A Sport and a Pastime (3 page)

“You know something?” Cristina says. “You’re the only friend of Billy’s I like.”

It pleases but disturbs me, this remark. I’m not sure what it means, I just have the feeling it will prove to be fatal. I don’t want to answer or even to appear as if I’ve heard.

“They’re all illiterates,” she tells me.

Through the crowd a woman is approaching.

“Isabel!” Cristina cries. It’s her friend.

There is no way to begin except with admiration for Isabel who is forty and dressed in a beautiful, black Chanel suit with silver buttons and a ruffled, white shirt. On her finger is a ring with a large diamond, a perfectly round diamond that catches every piece of light, and her smile is as dazzling as her clothes. There’s a young man with her whom she introduces.

“Phillip…” Her hand flutters hopelessly, she’s forgotten his name.

“…Dean,” he murmurs.

“I’m the worst in the world,” she says, the words drawling out. “I just seem to forget names as fast as people can tell them to me.”

She laughs, a high, country laugh.

“Now, don’t take it to heart,” she tells him. “You’re the best-looking thing in this room, but I’d forget the name of the President himself if I didn’t already know it.”

She laughs and laughs. Phillip Dean says nothing. I envy that silence which somehow doesn’t disgrace him, which is curiously beautiful, like a loyalty we do not share.

“He’s been traveling in Spain,” she says, “isn’t that right?”

“Spain!” Cristina says.

His face seems to show it. There still remain the faint, lustrous tones of journeys in an open car.

“I love Spain,” Cristina says.

“You’ve been there?”

“Oh,” she says, “many times.”

“Barcelona?”

“I love it.”

“And Madrid…”

“What a city.”

“We went to the Prado every day,” he says.

“I love the Prado.”

“What is it?” Isabel says.

“The museum.”

“The museum?” she says. “Why, I love it, too. I forgot what it was called.”

“It’s the Prado,” he says.

“Why, that’s right. I remember it now.”

“What were you doing in Spain?” Cristina asks.

“I was just traveling,” he says.

“All alone?”

Images of a young man in the dun-colored cities of late afternoon. Valencia. Trees line the great avenues. Seville at night, the smell of dust that has settled, the smell of oleander, richer, green. In front of the big hotel two porters are hosing the sidewalk.

“No, I was with my father,” he says.

Suddenly I like him. Cristina can’t take her eyes away. She asks when he was born, and it turns out he’s a Sagittarius which is a very good sign.

“Really?”

“It’s one of the best for me,” she says. “Scorpio is the worst.”

“I’m a Libra,” Isabel says and laughs. “Isn’t that right?”

Dean has a small, straight mouth and wide-set, intelligent eyes. Hair that the summer has dried. It’s of schoolboy heroes that I am thinking, boys from the east, ringleaders, soccer backs slender as girls.

“You have a great face,” Cristina says. She is seized with a sudden gaiety. “You know, I’d like to do a painting of you.”

Isabel laughs. The evening has only begun.

At three in the morning–Cristina never goes to bed when she’s drinking–we are wandering through the disorder of les Halles. The air is chilly at this hour, noises seem to ring in it. The workmen glance up from their crates at the unmistakable sound of high heels. Isabel is talking. Cristina. They are pointing everything out. We trail foolishly between great barricades of fruit and produce, past empty bars, through the carts and trucks. Finally we emerge at the roaring, iron galleries where meat is handled. It’s like coming upon a factory in the darkness. The overhead lights are blazing. The smell of carnage is everywhere, the very metal reeks with an odor denser than flowers. On the sidewalk there are wheelbarrows of slaughtered heads. It’s right out of Franju and that famous work which literally steams of it. We stare down at the dumb victims. There are scores of them. The mouths are pink, the nostrils still moist. Worn knives with the edge of a razor have flensed them while their eyes were still fluttering, the huge, eloquent eyes of young calves. The bloody arms of the workers sketch quickly. Wherever they move, the skin magically parts, the warm insides pour out. Everything is swiftly divided. An animal which two minutes ago was led to them has now disappeared. Cristina draws her white coat around her like a countess.

“I’m going to have nightmares,” she says.

“We’re really going to sleep sometime?” Billy asks.

“Let’s go to the pig place,” Isabel says.

“Sweetheart, where is it? Isn’t it right around here?”

“It’s just down the street,” Billy says.

It takes us ten minutes to find it. Of course, there’s an enormous crowd, there always is this time of night. Taxis are waiting with their lights on dim. Cars are parked everywhere. The restaurant is filled. There are tourists, wedding parties, people who’ve been to cabarets, others who’ve stayed up in order to visit the famous market. It’s said they are planning to move it to a location outside the city, it will soon be gone.

Somehow we find a table. Billy is rubbing his hands. There’s a delicious odor of rich, encrusted soup which is the specialty. Cristina doesn’t want any, she wants wine.

“It’s not good for you, you know that,” Billy tells her. She’s had jaundice, she was in bed for months. “Why don’t you just have some soup?”

“You have it,” she says.

“Bummy…”

“What?”

“I’m going to order it for you.”

“Go right ahead,” she says. She turns and gives us a brilliant smile.

The crowd is thick. The waiters struggle to get through. They seem to hear nothing, or it has no effect. The patrons are multiplying as if in a dream. Incredible faces on every side, Algerian, bony as feet, cardboard American, the pink of French. Isabel is laughing, laughing. She claps her hand over her mouth and rocks back and forth a little. She’s telling about an argument that started when her husband was packing for a trip. He was shouting at her in French.

“Now, you obey me this instant,” he said.

“I will not.” She performed some angry, little stamps.

“Stop doing that with your feet.”

“I won’t.” Laugh, laugh.

Of course, he adores her, I know they’re going to tell me that.

“Don’t ever marry a Frenchman,” she says. Then she laughs. She is hugging Coco, her poodle, and laughing. She is opening boxes from Lanvin, the tissue crashing as she brushes it aside. The telephone rings, and it’s one of her friends. She laughs and laughs, she talks for hours.

“Do you live in Paris?” Dean asks me.

“Pardon?”

“Do you live in Paris?” he says.

Isabel is telling about her husband’s family. She’s sick of them. All they’re interested in is their grandbaby, she says. I explain I’m living in the Wheatlands’ house. It’s in a little town.

“You know Dijon?”

“Yes.”

“It’s near Dijon.”

“It’s in the center of France,” he decides.

“The very heart. It’s a small town, but it has a certain quality. I mean, it’s not rich, it’s not splendid. It’s just old and well-formed.”

“What town is it?”

“I doubt if you’ve ever heard of it. Autun.”

“Autun,” he says. Then, “It sounds like the real France.”

“It is the real France.”

“He’s crazy,” Billy warns.

It’s almost five in the morning when we drive Isabel home. There are just the four of us left, Dean has gone. I am exhausted. I feel as if I am entering a grave crisis of the soul. The streets are completely abandoned. The sky has begun to pale. We pull up before a building on the Avenue Montaigne, Billy takes her to the door. I stay in the car with Cristina, our heads leaning back, our eyes closed.

“He’s a nice boy,” she says. “Don’t you wish you were that young again?”

“I’m not that old.”

“Baby…” she says soothingly.

“I only feel it.”

“No, you look very young. Really. You look as if you could still be in school.”

“Thank you.”

“What were you like then?” she says sleepily.

“It’s too long ago.”

“No, really, what were you like?”

“I was the idol of my generation.” I can hear her head move.

“Didn’t you know that?” I tell her.

The door opens, it’s Billy. He slumps down in the seat. We start to drive.

“Let’s go somewhere for a drink,” Cristina says.

He is silent.

“Billy?”

“Do you really want to?”

“Where can we go?”

“The Calvados,” he says.

“Yes,” she says, “let’s go there.”

[4]

C
OURTYARDS WITH RUSTY GATES
receive me back. Enclosures. Great walls crumbling at the sill. The trees stand like brewers in the Place d’Hallencourt. Bricks are laid beneath them. The sidewalks are veined with moss. As one descends, the streets begin to flower out. Rue Dufraigne. Faubourg St. Blaise, a fine house here, small iron balcony, enormous garden. The trees pour over the wall and shade the public side as well. The doors look quite secure.

There’s another house on rue de la Grille. A marvelous color–faded brick, with the doors, windows, all the major lines set in white stone. Gravel driveway. Tall, iron gates. I pass it in the morning as a girl in a pink smock opens the shutters room by room. Belongs to a doctor, I’m sure. They’re all doctors.
Vétérinaires
.
Yeux
,
nez
,
gorge
,
oreilles
. They’re fortified within the most solid houses in town, the biggest ones, commanding every street. The fixtures are polished. The plaques are always shined.

Posters for football stuck in the windows of cheap cafés. Autun against Charolles. Autun against Chagny. No one seems to read them. A few men are playing dominoes; they look like North Africans. At the bottom of town the factories are silent. The old ones have been abandoned, tanneries with their tall chimneys cold, their windows dark. Beyond, the river lies still.

Four in the afternoon. The trees along the street, the upper branches, are catching the last, full light. The stadium is quiet, some bicycles leaning against the outer wall. I read the schedule once again and then go in, turning down towards the stands which are almost empty. Far away, the players are streaming across the soft grass. There seem to be no cries, no shouting, only the faint thud of kicks.

It is the emptiness which pleases me, the blue dimensions of this life. Beyond the game, as far as one can see, are the fields, the trees of the countryside. Above us, provincial sky, a little cloudy. Once in a while the sun breaks out, vague as a smile. I sit alone. There are the glances of some young boys, nothing more. There’s no scoreboard. The game drifts back and forth. It seems to take a long, long time. Someone sends a little boy to the far side to chase the ball when it goes out of bounds. I watch him slowly circle the field. He passes behind the goal. He trots a while, then he walks. He seems lost in the journey. Finally he is over there, small and isolated on the sideline. After a while I can see him kicking at stones.

I am at the center of emptiness. Every act seems purer for it, easier to define. The sounds separate themselves. The details all appear. I stop at the Café St. Louis. It’s like an old schoolroom. The varnish is worn from the curve of the chairs. The finish is gone from the floor. It’s one large, yellowing room, huge mirrors on the wall, the same size and position as windows, generous, imperfect. Glass doors along the street. Wherever one looks, it seems possible to see out. They’re playing billiards. I listen without watching. The soft click of the balls is like a concert. The players stand around, talking in hoarse voices. The rich odor of their cigarettes… They’re never there in the daytime. It’s very different with the morning light upon it, this café. Stale. The billiard table seems less dark. The wood is drawing apart at the corners. It’s quite old, at least a hundred years I should think, judging from the elaborate legs. Beneath the pale green cloth which is always thrown over it, the felt is worn, like the sleeves of an old suit.

“
Monsieur?
”

It’s the old woman who runs the place. False teeth, white as buttons. Belonged to her husband probably. I can hear them clattering in her mouth.

“
Monsieur?
” she insists.

Later on, about nine, there’s the hotel where there’s music in the bar and somebody at least, a few couples, sitting around. The three or four gilded youths of the town, too, slouched on the divans. I know them by sight. One is an angel, at least for betrayal. Beautiful face. Soft, dark hair. A mouth like spoiled fruit. Nothing amuses them–they don’t talk until somebody leaves, and then they begin little, laughing cuts, sometimes calling over to the barman. The rest of the time they sit in boredom, polishing the gestures of contempt. The angel is taller than the rest. He has an expensive suit and a tie knotted loosely at the neck. Sometimes a sweater. Soft cuffs. I’ve seen him on the street. He’s about seventeen, and he seems less dangerous in the daylight, merely a bad student or a boy already notorious for his vices. He’s ready to start seductions. Perhaps he even says it’s easy, and that women are simple to get. To believe is to make real, they say. A chill passes through me. I recognize in him a clear strain of assurance which has nothing to imitate, which springs forth intact. It feeds on its own reflection. He looks carefully at himself in the mirror, combing his hair. He inspects his teeth. The maid has let him undress her. She hates him, but she cannot make him go. I try to think of what he’s said. He has an instinct for it. He is here to hunt them down, to discover the weaklings. I don’t know what he feels–the assassin’s joy.

I am modeling myself after him, just for the evening. As I walk home I see my image floating on the glass of darkened shopfronts. I stop and look at clothes. It’s like coming out of a movie. I have discarded my identity. I am still at large, free of my old self until the first encounters, and now I imagine, very clearly, meeting Claude Picquet. For a moment I have the sure premonition I am about to, that I am really going to see her at the next corner and, made confident by the cognacs, begin quite naturally to talk. We walk along together. I watch her closely as she speaks. I can tell she is interested in me, I am circling her like a shark. Suddenly I realize: it will be her. Yes, I’m sure of it. I’m going to meet her. Of course, I’m a little drunk, a little reckless, and in an amiable condition that lets me see myself destined as her lover, cutting into her life with perfect ease. I’ve noticed you passing in the street many times, I tell her. Yes? She pretends that surprises her. Do you know the Wheatlands, I ask. The Wheatlands? Monsieur and Madame Wheatland, I say. Ah,
oui
. Well, I tell her, I’m staying in their house. What comes next? I don’t know–it will be easy once I am actually talking to her. I want her to come and see it, of course. I want to hear the door close behind her. She stands over by the window. She’s not afraid to turn her back to me, to let me move close. I am going to just touch her lightly on the arm… Claude… She looks at me and smiles.