“You made me stop coming.”
“I know. I can explain.”
“With your arms full of toys?”
IN THE TUILERIES they paused to sit by the first fountain west of the Louvre, the one almost embraced by the wings of the palace but slipped from their grasp like a dropped ball. The green metal chairs littered about the gardens were new and had little of the feel of the essential Paris that Jules once had thought would remain fixed throughout his life. Since his youth, someone had invented an epoxy or other compound that kept the slats shiny and smooth without wear. Like civilization itself, they seemed frictionless and unworn, with no story except things to come. Their time had just begun, there was nothing rough and knowing about them even though eventually they, too, would be old.
“I have to rest,” he said, despite the fact that he could have run, however slowly, all the way to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, but he wanted her to know by way of warning, to remind her, that he was old. This was because, as they walked, they walked together with the rhythm of a man and a woman who are in love. There was a lightness, an expectation, and an exactitude to their step, an excitement that carried them forward as if gravity had disappeared from the world.
“I have to rest, too,” she said. Obviously she didn’t. They moved their chairs east a few meters when a south wind carried the plume of the fountain out beyond the rim and sprayed water across the gravel. It wouldn’t have been disastrous had it wet them. For the first time that spring, the evening was so warm that they might have heard the few tree frogs in the park, awakened after having slept since October. In fact, except sometimes at four o’clock in the morning in the middle of a hot and empty August, the traffic on the Place de La Concorde made it almost always impossible to hear tree frogs or crickets in the Tuileries. But they were there.
“Are you all right?” élodi placed a hand on his arm. He wondered if it were as electric for her as it was for him, or, for her, more like petting a dog.
“I’m all right, but I don’t think I’ve ever just walked past this fountain. I don’t really have to rest, I just like to sit here. Even when I have an appointment and have to rush, I’ll sit down for at least a moment, like genuflecting, before I go on.”
“Do you genuflect a lot?” she asked mischievously.
“No, but I know how to do it. When I was young the churches were full and it was part of the culture. Even Jews could genuflect perfectly. I think it’s a lovely gesture and I’ve always admired it. Especially when a woman does it, it’s extremely graceful and beautiful.”
“I do it,” she told him, “in church.”
This difference between them arose only instantly to disappear, to their pleasurable relief. To check the excitement relief generated, neither said anything, which, in silence, brought them closer. “Why are so many children crying?” élodi asked. When she saw small children, she felt love for them that was very strong in view of the fact that they were not her own, and a desire to have children that filled her with both pleasure and longing. Jules had the same surge of love – which a foolish person might think inappropriate – but rather than prospective it was an intense remembrance of things past and lost, and the natural emotion of someone in the process of leaving life.
Amidst the crowd at least two children were screaming unhappily. Remembering Cathérine at that age, Jules answered, “They get excited by the playground, but eventually they have to leave. They get tired from the Métro, scared by the crowds, or they’re hungry, their clothes are too tight, or the wind blows in their faces. Sometimes they’re scared by what they see, and you never know what it is: a face, a dog, it could be anything.”
“You have children?”
“A daughter.”
“How old is she?”
“She’ll be forty soon.”
“My,” said élodi, taking in a breath.
“Yes, that’s what I say. I don’t know what’s happening here, but I don’t want to walk away, not yet. Perhaps we should have dinner. I know a place nearby that’s practically invisible because it’s in a courtyard with no sign on the street. It’s been there since before the war, and the food is good.”
AT DUSK, THE STREETLIGHTS had begun to come on over the bridges and along the boulevards, and the restaurant was warm and dark, with islands of light. When they entered they were hit by a wash of conversation as cheerful and unintelligible as the sound of a waterfall, and as they walked to their table they smelled bread, wine, candle smoke, perfume, linen, good leather, and gin. The owner seated them near a fireplace in the back and left them with menus. A conical blaze was dancing above four splits of oak that after having spent the winter outside crackled like gunfire. The people who looked at Jules and élodi thought that she was either his granddaughter or that it was scandalous even for France. As they scanned the menus, élodi asked, “Why are the Tuileries always so packed with people? Is it just overflow from the Louvre?”
Jules could not converse and read his menu at the same time, so he looked over the top of it to answer. “Overflow from the Louvre is part of it. This area has few parks. Tourists not going to or coming from the Louvre come here to rest after walking around. And I think the French are repeating what their forbears did. For some, a very few, it’s atavistically promenading with their aristocratic ancestors. For others, it’s strutting through the domain of the king they beheaded. In revolutions the populace goes mad with a desire to view the king’s real estate. It’s always the same. Which one are you?”
“I suppose I’d be promenading like a low-level peacock, which is ridiculous of course. And you?”
“We weren’t here.”
“Where were you?”
“Germany, Holland, I really don’t know as far back as the Revolution. Our family records and memorabilia were lost during the war. It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes it does.”
“No, not compared to what else was lost.”
They ordered soup, bread, cheese, but not wine. “Just Perrier,” Jules told the owner, and looked over to élodi, who followed his lead after he said, “I’ve come to believe that Badoit is too salty.”
“No wine?” she asked.
“What I have to tell you I want to tell you without wine, which would make it less difficult. But it must be difficult, because it must be exact.”