Foreign Bodies (2 page)

The ladies’ room led out through a corridor into something like a restaurant, though it resembled more a busy Broadway cafeteria, where shoppers sat surrounded by their newly purchased bags and boxes. The ceiling was misty with smoke; all these people were intent on their cigarettes. She looked around for a seat. Every table was taken. Then she noticed an empty spot strewn with ash-filled saucers, occupied by three noisy men and a woman.

She put her hand on the back of the vacant chair. “Will it be all right if I settle down here for a minute?”

The woman gave out a help-yourself-what-do-I-care shrug. It was impossible to know whether she understood English, or whether the gesture with the chair was enough. The men continued what seemed to be an argument. Here there was no heap of overflowing bags: presumably this intense little circle, like Bea herself, had no local purpose other than refuge from the griddle of the streets. Odors of eggs and coffee all around. Floating tongues of perfume: a mannequin sailing by, uncannily tall, feet uncannily long, a trail of silky garments over one long arm, breastless, eyes of glass, Matisse-red mouth, perfection
of jaw and limbs and stiffened hair, the very model of a Parisian model, exuding streams of fragrance. The men stared, as if sighting a yellow tiger in a place that smelled of kitchen. “
Imbéciles
,” the woman muttered; these syllables, addressed to Bea, were roughened by an unidentifiable accent. The accent matched the woman’s hard look: tight black curls sprouting from an angry head. The visionary living robot slid away, and the men resumed their quarrel — if it was a quarrel. Their talk was French and not-French, it had the sound of half a dozen languages all at once: Europe scrambled. A quarrel, a protest, a lament, a bark of resignation? Bea sank into the clear relief of sitting still and shedding warmth — she could almost fall asleep against these enigmatic contentious voices, wavering like underwater flora at the far rim of her fatigue. The deadly walk back to the hotel still ahead. These people, who were they, where did they come from? Too shabby, too provisional, to be ordinary citizens. They didn’t belong, they were out of place and out of sorts. They hung their cigarettes from their lower lips only to let the time pass. The woman, with those impatient furious whorls springing up around a blotched face, stood up and was pulled down by one of the men. She stood up again, to go where? Where had they come from, where could they go?

Bea left them finally. She had seen their like strewn all over Paris.

She went one last time to find Marvin’s son. The jagged-toothed landlady materialized as before, only now in cotton house slippers, with a wet mop in hand and a big rag wound round her waist. She was washing down the stairs. The boy was gone, since two days gone for good with his knapsack and a girl to help drag out the duffle bag. What did he have in there, iron bars? The room was his for one week more, it was a blessing anyhow that he owed nothing, that useless boy, because of the father in America. The girl? A quiet little dark thing, like an Arab or a gypsy.

— How should I know where he went? He didn’t tell me, why should he?

— I need to talk to him, I’m his aunt.

— I’m sorry for you, a boy like that. My own two nephews, they have real jobs, not one day here, one day there, a different boss every time. Maybe he moved in with her, that one, not a kid like him, already a wrinkle between the eyes, that’s what they do, after a while they move in with them. If you want to take a look upstairs, I don’t object, only watch the steps, they’re still wet. I looked in up there myself, to see about damage. A couple of nails in the wall, I don’t mind, like if he hung a picture.

— Well, but did he leave anything behind?

— I found this up there, if you want it it’s yours, it’s no use to me.

The landlady held out a battered book.

In the taxi going back to her hotel, she examined it. Something like a dictionary, an indecipherable language across from a column of French, not a name inscribed, not a sign of anything. It was old; the pages were brittle and loose. Pointless to keep it, so when she paid the driver and got out, she abandoned it.

The next day she visited the Louvre, and for the rest of the week — as far as her money and the lethal weather allowed — she relied on her guidebook to lead her to storied scenes and ancient glories. Then she went home to her two-and-a-half-room apartment on West 89th Street, where the bulky shoulder of an air conditioner darkened a window and vibrated like a worn drum. And where to Bea or not to Bea was always the question.

July 28, 1952

Dear Bea,

You missed him? You were right there in Paris, you knew exactly where he was, you knew reasonably well where he might be employed, and I depended on you. And what do I get instead? A weather report! The business as you know has me pretty much tied up lately, I couldn’t for love or money get out there myself, my sister takes a vacation and thinks of nothing but her own pleasure and leaves me in the dark. You simply didn’t try hard enough. I realize you don’t know Julian, but if you haven’t got any family feeling, why not a little family responsibility?

You mention a girl. As if in passing. Julian is twenty-three years old. At this age to get himself mixed up with some girl over there is not what I have in mind for my son. You understand that Margaret would go if it was feasible, but as you are aware she is somewhat neurasthenic, and is plainly incapable of traveling alone. Of course we are both very distressed, Margaret even more than I. She finds it intolerable that we sometimes don’t know Julian’s whereabouts, he writes so infrequently. I recognize that he’s at that experimental stage typical of his generation, they want to try out this and try out that, and if it’s a little on the spiteful side, all the better, they go for it. The trouble with these kids is that they haven’t had
the military to toughen them up, not that I’m not glad he’s been spared what I saw in the Pacific. And considering that I got through it as an overaged LCDR it wasn’t so easy for me either. A headstrong boy, I suppose we’ve indulged him. Or maybe not — there’s nothing out of the ordinary with junior year abroad, they all do it nowadays. One year with the Paris meshugas, all right, but it’s been
three
, and he shows no signs of returning to finish up. I can assure you that Margaret and I never anticipated a dropout! As an alumnus who’s made substantial contributions to my alma mater, I’m embarrassed. There was no hint of his not finishing, even with all that crazy reading he was doing, Camus and whatnot, a waste of time for a science major. Or history of science, the soft stuff, he doesn’t have a head for the real thing. Iris is the one, she takes after me, a commonsensical head on her shoulders, and a good head for chemistry too — halfway through a doctorate, in fact. I expect her to marry intelligently. You can never tell how genes ricochet, I sometimes think there’s a bit of you in Julian, and God knows I can’t have him ending up in a bad marriage, not to mention teaching louts on their way to the body shop.

As far as the 500 bucks are concerned, you imply this was to get him out of that slum into something better. Not so! I can imagine what sort of grimy getup he’s been running around in, and I did speak of cleaning him up with something respectable, a shirt and an actual suit, etc., whatever the cost, but I told you explicitly, I want my son out of there altogether, out of Europe, out of the bloody dirt of that place, and back home in America where he belongs. He complains that his mother and I manipulate him — whatever he thinks that means — yet if anyone’s doing the manipulating, it’s Julian. I hear from him only when his pockets are past empty. Otherwise the few times he writes it’s to Iris. They used to be close, those two, as thick as thieves, though with the three years between them and his head in the clouds they never had much in common that I could see.

But if anyone can dope out what he might be up to, it’s his sister. Who knows what he tells her — she reads his letters and then they disappear. If you ask her she says he’s fine, he’s well, he’s attending some sort of lecture thing, he’s got some sort of job — it turns out he’s wiping up tables.

Now here’s my idea, and this time I hope you’ll come through. As soon as we get wind of where he’s at, I want you to take a week or so and go over there again and bring him back. I don’t care how you do it. Do whatever you do when you get your body shop guys to swallow those nursery rhymes you keep shoving down their throats. You seem to think you’re good at that. If you have to bribe him — I mean with $$$ — then bribe him. Just get him back to New York, for starters. He won’t be willing to come out here to his own family, at least not right away. I suspect he’ll be too hang-dog. There’s Iris who always has her little cat-that-ate-the-canary smile, and there’s Julian, the sullen one, and what’s he got to sulk about? He’s always had his own way. When you get off the plane at Idlewild, I want you to take him home with you and keep him for a couple of days and calm him down. I don’t say he won’t be resentful, but if you can handle your regular louts, you can handle a boy like Julian. Talk books to him — he’ll like that.

But that’s only part of my idea. It’s not that I think it’ll be a cinch to pry him out of Paris. He’s wormed his way into the life over there — Iris says he sometimes even writes to her partly in French. I’m not so stupid as to believe that a relative he’s never met, who comes at him out of the blue, is going to be much of an influence, just like that. You have to
know
him, to figure him out, not that I’ve been able to. I can’t reach him, that’s the fact of it, and Margaret — Margaret’s awfully tired. Some days she’s just too tired to cope with the
thought
of Julian, how long he’s been away.

So Iris is the one. I’m sending her east next week, to get you
acquainted with Julian. A briefing, in navy lingo. I should have arranged something like this before you went off on that vacation — but then I found out about it too late to do anything except get the check to you. You ought to be in touch more. When I see how thick Iris is with Julian, I realize how derelict my own sister’s been. Ever since mama and papa died, eighteen years since mama, ten since papa, what do I know of your life? That you had a bad patch with a fellow who played the oboe, or whatever it was? Iris’s plane is due at LaGuardia Thursday afternoon at 4:10
P.M
. She’ll stay the weekend, and then it’s back on Monday — she’s got her 9
A.M
. lab Tuesday morning.

As ever,

Marvin

July 31, 1952

Dear Marvin,

I am looking forward to meeting your daughter. Luckily I have no out-of-town plans as I sometimes do on weekends in the summer, and will be free to host her. I believe she was no more than two or so, the only time I ever saw her. It’s very fine that Iris understands Julian so well — she would certainly make a better emissary than I, so why not? I’m afraid you are being a little high-handed when you suppose I can simply fly off again at a word from you. I do have a job, whether or not you esteem it.

Yrs,
Bea

August 3, 1952

Bea:

Don’t tell me about your so-called job, they’ll never miss you. You do what you do and you are what you are because you never had the drive to be anything else. Iris is on her way
to a Ph.D., I
told
you this, the hard stuff, the real thing — she’s an ambitious kid, she’s on track, she sticks to what she starts. It’s you I want over there, I’ve explained why. You can make the time — get yourself one of those substitutes from the teachers’ union or whatever. As I said, I’ll let you know where Julian’s at as soon as we hear. Meanwhile Iris will fill you in.

Marvin

M
ARVIN
’
S
RANT
, Marvin’s bluster, with all its contradictions and lame exposures. The brutishness of his language, even when he imagined himself at his fanciest. The old nasty condescension. An unwitting confession of desperation — his son was a hard case, that was the long and the short of it. And still he intended, with a wave of a seigneurial hand, to ship her out again.