Nadine Gordimer - Burger's Daughter

With Solvig, with old Bobby (rambling off over her own hopelessly philosophical grievances in a bright English voice — I used to do all Henry Torren’s correspondence at one time. Ten francs an hour! You couldn’t get someone to wash your floors for that. How many millions d’you think he’s worth! Oh but I don’t really mind. I don’t expect anything different. His grandmother wore clogs, a cotton-hand, it’s true, my dear—) — with all the little group of you who once lived with lovers: I imagine in your voices down there on the terrace or in the kitchen a discussion of the prospects, for me, you all know so well.

Manolis was having an exhibition of his paintings on glass; Georges, reversing their roles and taking up housewifely responsibility for the opening, calculated with Madame Bagnelli the number of people for whom he was on his way to order amuse-gueules from Perrin: Donna and Didier, twelve, Tatsu — and Henry; maybe — fourteen, you and Rosa and Chabalier, seventeen… Pierre Grosbois had built himself an ‘American barbecue’ and the Grosbois initiated it with a party — No madonnas and flying donkeys (he looks too much at Chagall, êh), the bouzouki records his boyfriend buys him were the only Greek inspiration, what did you think? But I also can make things with my hands— and the little Rôse will bring her professor, of course.

Gaby suddenly cut out a dress for her; there were fittings with Rosa standing on the terrace table, waving to acquaintances who happened to look up and see her aloft, and the children of neighbours, curious and shy. The equidistant sea and sky were divided for her by the line of gravity like an hour-glass, through which a ship wrapped in pink-mauve haze passed from one element to the other, coming down over the horizon. Gaby and Katya pinned and tacked; while Rosa recognized the car-ferry boat from Corsica or Sardinia Bernard identified when they were walking round the ramparts, Gaby was telling Katya about a book she had ordered from Paris. — La Ménopause effacée , apparently if your doctor isn’t a complete idiot you can avoid the whole thing. It simply doesn’t have to happen to you — Being Gaby, she gurgled with laughter, tipped over into the uncontrolled improvisation and patter that sometimes seemed to become compulsive, she would talk at a street-comer or at the door, unable to free people of herself. — You can go on for ever. In theory. Not that anyone would want to, my god… With Pierre, mon pauvre vieux , it’s not much point…and where would I find someone in this place… Can you imagine, like Pierre’s dentist’s wife — you remember, I told you? — she takes a policeman to the Negresco on his day off every week, she picks him up from the prefecture in Nice, they have a good lunch — She pays for the room… — The laugh rose to a wail — Madame Perrin’s second daughter is at the reception there now — the old Perrin said, it’s comme il faut , mind you — not as if it’s some type picked up on the beach, he’s from the prefecture, a family man . — No — but look, my eyebrows are getting coarse, like an old man’s. Look at these marks on my hands—

— Keep out of the sun, Gaby.—

— Keep out the sun! — it’s not the sun, you know it, Katya. My doctor says there’s nothing to be done. He’s a man, what does he care. But it’s not so sure, not at all. We should have been taking hormones years ago, Katya…they say deterioration can’t be repaired but it can be arrested — Like that! — ah, that’s better, that’s the way the skirt should hang… This girl won’t ever need to get old, who knows?—

The ship was growing from veil to solidity, from pink to white, and as it listed imbedded itself out there in an ocean laid like a Roman mosaic pavement in wavy bands of pollution to the inshore limits. She and Bernard Chabalier might take a ship, one day; they could be standing somewhere on that advancing object, approaching again the chalky-lavender mountains beyond Nice and the white buildings nested up the cliffs, flashing a fish-scale tiled cupola, blue, green or rose with a gilt spike, and the towers on the shore towards Antibes that spouted up over the sea, leaning, turning slowly on their axes under the wing of the plane, built in the spiral — that aspiring, unfinished figure — that was reduced to the scale of her hand in Arnys’ bar. Rosa took in a great lungful of air out there, causing pins to give way, and the women protested indulgently. — I take the pills he gave me, yes — but I wonder if it’s the best thing? according to what I’ve read there’re new discoveries all the time. I’m going to take the book and simply say, tell him — But Katya — you examine your breasts, don’t you? It’s essential. You don’t neglect yourself?—

— You’re the only one who goes to a private doctor. You miss the girls’ gatherings at the clinic; Bobby, Françoise and Marthe, Darby in his oldest cap (afraid they’ll reassess pensions and charge if you look too prosperous). We all have our pap test. You’re crazy to pay.—

— Pierre’s idea, not mine. He doesn’t trust the clinic doctor — for my part ours is a vieux con . But the breasts — you must do that every month. Just in the bath, I lie in my bath and like this — carefully — I close my eyes and feel — you must concentrate—

Katya put out a brisk hand to Rosa. — Come down. You seem to like it up there. — Now and then when the French people became absorbed in discussion of bowel movements or other regulations of their bodies’ functions, she could be distinguished as a foreigner among them still. She spoke English, to redefine herself for the eyes of the girl; a comment on preoccupations deftly quitted, disloyally leaving her friend to them. — If someone would write the book that tells how to get old and ugly and not mind.—

— I don’t understand you too well…? Gaby looked from one to the other.

Katya said it for her in French.

Gaby put on her show of jostling gaiety — Look at that, look at that one! — but Katya, you have still a beauty, êh. — An impressed face pausing at Rosa. — Listen to her — when you have like this (an imitation of the mouth of Françoise or perhaps it was meant to be Marthe) like the anus of a hen…when you are gaga like Poliakoff… then you can complain, êh — She was a dancer, you know that? The muscles are still supple — The Ballet Russe… — A career was built up in the air.

Katya seized and crossed hands with her friend in the position of the corps of cygnets, jerking her head to the burst of ‘Swan Lake’ she sang. Their breasts’ bulk shifted from side to side like pillows being plumped.

Pierre had come up out of the dark of the little stairway and the house, a lonely bald child in search of playmates. He looked at his wife laughing and panting, intimated to Rosa, by drawing up a chair and placing himself carefully, that she and he were the only reasonable beings present.

Gaby was over at once. — How do you like it? Isn’t she beautiful? I’m proud of myself, frankly—

Her husband gazed, not to be influenced. — Wait. Sit down, Rôse. A dress can’t be judged until you see a woman coming and going, standing and sitting — am I right?—

— But it’s good! The colour, with her skin? The tiny design — real satin fermière —I think the fashion’s amusing—

— Wait. Yes. It’s good.—

Rosa walked up and down for them, smiling over her shoulder as she turned the body Chabalier defined for her with his hands, the face he watched with an attention that was only for her.

The girl’s strong awareness of herself brought to Katya the physical presence she had known, and overlaid by many others: Lionel Burger’s young flesh and face that was always under an attention beyond desire, a passion beyond theirs on the bed, the passion-beyond-passion, like the passion of God, although for him there was no such concept: he was on his own; a frightening being, the young man who thrust his heat inside her in the coldest cities of the world.