Beautiful Soul: An American Elegy (22 page)

Simone’s not here, she
said, and gestured vaguely at another part of the room.

I know. It’s you I want to
see.

Why?
she
said in English.

I didn’t know what else to do
so I grabbed her by the hand—that bird hand. She pulled away from me.

Please let’s go outside, I
said. Panting a little, eyes unlidded.

We skirted the walls to
avoid the crush. Outside on the street it was raining lightly. I took note of a
police van halfway down the block, and three or five
flics
were standing around in
the street next to it, smoking. We stood under an awning.

Gustave, she said, trying
it out. Can I call you Gus?

I’d rather you didn’t, I
mumbled. Then, hastily: Yes.

We were quiet for a moment.
She took out a packet of cigarettes and offered me one. I took it loosely
between my fingers and let it hang there. She offered me the flame of her
lighter and I shook my head.

Simone’s told me about you,
she said. She looked at me frankly. She says you have a gigantic dick. But it
doesn’t seem that big because you’re so big. In fact, that makes it look kind
of small.

Evasive maneuvers seemed
called for. You study philosophy, don’t you? I said to the rain.

I study philosophy, she
echoed.

Plato? I said, knowing
immediately it was the wrong thing, the wrong name or note.

All of philosophy is just
footnotes to Plato, she said kindly.

Who said that?

His name was Whitehead.

I’ve heard of Sartre of
course, I said. I’ve seen his play.
And Beauvoir.
Someone
pointed her out to me on the street once.

De Beauvoir, she corrected.
Yes, I like her. She knows the truth about women.

Which is?

You don’t really want to
know, she said, picking tobacco off of her tongue.

I don’t read any
philosophy, I said stupidly. Then, to compound it: I study graphic design. I
want to study art, but I study graphic design.

She smiled up at me. I
know.

The door to the gallery
opened and a stream of young women and a few men emerged, giggling. The men, to
show their bravado, began to shout at the cops down the street, calling them
Fascists and so forth. The cops stood there, heads cocked to one side like
curious dogs. I moved a few steps away from them, but when M didn’t move, I
came back. She didn’t turn around.

Charles stepped out with a
woman on his arm, a new swan, not Simone—this one had a cropped peroxide cap
for hair and layers of white foundation to render her face sepulchral and
ghostly. This place is dead, Gustave. I’ve got some hash—we’re going to the
cemetery. You and your friend want to come along? Before I could say anything M
had said
Sure
, why not, in that sharp flat American
way that cut through and mocked the very notion of hesitation. We began to
trail behind Charles and the other woman down the Rue Huyghens toward the vast
and silent expanse of the cemetery, shut tight for the night. When we reached
the boulevard, we steered past the northern entrance and then ran through the
parked cars, across the wet street, to the high stone wall. We’ll never get
over, M said. Charles looked at me and I went and placed myself spread-eagled
against the cold wet wall, ivy tickling my face. He laced his fingers together
and M, without hesitating, stepped into his grip and he hoisted her onto my
back. I felt the soft weight of her for a moment,
then
she climbed onto my shoulders and to the top of the wall. The new Swan was
next, then Charles himself. Charles and his Swan were giggling, but suddenly
they stopped and Charles hissed at me to come on, someone was coming. I glanced
to my right and saw a light streaking in the mist. Digging my fingers into the
mass of ivy, I hoisted myself to the top of the wall, swung my legs over, and
dropped to the hard ground below, where the others were waiting. We held our
breaths, listening to the crunch of gravel on the other side of the wall, and
then the crunching passed.

We were in the city of the
dead. Rows upon rows of upright stone, some of it carved into angels with and
without wings, some of it in obelisks, many crosses, many simple slabs. We
walked down the narrow rows in twos, not talking much, passing a joint back and
forth. Charles and his Swan were ahead of us—he was hunting for a particular
tomb, Proudhon’s I think. I was only astonished to be there, at the center of a
silent universe with this beautiful girl who barely came up to my sternum
walking beside me.

Do you think about death?
she
asked.

You’re the philosopher.

I mean your own death. Do
you think about it?

I don’t, I said. I felt
again that this was the wrong thing to say—that I was, as you Americans say,
blowing it. But I couldn’t pretend to think thoughts I didn’t have. I tried to
find a way to say this.

I want to be a painter, I
said with forced loftiness. I’m interested in what I can see. I can’t see
death. Only decay.

Look around and you’ll see
both.

We were indeed surrounded
by the dead, and by a dead darkness impossible to find in Paris. It reminded me
of home, at night, but inverted: instead of a square of light surrounded by the
dark (with the strong ceaseless life of the river felt rather than seen, never
far off) we were in what I felt to be a vast field of blackness haloed by the
city. Except that the tombs caught the light, wet as they were. The white
marble ones in particular seemed to be on fire, but coldly. And the shadows
were crazy, falling in all directions like chess pieces swept off the board.

Brancusi’s around here
somewhere, I said, stumbling.
And Chaim Soutine.
Do
you know his work? He was a great friend of Modigliani. He painted carcasses
that look like faces.
And faces that look like carcasses.

M smiled up to me. Indeed
this counselor, she quoted, is now most still, most secret, and most grave. Who
was in life a foolish prating
knave.

What does “prating” mean?

M shrugged. We had come to
a stop at a crossroads between graves while Charles and his girl kept on moving
ahead. They were leaning together as though drunk, barely supporting each
other, like the shadows.

Simone says you’re from
Vietnam.

She said that? I’m not.
Nobody’s from Vietnam.

The Vietnamese are, I said
stupidly.

We are all Vietnamese, she
said. Quoting again

Aren’t you an American?

I lived in America. Not
anymore.

But you’re not from there.

You’re more American than I
am, she said, glancing up at me.

What does that mean?

Nothing.

If you’re saying I’m
provincial, you’re right, I said. You can’t insult me with that. In fact, you
can’t insult me at all. Charles tries sometimes. He doesn’t understand what it
is to come from nowhere and have nothing. But Americans are rich. I’d like to be
rich, but I’m not. So you shouldn’t say I’m American.

She smiled. You’re kind of
dumb, she said. I like that.

I thought she wanted me to kiss her, but it seemed
ridiculous. Standing like that, in the wet cemetery (the mist had gathered itself
into a proper rain at this point, streaking her dark hair into commas on her
forehead), I felt as I’ve felt so often the grotesqueness of my height. She was
so far away.

Gustave,
mon
vieux, big old
man in a bespoke pinstriped suit, pear-shaped shadow on a flimsy chair, dust
motes dancing in a last shaft of sunlight pouring past his shoulder, nearly
caressing his empty scalp. The listener is occluded, there’s only us, the
eavesdroppers, the voyeurs, still trying to grasp the picture that his thousand
words are composing. Still talking in other words, his fingers laced together,
looking steadily into the camera, violet glints in his gray-blue eyes.

I began to see M more
often, yet there was no question of anything between us. For one thing she had
a boyfriend, a Vietnamese student named Ly Cam. I asked her if she only dated
Vietnamese men, and she said
Yes
the way she sometimes
did, not to mean yes but to tell me I should stop asking stupid questions. And
that’s how she answered all the questions I asked her that were meant, in my
clumsy way, to open up a path between us for the kiss I’d wanted to give her in
the cemetery that night. One evening we were in a café and I was drunk and I
asked her if she wanted to know how strong I was. Yes, she said looking down.
But I was drunk enough to ignore the real meaning of that yes, and so without
pausing I scooped her up in my arms, spread my legs apart, and lifted her over
my head like she was a dumbbell. Everyone was looking at us and hooting,
applauding, mocking me. I am strong! I bellowed like a gored ox. I am strong!

Please put me down, M said
in the gentlest voice I’d ever heard, and so after a moment I did.

In spite of this behavior M
continued to tolerate my presence, in the halls and courtyards of the Sorbonne,
at the seedy bars she favored, in the apartment she shared with Simone. I was
far from the only moth drawn to the flame of those two women, fundamentally
similar as women are, yet with completely different capacities for imagination
and for danger. Often enough I’d find Ly Cam there, bearded like Che, sitting
cross-legged on the floor strumming his guitar and singing Woody Guthrie songs
in his own private melange of Vietnamese, English, and French. He was half my
size, smaller even, exactly M’s height; if I worried him he gave no sign. And
really I gave him no reason to worry, in spite of my clowning: I was simply
built on a different scale than he and M, so very less fine-boned in body and
in mind, so that he couldn’t have foreseen any connection more profound than
curiosity. Ly Cam was very popular: the French students sat at his feet and
asked him questions about the war and his sufferings; plus it was reputed that
he had access to the best drugs. He played to their sympathies, talking about
national liberation and the heroism of Mao and Ho Chi Minh, though M had told
me he was the son of an ARVN officer, a personal crony of Diem’s. She said this
with an indifference that puzzled me.

Doesn’t that make him a
hypocrite? I asked her one rainy afternoon when I had her to myself, except for
Simone and one of her boyfriends shut up in her room, from which occasionally a
low growl would emanate.

He thinks he’s sincere, she
answered. Who am I to judge? Do you know who my father is?

But you sleep with him,
don’t you?

She looked at me pityingly.

How can you sleep with
someone who represents himself one way but is really completely a different
way?

It’s in the past, she said.
Who he was in Saigon, who his father is—that doesn’t tell me
who he is.
And neither does what he says, or what he believes.

What’s left, then?

She gave me a direct look.
It’s his smell.

You’re serious?

Yes.

So what you’re saying then,
I said, getting
angry,
is that the sex is so good it
doesn’t matter that he’s a liar.
A fake.

No.

Well?

I don’t just mean his
smell, that
just seems like the best word for it. It’s his
feel. I can feel him. I look at him, I stand a few inches from him, I touch
him, and I just know he’s a good person. Plus he listens to me.

I listen to you, I said. You
will notice as I recount this conversation I do not spare myself. I did not
spare myself then either. My own sense of dignity, the peasant’s reserve with
which I greeted the strange kaleidoscope that was the Paris of my fellow young
people, always seemed beside the point when it came to M. I let myself hang
open with her, like a tongue hangs out of a shoe.

She shook her head. You
don’t listen. You’re not listening now. You devour, but you don’t listen.

A long, steadily rising cry
caused the door to Simone’s bedroom to vibrate. Neither of us looked away from
the table where our empty coffee cups were. We could both all too easily
visualize what was going on in there.