Rameau's Niece



How extraordinary. A little girl (she was no more than sixteen) had chosen for company a work of mine, a rather difficult one, too. Why, it was in her small and delicate hand at that very moment! She pressed the book—my book—almost reverently to her breast.





SHE: I have so many questions.





As did I, the first and most pressing of which was, Who was she?

This I knew not. But, yet, I felt I knew something of greater weight, for her desire to struggle toward the freedom to make use of her reason was clear to me. And so too was my obligation to accompany—no, to lead her on her journey. Without my knowledge, I had been chosen to be (indeed, judging by the book in her little white hand, I already was) her guide on a journey toward enlightenment. Here was an innocent child, unspoiled, seeking an education.





MYSELF: But how is it that you know me? And who is your uncle?





I tell you now, dear reader, that I addressed these questions to the lovely girl in a state of agitation, for in my distress at disturbing an innocent young lady by clumsily bumping into her on a deserted and narrow garden path, and in my excitement at discovering a pupil so eager, I had quite forgotten to step aside to let her pass, and so was standing in such intimate proximity to her that I felt her breast heaving, in shock at the surprise of the initial encounter, no doubt, against my own chest, her little hand clutching still my modest treatise on sociability now pressed between our two hearts.

I longed to teach her then, to be her friend, to be employed incessantly in promoting her felicity and increasing it by every sort of pleasure.

And, longing thus, foreseeing the pleasure and happiness of such an arrangement, and standing thrust against her as I was, I became conscious of another feeling—a sudden and enormous surge of emotion on my part.

Recognizing my inability to control this swelling of sentiment in a situation of such delightful propinquity, and fearing that the girl might herself sense this sudden fullness of feeling and become alarmed, I moved back a pace.





SHE: Don't be startled, sir. I am not a stranger to you, only a stranger in this figure, for you have not seen me since I was a child. I am Rameau's niece.





EDWARD HAD NO DIFFICULTIES at dinner parties. If he had been seated beside a rock, he would have quickly begun an animated discussion of its layers of granite or sandstone or lime, its life underground, its ocean journeys and aspirations for the future. Intoxicated by this encounter, he would regale Margaret with tales of the rock's history, which he would tell with such enthusiasm and such grace that she would laugh and hope that some day she too might sit beside a stone at dinner. And the stone? It would sigh and bask in its newly realized glory, its importance and beauty, necessity and dignity—I pave roads and build towers, I form mountains, I rest on the throats of gracious ladies!

Margaret, on the other hand—well, sometimes she thought about what it would be like to sit next to herself at a dinner party. She would have nothing to say. And neither would she.

Unable to ask the initial dinner-party question (the question to ask at a dinner party, at least at the kinds of dinner parties she attended, was either "What is your field?" or "What are you working on?" depending on the degree of familiarity between participants in the exchange), unable to ask the question because of a feeling that she ought already to know the answer but didn't, or that the answer was "Nothing" and would make the question seem aggressive and cruel, she would sit in an agonized silence that she, in the next chair, also paralyzed and mute, would interpret as disdain, boredom, or, worst of all, stupidity.

Edward told her that her appalling memory was cleansing, that she came to everything fresh, and so it was a virtue. But he was wrong. A poor memory robs a person of dignity, Margaret knew. She had some standing in the world, but none of it had been achieved at dinner parties.

But here we are, Margaret thought, as she and Edward entered a large West Side apartment, the walls around them enameled, glistening, slick as ice. The ceiling, she thought, looking up—you could skate on the ceiling, gravity aside.

Edward whispered in her ear, "'And most of the jokes you just can't catch, like dirty words rubbed off a slate, and the songs are loud but somehow dim and it gets so terribly late."' Edward had taken to quoting only American poets since moving to New York. "Elizabeth Bishop," he said gently, answering her helpless look.

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