William Maxwell - The Chateau

AT TWO O’CLOCK, when they came downstairs from their room, Mme Straus-Muguet was waiting for them in the second-floor hall at the turn of the stairs. Speaking slowly and distinctly, the way people do when they are trying to impress careful instructions on the wandering minds of children, she asked if they would do an errand for her. She had overheard them telling Mme Viénot that they were going to Blois this afternoon. On a scrap of paper she had written the name of a confiserie and she wanted them to get some candy for her, a particular kind, a delicious bonbon that was made only at this shop in Blois. She gave Barbara the colored tinsel wrapper it came in, to show the confiseur, and a hundred-franc note. They were to get eight pieces of candy—six for her and two for themselves.

This time the bus was not crowded. They found seats together and all the way into town sat looking out of the window at scenery that was simple and calm, as Harold’s guidebook said—long perspectives of the river, with here and there a hill, some sheep, a house, two trees, women and children wading, and then the same hill (or so it seemed), the same sheep, the same house, the same two trees, like a repeating motif in wallpaper. It was a landscape, one would have said, in which no human being had ever raised his voice. They went straight to the ration bureau and stood in line at the high counter, with their green passports ready, and were quite unprepared for the unpleasant scene that took place there. A grim-faced, gray-haired woman took their passports, examined them efficiently, and then returned them to Harold with ration stamps for bread, sugar, etc. She also said something to him in very rapid French that he did not understand. Speaking as good French as he knew how to speak, he asked her if she would please repeat what she had said, and she shrieked furiously at him in English: “They’re for ten days only!”

They stood staring at each other, her face livid with anger and his very pale. Then he said mildly: “If you ever come to America, you will find that you are sometimes obliged to ask the same question two or three times.” And because this remark was so mild, or perhaps because it was so illogical (the woman behind the counter had no intention ever of setting foot out of France, and if by any stretch of the imagination she did, it would not be to go to a country that so threatened the peace of the world), there was no more shouting. He went on looking directly into her eyes until she looked away.

Outside, standing on the steps of the building, he said: “Was it because we are taking food out of the mouths of starving Frenchmen?”

“Possibly,” Barbara said.

“But we haven’t seen anybody who looked starving. And they want American tourists. The French government is anxious to have them come.”

“I know. But she isn’t the French government.”

“Maybe she hates men.” His voice was unsteady and he felt weak in the knees. “Or it could be, I suppose, that her whole life has been dreadful. But the way she spoke to us was so—”

“It’s something that happens to women sometimes,” Barbara said. “An anger that comes over them suddenly, and that they feel no part in.”

“But why?”

She had no answer.

If it is true that nothing exists without its opposite, then the thing they had just been exposed to was merely the opposite of the amiability and kindness they had encountered everywhere in France. Also, the gypsy fortuneteller had promised Barbara malice she didn’t expect.

Facing the ration bureau was a small open-air market, and they wandered through it slowly, looking at straw hats, cotton dresses, tennis sneakers, and cheap cooking utensils. They were unable to get the incident out of their minds, though they stopped talking about it. The day was blighted.

From the market they made their way down into the lower part of the city, and found Mme Straus’s candy shop. They also spent some time in the shop next door, where they bought an intermediate French grammar, two books on gardening, and postcards. Then they walked along the street, dividing their attention between the people on the sidewalk and the contents of shop windows, until they arrived at the ramp that led up to the château.

They stood in the courtyard, looking at the octagonal staircase and comparing what the Michelin said with the actuality in front of them. Because it was getting late and they weren’t sure they wanted to join a conducted tour—they were, in fact, rather tired of conducted tours—they walked in the opposite direction from the sign that said guide du château , and toward the wing of Gaston d’Orléans. Harold put his hand out and tried a doorknob. It turned and the door swung open. They walked in and up a flight of marble stairs, admiring the balustrades and the ceiling, and at the head of the stairs they came upon two large tapestries dealing with the Battle of Dunkerque—a previous battle, in the seventeenth century, judging by the costumes and theatrical-looking implements of war. The doors leading out of this room were all locked, and so they made their way down the stairs again, trying other doors, until they were out in the courtyard once more. They were just in time to see two busloads of tourists from the American Express stream out of the wing of Louis XII and crowd into the tiny blue and gold chapel. The tourists were with a guide and the guide was speaking English.

Standing under an arcade, surrounded by their countrymen, Barbara and Harold learned about the strange life of Charles d’Orléans, who was a poet and at fifteen married his cousin, the daughter of Charles VI. She had already been married to Richard II of England, when she was seven years old. The new marriage did not last long. She died in childbirth, and the poet remarried, lost the battle of Agincourt, and was imprisoned for twenty-five years, after which, a widower of fifty, he again married—this time a girl of fourteen—and surrounded himself with a little court of artists and writers, and at seventy-one had at last, by his third wife, the son he had waited more than fifty years for.

“I see what you mean about having a guide who speaks English,” Harold said as they followed the crowd back across the courtyard and up a flight of steps to the Hall of State. They were waiting to learn about that, too, when the guide came over to them and asked Harold to step outside for a moment, with Madame.

He was about thirty years old, with large dark intelligent eyes, regular features, a narrow face cleanly cut, and dark skin. An aristocratic survival from the time of François premier, Harold thought as they followed the guide across the big room, with the other tourists looking at them with more interest than they had shown toward the Hall of State. He did not know precisely what to expect, or why the guide had singled them out, but whatever he wanted or wanted to know, Harold was ready to oblige him with, since the guide was not only a gentleman but obviously a far from ordinary man.

Though the guide made his living taking American tourists through historical monuments, he did not understand Americans the way he understood history. If you are as openhanded as they mostly are, you cannot help rejoicing in small accidental economies, being pleased when the bus conductor fails to collect your fare, etc., and it doesn’t at all mean that you are trying to take advantage of anybody. The guide asked them if they were members of his party, and Harold said no, and the guide said would they leave the château immediately by that little door right down there?

The whole conversation took place in English, and so Harold had no trouble understanding what the guide said, but for a few seconds he went right on looking at the Frenchman’s face. The expression in the gray eyes was contempt.