Mavis Gallant - Across the Bridge

He left the grave and the sea and started back to the walled city. He thought of other violations and of the filth that can wash over quiet lives. In the dark afternoon the lighted windows seemed exclusive, like careless snubs. He would write to his friend, “I wondered what I was doing there, looking at other people’s windows, when I have a home of my own.” The next day he changed his train reservation and returned to Paris before the week was up.

Magda recognized him but did not know he had been away. She asked if he had been disturbed by the neighbor who played Schubert on the piano all night long. (Perhaps the musician existed, he sometimes thought, and only Magda could hear him.) “You must tell him to stop,” she said. He promised he would.

Mme. Carole Fournier, Customers’ Counselling Service, turned out to be an attractive young woman, perhaps a bit thin in the face. Her hollow cheeks gave her a birdlike appearance, but when she turned to the computer screen beside her desk her profile reminded him of an actress, Elzbieta Barszczewska. When Barszczewska died, in her white wedding dress, at the end of a film called The Leper , the whole of Warsaw went into mourning. Compared with Barszczewska, Pola Negri was nothing.

The plastic rims of Mme. Fournier’s glasses matched the two red combs in her hair. Her office was a white cubicle with a large window and no door. Her computer, like all those he had noticed in the bank, had a screen of azure. It suggested the infinite. On its cerulean surface he could read, without straining, facts about himself: his date of birth, for one. Between white lateral blinds at the window he observed a bakery and the post office where he bought stamps and sent letters. Hector, tied to a metal bar among chained and padlocked bikes, was just out of sight. Had the window been open, one might have heard his plaintive barking. M. Wroblewski wanted to get up and make sure the dog had not been kidnapped, but it would have meant interrupting the charming Mme. Fournier.

She glanced once more at the blue screen, then came back to a four-page questionnaire on her desk. He had expected a welcome. So far, it had been an interrogation. “I am sorry,” she said. “It’s my job. I have to ask you this. Are you sixty-six or over?”

“I am flattered to think there could be any doubt in your mind,” he began. She seemed so young; his voice held a note of teasing. She could have been a grandchild, if generations ran as statistics want them to. He might have sent her picture to his friend in Warsaw: red combs, small hands, zodiac (Gemini) medallion on a chain. Across the street a boy came out of the bakery carrying several long loaves, perhaps for a restaurant. She waited. How long had she been waiting? She held a pen poised over the questionnaire.

“I celebrated my sixty-sixth birthday on the day General de Gaulle died,” he said. “I do not mean that I celebrated the death of that amazing man. It made me very sorry. I was at the theatre, with my wife. The play was Ondine , with Isabelle Adjani. It was her first important part. She must have been seventeen. She was the toast of Paris. Lovely. A nymph. After the curtain calls, the director of the theatre walked on, turned to the audience, and said the President was dead.” She seemed still to be waiting. He continued, “The audience gasped. We filed out without speaking. My wife finally said, ‘The poor man. And how sad, on your birthday.’ I said, ‘It is history.’ We walked home in the rain. In those days one could walk in the street after midnight. There was no danger.”

Her face had reflected understanding only at the mention of Isabelle Adjani. He felt bound to add, “I think I’ve made a mistake. It was not President de Gaulle after all. It was President Georges Pompidou whose death was announced in all the theatres of Paris. I am not sure about Adjani. My wife always kept theatre programs. I could look it up, if it interests you.”

“It’s about your being sixty-six or over,” she said. “You’ll have to take out a special insurance policy. It’s to protect the bank, you see. It doesn’t cost much.”

“I am insured.”

“I know. This is for the bank.” She turned the questionnaire around so that he could read a boxed query: “Do you take medication on a daily basis?”

“Everyone my age takes something.”

“Excuse me. I have to ask. Are you seriously ill?”

“A chronic complaint. Nothing dangerous.” He put his hand over his heart.

She picked up the questionnaire, excused herself once more, and left him. On the screen he read the numbers of his three accounts, and the date when each had been opened. He remembered Hector, stood up, but before he could get to the window Mme. Fournier was back.

“I am sorry,” she said. “I am sorry it is taking so long. Please sit down. I have to ask you another thing.”

“I was trying to see my dog.”

“About your chronic illness. Could you die suddenly?”

“I hope not.”

“I’ve spoken to M. Giroud. You will need to have a medical examination. No, not by your own doctor,” forestalling him. “A doctor from the insurance firm. It isn’t for the bank. It is for them — the insurance.” She was older than he had guessed. Embarrassment and its disguises tightened her face, put her at about thirty-five. The youthful signature was a decoy. “M. Wroblewski,” she said, making a good stab at the consonants, “is it worth all this, for fifteen thousand francs? We would authorize an overdraft, if you needed one. But, of course, there would be interest to pay.”

“I wanted the fund for the very reason you have just mentioned — in case I die suddenly. When I die, my accounts will be frozen, won’t they? I’d like some cash for my wife. I thought I could make my doctor responsible. He could sign — anything. My wife is too ill to handle funeral arrangements, or to pay the people looking after her. It will take time before the will is settled.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m truly sorry. It is not an account. It is a cash reserve. If you die, it ceases to exist.”

“A reserve of cash, in my name, held by a bank, is an account,” he said. “I would never use or touch it in my lifetime.”

“It isn’t your money,” she said. “Not in the way you think. I’m sorry. Excuse me. The letter should never have been sent to you.”

“The bank knows my age. It is there, on the screen.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I don’t send these things out.”

“But you sign them?”

“I don’t send them out.”

They shook hands. He adjusted his hat at a jaunty angle. Everything he had on that day looked new, even the silk ascot, gray with a small pattern of yellow, bought by Magda at Arnys, on the Rue de Sèvres — oh, fifteen years before. Nothing was frayed or faded. He never seemed to wear anything out. His nails were clipped, his hands unstained. He still smoked three Craven A a day, but had refrained in the presence of Mme. Fournier, having seen no ashtray on her desk. There had been nothing on it, actually, except the questionnaire. He ought to have brought her some chocolates; it troubled him to have overlooked a civility. He held nothing against her. She seemed competent, considerate in her conduct.

“Your accounts are in fine shape,” she said. “That must be something off your mind. We could allow … At any rate, come back and see me if you have a problem.”

“My problem is my own death,” he said, smiling.

“You mustn’t think such things.” She touched her talisman, Gemini, as if it really could allow her a double life: one with vexations and one without. “Please excuse us. M. Giroud is sorry. So am I.”

After the business about the letter and the Prussia question this morning, Magda was quiet. He let her finish her tea (she forgets she is holding a cup) and tried to draw her into conversation about the view from the window.