The Chateau Page 5

  “It’s cold,” she said. “I noticed it downstairs. The whole house is cold.”

  He glanced at the fireplace. The ornamental brass shield over the opening was held in place with screws and it looked permanent. There was no basket of wood and kindling on the hearth. In her mind the present often extended its sphere of influence until it obscured the past and denied that there was going to be any future. When she was cold, when she was sad, she was convinced that she would always be sad or cold and there was no use doing anything about it; all the sweaters and coats and eiderdown comforters and optimism in the world would not help, and all she wanted him to do was agree that they would not help. Unfortunately, she could not get him to agree. It was a basic difference of opinion. He always tried to do something. His nature required that there be something practical you could do, even though he knew by experience that it took some small act of magic, some demonstration of confidence or proof of love, to make her take heart, to make her feel warm again.

  “Why don’t you take a hot bath? You’ve got time if you hurry,” he said, and turned to the bookcase. Because there were times when he was too tired, or just couldn’t produce any proof of love, or when he felt a deep disinclination to play the magician. At other times, nothing was too much trouble or exhausted his strength and patience.

  His finger, in the pursuit of titles, stopped at Shaw and Wells, in English; at Charles Morgan and Elizabeth Goudge, in French, and so inconsistent from the point of view of literary taste with the first two; at La Mare au Diable, which he had read in high school and could no longer remember anything about; at Le Grand Meaulnes, which he remembered hazily. The letters of Mme de Sevigné (in three small volumes) he had always meant to read some time. The Fables of La Fontaine, and the Contes, which were said to be indecent. A book of children’s songs, with illustrations by Boutet de Monvel. A book of the religious meditations of someone that he, raised a Presbyterian, had never heard of. He said: “Say, whose books are these, do you suppose?” and she answered from the bathroom in a shocked voice: “Why, there’s no hot water!”

  “Let it run,” he called back.

  “There’s no water to let run.”

  He went into the bathroom and tried both faucets of the immense tub. Nothing came out of them, not even air.

  “It’s the war,” he said.

  “I don’t see how we can stay here two weeks without a bath,” Barbara said.

  He moved over to the washstand. There the cold-water faucet worked splendidly but not the faucet marked chaud.

  “She said in her letter ‘a room with a bath.’ If this is what she means, I don’t think it was at all honest of her.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “And I don’t see any toilet.”

  They looked all around the room, slowly and carefully. There was one door they hadn’t opened. He opened it confidently, and they found themselves staring into a shallow clothes closet with three wire coat hangers on the metal rod. They both laughed.

  “In a house this size there’s bound to be a toilet somewhere,” he said, by no means convinced that this was true.

  They washed simultaneously at the washbowl, and then he put on a clean shirt and went out into the hall. He listened at the head of the stairs. The house was steeped in silence. He put his head close to the paneling of the door directly opposite theirs, heard nothing, and placed his hand on the knob. The door swung open cautiously upon a small lumber room under the eaves. In the dim light he made out discarded furniture, books, boxes, pictures, china, bedclothes, luggage, a rowing machine, a tin bidet, a large steel engraving of the courtyard and Grand Staircase of the château of Blois. He closed the door softly, struck with how little difference there is in the things people all over the world cannot bring themselves to throw away.

  The remaining door of the third-floor hall revealed a corridor, two steps down and uncarpeted. The fresh paint and clean wallpaper ended here, and it seemed unlikely that their toilet would be in this wing of the house, which had an air of disuse, of decay, of being a place that outsiders should not wander into. The four dirty bull’s-eye windows looked out on the back wing of the château. There were doors all along the corridor, but spaced too far apart to suggest the object of his search, arid at the end the corridor branched right and left, with more doors that it might be embarrassing to open at this moment. He opened one of them and saw a brass bed, made up, a painted dresser, a commode, a rag rug on the painted floor, a single straight chair. He had ended up in the servants’ quarters.

  Retracing his steps, he listened again at the head of the stairs. The house was as still as houses only are on Sunday. When he opened the door of their room, Barbara had changed back into her traveling suit and was standing in front of the low dresser. “I couldn’t find it,” he said.

  “Probably it’s on the second floor.” She leaned toward the mirror. She was having difficulty with the clasp of her pearls. “But it’s funny she didn’t tell us.”

  “She has dyed hair,” he said.

  “Sh-h-h!”

  “What for?”

  “There may be someone in the room across the hall.”

  “I looked. It’s full of old junk.”

  She stared at him in the mirror. “Weren’t you afraid there’d be somebody there?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But how else was I going to find it?”

  “I don’t believe that she was about to go to the station to meet us.”

  “Do you think she forgot all about us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He put on a coat and tie and stood waiting for her.

  “I’m afraid to go downstairs,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “We’ll have to speak French and she’ll know right away that Muriel helped me with those letters. She’ll think I was trying to deceive her.”

  “They don’t expect Americans to speak idiomatic French,” he said. “And besides, she was trying to overcharge us.”

  “You go down.”

  “Without you? Don’t be silly. The important thing is you got her to figure the price by the week instead of by the day. She probably respects you more for it than she would have if we—”

  “Do you think if we asked for some wood for the fireplace—”

  “I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “Probably there isn’t any wood.”

  “But we’re right next door to a forest.”

  “I know. But if there’s no hot water and no toilet—Anyway, we’re in France. We’re living the way the French do. This is what goes on behind the high garden walls.”

  “I don’t trust her,” Barbara said.

  “Fortunately, we don’t have to trust her. Come on, let’s go.”

  Chapter 3

  AS THEY DESCENDED THE STAIRS, they listened for the sound of voices, and heard the birds outside. The second-floor hall was deserted. In the lower hall, at the foot of the stairs, they were confronted with two single and two double curtained French doors. One of the single doors led to the passageway through which Mme Viénot had brought them into the front part of the house. He opened one of the double doors, and they saw a big oval dining table. The table was set, the lights in the crystal chandelier were turned on, the wine and water carafes were filled. “At least we’re not late for dinner,” he said, and pulled the door to.

  The other single door opened into a corner room, a family parlor. Two large portraits in oil of the epoque of Louis XV; a radio; a divan with a row of pillows; a fireplace with a Franklin stove in front of it; a huge, old-fashioned, square, concert-grand piano littered with family photographs. In the center of the room, a round table and four straight chairs. The windows looked out on the courtyard and on the park in front of the château.

  He crossed the room to examine the photographs. “Mme Viénot has changed surprisingly little in the last quarter of a century,” he said. His eyes lingered for a moment on the photograph of a thin, solemn schoolboy in the clothes of a generation ago. “Dead,” he s
aid softly. “The pride of the family finished off at the age of twelve or thirteen.”

  “How do you know that?” Barbara asked from the doorway.

  “There are no pictures of him as a grown man.”

  As he deferred to her judgment of people, so she deferred to his imagination about them, which was more concrete than hers, but again not infallible. (Maurice Bonenfant died at the age of twenty-seven, by his own hand.)

  They went back into the hall and tried again. This time when the door swung open, they heard voices. The doorway was masked by a folding screen, and there was just time as they emerged from behind it to be aware that they were in a long pink and white room. Mme Viénot rose to greet them, and then led them around the circle of chairs.

  “My mother, Mme Bonenfant …” (a very old woman)

  “Mme Carrère …” (a woman of fifty)

  “M. Carrère …” (a tall, stoop-shouldered man, who was slightly older)

  “And M. Gagny … who is from Canada …” (a young man, very handsome, with prematurely gray hair and black eyebrows)

  When the introductions had been accomplished, the old woman indicated with a smile and a slight gesture that Barbara was to take the empty chair beside her, and Harold sat down next to Mme Viénot.

  Perceiving that their arrival had produced an awkward silence, he leaned forward in his chair and dealt with it himself. He began to tell them about his search through the village for the house of M. Fleury. “Je ne comprends pas les directions que Mme Michot m’a données, et par consequence il me faut demander à tout le monde: ‘Où est la maison de M. Fleury—du côté de là, ou du côté de là?’ On m’a dirigé encore … et encore je ne comprends pas. Alors … je demande ma question à un petit garçon, qui me prendre par la main et me conduire chez M. Fleury, tout près de la bureau de poste.… Je dis ‘merci’ et je frappe à la porte. La porte ouvre un très peu. C’est Mme Fleury qui l’ouvre. Je commence à expliquer, et elle ferme la porte dans ma figure.”

  He saw that the tall middle-aged man was amused, and breathed easier.

  “Le garçon frappe à la porte,” he continued, “et la porte ouvre un peu. C’est le fils de M. Fleury, cette fois. Il écoute. Il ne ferme pas la porte.… Quand j’ai fini, il me dit ‘Un instant! Attendez, monsieur!… J’attends, naturellement. J’attends et j’attends.… La porte ouvre. C’est M. Fleury lui-même, les pieds en bas, pas de souliers.… J’explique que madame et les baggages sont à la gare et que nous désirons aller au château.… Il entends. Il est très sympathique, M. Fleury, très gentil. Il envoie son fils en avant pour prendre le clef du garage où le camion repose. Le garage est fermé parce que c’est dimanche.… Et puis, nous commençons. M. Fleury—” He paused, unable to remember the word for “pump,” and realized that he was out in deep water. “—M. Fleury pompe l’air dans les tires, et moi, je lève quelques sacs de grain qui sont dans le derrière du camion. Le camion est plus vieil que le Treaty de Versailles.… Plusier années plus vieil. Et le fils de M. Fleury versait un litre de petrol dans le tank, que est empty, et l’eau dans le radiator.… ”

  Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Mme Viénot nervously unfolding her hands. Was the story going on too long? He tried to hurry it up, and when he couldn’t think of the French word he fell back on the English, which he hopefully pronounced as if it were French. Sometimes it was. The camion that antedated the Treaty of Versailles shuddered and shook and came to life, and the company burst out laughing. Harold sat back in his chair. He had pulled it off, and he felt flooded with pleasure.

  There was a pause, less awkward than before. Mme Bonenfant confided to Barbara that she was eighty-three and a great-grandmother.

  Mme Viénot said to Harold: “M. Gagny has just been telling us why General de Gaulle is not held in greater esteem in London.”

  “So many noble qualities,” M. Carrère said in French, “so many of the elements of true greatness—all tied to that unfortunate personality. My older brother went to school with him, and even then his weaknesses—especially his vanity—were apparent.

  The conversation shifted to the Mass they had just come from. It had a special interest in that the priest, who was saying his first Mass, was a boy from the village. Mme Viénot explained parenthetically to the Americans that, since the war, young men of aristocratic family, really quite a number of them, were turning to the priesthood or joining holy orders. It was a new thing, a genuine religious awakening. There had been nothing like it in France for more than two generations.

  The Americans were conscious of the fact that the gray-haired young man could have talked to them in English and, instead, continued to speak to the others in French. The rather cool manner in which he acknowledged the introduction implied that he felt no responsibility for or interest in Americans.

  Harold looked around at the room. It was a long rectangle, with a fireplace at either end. The curtains and the silk upholstery were a clear silvery pink. The period furniture was light and graceful and painted a flat white, like the molding and the fireplaces, which were identical. So were the two horizontal mirrors over the Adam mantelpieces. In the center of the room, four fluted columns and a sculptured plant stand served as a reminder that in France neo-classicism is not a term of reproach. Along one side of the room, a series of French doors opened onto the terrace and made the drawing room well lighted even on a gray day. The circle of chairs where they were sitting now was in front of one of the fireplaces. At the other end of the room, in front of the other fireplace, there were two small sofas and some chairs that were not arranged for conversation. In its proportions and its use of color and the taste with which it was furnished, it was unlike any drawing room he had ever seen. The more he looked at it, the more strange and beautiful it became.

  The sermon had exceeded the expectations of the company, and they continued to talk about it complacently until the servant girl opened the hall doors and removed the folding screen. The women rose and started toward the dining room. M. Carrère had to be helped from his chair, and then, leaning on his cane, he made his way into the hall. Harold, lightheaded with the success of his story, waited for the Canadian to precede him through the doorway. The Canadian stopped too, and when Harold said: “After you,” he changed. Right in front of Harold’s eyes he stopped being a facsimile of a Frenchman and became exactly like an American. With his hand on Harold’s shoulder, he said: “Go on, go on,” goodnaturedly, and propelled him through the door ahead of him.

  In the dining room Harold found himself seated between Mme Carrère and old Mme Bonenfant. Mme Carrère was served before him, and he watched her out of the corner of his eye, and was relieved to see that there was no difference; table manners were the same here as at home. But his initial attempts to make conversation met with failure. Mme Carrère seemed to be a taciturn woman, and something told him that any attempt to be friendly with her might be regarded as being overfriendly. Mme Bonenfant either did not understand or was simply not interested in his description of the terraced gardens of Mont-Saint-Michel.

  George Ireland, the American boy who had spent the previous summer at the château and was indirectly responsible for their being here now had said that it was one of his duties to keep Mme Bonenfant’s water glass filled. Harold saw that there was a carafe of water in front of him and that her glass was empty. Though she allowed him to fill it again and again during dinner, she addressed her remarks to M. Carrère.

  As the soup gave way to the fish and the fish in turn to the entree, the talk ranged broadly over national and international politics, life in Paris before the war, travel in Spain and Italy, the volcanic formations of Ischia, the national characteristics of the Swiss. In his effort to follow what was being said around the table, Harold forgot to eat, and this slowed up the service. He left his knife and fork on his plate and, too late, saw them being carried out to the pantry. A clean knife and fork were brought to him with the next course. Mme Viénot interrupted the flow of wit and anecdote to inquire if h
e understood what was being said.

  “I understand part of it,” he said eagerly.

  A bleak expression crossed her face. Instead of smiling or saying something reassuring to him, she looked down at her plate. He glanced across the table at Barbara and saw, with surprise, that she was her natural self.

  After the dessert course, Mme Viénot pushed her chair back and they all rose from the table at once. Mme Carrère, passing the sideboard, lifted the lid of a faïence soup tureen and took out a box of Belgian sugar. The Canadian kept his sugar in a red lacquer cabinet in the drawing room, and Mme Viénot hers and her mother’s in the writing desk in the petit salon. Harold excused himself and went upstairs to their room. Strewing the contents of the dufflebag over the bathroom floor, he finally came upon the boxes of cube sugar they had brought with them from America. When he walked into the drawing room, the servant girl had brought the silver coffee service and Mme Viénot was measuring powdered coffee into little white coffee cups.

  The Canadian lit a High Life cigarette. Harold, conscious of the fact that their ten cartons had to last them through four months, thought it might be a good idea to wait until he and Barbara were alone to smoke, but she was looking at him expectantly, and so he took a pack from his coat pocket, ripped the cellophane off, and offered the cigarettes to her and then around the circle. They were refused politely until he came to Mme Viénot, who took one, as if she was not quite sure what it might be for but was always willing to try something new.

  “I think the church is in Chartres,” Barbara said, and he knew that she had been talking about the little church at the end of the carline. There were two things that she remembered particularly from that earlier trip to France and that she wanted to see again. One was a church, a beautiful little church at the end of a streetcar line, and the other was a white château with a green lawn in front of it. She had no idea where either of them was.

  “You don’t mean the cathedral?” Mme Viénot asked.

  “Oh, no,” Barbara said.