The Paris Wife (33 page)

When Lent and his pretty assistant Fräulein Glaser came to spend an evening with us at the Taube, we heard the whole thing firsthand.

“One man got caught in heavy snow, old snow, especially wet and deep,” Lent said. “We didn’t find him for two days. The rescuers dug and dug, and when he finally turned up it was his blood that had made an easy trail for us to follow. He’d nearly twisted his head off trying to find a way to breathe.”

“Right to the bone,” Fräulein Glaser added. She was so fresh and lovely with her tightly knotted hair and tanned brown face that it was almost a shock to hear such horrible details coming from her. “There was another man, years ago, killed in a powder-snow avalanche. He’d been turning to wave to his friend, and both of them died while waving, smiling.”

“I can’t believe the part about them smiling,” I said.

“I can,” Ernest said. The fire crackled and snapped and we all went quiet for a time. “Maybe it’s like bullfighting or anything else,” he finally said, staring into his cup of mulled wine. “Maybe you can learn the avalanche, versing yourself on the conditions and what sets them off and how to survive in one if you’re taken away.”

“Perhaps,” Lent said. “You might improve your chances, in any case, but it would never stop being dangerous.”

“Do you think we’ll get up again this season?” Ernest asked.

“Unlikely,” Lent said. “And if you could talk someone into taking you up the mountain, it wouldn’t be me. I couldn’t live with myself if something happened a second time.”

Fräulein Glaser nodded compassionately, but Ernest didn’t seem the least bit chastened by Lent’s experience. He was still thinking about how it might be done. I could tell by the spark in his eyes that any challenge set off. He wanted to test his skill and his fear, too, just as I was thinking,
Men have died. We shouldn’t be here at all
.

Because Lent remained adamant about our not skiing, we were happy to get a letter from Dos Passos, near the end of March, saying he was coming by for a visit with the Murphys. When they arrived, being at Schruns was like being anywhere with the very rich. It was an incomparable party at all hours of the day, and everyone was jolly.

“I love your little hideaway,” Sara Murphy said when she came to breakfast in new and absolutely pristine ski clothes even though the skiing was nil.

“It’s the best place around,” I agreed.

“But not hidden any longer,” Ernest said with a snide smile.

Ernest was often quick to complain about the Murphys’ unending good taste and loads of ready cash. He had more patience with Sara, because she was so beautiful and gave us all something nice to look at. Gerald was trickier. He was too polished for Ernest, too refined. His clothes were perfect and he spoke so well, one couldn’t help but feel he’d built himself from the ground up into a creature that was only elegance, only charm. But he also seemed strangely determined to do whatever it took to impress Ernest and gain his friendship and approval. We couldn’t reach the slopes, but Ernest gave Gerald skiing lessons on the hill behind the Taube, and it was here Gerald began to call Ernest “Papa” because he was the seasoned teacher and loved that role. He said, “Show me again how to cut that turn at the bottom of the slope, Papa. That was a beauty.”

Ernest remained wary. “They could buy the whole stinking Riviera if they chose,” he said in bed one night. “And they’d people it with lots of interesting specimens to entertain them at all hours, like us. We’re all monkeys for the organ grinder, and Dos is the worst. He hasn’t got any spleen left at all, he works so hard to keep them.”

“But some of it’s nice, and they’re very generous, aren’t they?”

“Here’s my good and true wife again. Would it kill you to agree with me once?”

“Would it kill you to see the good in them? They admire you to no end.”

“The very rich only admire themselves.”

We lay still for some moments and in the silence I could hear Bumby’s dry cough in the next room. The older he grew, the less often he woke in the night, and we didn’t bother employing Tiddy now except by day. But as I listened to the cough build, I thought that it might be nice to have her there, for moments like this one.

“Are you going to get that?” Ernest said. “You wouldn’t want him to wake our good and generous guests.”

“Do you have to be such a perfect ass?” I said, getting up tiredly and reaching for my robe.

“I do, yes. It keeps me in shape.” He rolled over and made a big show of getting comfortable for sleep while I went in to mind the baby, who wasn’t really even awake. He coughed with his eyes closed, still dreaming, and when the spell finally settled, he seemed perfectly well and breathed deeply. When I went back to bed, I crawled in quietly thinking Ernest would already be asleep, but he wasn’t.

“I’m sorry I’m such a crotchety shit,” he said in the dark. “You’ve always been the better guy.”

“I’m not,” I said and turned to face him. “We’re the same guy, aren’t we?”

“Sure,” he said, and he tousled my hair and kissed me on the nose. “Good night, Tatie.”

“Good night, Tatie,” I said back.

At Chenonceaux the château stood, reflected perfectly in the Cher River. It looked as if it was there because I’d imagined it, that it had come out of my dream and would hover until I turned away and it dissolved. My eyes were drawn over and over to the doubled string of arches until I couldn’t tell which was the real and which was the still mirror.

“It’s called the Ladies’ Castle,” Pauline said, reading from her guidebook.

“Why?” Jinny asked.

“It doesn’t say why. Maybe because it’s the grandest lady around.”

“Maybe it’s where the ladies were corseted up and kept quiet,” Jinny said. “While the men were over in their castle entertaining whores and chewing on great sides of beef.”

I laughed. “One would think you didn’t like men at all.”

“Oh, they have their uses.”

“I should say so,” Pauline said.

We were traveling in the Loire Valley, in château country. I’d never been before, but Jinny and Pauline knew just where to stay and which restaurants to visit and what to order. We’d had potted minced pork in Tours, wild boar and quail and buttery veal cutlets, white asparagus and mushrooms that melted on your tongue, and seven kinds of chèvre. Everywhere we went there was a different regional wine to try, and at night we slept awfully well in the best inns. At first I felt strange about letting the girls foot the bill for everything, but they kept insisting that I was their guest and that the whole trip had been invented because they wanted to treat me.

Ernest generally hated for me to accept charity, but when Pauline and Jinny proposed the Loire scheme, not long after we returned to Paris in April, he’d surprised me by encouraging me to go.

“Marie Cocotte will come around every day and feed us,” he said. “The book’s done. I’ll take Mr. Bumby to the bicycle races every day and park him in the sun for long naps. We’ll be a fine team, and you’ve earned your break.”

I had, I thought. In the last few weeks at Schruns I’d spent every spare moment preparing my concert pieces, afraid I wouldn’t be ready. We’d told everyone we knew, and the hall was already nearly sold out. That alone was a maddening thought, but I stuck to the work at hand, each piece, phrase, and nuance, trusting that when the time came, I could rely on habit if everything else failed. Meanwhile, Ernest had been throwing everything he had into finishing up
Sun
, which he’d been rewriting at a clip of several chapters a day. Now he was preparing to mail the manuscript to Maxwell Perkins.

“I’m thinking of dedicating it to Mr. Bumby,” he said, “and including something about the book being full of instructive anecdotes.”

“Are you serious?”

“Of course not. It’s meant to be ironic. Scott says I shouldn’t do it, but I think it’s fine. Bumby will know that I really mean don’t ever live this way, like these poor lost savages.”

“When he can read, you mean,” I said, laughing.

“Yes, of course.”

“It’s not easy to know how to live, is it? He’s lucky to have you as a papa, and someday he’ll be so proud.”

“I hope you mean it.”

“Of course, Tatie. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because it’s not always easy to know how to live.”

As I packed for my trip, I had to admit that I was relieved to have our Paris routine back and Pauline well in it. As soon as we’d returned, she had come around to the sawmill immediately and was wonderfully herself, laughing and joking with both of us, calling us her “two dearest men.”

“God, I’ve missed you, Pfife,” I said, and meant it all through.

As we started our trip, both sisters were in the merriest of spirits. For two days, we stopped at every château starred on the map, each of which seemed grander and more exquisite than the last. But as time passed, Pauline’s mood seemed to shift.

At the Château d’Azay-le-Rideau, a stronghold of white stone that appeared to be floating up out of the lily pond that bounded it, she looked at everything with eyes darkened and sad. “Please let’s go,” she said. “I don’t want to see anything.”

“You’re just hungry, ducks,” Jinny said. “We’ll have lunch right after.”

“The carpets are supposed to be Persian splendor,” I said looking at the guidebook Pauline had passed to me.

“Oh, shut up, will you, Hadley?”

“Pauline!” Jinny said sharply.

Pauline looked shocked that she’d actually said what she’d said, and she walked quickly toward the car. For my part, I was so stung I felt the blood leave my face.

“Please don’t mind her,” Jinny said. “I don’t think she’s sleeping well. She’s always been sensitive that way.”

“What is it really? Does she not want me here?”

“Don’t be silly. It was all her idea. Just give her a little space and she’ll come around.”

Jinny and I spent the better part of an hour walking through the park around the château, and when we got back to the car, Pauline was more than halfway through a bottle of white wine that had been chilling on ice in the boot. “Please forgive me, Hadley. I’m such a daft ass.”

“That a girl,” Jinny said.

“It’s all right,” I said. “We all have our moods.”

But she drank too much and seemed to be simmering just under the surface of our good time, no matter what we ate or saw or did. No matter what I or anyone else said.

Late in the afternoon we had stopped and were walking through the Jardin de Villandry on the Loire River. The whole thing was perfection and splendor. The garden stood on three levels, with the first level rising out of the river plateau and surrounded by flowering linden trees. The other levels were terraced in pleasing geometries, curving around paths of small pink stones. There was an herb garden, a music garden, and then one called the Garden of Love, where Pauline walked ever more slowly. She finally stopped still near a patch of love-lies-bleeding and then, inexplicably, started to cry.

“Please stop, darling,” Jinny said. “Please be happy.”

“I don’t know what’s gotten into me.” She wiped her tears with a pressed linen handkerchief, but couldn’t stop them coming. “I’m sorry,” she said, with a small choke in her voice, and then ran, her good shoes tripping on the pink stones.

When he saw Pfife on the street in her good-looking coat, she was always so fresh and full of life. She cocked her head to one side when he talked to her and squinted her eyes and listened. She listened with everything she had and talked that way, too. When she said things about his work, he had the feeling that she understood what he was trying to do and why it mattered. He liked all of this, but hadn’t meant to do anything about it. Then one night she’d been at the sawmill until very late. Hadley had gone to bed with a raw throat and they’d stayed up talking. When it came time for Pfife to go, instead of putting her in a taxi, he walked her home. It was three miles at least, but they covered the distance in a kind of trance, smiling strangely at one another, their steps ringing on the cobblestones. They walked ever more slowly as they approached her door, but finally there was nowhere else to go
.

She turned to him and said, “You can kiss me.
”

“
All right,” he said, and kissed her deeply on the lips. Then he walked home alone, desire buzzing through him, wondering if Hadley would suspect anything
.

A few days later they met by chance at the Dingo. It had been chance for him in any case. They’d each had a glass of Pernod and then she said, “If we stay here some of our friends will eventually turn up and then we’ll have to stay for good.
”

“
Where should we go?
”

She’d given him a serious look and paid the check herself, and then they’d walked quickly to her apartment on the rue Picot. Her sister was out for the evening and they hadn’t even turned on the lights or pretended they were there for anything else. He’d been surprised by her intensity—she was very Catholic, after all, and he’d guessed she’d be timid and full of guilt. But the guilt came much later. For the moment, there was only the totally convincing and wonderful strangeness of her. Her narrow hips and very long white legs were nothing like his wife’s. Her breasts were like the small tight halves of peaches and she was a new country, and he was very happy to be with her as long as he didn’t think about what it stood for
.

When he went home to his wife, he’d felt like a terrible shit for doing it and swore to himself that it wouldn’t happen again. And then, when it did, over and over, more and more planned and deliberate all the time, he wondered how he’d ever get out of the mess he’d made. If Hadley knew it would kill her twice, once for each of them betraying her. But if she didn’t, well, that was almost worse. It wasn’t even quite true, that way, because she was his life and nothing meant anything if she didn’t know it
.

He loved them both and that’s where the pain came in. He carried it in his head like a fever and made himself sick thinking about it. And sometimes, after hours lying awake, it came to him clearly that he only had to change his life to match his circumstances. Pound had managed it. He had Shakespear and Olga both and no one doubted he loved them. He didn’t have to lie; everyone knew everything and it all worked because he’d kept pushing and hadn’t compromised or become someone else
.