Save Me the Waltz: A Novel (13 page)

“Well, go to this address anyway,” David insisted. “We’ll wait.”

The cabby shrugged his shoulders reluctantly.

“To wait is ten francs an hour,” he argued disgruntled.

“All right. We are American millionaires.”

“Let’s sit on the robe,” said Alabama, “the cab looks full of fleas.”

They folded the brown army-issue blanket under their soaking thighs.

“Tiens!
There is the Monsieur!” The cabby pointed indolently at a handsome meridional with a patch over one eye who was engrossed in removing the handle from his shop door directly across the way.

“We want to see a villa, the ‘Blue Lotus,’ which I understand is for rent,” David began politely.

“Impossible. For nothing in the world is it barely possible. I have not had my lunch.”

“Of course, Monsieur will allow me to pay for his free time——”

“That is different,” the agent beamed expansively. “Monsieur understands that since the war things are different and one must eat.”

“Of course.”

The rickety cab rolled along past fields of artichoke blue as spots of the hour’s intensity, through long stretches of vegetation shimmering in the heat like submarine growths. A parasol pine rose here and there in the flat landscape, the road wound hot and blinding ahead to the sea. The water, chipped by the sun, spread like a floor of luminous shavings in a workshop of light.

“There she is!” the man cackled proudly.

The “Blue Lotus” parched in a treeless expanse of red clay. They opened the door and stepped into the coolness of the shuttered hall.

“This is the master’s bedroom.”

On the huge bed lay a pair of batik pajamas and a chartreuse pleated nightgown.

“The casualness of life in this country amazes me,” Alabama said. “They obviously just spent the night and went off.”

“I wish we could live like that, without premeditation.”

“Let’s see the plumbing.”

“But, Madame, the plumbing is a perfection. You see?”

A massive carved door swung open on a Copenhagen toilet bowl with blue chrysanthemums climbing over the edge in a wild Chinese delirium. The walls were tiled with many-colored fishing scenes of Normandy. Alabama tentatively tested the brass rod designed to operate these pictorial fantasies.

“It doesn’t work,” she said.

The man raised his eyebrows Buddhistically.

“But! It must be because we have had no rain! Sometimes when it doesn’t rain, there is no water.”

“What do you do if it doesn’t rain again all summer?” David asked, fascinated.

“But then, Monsieur, it is sure to rain,” the agent smiled cheerfully.

“And in the meantime?”

“Monsieur is unnatural.”

“Well, we’ve got to have something more civilized than this.”

“We ought to go to Cannes,” Alabama said.

“I’ll take the first train when we get back.”

David telephoned her from St-Raphaël.

“Just the place,” he said, “for sixty dollars a month—garden, waterworks, kitchen stove, wonderful composition from the cupola—metal roofing of an aviation field, I understand—I’ll be over for you tomorrow morning. We can move right in.”

The day enveloped them in an armor of sunshine. They hired a limousine stuffy with reminiscences of state occasions. Paper nasturtiums fading in the cubism of a cut glass triangle obscured the view along the coast.

“Drive, drive, why can’t I drive?” Bonnie screamed.

“Because the golf sticks have to go there, and, David, you can get your easel back here.”

“Um—um—um,” the baby droned, content with the motion. “Nice, nice, nice.”

The summer ate its way into their hearts and crooned along the shaggy road. Tabulating the past, Alabama could find no real upheavals in spite of the fact that its tempo created the illusion that she lived in
madcap abandon. Feeling so wonderful, she wondered why they had ever left home.

Three o’clock in July, and Nanny gently thinking of England from hilltops and rented motorcars and under all unusual circumstances, white roads and pines—life quietly humming a lullaby. Anyway, it was fun being alive.

“Les Rossignols” was back from the sea. The smell of tobacco flowers permeated the faded blue satin of the Louis XV parlor; a wooden cuckoo protested the gloom of the oak dining room; pine needles carpeted the blue and white tiles of the balcony; petunias fawned on the balustrade. The gravel drive wound round the trunk of a giant palm sprouting geraniums in its crevices and lost itself in the perspective of a red-rose arbor. The cream calcimined walls of the villa with its painted windows stretched and yawned in the golden shower of late sun.

“There’s a summerhouse,” said David proprietorily, “built of bamboo. It looks as if Gauguin had put his hand to landscape gardening.”

“It’s heavenly. Do you suppose there really is a
rossignol?
”

“Undoubtedly—every night on toast for supper.”

“Comme ça, Monsieur, comme ça
,” Bonnie sang exultantly.

“Look! She can speak French already.”

“It’s a marvelous, marvelous place, this France. Isn’t it, Nanny?”

“I’ve lived here for twenty years, Mr. Knight, and I’ve never got to understand these people. Of course, I haven’t had much opportunity to learn French, being always with the better class of family.”

“Quite,” said David emphatically. Whatever Nanny said sounded like an elaborate recipe for making fudge.

“The ones in the kitchen,” said Alabama, “are a present from the house agent, I suppose.”

“They are—three magnificent sisters. Perhaps the Three Fates, who knows?”

Bonnie’s babbling rose to an exultant yell through the dense foliage.

“Swim! Now swim!” she cried.

“She’s thrown her doll in the goldfish pool,” observed Nanny excitedly. “Bad Bonnie! To treat little Goldilocks that way.”

“Her name’s Comme Ça,” Bonnie expostulated. “Did you see her swimming?”

The doll was just visible at the bottom of the sleek green water.

“Oh, we are going to be so happy away from all the things that almost got us but couldn’t quite because we were too smart for them!” David grabbed his wife about the waist and shoved her through the wide windows onto the tile floors of their new home. Alabama inspected
the painted ceiling. Pastel cupids frolicked amidst the morning glories and roses in garlands swelled like goiters or some malignant disease.

“Do you think it will be as nice at it seems?” she said skeptically.

“We are now in Paradise—as nearly as we’ll ever get—there’s the pictorial evidence of the fact,” he said, following her eyes.

“You know, I can never think of a
rossignol
without thinking of the
Decameron
. Dixie used to hide it in her top drawer. It’s funny how associations envelop our lives.”

“Isn’t it? People can’t really jump from one thing to another, I don’t suppose—there’s always something carried over.”

“I hope it’s not our restlessness, this time.”

“We’ll have to have a car to get to the beach.”

“Sure. But tomorrow we’ll go in a taxi.”

Tomorrow was already bright and hot. The sound of a ProvenҪal gardener carrying on his passive resistance to effort woke them. The rake trailed lazily over the gravel; the maid put their breakfast on the balcony.

“Order us a cab, will you, daughter of this flowery republic?”

David was jubilant. It was unnecessary to be anything so dynamic before breakfast, commented Alabama privately with matinal cynicism.

“And so, Alabama, we have never known in our times the touch of so strong and sure a genius as we have before us in the last canvases of one David Knight! He begins work after a swim every day, and he continues until another swim at four o’clock refreshes his self-satisfaction.”

“And I luxuriate in this voluptuous air and grow fat on bananas and Chablis while David Knight grows clever.”

“Sure. A woman’s place is with the wine,” David approved emphatically. “There is art to be undone in the world.”

“But you’re not going to work all the time, are you?”

“I hope so.”

“It’s a man’s world,” Alabama sighed, measuring herself on a sunbeam. “This air has the most lascivious feel——”

The machinery of the Knights’ existence, tended by the three women in the kitchen, moved without protest through the balmy world while the summer puffed itself slowly to pompous exposition. Flowers bloomed sticky and sweet under the salon; the stars at night caught in the net of the pine tops. The garden trees said, “Whip—poor—will,” the warm black shadows said, “Whoo—oo.” From the windows of “Les Rossignols” the Roman arena at Fréjus swam in the light from the moon bulging low over the land like a full wineskin.

David worked on his frescoes; Alabama was much alone.

“What’ll we
do
, David,” she asked, “with ourselves?”

David said she couldn’t always be a child and have things provided for her to do.

A broken-down carryall transported them every day to the beach. The maid referred to the thing as
la voiture
and announced its arrival in the mornings with much ceremony during their brioche and honey. There was always a family argument about how soon it was safe to swim after a meal.

The sun played lazily behind the Byzantine silhouette of the town. Bathhouses and a dancing pavilion bleached in the white breeze. The beach stretched for miles along the blue. Nanny habitually established a British Protectorate over a generous portion of the sands.

“It’s bauxite makes the hills so red,” Nanny said. “And, Madam, Bonnie will need another bathing costume.”

“We can get it at the Galeries des Objectives Perdues,” Alabama suggested.

“Or the Occasion des Perspectives Oubliés,” said David.

“Sure. Or off a passing porpoise, or out of that man’s beard.”

Alabama indicated a lean burned figure in duck trousers with shiny ribs like an ivory Christ and faunlike eyes beckoning an obscene fantasy.

“Good morning,” the figure said formidably. “I have often seen you here.”

His voice was deep and metallic and swelled with the confidence of a gentleman.

“I am the proprietor of my little place. We have eating and there is dancing in the evenings. I am glad to welcome you to St-Raphaël. There are not many people in the summer, as you see, but we make ourselves very happy. My establishment would be honored if you would accept an American cocktail after your bath.”

David was surprised. He hadn’t expected a welcoming committee. It was as if they had passed a club election.

“With pleasure,” he said hastily. “Do we just come inside?”

“Yes, inside. Then I am Monsieur Jean to my friends! But you must surely meet the people, so charming people.” He smiled contemplatively and vanished in splinters on the sparkle of the morning.

“There aren’t any people,” Alabama said, staring about.

“Maybe he keeps them in bottles inside. He certainly looks enough like a genie to be capable of it. We’ll soon know.”

Nanny’s voice, ferocious in its disapproval of gin and genies, called Bonnie from over the sands.

“I said no! I said no! I said no!” The child raced to the water’s edge.

“I’ll get her, nurse.”

The David Knights precipitated themselves into the blue dye after the child.

“You ought to come out a sailor, somehow,” Alabama suggested.

“But I’m being Agamemnon,” protested David.

“I’m a little teeny fish,” Bonnie contributed. “A lovely fish, I am!”

“All right. You can play if you want to. Oh, my! Isn’t it wonderful to feel that nothing could disturb us now and life can go on as it should?”

“Perfectly, radiantly, gorgeously wonderful! But I want to be Agamemnon.”

“Please be a fish with me,” Bonnie inveigled. “Fishes are nicer.”

“Very well. I’ll be an Agamemnon fish. I can only swim with my legs, see?”

“But how can you be two things at once?”

“Because, my daughter, I am so outrageously clever that I believe I could be a whole world to myself if I didn’t like living in Daddy’s better.”

“The salt water’s pickled your brain, Alabama.”

“Ha! Then I shall have to be a pickled Agamemnon fish, and that’s much harder. It has to be done without the legs as well,” Alabama gloated.

“Much easier, I should think, after a cocktail. Let’s go in.”

The room was cool and dark after the glare of the beach. A pleasantly masculine smell of dried salt water lurked in the draperies. The rising waves of heat outside gave the bar a sense of motion as if the stillness of the interior were a temporary resting place for very active breezes.

“Combs, yes we have no combs today,” Alabama sang, inspecting herself in the mildewed mirror behind the bar. She felt so fresh and slick and salty! She decided the part was better on the other side of her head. In the dim obliteration of the ancient mirror she caught the outline of a broad back in the stiff white uniform of the French Aviation. Gesticulating Latin gallantries, indicating first her, then David, the glass blurred the pantomime. The head of the gold of a Christmas coin nodded urgently, broad bronze hands clutched the air in the vain hope that its tropical richness held appropriate English words to convey so Latin a meaning. The convex shoulders were slim and strong and rigid and slightly hunched in the man’s effort to communicate. He produced a
small red comb from his pocket and nodded pleasantly to Alabama. As her eyes met those of the officer, Alabama experienced the emotion of a burglar unexpectedly presented with the combination of a difficult safe by the master of the house. She felt as if she had been caught red-handed in some outrageous act.

“Permettez?” said the man.

She stared.

“Permettez,” he insisted. “That means, in English, ‘permettez’ you see?”

The officer lapsed into voluble incomprehensible French.

“No understand,” said Alabama.

“Oui understand,” he repeated superiorly. “Permettez?” He bowed and kissed her hand. A smile of tragic seriousness lit the golden face, an apologetic smile—his face had the charm of an adolescent forced to enact unexpectedly in public some situation long rehearsed in private. Their gestures were exaggerated as if they were performing a role for two other people in the distance, dim spectres of themselves.