Mavis Gallant - The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant

Roger stopped in front of a pastry shop and showed Simone a chocolate cake. “Why can’t we have that?”

“Because it would kill you. The specialist said so.”

“We could have oysters,” Roger said. “I’m allowed oysters.”

“Luc will be home,” said Simone. “He doesn’t like them.”

Father Rousseau sent for the Clairevoies again. This time he wore a tweed jacket over a white sweater, with a small crucifix on one lapel and a Solidarność badge on the other. After lighting his cigarette he sat drumming his fingers, as if wondering how to put his grim news into focus. At last he said, “No one can concentrate on an exam and on a woman. Not at the same time.”

“Women?” cried Simone. “What women?”

“Woman,” Roger corrected, unheard.

There was a woman in Luc’s life. It seemed unbelievable, but it was so.

“French?” said Roger instantly.

Father Rousseau was unable to swear to it. Her name was Katia, her surname Martin, but if Martin was the most common family name in France it might be because so many foreigners adopted it.

“I can find out,” Simone interrupted. “What’s her age?”

Katia was eighteen. Her parents were divorced.

“That’s bad,” said Simone. “Who’s her father?”

She lived in Biarritz with her mother, but came often to Paris to stay with her father and brother. Her brother belonged to a political debating society.

“I’ve seen him,” said Simone. “I know the one. She’s a terrorist. Am I right?”

Father Rousseau doubted it. “She is a spoiled, rich, undereducated young woman, used to having her own way. She is also very much in love.”

“With Luc?” said Roger.

“Luc is a Capricorn,” said Simone. “The most levelheaded of all the signs.”

So was Katia, Father Rousseau said. She and Luc wrote “Capricorn loves Capricorn” in the dust on parked cars.

“Does Luc want to marry her?” said Simone, getting over the worst.

“He wants something.” But Father Rousseau hoped it would not be Katia. She seemed to have left school early, after a number of misadventures. She was hardly the person to inspire Luc, who needed a model he could copy. When Katia was around, Luc did not even pretend to study. When she was in Biarritz, he waited for letters. The two collected lump sugar from cafés but seemed to have no other cultural interest.

“She’s from a rich family?” Simone said. “And she has just the one brother?”

“Luc has got to pass his entrance examination,” said Roger. “After he gets his degree he can marry anyone he likes.”

“ ‘Rich’ is a relative term,” said Simone, implying that Father Rousseau was too unworldly to define such a thing.

Roger said, “How do you know about the sugar and ‘Capricorn loves Capricorn’ and how Luc and Katia got to know each other?”

“Why, from Katia’s letters, of course,” said Father Rousseau, sounding surprised.

“Did you keep copies?” said Simone.

“Do you know that Luc is of age, and that he could take you to court for reading his mail?” said Roger.

Father Rousseau turned to Simone, the rational parent. “Not a word of reproach,” he warned her. “Just keep an eye on the situation. We feel that Luc should spend the next few weeks at home, close to his parents.” He would come back to Rennes just before the examination, for last-minute heavy cramming. Roger understood this to be a smooth Jesuitical manner of getting rid of Luc.

Luc came home, and no one reproached him. He promised to work hard and proposed going alone to the country house, which was near Auxerre. Simone objected that the place had been unheated all winter. Luc replied that he would live in one room and take his meals in the village. Roger guessed that Luc intended to spend a good amount of time with Cousin Henri, who lived nearby, and whom Luc — no one knew why — professed to admire. Cousin Henri and Roger enjoyed property litigation of long standing, but as there was a dim, far chance of Henri’s leaving something to Luc, Roger said nothing. And as Simone pointed out, meaning by this nothing unkind or offensive, any male model for Luc was better than none.

In the meantime, letters from Katia, forwarded from Rennes, arrived at the Paris apartment. Roger watched in pure amazement the way Simone managed to open them, rolling a kitchen match under the flap. Having read the letter, she resealed it without trace. The better the quality of the paper, the easier the match trick, she explained. She held a page up to the light, approving the watermark.

“We’ll need a huge apartment, because we will have so many children,” Katia wrote. “And we’ll need space for the sugar collection.”

The only huge apartment Simone could think of was her own. “They wish we were dead,” she told Roger. “My son wishes I were out of the way.” She read aloud, “ ‘What would you be without me? One more little Frenchman, eternally studying for exams.’ ”

“What does she mean by ‘little Frenchman’?” said Roger. He decided that Katia must be foreign — a descendant of White Russians, perhaps. There had been a colony in Biarritz in his father’s day, the men gambling away their wives’ tiaras before settling down as headwaiters and croupiers. Luc was entangled in a foreign love affair; he was already alien, estranged. Roger had seen him standing at the window, like an idle landowner in a Russian novel. What did Roger know about Russians? There were the modern ones, dressed in gray, with bulldog faces; there were the slothful, mournful people in books, the impulsive and slender women, the indecisive men. But it had been years since Roger had opened a novel; what he saw were overlapping images, like stills from old films.

“ ‘Where are you, where are you?’ ” read Simone. “ ‘There is a light in your parents’ room, but your windows are dark. I’m standing under the awning across the street. My shoes are soaked. I am too miserable to care.’

“She can’t be moping in the rain and writing all at the same time,” said Simone. “And the postmark is Biarritz. She comes to Paris to stir up trouble. How does she know which room is ours? Luc is probably sick of her. He must have been at a meeting.”

Yes, he had probably been at a meeting, sitting on the floor of a pale room, with a soft-voiced old man telling him about an older, truer Europe. Luc was learning a Europe caught in amber, unchanging, with trees for gods. There was no law against paganism and politics, or soft-voiced old men.

At least there are no guns, Roger told himself. And where had Simone learned the way to open other people’s letters? He marveled at Katia’s doing for his son what no woman had ever done for him; she had stood in the rain, crying probably, watching for a light.

Ten days before Easter, Cassandra Brunt arrived. Her father was a civil servant, like Roger. He was also an author: Two books had been published, one about Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, the other about the failure of the Maginot Line and the disgraceful conduct of the French officer class. Both had been sent to the Clairevoies, with courteous inscriptions. When Simone had gone over to England alone, to see if the Brunts would do for Luc, Mrs. Brunt confided that her husband was more interested in the philosophy of combat than in success and defeat. He was a dreamer, and that was why he had never got ahead. Simone replied that Roger, too, had been hampered by guiding principles. As a youth, he had read for his own pleasure. His life was a dream. Mrs. Brunt suggested a major difference: Mr. Brunt was no full-time dreamer. He had written five books, two of which had been printed, one in 1952 and one in 1966. The two women had then considered each other’s child, decided it was sexless and safe and that Luc and Cassandra could spend time under the same roof. After that, Luc crossed the Channel for three visits , while Simone managed not to have Cassandra even once. Her excuse was the extreme youth of Cassandra and the dangers of Paris. Now that Cassandra was fifteen Mrs. Brunt, suddenly exercising her sense of things owed, had written to say that Cassandra was ready for perils and the French.