The Knitting Circle (6 page)

“One night I said, ‘Teach me to make that bread I love.’

“So we went downstairs and he showed me. Watching a man knead dough and create bread from just flour and water and yeast is the sexiest thing imaginable. Because he had to be at the bakery at four a.m. to begin baking the bread, he always brought me back to Claude and Camille’s around three. But this morning I stayed and made the bread with him. It was as if my hands had finally learned what they were meant to do. I could feel the change as I worked the dough. How it grew less sticky. How it took new forms and properties. When I got home it was almost six and I was giddy. I would be a baker. I was meant to be a baker.

“I had forgotten that Camille and the girls had gone to meet Camille’s parents for a weekend in Brittany, on the coast. So when I quietly entered the apartment and found Claude sitting there, obviously awake all night, I thought something terrible had happened.

“I even forgot to speak English. I began to tell him, in French, about my discovery, how I had to find a baker to apprentice with. My hands tingled from the feel of the dough in them.

“‘Rouge,’ he said—privately, that’s what he always called me; he didn’t think Scarlet suited me. This name, he told me, it’s too ridiculous—‘I thought something terrible had happened to you. I thought you had been killed or hurt.’

“His English sounded, oddly, harsh.

“
Je suis désolée
,” I said.

“He covered his face in his hands and began to laugh. ‘I think you’ve been savagely murdered and all the while you’ve been baking bread.’

“I didn’t see what was funny. But I forced a smile. I caught a glimpse of myself in the oversized mirror and saw that I was covered with flour.

“As if he read my mind, Claude said, ‘You have flour everywhere.’

“And he got up and walked over to me and began to brush the flour from my sweater and my hair and my arms. That was when it began, the thing I knew would happen. I have wondered many times over the years how I knew with such certainty that this man and I were to be linked forever. And I have never been able to find an answer. I was so young when I arrived in Paris. And unsure of so many things. Yet this one thing I knew absolutely.

“That weekend, with Camille and the girls away, we made love in that particular way that new lovers have, as if nothing exists outside each other.

“This was long ago now. Twenty-two years. What I remember is Claude making us an omelette and how we ate it in my bed, cold. I remember how thoughts of running away with Claude began to fill my mind. I remember how on Sunday afternoon he held my face in his hands and said, ‘You know you must leave here, Rouge. We cannot be like this with Camille and the girls.’

“He didn’t mean, of course, that I had to leave right then. But that is what I did. I packed my suitcase, the same one that I had arrived with two years earlier, and I left that apartment with Claude’s fingerprints and kisses all over me. It was raining, a warm rain that diffused the lights of the city. Like the blurry colors of a Monet painting. Like tears. I went to the only place I knew to go: the bakery.

“Denis took me in. I told him I had fallen in love with someone, that I needed a place to stay for a while. He said something like, ‘
C’est dommage
,’ nothing more than that. I slept on his sofa and helped to bake the bread. And I began to meet Claude in his office in the afternoon, where, on a scratchy Persian rug, we would make love to the sound of a typewriter pounding in the office next door and students rushing down the hall, arguing or worrying or laughing.

“I went on this way, in a happy blur, for a month or so. Summer came and I learned to bake croissants and pain au chocolat, the intricacies of butter and dough, the delicate balance of sweet and sour. I did not ask about Camille, though I did inquire about the children, who I missed sorely. Especially the little one, Bébé. By this time she was eight, but small like her mother, with that fine hair that tangled easily and skin so fair that the pale blue veins shone just beneath. She carried a doll, Madame Chienne, everywhere with her. A rag doll that was loved away in spots, like my own dog Pal. Véronique was more polite, but less imaginative, and though I got on well with her, it was Bébé whom I adored. Claude brought me pictures that she’d drawn, and read me little stories she wrote. And I suppose in my fantasy of Claude running away with me to a place with golden sunshine, Bébé came too.

“Denis wanted me to go to a small village near Marseille to apprentice with an old man who Denis himself had worked with. This man, called Frère Michel by everyone, was famous all over France for his cannelles, the small sweet cakes made by nuns in the fourteenth century with vanilla bean and rum and egg yolks. They are made in special fluted tulip-shaped molds, and Frère Michel still used the wooden ones his own grandmother had used.

“I thought, I must go and take Claude with me. The only image I had of the south of France was one I had invented from van Gogh paintings and travel posters that hung in a travel agency window near the bakery. I could imagine walking through fields of towering sunflowers with Claude, or wandering the Roman ruins together. I could imagine the two of us plunging into the blue sea naked, then drying in the hot sun on pink rocks. But I could not see myself without him.

“So I let Denis talk about Frère Michel and cannelles, nodding as if I was considering the offer, until the day I realized that I was most certainly pregnant. On this particular morning, I awoke sweaty and suffocating in the hot apartment, and I felt a flutter, like a butterfly had burst from its cocoon and set off in flight. I put my hand to my stomach and my butterfly fluttered against it.”

Instinctively, Mary paused in her knitting and placed one hand on her own belly, as if she could feel that familiar fluttering, the first sign of a baby there. She remembered lying in bed with Dylan and gasping slightly, taking his hand and pressing it to her stomach.

She nodded at Scarlet before she picked up her knitting needles once again.

“My first impulse was to go immediately to Claude. At this time of the morning he would be teaching, and I got up quickly to dress and meet him at his classroom with the news. The happy news. On the bus to the university I made a plan in which we went together to the south, and we lived in that small town near Marseille, and I baked cannelles and madeleines, and Claude wrote the book he always talked about writing, and there in the plan was a little girl, not unlike Bébé. And a small house near the sea. And almond trees, and olive trees, and wild fennel.

“But as I raced up the stairs to the building where he taught, something struck me and sent a shiver through me even on such a relentlessly hot day. I remembered clearly when I’d had my last period, and it was back in June on an evening when Denis and I were still lovers. I sat hard on the steps, feeling the heat of the sunbaked stone through my thin dress, forcing myself to think. But I knew that had been my last period, and that two weeks later I had slept with both Denis and then, in that first weekend together, Claude.

“That flutter rose in me again, this time filling my throat with bile. Around me, students rushed, carrying armloads of books, speaking French and German and Spanish. I could smell their sweat and their cigarettes, and again I tasted vomit.

“I don’t know how long I sat there before a cool hand touched my bare arm. I looked up into Claude’s face. He was wearing his glasses, those funny rimless half-glasses, and his blond hair was matted across his forehead.

“‘Rouge,’ he said softly, ‘did I forget that we were going to meet?’

“I shook my head.

“‘You look so pale,’ he said, and touched my cheeks with the backs of both his hands. ‘Are you feverish?’

“I shook my head again. ‘It’s just so hot,’ I said.

“He helped me to my feet and held my elbow firmly for support. ‘Let’s get you some water, yes?’

“I let him lead me to his office. I had never been there in the morning, and I thought the Persian rug looked faded and worn in this light, that the color of the walls seemed dingy. I drank down the water he brought me without stopping, and then I immediately threw it up. Once I began vomiting I couldn’t stop. Claude grabbed the wastebasket and held it under my chin.

“A secretary appeared in the open doorway, wearing a concerned face. ‘Professor?’ she asked.

“‘This young girl is ill from the heat,’ Claude said. ‘She’ll be fine.’

“‘You have class now,’ the secretary said. ‘Shall I take her?’

“‘Call maintenance,’ Claude said, ‘to clean up here.’

“The secretary hesitated a moment before leaving.

“‘I was in the neighborhood,’ I said. ‘Silly of me. No breakfast. I just wanted to see your face.’

“Claude grinned at me. ‘Go and eat some eggs and a big café au lait in a cool café and you will be your old self again in no time.’

“I stared at him, puzzled.

“‘And we will meet here as usual at two o’clock,’ he said, straightening his shirt and tie, gathering his books and briefcase.

“
‘Au revoir,’
he said.

“I nodded because that was all I could manage. This was the first time we had been together and Claude had spoken to me entirely in French.

“I almost didn’t go back that afternoon. But I could not stay away. In the hours in between seeing him, I took his advice and sat in a cool café and ate eggs and toast, and I thought about this baby. I would never know for sure if it belonged to Denis or Claude. For some women, perhaps, that would not matter. They could convince themselves that the father was of course the man they loved.

“But for me, I only wanted this baby if it was Claude’s. Denis meant nothing to me. What if I had the baby and it was like Denis, distracted and lazy? Then I would know that it wasn’t Claude’s and I would have to live a charade with Claude. No, this little one would never be born.

“By the time I arrived back at Claude’s office, the secretary away at her lunch, the outer office empty, I had decided not to tell Claude anything. I would get the name of a doctor and get this done quickly, pretending that it never happened. It seemed so simple that when Claude came in I threw myself at him, tearing at his tie and the buttons on his shirt, wanting only to fill myself with him.

“He laughed softly. ‘You are revived,’ he whispered in English.

“Of course, these things are never so simple, are they? That very evening I told Denis about my situation. Not the details of it, just that I was pregnant and needed an abortion. He studied my face, as if he could find there some evidence of his own involvement in this predicament. But I remained unreadable.

“‘I can arrange this,’ he said finally.

“He took longer than I had hoped and it was several weeks later before he handed me a name and address on a slip of paper right before we began to make the morning’s baguettes. I took it and thanked him, but he waved away my gratitude with his hands.

“‘Let’s not talk about this again,’ he said.

“I was happy to oblige.

“That week, Claude and his family were away in Spain. How perfect, I thought. I had begun to read everything as a sign about who the father was. Claude’s absence during the abortion made it clear that Denis was the father. But on the very day it was to be done, as I combed my hair in preparation to leave, the phone rang and it was Claude—a sign that the baby must be his. My heart beat fast as I listened to him speak into a pay phone in a café at the beach.

“‘Rouge,’ he said, ‘I am miserable without you. I will never be away from you like this again. I’ll figure out a way for us to be together. Do you believe me?’

“‘Yes,’ I said.

“‘I love you,’ Claude was saying, over and over again.

“He did not stop until I said it to him.

“‘I love you too, Claude,’ I said, the words burning my throat.

“When it was done, I was made empty. The weight stayed on me. My hips and waist were thick, my breasts larger. But beneath that, was stone. Or worse, nothing at all. As soon as I woke from the anesthesia, I knew in my heart that it had been Claude’s child after all. The nurse gave me something to calm me, but I couldn’t stop crying.

“This new me, empty, overweight, unhappy, tried to continue life as it had been before. Denis and I baked bread in the early morning. I met Claude in the afternoons, and could hardly appreciate the changes in him. The declarations of love, the promises of a future together. One day he pinched my waist, and teased me that I was growing too fat and too happy.

“‘You look the way you did when I first saw you,’ he said when I pulled away from him. He made me turn back to face him. ‘That day I knew,’ he said, serious now. ‘I knew you were going to change my life.’

“‘I knew too,’ I said.

“Soon afterwards, after the weather had turned crisp and cool, Denis once again asked me about Frère Michel. ‘He will take you on,’ he said. ‘But I wouldn’t waste time if I were you. He’s very old. He won’t be around forever.’

“I looked into Denis’s face. He had flour across one cheek, and flecks of sticky dough on his apron.

“‘I’ll go,’ I said. ‘I’m ready.’

“Can you believe it when I tell you that I went a week later and I never told Claude? I saw him those last afternoons. I listened to his ideas for us to have a life together. He would pay for an apartment for me to live, and it would be ours. He would go to America to teach and I would come with him; he had done it before, why not again? Perhaps, he sighed, he would leave Camille, get a divorce, marry me.

“I said nothing. I let him make love to me as if it was not the last time. Then I went directly to pick up my bag at Denis’s apartment, and from there to the train heading south. On that train I thought about nothing. Not what I was doing. Not what I had done. During the nights before I left, I wondered how Claude and I would be linked forever. Was it through this baby who would never be born? Or was it through our love? Did love’s energy continue even after the lovers separated? These thoughts kept me awake. But once I was on the train south, my mind stopped.

“On a whim, I had stopped at a yarn store near Denis’s apartment and bought a skein of light blue mohair and a pair of bamboo knitting needles. As the industrial cities passed my window, and cypress trees appeared beside barren fields of wheat and flowers, I knit. My hands seemed to knit away the noise that had kept me awake, to erase the questions for which there were no answers.