Mavis Gallant - The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant

Peering into Madame Gisèle’s magic hand mirror again to see what she can see, Amalia does not recognize her own face. Two years ago, when she knew that Marie would be coming to Paris, Amalia dyed her graying hair. Later, she saw her reflection in the glass covering an old photograph of Marie (the photograph taken to Madame Gisèle for mystical guesswork) and she saw two faces and believed them to be both her own. What am I now, she wondered. I am the one I left and the other one I became. Marie is still herself.… Now Amalia knows she was mistaken; Marie is also two. When Marie did arrive in Paris, when she got down from the train that terrifying morning and lumbered toward them, out of the past, holding out her arms, Dino and Amalia would never have known her if Marie had not cried out their names. They had been waiting all night for the past, and they were embraced by a ridiculous stranger who had no one to love but them. Dino pushed out his lips in the Eastern grimace of triumph and contempt, but close to his frightened heart, with his work permit and residence permit and proof of existence and assurance of identity and evidence of domicile, he carried — still carries — a folded piece of paper covered with figures in red ink. It is a statement of account for Marie, if ever she should ask for it. It will show how little Dino received for the rings and gold pieces she gave Amalia when Dino and Amalia left Bucharest sixteen years ago. “Send for me later,” Marie had said, and they kissed on the promise. Dino has a round face, blond hair, small uptilted blue eyes, and a nose like a cork on a bottle, but of course he is pure Romanian — a Latin, that is. There is not a drop of foreign blood in any of them: no Greek, no Turkish, no Magyar, no Slav, no Teuton, no Serb. He is represented in the cards by the king of clubs, a dark card, but Amalia prefers it to diamonds. Diamonds mean “stranger.”

Madame Gisèle turns the hand mirror facedown, because when Amalia looks in it she is getting more than her money’s worth.

“Oh, why did Marie ever come here?” Amalia says. In Bucharest they would have given her a pension, in time. They might have sent her to a rest home on the Black Sea. Who will look after her during the long, last illness every émigré dreads? Amalia wonders, What if Marie is insane?

With the word “insane” she is trying to describe Marie’s wishing, her belief that the planets can hear. Amalia is an old expatriate; she knows how to breathe underwater. Marie is too old to learn. She belongs to irrecoverable time — that has been the trouble from the beginning. She came to Paris nearly two years ago, and has been wishing for something ever since.

This is a common story. Madame Gisèle’s clients are forever worried about lunacy in friends and loved ones. With her left hand she cuts the deck and peers at the queen of diamonds — the stranger, the mortal enemy, the gossip and poisoner of the mind. Surely not Marie?

“Your friend is not insane,” says Madame Gisèle abruptly. “She found work without your help. She has found a room to live in.”

“Yes, by talking to a Romanian on the street! What Romanian? What do we know about him? She talks to anybody. Why did she leave certain people who made a home for her even when they had no room, and even bought her a bed? She found work, yes, but she spends like a fool. Why does she bring certain people the first strawberries of the season? They haven’t asked for anything. They can live on soup and apples. Marie is old and sick and silly. She says, ‘Look, Amalia, look at the new moon.’ What do you know about Marie? You don’t know anything.”

“Why do you come, if you don’t want to hear what I say?” shouts Madame Gisèle, in her village dialect. “Your brain is mildewed, your husband murdered his mother, your friend is a whore!”

These are standard insults and no more offensive than a sneeze. “Parlons français,” says Amalia, folding her hands on Marie’s X rays. She will furnish proof of Marie’s dementia, if she can — it seems an obligation suddenly.

“I am the last to deny that Marie was a whore,” she begins. “She was kept by a married man. When Dino and I were engaged and I brought him to her flat for the first time, she answered the door dressed in her underwear. But remember that in Bucharest we are a Latin race, and in the old days it was not uncommon for a respectable man to choose an apartment, select the furniture, and put a woman in it. After this man’s wife died, he would have married Marie, but it was too late. He was too ill. Marie nursed this man when he was dying. She could have left with Dino and me but she stayed.”

“It was easier for two to come out then than three,” says Madame Gisèle, to whom this is not a complete story. “Certain people may have encouraged her to stay behind.”

“If everyone left, what would become of the country?” says Amalia, which is what every old émigré has to say about new arrivals. “Listen to me. I think Marie is insane.”

One day, soon after Marie had come to Paris, before she had found work in a shop by talking to a Romanian on the street, Amalia walked with her in the gardens of the Champs-Élysées. It was by no means a promenade; Amalia was on one of the worried errands that make up her day — this time, going to the snack bar where the cook, who is from Bucharest, saves stale bread for people who no longer need it. Once you have needed this bread, you cannot think of its going to anyone else. Marie walked too slowly — her legs hurt her, and she was admiring the avenue. Amalia left her under a chestnut tree. If the tree had opened and encased Marie, Amalia would have thought, God is just, for Marie was a danger, and her presence might pull Amalia and Dino back and down to trouble with the police, which is to say the floor of the sea.

“Listen, Marie,” began Amalia to herself, having disposed of Marie on a bench. “We never sent for you because we never were ready. You’ve seen the hole we live in? We bought it with your rings. We sleep in a cupboard — it has no windows. That piece of cotton hanging is a door. We call this a dining room because it has a table and three chairs — we bought the third chair when we knew you were coming. There is your new bed, between the chair and the curtain. Dino will curse you every time he stumbles against it. The trees of Paris? The flower stalls? We have the biggest garage of Paris in the middle of our square. The square should be called Place du Garage St.-Honoré now. I want to tell you also that most of the things you gave me were worth nothing. Only diamonds matter, and the best were stolen when we were coming through Bulgaria and Greece. When we first came to live here, where the garage stands now there were baskets of fruit and flowers.”

Returning with her newspaper parcel of stale bread, Amalia looks for Marie. Marie has vanished. Amalia understands that some confused wishing of her own, some abracadabra pronounced without knowing its powers, has caused her old friend to disintegrate. She, Amalia, will be questioned about it.

Marie is not far away. She has left the bench and is sitting on the ground. Pigeons cluster around her — they go to anyone. Her eyes are globed with tears. The tears are suspended, waiting, and every line of her body seems hurt and waiting for greater pain. Whatever has hurt her is nothing to what is to come. Amalia rushes forward, calling. Marie is not crying at all. She holds out a chestnut. “Look,” she says.

“Where did it come from?” cries Amalia wildly, as if she has forgotten where she is.

Marie gets to her feet like a great cow. “It was still in its case; it must be left over from last year.”

“They turn dark and ugly in a minute,” says Amalia, and she throws it away.