dinner?”

“All right. But not too expensive.” The phrase worries him. He tries to ignore it.

“It’s on me,” he says.

“Do you have any money? Daddy said you were desperate.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“No,” he says. “I have a job.”

“You have? What?”

“Tutoring,” he says.

“You never said anything about that.”

“Well, it’s not exactly making me rich.”

“He made me promise not to give you any money, no matter what. He was sure you were going to ask me for some.”

“He acts like I’m your no-good husband.”

“No. He worries about you.”

“His methods are curious,” Dean says. “Besides, I hate lessons about the value of money. What’s the point? Everybody knows it’s valuable. I don’t want any lessons imposed on me. I don’t like people that give lessons. We’re all free. We were meant to love and help each other, not to give lessons.”

“No,” she says, “I think he just wants you to…”

“What?”

“Have a more regular life,” she decides.

Dean smiles.

“Come on,” he says. “Are you ready?”

They go down one floor in the elevator and walk along the corridor.

“Money,” Dean says. “I’ll tell you it’s very hard to think clearly when you don’t have any. That’s one of my discoveries. Of course, it’s hard when you have too much.”