Like everything else, time is infinitely divisible. In the motion of things, therefore, we miss most of what is present. So might it not be that in freezing an interval we cannot otherwise perceive, a photograph allows a liberation of powers we do not know we have, a window into truth that exists at every moment and everywhere but that in our continual distraction we do not see? What else could explain the power and truth of expressions frozen long ago but in which the camera had captured an elusive truth that nonetheless is always present? Somehow, Jacqueline’s young eyes held complete knowledge of what was to come, and her smile held sadness.
The photographs of his wife and child, his mother and father, would, with concentration, come alive. Jacqueline in a canoe in Canada, her head turned toward him as she sat in the bow, her flowing deep red hair, long magnificent back, and shockingly beautiful face, young and smiling. Jacqueline, age twenty-seven, the first, formal, faculty portrait of her, in a Chanel suit. Her youth, her openness, kindness, and willingness shone through as if she were really there. Cathérine, in a gorgeous portrait of her asleep as a baby, in complete innocence and flawless beauty, her deep red hair, like her mother’s, splayed magnificently on the pillow, or as a mischievous sprite that he would forever love, making a face, in a ridiculous Bolivian hat. And the tattered, cracked, sepia photograph of his parents at a beach in the thirties, when they were less than half his age now. Perhaps he read too much into it, but it was as if, despite their expressions, they knew, and as if they were looking at the child who was yet to be born and who was looking back at them from the future they understood then better than it would be possible for him to understand now. Such is the power of photographs, the power of music, and the power of love.
THE NEXT MORNING, he arose naturally at six-thirty. There had been not a single note of music in his dreams. When he was young he would hear whole symphonies there, grand pieces, long cadenzas derived from Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms. He never wrote them down, because though they were variations with many an original theme or phrase, they owed everything to what had inspired them. And rarely did he play his own music for anyone but himself, for it always brought him back to the same thing, and he often had to stop in mid-phrase.
By seven o’clock he had shaved, bathed, and was out the door and in cool sunshine. Unlike many runners, who had colorful clothes, shoes engineered like Ferraris, and various accessories – water bottles, visors, pouches, pedometers, music players – he had a pair of old white tennis shoes, military surplus khaki shorts, and a gray T-shirt. That was it, except for a swimming pool pass and goggles pinned at the waist to the right side of the shorts. Although he was no longer fast, he was steady. A slow, five-kilometer run, kilometer swim, and fifteen minutes of weights and calisthenics outdid all the accessories in the world. In the army he had learned that he was happiest when stripped of everything but his own strengths. All the rest, purchased, was never truly to be possessed.
Easy breathing didn’t come to him in the compound, on the Rue Thiers, the Rues Salomon Resnik, Le N?tre, Boulingrin, or the maze of streets on top of the hill, not even along the Allée Henri II in the park itself, but only when he had rounded the circle and faced the long, open straightaway of the Chemin du Long de la Terrasse, the Grand Terrace, its narrow white paths engraved as if by a rule and disappearing north in the open air.
The forest of Saint-Germain-en-Laye was enormous, the trees thick, the allées mainly level. You could run any route you pleased, a hundred kilometers even, and hardly pass the same place twice. But though far cooler in summer and less used than the Grand Terrace, it had so much less wind and light that Jules, who could no longer run great distances as once he had, preferred the terrace and the immense gardens of the Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
Averse to death by cardiac infarction, he had accepted for almost two decades the humiliation of being passed by girls, who probably thought it miraculous not that someone like him was running, but that someone like him was still alive. Though he could go much faster, solely out of caution he didn’t. In fact, with the musculature of a much younger man, he could easily have run until his heart gave out, and he knew it. Running high above the river at a good but easy pace, newly harvested fields to his right, and trails of mist sparkling in the sun as they rose from the Seine, he waited for music, but nothing came.
Today, Tuesday, was the only day of the week that the pool was open at eight. As was his custom, he arrived in just enough time to do a thousand meters before the nine-thirty closing. After passing through the turnstiles, he elicited from a frog-like little gatekeeper who dressed remarkably like Clemenceau a greeting not necessarily to be expected from a professional attendant: “You again.”
“Why do you always say that to me?” Jules asked.
“Say what?”
“You again. Do you say it to everyone?”
“Yes and no.”
“That answer is impossible in response to the question.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I know so.”
“Intellectuals are all the same.”
“I’m not an intellectual, and intellectuals are not all the same.”
“Some of them are.”
“That means not all of them are.”
“That’s what you say. I say they are.”
Having lost, if not on the merits, and given up some minutes in the pool, Jules surrendered. Now he would have to swim faster, but the risk of death such as it might be was still preferable to swimming not a thousand meters but 975, or 950, or, God forbid, 875. And, unlike others – doctors, lawyers, beefy finance guys who wore lots of rings – all of whom were finishing up and would head for the showers, the mirrors, and the hair dryers, Jules did not have to change. He shed his shoes and shirt, not bothering to lock them up, unpinned his goggles, and dived into an empty lane as the last of the other swimmers cleared the hall.
Warmed up by his run, he began slowly but then increased the pace, going a little faster than usual. Even with the water rushing by as he moved through it, in the empty hall the sound made by all indoor pools had not failed to gather beneath the ceiling – a sound like a continuous soft crash; or the crumpling of tissue paper; or the extreme extension of a breaker as it recedes and its abandoned foam sinks into the sand; or, heard from a distance, a forest fire minus the crack of exploding trees; or a cathedral in which a large number of supplicants mumble prayers that mix together beneath the vaults before escaping on the wind. Because sound had been his profession in adulthood and his love for as long as he could remember, he had a lot of analogies for it and a lot of memories of it.