Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series) (17 page)

“Beauty, exaltation, the golden bough,” Berthe Trépat said. “Don’t say a word, I can make a perfect guess. I also came to Paris, from Pau, quite a few years ago, looking for the golden bough. But I was weak, young man, I was … What’s your name?”

“Oliveira,” Oliveira said.

“Oliveira…
Desolives
, the Mediterranean … I’m from the South too, we’re panic, young man, we’re both panic. Not like Valentin, who is from Lille. Northerners, cold as fish, like quicksilver. Do you believe in the Great Work? Fulcanelli, you
understand … No need to answer, I can see that you’re an initiate. Perhaps you haven’t reached the experiences that really count yet, while I … Take the
Synthesis
, for example. What Valentin said is right, radiesthesia points out kindred souls to me and I think that shows through in the piece. Or don’t you think so?”

“Oh, yes.”

“You have a lot of karma, you can spot it in a minute …” her hand gripped him strongly; the pianist was ascending to a state of meditation and to do that she had to hold herself tightly against Oliveira who resisted only slightly, just enough to get her to cross the square and go up the Rue Soufflot. “If Étienne or Wong sees me they’ll give me a hard time,” thought Oliveira. But why should he care what Étienne or Wong might think, as if after the metaphysical rivers mixed with dirty pieces of cotton the future might have some importance. “Now it’s just as if I’d never been in Paris and still here I am stupidly attent to what is happening to me and it bothers me that this poor old woman is starting to come on with the sadness bit, the clutch of a dying man after the pavan and the complete flop of the concert. I’m worse than a kitchen rag, worse than dirty cotton, I really have nothing to do with my own self.” Because this idea stayed with him, at that hour of the night and in the rain and stuck to Berthe Trépat, he began to feel like the last light in a huge mansion where all the other lights had gone out one by one, he began to get the notion that all of this was not he, that somewhere he was waiting for himself, that this person walking in the Latin Quarter hauling along an old woman who was hysterical and maybe a nymphomaniac was only a
Doppelgänger
, while the other one, the other…“Did you stay there in your Almagro neighborhood? Or did you drown on the voyage, in whores’ beds, in meaningful experiences, in the well-known necessary disorder? Everything seems to console me, it’s comfortable to think of one’s salvation even though it’s just barely, the guy who is going to be hanged must keep on thinking that something will happen at the last minute, an earthquake, a noose that breaks twice so that they have to pardon him, the phone call from the governor, the uprising that will set him free. And now this old girl is just about ready to start grabbing at my fly.”

But Berthe Trépat was lost in didascalic convolutions and had
begun to tell with enthusiasm of her meeting with Germaine Tailleferre in the Gare de Lyon and how Tailleferre had said that the
Prelude for Orange Rhombuses
was extremely interesting and that she would speak to Marguerite Long about it so she could include it in one of her concerts.

“It would have been a success, Mr. Oliveira, a triumph. But you know impresarios, little dictators, even the best artists are victims … Valentin thought that perhaps one of the younger pianists, someone who wouldn’t worry, could do it … But they’re just as ruined as the old ones, they’re all cut from the same cloth.”

“What about yourself, in another concert …”

“I never want to play again,” Berthe Trépat said, hiding her face although Oliveira was careful about looking at her. “It’s a shame that I still have to appear on stage to introduce my music when I should really be a muse, you know, the one who inspires artists; they would all come to me and beg me to let them play my things, beg me, yes, beg me. And I would give them permission, because I think my work is the spark that should ignite the sensibility of the public here and in the United States, in Hungary … Yes, I would give them my permission, but first they would have to come to me and ask for the honor of interpreting my music.”

She clutched Oliveira’s arm, and without knowing why, he had decided to go along the Rue Saint-Jacques and was walking along with the pianist gently in tow. An icy wind was blowing into their faces, filling their eyes and mouths with water, but Berthe Trépat seemed indifferent to any kind of weather, hanging on to Oliveira’s arm as she began to sputter something that would be broken every few words by a hiccup or a short cackle that could have been one of spite or mockery. No, she didn’t live on the Rue Saint-Jacques. No, but she didn’t care where she lived either. She would just as soon keep on walking like that all night long, more than two hundred people for the première of the
Synthesis.

“Valentin is going to get worried if you don’t go home,” Oliveira said, mentally grasping for something to say, a rudder to steer this corseted ball who was rolling along like a sea urchin in the wind and the rain. From out of her lengthy and disjointed rambling he was able to piece together the fact that Berthe Trépat lived on the Rue de l’Estrapade. Half-lost, Oliveira wiped the
water out of his eyes with his free hand and got his bearings like a Conrad hero standing in the prow of a ship. He suddenly had a terrible urge to laugh (and it hurt his empty stomach, cramped his muscles, it was strange and painful and when he would tell Wong about it he wouldn’t begin to believe it). Not at Berthe Trépat, who was going on about the honors she had received in Montpellier and Pau, with an occasional reference to the gold medal. Nor at his having been stupid enough to volunteer his company. He wasn’t quite sure where the urge to laugh was coming from, it came from something previous, something farther back, not because of the concert, which should have been the most laughable thing in the world. Joy, something like a physical form of joy. Even though it was hard for him to believe it, joy. He could have laughed with contentment, pure, delightful, inexplicable contentment. “I’m going crazy,” he thought. “And with this nut on my arm, it must be contagious.” He didn’t have the slightest reason to feel happy, water was seeping through the soles of his shoes and down his collar, Berthe Trépat was grasping his arm tighter and tighter and suddenly she began to be racked by a great sob, every time she mentioned Valentin she would shake all over and weep, it was a kind of conditioned reflex which in no way could have produced happiness in anyone, not even a madman. And Oliveira, while he wanted to burst out laughing in the worst way, carefully took hold of Berthe Trépat and was slowly leading her towards the Rue de l’Estrapade, towards Number Four, and there was no reason to think so, and much less understand it, but everything was just fine that way, taking Berthe Trépat to Number Four Rue de l’Estrapade, seeing as much as possible that she didn’t step in any puddles or go under the water pouring out of the spouts on the cornices at the corner of the Rue Clotilde. The idle mention of a drink at her place (with Valentin) didn’t seem bad at all to Oliveira; he would have to climb five or six floors towing the pianist after him, go into an apartment where Valentin had probably not lit the stove (but there would be a miraculous salamander, a bottle of cognac, they could take off their shoes, put their feet next to the fire, talk about art and about the gold medal). And he might even be able to come back some other night to Berthe Trépat and Valentin’s place with a bottle of wine and keep them company, cheer them up. It was something like going to visit the old man in the
hospital, going anywhere where until that moment it had not occurred to him to go, to the hospital, to the Rue de l’Estrapade. Before the joy there came the thing that was giving him terrible cramps in the stomach, a hand clasped underneath his skin like a delightful torture (he would have to ask Wong, a hand clasped underneath his skin).

“Number Four, right?”

“Yes, that house with the balcony,” Berthe Trépat said. “An eighteenth-century mansion. Valentin said that Ninon de Lenclos had lived on the fourth floor. He’s such a liar. Ninon de Lenclos. Oh, yes, Valentin lies all the time. It’s almost stopped raining, hasn’t it?”

“It’s not raining so much,” Oliveira conceded. “Let’s cross here, all right?”

“The neighbors,” Berthe Trépat said, looking at the café on the corner. “Naturally, the old woman from the eighth floor … You can’t imagine how much she drinks. Do you see her there at the side table? She’s looking at us, tomorrow the gossip will start …”

“Please, madame,” Oliveira said. “Look out for that puddle.”

“Oh, I know her, and the landlord too. They hate me because of Valentin. I’ve got to admit he has done some … He can’t stand the old woman on the eighth floor, so one night when he came home quite drunk he daubed cat turd all over her door, from top to bottom, he made drawings with it … I’ll never forget the uproar … Valentin in the tub taking the crap off, because in his true artistic enthusiasm he had got it all over himself, while I had to deal with the police, the old woman, the whole neighborhood … You can’t imagine what I’ve gone through, and me, with my standing … Valentin is awful, like a child.”

Oliveira could see the white-haired man again, his jowls, his gold chain. It was like a path suddenly opening up in the middle of the wall: all you have to do is edge one shoulder in a little bit and enter, open a path through the stones, go through their thickness and come out into something else. The hand was clutching at his stomach so much that he was feeling nauseous. He was inconceivably happy.

“I’d like to have a
fine à l’eau
before I go up,” Berthe Trépat said, stopping at the doorway and looking at him. “This pleasant walk has made me a little cold, and besides, the rain …”

“With pleasure,” Oliveira said, disappointed. “But maybe it would be better if you went right up and took off your shoes, your feet are soaked.”

“There’s enough heat in the café,” Berthe Trépat said. “I don’t know whether Valentin has come home, it’s just like him to be wandering around here looking for some friends. On nights like this he falls terribly in love with anyone, he’s like a puppy, believe me.”

“I’ll bet he’s home and has the stove going,” Oliveira artfully suggested. “A good glass of punch, some wool socks … You’ve got to take care of yourself, madame.”

“Oh, I’m like a rock. But I don’t have any money to pay for anything in the café. Tomorrow I’ll have to go back to the concert hall and pick up my
cachet
…It isn’t safe to go around at night with so much money in your purse, this neighborhood, terrible …”

“It would be my pleasure to buy you a drink,” Oliveira said. He had managed to get her into the doorway and warm, damp air came from the hallway, musty-smelling, like mushroom sauce. His contentment was slowly going away as if it had kept on walking along alone down the street instead of staying with him in the doorway. But he had to fight against that idea, the joy had only lasted a few minutes, but it had been so new, so something else, and that moment when she had described Valentin in the bathtub all anointed with cat filth, the feeling had come over him that he could take a step forward, a real step, something without feet or legs, a step through a stone wall, and he could go in there and go forward and save himself from the other side, from the rain in his face and the water in his shoes. It was impossible to understand all that, as it always was with something so necessary to be understood. A joy, a hand underneath his skin squeezing his stomach, a hope—if it was possible to think of a word that way, if it was possible that something confused which he could not grasp could materialize under a notion of hope, it was just too idiotic, it was incredibly beautiful and now it was going away, it was going away in the rain because Berthe Trépat had not invited him up, she was sending him back to the corner café, re-enlisting him in the order of the day, in everything that had happened all during the day, Crevel, the docks on the Seine, the desire to go off in any direction, the old man on the stretcher, the mimeographed
program, Rose Bob, the water in his shoes. With a gesture that was slow enough to lift a mountain off his shoulders, Oliveira pointed at the two cafés which broke the darkness on the corner. But Berthe Trépat didn’t seem to have any preference; suddenly she forgot her intentions, muttered something without letting go of Oliveira’s arm, and was looking furtively into the darkened corridor.

“He’s back,” she said quickly, fixing her teary eyes on Oliveira. “He’s up there, I can feel it. And somebody’s with him, that’s for sure, every time he introduced me at a concert he would run home to jump into bed with one of his boyfriends.”

She was panting, digging her fingers into Oliveira’s arm, and turning around every minute to peer into the darkness. From up above they heard a muffled mewing, like someone running along a felt path, the noise of which echoed down along the snail-twist of the staircase. Oliveira didn’t know what to say and he took out a cigarette and lit it with some difficulty.

“I forgot my key,” Berthe Trépat said so low that it was hard to hear her. “He never leaves a key for me when he’s going to go to bed with one of them.”

“But you really must get some rest, madame.”

“What does he care whether I rest or explode. They’ve probably lit the fire and they’re using up all the coal that Dr. Lemoine gave me. And they’re probably naked, naked. Yes, in my bed, naked, the bastards. And tomorrow I’ll have to put everything in order, and Valentin has probably vomited on the pillow, he always does … Tomorrow like always. Me. Tomorrow.”

“Don’t you have any friends around here, somewhere where you could spend the night?” Oliveira asked.

“No,” Berthe Trépat answered out of the corner of her eye. “Believe me, young man, most of my friends live in Neuilly. The only thing I have here are those old women and the Algerians on the eighth floor, a dirty lot.”

“If you want me to, I’ll go up and tell Valentin to open up,” Oliveira said. “Maybe if you wait in the café we can get everything arranged.”

“Arrange what?” Berthe Trépat said, dragging out her words as if she were drunk. “He won’t open up, I know him too well. They’ll huddle up quiet in the dark. Why should they want it light, now of all times? They’ll turn on the lights later, when
Valentin feels sure that I’ve gone to spend the night in a hotel or a café.”