Mavis Gallant - The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant

“The porter seemed drugged,” said Herbert. “There was something hysterical, irrational. What did he mean by ‘too late’? He meant ‘too early’!”

“He was playing,” said little Bert, who had the high, impudent voice of the spoiled favorite. “He wanted you to play too.”

Herbert smiled. “Grown people don’t play that way,” he said. “They mean what they say.” His scruples made him add, “Sometimes.” Then, so that little Bert would not be confused, he said, “I mean what I say.” To prove it he began looking for the two-star restaurant as soon as they had reached the station. He looked right and left and up at a bronze plaque on the wall. The plaque commemorated a time of ancient misery, so ancient that two of the three travelers had not been born then, and Herbert, the eldest, had been about the age of little Bert. An instinct made him turn little Bert’s head the other way, though the child could barely read in German, let alone French.

“I can’t protect him forever,” he said to Christine. “Think of what the porter said.”

It was a sad, gnawing moment, but once they were aboard the express to Strasbourg they forgot about it. They had a first-class compartment to themselves. Herbert opened one smooth morning paper after the other. He offered them to Christine but she shook her head. She carried a paperback volume of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s essays tucked in behind her handbag. For some reason she thought that Herbert might tease her. They moved on to breakfast in the dining car, where Herbert insisted on speaking French. Little Bert was truly cooperative this time and did not interrupt or keep whimpering, “What are you saying?” He propped the object Herbert had begun to refer to as “that damned sponge” behind the menu card, asked for a drop of coffee to color his milk, and ate toasted brioche without being coaxed. When the conductor came by to check their tickets little Bert suddenly repeated a French phrase of Herbert’s, which was, “Oh, en quel honneur?” Everyone who heard it smiled, except Christine; she knew he had not meant to be funny, though Herbert believed the child had a precocious sense of humor. He did not go so far as to write down little Bert’s remarks, but made a point of remembering them, though they were nothing but accidents.

The early start and the trouble at the hotel must have made Herbert jumpy. He kept lighting one cigarette after another so carelessly that sometimes he had two going at once. He looked at Christine and told her in French that she was overdressed. She smiled without replying; it was the end of the holiday, too late for anything except remarks. She glanced out at men fishing in ditches, at poplar shadows stretched from fence to fence, and finally — Herbert could tease her or not — she opened her book.

Little Bert was beside her in a second. He stood leaning, breathing unpleasantly on her bare arm. He laid a jammy hand over the page and said, “What are you doing?”

“Standing on my head.”

“Don’t,” said Herbert. “Children can’t understand sarcasm. Christine is reading, little Bert.”

“But he can see that I’m reading, can’t he?”

“What are you reading?” said the child.

“A book for an examination.”

“When is it?” he said, as if knowing they had been expecting another “what?”

“In two days’ time at eight in the morning.”

Still he did not remove his paw from the page. “Can you read to me?” he said. “Read a story about Bruno.”

“Herbert,” she said suddenly, in her slow voice. “Do you ever think that nothing passes unobserved? That someone might be recording all your private expressions? The faces you think no one sees? And that this might be on film, stored away with tons and tons of other microfilm? For instance, your reaction to the porter — it wasn’t a reaction at all. You were sleepwalking.”

“Who would want a record of that?” said Herbert. “En quel honneur.”

“Read a story where Bruno has sisters and brothers,” said little Bert.

“I’ll read after Strasbourg,” said Christine. She was too inexperienced to know this was a pledge, though Herbert’s manner told her so at once.

“If Christine wants to study I’ll read,” he said.

Oh, he was so foolish with the child! Like a servant, like a humble tutor with a crown prince. She would never marry Herbert — never. Not unless he placed the child in the strictest of boarding schools, for little Bert’s own sake. Was it fair to the child, was it honest, to bring him up without discipline, without religion, without respect, belief, or faith? Wasn’t it simply Herbert’s own self-indulgence, something connected with his past? It happened that little Bert’s mother had run away. Not only did Herbert-the-amiable forgive his wife, but he sent her money whenever she needed it. In a sense he was paying her to stay away from little Bert. He’d had bad luck with his women. His own mother had been arrested and put in a camp when he was three. She had been more pious than political, one of a flock milling around a stubborn pastor. After she came home she would sit on a chair for hours, all day sometimes, munching scraps of sweet food. She grew enormous — Herbert recalled having to help her with her shoes. She died early and stayed in his mind as a bloated sick woman eating sugar and telling bitter stories — how the Slav prisoners were selfish, the Dutch greedy, the French self-seeking and dirty, spreaders of lice and fleas. She had gone into captivity believing in virtue and learned she could steal. Went in loving the poor, came out afraid of them; went in for the hounded, came out a racist; went in generous, came out grudging; went in with God, came out alone. And left Herbert twice, once under arrest, and once to die. Herbert did not believe for a second that the Dutch were this or the French were that; he went to France often, said that French was the sole language of culture, there was no poetry in English, something else was wrong with Russian and Italian. At the same time he thought nothing of repeating his mother’s remarks.

Christine came up out of her thoughts, which were quite far from their last exchange. She said, “Everyone thinks other people are dirty and that they won’t cooperate. We think it about the Slavs, the Slavs think it about the Jews, the Jews think it about the Arabs …”

Herbert said, “Oh, a Christian sermon? En quel honneur?” and stared hard at the two cigarettes lit by mistake and crowding the little ashtray. His mother’s life had never been recorded, and even if it had been he would not have moved an inch to see the film. Her life and her death gave him such mixed feelings, made him so sad and uncomfortable, that he would say nothing except “Oh, a Christian sermon?” when something reminded him of it.

“Now, little Bert,” said his father at eleven o’clock. “We are almost at Strasbourg. I know you are not used to eating your lunch quite so early, but we are victims of the airport strikes and I am counting on you to understand that.” He drew the child close to him. “If there are shower-baths in the station …”

“We’ll eat our plum tart,” said little Bert.

“We’ll have to be quick and alert from the time we arrive,” said Herbert. He had more than that to say, but little Bert had put Bruno between his face and his father’s and Herbert had no wish to address himself to a bath sponge. He began stuffing toothbrushes and everything they would need for their showers into his briefcase, not at all out of sorts.

Christine jumped down and made a dash in the right direction as soon as the train stopped. But the great haste recommended by Herbert had been for nothing: There were no showers. Nevertheless she paid her fee of one franc fifty centimes, which allowed her a threadbare dark blue square of toweling, a sliver of wrapped soap, four sheets of glassy paper, and a receipt for the money. She showed the receipt to an attendant carrying a mop and a bucket and wearing rubber waders, who looked at it hard and waited for a tip before unlocking a tiled cubicle containing a washbasin. The tiles rose very high and the ceiling was lost in twilight. The place was not really dirty, but coarse and institutional. She took off her dress and sandals and stood on the square of towel. Noise from the platform seemed to seep between the cracked tiling and to swirl and echo along the ceiling. Even the trains sounded sad, as though they were used to ferry poor and weary passengers — refugees perhaps. The cubicle was as cold as a cellar; no sun, no natural light had ever touched the high walls. She stepped from the towel to her sandals — she did not dare set a foot on the cement floor, which looked damp and gritty. In these surroundings her small dressing case with its modest collection of lotions and soap seemed a wasteful luxury. She said to herself, If this is something you pay for, what are their jails like?