Second Generation (21 page)

Sally Levy helped. At least to the extent that once the summer at Higate was over, he found himself thinking about her constantly. "I am not in love with her," he assured himself. "I am not stupid or romantic enough to be in love with a demented thirteen-year-old kid." He had had affairs with four girls, successively, and had convinced himself that he was sincerely in love with all four of them, also successively. But when he fixed any one of them in his mind as candidates for marriage, the image was "always blocked by the memory of Sally Levy, her oversized hands scratched from the grape picking, her fingers stained with grape juice, her face covered with freckles, her straw-colored hair an unwashed tangle, and her eyes filled with a

foolish, cowlike worship. She followed him everywhere, made an ultimate nuisance of herself, and then finally said to him, one evening,

"You might as well know about it. I love you."

"You're crazy," he told her.

"Sure, that's a fine thing to say."

"Jesus, you're thirteen years old."

"I didn't have anything to do with that. Anyway, it's no reason why you can't be nice to me."

"I am nice to you."

"You are like hell. You don't even know that I exist. You pay more attention to the damn dogs."

"Why don't you stop trying to talk tough?" he asked her gently.

"Maybe it's just the way I am."

"Maybe."

"How do you feel about me?" she demanded.

"What do you mean, how do I feel about you. I like you all right. We're sort of related, aren't we?"

"No. How could we be related? You're Chinese. But that doesn't bother me."

"Thank you."

"Because I'm in love with you."

"Yes, you said that before."

"In a few weeks you'll be going back to Los Angeles. You'll forget all about me."

"Not very likely."

"You don't even say that nice. You think I'm just a crazy kid, don't you?"

Joe shook his head hopelessly.

"Well, I'm not. I started to menstruate."

He stared at her, unable to think of an appropriate comment.

"Well, if you're going to medical school, that shouldn't shock you."

"It doesn't shock me. It's just a funny thing for a kid to say."

"Why don't you stop calling me a kid? Why can't you take me seriously? If you did, you'd at least come up here sometime to see me. I can't go down to Los Angeles. What do you think my mother would say if I told her that I was in love with you and I have all kinds of crazy dreams about you making love to me?"

"I can imagine what she'd say."

"So you won't come to see me, not even once?"

"How can I, Sally? I'll be in medical school. Do you know what medical school is like? They work you twenty-four hours a day."

"And in between, you sleep with the nurses."

"God Almighty, where do you get your ideas?"

"I read a lot."

"I bet you do."

"Anyway, you can be sure of one thing. If you marry anyone else, I'll just kill you."

"Just like that?"

"You bet."

"Well," he said, "you don't have to kill me, because I don't intend to marry anyone."

Thinking about it now, months later, her image remained with him, vivid, alive. Whoever he was with paled into dullness against that memory.

It was a year since Barbara had met Marcel Duboise, and to celebrate the occasion, she prepared dinner for the two of them in her apartment on the Quai de Passy. She had been reading French cookbooks, practicing assiduously, and for the occasion she decided on a
boeuf en croute.
She had to finish her piece for the magazine, and that took the morning. Then she skipped lunch, contenting herself with a cup of coffee and a cigarette, and went to work on the
boeuf,
wondering meanwhile, as she had so often before, how it was that a nation of superb cooks built apartments with such wretched kitchens. Hers was no better than a large closet. The dish was a challenge; for herself, she considered
haute cuisine
to be an utter waste of time and rather silly in the bargain, but since she happened to be in love with a Frenchman, she was determined to conquer it. She had done her shopping in the early morning, in the best local tradition. Beef fillet. She trimmed it carefully, tied it up, giggling at her careful effort, rubbed it with pepper, and then browned it in fresh sweet butter, all the while feeling that she was working out a puzzle rather than preparing food. Ten minutes in a hot oven. While it was cooling, she read over her piece for the magazine: the new spring fashions, a scattering of politics that she had picked up from
Le
Monde
—she was still on uneasy ground with politics—the three new best-selling novels, particularly Aragon's new book, and the opening of a new loan exhibit of the Impressionists. She was on firm ground there; at least that much her mother had given her, and after reading it, she decided that Jean would like it. Jean read every piece she wrote, and discussed her pieces in the letters they exchanged. It was in her last letter that Jean had observed that her daughter was becoming a "damned competent and professional writer." It was high praise.

The meat had cooled by now. Slice the mushrooms, saute in butter, chop the mixed herbs with the parslev, add that, cool again. Now to make the puff pastry, so absolutely foolish and so absolutely complex. She had pinned up the recipe on the wall in front of her. Roll out the pastry and divide in two. Mixture of mushrooms and spices on the larger piece. Place the beef on top of it, fold pastry up and around, second piece of pastry over the top. The egg glaze. She had forgotten that entirely. Then into a hot oven for forty minutes. It left her only enough time to shower and dress. When she took the dish out of the oven, brown and beautiful, filling the house with its good smell, Marcel was at the door.

He brought a bottle of champagne and another of red wine, and under his arm was a long loaf of fresh bread. "A double celebration," he announced, after Barbara had taken the packages and kissed him.

"Double?"

"Our anniversary and my promotion. I am no longer a contemptible critic."

"Oh, wonderful! But you were never a contemptible critic, never a contemptible anything."

"All critics are contemptible. Who was it, Shaw or some other very wise man, who said the critic is like the eunuch in the harem? He watches the trick turned every night, but knows he could never do it himself."

"Yes, very clever. Now please tell me what happened," Barbara begged him.

"Ah. So you wish to know?"

"Yes, I wish to know."

"Very well. My estimable editor, I hear he is looking for someone on special assignment in Spain. True, we have three men there already, but this is very special. So I go to him, I plead, I threaten, I entreat, I become a veritable Cyrano of persuasion—and finally he melts, he agrees. Whereby, I am going to Spain." "What kind of special assignment?" Barbara asked slowly, quietly.

"Ah, come, come." He started to kiss her again, but she pushed him away.

"What kind of special assignment?"

"What is that marvelous, enchanting smell?"

"Stop it! Don't be cute now. I want to know what you are going to do in Spain."

"All right. You have heard of the Fifteenth Brigade, the Internationals. It includes an American Brigade of volunteers, which they call the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. My editor wants a series of pieces on them. They are very brave, very gallant, and we have printed very little about them. You see, I speak English, thanks to you."

"You told him you speak English?" she asked coldly.

"But I do, Barbara."

"I suppose you do, in a manner of speaking, if you call it English. I think the whole thing stinks."

"Just like that?"

"How else? Shall I tie it up in a rose-colored ribbon? You know how I feel about war, about this insanity of men killing each other for their filthy causes, for their noble aims."

"We never talked about it."

"You've been living with me and sleeping with me for almost a year. You don't know me? Must I spell everything out—this is how Barbara feels about this and this is how Barbara feels about that?"

"You're right. There's a lot I don't know about you. I've never seen you in such a royal rage before."

"Then it's time."

"Baby, baby," he said, "we can't have a fight. We never had a fight. Please, please try to understand what this means to me, a by-line assignment as a special foreign correspondent. I don't have to argue the cause of the Spanish Republic. You know it as well as I do, and you know what that butcher Franco has done. I'm not enlisting. I'm not a volunteer. I am simply going as a writer, as a journalist, to put down what I see and hear."

"So you can say, thank God for a war."

"No, that's not fair."

"What is fair? For me to fall in love with a man who goes off to get shot at in this stupid game? I told you about the kid in San Francisco, his poor wasted life. He was in love with me. I was selfishly spared, because there was no way I could love him. But I do love you, and I will not have this happen to me again. I will not. I know I live in a world of maniacs, but I thought that you and I—"

"Would be spared?" he asked gently. "No one is spared, Barbara, dear love, no one. And this is something I have to do, believe me. It's not forever. Only six weeks, and then I'll be back, whole and safe and sound, I promise you."

She dropped into a chair and began to weep.

"No, no tears, please." He knelt beside her, kissing her hand, first on the back and then on the palm, a gesture so French, so unexpected, that she began to giggle through her tears.

"May I open the champagne?" he asked her.

"Yes."

"And will you tell me what the marvelous smell is?"

"Boeuf en croiite."

"Am I not the most fortunate of all men? Am I not?"

Later that evening, her emotions under control, Barbara tried to be both practical and helpful. "Remember," she said to Marcel, "you are an observer. You have no obligation to put yourself in a dangerous situation. That would be stupid and wasteful. Your job is to see things and write about them."

"Yes, my dear," he agreed.

"You're not listening."

"But I am. Every word."

"By the way, I do know someone in that unit. Well, no. I don't really know him, but the Levys do. You remember? I told you about them."

"Yes. Of course."

"It seems that this boy worked for them at the winery. His name is Bernie Cohen. Can you remember that?"

"I will try. What is he doing in Spain?"

"Well, he's Jewish and he's a Zionist or something of that sort, and he intends to go to Palestine. From what my brother wrote to me, he enlisted in the Lincoln Brigade to get experience in fighting—which is perfectly insane, but I don't know what part of this is not insane. But Joe met him at Higate, and he says he is competent and reliable, so at least that would be one person you would know."

"Barbara, I don't really have to know anyone. I'll be with the press. You simply must not worry about me. I'll be all right."

"You don't have to go. You can still tell them that you don't want this wretched assignment."

"I can't. You know that."

"All right. I won't speak of it again. You know how I feel. Just think about it."

"Not only that, but I'll do the dishes."

'To hell with the dishes. Take me to bed, and we'll pretend there are only two of us in a very beautiful, uncomplicated world."

Marcel left for Spain the day before the Levys arrived in Paris, and the evening of the day they arrived, they telephoned Barbara and asked her to dine with them the following day. On her father's side, Barbara had no blood relations. Daniel Lavette, the child of two immigrant parents, had been left an orphan at the age of seventeen. Since she was a child, Barbara had known of his close attachment to the Cassala family in San Mateo and the Levy family in Sausalito, and she had also known of her mother's distaste for both families. They were a part of her father's life. She had never met any of them, but through the years she had heard a great deal about them. For most Californians, the wine business wears a halo of romance, and Barbara was intrigued with the notion of two young people buying an abandoned winery during Prohibition and turning it into a prosperous enterprise—and now the thought of selling California wine in France delighted her. In any case, they would fill some of the empty hours that faced her during Marcel's absence. Until he left, she had not realized how totally she had come to depend on him, and when she looked back now at her years in Paris before she had met him, they appeared to be lonely and barren beyond belief.