Going Ashore (26 page)

The room was silent. Jane leaned over to the window between their beds, where the unaccustomed sun had roused a fat, slumbering fly. It shook its wings and buzzed loudly. Jane put her finger on its back; it vibrated and felt funny. “Look, Ern,” she said.

Ernestine squirmed over on the bed; their heads touched, their breath misted the window. The fly moved and left staggering tracks.

“We could go out,” said Jane. “Frau Stengel even said it.” They went, forgetting their rubbers.

Mrs. Kennedy came home at half past six, no less and no more exhausted than usual. It had not been a lively day or a memorably pleasant one but a day like any other, in the pattern she was now accustomed to and might even have missed. She had read aloud until lunch, which the clinic kitchen sent up on a tray – veal, potatoes, shredded lettuce, and sago pudding with jelly – and she had noted with dismay that Mr. Kennedy’s meal included a bottle of hock, fetched in under the apron of a guilty-looking nurse. How silly to tempt him in this way when he wanted so much to get well, she thought. After lunch, the reading went on, Mrs. Kennedy stopping now and then to sustain her voice with a sip of vichy water. They were rereading an old Lanny Budd novel, but Mrs. Kennedy could not have said what it was about. She had acquired the knack of thinking of other things while she read aloud. She read in a high, uninflected voice, planning the debut of Jane and Ernestine with a famous ballet company. Mr. Kennedy listened, contentedly polishing off his bottle of wine. Sometimes he interrupted. “Juan-les-Pins,” he remarked as the name came up in the text.

“We were there.” This was the chief charm of the novels, that they kept mentioning places Mr. Kennedy had visited. “Aix-les-Bains,” he remarked a little later. Possibly he was not paying close attention, for Lanny Budd was now having it out with Göring in Berlin. Mr. Kennedy’s tone of voice suggested that something quite singular had taken place in Aix-les-Bains, when as a matter of fact Mrs. Kennedy had spent a quiet summer with the
two little girls in a second-class pension while Mr. Kennedy took the mud-bath cure.

Mr. Kennedy rang for his nurse and, when she came, told her to send in the doctor. The reading continued; Jane and Ernestine found ballet careers too strenuous, and in any case the publicity was cheapening. For the fortieth time, they married. Jane married a very dashing young officer, and Ernestine the president of a university. A few minutes later, the doctor came in; another new doctor, Mrs. Kennedy noted. But it was only by constantly changing his doctor and reviewing his entire medical history from the beginning that Mr. Kennedy obtained the attention his condition required. This doctor was cheerful and brisk. “We’ll have him out of here in no time,” he assured Mrs. Kennedy, smiling.

“Oh,
grand,”
she said faintly.

“Are you sure?” her husband asked the doctor. “There are two or three things that haven’t been checked and attended to.”

“Oh?” said the doctor. At that moment, he saw the empty wine bottle and picked it up. Mrs. Kennedy, who dreaded scenes, closed her eyes. “You waste my time,” she heard the doctor say. The door closed behind him. She opened her eyes. These awful rows, she thought. They were all alike – all the nurses, all the clinics, all the doctors. Mr. Kennedy, fortunately, did not seem unduly disturbed.

“You might see if you can order me one of those books of crossword puzzles,” he remarked as his wife gathered up her things to leave.

“Shall I give your love to Jane and Ernestine?” she said. But Mr. Kennedy, worn out with his day, seemed to be falling asleep.

Back at the hotel, Jane and Ernestine were waiting in the upper hall. They clung to Mrs. Kennedy, as if her presence had reminded them of something. Touched, Mrs. Kennedy said nothing about the mud on their shoes but instead praised their rosy faces. They hung about, close to her, while she rested on the chaise longue in her room before dinner. “How I should love to trade my days for yours,” she said suddenly, thinking not only of their magic future but of these days that were, for them, a joyous and repeated holiday.

“Didn’t you have fun today?” said Jane, leaning on her mother’s feet.

“Fun! Well, not what you chicks would call fun.”

They descended to dinner together; the children held on to her hands, one on each side. They showed, for once, a nice sensibility, she thought. Perhaps they were arriving at that special age a mother dreams of, the age of gratitude and awareness. In the dining room, propped against the mustard jar, was an envelope with scrolls and curlicues under the name “Kennedy.” Inside was a note from Frau Stengel explaining that, because she was expecting a child and needed all her strength for the occasion, she could no longer give Jane and Ernestine their lessons. So delicately and circuitously did she explain her situation that Mrs. Kennedy was left with the impression that Frau Stengel was expecting the visit of a former pupil. She thought it a strange way of letting her know. I wonder what she means by “harmony of spirit,” she thought. The child must be a terror. She was not at all anxious to persuade Frau Stengel to change her mind; the incident of the book at breakfast, the mention of movies, the mud on the children’s shoes all suggested it was time for someone new.

“Is it bad news?” said Jane.

Mrs. Kennedy was touched. “You mustn’t feel things so,” she said kindly. “No, it is only that Frau Stengel won’t be your governess any more. She is expecting” – she glanced at the letter again and, suddenly getting the drift of it, folded it quickly and went on – “a little boy or girl for a visit.”

“Our age?”

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Kennedy vaguely. Would this be a good occasion, she wondered, to begin telling them about … about … But no, not in a hotel dining room, not over a plate of alphabet soup. “I suppose I could stay home for a few days, until we find someone, and we could do lessons together. Would you like that?” They looked at her without replying. “We could do educational things, like nature walks,” she said. “Why, what ever is the matter? Are you so unhappy about Frau Stengel?”

“Is he dead?” said Jane.

“Who?”

“Our father,” said Jane in a quavering voice that carried to every table and on to the kitchen.

“Good heavens!” Mrs. Kennedy glanced quickly around the dining room; everyone had heard. Damp clouds of sympathy were forming around the table. “As a matter of fact, he is much better,” she said loudly and briskly.
“Perhaps, to be reassured, you ought to see him. Would you like that?”

“Oh, yes.”

She was perplexed but gratified. “Father didn’t want you to see him when he was so ill,” she explained. “He wanted you to remember him as he was.”

“In case he died?”

“I think we’ll go upstairs,” said Mrs. Kennedy, pushing back her chair. They followed her across the room and up the staircase without protest. She had never seen them looking so odd. “You seem all pinched,” she said, examining them by the light between their beds. “And a few minutes ago you seemed so rosy! Where are my little Renoir faces? I’m getting you liver tablets tomorrow. You’d better go to bed.”

It was early, but they made no objection. “Are you really going to be home tomorrow?” said Jane.

“Well, yes. I can’t think of anything else to do, for the moment.”

“He’s dead,” said Jane positively.

“Really,” said their mother, exasperated. “If you don’t stop this at once, I don’t know what I’ll do. It’s morbid.”

“Will you read to us?” said Ernestine, shoeless and in her petticoat.

“Read?” Mrs. Kennedy said. “No, I couldn’t.” With quick, tugging motions, she began to braid their hair for the night. “I don’t even want to speak. I want to rest my voice.”

“Then could you just sit here?” said Jane. “Could we have the light?”

“Why?” said Mrs. Kennedy, snapping elastic on the end of a braid. “Have you been having bad dreams?”

“I don’t know,” said Jane, standing uncertainly by her bed.

“Healthy children don’t dream,” her mother said, confident that this was so. “You have no reason whatever to dream.” She rose and put the hairbrush away. “Into bed, now, both of you.”

They crept wretchedly into their separate beds. Mrs. Kennedy kissed each of them and opened the window. She was at the door, her hand on the light switch, when Jane said, “Can God punish you for something?”

Mrs. Kennedy dropped her hand. She had been, she found with annoyance, about to say vaguely, “Well, that all depends.” She said instead, “I don’t know.”

It was worse than anything the children had bargained for. “If
she
doesn’t know –” said Ernestine. It was not clear whom she was addressing. “– then who does?”

“Nobody, really,” said Mrs. Kennedy. They had certainly chosen a singular approach to the subject, and an odd time to speak of it, she thought, but curiosity of this sort should always be dealt with as it came up. “Many people think they know, one way or the other, but it is impossible for a thinking person – Father will tell you about it,” she finished. “We’ll arrange a visit very soon.”

“If you don’t
know,”
said Jane from her pillow, “then we don’t know what can happen.” She lay back and pulled the bedsheet up to her eyes. Mrs. Kennedy put out the light, promising again an interesting talk with their father, who would explain all over again how he didn’t know, either, and why.

Just before going to bed, shortly after ten o’clock, Mrs. Kennedy softly re-entered the children’s room. She carried a large dish of applesauce, two spoons, and two buttered rolls for the girls to discover in the morning. The room was totally dark, and stuffy; someone – one of the children – had closed the window and drawn the heavy double curtains straight across. Groping in the dark to their bedside table, she put down her burden of food, and then, as quietly as she could, pulled the draperies to one side. Moonlight filled the squares of the window. The breeze that came in when she unlatched the window smelled of snow. In the bright, cold, clear night, the lights from the villages down below blinked and wavered like stars. It was not often that Mrs. Kennedy had time to enjoy or contemplate something not directly dependent on herself or fated by one of her or her husband’s decisions. For nearly a full minute, she stood perfectly still and admired the night. Then she remembered one of the reasons she had come into the room, and bent over to draw the covers up over her daughters.

Ernestine had got into bed with Jane, which was odd; they lay facing the same direction, like two question marks. With one hand Ernestine limply clutched at her sister’s braids. Both children had wormed down into the middle of the bed, well below the pillow, under a tent of blankets; it was a wonder they hadn’t smothered.

Mrs. Kennedy drew back the blankets and gently pulled Ernestine away. Without waking, but muttering something, Ernestine got up and walked to her own bed. The hair at her temples was wet, and she generated the nearly feverish warmth of sleeping children. Sleeping, she put her thumb in her mouth. Mrs. Kennedy turned to Jane and pulled her carefully up to the pillow. “I left my book outside,” said Jane urgently and distinctly. Straightening up, Mrs. Kennedy gave the covers a final pat. She looked down at her little girls, frowning; they seemed at this moment not like little Renoirs, not like little dolls, but like rather ordinary children who for some reason of their own had shut and muffled the window and then crept into one bed, the better to hide. She was tempted to wake Jane, or Ernestine, and ask what it was all about, this solicitude for Mr. Kennedy, this irrelevant talk of God. Perhaps Frau Stengel, in some blundering way, had mentioned her pregnancy. Despairing, Mrs. Kennedy wished she could gather her children up, one under each arm, and carry them off to a higher mountain, an emptier hotel, where nothing and no one could interfere, or fill their minds with the kind of thought she feared and detested. Their
minds
. Was she really, all alone, without Mr. Kennedy to help her, expected to cope with their minds as well as everything else?

But I am exaggerating, she thought, looking out at the peaceful night. They haven’t so much as begun to think, about anything. Without innocence, after all, there was no beauty, and no one could deny the beauty of Jane and Ernestine. She did not look at them again as they lay, damp and vulnerable, in their beds, but, instantly solaced with the future and what it contained for them, she saw them once again drifting away on a sea of admiration, the surface unmarred, the interior uncorrupted by thought or any one of the hundred indecisions that were the lot of less favored human beings. Meanwhile, of course, they had still to grow up – but after all what was there between this night and the magic time to come but a link of days, the limpid days of children? For, she thought, smiling in the dark, pleased at the image, were not their days like the lights one saw in the valley at night, starry, indistinguishable one from the other? She must tell that to Mr. Kennedy, she thought, drawing away from the window. He would be sure to agree.

FIRST DAY

RATHER THAN SPEND
his first afternoon in the hotel lobby with the rest of the charter group, watching a rerun of “Gunsmoke” dubbed in French, the wise traveller will set out without delay to replace the contents of luggage stolen from the airport bus. And what venue can be more suited to this than Paris – city where “everything can be had” (Anatole France)?

Leaving the hotel, he should not plunge at once into the Métro, tempting and convenient though it may seem, but be content to elbow his way along the bustling streets, absorbing the unique atmosphere of a metropolis “transported from Heaven and rebuilt stone by stone in Paradise” (François Mitterrand). In the Rue du Conseiller Municipal Aristide Rotonde, the traveller will observe a small russet stain in the gutter, commemorating the remarkable afternoon, 23 June 1977, when twelve armed robberies took place at intervals of six minutes. Farther along, just before the shop selling plastic buckles and buttons, a plaque indicates where Odilon Morasse had his vegetarian restaurant (1962-63). Below the plaque and a little to the left can be seen several interesting modern inscriptions, including “
KEEP FRANCE FRENCH
,” “
FOREIGN SCUM
,” “
SWINE
,” “
DEATH
,” and “
OUT
!” M. André (Dédé) Bouge, owner of the butcher shop at No. 94, has no objection to being photographed standing in front of the inscriptions, wearing a clean butcher’s apron.