Travesty (10 page)

But was that cemetery somewhat familiar to you,
cher ami?
It
should have been.

Silence. The bird in flight. Silence falling between driver and
passenger who find themselves deadlocked on a lonely road, deadlocked in their
purposes, deadlocked between love and hatred, memory and imagination. But you need
not bother to raise your chin, turn your head, rouse yourself from all your
afflictions into unhappy speech. I know what you are thinking. I could not agree
more heartily. Silence is what we are after, you and I. Silence. I long for it also.
You are not alone.

We will not be denied. After all, we are now on the near edge of
recklessness, it is no longer even a question of time to spare, and beyond us the
trees are dying, the tiny shoots are turning a bright green, the landmarks are
falling to the left and right of us so quickly that their significance is fading in
direct proportion to our mounting preoccupation with ourselves, with what is to
come. Yes, silence is consuming sight.

The moral of it all is trust me but do not believe me—ever.
Why, even as I deny the fleeting landmarks I cannot help but call your attention to
that small church set back from the road in that clump of naked
trees on our right. Naturally the church has nothing to do with the cemetery.
The cemetery is already far, far behind us. It is gone. No, this is the church that
is guarded by the old crone who tends the place with her cane and dog. She is an
insufferable old creature who tried to frighten me away the very afternoon I stopped
and strolled about and committed the landmark of her ugly little church to memory.
She has a beautiful cough, I can tell you that. And I knew at once that she was no
more taken in by the weedy sanctity of the little church and mutilated calvary than
was I. At any rate I had only an objective interest in the steeple, as a point of
essential reference, and a personal interest in the fountain which I knew I would
discover in the tall grass behind the church.

The fountain was there, as I knew it would be. And just think,
according to local legend it was the Fountain of Clarity. You can imagine how
pleased I was to stand in the last of the sun with this precise moment of our dark
passage fixed in my mind—hearing the rain, the engine, the tires, seeing our
lights—and at the same time to lean forward and regard my own face in the
little pool of water that lies in the depths of the Fountain of Clarity. Its ancient
artisan could not have known that one day a privileged man such as myself would so
admire his work. The creators of that ancient legend could not have known that I
have never expected anything at all from my life except clarity. I have pursued
clarity as relentlessly as the worshipers pursue their
Christ.
And there I stood, noting the algae in the bottom of the pool, the paleness of the
still water, the rough ingenious construction of the fountain hidden in the tall
grass. It was a pleasing coincidence. But my own face, our dark night that was as
real to me as it is this moment, the automobile that was awaiting me on the dirt
road in the shadow of the wretched calvary—it was nothing, nothing at all
compared with the intensity with which I was then contemplating the existence of our
own Honorine. Your Muse, my clarity, I cannot convey to you my satisfaction as the
thought of Honorine filled the silence of an earthly spot which, except for the
fountain, was otherwise perhaps a little too picturesque. But if I had ever worn a
wedding band, an idea which for me has always been distasteful, certainly I would
have removed it then and dropped it as an offering into the cold pool where the cows
drank and the old woman filled her jugs and bottles.

No doubt it is just as well that I was not wearing a ring. But tell
me, are you feeling better?

Approaching. Yes, we are approaching closer. And once again, you
see, I must shift the gears. Shift them from one velvet plateau to the next. And now
how directly we are propelled toward Honorine in her mammoth bed. By now she must
indeed be smiling in the depths of her sleep. But of course she has left the old
lantern burning for us as usual, burning in our honor and for
our protection. If I remember, I will point it out to you—that old lantern
swaying on the end of its chain.

Jealousy? Jealousy?

After all I have said . . .after my woman of luxury . . .after
Monique . . .after all my fervent protestations of affection . . .after all I
have done to clarify our situation and to allay your fears—now, as a last
resort, you are finally willing to accuse me of mere jealousy? As if I am only one
of those florid money-makers who is afraid to thrust even his fingers into the
secret places of his stenographer’s attractive body and yet turns green, as
they say, whenever he imagines that his lonely wife harbors in her heart of hearts
the quivering desire to watch while her husband’s best friend climbs nude and
dripping from his tubful of hot water? Is it with such implications that you expect
to stop me, to bring me to earth, so to speak? As if on this note I will suddenly
recognize myself and bow to your judgment, exclaiming that, yes, for all these years
I have been an excellent actor outwardly while inwardly nursing the most unpleasant
banalities of sexual envy? As if you are the hero and I the villain, the one openly
and, I might say, foolishly accepting the favors of the other’s honest wife
and naive daughter until the other has finally spent
enough
years drinking slime (in his toilet, in his monastic bed chamber, in his cold
automobile parked side by side with his wife’s in what was once the stable)
in order to act? But are you then so foolish? And could any man, even me, bear such
violent feelings for that length of time? And are you suggesting that Honorine is
not sensitive, perceptive? After all, if I had in fact been concealing and suffering
all this time the latent frenzy of jealousy, would it not have exposed itself in
some faint sign which Honorine, in all her concern for my welfare, would have noted
at once? Well, you can see what I think of your last resort. This argument is not
your avenue of escape.

Of course it is true that you are not a very good poet. I have always
made my opinion plain. And it is true that all your disclaimers (about your worth,
the size of your audience, the importance of your prizes, the extent of your
creative torment, the unhappiness of your life, and so forth) were always to me
offensive. And it is true that you are an emotional parasite. Would you deny it? As
for your dreadful and eternal seriousness, it is indeed true that on certain
occasions, when you have been brooding alone before the fire, when you have been
brooding with Honorine over some dull line of verse, when after a glass or two of
cognac you have converted your brooding into a sullen, pretentious monologue for the
benefit of Honorine and Chantal and me, then I have indeed longed to hear you
suddenly give voice to a single, extended, piercing shriek of laughter.
But no more than that. Never have I wished you pain or
discomfort more than that. So please do not accuse me of being jealous. It is a bad
idea and a poor ploy.

On the other hand, it is also quite true that even after sharing so
many intimate years together, still there is a great deal that you do not know about
Honorine and Chantal and me. Witness my discussion tonight. And this discussion is,
I assure you, the merest hint of what you do not know about the three of us. Only
the clear, white, brutal tip of the iceberg, to borrow a familiar but indispensable
figure of speech. But wait. Stop for another moment. Consider everything you do
indeed know about your mistress and her only two living blood or legal relatives. If
you exposed this information in one of your poems you would embarrass the three of
us for a lifetime. At least such a revelation would embarrass me if not Chantal and
Honorine, who might in fact cherish this permanent form of your devotion.

But have you forgotten it all? Need I remind you of the afternoon and
even the hour of day when you wrote your first inscription for Honorine—wrote
it, that is, in her copy of your first book of poems? Yes, Honorine’s
treasured copy of that volume; your earliest and, I later heard, most derivative
poems; my own gold-tipped pen which you borrowed for that occasion with hardly a
word. Don’t you remember? There were times when I might have wished that
Honorine had chosen to show me that first inscription of yours, but then there were
others when I was equally pleased that she
had instead chosen to
guard it selfishly from any eyes but hers. At least I caught a glimpse of your
black, flowery handwriting that afternoon and, to be honest, thereafter kept my
gold-tipped fountain pen capped for a week.

But what of all those first days and months and seasons when I retired
early to my own sumptuous but monastic room, took unnecessary business trips,
bundled Chantal off to mountain holidays? Have you forgotten how considerate I was,
and how discreet, ingenious, flattering? Don’t you remember Honorine’s
pleasure when there were two gifts of flowers on the piano in a single day? Or all
those winter evenings when, on the white leather divan, the three of us enjoyed
together the portfolio of large, clear photographs depicting the charming
pornographic poses of a most intelligent woman of good birth? Surely you remember
that visual history of the life of Honorine from youth to middle age in which her
own appreciation of her piquant autoeroticism becomes increasingly subtle,
increasingly bold? Surely you will not have forgotten the night when you remarked
that every man hopes for an ordinary wife who will prove a natural actress in the
theater of sex? Well, I savored that remark for days. I still do. It was perhaps the
only poetic remark you ever made.

I could go on. I could remind you of our disagreements, which were to
be expected, or of our “family” celebrations, such as the event of my
fiftieth birthday
when you decided at last to inscribe one of
your precious books for the so-called head of the household. I could remind you of
all those physical moments when you managed to convey your awareness of my pleasure,
generosity, total absence of perturbation. For instance, I need say no more than
“the king drinks!” to recall to you those yearly festive nights when
three of us sat around our flower-crowned cake and with shouts of happiness and
admiration hailed the fourth. Surely you remember that you were always the king,
though I would not remind you of how foolish you looked with your famous cigarette
and open white shirt and paper crown. You accepted your royalty begrudgingly, as you
did your popularity, but accepted it all the same. Or, for instance, it would be a
simple matter for me to say that single word, those several words, which would
immediately revive in your memory the sight of your body, of mine, of Honorine
removing her nightgown of plum-colored velours before the embers still glowing in
the conical recess of her bedroom fireplace.

It so happens that the book you inscribed for me no longer exists. But
no matter. You know what I am talking about, and none of it—none of
it—can be denied. So you must not accuse me of being jealous. Now is not the
time to offer me a wound so deep.

But now I must tell you that once we pass Tara I will say nothing
more. And I warn you now that if you
make a single movement or
utter a single sound once we pass Tara your death will not be an ironic triumph but
a prolonged and hapless agony.

And yet I do not mean to adopt that tone of voice. Will you excuse
it? To clear the air, I can tell you that whenever anything unusual is about to
happen my chest itches. Yes, the skin in the area of my sternum is especially
sensitive to unexpected occurrences, changes of scene, threats of impending
violence. And now it is itching!

Chez Lulu
. That’s the place. I remember it well. And
how fortunate for me that it is you rather than Lulu who is my companion for
tonight’s undertaking, since Lulu may have been an agreeable and even
seductive giant of a young man but was hardly fit for the mental and emotional
rigors of the private apocalypse. He was an excellent host in the establishment that
bore his name, but I cannot imagine anyone more frustrating in a discussion such as
this one and occurring under these the most difficult of conditions. Actually our
charming, dark-haired young brute of a man could not possibly have been your
substitute, never fear. And yet both Honorine and Chantal were fond of him. At any
rate it was in
Chez Lulu
that Chantal gained her
emotional though not legal majority in a spectacle that you especially would
have enjoyed. Chantal could not have been more than fifteen years of age at the
time.

Well, anyone with a penchant for the ocean and for summers promising a
certain harmless decadence will recognize
Chez Lulu
from merely its name.
You too must have discovered it in a dozen seaside resorts: the harbor barely large
enough for a handful of sailboats and a yacht or two, the summer evening rich with
the scent of both the rose and the crab, the couples strolling or arousing each
other beneath the aromatic trees, and there, fronted by a few feet of powdered sand,
there the bar-restaurant which for its disreputable music and growing adolescents
and strings of brightly colored lights is indispensable to any such dark and idyllic
cove noted for quietude, natural beauty, safe swimming. With
Chez Lulu
the
glorious nighttime summer shore would have offered no champagne vying with spilled
beer, no irruption of girlish laughter, no hint of first (or possibly last) romance.
Perhaps you are already beginning to smile. I need say no more. The point is that
until we concluded that we preferred to spend our summers in an Alpine resort
instead of beside the sea in the second and smaller dwelling owned by
Honorine’s mother, Chantal and Honorine and I were among the most favored
patrons of
Chez Lulu
. There, I can tell you, we ate mussels roasted on
olive twigs and laughed with appreciation at Lulu himself, who as owner and master
of ceremonies was large, handsome, amusing,
and the possessor of
an unlimited store of sexually aggressive ways. You know his type: one of those
tall, strapping young men who would have made an excellent athlete had it not been
for his relentlessly dissolute nature.