The Chain of Chance

and louder till it reached a shrill intensity, then suddenly stopped, and a woman’s voice could be heard scolding a child.

“It’s time for us to go downstairs… We always eat on schedule.”

The dining room was lit by a long row of pink candles on the table. On the way down Barth whispered that his grandmother would be joining them for dinner, adding that for a ninety-year-old woman she was still extremely fit, if a little on the eccentric side. I took this as a warning of sorts, but before I had a chance to reply I found myself being introduced to the other members of the family. Besides the three children whom I’d already met, and Mrs. Barth, who was already seated across the table in a hand-carved chair identical to the one in the library, I saw an elderly lady dressed in a gown of royal purple. An old-fashioned lorgnette trimmed with diamonds glittered on her chest, and her small black eyes transfixed me like a couple of shiny pebbles. She held out her hand, but so high and with such enthusiasm that I kissed it, something I otherwise never do; and in a surprisingly deep and masculine voice, one that sounded as false as a voice in a poorly dubbed film, she said:

“So you’re an astronaut, are you? I’ve never sat at the same table with an astronaut before.”

Even the doctor was taken by surprise. Mrs. Barth was quick to remark that the children had announced my arrival. The old lady told me to sit down next to her and to speak in a loud voice, as she was hard of hearing. Next to her table setting was a kidney-shaped hearing aid, but at no time during the meal did she use it.

“You can keep me entertained,” she said. “I doubt whether I shall have a similar occasion so soon again. Please, be so kind as to tell me how the earth really looks from up there? I don’t trust the photographs.”

“And rightly so,” I said, passing her the salad bowl, secretly charmed by her blunt and unceremonious manner. “No photo can ever match it, especially not when the orbital path is close and the earth gradually takes the place of the sky. It doesn’t block the sky, it becomes the sky. That’s the impression one gets.”

“Is it really as beautiful as they say?” Her voice expressed doubt.

“It was to me, anyhow. What impressed me most was the emptiness of it, the desolation. Not a sign of any cities, highways, or seaports—nothing but oceans, continents, and clouds. By the way, the oceans and continents look much the same as we were taught at school. But the clouds… I found the clouds to be the most uncanny thing of all, maybe because they didn’t look like clouds.”

“What did they look like?”

“That depends on the altitude. From very far away they look like the old and wrinkly hide of a rhinoceros, all cracked and bluish-gray. But the closer you get, the more they look like different shades of sheep’s wool after it’s been combed out.”

“Were you ever on the moon?”

“I’m sorry to say I never was.”

I was preparing myself for more questions of a cosmological nature when she abruptly changed the subject.

“You speak French so fluently, but with a strange accent and a slightly different vocabulary. You’re not from Canada, are you?”

“My family was Canadian; I was born in the States.”

“Just as I thought: Then your mother is French?”

“Was French.”

I could see that both husband and wife were trying to dampen the old lady’s curiosity by means of glances from across the table, but she simply ignored them.

“And did your mother speak French with you?”

“Yes, she did.”

“Your first name is John, So she must have called you Jean.”

“She did.”

“Then I shall call you that. Please take away the asparagus, Jean—I’m not supposed to eat it. The secret of growing old, Jean, is having lots of experience you can no longer use. They’re right”—she said, indicating the rest of the family—“not to pay me any attention. You’re still too young to know, but there’s quite a difference between being seventy and being ninety. A fundamental difference,” she added for emphasis. She stopped talking and began eating her meal, and came to life again only when the table was being cleared in preparation for the next course.

“How many times did you travel to outer space?”

“Twice. But I didn’t travel very far from earth. If you compare it to an apple, then only as far as the peel is thick.”

“Aren’t you being modest?”

“Not really.”

The conversation had taken a somewhat strange turn, but I can’t say I found it awkward, especially since the old lady had a special charm about her. And so I was not the least bit irritated when she went on with her interrogation.

“Are you in favor of letting women travel in outer space?”

“I really haven’t given it much thought,” I answered honestly. “If that’s their ambition, then why not?”

“You’re the ones who started that whole crazy movement, aren’t you? That women’s liberation business. It’s so childish, so tasteless, though it certainly is convenient.”

“Do you think so? Why convenient?”

“It’s always convenient to know who’s to blame for everything. Everything’s the fault of men, say the ladies. They’re the only ones who can straighten out the world. They want to take your place. As preposterous as it may sound, they do have a definite goal in mind, which is more than can be said of you men.”

After a dessert of rhubarb sprinkled with sugar, the kids sneaked out of the dining room and I got ready to leave. But when the doctor heard I was staying at Orly, he insisted I move in with him. I had no desire to take advantage of him, but I was sorely tempted. To put it bluntly, I wanted to pester the hell out of him.

Mrs. Barth seconded her husband’s invitation and showed me their still-empty guest book, saying it would bring good luck if an astronaut were the first to sign it. After a round or two of polite exchanges, I finally gave in. It was decided that I would move in with them the following day. Dr. Barth accompanied me to my car and after I was behind the wheel confided that his grandmother had taken a distinct liking to me, adding that this was no small honor. He was still standing in the gateway as I drove off and plunged into a Parisian night.

To avoid the traffic I swung around the center of the city and headed for the boulevards along the Seine, where the midnight traffic was sure to be lighter. I was tired but contented. My conversation with Barth had left me feeling extremely hopeful. I took it easy on the road, not trusting myself after drinking all that white wine. Ahead of me a small 2 CV was nervously hugging the curb. The road was deserted. Warehouses loomed high above the railings that ran along the opposite bank of the Seine, but I hardly noticed them: my mind was wandering. Suddenly a pair of car lights blazed in the rear-view mirror like a couple of suns. I was right in the middle of passing the 2 CV and was a little too far over to the left, so I decided to make way for the night racer and drop back into the slow lane, but it was too late. His headlights flooded the inside of my car, and a second later a flattened-out shape came shooting through the gap. By the time I recovered from the air blast, he was gone. Something was missing from the right front fender. All that was left of the mirror was the stem. Cut off. A little farther down the road it occurred to me that if it hadn’t been for the wine I would have blocked its path and might now be lying underneath the wreckage of my own car. Now that would have given Randy food for thought. How beautifully my death would have fit the Naples pattern. How sure Randy would have been it was connected with the simulation mission. But it seems I wasn’t fated to be the twelfth victim: I made it back to the hotel safely.

* * *

On the fourth day of my visit, on a Sunday, in order to put his team’s involvement in the case on a more personal basis, and also perhaps to show off his new house, Barth held a little get-together at his place to which more than twenty people were invited. Since I hadn’t been prepared for any formal affairs, I decided to drive to Paris on Saturday to pick up something more appropriate for the occasion, but Barth talked me out of it. So, dressed as I was in a pair of faded jeans and a scraggly sweater—all my better clothes had been ruined by the Italian police—I stood at the entrance along with the Barths. The walls on the ground floor had been opened up, converting the downstairs area into a spacious drawing room. It was a rather strange situation: surrounded by a crowd of