Heaven Has No Favorites: A Novel (14 page)

“There,” Lillian said, pointing across the river at the light façade of a small hotel.

“Do you know the place?”

“How would I know it?”

“From the last time you were here.”

“When I was last here, I stayed mostly in hiding in a greengrocer’s cellar.”

“Wouldn’t you prefer to stay somewhere in the sixteenth
arrondissement
? Or with your uncle?”

“My uncle is so stingy that he probably lives in a single room. Let’s drive across the bridge and ask whether they have any vacancies. Where do you stay?”

“At the Ritz.”

“Of course,” Lillian said.

Clerfayt nodded. “I’m not rich enough to live elsewhere,” he said.

They drove across the bridge to the boulevard Saint-Michel and onto the quai des Grands-Augustins and stopped in front of the Hôtel Bisson. As they got out of the car, a hotel employee came out the front door carrying bags. “There’s my room,” Lillian said. “Someone is just leaving.”

“Do you really want to stay here? Just because you saw the hotel from across the river?”

Lillian nodded. “That’s just the way I want to live. Without recommendations and prejudices.”

The room was available. The hotel had no elevator, but luckily the room was on the second floor. The stairs were old and dished. The room was small and sparsely furnished, but the bed seemed good, and there was a bathroom. All the furniture was cheap modern stuff except for a small baroque table that stood there like a prince among slaves. The wallpaper was old, and the electric light inadequate—but in compensation there shone outside the window the river with Conciergerie, quays, and the towers of Notre-Dame.

“You can leave here any time you please,” Clerfayt said. “That’s something people are apt to forget.”

“Where to? To you in the Ritz?”

“Not to me, but to the Ritz,” Clerfayt replied. “During the war, I stayed there for half a year. I wore a beard and went by another
name. On the cheaper side, facing the rue Cambon. On the other side, facing the place Vendôme, were the German big shots. It was something to remember.”

The porter brought up the bags. Clerfayt went to the door. “Would you like to have dinner with me this evening?”

“When?”

“Around nine?”

“At nine, then.”

She watched him as he went out. Throughout this day’s drive, they had exchanged not a word about the evening in Ascona. French was a convenient language, she thought. You slid from
tu
to
vous
and vice versa; it made the gradations of intimacy a kind of game. She heard Giuseppe’s starting roar and went to the window. Perhaps he’ll be back, she thought, but perhaps not. She did not know, and it was not very important. The important thing was that she was in Paris, that it was evening, and that she was breathing. The traffic lights on the boulevard Saint-Michel turned green, and like a cavalry charge a horde of Citroëns, Renaults, and trucks dashed across the bridge behind Giuseppe. Lillian could not remember ever having seen so many automobiles. During the war, there had been very few on the streets. The noise was intense, but it reminded her rather of an organ on which iron hands were playing a mighty
Te Deum
.

She unpacked her things. She had not brought much with her; nor did she have much money. She telephoned her uncle. There was no answer. She telephoned again. A stranger’s voice responded. Her uncle had given up his telephone years ago, it seemed.

For a brief moment, she was panic-stricken. Her monthly check had been coming to her through a bank, and it was a long time since she had heard from her uncle. He couldn’t be dead, she thought.
Strange, that always occurred to one first. Perhaps he had moved. She asked the hotel clerk for a city directory. There was only the old one, from the first year of the war, nor was there any new telephone book. Even now there was still a shortage of coal. The room grew chilly in the evening. Lillian put on her coat. For safety, she had taken along some heavy sweaters and woolen underthings, with the thought that if they were superfluous in Paris, she could give them away to someone. She was glad that she had them.

The twilight began creeping through the window, gray and dirty. Lillian took a bath to make herself warm, and got into bed. For the first time since she had left the sanatorium, she was alone. She was really alone now for the first time in years. The money she had would, at most, last a week. With darkness, a new form of panic began to grip her. Where could her uncle be? Perhaps he had gone traveling for a few weeks. Perhaps he had had an accident, and perhaps he was dead. Perhaps Clerfayt, too, was already swallowed up in this unknown city, had taken himself off into another hotel, another existence, and she would never hear from him again. She shivered. Romantic daring quickly faded in the face of a few facts, in the face of cold and loneliness. In the warm cage of the sanatorium, the radiators would be humming now.

There was a knock at her door. It was the hotel porter with two packages. She saw that the small one contained flowers. Flowers could only come from Clerfayt. In her gratitude and in the dimness of the room, she gave the man far too large a tip. Quickly, she opened the second box. A woolen blanket lay inside. “I imagine you will need this,” Clerfayt had written. “There’s still not enough coal in Paris.”

She unfolded the blanket. Two small cartons fell out of it. Light bulbs. “French hotels always economize on light,” Clerfayt had written. “Replace your bulbs with these—they will make the world twice as bright.”

She followed his advice. At least it was now possible to read. The porter brought her a newspaper. She looked into it, but after a while she laid it aside. These things no longer concerned her. Her time was too short. She would never know who was elected president next year, nor what party was uppermost in the Chamber of Deputies. Nor did such distant matters interest her; her whole being was filled with the will to live. To live her own life.

She dressed. She had her uncle’s last letter; he had written her from that address six months ago. She would go there and inquire further.

There was no need of hunting. Her uncle was still in his old flat; he had only given up his telephone.

“Your money?” he said. “As you like. I’ve been having your monthly allowance sent to Switzerland; it was hard to get a permit to transfer the funds. Naturally, I can have it paid to you in France. To what address?”

“I don’t want it in monthly installments. I want to have all of it right now, at once.”

“What for?”

“To buy clothes.”

The old man stared at her. “You’re like your father. If he—”

“He’s dead, Uncle Gaston.”

Gaston looked down at his big, bleached hands. “You don’t have much money left. What do you mean to do here? My word, if I had the luck to live in Switzerland!”

“I haven’t lived in Switzerland. I’ve lived in a hospital.”

“You don’t know anything about managing money. You’d spend it in a few weeks. You’d lose it—”

“Possibly,” Lillian said.

He stared at her in consternation. “And what do you do when you’ve lost it?”

“I wouldn’t be a burden on you.”

“You ought to marry. Are you all right now?”

“Would I be here if I weren’t?”

“Then you ought to get married.”

Lillian laughed. It was too obvious; he was anxious to shift the responsibility for her to someone else. “You ought to get married,” Gaston repeated. “I could arrange for you to meet some suitable people.”

Lillian laughed again; but she was curious to see how the old man would go about it. He must be almost eighty, she thought, looking at his ostrich-like head, but he acts as if he has to provide for another eighty years. “All right,” she replied. “And now tell me one thing—what do you do when you are alone?”

He stared at her in astonishment. “All sorts of things—I don’t know—I keep busy—what an odd question. Why?”

“Don’t you ever feel the impulse to take everything you have and go out into the world and squander it?”

“Just like your father!” the old man replied contemptuously. “He never had any sense of responsibility, or foresight either. I’ve a good mind to have you placed under guardianship.”

“You can’t do it. You think I’ll throw my money away—but I think you’re throwing your life away. Let’s leave it at that. And see that I can have the money tomorrow. I want to buy those clothes soon.”

“Where?” the old man asked quickly.

“At Balenciaga’s, I think. Don’t forget that the money belongs to me.”

“Your mother—”

“I want it tomorrow,” Lillian said, giving Gaston a light kiss on the forehead.

“Listen, Lillian, don’t rush into any extravagances. You’re perfectly well dressed. Clothes from those fashion houses cost a fortune!”

“Probably,” Lillian replied. She looked across the dark courtyard at the gray windows of the houses opposite, which gleamed dark as slate in the last remnants of daylight.

“Like your father!” The old man was sincerely horrified. “Just like him. You could have lived without a care if it hadn’t been for his fantastic projects—”

“Uncle Gaston, I’ve been told that there are two ways to part with your money nowadays. One is to save it and have it go in the inflation. The other is to spend it. And now tell me how you have been.”

Gaston made a nervous gesture. “You can see. Things are hard nowadays. These times! I’m a poor man.”

Lillian looked around. She saw fine old furniture standing about. Sofas and chair swatched in dust sheets, a crystal chandelier tied up in gauze, and a few good paintings. “You always used to be stingy, Uncle Gaston,” she said. “But why are you still?”

His dark bird’s eyes scrutinized her. “Do you want to live here? I don’t have much room—”

“You have plenty of room, but I don’t want to live here. How old are you anyway? Weren’t you twenty years older than my father?”

The old man was irritated. “If you know, why do you ask?”

“Don’t you have any fear of death?”

Gaston was silent for a moment. “You have dreadful manners,” he said at last, softly.

“That’s true. I shouldn’t have asked you. But I ask myself that so often that I forget the question frightens others.”

“I’m still in good shape. If you’re counting on a legacy from me, you might have long to wait.”

Lillian laughed. “I’m not counting on that. And I’m staying in a hotel and won’t be a burden to you here.”

“What hotel?” Gaston asked quickly.

“The Bisson.”

“God be thanked! I wouldn’t have been surprised if you were at the Ritz.”

“I wouldn’t either,” Lillian said.

Clerfayt called for her. They drove to the Restaurant Le Grand Vefour. “How was your first collision with the world?” he asked.

“I have the feeling that I’ve come among people who think they’re going to live forever. At least they act that way. They defend their possessions and let their lives slip by.”

Clerfayt laughed. “And yet while the war was on, they all vowed that they would never again make the same mistake if they came through it alive. Human beings are great at forgetting.”

“Have you forgotten it, too?” Lillian asked.

“I’ve made a great effort to. I haven’t quite succeeded.”

“Is that why I love you?”

“You don’t love me. If you loved me, you wouldn’t use the word so lightly—and wouldn’t tell me.”

“Do I love you because you don’t think of the future?”

“Then you would have had to love every man in the sanatorium. Let’s see—we’re going to have sole with roasted almonds and drink a young Montrachet with it.”

“Then why do I love you?”

“Because I happen to be here. And because you love life. I am an anonymous specimen of life to you. Extremely dangerous.”

“For me?”

“For the one who is anonymous. He can be replaced at random.”

“So can I,” Lillian said. “So can I, Clerfayt.”

“I’m no longer quite so sure of that. If I had any sense, I’d clear out as soon as possible.”

“You’ve barely arrived.”

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“Where to?” Lillian asked, without believing him.

“Far away. I have to go to Rome.”

“And I have to go to Balenciaga’s to buy clothes. That’s farther than Rome.”

“I really am going. I must see about a contract.”

“Good,” Lillian said. “That will give me time to plunge into the adventure of the fashion houses. My uncle Gaston is already talking of placing me under guardianship—or marrying me off.”

Clerfayt laughed. “He would like to put you into a second prison before you know what freedom is.”

“What is freedom?”

“I don’t know either. I only know that it is neither irresponsibility nor aimlessness. It’s easier to say what it is not than what it is.”

“When are you coming back?” Lillian asked.

“In a few days.”

“Do you have someone in Rome?”

“Yes,” Clerfayt said.

“I thought so.”

“Why?”

“It would be strange if you had been living alone. I wasn’t living alone either, when you came.”

“And now?”

“Now,” Lillian said, “I’m far too drunk on life itself to be able to think it over.”

She went to Balenciaga the following afternoon. Aside from sports things suitable for the sanatorium, Lillian had hardly any wardrobe.
Some of her dresses dated from wartime; others had been her mother’s, which she had had made over by a seamstress.

She watched the women who sat around her. She studied their clothes and probed their faces for the kind of excitement that filled her. She did not find it. She saw spiteful, aging parrots, too heavily made up, who gazed at the younger ones out of lidless eyes, and young women of brittle elegance whose knowing looks took in everything but the incomprehensible fascination of simple existence. Among these sat a band of good-looking Americans, chattering enthusiastically in their naïve way. Only here and there, burning to perishability in the busy emptiness like a lighted candle between window decorations, was a face that had some magic—usually an aging face—one that confronted age without terror, and on which time lay, not like rust, but like the patina upon a noble vessel, intensifying its beauty.