Aaron Elkins: Old Bones

"I want to apologize for my cousin’s behavior," he said.

"Oh, no," Claire said, and looked at him. A tear broke loose and ran cleanly down her cheek; she wore no makeup. "It’s I who should apologize. My parents…It’s only when my father drinks that-that…"

"There’s no need for you to apologize, mademoiselle." He smiled at her, rather smoothly, he thought. "Since we’ve already been introduced, and we’re relatives, after all, perhaps we might call each other by our first names? I’m Raymond."

"Claire," she said softly.

"Do you live near here, Claire?" he asked.

"I live in Rennes, with my parents."

"Ah. Well, that’s not far."

She looked briefly at him again. Far from what, he was afraid she was going to say. He was struck by how very clear and calm her eyes were. Beautiful, really; melancholy and intelligent.

"No," she said, "not far. Rennes is very nice."

"I’m sure it is."

They sat stiffly while he searched for something to talk about. Perhaps he ought to go; she was merely being polite to him, when it was he who had meant to offer politeness. But he continued to sit. Why, he wasn’t sure.

"And you?" she said.

"Pardon?"

"Where do you live?"

"Oh, in California; a city called San Mateo. You’ve probably never heard of it?"

"Ah…no."

"No, of course not. Well." He sipped suavely from a water glass, noticing too late the smudge of Madame Fougeray’s rich, plum-colored lipstick on the rim. "Yes," he said, "San Mateo. I’m a professor there. Uh, Claire, do you speak English? My French isn’t very good. That is," he added with uncharacteristic vanity, "my spoken French."

"Yes, I speak it," she said in delightfully Gallic English, "but your French is excellent."

"No, my accent is excellent. Which is a mixed blessing. Everyone thinks I understand much more than I do, and they speak so fast I can’t follow them."

She smiled for the first time. "I have the opposite problem. I understand English very well, but my accent is so terrible people think I understand nothing, and shout at me and use sign language."

No, he almost told her, your accent is beautiful, charming; it’s like music. His face grew warm. What a thing to say. Where were these ideas coming from?

"You speak English extremely well," he said. "Where did you learn?"

The conversation continued in this painful vein for another five minutes, then petered desolately out altogether. She had just told him that she was an accountant in her father’s sausage factory, and he simply couldn’t think of anything to reply.

"Well…" he said, pushing back his chair.

"You said you were a professor?" she said.

He felt a swelling in his chest. She didn’t want him to go. "Yes, of European and American literature."

Her eyes widened. "Truly? But I’m a graduate in literature myself. Of the University of Rennes."

"You are? But you said you’re an accountant."

"Well, yes, my father wants me to work in the factory, but my first love is literature. One day I will teach it too."

"Really? That’s wonderful! I’m somewhat of a specialist in French literature myself," he proclaimed immodestly, "especially the nineteenth century. I have a Flaubert novel with me, as a matter of fact. In my opinion he’s the finest of them all. Well," he emended judiciously, "of the early nineteenth-century French novelists, that is. And of course with the exclusion of the romanticists."

She laughed. "And I’ve brought a Balzac. I’ve been reading it for two days."

"Which one?"

"Les Illusions Perdues."

"Ah."

She tilted her head and looked at him, something like a sparkle in her pale eyes. "Oh? Don’t you like it? It seems to me a marvelous work, full of the most keen observation."

"Of course it is, but an author isn’t a sociologist. I don’t believe he should be judged on ability to observe, but on the power of his literary style. Balzac’s is rudimentary at best, and he’s far too melodramatic for my taste, and too moralistic as well."

"But isn’t Flaubert moralistic and melodramatic?"

"Well, no, I don’t think I’d say that; at least, not as much. But it doesn’t matter; it’s the care he takes with each sentence that’s so wonderful-with settling for nothing less than the one wholly appropriate word. No one’s ever been a more scrupulous writer than Flaubert."

Ray knew his own eyes were sparkling. He was enjoying himself, something he hadn’t expected to do until he was safely back in the library stacks at Northern Cal.

"But," she said, "what has scrupulosity-" She giggled delightfully. "Is that a word? What has it to do with literature? A great book is defined by its power to move, not by how carefully the author peers through his Roget in search of le mot juste. Of course Madame Bovary is a great novel, but it’s because Flaubert had something great to tell us, not because he worried every line to get the words exactly right."

Ray grinned happily. "No, I disagree…"

They talked long past the dinner hour, remaining after the others had left and not getting up until the grumbling Madame Lupis began pointedly sweeping up almost under their feet. Ray had one more surprise in store for himself, and that was when he asked Claire if she’d like to walk to Ploujean with him the following morning for a cup of coffee in one of the cafes. If, of course, the weather was fine.

"Tomorrow? But tomorrow is Cousin Guillaume’s funeral. It wouldn’t be-"

"The next day then?" The boldly inspired Raymond Alphonse Schaefer was not to be so easily put aside.

Claire lowered her eyes. "You’ll still be here?"

"Of course," Ray said, deciding then and there.

Claire hesitated, then accepted his invitation with graceful thanks.

Later that evening, when she came to the salon with her set-faced, close-mouthed parents for ten o’clock coffee, she had added a small gold choker to her plain wool outfit of navy blue and appeared to have put a touch of color on her lips and cheeks. There was even, it seemed to Ray, the hint of a delicate, delicious floral scent when she passed him. She provided little competition to Leona’s chic plumage, but the change was noticeable. Ray spoke to her only in passing-earning a suspicious and belligerent look from Claude-but he had no doubt that she had made the effort for him, and the thought made him giddy with pleasure.

He had no illusions about his own attractiveness. He knew very well that he was one of those gray, quiet men who fail to impress themselves on the consciousness of others. People never remembered whether or not he’d been at a particular meeting or cocktail party, and students who had been at one of his seminars in the morning walked by him in the afternoon without recognizing him.

If you asked the people who knew him whether he smoked a pipe (he didn’t) or wore a bowtie (he did), nine out of ten would have no idea. Most would have said he wore glasses, although in fact he only looked as if he ought to. A few years before, in a wild fit of self-assertion, he’d grown a beard, which came in a startling, curly red. But except for a single acerbic remark from the dean of humanities when it was at the scruffy stage, no one commented. And when he shaved it off two years later, no one noticed at all.

So when an intelligent, attractive woman made herself prettier for his sake, well, that was something to think about.

When he got up to go to his room she was reading Balzac. He stopped at her chair.

"I’ll see you Friday morning," he said gallantly, not caring who heard him say it.

He went humming to bed, taking the stone steps two at a time. He had not bothered to apologize to Jules.

Guillaume du Rocher’s funeral went smoothly, conducted with fitting sobriety and according to meticulous instructions left by the deceased. Afterwards, family and servants gathered in the library upstairs, where Monsieur Bonfante, Guillaume’s attorney of more than forty years, was to read the will.