William Maxwell - The Chateau

“But that’s what I keep telling you. Exactly what I am is the American type.”

“You have got everything all wrong, but your ideas interest me.”

“They are not my ideas. I have not said one original thing all evening.”

“I like you,” Jean Allégret said. “And if it were possible, if there was the slightest chance of changing human nature for the better, I would be on your side. But it does not change. Force is what counts. Idealism cannot survive a firing squad.… But in another way, another world, maybe, what you say is true. And in spite of all I have said, I believe it too. I am an artist. I paint.”

“Seriously?”

“Excuse me,” the Frenchman said. “I neglect my duties as a host. I will be back in a moment.” He got up and went across the lawn and into the house.

The moon was above the marshes now, round and yellow and enormous. The whole sky was gilded by it. The house was no longer ugly. By this light you could see what the Victorian architect had had in mind. Harold stood behind Barbara, with his hand on her shoulder, listening to the girls’ conversation. Then, drawn by curiosity, he went up the steps and into the house, as far as the drawing-room door. The fruitwood furniture was of a kind he had little taste for, but around the room were portraits and ivory miniatures he would have liked to look at. But would it (since the French were said to be so reluctant to ask people into their homes) be considered an act of rudeness for him to go around looking at things all by himself?

He turned back toward the front door and met Jean Allégret in the hall. “Oh there you are,” the Frenchman said. “I was looking for you.”

They went and sat down where they had been before, but turned the bench around so that they could watch the moon rising through the night sky.

“I do not like the painting of our time,” Jean Allégret said. “It is sterile and it has nothing to do with life. What I paint is action. I stand and watch a man cutting a tree down, a farmer in the field, and I love the way he swings the ax blade, I see every motion, and it’s that motion that interests me—not color or design. It’s life I want to paint.”

“You are painting now?”

“I have not painted since the war. I am rebuilding what was destroyed, you understand. I cannot do that and also paint. The painting is my personal life, which has to give way to the responsibilities I have inherited.”

“You are not married?”

The Frenchman shook his head. “When the house is rebuilt and the farms are under cultivation again, then I will find a wife who understands what I expect of her, and there will be children.”

“And she must expect nothing of you? There can be no alteration of your ideas to fit hers?”

“None whatever. I do not approve of American ideas of how to treat women. They are gallant only on the surface. You lose control over your women. And you have no authority over your children or your home. You continually divorce and remarry and make a further mess of it.”

“Modern marriage is very complicated.”

“It need not be.”

Harold saw Eugène stop in front of Barbara and say something. After a moment he walked away. He did not appear to be having a good time. The tweed coat, Harold thought.

Turning to Jean Allégret, he said: “You do not know my name, do you?”

The Frenchman shook his head.

“Very good,” Harold said. “I have a suggestion to make. Suppose I do not tell you my name. Some day you may find that you cannot go on carrying the burden of family responsibilities, or that you were wrong in laying aside your personal life. And you may have to drop everything and start searching for what you once had. Or for something. Everybody at one time or another has to go on a search, and if I do not tell you my name, or where I live, then you will have an object to search for, an excuse. America is a large country, it may take years and years to find me, but while you are searching you will be discovering all sorts of things, you will be talking to people, having experiences, and even if you never find me— You don’t like my idea?”

“It’s completely impractical. Romantic and charming and impractical—a thoroughly American idea.”

“I suppose it is,” Harold said. He took his financial diary out of his pocket and wrote his name and forwarding address in Paris and their address in America. Then he tore the page out and handed it to the Frenchman, and went over to the bench where the three girls were sitting. They looked up as he approached.

“Do you want to come and join us?” he asked.

“Are you having a pleasant conversation?” Barbara asked.

“Very.”

“Then I think I’ll stay here. We’re talking about America.”

“When you come back to Paris in September,” Jean Allégret said as Harold sat down, “I’d like very much to have you come and stay with me in the country. At my own place, I mean. This is my uncle’s house, you understand.”

Harold noticed that he had said “you,” not “you and your wife.”

“We’d like to very much,” he said.

“We could have some shooting. It’s very primitive, you understand. Not like this. But I think you will find it interesting. Actually,” Jean Allégret said, his voice changing to accommodate a note of insincerity, “I am young to have taken on so large a responsibility. I’m only twenty-seven, you know.” Behind the insincerity was the perfectly sincere image that he projected on the screen of his self-approval—of the man who lays aside his youth prematurely.

Like those people who, weeping at the grave of a friend, have no choice but to dramatize the occasion, Harold thought, and search around in their mind for a living friend to write to, describing how they stood at the grave, weeping, etc. The grief is no less real for requiring an audience. What the person doubts and seeks confirmation of is his own reality.

“There are six farms to manage,” the Frenchman went on, “and I am—in spite of my lack of experience—in the position of a father to the village. They wanted to make me mayor. They bring all their problems to me, even their marital problems. I am also working with the boys.… The whole life of the community was destroyed, and slowly, a little at a time, I am helping them rebuild it. But it means that I have very little time to myself, and no time for painting. If the Communists take over, I will be the first to be shot, in our village.”

“Are there many?”

“Five or six.”

“And you know who they are?”

“Certainly. They have nothing against me personally, but if I am successful I will defeat their plans, and so I will be the first person taken out and shot. But you must come and see my village.… I want to give you my address, before I forget it.”

Harold produced the financial diary again and while the Frenchman was writing, he sat looking at the dancers framed by the lighted windows. He still felt amazed and numb when he thought of what happened in the dining room, but most of the time he didn’t think about it. A curtain had come down over his embarrassment. After a startled glance at the wreckage of the children’s table, the guests had politely turned away and filed from the room as if nothing had happened. Jean Allégret went to the kitchen and came back with a damp cloth and scrubbed at the wine stain in the rug. Harold started to pick up the broken glass and found himself gently pushed out of the dining room. The sliding doors closed behind him. In a few minutes, Jean Allégret reappeared and brushed his apology aside—it was nothing, it was all the fault of the table pliante—and took him by the arm and led him outdoors and they went on talking.

Now, when the financial diary and the pencil had been returned to him, Harold said: “Would you take me inside and show me the house? I didn’t want to walk around by myself looking at things. Just the two rooms they’re dancing in.”