Luncheon of the Boating Party (53 page)

“So you’re going to become a wanderer too?” An edge to her voice cut through him.

The approaching evening folded the river, the ferry, and the two of them into a shadow. He slipped his arm around her waist. “Not yet. I’m not a wanderer yet. Right now I’m going with you.” In the gloaming, he couldn’t tell whether her eyes said yes or no. The alternating stiffness and relaxation of her body told him that she wasn’t teasing him. She was genuinely conflicted. At Rueil-Malmaison he waited with her for the train and stepped into it behind her.

“No. Don’t. Stay here.” She pushed him back down the steps and the conductor closed the door.

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C h a p t e r T h i r t y - f i v e

Les Fêtes Nautiques

Alphonsine sang softly.
Today is Sunday. . . . Hurry, rowers, get the
oars ready!
the song urged. She
was
hurrying, putting on her best blue dress, a Parisian dress on the verge of being too chic for the country, but this was the day of the Fêtes, the most important day of the year at Chatou. She fastened a dark blue velvet ribbon around her neck for Alphonse’s team.

In the dining room, she watched Auguste grab Maman around the

waist and swing her in a dance step, and then he did the same with her.

“It’s a busy day, young man. I don’t need your foolery.” Maman’s eyes sparkled even as she said it.

“It’s
exactly
what you need. Today especially.” He tipped his straw boater at a rakish angle and sashayed outside singing,
“Ohé! Ohé! Ohé!”

“It’ll be sad to see him go now that the painting’s fi nished,”

Maman said.

“No, it isn’t. Not yet.”

“Of course, you might lure him to stay longer.”

“Maman, sh. Don’t talk that way.”

“He’s been just like another son.”

“Stop it.”

She had made mistakes. If she had spoken to Circe privately, if she hadn’t sent him off to Paris to find another model . . .

She went outside where Uncle Titi was setting up the
grenouille
game, a wooden box with openings in the top around a ceramic frog

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with a gaping mouth. It was a tossing game. People won chits to spend in the restaurant according to what hole their copper disc fell into.

“Let me try it,” Auguste said. He tossed, and by God if the disc didn’t land right in the frog’s mouth with a clink. “Ha! Do you think that’s enough to erase one-hundredth of my bill here?”

“Do you think Papa’s actually going to make you pay all of it?”

Alphonse asked Auguste to help him carry out more tables and

chairs.

In a few minutes she felt someone behind her squeeze her waist with both hands. She whirled around and Raoul gave her a kiss on both cheeks.

“First to arrive gets to kiss the ladies,” he said.

“Aren’t you the proper
canotier.
” For once he wasn’t in his suit jacket with his brown felt bowler, but white canvas pants, the traditional blue-and-white-striped jersey of a
canotier,
and a fl at-topped boater.

Auguste came up from the cellar carrying two chairs and greeted Raoul as though he hadn’t seen him in years. “Are you the first to arrive?”

“Aline isn’t here yet, if that’s what you’re asking,” Raoul said.

Auguste scowled and turned to get more chairs. Raoul called after him, “Today’s the day your
quatorzième
will be named.” He lifted his shoulders and made a face as if to say,
What’s the matter with him?

The rail line had doubled its service and people were staking out viewing places on the Rueil bank and the island. They promenaded.

They browsed the booths strung out on both banks. They rented yoles.

They laid out picnics. They filled the restaurant. All the things Alphonsine loved would be happening today.

She gave out blue and red ribbons for people to show what teams they were supporting in the jousts. An organ grinder cranked out a tune, and his monkey dressed as a
canotier
collected sous and put them in his tiny straw hat. Several pedal boats decorated with garlands of paper flowers came up from La Grenouillère along with the usual green rental rowboats. Accordion music came across the water from Auberge Lefranc.

Auguste sat with the models—all except Aline and Charles and Gus-

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tave—under a maple tree at water’s edge, crossing and recrossing his legs, watching the bridge and smoking. She brought him a tin ashtray.

“Are you concerned about who will win the spot in the painting?”

she asked. “Who the
quatorzième
will be?”

“Among other things.”

A racing scull crossed the river from Auberge Lefranc with four people rowing in rhythm to their song:

The jolly
canotier
is rowing hard

Digging his own path with his strength and his oars.

On the throne at the rudder, just like in a palace,

Sits one of his women.

Everyone on both terraces joined in as the boat fl oated close.

“Start another,” Alphonsine prompted.

Angèle started the
Marseillaise des canotiers,
and the team of rowers took that song downriver to the next
guinguette.

Alphonsine turned and saw Gustave, sporty and chic in blue trousers, expertly tailored cream-colored jacket, the blue silk cravat and fl at-topped boater of the Cercle de la Voile à Paris, and a blue breast banner identifying him as the vice president of that prestigious sailing organiza-tion. He stepped onto the platform to register the racers, and was mobbed by contestants. Auguste and the models gathered to size them up.

Angèle said to Auguste, “You don’t look like the jolly
canotier
in the song. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t feel anything for these fellows.”

“Don’t get all herky-jerky about it. It’s just a face.”

“Yes, yes, just a painting,” Auguste said. “Just a chance to turn my career one way or another.”

Alphonsine began to feel Auguste’s nervousness herself, especially when she saw a man from Bougival with a huge hook of a nose and pink, scabby skin sign up for four races. Auguste gave her a sinking look.

“You’d better hope this Monsieur Le Hook capsizes or rams some-

one and gets disqualified,” she said.

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Raoul registered for the one-man
périssoire,
Pierre and Paul registered for the two-man sculls, and Guy de Maupassant registered his team for the two-man sculls, the
triplettes,
the four-man sculls, and registered himself for the slalom course of the narrow open-hulled
as,
the most difficult craft to maneuver.

“Are you crazy? Your arms will fall off,” Pierre said.

“You put a boat in front of him, he can’t stay out of it,” Alphonsine said.

“If I let one of my boats go unused today, she’ll say I have too many,”

Guy said.

A trumpet announced the parade arriving from Bougival. Alphonsine hurried inside to get Maman. Papa in his nautical suit and mariner’s hat led off, mounted on Uncle Titi’s horse draped with a banner with the words
Le Grand Admiral de Chatou.
She loved seeing him ride in for a festival he had started from nothing. He scanned the crowd for Maman, whose face was alive with pride, her eyes moist, beside herself with adoration.

The mayors and councilmen of all the river towns that had jousting teams followed on horseback, wearing tricolor chest bands. The
gendarmes
and firemen came next, then the acrobats turning cartwheels, a vaudeville troupe, and the former jousting champions in their white shirts and pants with red or blue cummerbunds. The band brought up the rear playing a march.

The mayor of Chatou mounted the platform to welcome everyone.

The band played Offenbach’s Barcarole, and the vaudeville troupe did a skit using a flat cutout of a gondola. Papa pantomimed cracking a wine bottle against the prow and bellowed into a megaphone, “
Que les
courses commencent!
Let the races begin!”

“Let the choosing of a
quatorzième
begin!” Pierre echoed.

Uncle Titi ferried Gustave and the racing master out to the anchored barge that was both the starting point and the finish line, since all races went upstream and then back. Over a megaphone Gustave called for
canotiers
of single-man
périssoires
to take their positions. She liked the authoritative sound of his voice, stronger than his usual deference. This was his day too.

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Raoul stood up. “Wish me luck.” He leapt onto the dock in an awkward, tipping plunge and Alphonsine gasped, but he managed to get into a boat.

“He’s not a
canotier,
is he?” Ellen asked.

“No, he’s a cavalier,” Auguste said. “But if he can win this, he’ll have a chance at the championship, and if he wins that, since he’s in the painting already, I can choose my own
quatorzième!
”

Gustave announced, “
Canotiers,
take your mark!” the racing master shot the starting gun, the
canotiers
dug in their paddles.

Raoul kept up on the upstream, but lost position at the turnaround.

Alphonsine cheered for him until the end, but he didn’t place. A man from Guy’s team who went by the name of Tomahawk won fi rst and Monsieur Le Hook from Bougival won second. Raoul came back grinning and exhilarated. “Just wait until next week when I have wind in my sails.”

“A lot of good that’ll do me this week,” Auguste said.

The two-man
périssoires
were next. Pierre was standing to stretch.

“Ask Alphonse to put you in
Lutin,
” Alphonsine said. “It’s the lightest.”

“With a name that means wanton and roguish, are you sure that’s the best boat for us?” Pierre asked.

Alphonse came up from the dock to advise them. “Paul, you take the forward position. Come up with the turning marker on your right.

Pierre, you backstroke on the right while Paul does tight forward strokes on the left to turn you tightly.”

“Bonne chance,”
Alphonsine said.

Guy appeared wearing white blousy pants, a red waist sash, and a maillot of blue and white stripes. “Today, my name is Loup d’Eau Douce.” He growled and showed his teeth.

“Well, then, Freshwater Wolf, are you racing in the two-man sculls?”

Raoul asked.

He growled an exaggerated
“Oui,”
half animal, half human, a demeanor that fit with his bushy mustache, and gestured with his thumb over his shoulder. “With Petit Bleu.”

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Alphonsine laughed. Petit Bleu was his friend Jean. “Bravo, Jean. You chose the name of the best wine in the Île de France. From Argenteuil.”

“Forget the wine. Pour us some victory champagne now,” Guy said.

“We’ll be back before the bubbles are gone.”

Alphonsine stood on her toes. Gustave called out, “Take your

marks.” The gun went off, the trumpet blared, the crowd shouted,
“Oh
hisse! Ho!”
and Guy and Jean shot out in front of all but Le Hook. The two boats stayed bow to bow until the turnaround, and Guy and Jean nosed ahead to fi nish first. On the dock they shook hands all around and Pierre and Paul came back to the table with their arms slung over each other’s shoulders.

“Guy and Petit Bleu are good possibilities,” Ellen said. “Not bad-looking.”

“But Guy and Auguste have no use for each other,” Alphonsine said.

Between every two races there was a break, and immediately the water was filled with yoles and pedal boats. The impresario bellowed out the virtues of
canotage
while mimes accompanied his words with buffoonery.

Out of the milling crowd stepped Aline. As soon as Auguste spotted her, he maneuvered his way to her side and brought her to the group.

The trumpet on the barge struck a fanfare and Gustave announced the
triplettes,
sculls for three rowers and a coxswain. Guy’s team came in second. That meant his teammate, Tomahawk, a big blond fellow with hair like a haystack and a thick neck, was a possibility.

“Do you have any yellow paint left?” Alphonsine teased.

“Very funny, mademoiselle. I’m going to die laughing,” Auguste said.

Anne served eel stew to Guy’s team. Alphonsine poked Guy on the shoulder. “That’s for your energy. There’s a surprise riding on these races.” He ate quickly and was off for the four-man race.

“If Guy’s team wins, Tomahawk just may be our
quatorzième,
”

Pierre said.

“And if they don’t, I could have Monsieur Le Hook,” Auguste said.

“What a happy choice.”

“But Le Hook’s team has a handsome fellow in the fourth seat,” Ellen said. “I wouldn’t mind
him
gazing at me in the painting.”

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Le Hook’s team and Guy’s team with Tomahawk in the second seat

shot off ahead of the pack.

“I’m betting for Guy,” Raoul said.

“That would set Tomahawk as a possibility in the painting, depending on whether he’s going to race in the slalom,” Pierre said.

“Tomahawk is a brute,” Paul said. “I’m rooting for Le Hook.”

Le Hook gained on the return, and when they approached the fi nish, Le Hook and Guy were prow to prow.

“Allez,
Guy!
Allez!”
Raoul yelled with some of the models.

“Plus vite,
Hook!
Plus vite!”
yelled Pierre and others.

With some misgivings, Alphonsine took up Raoul’s chant for Guy.

In the last ten meters, Guy won by half a length, and Raoul went wild, cavorting and lunging, saving himself from falling just in time.

The band played dance music while the race master set up buoy

markers for the side-by-side slalom courses. Loud conversations crossed each other on the terraces, knives and forks clattered on plates, absinthe, madère, and orange-flavored bishop spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg flowed, and champagne corks popped at every table where there were winners. Alphonsine circulated among the tables to congratulate all the contestants.