Matters of Honor (17 page)

Did you get into some sort of trouble? I asked. I hadn’t gotten the impression that you left there under a cloud.

He laughed, and said that wasn’t the problem—or perhaps there was no problem at all, in any event not yet. He had slept with Madame van Damme. I mean Madeleine.

Such was my astonishment that I asked him to repeat what he had said, and when he had done so, I asked how such a thing was possible. He said it had been very simple, weirdly simple. Monsieur van Damme was at Bayencourt only on weekends, and not necessarily every weekend, and Denis had already left. He was spending the last three weeks of August with friends near Biarritz. There was no one at the château during the week except the children, the servants, Madeleine, and himself. From the start, Henry had gotten along very well with the husband and wife. As he had already mentioned when telling me about Denis van Damme, he had been told to make himself at home in the library. Usually he went there after dinner. He would sit on a sofa near the windows, which were left open to let in cool evening air. When Madeleine came to the library, she almost always sat in one of the huge tapestry-covered armchairs on either side of the fireplace. Monsieur van Damme would sit in the other.

Here Henry broke off the story in order to get another cup of tea. I asked him to get one for me as well.

I should tell you, he continued, that Madeleine is very attractive—as an objective fact, without thinking that there could be something between us. It would have been preposterous. She is tall, big boned, and athletic looking, with an incredible head of blond hair barely touched by gray. She can’t be more than fifty, and I have no idea whether she seems younger or older. Anyway, that evening I was absorbed in my book—by a weird coincidence
Le rouge et le noir
—when she sat down at the other end of my sofa and began to ask me a series of personal questions, first about college, then about Margot, whom she said she didn’t really understand, and then about the war. She knew something about my past but not much, or perhaps she was simply pretending not to know. That, as you can imagine, put me on edge, and I answered her questions with real difficulty because I felt that my back was against the wall, more so than at the Standishes’ lunch. I couldn’t disregard the fact that she was my employer and in a sense my hostess. At the same time, no doubt about it, I found her interest and sympathy flattering, perhaps even exciting. So I answered but as briefly as possible. Then she told me that during the war her parents had helped a number of Jews to hide. That hadn’t been as difficult in Belgium as in Poland—or so she thought. Although her husband personally had absolutely nothing against Jews, the rest of his family was all Flemish rightists and anti-Semites. That made a lot of trouble during the war and put her parents in danger. Her too because she was involved in the Resistance. The Resistance was also anathema to her in-laws. The tables were turned right after the war, when it was the in-laws who faced various difficulties. I’m not sure whether it was the way she told this story or that the air had gotten colder, but I shivered. She noticed it, asked me to close the windows, and, when I had done so, asked me to sit down beside her. I did as she said, whereupon she took my hand, held it against her face, and said, Aren’t you going to ask me to come to bed with you?

My response, Henry continued, was to put my arm around her and kiss her. I was very awkward, but she let me, just once. Then she pushed me away very gently and said, Turn out the lights here and go to your room. I won’t be long. My room at Bayencourt was a little bigger than your bedroom here: an armoire and a chest of drawers, a worktable at the window, a straight-back chair, and one armchair. I quickly stuffed the underwear and shirt that I had left on the bed into the armoire, took off my jacket and tie, and waited. The time before she appeared moved very slowly or very fast, I’m not sure which; my heart was beating so hard that I could hardly bear it. Then the door opened. She wore a long red velvet bathrobe. Her feet were bare. I stood up and held my arms out to her, and when she did the same the bathrobe opened. She was naked. It was like seeing Dürer’s Eve except that her hair was pinned up in a bun behind her head. She helped me undress and we lay down on the bed. She spoke before I did. Is this your first time? she asked. I nodded, without daring to touch her. Then just lie on your back, she said, and be very quiet. She bent over me and let down that amazing hair, which fell like a tent over her shoulders and me. When it was over she said, Now you can be patient and tender. She stayed with me until dawn. From then on she came to me every night, twice even when Monsieur van Damme was there. They sleep in separate bedrooms so that after he had gone to his room all she had to do was to wait ten minutes to be sure he was asleep. I can hardly describe what it was like.

I nodded. The truth is that I was shaken by his story.

Anyway, to go back to Margot, he said, which is how I got started telling you all this, you can imagine how uneasy I am about Margot and Etienne. It’s not that I am afraid they know; that’s not possible. But I can’t help feeling terribly anxious, as if I had wronged them, betrayed our friendship.

And how do you feel about her, I asked, about Madame van Damme?

Madeleine? It’s all so preposterous. Just saying her name fills me with happiness and gratitude, but I can’t really think that I love her. Surely she doesn’t love me. If I didn’t know that it had happened, I wouldn’t believe that it had. Why did she choose me? Do you realize that she must be four or five years older than my mother? She never told me her age, but I am pretty sure that’s right given what she was doing during the war. She will be in Boston at the end of the month, staying at a hotel. She’s coming alone, for some Wellesley alumnae business. Can you imagine it? A whole week.

XVI

S
OME TIME LATER
, Henry told me gravely that Madeleine had arrived in Boston. For several days he was not to be seen in the dining room at dinner, and he didn’t stop by my room as was his custom.

An unpleasant incident occurred more or less at that time involving Margot. Rehearsals of
Ubu
were in progress and whenever we spoke Henry said he was pleased with the cast, especially the pompous sophomore, who had turned out to be a friend of Ralph Wilmerding’s. Henry thought he was “quintessentially ubuesque.” There was a good deal of interest in the production, and while the other roles were never easy to fill, he had many candidates to choose from. A big problem he faced was Margot’s determination to play
la mère
Ubu. Remembering our earlier conversation, and the suggestion I had made, I said that was splendid, for once proof that telepathy can work.

Yes, Henry said, I also thought it was a great idea at first, but she doesn’t know how to project her voice and can’t be heard. The acoustics at the Fogg are terrible, because of all that stone. I don’t know whether she can overcome it.

A week or so passed before we talked again about the play. Henry came to my room after a rehearsal. He threw himself into an armchair and told me that he had bad news about Margot. After he had gotten the actor playing Ubu to work with her on her breathing, he told me they had a special rehearsal at the Fogg, just the three of them, and it was no better. That was, he thought in retrospect, the time to tell her nicely that he would have to replace her, but he didn’t; the prospect of directing her was irresistible. He let matters more or less slide until this afternoon’s important full rehearsal when, in the presence of the entire cast and Bob Chapman, the tutor helping him with technical aspects of the production, and with Wilmerding and Scott Allen watching from the side, he suddenly blew up. He was standing where the last row of seats would be, Margot was in the midst of one of her big speeches, and he mostly couldn’t hear and when he did hear he couldn’t understand, although he knew the lines by heart. Suddenly, without any forethought, he found himself yelling at her: You sound like a debutante at a freshman smoker! Stop speaking through your goddamn nose! Even as he yelled, he heard Wilmerding and Allen snickering. Then Wilmerding stood up to applaud—you couldn’t tell whether he was applauding him or Margot. The situation was so ghastly that Henry didn’t even notice Margot stride across the space that was cordoned off as the stage until she stood before him shouting—this time projecting so well that no one present could fail to hear—I’ve had it with you, you bastard. Then she slapped him hard across the face, first one cheek and then the other. He just stood there, silent, while she stomped off.

How could I have let things slide so badly, how did I lose control? he asked over and over, shaking his head in disbelief. I know I’ve been tense, I know that I’m behind in my work, I know that I’ve spent too much time with Madeleine, and I know that Margot’s been frustrating, but how I let such a thing happen is beyond me. I guess it was saying that she spoke through her nose that got her, he said. She’s very sensitive about it. Still, it wasn’t the end of the world.

I replied that Margot evidently thought otherwise.

He nodded and pointed to the red marks on his cheeks. Somehow, they got through the rehearsal, with him reading Margot’s part. Afterward, Bob Chapman and he walked back to the house. On the way, Chapman told him not to take what happened too hard. You’ll both get over it, he said, and the play might be improved because Margot isn’t right as
mère
Ubu, unlike Jackson as Ubu—that role was made for Wilmerding’s blowhard friend, it fits him like a glove. At the same time, Chapman said I should learn a lesson: one should look for ways to turn a liability into a strength. I might have taken advantage of Margot’s snobby elocution and made it into another incongruous facet of Mrs. Ubu’s grotesque personality. At least I might have tried to. This advice, given so calmly and discreetly, really hurt more than the slap and made me feel boorish and stupid, but I was grateful for it.

He looked utterly wretched and asked whether I had any liquor in the room. In fact, there was some sherry left in the bottle George had given me for my birthday. I poured a drink for each of us. Henry finished his, looked at his watch, and asked to use the phone. I supposed he was going to call his mother so I went to wash my hands and afterward, to give him more time, stayed in the bedroom putting away the shirts that had just come back from the laundry. I was surprised to hear, instead of a Polish conversation, Henry saying that he would like to speak to Margot. A moment of silence followed. The girl on bells at Margot’s dormitory must have been looking for her. Then Henry spoke again, saying a rather cheerful Hello, Margot. The bang of the receiver being slammed down on the other end was so loud that I heard it from the bedroom. Henry hung up too, very gently, and addressing me said, I don’t know what to do now, she won’t speak to me. I’ve got to fill that role. That can’t wait and I’ll have to manage it one way or another. But that she should be so angry, that I should have lost her, is more than I can bear.

It was seven. I said we should go to dinner. Most people had already eaten, and we were able to have a table to ourselves. I told him I couldn’t understand how he had those feelings for Margot and could continue whatever he was doing with Madame van Damme. He told me he didn’t have an answer; he was utterly confused.

I
T WAS A MYSTERY
to me what made Henry think he could stage and direct a play. His experience consisted of nothing more than being taken to Broadway shows by his parents, an imposition he complained about as yet another effort to infantilize him. Nonetheless, if I hadn’t known him well, I wouldn’t have suspected that every step he took was improvised. His self-assurance was impregnable. He replaced Margot as
la mère
Ubu with a Radcliffe freshman, a Walküre with a voice to match. A week later, after the dress rehearsal, Chapman gave the cast the victory sign. The enthusiasm of the audience at the premiere was such that the director of the Fogg agreed on the spot to two more performances to take place the following week.

There was a party afterward given by Mr. Ryan, an economics tutor affiliated with the house, and his wife, who had painted the play’s only backdrop, a curtain held aloft on two poles at each end. The cast and everyone connected with the production, as well as their friends, were invited. The Ryans lived at the corner of Brattle and Fayerweather streets. It was a beautiful night in March. Although it wasn’t especially cold, George had gotten his car so that as soon as Henry was ready, we could drive him there. Archie came with us. Practically everyone must have already arrived. One could hear the roar of the guests from the street. We were quickly separated, and I didn’t see George again until Bob Chapman’s toast, for which someone managed to quiet the crowd. As soon as he had finished, Henry made a toast and offered his thanks without, it seemed to me, omitting anyone. We got back to the house very late, and I was surprised when Henry followed me to my room. He sat down and asked: Did you notice Wilmerding and Allen? What about them? I answered. Neither came to the party, he said, although they were both at the play. I don’t understand those two.

XVII

S
UCCESS
, observed Tom Peabody, having made sure that Wilmerding and his two sidekicks with whom we had just had lunch were out of earshot, ah success. It’s hard to earn and harder to wear gracefully.
Inde ira et lacrimae.

We were lingering over coffee in the house dining room. Henry had been at lunch with us as well, but had left abruptly in the middle of the meal. I asked Tom what he meant by the English part of his aphorism; I understood the Latin.

It’s simple, he answered, I would have thought you could figure it out. Henry’s sudden blaze of success doesn’t suit Wilmerding. Ergo, it doesn’t suit Wilmerding’s disciples. Henry should have pleaded with Wilmerding to take ample credit for
Ubu;
in fact, he should have forced it on him. Now the harm is done. Are you ready for another old saw,
ira furor brevis
? Not this time. Hell will freeze over before Wilmerding relents.

I protested, telling Tom that I knew for a fact that Wilmerding had done nothing to help out with the production, although he had been given every opportunity. The same was true of his pals, Thatcher and Burlingham. Hot air: that was all.

Tom waved that aside. I don’t doubt it, he said, but it doesn’t matter. Never ask someone to help unless you really want him to help and you think he will. Otherwise, you’re asking for trouble. And if you fall into that trap and you happen to be dealing with someone like Ralph, you had better pretend that he has been immensely helpful. Better yet, indispensable. As it is, Wilmerding feels slighted and will make your friend Henry pay for the insult. Of course, he might have turned against Henry whatever he did. They all think he’s too big for his britches.

I asked whether, as a practical matter, there was anything Henry could still do to repair the damage.

Do now? Probably nothing. He can hope for the best and not expect much. It wasn’t very smart to try to worm his way into Wilmerding’s circle. He did that, you know. I observed it with interest because I was in a way an accessory to the crime. He’d see me at Ralph’s table and ask whether he could join me. After a while, he began to act as though he were entitled to be there and didn’t need my presence as a pretext. That’s when Wilmerding began his cat-and-mouse game with him, a game designed only to humiliate, because Wilmerding is a house cat and doesn’t eat mice. If you know him well enough, you will realize that if Ralph chooses the game, he wins. It doesn’t matter whether it’s chess or checkers or who remembers more dates of famous battles or how many rounds Joe Louis went with Tommy Farr. I don’t know whether Wilmerding and Henry have actually played, but if they have I’m sure Wilmerding won. Then Henry came up with a game of his own: putting on a play no one had ever heard of with no opportunity for Wilmerding to beat him. That left only one solution. The banishment of Henry! For the sake of the established social order.

Having said this, Tom folded his napkin and got up. I followed him to his entryway. Before he went in, I said, I want to ask a question: What do you really think of Wilmerding and company?

Tom raised his eyebrows. Not much. But as undergraduates go, they’re decent company: good-looking, well dressed, reasonably civilized.

But in relation to this case, I insisted, to what they’ve done.

They’ve been rough with him, he replied. But don’t worry too much about Henry. I suspect that he’s very resilient.

After lunch I recalled incidents that Tom’s remarks illuminated for me in retrospect. It was a fact that only one Parnassian—Jack Merton—as well as Tom Peabody, of course, had come to the Ryans’ party for
Ubu,
although all were invited and I had heard Henry repeat the invitation the day before the premiere. Also, very recently I had noticed on several occasions at lunch and dinner that it was difficult for Henry to get a word in edgewise: whatever he said, Wilmerding or Allen would break in and, speaking more loudly than he, take the conversation in some other direction. This was to some extent how they normally behaved. They were enamored of clipped private jokes and anecdotes that were sometimes difficult to decipher. But at this last lunch they had been openly brutal. Wilmerding had ignored questions Henry addressed to him—rather than answer he turned away and spoke to Thatcher or Burlingham—and Allen had once or twice imitated Henry’s accent in answering something he had said.

I didn’t doubt that Henry knew what was happening, and in the days that followed my talk with Tom I took to waiting for him at the door of the dining room so that we could sit together, or, if he had arrived before me, I joined him at whatever table he happened to have chosen. I didn’t think that he would again attempt to scale Parnassus, though I was reluctant to be the first to mention the change in his and Wilmerding’s relations. It wasn’t long, however, before Henry asked whether I could explain what he had done to Ralph and the rest of that crew.

I seem to have become public enemy number one, he said, and I don’t know what crime I have committed.

Although I had come to believe that Tom was right in everything he had said, I didn’t have the heart to repeat his words to Henry. I avoided the question partially, telling him that with the exception of Merton, they were pretentious second-raters unable to accept the success of anyone who wasn’t a charter member of their club but came into daily contact with them. I added that I had become tired of seeing them at lunch and dinner. That at least was absolutely true.

Nothing more was said at the time. A couple of days later, he asked me out of the blue whether I had imagined that
Ubu
could turn into such an albatross.

I shook my head.

It has, he said, most probably because it has been such a success. If it had fizzled some might have snickered but no one would have really cared. Instead it has made trouble. Not just between Wilmerding and me—by the way there may be more to it than my success, but I can’t put my finger on it. But the classics department too has its nose out of joint. A couple of old fogies claim that my having staged such a play is a sign that I’m not serious. A self-respecting classicist, they say, if he were to do any such thing at all, would have chosen a Greek or Latin text instead of some French drivel. They wouldn’t have even noticed that there had been a production of
Ubu
if there had been less talk about it.

The following week he reported that he was pretty sure of having placated both the department chairman and the professor with whom he was reading Greek tragedies. He told them about the coincidence of his reading Plautus in the library of a château in the Ardennes awakening the interest of the director of the national theater of Brussels, and the rapprochement the director had made between Plautus and Jarry.

Name-dropping clinched it, he added, brazen name-dropping. Denis van Damme, Ardennes, a French château, a Belgian industrial fortune. They began to regard me with a certain new respect. Unfortunately, I made them a foolish promise that I will live to regret. I told them that if work on my thesis permits, I’ll stage a Greek or Latin play next spring.

In all likelihood, he could have skipped that commitment. A few days later he learned that the election to the national honor society had taken place and that he was one of the handful of juniors chosen. Over dinner at Henri IV, where Archie and I took him to celebrate, Henry refused to be congratulated. For one thing, when he told his parents his mother said, That’s all you have to tell me? What’s so good about being one out of eight? You aren’t at the head of your class?

Besides, he said, this election is based on arithmetic; they take the juniors with the highest grades. Nobody needed to vote for me because he liked me. It would be fun to be elected to something just once because everyone thinks I’m such a nice guy.

D
R.
R
EINER AND
I were going through another crisis at just that time. I had begun a novel for my creative writing course and it was going no better than my analysis. There were days when I could manage at most a few lines. And I was spending more time with George, not only because I liked him but also because he did not try to involve me in problems that couldn’t be solved. We would have a meal, drink a beer, chuckle over Berkshires gossip, and say goodbye. I had spent only one week in Lenox during the past summer, most of it playing tennis on the Standishes’ court. I hadn’t gone home for Christmas, and I wasn’t planning to go at Easter. George was my source of news. I had no doubt that I hurt my parents’ feelings by staying away. But their silence—my mother had stopped writing to me—and my Christmas present, three pairs of thick wool socks and a pair of red flannel pajamas out of the L. L. Bean catalog, left no doubt in my mind that they considered me damaged goods. Which was more to blame: the beating I had received in New Orleans or my subsequent nervous breakdown? I also thought it possible that, after all those years of bringing up somebody else’s kid, and putting a more or less good face on it, they’d had enough. A Standish trust was paying my way. I was off their hands and out the door. Good riddance to a bad job. Dr. Reiner showed no interest in these speculations; he said, We’re not here to discuss current events.

Had I been less absorbed by these personal worries I might have realized how isolated the collapse of the relationship with Wilmerding had left Henry. If you crossed off Wilmerding and his companions, he had no friends apart from Archie, George, and me—an odd situation for an undergraduate so accomplished to find himself in just in the second half of his junior year. I should have once again made an effort to have meals with him regularly. But I was skipping more dinners and lunches than I ate, and almost never went to breakfast. The hours kept by the muse and the house dining room staff did not overlap. So it happened that I wouldn’t spend an evening with Henry until after the Easter break. We went to an early show at the University Theater and then sat up talking in my room.

I saw Madeleine in New York, he told me. She timed her trip so that I could be there.

Is it possible that I said something as stupid as, Did you have a good time? It didn’t matter; he could hardly wait to tell me. She is fabulous, he said, I am beginning to believe that she may be in love with me. Anyway she really wants to be with me. Just think—we had three nights together. Then she went back to Brussels and I took the subway to Brooklyn.

I was intrigued and asked whether he had actually slept at her hotel. He laughed and said, Yes, at a very big hotel she had chosen on purpose, the Waldorf-Astoria. It was so big that even if someone she knew happened to be in the lobby there was little likelihood of that person’s realizing that he was with her unless she took his arm, which she was careful not to do. They were together all the time, even when she went shopping, except for two lunches, when she had to meet the wives of her husband’s business friends. That Mr. and Mrs. White could have survived the news that their only son was staying at the Waldorf with a woman more than thirty years older didn’t seem likely. I asked him how he had managed to get that past his parents.

I told a huge lie, he answered. I said I was staying with George. Naturally they were furious, and I had to agree to call them every morning so that they’d know I hadn’t been hit by a car. Of course, I couldn’t have those conversations in front of Madeleine. They were too embarrassing. I had to wait until she was in the bathroom. The risk of their calling me at the Standishes’ was very small because they wouldn’t want to disturb such grand people, but just in case there was an emergency and they got up their nerve to dial the number, George was ready to back up my story and get hold of me right away.

You’ve told him about Madeleine!

I had to, he replied. Besides, I trust him. I’ve told you about it because I tell you everything. I haven’t told Archie.

He paused, but I didn’t say anything, and he asked whether I thought he had made a mistake confiding in George. I assured him that he hadn’t. Henry looked relieved.

There is something else, he said. Madeleine knows about the business with Wilmerding, he said, I told her in a letter. She thinks that my friends let me down. They didn’t stand up for me. That’s what she wrote, and she said it again in New York. I think I’ve convinced her that there was nothing that you could have done. Perhaps Peabody could have brought them to heel, but that sort of thing is not for the senior tutor to concern himself with. Anyway, what would my relationship with Ralph have been if he’d had a talking-to? Worse than nothing, and that’s all it is now.

A nothing that rankles, I said, hoping that Madeleine had not hit the nail on the head.

Either he really thought we hadn’t let him down or he was determined to put a good face on our conduct. He gave me his other big news. Madeleine had told him that she had allowed her husband to talk her into engaging Henry again for July and August as the resident English tutor in Bayencourt. He was even going to get a raise. But first he would go to London, where she would meet him. They would spend a few days together, and then she would go home so as to be there on the first of July, when he was scheduled to arrive. This, he said, would be the amusing part of the vacation. In order to pacify his parents about his being away all summer, and also because he felt somewhat guilty about the Easter break, he promised that right after his last exam he would go with them to a resort they liked in the Catskills, a short distance from Woodstock, run by a Polish couple, a former lieutenant in the army of General Anders who had survived his campaigns and the lieutenant’s wife. The clientele was all Polish Jews, including some who’d come to New York as refugees after the war ended. The scenery was truly beautiful, and there were good walks in the nearby woods, but the great attraction was the Polish cuisine. Even during a heat wave at lunch the guests would tuck away huge helpings of stuffed cabbage followed by a cucumber salad and a nice cheesecake. For dinner they might have
zrazy
with kasha and more cucumber salad. After that strawberries and whipped cream and a different cake, possibly one made with poppy seeds, which was a great favorite, except, of course, for guests like his father, who lived in the shadow of a heart attack and ate nothing but cottage cheese and watermelon. His father had already announced that they had reserved a bungalow on the grounds, which meant that Henry would have to sleep on a pullout sofa in the living room and listen to him snore. He made an attempt to persuade them to get a bedroom for him in the hotel itself. His father refused. There was no extra charge for a third person in the bungalow, so he would be throwing good money out the window if he paid for a bed in the hotel. Henry said that in the end he didn’t care all that much. The walls in the main building were thin too and, if the choice was between listening to his father’s snoring and that of strangers, he came out in favor of his old man.