William Maxwell - The Chateau

Those people whose windows look out on the gardens of the Palais-Royal know that though the palace is built of stone it is not gray but takes its color from the color of the sky, which varies according to the time of day. In the early morning, at daybreak, it is lavender-blue. In the evening it is sometimes flamingo-colored. If you walk along the rue La Feuillade shortly after five o’clock in the morning, you will come to a bakery that is below the street level, and the smell of freshly baked bread is enough to break your heart. And if you stand late at night on the Pont des Arts, you will find yourself in the eighteenth century. The lights in the houses along the Quai Malaquais and the Quai de Conti are reflected in the river, and the reflections elongate as if they were trying to turn into Japanese lanterns. The Louvre by moonlight is a palace, not an art gallery. And if you go there in the daytime you must search out the little stairway that leads up to a series of rooms where you can buy, for very little money, engravings of American flowers—the jack-in-the-pulpit, the May apple, the windflower—that were made from specimens collected by missionaries and voyageurs in the time of Louis XIV. At the flower market there is a moss rose that is pale pink with a deeper pink center, and you will walk between trenches of roses and peonies that are piled like cordwood. And though not every day is beautiful (sometimes it is cold, sometimes it is raining) there will be days when the light in the sky is such that you wonder if—

I know, I know. Everybody feels that way about Paris. London is beautiful too. So is Rome. So, for that matter, is New York. The world is full of beautiful cities. What interests me is Mme Viénot. It is a pity that they did not bother to see her .

She was in the country. But just because the Americans didn’t see her is no sign we can’t.… It is a Tuesday. The sky in Touraine is a beautiful, clear, morning-glory blue. She wheels her bicycle from the kitchen entryway, mounts it, and rides out of the courtyard. The gardener and his wife and boy are stacking the hay in the park in front of the house, and a M. Lundqvist is leaning out of the window of Sabine’s room. He waves to her cheerfully, and she waves back.

She stops to talk to the gardener, who is optimistic about the hay but thinks it is time they had rain; otherwise there will be no fodder for the cows, and the price of butter will go sky-high, where everything else is already.

Halfway down the drive she turns and looks back over her shoulder. The front of the house, with its steep gables, box hedge, raked gravel terrace, and stone balustrade, says: “If one can only sustain the conventions, one is in turn sustained by them …” Reassured, she rides on. She is going to haggle with the farmer, five miles away, who supplies her with cream and butter and the plain but admirable cheese of the locality. When she looks back a second time, the trees have closed in and the château is lost from sight. But it can be seen again from the public road, across the fields—a large, conspicuous white-stone house, the only house of this size for several miles around.

M. and Mme Bonenfant celebrated their son’s coming of age here, and the marriages of their two daughters, and of one of their granddaughters. Like all well-loved, well-cared for, hospitable, happy houses, the Château Beaumesnil gives off a high polish, a mellowed sense of order, of the comfort that is felt by the eye and not the behind of the beholder. A stranger walking into the house for the first time is aware of the rich texture of sounds and silences. The rugs seem to have an affinity for the floor they lie on. The sofas and chairs announce: “We will never allow ourselves to be separated under any circumstances.” “This is rightness,” the house says. “This is what a house should be; and to have to live anywhere else is the worst of all possible misfortunes.”

The village is just the same—or practically. M. Canourgue’s stock is now on open shelves instead of under the counter or in the back room. There is a clock in the railway station, and the station itself is finished. Though the travel posters have been changed and the timetables are for the year 1953, the same four men are seated on the terrace of the Café de la Gare.

The village is proud of its first family, and also of the fact that the old lady chose to throw in her lot with theirs. Mme Bonenfant is eighty-eight now, and suffers from forgetfulness. Far too often she cannot find her handkerchief or the letter she had in her hand only a moment ago. On her good days she enjoys the quickness and clarity of mind that she has always had. She is witty, she charms everyone, she is like an ivory chess queen. On her bad days chère Maman sits with her twisted old hands in her lap, quiet and sad, and sometimes not really there; not anywhere. It bothers her that she cannot remember how many great-grandchildren she has, and she says to Sabine: “Was that before your dear father died?” and realizes from the look of horror that this question gives rise to that she has confused a son-in-law who is dead with one who is very much alive. She leaves the house only to go to Mass on Sunday, or to the potager with her wicker garden basket and shears. She is still beautiful, as a flower stalk with its seed pod open and empty or a tattered oak leaf is beautiful. The potager never ceases to trouble her, because ever since the war the fruit trees, flowers, and vegetables have been mingled in a way that is not traditional. And terrible things have happened to the scarecrow. “Look at me!” he cries. “Look what has happened to me!” Mme Bonenfant, snipping away at the sweet-pea stems, answers calmly: “To me also. All experience is impoverishing. A great deal is taken away, a little is given in return. Patience is obligatory—the patient acceptance of much that is unacceptable.”

Now it is evening, but not evening of the same day. The house is damp, and it has been raining since early morning. There are no guests at the moment. With her poor circulation Mme Bonenfant feels the cold, and so sometimes even in summer a small fire is lit for her in the Franklin stove in the petit salon. Mme Viénot is sitting at the desk, going over her accounts. Alix is on the divan. And Mme Bonenfant is going through a box of old letters.

“This is what the world used to be like,” she says suddenly. “It is a letter from my father to his sister in Paris. ‘The two young people’—Suzanne and Philippe, he is referring to—‘evinced a delicate fondness for each other that we ought to be informed of.… ’ ”

“And were they informed of it?” Alix asks.

“Yes. Shortly afterward,” Mme Bonenfant says, and goes on reading to herself. When she finishes the letter, she puts it back in its envelope and drops it into the fire. The paper bursts into flame, the pale-brown ink turns darker for a few seconds and then this particular link with the remote past is gray ashes, and even the ashes are consumed.

“But surely you aren’t destroying old letters!” Mme Viénot exclaims.

“When I am gone, who will be interested in reading them?” Mme Bonenfant says.

“ I am interested,” Mme Viénot says indignantly. “We all are. I have implored you—I implore you now—not to burn family letters.”

“You didn’t know any of the people,” Mme Bonenfant says with finality, as though Mme Viénot were still a child.

Though she is very old, and tired, and forgetful, she is still the head of the family.

Now suppose I pass my hand over the crystal ball twice. What do we see? The furniture is under dust covers, the shutters are closed, the grass is not cut in the park, the potager is a tangle of weeds and briers. Sometimes in the night there are footsteps on the gravel terrace in front of the house, but no one lies in bed with a wildly beating heart, hearing them. All the rooms of the house are quiet except the third-floor room at the head of the stairs. The shutters here have come loose; they must not have been fastened securely. At some time, the ornamental shield has been removed from the fireplace, and occasionally there is a downdraft that redistributes the dust. Wasps beat against the windowpanes. In the night the shutters creak, the black-out paper flaps softly, the room grows cold. The mirrors recall long-forgotten images: the Germans; the young American couple; M. Lundqvist; Mme Viénot as a girl, expectant and vulnerable. Moonlight comes and goes. The mirrors remember the poor frightened squirrel that got in and could not get out. And in the hall at the foot of the stairs—this is really very strange—the grandfather’s clock chimes again and again, though there is nobody to wind it.