Читать книгу Lessons in French - Hilary Reyl - Страница 10

Nobody had told me that Clarence was British. Olivier’s use of “pompous” to describe him, which I quickly found inaccurate, was probably meant as a synonym for British, but I had not caught on and was startled by his accent.

“Lovely to meet you. What do you go by, Katherine? Kate?”

I liked him immediately. “My friends call me Katie.”

“Katie it is. I hope you were welcomed. Madame Fidelio can be a bit daft, but I trust she hasn’t been too hostile. You are settling in?”

He was gangling, but with a fleshy face, full quivering lips and unruly curls that were turning silver. There were specks of dandruff on his glasses.

“Oh, Madame Fidelio was quite nice to me, and I’m fine. I absolutely love it here. It’s unreal.”

“Lydia will tell you it’s a bit of a shambles, but I adore the place, even if the courtyard is sunless. How long have you been here now?”

“A week today. It’s such a fantastic neighborhood.” Could I sound any more like I had never left Southern California? Why did I always revert when I was nervous?

But he didn’t seem to mind. My enthusiasm swept across his face. As he smiled almost youthfully, his glasses hopped. “So, I trust you’re finding your way around?”

“I’ve been doing some exploring. Paris is the greatest city to walk in. I guess that’s a cliché, but I mean it. It’s the best city to wander around alone because it’s so beautiful you feel like it’s hugging you.”

“An embrace, yes. Nicely put. These are the most satisfying streets to experience on one’s own. And even when one arrives at this empty apartment, one feels welcomed, despite the vicious Portuguese sentry!”

We laughed.

Right away, I was comfortable with Clarence. Having spent long stretches of my adolescence imagining what life with a father would be like, I was emotionally primed for this man with his ripe, knowing face, as he took off his blazer in his half-painted entryway and ushered me into his living room with a gallant “please.”

The leafy motif of his ascot matched the celadon stripe in the cushion where he rested his elbow as he settled into an armchair. The cushion was of the same striped fabric that covered the ottoman. I was beginning to notice patterns in the apartment where before there had only been striking, singular images. Was familiarity like this?

“Lydia said you teach comparative literature and that you’re on sabbatical writing?”

“Did she happen to say what I was writing about?”

“Well, I don’t know if she mentioned it, but I—”

“Oh, bloody hell!” His calm rippled furiously, then resettled.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, it’s nothing. Just that ridiculous old clock. It’s rubbish, but Lydia is very attached to it. I suppose it’s valuable rubbish if such a thing can be. Expensive rubbish anyway. Why did the painters put it on the floor like that? Bloody idiots, all of them.”

I had only looked at this clock to check the time with Olivier while we were drinking. I had not noticed that the clock face was set in a black tree ornamented with Rococo branches. Wrapped around the tree was a polished snake. And beside the tree, standing on the bronze base, was a fairy, fondling the snake with one hand and offering it a drink from a half-shell in the other. The snake was arching into the fairy’s caress.

“It’s not ticking, is it?” Again, a slight erosion of calm, then he chuckled. “But it serves her right. It’s so hideous, that object.”

“You’re right, it’s not ticking. I think it must have stopped. It was working when I got here. Last time I checked. A week ago.”

“It’s appalling-looking, don’t you think? I mean, didn’t it strike you as hideous when you first entered the room? That’s not to say that it’s uninteresting, historically. It’s probably very revelatory of the 1830s, but that doesn’t mean we need it in our living room, does it? For goodness sake, swastikas are revelatory.”

“Well, it’s not my taste, but there is something very French-looking about it.”

“You’re kind. Lydia did say that about you, that you seemed like a kind person.”

“Goodness, thanks. So, what are you writing about?”

He looked at me as though he were about to pull a big box of chocolates from behind his back. He may have even winked.

“In a word,” he said “‘fashion.’”

I glanced at him, ascot askew in the collar of a rumpled Oxford shirt, brown cords, old-man shoes, a white flake on the glasses.

“Wow.”

The telephone rang.

“That will be Lydia.” He picked up a cream-colored rotary phone from a black-lacquered side table.

“Hello, my dear. Are the Huns brandishing their pickaxes yet?” He began to pace within the limits of the phone coil. “Yes, she’s fine…. Yes, Olivier appears to be gone, thank God. And he doesn’t appear to have murdered Katie or stolen or ransacked anything, although I did have to rescue a piece of your faience from the garden. He’d left one of your cups out there to the mercy of the elements. It was full of rainwater and dead leaves. Selfish twit. … As I say, Lydia, she’s fine. Why don’t you ask her yourself?” With a meaningful look at the stopped clock on the floor, he put his finger to his lips. Then he handed me the receiver.

Lydia sounded awash in happiness, but a happiness that had nothing to do with Clarence and me and everything to do with faraway events. The Wall would break soon, she said. There was monumental pressure from both sides. That was all anyone was talking about. She was getting unbelievable shots. She kept interrupting herself to say “hello” and “wonderful to see you” so that our conversation was populated by prominent German ghosts. She told me that her Paris printer would be stopping by tomorrow to introduce herself and that the two of us should have a coffee—“keep the receipt”—because we would be working together from time to time. “She does all my black and white work in Europe.” There was a loud social rumble. “Thank you!” she said away from the receiver, and I heard a clink and a cool rivulet down her throat. “Listen, I’ll call you from somewhere quieter tomorrow, but I have to know, have you told Clarence about Yale yet?”

“About Yale?”

“He can’t stand the Deconstructionists. They’re his nemesis. He’ll die when he finds out that I’ve hired a Deconstructionist from Yale to come work in the apartment. He’ll just die. He’ll moan that there’s a traitor in his midst.”

“But—”

“Just tell him. It’s a joke, sweetheart. He’s trying to be a Historicist.”

“Of course, yeah.” I giggled nervously.

“Listen, the prime minister has just arrived. I’ll call you later.”

Deconstruction was a joke? The form of literary criticism I had felt so terrible not mastering in college, hell, not even grasping, except to understand that all language pointed nowhere but back upon itself, which wasn’t very helpful. This concept that had walled me out with its jargon, these lit majors who had hurt my feelings so many times, this momentous testament to my lack of sophistication was really a gag. Here in the land of jet-set intellectuals, it was a mere farce between husband and wife. I felt my world gelling anew as if I had finally found the right prescription for a pair of glasses. So, this was the point of view of choice. Deconstruction was not glowering and intimidating. It was funny.

“What’s so amusing?” Clarence asked. He was annoyed, but not with me.

“Lydia wanted me to pretend I was a Deconstructionist because I did some literature at Yale. I was an art major, actually, but I did try some theory courses because you kind of had to in order to know what anyone was talking about. She said you would think it was funny because you’re a Historicist.”

“I hope she said I was a ‘New Historicist.’”

“I’m sure she did.”

“Probably not, but it’s not your fault. Anyway, is that her idea of a joke?”

“Well, she said the Deconstructionists were your nemesis, that I was the enemy.”

He practically spat. His trembling lips were a comical version of Portia’s gorgeous pout from the leather frame.

“Where is the woman’s sense of nuance? My nemesis indeed! She likes to pretend I’m some sort of reactionary. I am a cultural critic. I incorporate deconstruction into my work. I appreciate the text-only approach for what it meant to its time, but it’s passé, you understand.”

“Not exactly.”

Clarence explained it to me in fatherly tones. He said that it was simply the jargon that got you. Most critics should be shot. Their writing was rubbish.

“Can you believe that Derrida was the first photo in Lydia’s last book?” he asked. “You must have seen it. A travesty. I nearly convinced her not to do it, but you’ll learn how stubborn she can be. Anyway, I can help you sift through the jargon if you’re interested. Then you’ll see how easy it is to move beyond it.”

My perspective adjusted again. So, deconstruction wasn’t a joke exactly. Instead, it was a historical phase that I would master because this lovely professor, whose eyebrows did not frown and who did not assume I knew what hermeneutics were, was going to help me. Yet another vista to take in. There were cocktail parties where the German chancellor was giving you the inside scoop on when the Berlin Wall would come tumbling down and a room full of Monets that made your mother sigh as though she had once possessed them in her boudoir. There was faience abandoned in a secret garden, chestnut croissants at Hédiard.

The doorbell rang. Clarence jumped out of his seat, then sank back.

“Who could possibly be here now? Are you expecting anyone?”

I shook my head.

“Shall we go see?”

We were just intimate enough by now for me to know perfectly well that he knew perfectly well who was at the door.