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Chapter 3

A few years before falsifying his age to do a hitch of military service sooner than the law required, Felix Garvin had given his mother a bit of general information in words that evoked memories of his father:

“I’ll show these Basque sons of bitches that they do not have a monopoly on flipping a ball against a backstop with a long wicker scoop like a pelican’s beak!”

The Low Garvinese was English he had learned from a Hollander who, toward the end of his world hiking, cycling, and busing tour, stopped in Bayonne to visit relatives. Having added to his fluent English in North America, he shared those improvements on the language of Her Gracious Majesty, the Queen.

The ball game to which Felix had referred was pelota. With so many Basques in Bayonne, each taking pride in his national sport, Felix had been oversensitive. Being in no position to tell those fellows, “My dad can beat your dad,” he’d had to prove his worth by performance. The game had finally hooked him.

And now, in an indirect way, his father’s impending visit teamed up with his feud with the pelota sharks to give him a logical escape from another of Mommie’s million unreasonable whims. Flora wanted him to sweat out the current Sudzo program.

“Sweet weeping Jesus!” Felix protested. “I do not have her shape, but I couldn’t sing much worse than her best!”

“And that is exactly why I want you to tape the whole show. Right after that lousy imitation of my act, there is going to be a historic number. A playback of my very first Sudzo show.”

Felix guessed that Flora wanted to tape the show to add long-ago memories to the sentimental richness of the family reunion. There was also another answer: Flora, as filmed a quarter of a century past, was expertly made up for facing the lights. She had the shape and the sparkle: nothing to do but transpose TV color to home lighting. What Flora did not know about makeup could be engraved on a pinhead, using a jackknife.

Felix had a very special date with Diane, the live-in housekeeper who was on vacation with pay until after the Governor-General quit Bayonne to head for North America. Before breaking out in a cold sweat, he got the answer from the hereditary built-in computer: “I’ve been working out for qualifying for a pelota match, my ass is dragging, and I couldn’t stay awake for that show to start. But I’ll help you connect the recorder.”

“I can do that myself! I really wanted you to see some family history.”

Felix retired to his quarters, the top floor of what had been carriage house and, later, garage and chauffeur’s apartment, until women and children could cope with things automotive. A head taller than the Old Man, he resembled him in temperament and facial expression; two years of military service had given him an appearance of maturity somewhat beyond his age. However, there was a difference: Instead of the Governor-General’s trick of leaving people wondering whether bawdy laughter or cold ferocity would take command, the son was never as explicit in either direction. His veneer of urbanity and the suggestion of “presence” must have been his mother’s contribution from the Helflins, as exemplified by Flora’s fifth cousin, the late Imperator.

Diane supervised the domestic help, managed the ménage, and could be considered the feminine equivalent of the Chinese “Number One Boy.” Except to another woman, Diane looked a dozen years younger than she actually was, and in any event she was a long day’s march from the barmaids near the barracks and the two or three whores who served a platoon or a company of recruits. She had class.

When the coast was clear, Diane, wearing nothing but woman under her dark robe, would edge into the young master’s apartment, slip out of that garment, and into bed.

“For a good-nighter. We’ll both sleep better,” she had said the first time. “No lights. Jamais! Madame your mother might wonder, and I’d be looking for another spot.”

He learned enough about Diane to develop fantasies and cravings and curiosities. What would she be like, dressed and with lights, and bit by bit, very deliberately, undressed, perhaps with his assistance. And then, pillow talk not whispered. And even waking up before dawn to fondle her before going home. Maybe not even going home for a few days or more...

Felix left the walled villa by the tradesman’s entrance. He walked briskly townward until, skirting St. Leon and the Parc des Sports, he came to the avenue that led to the Gate of Spain and into the walled city. Finding the pie-slice building facing 43 rue des Faures was no problem: Between pelota games at the sports park near the oak-shadowed spring of St. Leon, he had reconnoitered by daylight.

The ground-level épicérie was dark, as it should have been. Light leaked past the shades of the upper floor. The new duplicate key fitted smoothly, as Diane had assured him it would. Being sworn into the army had done much for Felix. Having a key to a woman’s apartment was the thirty-third, though there really should be a thirty-fourth, degree in machismo.

Felix was not sure whether he ascended stairs or walked the most ethereal of air.

Out of deference to Diane’s job and his mother’s prissy notions, he would have to leave well before dawn. Naturally there would be a lot of talk about meeting the father he had never seen. And then the door at the head of the stairs confronted Felix.

Before he could fumble for the evasive bell button, the bolt slid aside, a muted metallic whisper, the voice of romance, of intrigue. The door opened on bewilderment and total dismay. The pint-size, black-haired girl who faced him—

Christ on a life raft!

The key had worked, but this was the wrong apartment.

The dainty package laughed softly, caught him with both arms, and stood on tiptoe for a mouth-to-mouth kiss.

“Chéri, don’t look so blinking bewildered! C’est moi!”

Crepe de chine blouse gave hints of curves that, though never before glimpsed, evoked tactile memories.

“Maybe it was the lighting. You just didn’t look like you at all!”

Taking his hand, Diane nudged him to the sofa, where a floor lamp made an island of half brilliance; the remainder of the room was left in shadows accented by glints of bronze, the twinkle of ceramics, the gilt of a picture frame, and the glint of decanters and goblets on the buffet.

“Your hairdo. And—” Felix was still embarrassed. He must have gaped like the village idiot!

“It’s more than the frivolous hairdo that a housekeeper simply does not wear!” Diane dipped into shadows and produced a black dress and white blouse, quite crisp, stiff, and impersonal,

“First time you’ve ever seen me wear anything but this. Like the girl in the camera shop. And sensible shoes. And makeup that simply is not makeup.”

Diane flipped the horrible examples into the shadows and stepped back a pace, giving him a good look at dainty strap sandals, red reptile with high heels. These, and the burnt orange brocade skirt of exactly the right length, amazed him—he had never suspected that this or any other woman could have such lovely legs and exquisite ankles.

“Of course I am someone else, and I love it! And you knew the difference between the dragon housekeeper, herding the staff around and browbeating tradespeople. Right now, you are not the young master and there is no one I address respectfully as ‘madame’!”

By now, Felix was back to normal. Instead of being a juvenile moron, he had paid her a compliment. “You even smell different.”

“Of course I do! Does a female major domo use perfume that competes with madame la châtelaine! Do sit down! You need a drink.”

She poured Denis Mounier Fine Champagne cognac into medium-size warmed snifter goblets. Inhaling the fragrance of cognac, with occasional birdlike nips of the liqueur, has in spirit something in common with the stately Japanese tea ceremony; although there is nothing ritualistic in the enjoyment of good brandy, there is communion between drinkers and drink.

After pouring the cognac, she had seated herself in a chair facing Felix. Each regarded the other: This was so different from the “good-nighters” to which they had become accustomed. That they had taken so long to sip so little made it clear that each loved fine brandy and knew that the other did. And through cognac communion, they knew that moment after moment brandy was becoming less and less important.

Diane’s deeply drawn breath and her leaning back and stretching from the waist rounded the crepe de chine blouse in curves akin to those of the glasses that were contoured like magnolia buds about to ripen into blossom. Exhaling, she twisted a little to set her glass on the kidney-shaped end table with its red marble top and saw-pierced brass guard rim.

The long moment ended when, instead of by legerdemain, it was dexterity of ankle and toes that got her feet free of red reptile and high heels. Suppleness of body made it beautiful when, with leg cocked over knee, she busied herself taking a reef in hosiery that he knew must be silk. When it gathered about the ankle, Felix was sure there were no such snags or runners as he would have started. When he had his chance to undress Diane in fact as he had so often in fancy, he would know how. That would be next time.

Having her between the sheets and by light borrowed from the adjoining room was luxury, but most of all was pillow talk, and not in whispers.

And time to refill the snifters.

Freedom from furtiveness! What the barracks boasters imagined they knew about women was becoming ever more pathetic.

In view of the Governor-General’s history, there were questions; answering these and keeping the glasses replenished made it a marvelously busy evening for Felix.

“...is he actually going to retire?”

And another fragment, between additions of another thirty cubic centimeters of Grande Fine: “...he’ll be going to North America to see wartime comrades before it is too late?”

Like her guest, Diane was finding it a crowded evening.

Felix would ponder, frown thoughtfully, and come up with answers indicating that he had considered both sides of every question. His earnestness, his thoroughness, impressed Diane until, bit by bit, she realized that instead of clarifying anything, Felix ended by spreading a smoke screen of ambiguity. And since the dream girl had never met the Old Man, it was too soon for her to wonder whether thoroughness was in fact hereditary secretiveness, spontaneous and instinctive.

Felix did not know that Roderick David Garvin’s fixed opinion—one of a great many, that is—was to the effect that “Women, especially wives, excepting of course Azadeh, make it their life’s work to ask the god-double-damnedest questions.”

Although Felix thus far had had no wives and only one mother, wherefore his generalizations were scarcely based on experience, the Garvin Doctrine was taking—had already taken—form.

“Now that your sister has completed her higher education, do you suppose that madame your mother would still find North America as revolting as Mars?”

For the first time, Felix had a forthright answer. “Honey, I am no mind reader. You might ask madame the Old Lady.”

But to eliminate purely personal bias, he added that she should consult a good astrologer.

A medium dollop of Grande Fine went into each goblet. And Felix finally began to cogitate: Diane is a girl-watcher’s dream, a real pièce de resistance... With the Old Man always having women on the brain, this Mademoiselle Hot Panites might get the idea of becoming the First Lady of Mars.

Grande Fine Champagne grade of cognac is perhaps the most civilized, the most gracious of the many spirits that man has distilled. Accordingly, it is also one of the most insidious. Although a persistent clod can guzzle himself puking drunk, he or she who knows how attains the earlier stages of apotheosis, then restful sleep, and, eventually, happy resurrection.

When the clock of Cathedrale Ste. Marie trolled three, Diane was nearing nirvana. At the half hour, she sighed and stretched luxuriously. Although her words were French, they would have conveyed her meaning if she had addressed Felix in Old High Etruscan or Gujarati. “Chéri, I have had it. And you have had your share.”

Instead of telling her that the evening was still young, he countered, “Of cognac or of you?”

“You devil! I’d love to have you stay for late breakfast, but not until Monsieur the Governor-General and Madame la Chatelaine are honeymooning, and she is too busy persuading him to stay in France and forgets to watch your hours.”

Her voice was more convincing even than her logic. “Might be a good idea, having a taxi meet me at the épicérie door. That way nobody would suspect I was leaving you.”

He would be mistaken for a customer leaving the back door of the deluxe whorehouse that fronted on Boulevard Rempart de Lachepaillet. She was so pleased by his finesse that she did not follow his clear logic.

Diane sat up, swayed a little, fumbled, and found the robe that had gotten itself bemuddled with sheet, pillow, and evening paper. Abandoning her struggle with the garment, she gestured.

“In the living room alcove. That desk.”

“I saw the phone.”

“I meant the directory.” Diane smiled drowsily, contentedly. She murmured something that might have been, “A bientôt!”

He drew the sheet and blanket to her chin.

Ever since early childhood, Felix had heard of those fabulous women who could drink a platoon of armor under the table. Clearly, this was not one of those wonder girls.

Steady as an adjutant on parade, the young master found desk and phone. He did not find the directory, which was obscured by several paperback books that Diane had not gotten around to having fitted with custom hardcovers, as she probably intended. They were classics.

Being sure that he’d find no taxi service phone numbers in Flaubert’s Tentation de St. Antoine, nor in Bourget’s La psychologic de L’amour moderne, nor the worn and stained Guide fratique de Lyon, he poked about in pigeonholes and shelf stacks of the desk’s upper structure. The center drawer yielded nothing. Finally, starting over from a different angle, he got a glimpse of a color photo, used as if for a book marker, ten by fifteen centimeters, professional work, critically sharp, not the typical murky blurred blob. What had baited his curiosity was the space officer’s uniform with kilometers of gold braid, hectares of medals, decorations, and orders, and epaulettes the size of wastebaskets.

That the man portrayed was Roderick David Garvin made it very much the son’s business. That Flora had a much larger print in which the domes of Mars showed in the background was standard stuff. What piqued Felix was that Flora’s copy, considerably larger, did not include the very good-looking old lady, an aristocrat wearing a formal gown with bodice of sequins all aglitter with highlights that danced as she breathed.

The Admiral’s probably enjoying a standing ovation, and that two-teated brunette is proud of the old devil, he thought. Must be Azadeh—my honorary stepmother, or my halfway aunt?

With her makeup just right, Flora was more spectacular than Azadeh, and this left Felix wondering why Mommie had cropped an oversize blowup of that scene. Thanks to the enchantment built into every drop of cognac, the answer came to him: Though his mother was Number One Wife, she was not the First Lady of Mars.

But this particular picture was hardly unusual: There were Garvin fans all over the globe, and other groups who loved to hang Garvin in effigy and often did so.

Maybe, Felix surmised, Diane just got this picture and hasn’t had time to frame it. Or she’s waiting to have him autograph it. He frowned, then shook his head. That’s off the beam, too. Odd as balls on a bay mare! If she’d been a fan, she’d have asked all kinds of really damn fool questions.

Then he found the phone directory and finally figured that he could be halfway home before anyone answered a phone, assuming that someone was on duty. At this hour there was little chance of an unpleasant encounter. It was too late for hopheads and trouble-hunting drunks. By now they had either gotten their fix or been knocked off in the attempt. Anyway, he had learned a promising kung fu trick. If the other fellow survived, as he probably would, he would not know his own name for the next two or three days.

Taking off his shoes, he tiptoed to the stairs.