Mavis Gallant - Across the Bridge

She said, “The neighbor is still playing Schubert all night. It keeps me awake. It is sad when he stops.”

Their neighbors are a couple who go out to work. They turn off the television at ten and there is no further sound until half past six in the morning, when they listen to the news. At a quarter to eight they lock their front door and ring for the elevator, and the apartment is quiet again until suppertime. No one plays Schubert.

He picked up the tray. When he reached the doorway she said in a friendly, even voice, “The piano kept me awake.”

“I know,” he said. “The man playing Schubert.”

“What man? Men can’t play anything.”

“A woman? Someone you know?”

He stood still, waiting. He said to his friend, If I get an answer, it means she is cured. But she will burrow under the blankets and pillows until Marie-Louise arrives. Once Marie-Louise is here, I will go out and meet you, or the thought of you, which never quits me now. I will read the news and you can tell me what it means. We will look at those mirrored walls across the boulevard and judge the day by colors: pale gold, gray, white-and-blue. A sheet of black glass means nothing: it is not a cloud or the sky. Let me explain. Give me time. From that distance, the dark has no power. It has no life of its own. It is a reflection.

Today I shall bring a pad of writing paper and a stamped, addressed envelope. You can think of me, at a table behind the window. (It is getting a bit cold for the street.) I have a young dog. As you can see, I am still boringly optimistic. Magda is well. This morning we talked about Schubert. I regret that your health is bad and you are unable to travel. Otherwise you could come here and we would rent a car and drive somewhere — you, Magda, the dog, and I. I am sorry about the radio talk and its effect on some low people. There are distorted minds here, too — you would not believe what goes on. Someone said, “Hitler lives!” at a meeting — so I am told. I suppose the police can’t be everywhere. Please take good care of yourself. Your letters are precious to me. We have so many memories. Do you remember The Leper , and the scene where she dies at her own wedding? She was much more beautiful than Garbo or Dietrich — don’t you think? I wish I had more to tell you, but my life is like the purring of a cat. If I were to describe it, it would put you to sleep. I may have more to tell you tomorrow. In the meantime, I send you God’s favor.

YOU MOVED INTO my apartment during the summer of the year before abortion became legal in France; that should fix it in past time for you, dear Mlle. Dias de Corta. You had just arrived in Paris from your native city, which you kept insisting was Marseilles, and were looking for work. You said you had studied television-performance techniques at some provincial school (we had never heard of the school, even though my son had one or two actor friends) and received a diploma with “special mention” for vocal expression. The diploma was not among the things we found in your suitcase, after you disappeared, but my son recalled that you carried it in your handbag, in case you had the good luck to sit next to a casting director on a bus.

The next morning we had our first cordial conversation. I described my husband’s recent death and repeated his last words, which had to do with my financial future and were not overly optimistic. I felt his presence and still heard his voice in my mind. He seemed to be in the kitchen, wondering what you were doing there, summing you up: a thin, dark-eyed, noncommittal young woman, standing at the counter, bolting her breakfast. A bit sullen, perhaps; you refused the chair I had dragged in from the dining room. Careless, too. There were crumbs everywhere. You had spilled milk on the floor.

“Don’t bother about the mess,” I said. “I’m used to cleaning up after young people. I wait on my son, Robert, hand and foot.” Actually, you had not made a move. I fetched the sponge mop from the broom closet, but when I asked you to step aside you started to choke on a crust. I waited quietly, then said, “My husband’s illness was the result of eating too fast and never chewing his food.” His silent voice told me I was wasting my time. True, but if I hadn’t warned you I would have been guilty of withholding assistance from someone in danger. In our country, a refusal to help can be punished by law.

The only remark my son, Robert, made about you at the beginning was “She’s too short for an actress.” He was on the first step of his career climb in the public institution known then as Post, Telegrams, Telephones. Now it has been broken up and renamed with short, modern terms I can never keep in mind. (Not long ago I had the pleasure of visiting Robert in his new quarters. There is a screen or a machine of some kind everywhere you look. He shares a spacious office with two women. One was born in Martinique and can’t pronounce her “r”s. The other looks Corsican.) He left home early every day and liked to spend his evenings with a set of new friends, none of whom seemed to have a mother. The misteachings of the seventies, which encouraged criticism of earlier generations, had warped his natural feelings. Once, as he was going out the door, I asked if he loved me. He said the answer was self-evident: we were closely related. His behavior changed entirely after his engagement and marriage to Anny Clarens, a young lady of mixed descent. (Two of her grandparents are Swiss.) She is employed in the accounting department of a large hospital and enjoys her work. She and Robert have three children: Bruno, Elodie, and Félicie.

It was for companionship rather than income that I had decided to open my home to a stranger. My notice in Le Figaro mentioned “young woman only,” even though those concerned for my welfare, from coiffeur to concierge, had strongly counseled “young man.” “Young man” was said to be neater, cleaner, quieter, and (except under special circumstances I need not go into) would not interfere in my relationship with my son. In fact, my son was seldom available for conversation and had never shown interest in exchanging ideas with a woman, not even one who had known him from birth.

You called from a telephone on a busy street. I could hear the coins jangling and traffic going by. Your voice was low-pitched and agreeable and, except for one or two vowel sounds, would have passed for educated French. I suppose no amount of coaching at a school in or near Marseilles could get the better of the southern “o,” long where it should be short and clipped when it ought to be broad. But, then, the language was already in decline, owing to lax teaching standards and uncontrolled immigration. I admire your achievement and respect your handicaps, and I know Robert would say the same if he knew you were in my thoughts.

Your suitcase weighed next to nothing. I wondered if you owned warm clothes and if you even knew there could be such a thing as a wet summer. You might have seemed more at home basking in a lush garden than tramping the chilly streets in search of employment. I showed you the room — mine — with its two corner windows and long view down Avenue de Choisy. (I was to take Robert’s and he was to sleep in the living room, on a couch.) At the far end of the Avenue, Asian colonization had begun: a few restaurants and stores selling rice bowls and embroidered slippers from Taiwan. (Since those days the community has spread into all the neighboring streets. Police keep out of the area, preferring to let the immigrants settle disputes in their own way. Apparently, they punish wrongdoers by throwing them off the Tolbiac Bridge. Robert has been told of a secret report, compiled by experts, which the Mayor has had on his desk for eighteen months. According to this report, by the year 2025 Asians will have taken over a third of Paris, Arabs and Africans three-quarters, and unskilled European immigrants two-fifths. Thousands of foreign-sounding names are deliberately “lost” by the authorities and never show up in telephone books or computer directories, to prevent us from knowing the true extent of their progress.)