Margaret stepped forward, passed through the metal detector, watched the x-ray of her bag as it rolled along on a conveyor belt. Overlapping round coins, her keys, and several indistinct lumps—she was setting forth naked and alone.
Once on the plane to Paris, where she would spend the night before continuing to Prague, Margaret thought again how sad it was that Edward could not accompany her. No marvelous, heroic Czech Philharmonic together, but Edward had given her a long article about the orchestra to read on the plane as a standin for his own attendance and instruction and conversation. Professor Ehrenwerth had to stay home and coddle his students. Which was just as well, Margaret decided, for it was demeaning to have become so dependent on another person, even one as interesting as Edward.
And so Margaret was by herself. With the exception of 150 or so passengers who provided international atmosphere by speaking French or Japanese or richly American dialects of English, she sat unaccompanied on the plane.
If Edward were here, she thought, he would already have discovered that the stewardess was studying in her spare time to be France's first female rabbi, that the 250 other passengers would consume forty-five liters of red wine during the journey, that the five-year-old Japanese girl across the aisle was a violinist who had performed at Carnegie Hall—twice.
But Edward is not here. I am alone. The stewardess probably belongs to Racially Pure Young Women for Le Pen. What if the 250 passengers, having consumed their forty-five liters of wine, become ill simultaneously? The Japanese girl is to be given to an infertile Parisian couple in exchange for a Manet painting.
I am alone.
Dinner came and went. She read about the Czech Philharmonic, on strike, performing Má Vlast in an unsanctioned concert to an audience that stood up, with the orchestra, to totalitarianism, literally rising to their feet. The Czech Philharmonic had helped to topple the Communist regime! And in East Germany, where orchestra conductors led marches and played his Ninth Symphony as protest music, Beethoven had taken to the streets. Truth and beauty to the people!
She thought of Edward with a sudden pang, for he seemed, from the distance of three hours and thirty-five thousand feet, extremely handsome, even more handsome than he seemed up close. "Should you take up with a young, French bisexual airplane attendant, still I shall welcome you with open arms on your return," he had said, and she wondered whether he meant a male bisexual or a female one, and whether he would, in fact, take her back if she were really to stray with one of the slender, smooth-skinned, rather unreal attendants in their blue uniforms. At this thought, the thought of straying, she shuddered, for the flight attendants looked so alien to her, and the touch of a stranger seemed impossible.
And how could Edward, making his little joke about infidelity, have known, how could either of them have guessed, how much she would enjoy her new solitude? She felt she should guard it, it seemed that precious. No one here knew who she was, no one cared. She was free. There was nothing to spoil the rich alienation she was enjoying!
In the morning in Paris, she went straight to her hotel in order to sleep. There, a small brass plaque informed her, Casanova had also slept, although with whom the plaque did not say. There was a suit of armor on the staircase, and red carpeting extended up the steps and into her tiny room, which was far taller than it was long. The wall that held the windows was hung with deep crimson velvet drapes, and Margaret felt like a trinket in a little padded box.
Let me out, she thought, sinking into a deep sleep.
She woke up in time for dinner, for she had plans to meet Juliette and Jean-Claude at the apartment of one of their friends, a composer whom Margaret knew slightly, an aging avant-gard-ist, small, nervous, generous. He had the habit of hopping from foot to foot (hoof to hoof, Margaret thought, for he looked rather like a goat). When Margaret arrived at his apartment in Passy, he was nearly butting his guests in his eagerness to admit and entertain them. From the windows, a whole wall of them, in his living room, Margaret stared out at the Eiffel Tower.
Seeing Juliette and Jean-Claude, Margaret grew almost painfully nostalgic for Edward and their first trip together, and she quickly drank several glasses of the composer's excellent wine in memory of that time.
Oh, Edward, she thought, smiling dreamily at the witty and increasingly blurry French intellectuals the composer had collected around him. The composer himself briefly interrupted his endless shuttle between the door and the table and stood beside Margaret. "You're not eating?" he asked, gesturing toward a table covered with baskets and bowls.
"No, I'm drinking." She refilled her glass and held it to her lips, savoring the wine. She realized her eyes were closed and that she was swaying with pleasure. She opened them and stood still.