William Maxwell - The Chateau

“And there are lots of trains?”

“There are two,” Mme Viénot said. “One in the morning and one at night. I’ll get a schedule for you. Before the war, the mayor of Brenodville was a member of the Chamber of Deputies and we had excellent service; all the fast trains between Paris and Nantes stopped here.… Amboise is also worth seeing. Léonard de Vinci is buried there. And during the seventeenth century, there was an uprising—it was the time of the Huguenot wars—and a great many men were put to death. They say that Marie Stuart and the young king used to dine out on the battlements at Amboise, in order to watch the hangings.”

“What about buses?”

“I don’t think you’ll find the bus at all convenient,” Mme Viénot said. “You have to walk a mile and a half to the highway where it passes, and usually it is quite crowded.” Then as the silence in the dining room became prolonged: “I’ve been meaning to ask you about young George Ireland. We grew very fond of him while he was here, and he was a great favorite in the village. What is he doing now?”

“George is in school,” Harold said.

“But now, this summer?”

“He’s working. He’s selling little dolls. He showed them to us the last time we were at the Irelands’ for dinner. A man and a woman this high … You wind them up and they dance around and around.”

“How amusing,” Mme Viénot said. “He sells them on the street corner?”

“To tobacco stores, I believe.”

“And is he successful?”

“Very. He’s on his way to becoming a millionaire.”

Mme Viénot nodded approvingly. “When he arrived, he didn’t know a word of French, and it was rather difficult at first. But he spoke fluently by the end of the summer. We also discovered that he was fond of chocolate. He used to ride into the village after dinner and spend untold sums on candy and sweetmeats. And he was rather careless with my bicyclette. I had to have it repaired after he left. But he is a dear, of course. That reminds me—I haven’t answered his mother’s letter. I must write her today, and thank her for sending me two such charming clients. It was most kind of her. I gather that she knows France well?”

Harold nodded.

“Such an amusing thing happened—I must tell you. My younger daughter became engaged last summer, and before she had quite made up her mind, George came to me and said that Sabine must wait until he could marry her. Fancy his thinking she would have him? I thought it was very fresh—a fifteen-year-old boy!”

“He speaks of you all—and of the place—with great affection,” Harold said.

“It was a responsibility,” Mme Viénot said. There are so many kinds of trouble a boy of that age can get into. You’re quite sure you won’t have anything more? Some bread, perhaps? Some more coffee?” She rolled her napkin and thrust it through the silver ring in front of her, and pushed her chair back from the table. “When George left, he kissed me and said: ‘You have been like a mother to me!’ I thought it sweet of him—to say that. And I really did feel like his mother.”

As they were moving toward the door, he said hurriedly: “We’ve been meaning to ask you— Is there some way we could have hot water?”

“In your room? But of course! Thérèse will bring it to you. When would you like it? In the evening, perhaps?”

“At seven o’clock,” Barbara said.

“I could come and get it myself,” he said. “Or would that upset them?”

“Oh, dear no!” Mme Viénot exclaimed. “I’m afraid that wouldn’t do. They’d never understand in the kitchen. You must tell Maman about the poupées . She will be enchanted.”

“PORC-ÉPIC is French for porcupine,” he announced. He was stretched out on the chaise longue, in the darkest corner of their room, reading the green Michelin guide to the château country. “The porcupine with a crown above it is the attribute—emblem, I guess it means—of Louis XII. The emblem of François premier is the salamander. The swan with an arrow sticking through its breast is the emblem of Louise of Savoy, mother of François premier. And it’s also the emblem of Claude de France, his wife. Did you know we have a coat of arms in our family?”

“No,” Barbara said. “You never told me.” She had covered the towel racks in the bathroom with damp stockings and lingerie, and was now sitting at the kidney-shaped desk, with her fur coat over her shoulders and the windows wide open because it was no colder outside than it was in, writing notes to people who had sent presents to the boat. There were letters and postcards he should have been writing but fortunately there was only one pen.

“The ermine is Anne of Brittany and Claude de France,” he said, turning back to the guidebook.

“Why does she have two emblems?”

“Who?”

“Claude de France. You said—”

“So she does … Ummm. It doesn’t say. But it gives the genealogy of the Valois kings, the Valois-Orléans, the Valois-Angoulême, and the Bourbons through Louis XIV.… Charles V, 1364–1380, married Jeanne de Bourbon. Charles VI, 1380–1422, married Isabeau de Bavière. Charles VII—”

“Couldn’t you just read it to yourself and tell me about it afterward?”

“All right,” he said. “But it’s very interesting. Charles VIII and Louis XII both married Anne of Brittany.”

“The salamander?”

“No, the ermine. I promise not to bother you any more.” But he did, almost immediately. “Listen to this, I just want to read you the beginning paragraph. It’s practically a prose poem.”

“Is it long?”

“ ‘Between Gien and Angers, the banks of the Loire and the affluent valleys of the great river present an incomparable ensemble of magnificent monuments.’ That’s very good, don’t you think? Don’t you think it has sweep to it? ‘The châteaux, by their number, their importance, and their interest appear in the foreground. Crammed with art and history, they occupy the choicest sites in a region that has a privileged light—’ ”

“It looks like just any gray day to me,” she said, glancing out at the sky.

“Maybe the light is privileged and maybe it isn’t. The point is you’d never find an expression like that in an American guidebook.… ‘The landscapes of the Loire, in lines simple and calm’—that’s very French—’ owe their seductiveness to the light that bathes them, wide sky of a light blue, long perspectives of a current that is sometimes sluggish, tranquil streams with delicate reflections, sunny hillsides with promising vineyards, fresh valleys, laughing flower-filled villages, peaceful visions. A landscape that is measured, that charms by its sweetness and its distinction—’ ”

He yawned. The guidebook slipped through his fingers and joined the pocket dictionary on the rug. After a minute or two, he got up and stood at the window. The heavy shutters opened in, and the black-out paper was crinkled and torn and beginning to come loose. Three years after the liberation of France, it was still there. No one in a burst of happiness and confidence in the future had ripped it off. Germans, he thought, standing where he stood now, with their elbows on the sill. Looking off toward the river that was there but could not be seen. Lathering their cheeks in front of the shaving stand … Did Mme Bonenfant and Mme Viénot eat with their unwelcome guests, or in the kitchen, or where?

It had stopped raining but the air was saturated with moisture and the trees dripped. In the park in front of the château, the gardener and his wife and boy were pulling the haystacks apart with their forks and spreading the hay around them on the wet ground. He was tempted to go down and offer his services. But if they wouldn’t understand in the kitchen, no doubt they wouldn’t understand outdoors either.