William Maxwell - The Chateau

Because she was wearing a tight skirt, they stopped off first at the apartment in the rue Malène, and Barbara and Harold saw Alix’s children, who were charming, and had a visit with Mme Cestre while Alix was changing her clothes. At Bagatelle, something awaited them—a red brick wall almost a hundred feet long, and trained against it were climbing roses and white and blue clematis, demonstrating their cousinship. Both flowers were at the very perfection of their blooming period. It was one more ecstatic experience, to put with the lavender-blue searchlight, the rainy night in San Remo, the one-ring circus, and the medieval city that was enclosed in itself like a rose. Sitting on a bench, with the wall in front of them, Alix talked about her present life. All that Harold remembered afterward was the one sentence: “I don’t mind doing the washing and ironing, or anything else, so long as I don’t have to sit with them in the park.” It reduced the Atlantic Ocean to a puddle, and he began to tell her about their efforts to adopt a child. Then they looked at the roses some more. And then they made their way to a bus stop, and back into the city. She got off first, and they waved until they couldn’t see her any longer. They saw her once more after that. Sabine had a party for them, an evening party, and invited Alix and Eugène and also her sister and brother-in-law.

The man who looked like an acrobat but wasn’t?

He was a performer. Their instinct about him was right. But his performance was intellectual; he balanced budgets in the air. He had changed so in five years that they didn’t recognize him. He didn’t refer to the evening they had spent together, and they didn’t remember until afterward who he was.

And Sabine was different, Harold suddenly realized. In one respect she had changed. That strange suggestion of an unprovoked or unrelated amusement was not there any longer. Was this because it was now safe to be serious? In any case, she was happy.

Feeling that the party was for them, they tried too hard, and didn’t really enjoy themselves, but it didn’t matter; they had already reached the people they wanted to reach. Including that waiter, Joseph.

Pierre, you said his name was .

His name was Joseph, but they didn’t know it. The patron’s name being Joseph also, he called himself Pierre, to avoid confusion. But his name was really Joseph. The simplest things are often not what they seem.… The restaurant in the alley off the Place St. Sulpice had gone downhill. The patron had taken to drink, and their friend was now working in a brasserie on the boulevard St. Germain. The first time they stopped in, he was off duty. They left a message—that they would be back two days later. They almost didn’t go back. Though they had exchanged Christmas cards with him faithfully, would they have anything to say to him? It didn’t seem at all likely. When they walked in, there he was, and he saw them and smiled, and they knew that they didn’t have to have anything to say to him. They loved him. They had always loved him.

He led them to a table and they asked him what to order and he told them, just as he used to do; but when Harold asked him to bring three glasses with the bottle of wine, he shook his head and said warningly, as to a younger brother: “This is a serious restaurant.” He stood by their table, talking to them while they ate, or left them to go look after another table and then returned to pick up where they had left off. They found they had too much to say to him. When they left, they promised to meet him at noon on Sunday—for an apéritif, they assumed. On Sunday, the four of them—Joseph’s wife was there beside him—sat for a while in front of the brasserie, watching the people who passed, and talking quietly, and when the Americans got up to go, they discovered that they had been invited to lunch, in Joseph’s apartment, seven flights up, in the rue des Ciseaux. It was a tiny apartment, with two rooms, and only two windows. But out of each they could see a church tower, Joseph’s wife showed them. And they could hear the bells. She confessed to Barbara that they greatly regretted not having children, and that all their affection should be heaped on a canary. It was wrong, but they could not help it. And Barbara explained that at home they had a gray cat to whom they gave too much affection also. The canary’s name was Fifi, and all that love it had no right to poured back out of its throat, and remarks were frequently addressed to it from the lunch table. Lunch went on for hours. Joseph had cooked it himself, that morning and the day before, and they saw that there is, in France, a kind of hospitality that cannot be paid for and that is so lavish one can only bow one’s head in the presence of it. They drank pernod, timidly, before they began to eat. They drank a great deal of wine during lunch. They drank brandy after they stopped eating. From time to time there were toasts. Raising his glass drunkenly, Harold exclaimed: “A Fifi!” and a few minutes later Joseph pushed his chair back and said: “A nos amis, à nos amours!” The Americans were just barely able to get down the stairs.

Side by side with what happens, the friendship that unexpectedly comes into full flower, there is always, of course, the one that could and does not. Among the clients of the little restaurant in the rue de Montpensier there was a tall interesting-looking man, in his late forties, and his two barely grown sons. The father usually arrived first, and the sons joined him, one at a time. In their greeting there was so much undisguised affection that the Americans found them a pleasure to watch. But who were they, and where was the boys’ mother? Was she ill? Was she dead? And why, in France, did they eat in a restaurant instead of at home? Like a fruit hanging ripe on the bough, the acquaintance was ready to begin. All it needed was a word, a smile, a small accident, and they would all five have been eating together. If they had been on shipboard, for instance—but they were not on shipboard.

And who were they? Were they aware of the Americans?

Of course. How could they not be? The Americans went to a movie that was on the other side of Paris, and when the lights came on, there sitting in the row ahead of them were the father and his two sons. It was all Harold could do not to speak to them.… Though their story is interesting, and offers some curious parallels, I don’t think I’d better go into it here.

The Americans continued to see things, and to be moved by what they saw, and to love France. During the few days they were in Paris, there was an illumination of Gothic and Renaissance sculpture at the Louvre, and a beautiful exhibition of medieval stained-glass windows, at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.

And Mme Viénot?

They didn’t see her. And neither did they try to see Jean Allégret. They were afraid it would be pushing their luck too far, and also they were in Paris such a short time, and there were so many things they wanted to see and do. They saw a school children’s matinee of Phèdre at the Comédie Française and a revival of Ciboulette at the Comique. Harold got up one morning at daybreak and wandered through the streets and markets of Les Halles. Coming home with his arms full of flowers, he stopped and stared at an old woman who was asleep with her cheek pressed against the pavement. His eyes, traveling upward, saw a street sign: rue des Bons Enfants. The scene remained intact in his mind afterward, like a vision; like something he had learned.

Did they adopt a child?

No. It is not easy, and before they had managed to do it, Barbara became pregnant. It was as if someone in authority had said Since you are now ready and willing to bring up anybody’s child, you may as well bring up your own.… So strange, life is. Why people do not go around in a continual state of surprise is beyond me. In the foyer of the Musée Guimet, Barbara saw a Khmer head—very large it was, and one side of the face seemed to be considering closely, from the broadest possible point of view, all human experience; the expression of the other half was inward-looking, concerned with only one fact, one final mystery.