We stopped for lunch at the Cercle d’Or, a small inn near the outskirts of Rouen. The place had a wood-burning oven, and we ate lamb roasted over the coals, and goat cheese and Bosc pears, and coupes napoléons, and then we drank coffee with Calvados. By three-thirty in the afternoon, the semicircle of white-covered tables near the fire was almost deserted and the restaurant seemed hypnotically comfortable; padding waiters had begun to set the places for supper. Outside, above a hill covered with beeches, the rack of storm clouds had thinned into streaks of blue, and a few rays of sun reached into the dining room.
A squabble had started between Alain and Henri when Alain, for no reason at all, threw a mayonnaise-covered olive into Henri’s wine. The quarrel lasted through the coffee, when Henri, to the amusement of the restaurant staff, ordered Alain away from the table. Alain, swearing under his breath, shuffled obediently off to the courtyard and lay down in the back of the jeep; through the window by our table we could see his big sneakered feet protruding from under the rear flap in an attitude of careless defiance.
When he had gone, Henri said, “Espèce de con!” and Roger, who worshipped Henri and was always jealous of Alain, allowed a faint smile to cross his face. After that Henri stubbed out his cigarette on a crust of bread and began needling me about my appearance; short skirts were out of fashion, he said, and mine made me look like a prostitute. “And wherever,” he added, “did you get the idea that you could wear a green shirt with blue denim?”
“Americans don’t pay attention to little things like the color of their clothes,” remarked Roger nastily, brushing a thread from the sleeve of his immaculate tweed jacket. “Or the style of their hair. Sarah, ma vieille, you’re certainly pretty enough, but why don’t you put your hair up properly? Or cut it off? You have the look of a savage!”
Henri giggled and grabbed my frizzy ponytail. “She is a savage!” he exclaimed, with the delighted air of a child making a discovery. “A savage from the shores of the Mississippi!” (He pronounced “Mississippi” with the accent on the last syllable.)
In the sunlight through the window, Henri looked very fair-haired and well fed. His round face, like that of a troublemaking cherub, was flushed with malicious energy; I could tell he was enormously pleased to be annoying me, and that he wouldn’t let me off easily.
“I’m going to go see Alain,” I said, and started to get up, but Henri held on to my hair and pulled me back.
“Don’t go anywhere, darling,” he said. “I want to tell Roger all about your elegant pedigree.”
“Tell him about yours!” I said rashly, forgetting that Henri was illegitimate.
Roger gave a thin squawk of laughter, and Henri’s face darkened. He picked up a spoon and began stirring the heaped butts in the ashtray. “Did you ever wonder, Roger, old boy,” he said in a casual, intimate tone, “why our beautiful Sarah is such a mixture of races, why she has pale skin but hair that’s as kinky as that of a Haitian? Well, I’ll tell you. Her mother was an Irishwoman, and her father was a monkey.”
Roger raised his hand to his mouth and made an indeterminate noise in his throat.
A small, wry smile hovered on Henri’s lips. “Actually, it’s a longer story. It’s a very American tale. This Irlandaise was part redskin, and not only that but part Jew as well—some Americans are part Jew, aren’t they? And one day this Irlandaise was walking through the jungle near New Orleans, when she was raped by a jazz musician as big and black as King Kong, with sexual equipment to match. And from this agreeable encounter was born our little Sarah, notre Négresse pasteurisée.” He reached over and pinched my chin. “It’s a true story, isn’t it, Sarah?” He pinched harder. “Isn’t it?”
“Let me alone!” I said, pulling my head away.
“That’s enough, Henri,” said Roger.
There was a short silence, in which Henri’s eyes were fixed cheerfully and expectantly on mine, as if he were waiting for a reward.
I said, “I think that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. I didn’t know you could be so stupid.”
He waved his hand languidly at me, and I shoved back my chair and walked to the hall where the toilets were. All the staff had left the small dining room, which looked pretty and tranquil with the low fire and the tables freshly laid for dinner. The exception was the table where I had been sitting with Henri and Roger: the cloth, which hadn’t been cleaned after the coffee, was extravagantly littered with ashes, wine stains, ends of bread, and fruit parings, as if filthy children had been playing there.
In the room labeled Dames, which was surprisingly modern—all red, with Florentine-gold faucets—I closed the toilet lid and sat down on it, bending double so that my cheek rested on my knees. It was a position to feel small in. I sat breathing soberly and carefully as I tried to control the blood pounding in my head.
I wasn’t upset by the racism of what Henri had said. Nasty remarks about race and class were part of our special brand of humor, just as they had been in the wisecracking adolescent circles I had hung out with at school. On nights when we lay awake in bed, I often teased Henri into telling me nigger jokes, stories of the sexy, feckless little mulatto girl the French call Blanchette. His silly tall tale had done something far more drastic than wound me: it had somehow—perhaps in its unexpected extravagance—illuminated for me with blinding clarity the hopeless presumption of trying to discard my portion of America. The story of the mongrel Irishwoman and the gorilla jazzman had summed me up with weird accuracy, as an absurd political joke can
