Mavis Gallant - Paris Stories

The façade they put up now was almost flawless: the old man may even have been deceived. In the effort, they were obliged to look at themselves, and these moments, near-horror, near-perfection, were unrehearsed. They dragged resisting Flor to parties, to restaurants, to the theater. At times Bob and Bonnie began to believe in the situation, and they would say, in amazement, “There, do you see how good life can be?” Flor seemed quite normal, except that she complained of being tired, but many women are like that. One day they made an excursion to Montparnasse: Bob bought pictures, and Bonnie had unearthed a young artist. She said he was Polish and full of genius. It was a bad outing: Bob was irritated because Bonnie had promised to help the young man without telling him first. The studio was like dozens more in Paris: there was a stove with last year's ashes, and the pictures he showed them were cold and stale. There was a flattering drawing of Bonnie tacked to the wall. The painter talked as if he owed his diction to an attentive study of old Charles Boyer films. He had a ripe-pear voice and a French accent.

“I don't like him,” said Bob, when they were driving home. “He's nothing. He paints like a little girl. Anyway, he's a phony. What's that accent? He's just a New York boy.”

“He has lived here for many years,” said Bonnie, the bristling mother-bird.

“I may live here a lot longer but that won't change my voice,” said Bob. “He's afraid. He's scared of being what he really is. If he talked naturally he wouldn't be Michel Colbert. Colbert. Colbert. What is that?”

“What is Harris?” said Bonnie, trembling.

Nothing was said, nothing was said about anything, and the silence beat about them like waves. The elevator in the building wasn't working again. Bonnie clutched at Flor as they climbed the stairs. “What have I gone and done?” she whispered heavily, pinching Flor's arm.

Flor had not been lying down a minute before her husband came in and slammed the door behind him. He stood over her and said, “Why the hell didn't you back me up?”

“I didn't listen,” said Flor in terror. “I didn't speak.”

“That's what I'm saying. What do you suppose my father thinks?”

He didn't go on with it. Too much had been taken away from him. He did not want to diminish what remained. Flor seemed frightened, looking up at him, curled on the bed like a child, and he was filled with pity for her and for them all. She had been dragged from her bed for the futile visit to the studio and now he had to drag her out again. She was a sick girl: he had to remember that. He sat on the bed with his back half turned and said gently, “We have to go out for dinner, you know?”

“Oh, no, no.”

“It's my father and some of his friends,” he said. “You know I have to be there. These people have invited us. Bonnie's coming.” By this he meant that Bonnie understood the requirements of life.

“I'd rather not go.”

He was so tired, yet he was someone who had never been tired. He thought, You shouldn't have to plead with your wife over such simple things. “It'll do you good,” he said.

“I went to the studio,” she said plaintively.

“People go two places in one day,” he said. “It's not late. It's summer. It's still light outside. If you'd open those shutters you'd see.” He had a fixed idea that she feared the dark.

Light and dark were outside the scope of her fears. She moved her head, unable to speak. He would have taken her hand only he never touched her now. In the spring, she had begun pleading with him to let her sleep. She had behaved like a prisoner roused for questioning. Tomorrow, she had promised, or in the morning. Any moment but now. He woke her one dawn and was humiliated at what they had become, remembering Cannes, the summer they had met. He couldn't discuss it. He never touched her again. He couldn't look at her now. Her hair, loose on the pillow, was a parody of Cannes. So were the shuttered windows.

Flor felt his presence. She had closed her eyes but held his image under the lids. He was half turned away. His back and the shape of his head were against the faint summer light that came in between the slats of the shutters. One hand was flat on the bed, and there was the memory of their hands side by side on the warm sand. When he had moved his hand to cover hers, there remained the imprint of his palm, and, because they were both instinctively superstitious, they had brushed this mold away.

He said in such a miserable voice, “Are you really all that tired?” that she wanted to help him.

She said, “I've already told you. I'm afraid.”

He had heard of her fear of cars but couldn't believe it. He had never been afraid: he was the circus seal. They had always clapped and approved. He tried to assemble some of the practical causes of fear. “Are you afraid of the next war? I mean, do you think about the bombs and all that?”

Flor moved her head on the pillow. “It's nothing like that. I don't think about the war. I'm used to the idea, like everyone else.” She tried again. “Remember once when we were out walking, remember under the bridge, the boy kicking the man? The man was lying down.”

“What's the good of thinking about that?” he said. “Somebody's kicking somebody else all the time. You can't make yourself responsible for everything.”

“Why didn't the man at least get up? His eyes were open.”

He had been afraid she would say, Why didn't we help him? The incident had seemed even when they were witnessing it far away and grotesque. When you live in a foreign country you learn to mind your own business. But all this reasoning was left in the air. He knew she was making a vertiginous effort to turn back on her journey out. He said something he hadn't thought of until now. It seemed irrefutable: “We don't know what the man had done to him first.” Perhaps she accepted this; it caused a silence. “I'm glad you're talking to me,” he said humbly, even though he felt she had put him in the wrong.

“I'm afraid of things like that,” said Flor.

“Nobody's going to pull you under a bridge and kick you.” He looked at her curiously, for she had used a false voice; not as Bonnie sometimes did, but as if someone were actually speaking for her.

“Sometimes when I want to speak,” she said in the same way, “something comes between my thoughts and the words.” She loathed herself at this moment. She believed she gave off a rank smell. She was the sick redhead; the dying, quivering fox. “It's only being anemic,” she said wildly. “The blood doesn't reach the brain.”

On an impulse stronger than pride he had already taken her hand. This hand was warm and dry and belonged to someone known. He had loved her: he tried to reconstruct their past, not sentimentally, but as a living structure of hair, skin, breath. This effort surpassed his imagination and was actually repugnant. It seemed unhealthy. Still, remembering, he said, “I do love you,” but he was thinking of the hot, faded summer in Cannes, and the white walls of his shuttered room on a blazing afternoon, and coming in with Flor from the beach. He saw the imprint of his fingers on her brown shoulder; he thought he tasted salt. Suddenly he felt as if he might vomit. His mouth was flooded with saliva. He thought, I'll go crazy with this. He was appalled at the tenderness of the wound. He remembered what it was to be sick with love.

“You'd better come out,” he said. “It'll do you good. You'll see there's nothing to be afraid of.” With these words he caused them to resume their new roles: the tiresome wife, the patient husband.

He had never insisted so much before; but too much had been taken away in his wife's retreat and he had been, without knowing it, building on what was left: money, and his own charm. He could not stop charming people. The concierge was minutes recovering from his greeting every day. These elements — the importance of business, his own attractive powers — pulled away like the sea and left him stranded and without his wife.