A Sport and a Pastime

“Read. A magazine.”

“Yes,” she answers vaguely.

They move to the edge of the bed. There is an old copy of Realites. He reaches for it and pulls it to the floor. Her head leaning down, she starts to turn the pages. Dean looks over her shoulder. It is Sunday morning. Ten o’clock. Only the occasional, soft leafing of paper interrupts the stillness. She has come to an article about the paintings of Bonnard. They read it together. He waits until she has finished the page. Gently he begins.

“Not enough graisse,” she says.

He withdraws carefully—she is almost clinging to him, it feels—and she applies a bit more, wiping her fingers afterwards on the sheet. In it goes—she lies calm—and intrigued by a page that shows photographs of the fourteen kinds of feminine appeal (innocence, mystery, naturalness, etc.), he begins to move in and out in long, delirious strokes. France is bathed in sunshine. The shops are closed. Churches are filled. In every town, behind locked doors, the restaurants are laying their tables, preparing for lunch.

[29]

THE MORE CLEARLY ONE sees this world, the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist. It was strange how I found myself almost completely silent when I was with her. There was everything to talk about it seemed, but we simply could never begin. I took her to dinner in May when Dean went to Paris for a few days, and what days they were, summery, vast. The light failed slowly. The world was filled with blue cities, fragrant, mysterious. We dined at the hotel. From time to time I smiled at her, like a stupid uncle, while she talked about Dean. I was really not too interested. The terms of the encounter were all wrong. I knew what she was. I was ready to confess, to fall to my knees like a believer. It would have been a terrible moment. She would have denied it all. More likely, she wouldn’t have understood. What she wants is to know what his father and sister will think of her. Will they find her nice?

I’m sure they will,” I say.

“He doesn’t talk about his father.”

“Well, his father’s a critic—you know that. Rather elegant man, I gather.”

“Pardon.”

“I say he’s very elegant, very social.”

“Still,” she says, “he could find me nice.”

“Of course.” Why am I not telling her the truth?

We sit over salade de tomates, the rich slices specked with parsley fragments, gleaming with oil. I wonder if she feels herself ordinary. Does she know that his sister wanted to come down here to see him but Dean insisted on meeting her in Paris? Yes, of course she knows. She knows everything, sometimes I am convinced. Anyway, the future doesn’t surprise her. Much of it exists already—I have said that before.

“Some more tomates?” she says, offering to serve me.

She helps herself. Her mouth glistens. Across from us is an English couple. They’re both very young. He has dry, red hair. She is thin-faced and shy. Her dress looks like wallpaper, and they sit in an utter, English silence reading the menu as if it were a contract. In an accent so perfect it surprises me, Anne-Marie whispers,

“Did I hurt you, darling?”

“What?”

It’s a line from a joke Dean’s told her. Her face is full of a mischievous joy. But I don’t know the original story. She delivers it with the assurance of a clown. That’s what he says, she explains. They’re in bed together. Then she says: no, why? And he says: you moved. Her smile is questioning.

“Do I tell it right?” she asks. She looks to see if I am amused. I love her contempt for the sexual life of the English.

Dean is at the Calais, his car parked in the huge square past the corner with a white violation slip already tucked under the wiper. He’s sharing a room with his sister and being very agreeable. He desperately needs money—everything depends on it—and she wants to talk about his life, his future life, that is. She knows he’ll be touchy.

“Now don’t get angry…” she says.

“Oh, Amy…” he begins. He knows exactly how. She plays every card face up like a woman surrendering to love. He’s perfectly ready to face this future life, Dean says. More than that, it’s already appearing before him. These months have made an enormous difference. They’ve been like the wilderness for him, how can he explain it? Suddenly she wants to embrace him. She feels relieved and a little guilty.

“Do you mean it?”

“It’s changed my life,” he says. “It’s changing my life.” He smiles. He loves her. Sometimes she is like a toy.

“But what have you been doing?”

“Seeing no one,” he says. “Living the life of a little town. It’s like saying: stop all this, stop the noise; now, what should it all look like?”

“Yes…” she agrees.

“Life is composed of certain basic elements,” he says. “Of course, there are a lot of impurities, that’s what’s misleading.”

He has always instructed her. She listens gravely.

“What I’m saying may sound mystical, but in everybody, Anne, in all of us, there’s the desire to find those elements somehow, to discover them, you know? Sometimes I think they’re the same for all of us, but maybe they’re not. I mean, we look at the Greeks and say, ah, they built this civilization, this whole brilliant world, out of certain, simple things. Why can’t we? And if not a civilization, why can’t each of us, properly directed, build a life, I mean a happy life? Believe me, the elements exist. When you enter certain rooms, when you look at certain faces, suddenly you realize you’re in the presence of them. Do you know what I mean?”

“Of course, I do,” she says. “If you could achieve that, you’d have everything.”

“And without it you have…” he shrugs, “a life.”

“Like everybody’s.”

“Just like everybody’s,” he says.

“I don’t want that.”

“Neither do I.”

“I can never tell when you’re conning me,” she says.

He shakes his head slowly.

“I’m not,” he promises. “Because I want you to do me a tremendous favor.”

“What?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Later,” he says.

She goes into the bathroom to finish dressing. Dean reads a magazine. She comes out to comb her hair.

“Where shall we go?” she says.

“Shall we have a good dinner?”

“All right. But not too expensive.” The phrase worries him. He tries to ignore it.

“It’s on me,” he says.

“Do you have any money? Daddy said you were desperate.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“No,” he says. “I have a job.”

“You have? What?”

“Tutoring,” he says.

“You never said anything about that.”