Paris Is Always a Good Idea (27 page)

“You were just about to tell us how you met my mother, Monsieur Marchais,” said Robert.

“That's right.” Once more he could see Ruth as she walked along the street so charmingly in her red dress. “It was on a hot summer day that I first saw your mother. She was wearing a red dress with little white polka dots. She had a guidebook in her hand, stopped every few steps, turned the map in the book in every possible direction, and was looking out for street signs. When she passed the café for the third time, I got up and asked her if I could help in any way. She sighed with relief and looked at me with her green eyes, which were slightly aslant like those of a cat, and gave her delicate, heart-shaped face something really special. ‘I think I'm totally lost,' she said and laughed. Her laugh was … wonderful. So optimistic and full of life that it conquered me immediately. ‘I want to see the Eiffel Tower—it's somewhere in this direction, isn't it?'

“She looked at the guidebook once more, then pointed in completely the wrong direction. ‘No, mademoiselle, you need to go the other way. It's really not far from here,' I replied. Then I clapped my book shut. ‘Do you know what? I'll show you the way, otherwise you may never get there at all.'”

Max smiled. “That's how it all began. Over the next four weeks I accompanied Ruth on her walks through the streets of Paris whenever I could. I showed her the city, and all the art museums.” He shook his head with a smile. “
Mon Dieu,
I don't remember ever meeting anyone who was so obsessed with museums. By the end I'd seen museums that I didn't even know existed in my own city. Ruth loved pictures. Most of all she was taken by the Impressionists. Monet, Manet, Bonnard, Cézanne. We often went to the Jeu de Paume, where all those pictures were in those days. She could sit for hours in front of a painting, looking at it without saying a word. Then she'd turn her head and look at you with a smile. ‘Absolutely beautiful, isn't it?' she would say. ‘What a joy it must be to create something like that!' And I would nod, and think how happy it made me just to sit beside her, and occasionally stroke her arm or take her hand as if by accident, and breathe in the smell of her.” He turned to Robert and Rosalie. “I don't know if it was a particular perfume, but she always smelled of mirabelles. Can you imagine it? Like mirabelle jelly. It was indescribable, kind of bewitching. After that I never met another girl who smelled of mirabelles.” He sighed. “
Tempi passati.
So many things are irretrievable. That's why memories are so precious.” He felt his throat becoming dry, and coughed. “It was a tender little romance that resulted in a couple of kisses, and yet it was all so much more intense than many things I experienced later. What great joy I felt as I looked into her lovely face or walked hand in hand with her on the weekend through the parc de Bagatelle, which she preferred to all the other parks in Paris.”

Rosalie cast a meaningful glance at Robert, and the question of what the relationship was between these two young people passed fleetingly through his mind.

“You may find it difficult to believe nowadays, but it even made me happy to sit in a café just waiting for her.” Then he suddenly noticed the untouched plates in front of them. “But please take a piece of the apple tart. I'm a very bad host.”

Rosalie divided up the tarte tatin and served it on the plates. They tried the tart, with its slices of caramelized apple sitting smooth and gleaming on the puff pastry, while Max himself cut up his piece with a silver fork and then put it distractedly aside without eating any of it.

“Isn't it strange that you can sometimes experience such great happiness even when you know that the thing has no future?” he said thoughtfully. He looked over at Robert, who was excitedly shoving the last piece of his cake into his mouth. “Yes, no future. Because the love between your mother and me was an impossible love. It was limited to a few weeks, and we both knew it. From the very beginning. Even on that first day when I went to the Eiffel Tower with Ruth and afterward asked her if she'd drink a glass of wine with me, she told me that she had a fiancé waiting for her in America. Clearly a really nice man, likable, from a good family, a successful lawyer who would do anything for her. And that they were going to be married at the end of the summer. ‘I'm afraid I'm already taken,' she said with a laugh. ‘There's nothing to be done.' ‘But now you're here in Paris,' I said, thrusting the thought of some fiancé on the other side of the Atlantic as far from my consciousness as possible. We knew that it would have to end sometime. And in spite of that I still held her hand, and still said, ‘Give me a kiss,' as we took an evening trip in a
bateau mouche
along the Seine, with the Eiffel Tower outlined against the sky, so close you felt you could put your arms around it.” He sighed happily. “And in spite of all that she did kiss me and we fell in love and enjoyed the moment as if it would never end.”

“But then it did end,” said Robert.

Max fell silent, remembering how Ruth had traveled to the airport by taxi in the pouring rain. She hadn't wanted him to go with her.

“I've always said that I have to come back,” she had said on the morning she left, standing in front of him, her face pale.

“I know.” His heart had clenched as if it had had icy water poured over it.

She chewed her lower lip, hardly able to bear his silence.

“We could write to each other now and again,” she said, looking him beseechingly in the eye.
Don't make it so hard for us
was what her expression seemed to say.

“Yes, of course, okay,” he'd answered, and they'd forced themselves to smile—though they both knew there would be no letters.

It was an infinitely sad moment. In the end she had stroked his cheek tenderly and looked at him for the last time. “I'll never forget you,
mon petit tigre,
” she said. “I promise.” And then she left, closing the door quietly after her.

Max smiled wistfully, and then noticed that Robert was looking at him because he still hadn't answered.

“Yes, the moment ended,” he said simply. “Ruth vanished from my life just as she had entered it—with enchanting ease, and I was left with the two saddest words I've ever known: never again. I let her go, because I was not aware of the magnitude of what I was losing. Because I imagined that nothing could be changed. I was still young back then, I didn't know much. I thought it was hopeless. Perhaps I should have fought for her. Of course I should. It's only when something is irretrievably lost that you come to realize what it meant to you.”

Robert nodded and then said, “Then she married Paul, my father. And she never contacted you again?”

Max shook his head. “I never had any news of her again. Until today,” he said. “But when I think back to that summer today, I know they were the best weeks of my life. It's impossible to describe how carefree those days were.” He smiled. “They were the paint spots in my life. At least I did realize that even then.”

A long silence followed. The sun balanced like a big red ball on the silhouette of the old stone wall at the bottom of the garden. Max felt his hip starting to hurt, but he ignored it. He kept looking at the young man who had silently joined his hands in front of his face and was staring out through the triangle formed by his fingers. You could see that Robert was trying to make some sense of what he had just heard.

“My mother never said anything to me,” he said eventually. “I always had the impression that my parents were very happy together. They had a good marriage, never a cross word, and they laughed a lot.”

Max nodded. “I'm sure they did. In life you can experience many different kinds of love, and I'm sure that your mother's heart was big enough to make several people happy. Your father was an enviable man, Robert.”

“But what about the story then? When did you give her the story?” asked Rosalie.

“Oh yes, my little story—by the way, it was the first I ever wrote. I gave it to her on one of our last days when we'd gone to the parc de Bagatelle for a picnic. It was a glorious day, the air still smelled of rain, and we'd just gotten quite wet because there had been a short summer storm. But the sun quickly dried our clothes.”

Max still clearly remembered how they'd lain on a plaid rug on the grass. Under an old tree on a little hill not far from the Grotto of the Four Winds. Ruth had found the spot and said that it was perfect for a picnic.

“Ruth had an instant camera—they were all the rage at the time—and I took a photo of her which she gave me afterwards. I think I still have it.”

“Yes, you do. I think I saw it in the box,” interjected Rosalie.

“That afternoon I gave her the story of the blue tiger,” Max continued. “I'd had the original bound and kept a carbon copy for myself. The original title page had the words: ‘For Ruth, whom I'll never forget.' But then I thought that that dedication was very revealing, and so I changed the title page and just wrote, ‘For R.'” Max rubbed his beard in embarrassment as he looked over at Rosalie. “But that then led to a number of misunderstandings.”

He saw that Rosalie was smiling and hoped that she had forgiven him for the little lie his vanity had made him tell. Of course he hadn't wanted to admit that he'd had to go back to an old story because he didn't have a new idea. And more than that, he had felt flattered because she was so delighted when she thought the dedication was meant for her.

“But if it had been a new story I would of course have been glad to dedicate it to you, my dear Rosalie. I also have something to confess to you.”

“Yes?” she asked.

“The way you smile immediately reminded me of Ruth.”

“Really?” She laughed.

Robert was squirming uncomfortably on his cushion and it wasn't hard to see that something was still bothering him.

“So the story that my mother used to tell me is really about you and her?”

Max nodded. “Of course only those who are in the know would recognize that. Ruth was Héloïse, the little girl with the golden hair who believes in her tiger—the cloud-tiger.” He smiled. “And I was the tiger. She sometimes used to call me
mon petit tigre
; I really liked that.”

“And the land that is so far away that you can't get there by airplane, but only by longing—,” began Robert.

“—was our land.” Max completed the sentence. “I hoped that this way Ruth would never forget me, and I see now that she never did.” He nodded, and there was a strange gleam in his eye. What he did not say, however, was that the flight over Paris by night also had a deeper meaning.

One night they had flown. One magic, exhilarating, fairy-tale night that would have to be enough for a whole life, a night where they parted, intoxicated with love, in a dawn that already contained the bitter taste of separation.

She had kept her promise. A hesitant smile crossed his face. “I hope, Robert, you won't be angry with me if I'm glad that Ruth didn't forget me. Just as I am of course glad to meet her son. Your mother meant a great deal to me.”

“Can I see the photo? The one of my mother, I mean.”

“Of course. If Rosalie would be so kind as to get the box down from my wardrobe? I'm not really in a fit state for climbs like that.”

While Rosalie got up and went upstairs to the bedroom, Max gazed sympathetically at the young man who had intertwined his hands and kept stretching his fingers and pressing them against the backs of his hands. It was definitely not easy to have the past sprung on him like this. And more than that, a past on which he had had no influence at all.

“Why did she never tell me?” he said finally. “I wasn't a child anymore, and it was all so long ago. I would have understood.”

“Don't brood too much, my boy. Your mother surely did the right thing, I just know that. She was a wonderful woman—even then—and she must have loved you very dearly. Otherwise you wouldn't be the person you are today.”

Robert nodded gratefully. “Yes, perhaps you're right,” he said, and his expression brightened.

A few moments later, Rosalie came back down.

“Is this it?” She put the faded color photograph of a young woman on the table, and both men leaned over it.

“Yes,” said Max. “That's the photo from the parc de Bagatelle.”

Robert pulled the photo nearer and nodded.

“Yes,” he too then said. “That's Mom, no mistaking her.” He looked at the young woman standing under a tree and laughing into the camera. “My goodness, that laugh,” he said, wiping his eyes. “She never lost that laugh.”

The sun was already going down when Max Marchais's guests departed. Robert had expressed a desire to see the place where the picture of his mother had been taken, and so they'd agreed that they'd all go to the bois de Boulogne together the next day.

“Finding the tree is not the problem,” Max had explained. “I just hope I can get there with these stupid things.” He pointed to his crutches.

“Oh go on, you can do it! If necessary we can push you there, I'm sure they rent out wheelchairs,” Rosalie had said, and the laughter that followed was very liberating.

Then they had driven off in Rosalie's little car. Max had stood in the doorway a while longer, looking out after them. Life went on. It kept on going. A flame that was passed on by an endless team of runners until it reached its destination.

He hobbled back to the terrace and sat back down in his wicker chair. The cool of the evening descended on the garden. Deep in thought, Max looked at the faded photo that was still lying on the table.

He leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes for a moment. He saw two young people, full of the joys of summer, on a sunny day in the bois de Boulogne. They were stretched out under an old chestnut tree on a checkered woolen rug, joking with each other. The rug was scratchy, but only a little. Ruth was wearing her red dress with the white polka dots that he liked so much and her laughing mouth was almost as red as her dress. The light fell through the trees, casting tiny shimmering whirls on the rug and her bare legs. She had taken off her sandals. A bird chirped. The sky was bluer than blue. A white cloud drifted lazily by.