Man Who Was Late (14 page)

By this time, it was quite late. Ben set a fast pace. Until we got to Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the streets were dark and empty. Our heels made a resonating noise against the sidewalk of the sort I associate with black-and-white films about France under occupation. I could see that Ben’s standing in the world of night owls was high: at the Lipp, it was the
owner himself, and not one of the nephews, who gravely shook his hand and then mine and showed us to the table without even a pro forma delay. There was Ben’s usual fuss about categories and quantities of oysters.

When it subsided, and our glasses had been filled, Ben told me he was glad to be able to talk to me in person, instead of writing or telephoning. A row was in the making about Véronique; it was just as well that I hear about it from him; he wanted to tell me about her anyway now that it was no longer a secret he was obliged to keep, and, as I was staying with him, I would probably run into her and figure out the situation even if no one in her French family chose to mention it to me or to my mother. In the hours that followed—we were the last clients to leave the restaurant and then used all the logs Gianni had left, keeping the fire going until, dead with fatigue, we decided we had to call it a night—Ben told me much of the story I have related. The rest he confided only to his notes.

The new aspect of the situation, he said, is that Paul has become sure that it’s me, and not his nerves or imagination or some unknown dark stranger. Véronique and I have been quite careless and open on the telephone, first, because I call her only when by all rights he should be at his office, and, second, because in France you can’t listen on another extension to what is being said unless you get special equipment—and maybe even an authorization for it from the post office. If the telephone rings and someone picks it up, the other extensions essentially go dead. What we had not supposed was possible, but that pork did it, was that he would put a bug on his own line and make a tape that, although it is
not particularly rich in intimate detail, nonetheless leaves no doubt that we see each other behind his back. Véronique has heard the tape. He likes to play it to her. I have not yet had the pleasure. But that’s not the end of your cousin Paul’s telephone activities. He has taken to calling me at home in the middle of the night to inform me that he has just “screwed” or is about to “screw” Véronique—the verb is his as he now speaks to me in English, probably a form of ostracism so far as he is concerned—and he also calls at the office. The calls at the office are usually threats. For instance, he has suggested that he might send the tape to the head partner of my bank—as though poor old Dwight would care who is “screwing” Madame Decaze—and has even offered to shoot me if he catches us together.

To lighten the mood, Ben continued, I once asked him why he needs to catch me with her if all he wants to do is kill me, but I don’t completely dismiss this idea of his, having seen him bang away with his gun at clay pigeons, and he is so unbalanced that when I last let him into my office he was literally frothing at the mouth, making it difficult for him to speak. He also plans to notify your mother, because he holds you personally responsible for having introduced a “leper” into his domicile. Strangest of all, he hasn’t made any move to stop working for me as a lawyer. In fact, some of his calls are about how we are not giving enough business to his firm. He says no real man would make the personal situation between us a pretext for injuring him financially. I have not, as it happens, given instructions to use him less. On the contrary, I continue to like sending him out of town!

I asked whether he and Véronique were still seeing each other.

Of course, Ben replied, in the afternoons, at my house. I would say every afternoon, unless something happens that makes it quite impossible for me to leave the office. In those cases, she comes in the morning, right after Joos has taken Laurent to nursery school, and I simply get to the office on the late side. This week, Paul will have to spend two nights in Brussels. That means the three of us can dine together, unless you utterly disapprove. In any case, she will come home with me after dinner. And she is coming to lunch tomorrow. She has told Paul she has to see her mother about money.

I said that it could be that I was tired, but I couldn’t understand. If they loved each other and she was willing to leave Paul, why was she still living with Paul? Couldn’t their lawyer—I assumed they had one—arrange some sort of separation so that she could move in with Ben or into an apartment of her own? It seemed to me that was the way these things were arranged in New York.

He doesn’t want her to leave, Ben replied, he wants to keep her at any price, he wants her to love him again as in the past, and he says she will never get Laurent if she walks out. But that’s only a part of the story; it’s really because of me. She does love me, and I love her, and she does make me happy. Still, I have not said pack your bags or leave your clothes there, as you prefer, and come to live with me. And the reason I don’t do it is Laurent. I don’t want to be responsible for her losing him or having to accept some unworkable
arrangement, like not being able to take him out of the country. That is the understandable and respectable reason for the situation. I keep warning Véronique that if she doesn’t keep Laurent things will eventually sour between us. I am convinced that is so. It should be possible, though, for her to get Laurent on some reasonable basis if we are careful and persistent. But the secret, guilty reason is that I am afraid to have Véronique come to me with Laurent. I am out of the stepfather business; the twins put me out of it. Even if some love were left over inside me from the twins that I could give to Laurent, I would always be checking on him out of the corner of my eye, wondering whether he was throwing it away, as Sarah and Rebecca had.

There was nothing I could think of to say. We sat for a while, looking at each other, until Ben got up and opened one set of the French windows. Cold, mildewy air poured in.

I sound terrible, he told me. Like some sort of machine for grinding out words.

For some time I had felt an enormous ache encircling my skull, pressing against my eyes. It was not just Ben’s revelations, however much they depressed me. I had drunk too much, and although I had taken a bath and poured into it violet crystals from an expensive-looking bottle, my skin smelled of the airplane.

Let’s see what’s in the icebox, I suggested.

We found sausage and Gruyère. There was bread on the counter, wrapped in a dish towel. Ben opened a bottle of red wine. We sat down and ate, hacking away at the sausage with an old, dented carving knife. I saw that Ben was weeping. The kitchen window gave on the front courtyard, toward the east.
A sort of sallow morning had begun. Ben turned off the lights in the kitchen and the drawing room and we went to bed.

I fell asleep almost at once. When I awoke, Ben was knocking on my door. He asked if I wanted breakfast before lunch, which would be served as soon as Véronique arrived. If I did, Gianni would bring it immediately. I got ready, somehow holding my headache under control with orange juice, aspirin, and Ben’s bath crystals. When I went into the drawing room, Ben was still alone, standing before an open window. He was quite dressed up, considering it was Sunday and he was expecting only his mistress and his old best friend, who was the woman’s cousin. I admired his tweed suit of an undefinable soft color, the beautifully matching shirt and necktie, the polish of his shoes. Cousin Olivia’s ceilings were very high; perhaps because of that, or because of that sort of distance from people and objects that a hangover induces, I also found Ben very small and lonely looking. He heard my steps and turned around with a smile.

The last part of our conversation was very morbid, he said. I have those feelings of denial and despair, but they are not all that important. Just a way of conjuring bad luck: never admit you are happy! Someday, I will get around to patenting this method.

The doorbell didn’t ring. Véronique must have had a key. She came into the room with her coat still on, an enormous bunch of red chrysanthemums in her arms.

Look how beautiful they are, she said. They smell like a well-kept cemetery. And I have a new street guide for Jack, Ben’s is in tatters, and a necktie for Jack so he can dress up, and a sweater for Ben, so he can take his necktie off.

It was a cashmere turtleneck the color of her flowers. Ben said he would put it on at once. I saw that he was very moved. Then, at the table, while she served the food Gianni had set out, she exclaimed over how well Ben looked in his sweater, admired the wine, talked about my mother and Vassar and Ben’s important work—there was a huge project, which I too had heard about from Ben, that he was looking after in Brazil—I saw that she was leaving very little to chance. She was like a maddeningly pretty nurse whose light, quick hands bandage a large wound so tenderly that the sick man thinks only how fresh looking she is and how kind and does not even notice that she has taken away the hurt. Ben did seem happier than I had ever seen him. They offered to come with me on my walk, but I vigorously refused, knowing why she was there. As I headed toward the Seine, I prayed that this was one train Ben would manage not to miss.

Letter from Véronique to Ben (translated from the French by me):