Without Reservations (7 page)

I
 met Naohiro on the train to Giverny. I’d noticed him earlier at the St.-Lazare station, buying a ticket: a slim, attractive man, elegantly dressed completely in black except for a white sweater thrown across his shoulders. He was Asian; Japanese, I thought, although I wasn’t absolutely certain.

For weeks I’d looked forward to visiting Giverny, a small village halfway between Paris and Rouen. It was there that the great French painter Monet had lived for the last forty years of his life, devoting himself to his painting and his gardens. I’d been putting off my visit to Giverny, waiting for the perfect day: one with a breeze, when sun and shadow would play across the surface of Monet’s Japanese water garden, just as it had when he painted it.

Such a day arrived at the end of May.
A perfect day for Giverny
, I thought the instant I saw the fast-moving, slightly overcast sky through my window. Wonderful as the streets of Paris were, I longed for the countryside, for the fertile smell of the earth and the feel of grass beneath my feet.

It was from my mother that I had learned the guiding role nature plays in how we map out the geography of self. She was the granddaughter of a landscape gardener who worked on the grounds of a castle in Scotland. For a time, her world was one of towering trees and rose gardens, of heathered hills that stretched to the horizon, of clear water that revealed the salmon, gleaming like silver arrows just beneath the surface.

Later, my mother’s interest in the natural world was encouraged by both her parents. From her stern father she learned the botanical names and the science of nature; from her sturdy mother the pleasures of planting and digging in the earth, of being a part of nature’s cycle of life and death. But my mother’s gift for observation—the mark of a true naturalist—was her own.

A day in the country, I decided, was definitely in order. There was no doubt in my mind that, surrounded by nature’s immutable realities, I would find what I needed: a perspective on where I fit into the world.

I had just settled into my seat on the train when Naohiro appeared in the aisle next to me. He tilted his head in a slight bow. “Do you mind if I sit here?” he asked, in almost accentless English. Still, his voice confirmed what I had guessed at the train station: he was Japanese.

“Please do,” I said, looking up from the map I was studying. He sat down. Immediately I was aware of a scent about him that seemed familiar. It was crisp; he smelled like pine needles. Quickly it came to me, the reason why it seemed so familiar. It reminded me of Hiroshi, my son’s Japanese friend, who had stayed with us during a Christmas holiday. It was the same scent that filled the guest bathroom after Hiroshi had shaved and showered.

But I was aware of something more about Naohiro than his scent. His presence made me feel self-conscious: of my appearance, of the way I was sitting, of my movements and gestures. I was not unfamiliar with such symptoms: it was the behavior of a woman reacting to a man who attracts her.

As the train left the station, Naohiro reached into a small briefcase and pulled out a book. It was the same guidebook to Giverny that I had bought in Paris. I started to say something but stopped, remembering the conversations with my son about the reticence of the Japanese. In his four years as a teacher and translator in Japan, my son had grown to admire the Japanese. And I had grown to respect his careful insights into that culture. So I said nothing.

I turned my attention to the view, one that included the Seine winding its way alongside the train. This part of the river bore little resemblance to the glamorous Seine that bisected Paris. Sweet and unsophisticated, this Seine meandered like a country cousin across the pastoral landscape. Through the window I saw young boys fishing from its banks, their dogs dozing beside them in the sun.

Naohiro’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Is this your first time to Giverny?” he asked.

“Yes, it is,” I said, trying to conceal my surprise that he had initiated a conversation. “What about you?”

“No, I have been before. But this time I go especially to see the Japanese prints.”

I had read about Monet’s collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japanese prints, and of their influence on his work. “Are you an artist?” I asked, forgetting my resolve to not ask him personal questions.

He smiled. “No, I am a businessman.”

“Do you live in Paris?”

“No, but I come to France two or three times a year.”

He seemed not to mind my questions. Still, he asked me nothing about what I did or why I was in France.

As he spoke, I studied his face. It was a handsome face, slightly weathered and somewhat impassive. Except for his eyes. They were the eyes of a man who possessed wit and intelligence and, I
thought, a certain sadness. I was drawn to what I saw, or imagined I saw, there.

In the hour or so it took to reach Giverny, Naohiro and I talked mostly about Paris. About our favorite streets—his was the rue de Nevers, a street I did not know, and mine the rue du Bac; about the squares we thought most beautiful—place des Vosges for him, place Furstemberg for me; the open-air markets we liked—one on rue Daguerre, the other on rue de Buci. On one thing we agreed: that the best view of Paris was from any one of the bridges that crossed the Seine. Particularly the Pont Royal or the Pont-Neuf. As we talked I could see that Naohiro knew Paris far better than I did.

In our conversation we exchanged little about the personal details of our lives, but, I realized later, what had been said revealed a good bit about what we each responded to in the larger world.

Finally, I asked: “Is there someplace in Paris that is special to you? That you might suggest I visit?”

“Yes,” he said, without hesitating. “Sainte-Chapelle. You must go there to stand in the light.”

His answer surprised me. I had been to this medieval chapel on the Île de la Cité to see its famous stained-glass windows, but had never thought of “standing in the light.” Although I’d dutifully studied the architecture and used my guidebook to decipher the stories in the windows, I realized I had never actually placed myself there, in the moment, in the light. But I did not tell Naohiro this. Why, I’m not sure. Instead, I said, “I will definitely put Sainte-Chapelle on my list.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes. Just when I began to feel awkward about the silence, he asked, “And what place is special to you? That I might visit?”

Unlike him, I felt self-conscious about answering, as though he
would somehow judge me by my selection. Nevertheless, I knew what it had to be. “Père-Lachaise Cemetery,” I said. After a pause, I added, “You must go there to stand in the past.”

I told him about the Sunday I’d spent at Père-Lachaise, walking beneath the trees, picking my way up the crowded hillside through the tilting statues, searching for the graves of Colette and Proust, two writers I admired. I’d found Colette easily but had no such luck in locating Proust. And I told Naohiro of how, just before leaving the area where Proust’s grave was marked on the map, I’d come face-to-face with a gravestone engraved
ALIX STEINBACH
, 1880–1961. Although I had no idea who “Alix Steinbach” was, it pleased me that someone with a name so close to mine was now residing in Proust’s neighborhood.

“I feel at home in cemeteries,” I told Naohiro. “When I was little, my grandmother would take me on long walks through the cemeteries near our house. We’d read the tombstones and figure out from the dates how old the people buried there were.” I laughed. “I think it’s how I learned to add and subtract.”

Naohiro nodded, but said nothing. I was not surprised. What could he say? I didn’t expect him to understand, as most people didn’t, my choice of a cemetery as one of my favorite places in Paris.

We sat in silence until the train arrived at Vernon, a village three miles from Giverny. At the taxi stand, Naohiro suggested sharing a ride to Monet’s house. I agreed.

When we got to Giverny, the entrance was crowded with buses. Tour groups were heading off in every direction. It was very confusing. As I was debating whether to say good-bye to Naohiro and go my own way—whatever way that was—he asked if I would like to look at the Japanese prints with him.

“Yes, very much,” I said, following him through the gardens of
trellised roses, irises, dahlias, delphiniums, and poppies bordering the paths leading to the house. Inside, Monet’s collection of rare Japanese prints lined the walls of nearly every room. Their simplicity and stillness provided a serene contrast to the wild lushness of the gardens outside.

In the dining room, where the walls were painted in two shades of vivid yellow, I stopped to admire a print depicting a mountain-ringed horseshoe of water that ended abruptly at a wide sandy beach. There was no perspective; the flattened-out blue water at the top of the print simply stopped when it met the gray semicircle of sand near the bottom of the paper. It was pure landscape. But its haunting loneliness conveyed something profound, I thought; something having to do with the human condition.

“Do you like that one?” asked Naohiro, walking up behind me. “It is by Hiroshige. Some say he was the greatest of all the Japanese ukiyo-e painters.” His voice changed when he pronounced the Japanese word; it became softer, I thought, and more musical.

“Ukiyo-e? What does that mean?”

“Pictures of the floating world; of the real world,” he said. Then he smiled. “Does it remind you of your visit to Père-Lachaise?”

I looked to see if he was mocking me. But there was no hint of that in his face. What I thought I saw was some kind of understanding or recognition. Of what, I wasn’t sure. I looked back at the print.

Maybe, I thought, there
is
something in its quiet stillness, in its indifference to change, that does remind me of Père-Lachaise. Still, I was quite puzzled as to why Naohiro had made a connection between the two things.

“These prints are very fugitive,” he said, as we walked through the house. “The color must be protected from the light or it will die.”

It was an odd choice of words, his description of the prints as fugitive and capable of dying. But Naohiro, I was starting to see, expressed himself differently than westerners; particularly western men. He spoke English in a way that was both original and direct. I liked it.

By early afternoon the inside of the house had grown crowded and warm; it seemed a good time to retreat to the cool shade of the Japanese water garden. For a long while I stood with Naohiro watching the water lilies float under a small, green, wisteria-covered bridge. The sun filtering through the trees scattered tiny dots of light, like facets of a diamond, across the water’s surface. I noticed that where the arc of the bridge met its reflection in the water, a green circle was formed: the real bridge at the top, its watery reflection at the bottom.

I wondered about my own garden. Were the daylilies blooming? Had the pots of geraniums survived? Was there new growth on the old lilac tree I’d pruned back almost to the ground? Not too many years ago I’d charted the changing seasons by my sons, by their growth and their blossoming. Now, with both of them far from home, it was azaleas and snowdrops that signaled such changes.

From a tiny island in the center of the pond, a mourning dove cried out from the hollow of his nest. As I looked down, I saw two faces reflected in the water: mine and Naohiro’s. A small gust of wind abruptly shattered the image into ripples; our faces became puzzlelike pieces that moved apart and then together again, his floating across the surface with mine.