Mavis Gallant - The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant

Only the word “Socialist” seemed to stir Luc. “We need a good little civil war,” he declared, as someone who has never been near the ocean might announce, “We need a good little tidal wave”—so Roger thought.

He said, “There are no good little civil wars.” But he knew what was said of him: that his heart attacks had altered his personality, made him afraid. On a November day, Roger and his father had followed the coffin of Charles Maurras, the nationalist leader, jailed after the war for collaboration. “My son,” said Roger’s father, introducing Roger to thin-faced men, some wearing the Action Française emblem. Roger’s father had stood for office on a Royalist platform, and had come out of the election the last of five candidates, one an impertinent youngster with an alien name, full of z’s and k’s. He was not bitter; he was scornful and dry, and he wanted Roger to be dry and proud. Roger had only lately started to think, My father always said, and, My father believed. As he spoke, now, to Luc about satisfaction and failure, he remembered how he had shuffled behind the hearse of a dead old man, perhaps mistaken, certainly dispossessed. They got up to leave, and Roger bowed to an elderly woman he recognized. His son had already turned away.

In order to give Luc a fully virile image, Simone redecorated his room. The desk lamp was a galleon in full sail with a bright red shade — the color of decision and activity. She took down the photograph of Roger’s graduating class and hung a framed poster of Che Guevara. Stepping back to see the effect, she realized Guevara would never do. The face was feminine, soft. She wondered if the whole legend was not a hoax and if Guevara had been a woman in disguise. Guevara had no political significance, of course; he had become manly, decorative kitsch. (The salesman had assured her of this; otherwise, she would never have run the risk of offending Roger.) As she removed the poster she noticed for the first time a hole drilled in the wall. She put her eye to it and had a partial view of the maid’s bathroom, used in the past by a succession of au-pair visitors, in Paris to improve their French and to keep an eye on a younger Luc.

She called Roger and made him look: “Who says Luc has no view of women?”

Roger glanced round at the new curtains and bedspread, with their pattern of Formula I racing cars. Near the bed someone — Luc, probably — had tacked a photo of Hitler. Roger, without saying anything, took it down. He did not want Luc quite that manly.

“You can’t actually see the shower,” said Simone, trying the perspective again. “But I suppose that when she stands drying on the mat … We’d better tell him.”

“Tell Luc?”

“Rousseau. Orientation.”

Not “Father Rousseau,” he noticed. It was not true that women were devoted guardians of tradition. They rode every new wave like so much plankton. My father was right, he decided. He always said it was a mistake to give them the vote. He said they had no ideas — just notions. My father was proud to stand up for the past. He was proud to be called a Maurrassien, even when Charles Maurras was in defeat, in disgrace. But who has ever heard of a Maurrassienne? The very idea made Roger smile. Simone, catching the smile, took it to mean a sudden feeling of tolerance, and so she chose the moment to remind him they would have an au-pair guest at Easter — oh, not to keep an eye on Luc; Luc was too old. (She sounded sorry.) But Luc had been three times to England, to a family named Brunt, and now, in all fairness, it was the Clairevoies’ obligation to have Cassandra.

“Another learner?” Roger was remembering the tall, glum girls from northern capitals and their strides in colloquial French: That is my friend. He did not sleep in my bed — he spent the night on the doormat. I am homesick. I am ill. A bee has stung me. I am allergic and may die.

“You won’t have to worry about Cassandra,” Simone said. “She is a mature young woman of fifteen, a whole head taller than Luc.”

Simone clipped a leash to the dog’s collar and grasped Roger firmly by the arm. She was taking two of her charges for a walk, along streets she used to follow when Luc was still in his pram. On Boulevard Lannes a taxi stopped and two men wearing white furs, high-heeled white boots, and Marilyn Monroe wigs got out and made for the Bois. Roger knew that transvestites worked the fringe of the Bois now, congregating mostly toward the Porte Maillot, where there were hotels. He had heard the women in the café across the street complaining that the police were not vigilant enough, much the way an established artisan might grumble about black-market labor. Roger had imagined them vaguely as night creatures, glittering and sequined, caught like dragonflies in the headlights of roving automobiles. This pair was altogether real, and the man who had just paid the taxi driver shut his gold-mesh handbag with the firm snap of a housewife settling the butcher’s bill. The dog at once began to strain and bark.

“Brazilians,” said Simone, who watched educational television in the afternoon. “They send all their money home.”

“But in broad daylight,” said Roger.

“They don’t earn as much as you think.”

“There could be little children playing in the Bois.”

“We can’t help our children by living in the past,” said Simone. Roger wondered if she was having secret talks with Father Rousseau. “Stop that,” she told the barking dog.

“He’s not deliberately trying to hurt their feelings,” Roger said. Because he disliked animals — in particular, dogs — he tended to make excuses for the one they owned. Actually, the dog was an accident in their lives, purchased only after the staff psychologist in Luc’s old school had said the boy’s grades were poor because he had no siblings to love and hate, no rivals for his parents’ attention, no responsibility to any living creature.

“A dog will teach my son to add and subtract?” said Roger. Simone had wondered if a dog would make Luc affectionate and polite, more grateful for his parents’ devotion, aware of the many sacrifices they had made on his behalf.

Yes, yes, they had been assured. A dog could do all that.

Luc was twelve years old, the puppy ten weeks. Encouraged to find a name for him, Luc came up with “Mongrel.” Simone chose “Sylvestre.” Sylvestre spent his first night in Luc’s room — part of the night, that is. When he began to whine, Luc put him out. After that, Sylvestre was fed, trained, and walked by Luc’s parents, while Luc continued to find school a mystery and to show indifference and ingratitude. Want of thanks is a parent’s lot, but blindness to simple arithmetic was like an early warning of catastrophe. Luc’s parents had already told him he was to train as an engineer.

“Do you know how stiff the competition is?” his mother asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you want to be turned down by the best schools?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to be sent to a third-rate school, miles from home? Have you thought about that?”

Roger leaned on Simone, though he did not need to, and became querulous: “Sylvestre and I are two old men.”

This was not what Simone liked to talk about. She said, “Your family never took you into consideration. You slept in your father’s study. You took second best.”

“It didn’t feel that way.”

“Look at our miserable country house. Look at your cousin Henri’s estate.”

“His godmother gave it to him,” said Roger, as though she needed reminding.

“He should have given you compensation.”

“People don’t do that,” said Roger. “All I needed was a richer godmother.”

“The apartment is mine,” said Simone, as they walked arm in arm. “The furniture is yours. The house in the country is yours, but most of the furniture belongs to me. You paid for the pool and the tennis court.” It was not unpleasant conversation.