Mavis Gallant - The Cost of Living - Early and Uncollected Stories

“Nothing,” said Jane. It was a book Frau Stengel had given them, the comic adventures of Hansi, a baboon. Hansi was always in mischief, bursting in where grown-up people were taking baths, and that kind of thing, but the most enchanting thing about him, from the children’s point of view, was his heart-shaped scarlet behind, on which the artist had dwelt with loving exactitude.

Mrs. Kennedy drew the book toward her. She glanced quickly through the pages, then put it down by her coffee cup. She said nothing.

“Is it cruel?” said Jane nervously. She tried again: “Is it too cruel, or something?”

“It is worse than cruel,” said Mrs. Kennedy, when at last she could speak. “It is vulgar. I forbid you to read it.”

“We already have.”

“Then don’t read it again. If Frau Stengel gave it to you, give it back this morning.”

“It has our names written in it,” said Jane.

Momentarily halted, Mrs. Kennedy looked out at the view. Absorbed with her own problem — the children, the book, whether or not she had handled it well — she failed to notice that the fog had lifted, and felt just as hemmed in and baffled as usual. If only one could consult one’s husband, she thought. But Mr. Kennedy, who lay at this very moment in a nursing home half a mile distant, waiting for his wife to come and read to him, could not be counted on for advice. He cherished an obscure stomach complaint and a touchy liver that had withstood, triumphantly, the best attention of twenty doctors. It was because of Mr. Kennedy’s stomach that the family moved about so much, guided by a new treatment in London, an excellent liver man on the Riviera, or the bracing climate of the Italian lakes. A weaker man, Mrs. Kennedy sometimes thought, might have given up and pretended he was better, but her husband, besides having an uncommon lot of patience, had been ailing just long enough to be faddish; this year it was a nursing home on the rim of the Black Forest that had taken his fancy, and here they all were, shivering in the unaccustomed damp, dosed with a bracing vitamin tonic sent over from America and guaranteed to replace the southern sun.

Mr. Kennedy seldom saw his daughters. The rules of the private clinics he frequented were all in his favor. In any case, he seldom asked to see the girls, for he felt that they were not at an interesting age. Wistfully, his wife sometimes wondered when their interesting age would begin — when they were old enough to be sent away to school, perhaps, or, better still, safely disposed of in the handsome marriages that gave her so much concern.

Reminded now of Mr. Kennedy and the day ahead, she looked around the dining room, wondering if anyone would like to come along to the nursing home for a little visit. She stared coldly past the young American couple who sat before the next window; they were the only other foreigners in the hotel, and Mrs. Kennedy had swept them off to the hospital one morning before they knew what was happening. The visit had not been a success. Cheered by a new audience, Mr. Kennedy had talked about his views — views so bold that they still left his wife quite breathless after fourteen years of marriage. Were people fit to govern themselves, for instance? Mr. Kennedy could not be sure. Look at France. And what of the ants? Was not their civilization, with its emphasis on industry and thrift, superior to ours? Mr. Kennedy thought that it was. And then there was God — or was there? Mr. Kennedy had talked about God at some length that morning, and the young couple had listened, looking puzzled, until, at last, the young woman said, “Yes, well, I see. Agnostic. How sweet.”

“Sweet!” said Mr. Kennedy, outraged.

Sweet? thought his wife. Why, they were treating Mr. Kennedy as if he were funny and old-fashioned, somebody to be humored. If they could have heard some of the things he had said to the bishop that time, they might have more respect! She had given the young man a terrible look, and he had begun to speak valiantly of books, but it was too late. Mr. Kennedy was offended, and he interrupted sulkily to snap, “Well, no one had to revive Kipling for me ,” and the visit broke up right after that.

Really, no one would do for Mr. Kennedy, thought his wife — but she thought it without a jot of censure, for she greatly admired her husband and was ready to show it in a number of practical ways; not only did she ungrudgingly provide the income that permitted his medical excursions but she sat by his bedside nearly every day of the year discussing his digestion and reading aloud the novels of Upton Sinclair, of which he was exceedingly fond.

Sighing, now, she brought her gaze back from the window and the unsuitable hotel guests. “You might as well go to lessons,” she said to the girls. “But remember, no movies.”

They got down from their chairs. Each of them implanted on Mrs. Kennedy’s cheek a kiss that smelled damply of milk. How grubby they looked, their mother thought, even though the day had scarcely begun. Who would believe, seeing them now, that they had been dressed not an hour before in frocks still warm from the iron? Ernestine had caught her dress on something, so that the hem drooped to one side. Their hair…But Mrs. Kennedy, exhausted, decided not to think about their hair.

“You look so odd sometimes,” she said. “You look all untidy and forlorn, like children without mothers to care for them, like little refugees. Although,” she added, conscientious, “there is nothing the matter with being a refugee.”

“Like Frau Stengel,” said Jane, straining to be away.

“Frau Stengel? What on earth has she been telling you about refugees?”

“That you should never trust a Czech,” said Jane.

Mrs. Kennedy could not follow this and did not try. “Haven’t you a message for your father?” she said, holding Jane by the wrist. “It would be nice if you showed just a little concern.” They stood, fidgeting. “Shall I tell him you hope he feels much better?”

“Yes.”

“And that you hope to see him soon?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“He will be pleased,” their mother said, but, released, they were already across the room.

Frau Stengel was, on the whole, an unsatisfactory substitute for a mother’s watchful care, and it was only because Mrs. Kennedy had been unable to make a better arrangement that Frau Stengel had become the governess of Jane and Ernestine. A mournful Volksdeutsch refugee from Prague, she looked well over her age, which was thirty-nine. She lived — with her husband — in the same hotel as the Kennedy family, and she had once been a schoolteacher, both distinct advantages. The girls were too young for boarding school, and the German day school nearby, while picturesque, had a crucifix over the door, which meant, Mrs. Kennedy was certain, that someone would try to convert her daughters. Of course, a good firm note to the principal might help: “The children’s father would be most distressed…” But no, the risk was too great, and in any case it had been agreed that the children’s religious instruction would be put off until Mr. Kennedy had made up his mind about God. Frau Stengel, if fat, and rather commonplace, and given to tearful lapses that showed a want of inner discipline, was not likely to interfere with Mr. Kennedy’s convictions. She admired the children just as they were, applauding with each murmur of praise their mother’s painstaking efforts to see that they kept their bloom. “So sweet,” she would say. “So herzig , the little sweaters.”

The children were much too pretty to be taxed with lessons; Frau Stengel gave them film magazines to look at and supervised them contentedly, rocking and filing her nails. She lived a cozy, molelike existence in her room on the attic floor of the hotel, surrounded by crocheted mats, stony satin cushions, and pictures of kittens cut from magazines. Her radio, which was never still, filled the room with soupy operetta melodies, many of which reminded Frau Stengel of happier days and made her cry.