Edward's reaction to her success was a mixture of pride in her and in his choice of her, pride in the outside world's confirmation of his pride, and the simple excitement he always showed when something good occurred, for he was proud of goodness itself, as if it originated with him. In fact, he took the whole thing so much in stride—my wife, Margaret? Well, naturally!—that Margaret herself began to feel comfortable with the situation. It was, she concluded, a freak of nature, a happy fluke, like being born a strawberry blonde. No one deserves to be a strawberry blonde, no one earns it, it is not the reward for virtue. But on the other hand, no one deserves not to be a strawberry blonde either.
The seminar Margaret belonged to met four times a year, a group composed primarily of academics, with some poets, novelists, and highbrow journalists thrown in. For Margaret, it was a rather intimidating group, especially after she'd been discovered by writers, like Jacques Maridou, whom she couldn't even bear to read. Would she now have to discuss Maridou's theories of narrative? Weren't they hopelessly passe yet? She had not escaped critical theory altogether but had ignored it as much as possible, even in France. Her many visits to France, spent mostly in libraries, had made that country seem only more foreign to her: the fashions oddly distant, like costumes in an old James Bond movie; the food fetishistic; the intellectuals enthusiastically cynical. But now, she was a fashion in France. It was the bicentennial of the Revolution, and Margaret's book had been reprinted under the title Anatomie sans culotte, with Maridou's essay as an introduction.
One of the seminar's quarterly meetings was a Christmas party held in the large university-subsidized, West Side apartment of the group's chairman. The chairman herself, a colorful woman who taught Italian literature and claimed to have been Rossellini's production assistant during the filming of Open City (as a teenager—she was as vain about her age as she was about her avant-garde credentials), stood at the door to greet Margaret and Edward. After a flurry of ciaos and kisses, Edward threw an arm over the shoulder of a dapper man and wandered off, speaking German.
Margaret watched Edward walk away and thought that he was like a drug, a dangerous, potent, exhilarating drug, that the more she had of him the more she seemed to need him and want him. Did that mean she had too little of him, or too much? She noted the apartment's ornate cherry moldings with envy and turned her attention to the roomful of her colleagues. Which name went with which face? And then, which idea went with which name? Margaret thought there ought to be nametags with a person's discipline, political bent, and latest publication printed neatly beneath the name. "Timothy Shiller, economist, neoliberal, Why I Am Not a Socialist—And Never Was, Either." "Leonard Winks, medieval historian, far left, The Importance of Cross-Dressing in the Symbolism of the Eleventh-Century Promissory Note." But of course there were no labels, and anonymous bodies drifted past her as she leaned forlornly against a bookcase, listening to an enormous, effeminate art historian discuss rap music with a middle-aged woman she didn't recognize. Was it an indigenous art form? Or a commodity? Margaret didn't really care, but she felt the warmth of academic familiarity comfort her in her distress.
A pleasant-looking girl smiled in delight when she saw Margaret.
"Hello!" Margaret said. I know you, she thought. And I like you. Who are you?
"Yes, I read it," said a tall, pink man with a slight English accent to the young woman. "You were laboriously fair."
"You gave my book a nice blurb," said a man with a beard whom Margaret recognized as a professor of American history.
"I did?" Margaret said.
"My dear young lady," said a graying old man with a heavy Eastern European accent, "I have just written you a letter."
He was a professor of philosophy, she thought. The New School? No, Brooklyn College. Very partial to the thought of someone no one had ever heard of. Seventeenth century? And he was a translator, too. Czech, was he? Or Polish? He was a neat and compact man, as if he'd been specially designed to fold easily for travel. Jan! His name was Jan something. Comenius? Jan Comenius.
"I have invited you to Prague. That is, the Comenius Society has invited you to Prague to speak."
Ah. Jan Comenius was his philosopher, not his name. She remembered. A Bohemian protestant.
"I read your article in Quod, my dear young lady. 'The Satin Underground.' Very amusing title, very droll. And timely, too, this article. Don't you think the dissemination of revolutionary ideas through popular, underground art such as pornography is an interesting antecedent to the samizdat publications of my country? From the Satin Underground to the Velvet Revolution! What do you think?"
"Well..."
"What fun you will have, my dear young lady. I have just come back. 'Havel in the Castle'! That is what all the posters say! There are people dancing in the streets."
"Yes, I'm sure. I mean I've heard—"
"The Comenius Society will pay your expenses, there is a small honorarium—"