Save Me the Waltz: A Novel (12 page)

“But I shan’t mind that,” said the Englishman, feeling vaguely that he should be expectant. Anything incomprehensible has a sexual significance to many people under thirty-five.

“And I warn you that I am a monogamist at heart if not in theory,” said Alabama, sensing his difficulty.

“Why?”

“A theory that the only emotion which cannot be repeated is the thrill of variety.”

“Are you wisecracking?”

“Of course. None of my theories work.”

“You’re as good as a book.”

“I am a book. Pure fiction.”

“Then who invented you?”

“The teller of the First National Bank, to pay for some mistakes he made in mathematics. You see, they would have fired him if he hadn’t got the money
some
way,” she invented.

“Poor man.”

“If it hadn’t been for him I should have had to go on being myself forever. And then I shouldn’t have had all these powers to please you.”

“You would have pleased me anyway.”

“What makes you think so?”

“You are a solid person at heart,” he said seriously.

Afraid of having compromised himself, he added hastily, “I thought your husband promised to join us.”

“My husband is up enjoying the stars behind the third lifeboat on the left-hand side.”

“You’re kidding! You couldn’t know; how could you?”

“Occult gifts.”

“You are an outrageous faker.”

“Obviously. And I’m very fed up with myself. Let’s talk about you.”

“I meant to make money in America.”

“Everybody intends to.”

“I had letters.”

“You can put them in your book when you write it.”

“I am not a writer.”

“All people who have liked America write books. You will get neurosis when you have recovered from your trip, then you will have something that had so much better be left unsaid that you will try to get it published.”

“I should like to write about my travels. I liked New York.”

“Yes, New York is like a Bible illustration, isn’t it?”

“Do you read the Bible?”

“The Book of Genesis. I love the part about God’s being so pleased with everything. I like to think that God is happy.”

“I don’t see how he could be.”

“I don’t either, but I suppose
somebody
has to feel every possible way about everything that happens. Nobody else claiming that particular attribute, we have accredited it to God—at least, Genesis has.”

The coast of Europe defied the Atlantic expanse; the tender slid into the friendliness of Cherbourg amidst the green and faraway bells and the clump of wooden shoes over the cobbles.

New York lay behind them. The forces that produced them lay behind
them. That Alabama and David would never sense the beat of any other pulse half so exactly, since we can only recognize in other environments what we have grown familiar with in our own, played no part in their expectations.

“I could cry!” said David, “I want to get the band to play on the deck. It’s the most thrilling goddamned thing in the world—all the experiences of man lie there to choose from!”

“Selection,” said Alabama, “is the privilege for which we suffer in life.”

“It’s so magnificent! It’s glorious! We can have wine with our lunch!”

“Oh, Continent!” she apostrophized, “send me a dream!”

“You have one now,” said David.

“But where? It will only be the place where we were younger in the end.”

“That’s all any place is.”

“Crab!”

“Soapbox orator! I could bowl a bomb through the Bois de Boulogne!”

Passing Lady Sylvia at the douane, she called to them from a heap of fine underwear, a blue hot-water bag, a complicated electrical appliance, and twenty-four pairs of American shoes.

“You will come out with me tonight? I will show you the beautiful city of Paris to portray in your pictures.”

“No,” said David.

“Bonnie,” counselled Alabama, “if you walk into the trucks, they’ll almost certainly mash your feet, which would be neither ‘chic’ nor ‘élégante’—France, I am told, is full of such fine distinctions.”

The train bore them down through the pink carnival of Normandy, past the delicate tracery of Paris and the high terraces of Lyons, the belfries of Dijon and the white romance of Avignon into the scent of lemon, the rustle of black foilage, clouds of moths whipping the heliotrope dusk—into Provence, where people do not need to see unless they are looking for the nightingale.

II

The deep Greek of the Mediterranean licked its chops over the edges of our febrile civilization. Keeps crumbled on the gray hillsides and sowed the dust of their battlements beneath the olives and the cactus. Ancient moats slept bound in tangled honeysuckle; fragile poppies bled the
causeways; vineyards caught on the jagged rocks like bits of worn carpet. The baritone of tired medieval bells proclaimed disinterestedly a holiday from time. Lavender bloomed silently over the rocks. It was hard to see in the vibrancy of the sun.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” said David. “It’s so utterly blue, except when you examine it. Then it’s gray and mauve and if you look closely, it’s harsh and nearly black. Of course, on close inspection, it’s literally an amethyst with opal qualities. What
is
it, Alabama?”

“I can’t see for the view. Wait a minute.” Alabama pressed her nose against the mossy cracks of the castle wall. “It’s really Chanel, Five,” she said positively, “and it feels like the back of your neck.”

“Not Chanel!” David protested. “I think it’s more robe de style. Get over there, I want to take your picture.”

“Bonnie, too?”

“Yes. I guess we’ll have to let her in.”

“Look at Daddy, privileged infant.”

The child wooed its mother with wide incredulous eyes.

“Alabama, can’t you tilt her a little bit? Her cheeks are wider than her forehead and if you could lean her a little bit forward, she wouldn’t look so much like the entrance to the Acropolis.”

“Boo, Bonnie,” Alabama essayed.

They both toppled over in a clump of heliotrope.

“My God! I’ve scratched its face. You haven’t got any Mercurochrome with you, have you?”

She inspected the sooty whirlpools that formed the baby’s knuckles.

“It doesn’t seem to be serious, but we ought to go home and disinfect, I suppose.”

“Baby home,” Bonnie pronounced ponderously, pushing the words between her teeth like a cook straining a puree.

“Home, home, home,” she chanted tolerantly, bobbing down the hill on David’s arm.

“There it is, my dear. ‘The Grand Hotel of Petronius and the Golden Isles.’ See?”

“I think, David, that maybe we should have gone to the Palace and the Universe. They have more palms in their garden.”

“And pass up a name like ours? Your lack of a historical sense is the biggest flaw in your intelligence, Alabama.”

“I don’t see why I should have to have a chronological mind to appreciate these white-powdered roads. We remind me of a troupe of troubadours, your carrying the baby like that.”

“Exactly. Please don’t pull Daddy’s ear. Have you ever seen such heat?”

“And the flies! I don’t know how people stand it.”

“Maybe we’d better move further up the coast.”

“These cobbles make you feel as if you had a peg leg. I’m going to get some sandals.”

They followed the pavings of the French Republic past the bamboo curtains of Hyères, past strings of felt slippers and booths of women’s underwear, past gutters flush with the lush wastage of the south, past the antics of exotic dummies inspiring brown Provençal faces to dream of the freedom of the Foreign Legion, past scurvy-eaten beggars and bloated clots of bougainvillea, dust and palms, a row of horse cabs, the toothpaste display of the village coiffeur exuding the smell of Chypre, and past the caserne which drew the town together like a family portrait will a vast disordered living room.

“There.”

David deposited Bonnie in the damp cool of the hotel lobby on a pile of last year’s
Illustrated London News
.

“Where’s Nanny?”

Alabama poked her head into the bilious plush of the lace parlor.

“Madame Tussaud’s is deserted. I s’pose she’s out gathering material for her British comparison table so when she gets back to Paris she can say, ‘Yes, but the clouds in Hyères were a touch more battleship gray when I was there with the David Knights.’ ”

“She’ll give Bonnie a sense of tradition. I like her.”

“So do I.”

“Where’s Nanny?” Bonnie rolled her eyes in alarm.

“Darling! She’ll be back. She’s out collecting you some nice opinions.”

Bonnie looked incredulous.

“Buttons,” she said, pointing to her dress. “I want some orange jluice.”

“Oh, all right—but you’ll find opinions will be much more useful when you grow up.”

David rang the bell.

“Can we have a glass of orange juice?”

“Ah, Monsieur, we are completely desolated. There aren’t any oranges in summer. It’s the heat; we had thought of closing the hotel since one can have no oranges because of the weather. Wait a minute, I’ll see.”

The proprietor looked like a Rembrandt physician. He rang the bell. A valet de chambre, who also looked like a Rembrandt physician, responded.

“Are there any oranges?” the proprietor asked.

“Not even one,” the man responded with gloomy emphasis.

“You see, Monsieur,” the proprietor announced in a tone of relief, “there is not even one orange.”

He rubbed his hands contentedly—the presence of oranges in his hotel would certainly have caused him much trouble.

“Orange jluice, orange jluice,” bawled the baby.

“Where in the hell is that woman?” shrieked David.

“Mademoiselle?” the proprietor asked. “But she is in the garden, under an olive that is over one hundred years old. What a splendid tree! I must show you.”

He followed them out of the door.

“Such a pretty little boy,” he said. “He will speak French. I have spoke very good English before.”

Bonnie’s femininity was the most insistent thing about her.

“I’m sure you have,” said David.

Nanny had constructed a boudoir out of the springy iron chairs. Sewing was scattered about, a book, several pairs of glasses, Bonnie’s toys. A spirit lamp burned on the table. The garden was completely inhabited. On the whole, it might have been an English nursery.

“I looked on the menu, Madam, and there was goat again, so I just stopped in at the butcher’s. I’m making Bonnie a little stew. This is the filthiest place, if you’ll pardon me, Madam. I don’t believe we shall be able to stand it.”

“We think it
is
too hot,” Alabama said apologetically. “Mr. Knight’s going to look for a villa further up the coast if we don’t find a house this afternoon.”

“I’m sure we could be better pleased. I have spent some time in Cannes with the Horterer-Collins, and we found it very comfortable. Of course, in summer,
they
go to Deauville.”

Alabama felt, somehow, that they, perhaps, should have gone to Deauville—some obligation on their parts to Nanny.

“I might try Cannes,” David said, impressed.

The deserted dining room buzzed with the turbulent glare of midday in the tropics. A decrepit English couple teetered over the rubbery cheese and soggy fruit. The old woman leaned across and distantly rubbed one finger over Bonnie’s flushed cheeks.

“So like my little granddaughter,” she said patronizingly.

Nanny bristled. “Madam, you will please not to stroke the baby.”

“I wasn’t stroking the baby. I was only touching her.”

“This heat has upset her stomach,” concluded Nanny, peremptorily.

“No dinner. I won’t have my dinner,” Bonnie broke the long silence of the English encounter.

“I don’t want mine either. It smells of starch. Let’s get the real estate man now, David.”

Alabama and David stumbled through the seething sun to the main square. An enchantment of lethargy overwhelmed the enclosure. The cabbies slept under whatever shade they could find, the shops were closed, no shadows broke the tenacious, vindictive glare. They found a sprawling carriage and managed to wake the driver by jumping on the step.

“Two o’clock,” the man said irritably. “I am closed till two o’clock!”