Mavis Gallant - Home Truths

Peggy Boon, fourteen, too plump and too boring to be a friend for Anne — unless Anne, already, chose her friends for contrast — had been mooning about the lawn ever since the storm ended, watching for Ramsay to come up the path. She let him look at the Mosers’ view a full minute, and then stepped round from behind a tree. She had been making up a poem, she said flutily. No one made up poetry; Ramsay had never seen anyone making up poems. He glared over her head. She stood there, straight of hair, small of eye, fat arms across new breasts she was flattening at night with a silk scarf — this information from Katharine, by way of Anne. She was an English rose, she feared silence, and pronounced her own name “Piggy.”

“Everyone’s out,” she said, coloring deeply for no reason he cared to know. “Anne is playing tennis. I’m not keen … so … Nanette, well, I don’t know where she is. She didn’t say. Mrs. Moser went to visit the bees in case the thunder frightened them. She tells them everything. When Mr. Moser died she told the bees. She told them you were coming, and she’s told them she is moving your things out of the house and into Mr. Moser’s garden pavilion, and that you are his … his …” Unfolding her arms, stooping, she clutched at grass, as though weeding; she straightened up, she took courage, and announced, “You are Mr. Moser’s spiritual heir.” He was not listening to her. “If you don’t tell the bees everything, Mrs. Moser says, they go away. But my mother,” she added urgently, “says this is nonsense.”

Like all English voices, hers sounded to him underdeveloped. He stared down at the cardigan, drooping and empty-armed, at the tight belt and bulging seat of what he supposed was a dainty frock. He had avoided one sort of Canadian girl all his life, and here was the pure, the original mold. He asked, “Did you know Adrien Moser?” It seemed impossible.

“Oh goodness, yes. This is the fourth time I’ve been here.” She was gasping, as if he had splashed her with seawater. “I’ve been here a summer, and a Christmas, and an Easter, and this summer. Of course, he’s not here now, is he?” If only Ramsay would say, “He must have been charming” — something like that. She pretended he had: “Oh he was charming! He used to do so many kind things. Once he offered to buy me a bicycle. I refused, of course. But imagine! He’d hardly known me five minutes then.” Chewing on grass, airy and worldly now, she said, “I’ve been wondering.… No one’s told me. Are you a composer?”

“I’m studying with Jekel in Berlin.” And I am his best and strongest pupil, and if you knew anything you would know that, his mind continued. He had heard, for years, “Are you really only twelve? … only sixteen?” The voices had stopped; no one is ever likely to say, “Are you really only twenty?”

“Don’t you want a chair?” said Peggy, wiping the seat of one with her cardigan sleeve. “You’re not supposed to stand too long. I’ve heard … there’s something wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong . I was in a smash-up about two years ago, that’s all. This girl was driving,” he said. “It wasn’t even her own car. There was all hell with the insurance. No one was killed.”

“Oh, good.” Having offered Moser’s kindness, and had news of Ramsay’s health, Peggy said, “Do you like Switzerland?” But she had lost him. Katharine Moser, with her cat in attendance, came toward them, smiling. The shadows that bent over her hair were cast by trees whose bark was like the skin of a snake. He had imagined another face for her; until a few days ago, he had known her only in letters. He had given her soft hair streaked with white, and humorous, intelligent eyes. His idea of a great man’s wife was very near a good hospital nurse. Even now, when he thought, I am in Moser’s house, he was grateful to the intelligent hospital nurse, who did not exist; at least she was not Katharine. Her eyes were green, uptilted. The straight parting in her hair was coquetry, to show how perfectly proportioned was her face. The only flaws he had seen were the shape of her nose, slightly bulbous at the tip, and the too straight body, which was a column for the fine head. The bees’ scent, which clung to her hands and dress, was like incense. She was impressive, beautiful, fragrant, and until she lifted her arm to point to the pavilion where he would now sleep, and saw the skin of the arm, palely freckled, spotted, slack, he almost accepted her own idea of herself, which was that she was guileless, a child bride, touchingly young.

“I wanted to know you before I put you in the pavilion. You do understand why? It mustn’t be a museum, but I want it kept alive just by people he liked, or might have loved. It’s furnished with — What is it, Peggy?” The smitten girl was following them across the grass. Katharine watched Peggy Boon skip off (pretending joy) and become excluded. “That girl is having a rotten time. My daughter is so rude,” she said, and sighed, and forgot all about it. “Now, Moser’s bed and his tiled stove came from the curé’s room in a château. I bought them at an auction.”

He ducked his head to enter the pavilion. The first thing he saw was the piano, small and gaily colored, looking like the piano sometimes given a little girl for her first lessons. He could not see the name of the maker, which had been covered over with paint.

“Those engravings belonged to a fervent German monarchist who collected caricatures of the new rich, unaware that he was mocking himself. Moser liked objects that came from rich houses, providing they looked poor. He always thought he might die of hunger any day. He saved screws and tacks and elastic bands — you’ll find boxes full of rubbish, all labelled. Moser told me that the walls of his family’s house were covered with rugs they would not put on the floor, and that there were sheets over the rugs to protect them from light. I hope you will like your bed.”

The bed was carved and bore a coat of arms and an angel’s head. The angel had a squint; Ramsay could not tell if it was looking reproachfully to Heaven or out of the window. The pavilion had been prepared in secret, while Ramsay was down in Montreux at a movie. He saw roses, a reading lamp, and then he saw the last photograph of the old man. The old man sat on a bench, in sunlight, holding a scarf. Katharine stood with one hand on his shoulder. Moser’s eyes were wild and fixed.

“This is a great picture,” he said, taking it up. “It was in the papers when he died. Someone in Berlin said it looked like a famous picture of Freud going into exile.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that. Moser was never in exile. He died in his native country.” She shifted ornaments on the washstand. A shell porcelain soap dish was moved from the extreme left to the far right. The vase of roses took its place. “Now, there are things you can look at, if you want to. Testimonials. All the obituaries. Boxes of caramels — I found them after his last stroke. He loved them, but wasn’t allowed to have any. When we found the empty boxes I knew he’d been eating on the quiet. I’ve kept them — I don’t know why. This one wasn’t opened.” When she spoke of something she touched it. When she finished speaking she touched Ramsay’s arm.

“Here’s what they’ll find after me,” he said, and tumbled out of his pockets the marbles, the Yo-yo, and the sponge ball that were part of the reëducation of his injured hands. He was arrogant, he never doubted; it was a joke only in part. When Douglas Ramsay died, his Yo-yo and the plastic marbles would be placed on a shelf and labelled and dated, and dusted every day. He had never had parents; there was nothing behind him, nothing to come; the first plant life on earth had never existed; the cities would be reduced to mossy boulders; he would never have children; he would be mourned nevertheless. The curé’s bed, Moser’s bed, was Ramsay’s bed. “How did he sleep in it?” they would say. “He was so big, and the bed is so small!”