Mavis Gallant - The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant

Roger and Simone met Cassandra at the Gare du Nord. The moment he saw her, Roger understood she had been forced by her parents to make the trip, and that they were ruining her Easter holiday. He marveled that a fifteen-year-old of her size and apparent strength could be bullied into anything.

“I’ll be seeing Luc, what fun,” said Cassandra, jackknifed into the car, her knees all but touching her chin. “It will be nice to see Luc,” she said sadly. Her fair hair almost covered her face.

“Luc is at our country residence, studying with all the strength of his soul,” said Simone. “He is in the Yonne,” she added. Cassandra looked puzzled. Roger supposed that to a foreigner it must sound as though Luc had fallen into a river.

There had been no coaxing Luc, no pleading; no threat was strong enough to frighten him. They could keep the BMW; they could stop his allowance; they could put him in jail. He would not come to Paris to welcome Cassandra. He was through with England, through with the Brunts — through, for that matter, with his mother and father. Katia had taken their place.

“We’ll have her in Paris for a week, alone,” Simone had wailed. Luc’s argument was unassailable; alone, he could study. Once they were all there, he would have to be kind to Cassandra, making conversation and showing her the village church. Simone put the blame on Mrs. Brunt, who had insisted in a wholly obtuse way on having her rights.

“How are your delicious parents?” she asked, turning as well as the seat belt allowed, seeming to let the car drive itself in Paris traffic.

“Daddy’s at home now. He’s retired from the minstrel.”

“The ministry,” said Simone deeply. Cassandra’s was the only English she had ever completely understood. “My husband has also retired from public service. It was too much for his heart. He is much younger than Mr. Brunt, I believe.”

“Daddy was a late starter,” said Cassandra. “But he’ll last a long time. At least, I hope so.”

Like the dog bought to improve Luc’s arithmetic; like the tropical fish Simone had tended for Luc, and eventually mourned; like the tennis court in which Luc had at once lost interest and on which Roger had had his first heart attack, so Cassandra fell to Luc’s parents. With Simone, she watched television; with Roger, she walked uphill and down, to parks and museums.

“What was your minstrel?” she asked Roger, as they marched toward the Bois.

“Years ago, when there was a grave shortage of telephones, thanks to President de Gaulle—” Roger began. “Do you recall that unhappy time?”

“I’m afraid I’m dreffly ignorant.”

“I was good at getting friends off the waiting list. That was what I did best.”

He clutched her arm, dragging her out of the way of buses and taxis that rushed from the left while Cassandra looked hopelessly right.

“You like the nature?” he said, letting Sylvestre run free in the Bois. “The trees?”

“My mother does. Though this is hardly nature, is it?”

Sylvestre loped, snuffling, into a club of dusty shrubbery. He gave a yelp and came waddling out. All Roger saw of the person who had kicked him was a flash of white boot.

“You have them in England?” said Roger.

“Have what?”

“That. Male, female. Prostitutes.”

“Yes, of course. But they aren’t vile to animals.”

“You like the modern art?” Roger asked, breathless, as they plodded up the stalled escalators of the Beaubourg museum.

“I’m horribly old-fashioned, I’m afraid.”

Halfway, he paused to let his heart rest. His heart was an old pump, clogged and filthy. Cassandra’s heart was of bright new metal; it beat more quietly and regularly than any clock.

Above the city stretched a haze of pollution, unstirring, all of an even color. The sun suffused the haze with amber dye, which by some grim alchemy was turned into dun. Roger saw through the haze to a forgotten city, unchanging, and it was enough to wrench the heart. A hand, reaching inside the rib cage, seemed to grasp the glutted machine. He knew that some part of the machine was intact, faithful to him; when his heart disowned him entirely he might as well die.

Cassandra, murmuring that looking down made her feel giddy, turned her back. Roger watched a couple, below, walking hand in hand. He was too far away to see their faces. They were eating out of a shared paper bag. The young man looked around, perhaps for a bin. Finding none, he handed the bag to the girl, who flung it down. The two were dressed nearly alike, in blue jackets and jeans. Simone had assured Roger that Katia was French, but he still saw her Russian. He saw Katia in winter furs, with a fur hat, and long fair hair over a snowy collar. She removed a glove and gave the hand, warm, to Luc to hold.

“I’m afraid I must be getting lazy,” Cassandra remarked. “I found that quite a climb.”

The couple in blue had turned a corner. Of Luc and Katia there remained footsteps on lightly fallen snow.

“This place reminds me of a giant food processor,” said Cassandra. “What does it make you think of?”

“Young lovers,” Roger said.

Cassandra had a good point in Simone’s eyes: She kept a diary, which Simone used to improve her English.

“The Baron has sex on the brain,” Simone read. “Even a museum reminds him of sex. In the Bois de Boulogne he tried to twist the conversation around to sex and bestiality. You have to be careful every minute. Each time we have to cross the road he tries to squeeze my arm.”

When Cassandra had been shown enough of Paris, Simone packed the car with food that Luc liked to eat and drove south and east with the dog, Roger, and Cassandra. They stopped often during the journey so that Cassandra, who sat in the back of the car, could get out and be sick. They found Luc living like an elderly squatter in a ground-floor room full of toast crusts. It was three in the afternoon, and he was still wearing pajamas. Inevitably, Cassandra asked if he was ill.

“Katia’s been here,” said Simone, going round the house and opening shutters. “I can tell. It’s in the air.”

Luc was occupying the room meant for Cassandra. He showed no willingness to give it up. He took slight notice of his parents, and none whatever of their guest. It seemed to Roger that he had grown taller, but this was surely an illusion, a psychological image in Roger’s mind. His affair, if Roger could call it that, had certainly made him bolder. He mentioned Katia by name, saying that one advantage of living alone was that he could read his mail before anyone else got to it. Roger foresaw a holiday of bursting quarrels. He supposed Cassandra would go home and tell her father, the historian, that the French were always like that.

On the day they arrived, Simone intercepted and read a letter. Katia, apparently in answer to some questioning from Luc, explained that she had almost, but not entirely, submitted to the advances of a cousin. (Luc, to forestall his mother, met the postman at the gate. Simone, to short-circuit Luc, had already picked up the letters that interested her at the village post office.) Katia’s near seduction had taken place in a field of barley, while her cousin was on leave from military service. A lyrical account of clouds, birds, and crickets took up most of a page.

Roger would not touch the letter, but he listened as Simone read aloud. It seemed to him that some coarse appreciation of the cousin was concealed behind all those crickets and birds. Katia’s blithe candor was insolent, a slur on his son. At the same time, he took heart: If a cousin was liable for Army duty, some part of the family must be French. On the other hand, who would rape his cousin in a barley field, if not a Russian?

“You swore Katia was French,” he said, greatly troubled.