Rameau's Niece (11 page)

Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth
bather;
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

The beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, it ran from their
long hair:
Little streams pass'd all over their bodies.

An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies,
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the
sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and
bending arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.

—WALT WHITMAN

A
T THE AIRPORT,
Margaret waited to have her bags x-rayed and thought that when she passed through the metal detector, she would be passing into a new world. She would be on her way to Prague, formerly part of the second world, now reborn. Perhaps she would be reborn.

A little boy ran up to her, grabbed her hand, looked up, realized she was not his mother, and ran away in horror.

"I'm here," she heard a woman call. "I'm right here."

Margaret stepped forward, passed through the metal detector, watched the x-ray of her bag as it rolled along on a conveyor belt. Overlapping round coins, her keys, and several indistinct lumps—she was setting forth naked and alone.

Once on the plane to Paris, where she would spend the night before continuing to Prague, Margaret thought again how sad it was that Edward could not accompany her. No marvelous, heroic Czech Philharmonic together, but Edward had given her a long article about the orchestra to read on the plane as a stand-in for his own attendance and instruction and conversation. Professor Ehrenwerth had to stay home and coddle his students. Which was just as well, Margaret decided, for it was demeaning to have become so dependent on another person, even one as interesting as Edward.

And so Margaret was by herself. With the exception of 150 or so passengers who provided international atmosphere by speaking French or Japanese or richly American dialects of English, she sat unaccompanied on the plane.

If Edward were here, she thought, he would already have discovered that the stewardess was studying in her spare time to be France's first female rabbi, that the 250 other passengers would consume forty-five liters of red wine during the journey, that the five-year-old Japanese girl across the aisle was a violinist who had performed at Carnegie Hall—twice.

But Edward is not here. I am alone. The stewardess probably belongs to Racially Pure Young Women for Le Pen. What if the 250 passengers, having consumed their forty-five liters of wine, become ill simultaneously? The Japanese girl is to be given to an infertile Parisian couple in exchange for a Manet painting.

I am alone.

Dinner came and went. She read about the Czech Philharmonic, on strike, performing
Má Vlast
in an unsanctioned concert to an audience that stood up, with the orchestra, to totalitarianism, literally rising to their feet. The Czech Philharmonic had helped to topple the Communist regime! And in East Germany, where orchestra conductors led marches and played his Ninth Symphony as protest music, Beethoven had taken to the streets. Truth and beauty to the people!

She thought of Edward with a sudden pang, for he seemed, from the distance of three hours and thirty-five thousand feet, extremely handsome, even more handsome than he seemed up close. "Should you take up with a young, French bisexual airplane attendant, still I shall welcome you with open arms on your return," he had said, and she wondered whether he meant a male bisexual or a female one, and whether he would, in fact, take her back if she were really to stray with one of the slender, smooth-skinned, rather unreal attendants in their blue uniforms. At this thought, the thought of straying, she shuddered, for the flight attendants looked so alien to her, and the touch of a stranger seemed impossible.

And how could Edward, making his little joke about infidelity, have known, how could either of them have guessed, how much she would enjoy her new solitude? She felt she should guard it, it seemed that precious. No one here knew who she was, no one cared. She was free. There was nothing to spoil the rich alienation she was enjoying!

In the morning in Paris, she went straight to her hotel in order to sleep. There, a small brass plaque informed her, Casanova had also slept, although with whom the plaque did not say. There was a suit of armor on the staircase, and red carpeting extended up the steps and into her tiny room, which was far taller than it was long. The wall that held the windows was hung with deep crimson velvet drapes, and Margaret felt like a trinket in a little padded box.

Let me out, she thought, sinking into a deep sleep.

She woke up in time for dinner, for she had plans to meet Juliette and Jean-Claude at the apartment of one of their friends, a composer whom Margaret knew slightly, an aging avant-gard-ist, small, nervous, generous. He had the habit of hopping from foot to foot (hoof to hoof, Margaret thought, for he looked rather like a goat). When Margaret arrived at his apartment in Passy, he was nearly butting his guests in his eagerness to admit and entertain them. From the windows, a whole wall of them, in his living room, Margaret stared out at the Eiffel Tower.

Seeing Juliette and Jean-Claude, Margaret grew almost painfully nostalgic for Edward and their first trip together, and she quickly drank several glasses of the composer's excellent wine in memory of that time.

Oh, Edward, she thought, smiling dreamily at the witty and increasingly blurry French intellectuals the composer had collected around him. The composer himself briefly interrupted his endless shuttle between the door and the table and stood beside Margaret. "You're not eating?" he asked, gesturing toward a table covered with baskets and bowls.

"No, I'm drinking." She refilled her glass and held it to her lips, savoring the wine. She realized her eyes were closed and that she was swaying with pleasure. She opened them and stood still.

"So," said the composer. "Prague. Though nothing is going on in Eastern Europe, isn't that so?"

Margaret stared at him, startled. Had she blacked out briefly, missed some crucial link in this conversation? She searched his face for some clue, but saw only a bony nose, long chin, and a rather long, upper lip, like a goat's.

"Musically," he added.

"I'm going to hear the Czech Philharmonic," she said.

"Czech Philharmonic. Yes, well, limited repertoire," he said over his shoulder as he headed toward some new arrivals.

Yes, well, when's the last time you toppled a government, you hideous silly
chèvre?
she thought.

Margaret noticed she was drinking a glass of wine. Still. Or again. Which was it? How many glasses had there been? Margaret, Margaret, calm yourself. And always remember, the aim of art is not to topple governments, Margaret, any more than it is to support them, so just go sit down over there, right on that alarmingly low leather armchair, you can make it, and drink your nice, tasty wine, close your weary eyes, lean your head a little to this side, where the cushion bulges comfortably. Just like that.

She had heard one of the composer's own works performed once, an opera. Drums thumped luridly. Corpses were strewn about the stage, which had been splattered with red paint. What was it about? Greed and capitalist corruption and redemption through revolution, certainly. But what was the plot? It was hard to recall, hard to recall even what period it was set in, partly because she was now, she realized, thoroughly drunk, but primarily because there had been so many soldiers in so many different uniforms—World War I Tommies in gas masks, Nazi storm troopers in boots, Napoleonic cuirassiers, Roman legionnaires with ten-foot spears.

She hadn't thought of the opera, whatever it was called, in many years, and was surprised she remembered as much of it as she did. It was on their first trip together that Edward and Margaret had gone to see this rousing, panhistorical bloodbath, which included several gang-rape scenes during which a chorus chanted, "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" That was the trip on which we decided to get married, Margaret thought, and she opened her eyes and gazed at the composer, twitching toward the door now, with a little more warmth.

She and Edward had also gone to Versailles on that trip, for neither of them, in all their visits to France, had ever been there. And there they had marveled at a vulgarity so self-confident, so immense, and so ultimately frail. How could people with mirrors that big not realize how puny they themselves were?

Most of France survived in her memory as vivid fragments, moments immediately preceding or following meals. The meals themselves she remembered in detail. The steak with green peppercorns at a shabby inn famous for its steak with green pepper-corns. The inn was of some historic importance, but Margaret could recall only the steak and on the other side of the steak, Edward watching her, and then, after the steak, the twisted rickety staircase to their closet-sized room and single single bed. A plate of shrimp at an outdoor seaside café, past which a bull ran frantically, chasing a few brave souls and followed by what seemed to be the entire population of the town. What town? That fact was lost forever in the happy scent of garlic and olive oil, the pink of shrimp, the pale dust cloud heralding the arrival of the bull, the thrilling clarity of the very blue sky.

Only Versailles stood its ground, bigger than any
gigot
, How conventional, Margaret thought. Why not marvel over the Eiffel Tower as well? But then, I am marveling over the Eiffel Tower, aren't I? There it is, that symbol not of Paris but of all those who come to Paris, not of romance but of one's desire for romance, one's need. Some French writer said he ate lunch at the Eiffel Tower every day because it was the only place in all of Paris from which he would not have to look at the Eiffel Tower. Gide? Maupassant? Roland Barthes? Crébillon
fils?

"I love the Eiffel Tower," she murmured to Juliette, who had perched on the arm of Margaret's chair. "It's on the wallpaper in my aunt Eunice's bathroom."

Margaret smiled uncomprehendingly at the rest of the French people around her. Smoke filled the room. Juliette had begun deconstructing the Eiffel Tower with all the enthusiasm someone or other had put into constructing it.

"Who built the Eiffel Tower?" Margaret interrupted Juliette.

Juliette stared. "Eiffel," she said.

"Ah."

"You have read of course Barthes, the little essay? You know? Where he says that the tower has both sexes of sight, that is to say that the tower can both see and be seen."

"You mean it sticks up and you can also go inside it?" Margaret asked. "Yes, I read it."

The composer ushered in a new arrival, a young man, and Margaret noticed heads turn. There was a sudden buzz of whispered excitement.

"That's Henri de Goldbaumois," Juliette whispered. "He is the rising star of France."

"Movie star?"

Juliette looked at her pityingly.

"Rock star," said Margaret.

"Philosophy," Juliette said patiently. "Star of philosophy."

De Goldbaumois was surrounded by people, all listening intently.

"There is only standing room in his lectures," Juliette continued.

"Really? Meta-Heideggerian semaphorism?"

Juliette looked at her even more pityingly.

"You Americans!" she said.

"Us Americans."

"He teaches
The Federalist Papers
" Juliette said with some excitement. "They are by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison and
Jean
Jay," she added helpfully.

In another corner, the conversation had become suddenly animated, and Margaret shifted her attention and listened. Real estate and summer homes! Oh! She missed New York, so near and yet so far.

And then, blotting out the Eiffel Tower and James Madison and the smoky room, a sudden, forceful wave of homesickness for Edward struck Margaret. When the wave receded, she stood weakened in the sand. When he smiles, she thought, his whole face lifts, and his eyes blaze, the lines around them radiating like baroque sunbursts. What a hideous image, she thought. My poor Edward and his beautiful smile reduced to such a hideous image. I am a terrible wife.

Absentmindedly, Margaret watched Juliette's dark red lips moving.

And yet they do look like Baroque sunbursts, don't they, those lines around Edward's eyes? she thought.

She looked at Juliette's smooth face, at her wide cheeks and high cheekbones, and back at her unsmiling rouge red lips. The red lips parted and came together. Margaret no longer noticed what, if anything, came from them. She wondered how long she had been watching them. Did Juliette know Margaret was staring at her lips? Juliette put a fat cigarette between the red lips. When she removed it, inside a swirl of smoke, Margaret could see the marks of the red lips on the cigarette like fingerprints, no, no, lip prints. She felt strangely moved by the garish smears on the cigarette. "My aunt Eunice used to work in the Empire State Building," she said softly, taking Juliette's hand in her own. "On the second floor." Tears came to Margaret's eyes. "The second floor," she repeated.

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
she dozed, dozed seriously, on the plane to Prague, a sleek Air France craft that only emphasized to her how small and shabby she herself felt. One day away from Edward and she had become drunk, for the first time in years, and in public, too.

She tried to take a few notes when she woke up. Margaret had prepared a talk on eighteenth-century French philosophical works printed in Switzerland, then smuggled back across the Swiss border into France and sold by starving Parisian hacks who were then hounded by the police until they disappeared into exile, abject poverty, and utter obscurity. The discovery of
Rameau's Niece
had drawn her into this study of underground literature, which included not only works by philosophers like Voltaire and Helvétius and Locke, but also titles like
Venus, Wild in the Cloister
and
The Tender Guidance of Dom Bugger,
all of them referred to as "philosophical books."