The Beggar Maid (25 page)

Rose drank, and leaned against the wall, and heard them take up the theme of what students expected nowadays, how they broke down your door to tell you about their abortions, their suicide attempts, their creativity crises, their weight problems. Always using the same words: personhood, values, rejection.

“I’m not rejecting you, you silly bugger, I’m flunking you!” said the little sharp man, recalling a triumphant confrontation he had had with one such student. They laughed at that and at the young woman who said, “God, the difference when I was at university! You wouldn’t have mentioned an abortion in a professor’s office any more than you would have shit on the floor.
Shat
on the floor.”

Rose was laughing too, but felt smashed, under the skin. It would be better, in a way, if there were something behind this such as they suspected. If she had slept with that boy. If she had promised him something, if she had betrayed him, humiliated him. She could not remember anything. He had sprung out of the floor to accuse her. She must have done something, and she could not remember it. She could not remember anything to do with her students; that was the truth. She was solicitous and charming, all warmth and acceptance; she listened and advised; then she could not get their names straight. She could not remember a thing she had said to them.

A woman touched her arm. “Wake up,” she said, in a tone of sly intimacy that made Rose think she must know her. Another student? But no, the woman introduced herself.

“I’m doing a paper on female suicide,” she said. “I mean the suicide of female artists.” She said she had seen Rose on television and was longing to talk to her. She mentioned Diane Arbus, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Christiane Pflug. She was well informed. She looked like a prime candidate herself, Rose thought: emaciated, bloodless, obsessed. Rose said she was hungry, and the woman followed her out to the kitchen.

“And too many actresses to count—” the woman said. “Margaret Sullavan—”

“I’m just a teacher now.”

“Oh, nonsense. I’m sure you are an actress to the marrow of your bones.”

The hostess had made bread: glazed and braided and decorated loaves. Rose wondered at the pains taken here. The bread, the pâté, the hanging plants, the kittens, all on behalf of a most precarious and temporary domesticity. She wished, she often wished, that she could take such pains, that she could make ceremonies, impose herself, make bread.

She noticed a group of younger members of the faculty—she would have thought them students, except for what the host had said about students not being let in—who were sitting on the counters and standing in front of the sink. They were talking in low, serious voices. One of them looked at her. She smiled. Her smile was not returned. A couple of others looked at her, and went on talking. She was sure they were talking about her, about what had happened in the living room. She urged the woman to try some bread and pâté. Presumably that would keep her quiet, so that Rose could overhear what was being said.

“I never eat at parties.”

The woman’s manner toward her was turning dark and vaguely accusing. Rose had learned that this was a department wife. Perhaps it had been a political move, inviting her. And promising her Rose; had that been part of the move?

“Are you always so hungry?” the woman said. “Are you never ill?”

“I am when there’s something this good to eat,” Rose said. She was only trying to set an example, and could hardly chew or swallow, in her anxiety to hear what was being said of her. “No, I’m not often ill,” she said. It surprised her to realize that was true. She used to get sick with colds and flu and cramps and headaches; those definite ailments had now disappeared, simmered down into a low, steady hum of uneasiness, fatigue, apprehension.

Fucked-up jealous establishment.

Rose heard that, or thought she heard it. They were giving her quick, despising looks. Or so she thought; she could not look directly at them.
Establishment.
That was Rose. Was it? Was that Rose? Was that Rose who had taken a teaching job because she wasn’t getting enough acting jobs to support herself, was granted the teaching job
because of her experience on stage and television, but had to accept a cut in pay because she lacked degrees? She wanted to go over and tell them that. She wanted to state her case. The years of work, the exhaustion, the traveling, the high school auditoriums, the nerves, the boredom, the never knowing where your next pay was coming from. She wanted to plead with them, so they would forgive her and love her and take her on their side. It was their side she wanted to be on, not the side of the people in the living room who had taken up her cause. But that was a choice made because of fear, not on principle. She feared them. She feared their hardhearted virtue, their cool despising faces, their secrets, their laughter, their obscenities.

She thought of Anna, her own daughter. Anna was seventeen. She had long fair hair and wore a fine gold chain around her throat. It was so fine you had to look closely to make sure it was a chain, not just a glinting of her smooth bright skin. She was not like these young people but she was equally remote. She practiced ballet and rode her horse every day, but she didn’t plan to ride in competitions or be a ballerina. Why not?

“Because it would be silly.”

Something about Anna’s style, the fine chain, her silences, made Rose think of her grandmother, Patrick’s mother. But then, she thought, Anna might not be so silent, so fastidious, so unforthcoming, with anybody but her mother.

The man with the black curly hair stood in the kitchen doorway giving her an impudent and ironic look.

“Do you know who that is?” Rose said to the suicide woman. “The man who took the drunk away?”

“That’s Simon. I don’t think the boy was drunk, I think he’s on drugs.”

“What does he do?”

“Well, I expect he’s a student of sorts.”

“No,” said Rose. “That man—Simon?”

“Oh, Simon. He’s in the classics department. I don’t think he’s always been a teacher.”

“Like me,” Rose said, and turned the smile she had tried on the young people on Simon. Tired and adrift and witless as she was, she was beginning to feel familiar twinges, tidal promises.

If he smiles back, things will start to be all right.

He did smile, and the suicide woman spoke sharply.

“Look, do you come to a party just to meet men?”

W
hen Simon was fourteen, he and his older sister and another boy, a friend of theirs, were hidden in a freight car, traveling from occupied to unoccupied France. They were on their way to Lyons, where they would be looked after, redirected to safe places, by members of an organization that was trying to save Jewish children. Simon and his sister had already been sent out of Poland, at the beginning of the war, to stay with French relatives. Now they had to be sent away again.

The freight car stopped. The train was standing still, at night somewhere out in the country. They could hear French and German voices. There was some commotion in the cars ahead. They heard the doors grinding open, heard and felt the boots striking on the bare floors of those cars. An inspection of the train. They lay down under some sacks, but did not even try to cover their faces; they thought there was no hope. The voices were getting closer and they heard the boots on the gravel beside the track. Then the train began to move. It moved so slowly that they did not notice for a moment or so, and even then thought it was just a shunting of the cars. They expected it to stop, so that the inspection could continue. But the train kept moving. It moved a little faster, then faster; it picked up its ordinary speed, which was nothing very great. They were moving, they were free of the inspection, they were being carried away. Simon never knew what had happened. The danger was past.

Simon said that when he realized they were safe he suddenly felt that they would get through, that nothing could happen to them now, that they were particularly blessed and lucky. He took what happened for a lucky sign.

Rose asked him, had he ever seen his friend and his sister again?

“No. Never. Not after Lyons.”

“So, it was lucky only for you.”

Simon laughed. They were in bed, in Rose’s bed in an old house, on the outskirts of a crossroads village; they had driven there straight from the party. It was April, the wind was cold, and Rose’s house was
chilly. The furnace was inadequate. Simon put a hand to the wallpaper behind the bed, made her feel the draft.

“What it needs is some insulation.”

“I know. It’s awful. And you should see my fuel bills.”

Simon said she should get a wood stove. He told her about various kinds of firewood. Maple, he said, was a lovely wood to burn. Then he held forth on different kinds of insulation. Styrofoam, Micafil, fiberglass. He got out of bed and padded around naked, looking at the walls of her house. Rose shouted after him.

“Now I remember. It was a grant.”

“What? I can’t hear you.”

She got out of bed and wrapped herself in a blanket. Standing at the top of the stairs, she said, “That boy came to me with an application for a grant. He wanted to be a playwright. I just this minute remembered.”

“What boy?” said Simon. “Oh.”

“But I recommended him. I know I did.” The truth was she recommended everybody. If she could not see their merits, she believed it might just be a case of their having merits she was unable to see.

“He must not have got it. So he thought I shafted him.”

“Well, suppose you had,” said Simon, peering down the cellarway. “That would be your right.”

“I know. I’m a coward about that lot. I hate their disapproval. They are so virtuous.”

“They are not virtuous at all,” said Simon. “I’m going to put my shoes on and look at your furnace. You probably need the filters cleaned. That is just their style. They are not much to be feared, they are just as stupid as anybody. They want a chunk of the power. Naturally.”

“But would you get such venomous”—Rose had to stop and start the word again—“such
venomousness
, simply from ambition?”

“What else?” said Simon, climbing the stairs. He made a grab for the blanket, wrapped himself up with her, pecked her nose. “Enough of that Rose. Have you no shame? I’m a poor fellow come to look at your furnace. Your basement furnace. Sorry to bump into you like this, ma’am.” She already knew a few of his characters. This was The Humble Workman. Some others were The Old Philosopher, who
bowed low to her, Japanese style, as he came out of the bathroom, murmuring
memento mori, memento mori
; and, when appropriate, The Mad Satyr, nuzzling and leaping, making triumphant smacking noises against her navel.

At the crossroads store she bought real coffee instead of instant, real cream, bacon, frozen broccoli, a hunk of local cheese, canned crabmeat, the best-looking tomatoes they had, mushrooms, long-grained rice. Cigarettes as well. She was in that state of happiness which seems perfectly natural and unthreatened. If asked, she would have said it was because of the weather—the day was bright, in spite of the harsh wind—as much as because of Simon.

“You must’ve brought home company,” said the woman who kept the store. She spoke with no surprise or malice or censure, just a comradely sort of envy.

“When I wasn’t expecting it.” Rose dumped more groceries on the counter. “What a lot of bother they are. Not to mention expense. Look at that bacon. And cream.”

“I could stand a bit of it,” the woman said.

S
imon cooked a remarkable supper from the resources provided, while Rose did nothing much but stand around watching, and change the sheets.

“Country life,” she said. “It’s changed, or I’d forgotten. I came here with some ideas about how I would live. I thought I would go for long walks on deserted country roads. And the first time I did, I heard a car coming tearing along on the gravel behind me. I got well off. Then I heard shots. I was terrified. I hid in the bushes and a car came roaring past, weaving all over the road—and they were shooting out of the windows. I cut back through the fields and told the woman at the store I thought we should call the police. She said oh, yes, weekends the boys get a case of beer in the car and they go out shooting groundhogs. Then she said, what were you doing up that road anyway? I could see she thought going for walks by yourself was a lot more suspicious than shooting groundhogs. There were lots of things like that. I don’t think I’d stay, but the job’s here and the rent’s cheap. Not that she isn’t nice, the woman in the store. She tells fortunes. Cards and teacups.”

Simon said that he had been sent from Lyons to work on a farm in the mountains of Provence. The people there lived and farmed very much as in the Middle Ages. They could not read or write or speak French. When they got sick they waited either to die or to get better. They had never seen a doctor, though a veterinarian came once a year to inspect the cows. Simon ran a pitchfork into his foot, the wound became infected, he was feverish and had the greatest difficulty in persuading them to send for the veterinarian, who was then in the next village. At last they did, and the veterinarian came and gave Simon a shot with a great horse needle, and he got better. The household was bewildered and amused to see such measures taken on behalf of human life.

He said that while he was getting better he taught them to play cards. He taught the mother and the children; the father and the grandfather were too slow and unwilling, and the grandmother was kept shut up in a cage in the barn, fed scraps twice a day.

“Is that true? Is it possible?”

They were at the stage of spreading things out for each other: pleasures, stories, jokes, confessions.

“Country life!” said Simon. “But here it is not so bad. This house could be made very comfortable. You should have a garden.”

“That was another idea I had, I tried to have a garden. Nothing did very well. I was looking forward to the cabbages, I think cabbages are beautiful, but some worm got into them. It ate up the leaves till they looked like lace, and then they all turned yellow and lay on the ground.”