A Sport and a Pastime

the cold distance the bells begin, filling the darkness, clear as psalms.

[14]

SATURDAY, THE SIXTH OF January. The sky is cloudless, blue, cold as ice and yet burning the eyes. The sun is just weak enough to be felt through the windshield, no more. It’s the coldest day of the year. He takes a curve on the wrong side near Beaune and then, too late, sees the figure near the edge of the trees, a figure in uniform who casually waves him down, now it is two of them: gendarmes. Dean has crossed the solid line in the middle of the road. It’s quite serious. In France the agents don’t fool around. One doesn’t misbehave. Slowly they walk across to the car. They have the faces of hunters, unemotional and wise. They ask for his papers. His French vanishes. It crumbles to a few, inept words. He stammers and can answer only with difficulty. The policemen are patient. They seem to be watching his mouth, as if they might understand him despite himself. Not more than a glance on their part at Anne-Marie who sits still as a housemaid while Dean struggles and lies. It seems the ordeal will never end. Finally they deliver a warning, with gestures, and allow him to go on. Dean thanks them.

He knows he’s been a fool. It’s made even more clear by her silence, by something in her face. He behaved like a frightened boy. Worse, he couldn’t even find words.

“It’s lucky I don’t speak French that well,” he says, forcing a laugh.

“Oui,” she says.

All the way to Dijon she is somewhat disinterested in him. They ride in an unbroken silence, the cold leaking in on them, the whole day blue with it, people, objects, the very light. He pulls up before the Hotel de la Cloche.

“What do you think of it?”

She doesn’t reply.

It’s only when the door of the room is opened that she suddenly changes.

“Ah!” she cries, “c’est tres jolie!”

Dean is suspicious. It’s ridiculously modern. The corridors they walked along were built to grand dimensions, suitably gloomy, and now this: loud colors and the bareness of new furniture. The floor has been scraped and varnished. The yellow wallpaper is printed with hundreds of small, colored balls. He wonders if she’s being sarcastic, but no, she begins to unpack happily. She looks into the bathroom. She finds it perfect. Dean is annoyed. A wave of uncertainty comes over him. The afternoon begins to seem ominous. It has an emptiness he suddenly cannot think how to fill.

“Do we go out?” she says.

“Jesus, it’s bitter cold.”

“Pardon?”

“It’s too cold,” he says. “Where do you want to go?”

She shrugs. To see the stores.

“It’s freezing,” he says.

“Non,” she complains.

The streets are crowded, cold weather or not. They walk around until six, looking in windows, and before one good shop stand a long time admiring a black pullover. Suddenly he decides to buy it for her. They go inside. It costs forty francs. It’s more than he thought. The vendeuse waits, her face expressionless. It seems they are all listening. The pullover lies limp, a fine label gleaming within its throat. Forty francs. Finally he nods.

“All right,” he says. It’s like throwing away the oars.

She clings to his arm as they walk along afterwards, and he sees their reflection in the chilly glass. They look like a working couple. He is thin, tough, no necktie. It’s evening. He imagines he looks like a boxer.

The faint warmth of the hotel room restores him. She begins to strip off her clothes like a roommate and climb into bed. Dean undresses, too. He takes off his shoes. He unbuttons his shirt slowly, with the assurance of an athlete.

It is almost dark. Her arms are caught beneath her. He feels her hesitate, then begin to surrender. In the dusk, her desperate spasms fill him with the deepest, the most profound joy.

They have dinner on the rue Michelet, in a restaurant filled with the soft clatter of plates, a long dinner that seems almost a reminiscence they are so pleased, so content to eat in silence. They look up to find themselves exchanging smiles. At the end they become sleepy. They stuff themselves with cheese, epoisses, citeaux, specialties of a region known for its food.

She cannot be satisfied. She will not let him alone. She removes her clothes and calls to him. Once that night and twice the next morning he complies and in the darkness between lies awake, the lights of Dijon faint on the ceiling, the boulevards still. It’s a bitter night. Flats of rain are passing. Heavy drops ring in the gutter outside their window, but they are in a dovecote, they are pigeons beneath the eaves. The rain is falling all around them. Deep in feathers, breathing softly, they lie. His sperm swims slowly inside her, oozing out between her legs.

The wine has made him thirsty. At about three in the morning he gets up for water. She turns her head sleepily and asks for some, too. She rises on one elbow to drink it. His hand supports her back. Afterwards he opens the window wider. The rain is steady, hard as pellets. He can hear it falling on the roofs of Dijon, shifting, moving then in a different direction, across the avenues, down the black streets. He would like to kiss her behind the knees. At last he sleeps.

He will never awaken, not from this dream, that much I know. He is already too deep. He has reached the nadir. He cannot move. In the morning, in the clear, holy light he moves like an affectionate father, drawing her to him and pulling the pillows down.

[15]

SHE WAS CONCEIVED AFTER much difficulty—I do not know if this is significant—and born in the fall of 1944, the last autumn of the war. Her father had already been gone for two months. Her mother, whom I shall never see, had a poor, unhappy life, even though she eventually married again. There is a winter in which her child is sick, a depressing winter. She struggles through it alone. The restaurants are lighted. Behind the flat, steamy windows of the Cafe du Commerce businessmen are talking. The pale, neon script of the dance hall sign illuminates a narrow court—as she passes, coming home from the hospital in the evening darkness, she can see the couples enter. Her fingers are cold, her feet. Her life has no solution. It is like a crime that cannot be undone.

I don’t know how to think of this mother, this uncomplaining woman I am so inclined to like. I picture her as a little plain and fond of gossip. I’m not even sure where she was born, in Metz, I think, one with Toul and Verdun of the three old bishoprics. There’s no reason to say Metz, but one must place it somewhere.

Edouard, the father, was something of a dandy, although as he grew older he became stout. He was born in Belgium. Anne-Marie sees him from time to time. He lives in the sunshine of later years (he was considerably older than her mother) with a young wife north of Paris. She has a job as he’s not able to work too much any more. He has a few investments, and they’re able to get by. He’s very careful with his money, even more than most French, which is in itself quite something. They have a little boy eleven years old. The surprising thing is that Anne-Marie and her mother both think fondly of this villain. The mother has even gone so far as to keep the little boy for a few weeks while Edouard and his wife were off in Scandinavia. Of course, she was paid something, but still it seems extraordinary. As for her present husband, I know nothing about him, nothing at all. He’s saved her from a lonely life; that’s it.

There’s a photograph of Annie and her father and stepbrother, the three of them looking directly at the camera. She is sixteen but seems younger. Behind them is what appears to be the railroad station, large windows, distinguished facade. It’s one of those ordinary little snapshots which illustrate the life of almost everybody. It was