Mavis Gallant - Across the Bridge

More than a year later, Lisette — now working only part-time — mentioned that Halina had neglected to publish in Le Monde the anniversary notice of Tremski’s death. Did Forain want one to appear, in the name of the firm? Yes, of course. It would be wrong to say he had forgotten the apartment and everything in it, but the inventory, the imaginary camera moving around the rooms, filled him with impatience and a sense of useless effort. His mind stopped at the narrow couch with the brown blanket, Halina’s bed, and he said to himself, What a pair those two were. The girl was right to run away. As soon as he had finished the thought he placed his hand over his mouth, as if to prevent the words from emerging. He went one further — bowed his head, like Tremski at Barbara’s funeral, promising himself he would keep in mind things as they once were, not as they seemed to him now. But the apartment was vacated, and Tremski had disappeared. He had been prayed over thoroughly by a great number of people, and the only enjoyment he might have had from the present scene was to watch Forain make a fool of himself to no purpose.

There were changes in the office, too. Lisette had agreed to stay for the time it would take to train a new hand: a thin, pretty girl, part of the recent, nonpolitical emigration — wore a short leather skirt, said she did not care about money but loved literature and did not want to waste her life working at something dull. She got on with Halina and had even spared Forain the odd difficult meeting. As she began to get the hang of her new life, she lost no time spreading the story that Forain had been the lover of Barbara and would not let go a handsome and expensive coat that had belonged to Tremski. A posthumous novel-length manuscript of Tremski’s was almost ready for the printer, with a last chapter knitted up from fragments he had left trailing. The new girl, gifted in languages, compared the two versions and said he would have approved; and when Forain showed a moment of doubt and hesitation she was able to remind him of how, in the long run, Tremski had never known what he wanted.

OWING TO HIS advanced age and a lack of close relatives, M. Wroblewski receives little personal mail. Most of the friends of his youth in Warsaw are dead and the survivors have not much to say, except about their grandchildren, and one cannot keep writing back and forth about total strangers. Even the grandparents know them only through colored snapshots or as shrill, shy voices over the telephone. They barely say anything in Polish and have English-sounding names: their parents emigrated as soon as they could. M. Wroblewski’s wife has a niece in Canberra: Teresa, wife of Stanley, mother of Fiona and Tim. He keeps their photographs filed in large brown envelopes. Should Teresa and her family ever decide to visit Paris, he will spread their cheerful faces all over the flat.

You might imagine that changed conditions in Eastern Europe would stir some hope into the news from Warsaw, but his correspondents, the few who are left, sound dispirited, mistrustful. Everything costs too much. Young people are ignorant and rude. The spoken language is debased. Purses are snatched on church steps. There are no books worth reading — nothing but pornography and translated Western trash. Recently, a friend he has not seen in fifty years but with whom he has kept in touch sent him a long letter. The friend had been invited to describe his wartime ghetto experience in a radio talk. As a result, he was sent messages of insult and abuse. There was even a death threat. He is an old man. Surely enough is enough. “On that score, nothing has changed,” he wrote. “It is in the brain, blood, and bone. I don’t mean this for you. You were always different.”

A compliment, yes, but no one wants to be singled out, tested, examined, decreed an exception. “I don’t mean this for you” leads to awkwardness and painful feelings. Perhaps, a long time ago, as a young man, callow and cordial, M. Wroblewski had said the same thing to his friend: “Naturally, you are completely different. I’m talking about all the others.” Could he have said it? He would like to be able to send his friend a plane ticket to Paris, find him a comfortable room and discreetly settle the bill, invite him to dinner: M. Wroblewski, his friend, and Magda around the little table in the living room, with the green lampshade glowing and the green curtains drawn; or at Chez Marcel, where he used to go with Magda. The owner would remember them, offer free glasses of cognac with their coffee: jovial, generous, welcoming — One Europe, One World.

There, you see, M. Wroblewski would tell his friend. There are chinks of light.

This is a soft autumn, moist and mild. Between showers the broad boulevards fill up with people strolling as though it were summer. He sits in the Atelier, the new place just next door to the Select, composing and rejecting an answer to his friend. His hat and stick are on a chair; his dog, an obedient one, lies under it. The Atelier opened in the eighties, but he still thinks of it as “the new place.” It seems to have been in Montparnasse forever. The table mats depict a mature model posing for a life class some three generations ago. Newspapers are on wooden holders, in the old way. The waiters are patient, except when a customer’s reaction to a slopped saucer is perceived as an affront. Across the street the mirrored walls of the building that now rises above the Coupole reflect an Île-de-France sky: watered blue with a thin screen of clouds. If you sit at the front row of tables you may be pestered by foreign beggars, some of them children. M. Wroblewski keeps loose change in his pocket, which he distributes until it runs out. There have been many newspaper articles warning him not to do this: the money is collected for the brutal and cynical men who put the children on the street.

His friend in Warsaw is completely alert, with an amazing memory of events, sorted out, in sequence. If he were here, at this moment, he would find a historical context for everything: the new building and its mirrors, the naked model, the beggar girl with her long braid of hair and the speck of diamond on the side of her nose. Who, after hearing the voice of an old man over the radio, could sit down and compose a threat? All M. Wroblewski can see are a man’s hunched shoulders, the back of his thick neck. But no, his friend might say: I have seen his face, which is lean and elegant. What do you still hope for? What can you still expect? So much for your chinks of light.

And so they would exchange visions through the afternoon and into the evening, with the lights inside the café growing brighter and brighter as the trees outside become part of the night. Perhaps his friend would enjoy meeting someone wholly new, remote from the dark riddle of the man and the death letter. Unfortunately, most of M. Wroblewski’s Paris acquaintances have vanished or moved away to remote towns and suburbs (everything seems far) or retired to a region of the mind that must be like a twisted, hollow shell. When he reads his wife a letter from Canberra he takes care to translate the English expressions Teresa puts in as a matter of course. Magda used to understand English, but even her French is fading now. Before he reaches the end of the letter she will have asked four or five times, “Who is it from?” — although he has shown her the signature and the bright Australian stamps. Or she may surprise him with a pertinent question: “Are they coming home for Christmas?” There is no telling what Magda means by home. She may say to him, “Does my father like you?” or even, “Where do you live?”

She uses his diminutive, says “Maciek and I,” but knows nothing about him. She can play a game of cards, write a letter — it is never clear to whom — and he pretends to stamp and post it. By the time he has invented a plausible address, the incident has dissolved. She stares at the envelope. What is he talking about? She is poised on the moment between dark and light, when the last dream of dawn is shredding rapidly and awareness of morning has barely caught hold. She lives that split second all day long.