A Sport and a Pastime

pure light. It is in this city that she was born, in one melancholy autumn of the war. Her father had already left home to live with his mistress. Her mother was alone. A cold winter that year, a snowy winter, hard as stone, ice gleaming in the sunshine along the roofs. A winter which somehow formed her though she could not speak as much as a single word.

The remains of breakfast lie littered about like a feast from the night before. Across the street is the opera, touches of gold on the balcony railing, posters invisible below. Lucie de Lammermoor will be here, dark letters printed on violet. La Vie Boheme. They have gone back to bed and lie almost enclosed in a second sleep, the radio weak, her fingers lightly, the skin draws tight beneath them, tracing his balls.

In the bathroom he watches her putting up her hair. Her arms are raised. In the hollows there is a shadow of growth, short and soft, and to this belongs a damp, oniony odor which he loves. When she is in the tub, he begins to scrub her back. She complains. It’s too hard.

He runs his fingertips lightly over the skin.

“It looks better,” he says.

She does not reply. She is bent forward slightly in the thin, comforting steam, her arms along the white rim. Beneath them, faintly commonplace, her breasts are visible, as if he might see them any time he liked, as if they were ordinary as knees. The palest nipples—he can barely see one. He kneels there beside the tub. She begins to wash her legs.

Simple moments of immodesty, an immodesty which finishes desire, one often hears, in a great and abiding city. I have visited and read a good deal about Nancy. The capital of Lorraine. A model of eighteenth-century planning. Its harmonious squares, its elegant houses are typically French and appropriate to so rich a region, but its glory it owes to a Pole, Stanislas Leszczynski, who was given the duchies of Lorraine and Bar by his son-in-law, Louis XV, and who ruled from Nancy which he devoted himself to embellishing. An ancient city. The old quarter has never been altered. A city of rich merchants, strategic, key to the lands along the border. In front of its very walls… But how flat this all seems, how hopeless, like a cheap backdrop shaking as the actors walk.

[12]

SUNDAY MORNINGS. GLOVED HANDS touching, they drive along the empty boulevard. Schools are closed. The iron gates are locked in front of those long, damp alleys smelling of pee. A watery sunshine, blenched by skies which refuse to warm, falls on the blocks and corners. Unexpectedly, like a band of survivors, there is a crowd, all decently dressed, just leaving church. They squint as they come out into the light. They leave the steps, walk along, stop at the baker’s for bread. From there they scatter, the warm loaves under their arms. Dean is a little bored. It’s an effort to speak French. He’s weary of it, and English is no better, hers is so uneven. Her mistakes begin to be irritating, and besides, she seems disposed to talk only of banal things: shoes, her work at the office. When she is silent, he glances at her and smiles. She doesn’t respond. She senses it, he thinks. Suddenly, he feels transparent. The eyes that return his somewhat mechanical glance are the eyes of a knowing child, and all the evasions, poses, devices become foolish. The windshield has faint streaks of blue like air. As he looks through, at the road ahead, he is conscious of her calm appraisal. She understands effortlessly. Life is all quite clear to her. She is one with it. She moves in it like a fish, never wondering if it has a bottom, shores, worlds above it…

Worlds below. Those provincial Sundays I walked along the streets on the way perhaps to lunch with the Jobs, encountering as I went, even inventing myself, those small epiphanies of which the town is comprised. The clink of spoons as they dine, unseen, behind the shutters of the girls’ school. The graveled courts, the gardens of Autun. I stood near the window as I dressed, steeped in aching thoughts and hoping for the appearance, even for a moment emerging from her door, of Claude Picquet. Icicles fall from the roof, broken free by sunlight, and flash past the window. She never comes out. The street remains still. As I look back, I see that life is like a game of solitaire and every once in a while there is a move. Despite it all, I could have been happy, a quiet happiness to be sure, but happy nonetheless. I could have found it very pleasant to walk into town if the weather were nice—things like that. It is knowledge that poisons us, events one would hesitate to imagine.

Winter days remarkable only for their calm… I go down to the Cafe Francais and sit with my back to the mirrors watching them play cards. I have beautiful shots of this, many reflected in the glass. The camera was in my lap, sometimes behind a newspaper. The click of the shutter was softer than a match strike. The waitress pretending not to see. People come in the door, which is right on the corner. One wall is all windows on the square. The light is flooding but mild. The voices are low. I spread out the newspaper and begin to read. Occasionally I make some notes.

Of course, there’s Paris. I stand waiting on the quai in the icy dark. The clock shines white as the moon. The early train is an adventure, rocking along as dawn comes, rushing through villages of the dead. I take a seat at the end of the car. All the compartments look stuffy, thick with the odors of sleep. It’s after nine when we pull into Nevers. There’s a clatter of doors. Bursts of cold air from outside. A handsome girl boards wearing a checkered coat. Her father is there to see her off, I watch him through the windows. He is waiting rather diffidently for the train to begin moving and then, as it does, he shows a last, hurried affection. She has the scars of some skin disease on her cheeks, otherwise an intelligent face. And she has good legs and hands. Her father looked quite distinguished.

After we are moving she comes out of her compartment and enters the cabinet- toilette, just behind me. She passes very close in a red silk suit. She has a nice figure. A long time passes. I begin to be uneasy. I don’t know why. I begin to become aware of myself sitting innocently at the end of the passage. Silence, except for the train. Finally I hear paper tearing. The sound alarms me. We are passing dead engines. Farther down the car, two men are standing, one in the thick, blue uniform of the French Air Force. More paper tearing. They’re paying no attention to me, absolutely none, but suddenly I’m afraid. I have a moment of agonizing premonition. She’s going to do something terrible, burst out, wipe shit on my face, abuse me, screaming things I know I won’t be able to understand. I am about to stand up and move when there are explosions of air as we pass more engines. The sound is terrifying.

And then the great, blackened terminal in Paris, that filthy cathedral, stale and exhausted, through which one passes into grey, commercial streets. I walk outside to find a cab, falling wearily into the back seat although it’s only a little past noon. I am thinking of Cristina who later, as we drive to dinner, will begin to tell me about Isabel’s husband who comes to her now for advice. They’re very friendly. They drive around town talking while he offhandedly points to various buildings he owns.

“Fabulous apartment houses,” she says, shrugging up her shoulders in helplessness. She is in an expensive black dress from which her neck emerges quite bare.

“He didn’t own that one,” Billy says. “It was the little, tiny one next door.”

“The little one next door,” she agrees. “Yes. All right. But he’s shown me lots of others.”

“Well, I just wouldn’t believe everything he says.”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Why not?”

“I just wouldn’t,” Billy says. “You know, I talk to a lot of people.”

“He’s marvelous,” she says to me. “Believe me. Crazy about art.”

She’s had a few drinks already, bad for her liver, of course. She knows it, she won’t be able to sleep. Then she’ll begin to get terrible attacks, especially because of the not sleeping. Billy says that’s right: she ought to rest more.

We go to Chez Noe, just along the river, where as soon as we appear, we are embraced with cries of joy. They haven’t been here for months—it’s the place they used to come to before they were married.

“When we were sleeping together,” Cristina says.

Billy glances at her.

A small restaurant, plain as an aunt’s house. Upstairs it’s relatively empty. They put us by the window. Cristina insists on champagne.

“I feel like it tonight.”

“Watch out, Bummy,” he says.

She gives a foolish laugh.