The Chateau (29 page)

The Frenchman pounced: “But you came in too late. And you ruined the peace by your softness—by your idealism. And now, as the result of your quarrel with the Russians, you are going to turn France into a battlefield once more. Which is very convenient for you but hard on us.”

Harold studied the blue eyes that were looking so intently into his. Their expression was simple and cordial. In America, he thought, such an argument was always quite different. By this time, heat would have crept into it. The accusations would have become personal.

“What would you have us do?” he asked, leaning forward. “Stay out of it next time?”

“I would have you take a realistic attitude, and recognize that harshness is the only thing the German people understand.”

“And hunger.”

“No. They will go right back and do it over again.”

Harold glanced at the girl who was sitting between them, to see whose side she was on. Her face did not reveal what she was thinking. She took a sip of wine and looked at the two men as if they were part of the table decorations.

Caught between the disparity of his own feelings—for he felt a liking for Jean Allégret as a man and anger at his ideas—Harold was silent. No matter what I say, he thought, it will sound priggish. And if I don't say anything, I will seem to be agreeing.

“It is true,” he said at last, “it is true that we understand machinery better than we understand European politics. And I do not love what I know of the German mentality. But I have to assume that they are human—that the Germans are human to this extent that they sleep with their wives”—was this going too far?—“and love their children, and want to work, at such times as they are not trying to conquer the world, and are sometimes discouraged, and don't like growing old, and are afraid of dying. I assume that the Japanese sleep with their wives, the Russians love their children and the taste of life, and are sometimes discouraged, don't like growing old, and are afraid of—”

“You don't think that your niggers are human,” Jean Allégret said triumphantly.

“Why not? Why do you say that?”

“Because of the way you treat them. I have seen it, in Normandy. You manage them very well.”

“We do not manage them at all. They manage us. They are a wonderful people. They have the virtues—the sensibility, the patience, the emotional richness—we lack. And if the distinction
between the two races becomes blurred, as it has in Martinique, and they become one race, then America will be saved.”

“They are animals,” the Frenchman said. “And you treat them like animals.”

The girl stirred, as if she were about to say something. Both men turned toward her expectantly.

“I prefer a nigger to a Jew,” she said.

A
T THE END OF THE MEAL
, the guests at the large table pushed their chairs back. Barbara Rhodes, turning away from the young man who had bored her so with his handsome empty face, his shallow eyes that did not have the thing she looked for in people's eyes but only vanity, glanced toward the little table in the alcove. She saw Harold rise, still talking (what could they have found to talk about so animatedly all through dinner?) and draw the little table toward him so that the girl could get up.…
Oh no!
she cried as the table started to tilt alarmingly. She saw the Frenchman with a quick movement try to stop it but he was on the wrong side of the table and it was too late. There was an appalling crash.

“Une table pliante,” a voice said coolly beside her.

Unable to go on looking, she turned away, but not before she had seen the red stain, like blood, on the beautiful Aubusson carpet, and Harold, pale as death, standing with his hands at his side, looking at what he had done.

“T
HESE IDEAS OF YOURS
are foolish and will not work,” Jean Allegret said an hour later.

“Perhaps not,” Harold said.

They were sitting on a bench on the lawn, facing the lighted
windows but in the dark. On another bench, directly in front of them, Barbara and Sabine and another girl whose name Harold didn't know were sitting and talking quietly. There were five or six more people here and there, on the steps, in chairs, or on other benches, talking and watching the moon rise. The others were inside, in the library, dancing to the music of a portable record player.

“Perhaps they
are
foolish,” he said, “but I prefer them, for my own sake. If it is foolish to think that all men are brothers, it is at least more civilized—and more agreeable—than thinking that all men—you and I, for instance—are enemies, waiting for a chance to run a bayonet through each other's back.”

The wine had made him garrulous and extravagant in speech; also, he had done much less than the usual amount of talking since they had landed in France, and it gave him the feeling of being in arrears, of having a great deal backed up that he urgently needed to say.

“If it is really a question of that,” he went on, “then I will get up and turn around and—since I like you too much to put a bayonet in your back—offer you my back instead. Hoping that you won't call my bluff, you understand. Or that something will distract your attention long enough for me to—”

“Very dear, your theories. Very gentle and sweet and impossible to put into practice. Nevertheless, you interest me. You are not the American type. I didn't know there were Americans like that.”

“But that's what I keep telling you. Exactly what I am
is
the American type.”

“You have got everything all wrong, but your ideas interest me.”

“They are not my ideas. I have not said one original thing all evening.”

“I like you,” Jean Allégret said. “And if it were possible, if there was the slightest chance of changing human nature for the better, I would be on your side. But it does not change. Force
is what counts. Idealism cannot survive a firing squad.… But in another way, another world, maybe, what you say is true. And in spite of all I have said, I believe it too. I am an artist. I paint.”

“Seriously?”

“Excuse me,” the Frenchman said. “I neglect my duties as a host. I will be back in a moment.” He got up and went across the lawn and into the house.

The moon was above the marshes now, round and yellow and enormous. The whole sky was gilded by it. The house was no longer ugly. By this light you could see what the Victorian architect had had in mind. Harold stood behind Barbara, with his hand on her shoulder, listening to the girls' conversation. Then, drawn by curiosity, he went up the steps and into the house, as far as the drawing-room door. The fruitwood furniture was of a kind he had little taste for, but around the room were portraits and ivory miniatures he would have liked to look at. But would it (since the French were said to be so reluctant to ask people into their homes) be considered an act of rudeness for him to go around looking at things all by himself?

He turned back toward the front door and met Jean Allégret in the hall. “Oh there you are,” the Frenchman said. “I was looking for you.”

They went and sat down where they had been before, but turned the bench around so that they could watch the moon rising through the night sky.

“I do not like the painting of our time,” Jean Allégret said. “It is sterile and it has nothing to do with life. What I paint is action. I stand and watch a man cutting a tree down, a farmer in the field, and I love the way he swings the ax blade, I see every motion, and it's that motion that interests me—not color or design. It's life I want to paint.”

“You are painting now?”

“I have not painted since the war. I am rebuilding what was destroyed, you understand. I cannot do that and also paint. The
painting is my personal life, which has to give way to the responsibilities I have inherited.”

“You are not married?”

The Frenchman shook his head. “When the house is rebuilt and the farms are under cultivation again, then I will find a wife who understands what I expect of her, and there will be children.”

“And she must expect nothing of you? There can be no alteration of your ideas to fit hers?”

“None whatever. I do not approve of American ideas of how to treat women. They are gallant only on the surface. You lose control over your women. And you have no authority over your children or your home. You continually divorce and remarry and make a further mess of it.”

“Modern marriage is very complicated.”

“It need not be.”

Harold saw Eugène stop in front of Barbara and say something. After a moment he walked away. He did not appear to be having a good time. The tweed coat, Harold thought.

Turning to Jean Allégret, he said: “You do not know my name, do you?”

The Frenchman shook his head.

“Very good,” Harold said. “I have a suggestion to make. Suppose I do not tell you my name. Some day you may find that you cannot go on carrying the burden of family responsibilities, or that you were wrong in laying aside your personal life. And you may have to drop everything and start searching for what you once had. Or for something. Everybody at one time or another has to go on a search, and if I do not tell you my name, or where I live, then you will have an object to search for, an excuse. America is a large country, it may take years and years to find me, but while you are searching you will be discovering all sorts of things, you will be talking to people, having experiences, and even if you never find me— You don't like my idea?”

“It's completely impractical. Romantic and charming and impractical—a thoroughly American idea.”

“I suppose it is,” Harold said. He took his financial diary out of his pocket and wrote his name and forwarding address in Paris and their address in America. Then he tore the page out and handed it to the Frenchman, and went over to the bench where the three girls were sitting. They looked up as he approached.

“Do you want to come and join us?” he asked.

“Are you having a pleasant conversation?” Barbara asked.

“Very.”

“Then I think I'll stay here. We're talking about America.”

“When you come back to Paris in September,” Jean Allégret said as Harold sat down, “I'd like very much to have you come and stay with me in the country. At my own place, I mean. This is my uncle's house, you understand.”

Harold noticed that he had said “you,” not “you and your wife.”

“We'd like to very much,” he said.

“We could have some shooting. It's very primitive, you understand. Not like this. But I think you will find it interesting. Actually,” Jean Allégret said, his voice changing to accommodate a note of insincerity, “I am young to have taken on so large a responsibility. I'm only twenty-seven, you know.” Behind the insincerity was the perfectly sincere image that he projected on the screen of his self-approval—of the man who lays aside his youth prematurely.

Like those people who, weeping at the grave of a friend, have no choice but to dramatize the occasion, Harold thought, and search around in their mind for a living friend to write to, describing how they stood at the grave, weeping, etc. The grief is no less real for requiring an audience. What the person doubts and seeks confirmation of is his own reality.

“There are six farms to manage,” the Frenchman went on, “and I am—in spite of my lack of experience—in the position of a father to the village. They wanted to make me mayor. They bring all their problems to me, even their marital problems. I
am also working with the boys.… The whole life of the community was destroyed, and slowly, a little at a time, I am helping them rebuild it. But it means that I have very little time to myself, and no time for painting. If the Communists take over, I will be the first to be shot, in our village.”

“Are there many?”

“Five or six.”

“And you know who they are?”

“Certainly. They have nothing against me personally, but if I am successful I will defeat their plans, and so I will be the first person taken out and shot. But you must come and see my village.… I want to give you my address, before I forget it.”