Читать книгу Beyond Homer - Benjamin W. Farley - Страница 7

Morning came noisily through the thin fog of the French capitol. In spite of the closed windows, I could hear the claxons’ wails and the murmur of the traffic in the streets below. I rolled to my side, sat on the edge of the bed, then walked to the curtains. I opened them and the double windows and stared out across the city.

I was staying in a pension near the Garden of Luxembourg, about a thirty-minute walk from the metro stop where I promised Julene I would meet her later in the morning. An overcast sky added a somberness to the dull gray scene, appropriate to the slight headache that throbbed in my frontal lobes. I could see the numerous chimney pots on the tin roofs opposite the pension, as well as the iron grillwork and narrow balconies that protected the windows on the building opposite mine.

Two weeks ago, the major topic at the dinner tables on the second floor had been the bizarre murder of an elderly woman who lived on the third floor in a neighboring building beside ours. I couldn’t help but listen with interest to the conversation of the two patrons who sat at the table next to mine.

“Oui. The killer must have gone mad, slipped out of his room, crept across the balconies to hers, entered through the windows, and slit her throat! Alors! Stabbed her body nineteen times. Nineteen!”

“Why did he do that? Could that happen here?”

“Ah! Who is to say! I don’t know. Perhaps it was a foreigner.”

“Do we have any here?”

“Oui! The American,” he smiled, pointing his fork toward me. “The Belgian, three Japanese, and that quiet British girl.”

“Ah, yes! But I hardly think of them as les estrangers any more.”

In my case, I think that was because I frequently shared my bottle of wine with them.

“Ah, Monsieur, you are too kind,” the shorter, black-haired man of the two would respond.

“Do they have any clues?” I asked.

“I don’t think so. But yesterday a reporter from Le Miroir Français was there. I saw her from the balcony. Ohhh! was she quelque chose! Petite, feisty, glamorous! Ohhh la-la!”

“How do you know it was she?”

“I have seen her picture in the paper and in magazines. Ohhh, she is something!”

I wondered if he was referring to Mme. Gibert. “Do you know her name?”

“It’s on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t recall it at the moment,” he grinned. “Is monsieur interested?”

“Who’s to say?” I smiled.

After shaving, a quick shower, and dressing, I walked the two flights down to the second floor for the petit déjeuner. I thought of Sullivan and wished I had his book in front of me. His chapter on “The Chthonic World” had genuinely impressed me. It was about the caves and caverns and puzzling labyrinths that archeologists kept encountering on Crete. It had been preceded by a tedious chapter on recent archeological and anthropological research on the Cretean, Minoan, and Mycenaean sites. He argued that “such minutia is critical to any discussion of Homer’s poetic worldview.” His footnotes were rich in details, wherein he cataloged the numerous artifacts, designs, excavation levels, soil compositions, ash depth, implements and potshards. Such entries constituted the indispensable data requisite for bolstering his Introduction. But what Sullivan seemed most after were those recondite and audacious inferences and cryptic nuances that a scholar might venture without overt censure from his peers; those reasonable conjectures as to why these ancient peoples might have engaged in their supposed rites, or used the paraphernalia listed and tagged by the archeologists. Indeed, neither his Preface nor Introduction ever quite clarified his real purpose, but only hinted at “those dark and lost motivations that enabled them to endure and that permit us to probe our own subconscious.” His goal was as psychological as it was noetic. Then followed a chapter on caves, grottoes, and labyrinths; the haunts of serpents and monstrous bulls; the symbolism of the womb, the vagina, the sepulcher; the place of birth and death, of fear and protection, of home and sanctuary, of hearth and nurture. I thought of all the times I had crept frightened to bed alone as a child, up the stairs in the loft of the farmhouse, though my mother and grandmother rocked in the parlor by the fireplace below. “We are never that far from our roots, from the eons of those primitive ancestors who preceded us,” Sullivan had concluded. I had to agree and found comfort in that chapter.

After breakfast, I took the metro to the Tuileries station. Julene was already present, waiting near the top of the steps. She appeared to be admiring a sidewalk vendor’s art work. She wore a pale yellow sleeveless dress of medium length. Her lithe arms and legs brought to mind the image of a gaunt mannequin, except her full breasts filled the bodice of the dress with erotic appeal. She smiled as I indulged my eyes.

“You are so transparent,” she laughed. “But I do like it, uuumm, but I do.”

“Forgive me,” I smiled, “but it’s been a long cold winter, and lonely at that.”

“I bet you’ve had opportunities,” she replied. “I noticed you right off the bat last night. Who wouldn’t?”

“I’ve had a few,” I said. “I’ve not been interested until now. I was once in love with a beautiful girl, a woman of thirty-two, but all she wanted was sex. And once satisfied, she dropped me like a rock.”

“The wounded lover! I’m glad I revive you. Carl treats me the same way.”

She stepped in closer to me and took my hand. “Come. Let’s take a walk. I’ll tell you my story, if you’ll tell me yours.”

“I’ve nothing really to tell.”

“I bet.”

I pressed her hand in mine before releasing it. We wandered along the sandy aisles in the direction of the Louvre. The fog had lifted, and the sunlight bathed the plain trees in a whimsical green glow. Scores of pigeons cluttered the lanes. They strutted and cooed in front of us as we walked along.

“I was raped as a girl, as a child, you know. Many black girls are. Luckily, I never got pregnant. A white man on Carl’s father’s place raped me. He did it repeatedly and threatened to kill me if I told. Then one day, Carl happened to come by in an old Ford and heard me crying. I was standing by the door of the barn. The man had just stepped out and was brushing the straw off his shirt and overalls. Carl must have put two-and-two together. He got out of his car and ran toward the man. Carl caught him by the collar and threw him to the ground. ‘You son-of-a-bitch!’ he hollered at him. ‘She’s just a child. You get your freakin’ ass off this land as fast as possible, or I’ll kill you dead.’ Carl was about twenty-two. He was big and strong and didn’t wear glasses. He had just come home from Boston. His red hair was long and shiny with sweat. He kicked the man in the butt. The man got up and slapped the dust off his sleeves. ‘You damned Sullivans ain’t nothing but a pile of shit, nohow,’ he said. He left. I never saw him again.”

Sunlight peeped through the leaves overhead and filled the aisle with a luminous yellow-green tint. “How does your being cousins fit in to all this?” I asked.

“Oh, Lord. I knew I’d blow it. We’re not cousins.” She threw her head back and smiled. “Carl’s my uncle. His brother was my father. The man’s dead now, but I fell in love with Carl that day in the barnyard. He was my knight in shining armor. He’d come to check on my mother and me. Carl’s own father was dying of alcoholism and emphysema, and Carl didn’t have many friends, anyway. His father was schizophrenic and mistrusted everyone. Even his own doctor, Dr. Silverton. I once heard him tell Carl. ‘Stay away from that nigger woman,’ meaning my Mamma. ‘She got your brother in trouble, and she’ll do the same to you. The Sullivans have always cared for their black people, but we’ve suffered enough. If you mess with her, or that girl, I’ll disown you down to your socks. Do you understand?’ ‘Yes sir,’ Carl answered. ‘By God, if I won’t!’ the old man threatened.”

“Is the old man dead now?”

“Yes. Died six years ago. But he put it in a will. ‘If my son ever marries a Negress woman, mulatto, or quadroon, he shall thereby forfeit all rights and privileges appertaining to this estate, its investments, lands, houses, buildings, and orchards, and the same shall be awarded to the State of Alabama.’”

She looked away, up through the tress and out across the lane and the big red geranium bushes that bordered the walkway. “I love him, and he loves me. But he knows what would happen if we marry. The law doesn’t seem to mind our cohabitating, and Carl knows his father’s will wouldn’t stand up in court. But I know I can’t marry him, because we couldn’t have children. And I want him to have children, and I want children, too. I think every black woman wants children. Just something deep down inside our natures, like slaves longing for their children to be free and legal and become something they couldn’t. It’s been all so confusing lately. Carl doesn’t even touch me any more, except to put his hands on my thighs, and he knows I’m crazy about him.”

“I’m sorry I’ve looked at you so hungrily. I didn’t mean to compromise your affection.”

“Oh, Professor, you haven’t and won’t. Don’t worry about that. I’m just a needy black girl, and I need you to be a friend, that’s all.” She clutched my hand in hers. “Maybe I’ll change my mind if we stay here long. But I love that man.”

I felt hopeful and sorrowful at the same time. Indeed, she was comely to look upon and obviously bright and wholesome. But I had done enough compromising in the past, especially with the woman I had told her about. I held firmly to her hand, as we approached the Louvre.

“Let’s go to the Impressionist Museum. I’m not up to visit the Louvre,” she said. She looked at me with a deep tiredness that had sunk to the bottom of her rich blackness and had washed away her earlier ebullient cheerfulness.

So we returned: down the sandy aisles, parallel to the Rue de Rivoli, and made our way to the museum. Once inside, we walked thoughtfully by each painting.

“How can anyone select a favorite?” Julene whispered.

“I tend toward Manet,” I pointed to his Blonde Woman With Bare Breasts. “Look at her features, her eyes, her gentle face and nose, her breasts. Even the nipples are perfect. And see how the breasts are soft and fleshy and slightly upturned,” I nodded toward the painting. “And look at the gold straw of her hat, and the way she tilts her head. She must have been one of Manet’s mistresses. Look how pink and lifelike here skin is against that green background. He had to know her well. How he must have loved her arms and kisses!”

Julene looked at me with her dark brown eyes and smiled. She pulled on my hand and led me toward Pissarro’s Red Roofs. “Those houses so remind me of old slave cabins on an Alabama plantation in the winter,” she offered.

I stared at the chalky white buildings, their tall chimneys and red and purple roofs, and at the hill above the town. The bare trees in the foreground provided a demure screen, behind which the artist had enclosed his houses. A distinctive grandeur defined the work, without flamboyance or artificiality. As I peered closer, I could see where Pissarro had painted the hill’s meadows different colors, some red, some green, some a pale citron hue, and others blue. There were even blue doors and shutters on the houses. I squeezed her hand, and we walked on.

“You know there are some black artists whose works are comparable to these.”

“I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I can’t name a single black artist.”

“No harm,” she laughed. “Most Whites can’t. But if you ever come across any works by Thomas Benton, buy them if you can. His July Hay is brilliant. Black harvesters with graceful sickles are mowing a field of flaxen hay, bowed in the wind. There is a sweetness of breadth and color about it that only a black person can feel about our race and unending labor. The same is true of Charles Alston’s Deserted House, with its despair of the old South in every brush stroke. Or John Wilson’s Elevated Street Car Scene. It’s a product of World War II. White women on their way home, or to work, are busy chatting in the background. They appear frivolous and distracted; but seated, and starring at you, is a Black man, on his way to his job. His eyes stare at you. They give you no quarter for compromise or distraction. You can only imagine his sufferings, the prejudice he has endured, but he looms amidst those women as a man of greater character than all the city’s Whites, who have never had to suffer, or nurse their hungry children to bed at night.”

“Julene! Listen! Segregation is over. Your life is still ahead of you: a bright and shining future, if you choose it. How old are you, anyway? Twenty-five? Twenty-six?”

“Twenty-eight! And here I am in Paris, in the city I love. With the man I love, but who can’t make love the way I want. Or need him to. And I’m fighting it all the time.”

“Pity does no one good, Julene. And self-pity is even worse. And black, self-pity must be the cruelest embodiment of all. If you want to be an artist, strike out on your own. I hate to say it, but the world is indifferent. It doesn’t care one wit. It knows nothing of purpose. Nor does it fashion our dreams. We are simply on our own.”

“I know that!” she winced. Tears suddenly welled up in her eyes. “You don’t need to tell me that, friend or no friend. Even if it’s true. And my blackness has nothing to do with that.” She stopped and suddenly stared at me with her large soft eyes. “Have you ever had sex with a black girl?” she whispered. “With a real black woman? I mean ‘real.’ Hot, sweaty, panting, and all? Do you know what that’s like? Have you ever felt her heart beating through her back or chest when lying up against her? Or listened to her breathe? Or understood her hunger and desire to be caressed and loved, treated like a lady, even if a whore? Black men understand that, even if they’re worthless, or run away and behave like children. It‘s so damn hard to break free of our cocoon, our black and brown encasements that have nothing to do with our humanness. Do you understand that? Do you?”

I was still holding her hand. I pressed it gently in my own, then brought it up to my lips and kissed it. “No,” I replied in a small voice. “But your color is part of your being, as much as mine is inseparable from me. You’re fine, just as you are. You don’t have to explain that.”

She leaned against me and pressed a cheek against my face. A tear rolled down her own, lodged against my mouth, and trickled onto my tongue. It tasted hot and salty. One of the museum’s guards coughed politely. With embarrassment, we smiled and hurried into an adjoining room. I felt saddened by Julene’s anguish, by her helplessness, if not, somehow, partially to blame for it myself.

We ambled past numerous paintings, the art gems of the world. We passed Manets, Monets, and Pissarros, Renoirs, Degas, and Cezannes. Morisot’s In the Cornfield at Gennevilliers caught my eye. Its pale golden wheat field seemed to soothe that forlorn feeling that had crept inside my breast. The lone figure in the blue shirt and straw hat, standing on the worn path, sounded an even deeper emotion, too subliminal to define. Yet it stirred a sense of holistic otherness, of being swept up imperceptibly into that larger world of unbroken green trees and white and gray houses with red rooftops that Morisot had created as a border. Here was an immersion into beingness itself that silenced any need for conscious explanations.

“I once had sex with a girl in a wheat field,” I said in a whisper.

“Was it that beautiful woman you mentioned earlier?”

“No. She came later. It was with an Israeli girl, on a kibbutz, near Haifa. We had been working together in the kibbutz’s citrus groves. We roomed in the same barracks. She and a roommate were at one end of the hall, and I and another guy roomed at the other end. After dinner one evening, we walked out into a nearby field. The stars were especially bright, and the night air was clear. It was in April, or maybe May. Her parents were from London, but had come to the kibbutz in the late forties to become part of the Jewish state. She was about seventeen and soon due to fulfill her military obligation. She wasn’t religious, just an ethnic Jew, a true Israeli, a sabra, as she called herself. We lay down in the field together. I had never had sex until then. We undressed each other amidst a flurry of kisses. We had dust all over ourselves when we finished. We laughed and ran back to the barracks and showered together. We met like that for a whole month, until she had to leave for the army. I left soon afterwards, myself. I never saw her again. Nor heard from her, nor wrote her. She had short, honey-colored hair, which, of course, was dyed.”

“Carl and I had our first sex behind a smokehouse. He had come out of the big house to fetch a side of bacon. I guess I was fourteen. I ran along side of him. He was wearing overalls, a white shirt, and brogans. It was his last summer on the farm before returning to Harvard to defend his dissertation. I was barefooted, wearing a flour sack dress Mama had stitched for me. It was gray with pink flowers. We still had a mill in Alabama, not far from the farm. Its wheel is broken, now, and its wooden sluices split and spilling water, but it was quite a mill in its time. I’d been on the steps of the mill once when Carl looked up and saw my behind. I didn’t have any pants on. He smiled and kept staring, until I moved. But that day at the smokehouse, I teased him: ‘Where you headed, big man?’ Then I ran ahead of him and got on the plank steps. God, he was tall, lean, good-looking. Sweat was coursing down his neck and soiling his white shirt. I barred his way to the door. ‘Julene!’ he said. ‘You’re too pretty to be acting sassy like this. You know I got hormones, just like my uncle had for your mama.’ ‘I ain’t hiding nothin’,’ I replied. I put my hands on his arms and ran my fingers up to his shoulders. ‘Dammit, girl. I got a notion to do it right here,’ he smiled. I glanced toward the rear of the building. And, Lord, Clayton, we did it! I mean we did it, right there up against the back of that smokehouse. God, it’s a wonder I didn’t get pregnant. Mama had seen me and made me wash my pelvis with a douche of vinegar. I cried, it stung so much. ‘You piece of trash!’ she scolded. ‘The Sullivans are gonna be the death of us.’” Julene’s smile had now evaporated, replaced by a rueful scowl. She let out a long, slow breath. “After that, we used condoms.” She turned and managed a smile that filled me with a rush of desire.

“We’d better slip out of here, if we’re going to keep talking.”

“Yeah. I guess so. But I want to see Manet’s Olympia, first.”

“I think we passed it. Come this way. It was in that other room.”

We retraced our steps and found the painting.

“Yes, look at that!” she whispered. “Look at the maid. No one probably ever sees her. They’re all gawking at the mistress, or the whore.”

I stared at the prostitute in her inclined position, on the pale pink shawl and white bed linens. Her high heels seemed to mock any sense of respectability. Her hand over her private essence created a sensuousness all its own. Her breasts and legs shimmered with invitation! But the hardened and solemn stare of her eyes evoked an emptiness without joy. Then I looked toward the black maid. It was difficult to make her out against the equally black background. In her right arm, she cradles a large bouquet of colorful flowers. But the prostitute doesn’t even notice them.

“Look at those eyes of the maid. You can see their whites. What she would give for a paramour to love her, to send her flowers, to have someone wait on her!”

“It is magnificent. Almost disturbing,” I admitted. “There it all is. Life at a glance. Nothing lost. Her nudity. The uneasiness you are forced to feel, that you can’t escape.”

“Let’s slip out of here for some lunch.”

“OK! We’re not that far from La Place de Vendôme. Let’s find something there.”

Near La Place de Vendôme we found a delightful café, squeezed between two elegant jewelry stores. We seated ourselves at a small table, reminiscent of those marble-topped tables in Degas’s In the Cafe. The tiny restaurant radiated with light, dispelling any sense of depression one might bring into it. A large chandelier, suspended from the ceiling, brightened the entire café. Each table had been set with large white plates, dark green folded napkins, nickel-plated flatware, and tall stemmed wine glasses.

We ordered a salad, pâté of lamb, bread, and white wine.

“Here’s to you, kid!” I smiled at Julene.

She raised her glass and clinked it against mine.

“Careful! Cheap glass shatters you know.”

She laughed and rolled her large soft eyes. Her dark brown irises smiled back from their sea of aureoline white ocular spheres. Her nose was as splendidly chiseled and small as any of the painters’ models we had viewed. Her dark chocolate lips, tinged with ruby, and her delicate and slightly rounded chin, bestowed an unparalleled air of grace upon her.

“I could fall in love with you. You know that, don’t you?”

“Don’t you have anything better to do? What do you do, anyway?” she smiled.

“Oh, I work some, write some, travel some.” I glanced at her slender fingers. Just then she was toying with her wine glass. “I take long walks and reflect. It’s been a great sabbatical.”

“I guess so! Just what are you working on?”

“A new book. About Descartes, Pascal, Rousseau, and Kant. Paris invigorates me; helps me clear my mind of suppositions and allows me to think on my own. Plus, I’m interested in the existentialists, and being able to buy and read French editions of Marcel, Sartre, Camus, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir, and others has been exciting.”

“Sounds dreadfully morose,” she arched her thin eyebrows. “‘You are what you choose’ and all that garbage supposes an inner freedom only a few of us have. Certainly blacks aren’t that free. We’re still possessed by demons of hurt and anger. That’s why I like art. It’s concrete, imaginative, subtle,” she smiled, as she emphasized the last word. “It’s fluid, emotional, and all that’s good. Besides, it defies right or wrong, good or evil. It’s just what it is, and what you see. And what you feel. It has a life of its own. And sometimes it grasps you, like the works we just saw, or haunts you, like Benton’s July Hay. And it never leaves you in doubt, or with some ‘overwhelming question’ you can’t answer, if I might quote T.S.,” she chirped with smug playfulness. “It just leaves you with life, an instance of life. And that’s what makes it so great.”

“How triumphantly said! How delivered without anxiety or despair, if I might defer to a few heroes of my own.”

“Oh, by all means do! Far be it from little ole me to know the whole truth. I’m just plantation trash, Honey. Or have you forgotten?”

“Don’t be so snotty. No wonder Carl slammed you up against those boards and let you have it. Why do you need to be so feisty, anyway?”

“Why? ’Cause I’ve always had to fight for equality. Words are my only weapons, and art. I’m not as stupid as you think.”

“I never said you were.”

“I know,” she glanced away, with a tiny hint of hurt and embarrassment.

“Besides, your facial expressions and vocal tones are as deadly as any words.”

“It’s all part of my nature, my race. We’re basically still right-brained, emotional, imagistic, orrrrral,” she smiled, devilishly.

“Um! I’d like to know more of that orrrral part,” I grinned in return.

She shook her head from side to side. “You never give up. You’re as bad as any white devil I’ve ever met. Is that all you think about, sex?

“Only when a beautiful woman summons up my molten, erotic, and horny magma, my libidinous depths.”

She let out a prolonged, leisurely breath. “My, my. We really aren’t good for each other. At least not yet.” She looked at me warily, with a subtle blush about her eyes. I could detect it, in spite of her pale cafe-au-lait pigment.

“Tell me about yourself. Your real self. Beyond what you’ve already said.”

“I can’t do that right now,” she averred. “The chemistry’s too strong. Why don’t you tell me about yourself?” she suggested in earnest. The light from the chandelier overhead sparkled in her glass. She raised it and finished off her wine.”

“Let’s get some coffee and I’ll tell you—a little bit,” I volunteered. I nodded for the waiter. “Deux cafés noirs, s’il vous plait, Monsieur.”

“Bien sur,” he replied. “As you wish,” he said in English, as he began clearing our table.

Julene smiled and began anew. “Where are you from, anyway? And why did you become a Ph.D.? And why in philosophy? I could go on and on.”

The waiter wiped the table dry and looked at me a little stunned, as if I hardly qualified in his mind as an academic.

“C’est vrai,” I said, trying not to smile. “It’s the truth.”

He managed a polite grimace and returned momentarily with two demitasse cups of steaming, black espresso.

“Voila,” he finally smiled, with a courteous bow toward Julene.

“He likes you,” I said, after he departed.

“Come, on, tell me,” she coaxed. “Where are you really from? I want to know.”

“Rural Virginia. C’est vrai. I grew up on a tobacco farm, in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in the Knobs, as we called them. Probably not too unlike parts of your northern Alabama.”

“Go on. I would have thought you were from Richmond, or Atlanta, or maybe up North.”

“No, just the hills of Virginia. I never wanted to be anything more than a gentleman farmer, like your Carl, until I went to college and fell in love with Socrates, Aristotle, and Dostoevsky. Some mix, but that’s what happened. I couldn’t get enough literature. But I majored in philosophy and minored in literature. I also ran cross-country.”

“Where was all that?”

“At a little school called Davidson, near Charlotte, North Carolina. It was an all-male school in those days, and took farm boys like me. But I loved every minute of it. My family wanted me to go to VPI, for that’s where all my uncles had gone, or to VMI, where my great-grandfather, who fought with Jackson during that famous War of a century ago, had gone.”

“O Lord! Sounds like Carl’s family. Half of them died at Shiloh, the rest at Chickamauga and Atlanta. My own grandmother’s mother was a slave and tended to the wounded after the Battle of Shiloh. She was Carl’s grand-daddy’s mama’s slave, and half-white herself.”

“Maybe we should take a walk. Say up the Rue de la Paix, and back to the Tuileries? If she was half-white, who was her father?”

“We don’t know. She’d never say. But we don’t think it was a Sullivan. She didn’t look like any of them, and they never paid her any special attention. My mama’s got a picture of her in her late 90s, along with her own mother. They’re all buried at the Sullivan place, except my mama, who’s still alive. Slaves and owners alike are buried in the same fenced-in area, overgrown now with bramble, apple trees, and a lone magnolia. Carl’s father planted it for his mother, when he was a boy. My own father, Carl’s brother, is buried next to his mother and father, and there’s a space there for Carl and room for me—will or no will, and my mama, too.”

I paid the waiter, and we wandered up the street, toward Napoleon’s tall, commanding column. The bronze monument rose a dusty green in the noonday smog. Whirling traffic surrounded it, and bright sunlight glinted off the awnings of nearby shops. “They say that thing’s made out of a thousand plus cannons, melted down. Look at the hero up there, cast like Trajan, or some Roman Caesar. The glory of war!”

“Maybe they didn’t have body bags in those days. Just as Carl and I were boarding the plane in Tennessee, a flight returning from the west coast was filled with body bags. They hadn’t even put them in coffins yet. I guess they were headed for Fort Campbell. Some glory.’

“I almost volunteered for the war. It was just before the Tet offensive. But the recruiter turned me down. ‘You’re past 31,’ he said. ‘We don’t take ’em that old.’ So I drove back to the university, where I’ve been ever since.”

“I’m glad you’re not over there,” she took my arm. “I’m glad you’re with me, whatever happens.”

“What do you want to happen? Do you honestly think it can?”

We paused on the sidewalk, near a white-washed building, whose upper windows were all decorated with balconies of curled iron grill, Louis XVI gabled dormer windows, and a gently slanting roof.

“I am so torn, I don’t know,” she answered sadly. “How I love this city of culture, of art, and architecture! But I love my Alabama home and our Tennessee campus, equally. Their history here isn’t ours, you know. Nor their triumphs, nor tragedies. My God, our own are immense and terrifying enough.”

“Well said, dear girl. And with a philosophical import. But it is a place for dreams, for remembering what a civilization costs. Both to achieve and preserve, as well as to change. Monticello reminds me of that, whenever I go there. And so, too, the monuments along Richmond’s boulevards. And, of course, the mountains of Virginia, and those vistas from the Appalachian Trail, where you see nothing but sylvan coves and forests of poplar and hemlock, as far as the eye can rove. Perhaps we’re both dreamers, but a little too jaded to set our course on uncharted stars.”

“I want to be a painter, even if only a dreadful one. I think I’ll set up my easel tomorrow, in the faubourg where we’re staying, and just paint the trees, grill work, buildings, shutters, and eaves.With a splash of pink and green and yellowish buff and black for people and cars!” There was a renewed excitement in her voice. She tugged on my arm with fresh enthusiasm, with an eager step in her walk. “What about you?”

“I go where all things go, where go the leaf of the rose and the leaf of the laurel. That’s from a French poet, but I don’t remember his name, or where I read it.”

“It’s too sad. You’ve got to do better than that. You’ve been reading too much existentialism.”

“You’re probably right,” I smiled at her. “Please kiss me. I won’t tell Carl, or anyone, for that matter.”

She shook her head with a whimsical smile, put her hands up to my face, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed me hard on the mouth. “Ummmm,” she moaned. “I’ve got to get back to my own man. I want to be there when Carl gets home and dig out his day with Gibert. I think I’ll take the metro at the Opera,” she pointed. “You’ve inspired me to paint again.” There was a luminous glow about her face. “Oh, Lord! I almost forgot.” She reached in her handbag and handed me a paperback book that was soiled and worn. It was a copy of Carl’s From the Minoans to Homer. “He said for me to give it to you. We’ve got a few extra copies, so don’t worry.”

I accepted the book and turned thoughtfully through several of its brown-edged pages. “Please thank him. I’ll start reading it again, tonight.” I looked desperately into her dark eyes. I wanted her to know how smitten I was with her, how fortunate and lucky I felt, just being with her.

“I’d better go,” she repeated. “What’s your phone number?”

“I’ll write it down.” I took out our lunch receipt and scribbled down the pension’s number. “The concierge answers all calls, but she’ll call me to the phone if I’m there.” I handed it to her. “What’s yours?”

“I’d better keep that a secret,” she looked away apprehensively. “Carl does get jealous. It would be better for me to call you.”

“Julene! There’s still more of Paris to see, and I hardly know you.”

“Or I, you.” She stared at my collar and straightened my tie. “I’ll call you. That’s a promise.”

I put my arms around her waist. She slipped free, smiled, and disappeared down the street in the bright haze of the sun’s orange glare.