Mavis Gallant - Across the Bridge

After breakfast Dédé wound a long scarf around his neck and walked Pascal to school. He had invented an apartment with movable walls. Everything one needed could be got within reach by pulling a few levers or pressing a button. You could spend your life in the middle of a room without having to stir. He and Pascal refined the invention; that was what they talked about, on the way to Pascal’s school. Then Dédé came home and studied until lunchtime. In the afternoon he drew new designs of his idea. Perhaps he was lonely. The doctor looking after his mother had asked him not to call or write, for the moment.

Pascal’s mother believed Dédé needed a woman friend, even though he was not ready to get married. Pascal heard her say, “Art and science, architecture, culture.” These were the factors that could change Dédé’s life, and to which he would find access through the right kind of woman. Mme. Brouet had someone in mind — Mlle. Turbin, who held a position of some responsibility in a travel agency. She was often sent abroad to rescue visitors or check their complaints. Today’s lunch had been planned around her, but at the last minute she had been called to Greece, where a tourist, bitten by a dog, had received an emergency specific for rabies, and believed the Greeks were trying to kill him.

Her parents had come, nevertheless. It was a privilege to meet the magistrate and to visit a rare old house, one of the last of its kind still in private hands. Before lunch Mme. Turbin had asked to be shown around. Mme. Brouet conducted a tour for the women, taking care not to open the door to Dédé’s room: there had been a fire in a wastepaper basket only a few hours before, and everything in there was charred or singed or soaked.

At lunch, breaking out of politics, M. Turbin described the treatment the tourist in Salonika had most probably received: it was the same the world over, and incurred the use of a long needle. He held out his knife, to show the approximate length.

“Stop!” cried Mme. Chevallier-Crochet. She put her napkin over her nose and mouth; all they could see was her wild eyes. Everyone stopped eating, forks suspended — all but the magistrate, who was pushing aside shreds of cabbage to get at the last of the partridge.

M. Chevallier-Crochet explained that his wife was afraid of needles. He could not account for it; he had not known her as a child. It seemed to be a singular fear, one that set her apart. Meantime, his wife closed her eyes; opened them, though not as wide as before; placed her napkin neatly across her lap; and swallowed a piece of bread.

M. Turbin said he was sorry. He had taken it for granted that any compatriot of the great Louis Pasteur must have seen a needle or two. Needles were only a means to an end.

Mme. Brouet glanced at her husband, pleading for help, but he had just put a bite of food into his mouth. He was always last to be served when there were guests, and everything got to him cold. That was probably why he ate in such a hurry. He shrugged, meaning, Change the subject.

“Pascal,” she said, turning to him. At last, she thought of something to say: “Do you remember Mlle. Turbin? Charlotte Turbin?”

“Brigitte?” said Pascal.

“I’m sure you remember,” she said, not listening at all. “In the travel agency, on Rue Caumartin?”

“She gave me the corrida poster,” said Pascal, wondering how this had slipped her mind.

“We went to see her, you and I, the time we wanted to go to Egypt? Now do you remember?”

“We never went to Egypt.”

“No. Papa couldn’t get away just then, so we finally went back to Deauville, where Papa has so many cousins. So you do remember Mlle. Turbin, with the pretty auburn hair?”

“Chestnut,” said the two Turbins, together.

“My sister,” said Dédé, all of a sudden, indicating her with his left hand, the right clutching a wineglass. “Before she got married, my mother told me …” The story, whatever it was, engulfed him in laughter. “A dog tried to bite her,” he managed to say.

“You can tell us about it another time,” said his sister.

He continued to laugh, softly, just to himself, while Abelarda changed the plates again.

The magistrate examined his clean new plate. No immediate surprises: salad, another plate, cheese, a dessert plate. His wife had given up on Mlle. Turbin. Really, it was his turn now, her silence said.

“I may have mentioned this before,” said the magistrate. “And I would not wish to keep saying the same things over and over. But I wonder if you agree that the pivot of French politics today is no longer in France.”

“The Middle East,” said M. Turbin, nodding his head.

“Washington,” said M. Chevallier-Crochet. “Washington calls Paris every morning and says, Do this, Do that.”

“The Middle East and the Soviet Union,” said M. Turbin.

“There,” said M. Brouet. “We are all in agreement.”

Many of the magistrate’s relatives and friends thought he should be closer to government, to power. But his wife wanted him to stay where he was and get his pension. After he retired, when Pascal was grown, they would visit Tibet and the north of China, and winter in Kashmir.

“You know, this morning —” said Dédé, getting on with something that was on his mind.

“Another time,” said his sister. “Never mind about this morning. It is all forgotten. Étienne is speaking, now.”

This morning! The guests had no idea, couldn’t begin to imagine what had taken place, here, in the dining room, at this very table. Dédé had announced, overjoyed, “I’ve got my degree.” For Dédé was taking a correspondence course that could not lead to a degree of any kind. It must have been just his way of trying to stop studying so that he could go home.

“Degree?” The magistrate folded yesterday’s Le Monde carefully before putting it down. “What do you mean, degree?”

Pascal’s mother got up to make fresh coffee. “I’m glad to hear it, Dédé,” she said.

“A degree in what?” said the magistrate.

Dédé shrugged, as if no one had bothered to tell him. “It came just the other day,” he said. “I’ve got my degree, and now I can go home.”

“Is there something you could show us?”

“There was just a letter, and I lost it,” said Dédé. “A real diploma costs two thousand francs. I don’t know where I’d find the money.”

The magistrate did not seem to disbelieve; that was because of his training. But then he said, “You began your course about a month ago?”

“I had been thinking about it for a long time,” said Dédé.

“And now they have awarded you a degree. You are perfectly right — it’s time you went home. You can take the train tonight. I’ll call your mother.”

Pascal’s mother returned carrying a large white coffeepot. “I wonder where your first job will be,” she said.

Why were she and her brother so remote from things as they are? Perhaps because of their mother, the grandmother in Colmar. Once, she had taken Pascal by the chin and tried to force him to look her in the eye. She had done it to her children. Pascal knows, now, that you cannot have your chin held in a vise and undividedly meet a blue stare. Somewhere at the back of the mind is a second self with eyes tight shut. Dédé and his sister could seem to meet any glance, even the magistrate’s when he was being most nearly wide awake. They seemed to be listening, but the person he thought he was talking to, trying to reach the heart of, was deaf and blind. Pascal’s mother listens when she needs to know what might happen next.

All Pascal understood, for the moment, was that when Dédé had mentioned taking a degree, he was saying something he merely wished were true.