Читать книгу Montparnasse - Thierry Sagnier - Страница 6

Chapter 1

It had been 16 days. The deck felt slick and dangerous. A hundred feet below, the ship’s prow cut through a sullen Atlantic, sending frigid mist into the air.

It’s too cold, thought Frederick Cowles. I should return to the cabin. Easter will be wondering where I am.

A spray of icy seawater brushed his face and made him step away from the railing. Far beneath him, La Savoie’s giant steam engines thrummed dully in the night and the vibrations made his legs tingle.

He had a slight headache; too much Beaujolais. Now, mouth sour from the wine and the meal’s peppery entrée, he allowed himself the small satisfaction of discomfort and wondered one more time at the unfairness of life.

It had been 16 days, and they’d made love twice. In the recesses of his mind, Frederick wished he could address the subject as a man should, wished he’d done so earlier. Perhaps he should have been more insistent right from the start and made demands, not requests. Yet it was such a delicate matter of which he knew so little that broaching the subject seemed unbecoming and might make Easter even more hesitant to encourage his advances.

A week before leaving Chicago and 20 hours before he and Easter pronounced their vows, his mother, over lunch near the harbor, had told him he might expect Easter to fulfill the conjugal side of the marriage union once a week, no more, and probably less. His mother had frowned, as if introducing the subject of a dear friend’s embarrassing illness. “Once weekly is enough for any man, Frederick. Remember that, as I fear you might have inherited your father’s intemperate spirit. And try to be quick about it. Carnality is a sad necessity imposed upon us women, and there is nothing less pleasurable than enduring the onslaught of one’s husband. Your father occasionally takes overlong, particularly if he’s been imbibing.” Mrs. Cowles was a founding member of the local Anti-Saloon Society, and Frederick knew his father’s tippling repulsed her. “So when you intend to press yourself upon Easter,” she continued, “do so only after a light meal free of drink.”

She spooned a bit of orange sherbet into her large, toothy mouth. As an afterthought, she added, “And avoid spicy foods, Frederick; garlic and onions in particular. A foul breath is ungentlemanly, thoughtless, and frankly disgusting.”

Frederick had been mortified. It had been the first and only time his mother had ever referred to his father’s amatory habits in his presence for, in fact, Mrs. Cowles rarely referred to her husband at all. The exchange had left Frederick unable to eat his dessert.

That night he had been subject to appalling images of his mother and father locked in an obscene embrace. His parents always maintained a cordial distance from one another, two goldfish in a very large bowl. He had, until this moment, always assumed Mother and Father had somehow arisen from the marital bed without ever making physical contact; now he struggled to put the scene out of his mind.

His own physical needs were not that urgent; they never had been, though he participated freely in randy discussions with his friends. Desire was more like an expectation denied, the disappointment of a gift hoped for and not received.

Another spray of icy water washed across the deck. Easter was asleep in their cabin. Or perhaps she had woken and was scribbling in her diary. It was the one thing that brightened her mood. She wrote for hours, hunched over the correspondence table and humming to herself. He admired her neat handwriting and had from the day she’d sent him a thank you note for taking her to lunch after a work interview with his father’s company. The roundness of her l’s and w’s had impressed him, but now he found her devotion to the journal irritating. He was forbidden from reading the entries, and that was vexing. Complaining of a mild headache, he had left her in the cabin a half-hour earlier and now stood on the topmost deck of La Savoie. He was the only passenger out in the inclement weather.

The enveloping mist made him shiver. He could dimly hear the strains of music—a waltz full of strings—coming from the formal ballroom one deck below. Their first night aboard, he and Easter had danced to the very same tune.

He considered seeking shelter there; a stiff shot or two at the bar could lighten his mood, but no, it probably wouldn’t, and might indeed act to the contrary. He wasn’t dressed for the occasion. A guest had spilled a glass of red wine on the trousers of the elegant evening outfit he’d had tailored for the trip and the suit was in the hands of the ship’s laundress.

It wasn’t all Easter’s fault. Who could have known that the slightest movement of the ship, the merest hint of pitch or wallow, would cause her discomfort? When they were courting, she had enjoyed their outings on the lake, sworn a love for the water and not once had he considered that the trip across the Atlantic could be less than a joyful experience. In fact, he had deliberately opted for a slow journey. There were faster ships than La Savoie afloat—the Flandres traversed the Atlantic in less than a week—but a leisurely 12-day cruise had seemed a splendid way to begin their lives as man and wife.

The voyage, sadly, had become a nightmare for her. In fact, Frederick thought, it was a nightmare for them both.

Easter hardly ate. After the third day, she refused to accompany him to the dining room and asked instead that meals—inconsequential as they were—be brought to the cabin. She survived on toast, tea, an occasional cup of beef broth, lettuce without dressing, and fruit. Her slim form grew leaner; her lips became pale and thin, almost marginal. Her eyes lost their gleam.

They had visited the ship’s doctor four times, and the man had finally stopped prescribing larger and larger doses of nostrums to settle Easter’s stomach. Now he came by the cabin twice a day, hinting to Frederick that Mrs. Cowles’ discomfort might be more than mere seasickness. Perhaps, he hinted darkly, it was mental, even psychological. The words frightened Frederick.

“The stress of the marriage, I might assume,” the physician said, his voice barely a whisper. “The fear of physical intimacy.” Giving Frederick a meaningful look, he’d added, “The—how may I put it in acceptable language—discomfort associated with certain marital acts committed during the honeymoon.”

Frederick had nodded, not sure he did understand, fearful of the implications but unwilling to pursue the subject. The man’s dress white uniform with galloons and epaulets spoke of authority, but he was French, and everyone knew the French thought of sex with disturbing constancy. So of course, physician or not, he would mention that first.

Back home in Chicago, men who’d returned from the war were full of tales of the French’s sensual indulgences.

The music from the ballroom changed cadence, strains muted by damp and wind, to something jazzy and bouncy, horns, clarinets and slide trombones. The orchestra had four American Negro singers. On the first night the quartet had sung a medley of spirituals. Frederick and Easter had danced to those, too. He had heard Negroes were highly prized in France.

Perhaps the French doctor was right; it was the stress of it all, the harried days before the wedding, the demands made upon a bride, the train trip from Chicago to New York, the wedding night at the Pontchartrain.

Frederick shook his head free of carnal thoughts. That Easter was feeling so poorly was not her fault, and it was only normal she should prefer not to share her bunk. The situation had nothing to do with him; women were that way, their meeker constitutions prey to every affliction.

On the other side of the deck, a couple leaned on the railing and looked out to the sea.

How long had they been there? They both wore long matching raincoats and the man’s arm was across the woman’s shoulder, pulling her to him. There was a brief flare of light, a match on a cigarette. Something the man said made the woman laugh, and the sound was snatched by the night wind. Her hair whipped about her head. She stretched her neck to kiss the man’s cheek. The man turned slightly and their lips met. The band struck up another waltz. Frederick plunged his hands deeper into the pockets of his coat, felt a flash of envy and anger. He watched the couple embrace briefly, then disappear into a doorway.

If he returned to the cabin, Easter might be feeling better by now and could, conceivably, welcome his arrival.

And I could be, Frederick thought, Queen Marie of Romania and Emperor of Rome, as his father was fond of saying.