After élodi had arrived, they did. Not wanting to be noticed, they parked on the street and waited, hoping that the feel of the place might give them something unexpected to go on in the interview.
éLODI, WHO WAS wearing the yellow silk print, had some music in a portfolio, and no cello to burden her. As Jules watched her walk from the gate to his door he realized that from a distance he’d never really seen her move without the cello. Although she had been graceful even with it, when she was without it he witnessed something of extraordinary beauty. If someone walks when she knows she is observed it can make her stiff and awkward, but élodi took not a single, self-conscious, unbalanced step. In the fading, primarily reflected light, with the sun, now high over the Western Atlantic, draping the eastern parts of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in shadow, the color and sheen of the silk made it glow. As he had noticed before, it was tight on her. But now he didn’t avert his eyes, and as she came closer he saw her body moving against the material, and the slight shuffle of the fabric as she made her way forward. He knew that were he to cup his hand around her side as he pulled her into an embrace, what he would feel through the silk would be intoxicatingly firm and strong.
When they were sitting down in the same places as before, she asked, “Why not bring my instrument? Is there something wrong with it?”
“No, it’s perfectly fine. But I can’t teach anymore.”
She looked at him questioningly.
“Or, rather I mayn’t teach anymore. I have a cerebral aneurysm, and I collapsed on the train. The aneurysm is wrapped around my brainstem, partially at least, and inoperable. I shouldn’t quite say that. It is operable, but the risk of damage or death is so great that it’s better just to let it run its course and see how long I can live.”
This recalled for élodi the deaths of her parents, and the nausea and terror it had brought. Now whatever she had felt for him, confused as it was, was intensified.
“I have an insurance policy that covers disability, and they tell me that I’m now disabled. I’m not, but if I do any kind of work it voids the policy. I can’t have that, because I need it for the people I’ll leave behind. So I can’t write or teach, even privately, even without compensation. Bureaucracy, public or private, is both stupid and monstrous.”
“If you can’t teach, why am I here?” she asked, thinking that although she herself had flirted with it, now it was he who was being what people of his age – unlike many of her contemporaries, she knew the expression and understood its context – called being ‘too forward’. She both wanted him to be forward enough to make love to her, and not to be forward at all, which was exactly the way he felt. When they were thinking the same way, with a bias to attraction and risk, it made heat as if by induction: they could actually feel it between them. But when thinking the same way, with a bias toward caution and regret, they felt an internal, physical coldness. And when, as often happened as things changed between them in rapid oscillation, one was hot and the other cold, it made for a turbulence they could not master. But one kiss, one embrace, would have clarified everything.
“I’m not allowed to work, it’s true. However, nothing prevents you from trying out my cello with the prospect of buying it,” he said. “That’s not work, but the sale of personal effects.”
“And you can give me tips on how it should be played.”
“Absolutely. The older the instrument, the more idiosyncratic.”
“But you know,” élodi told him, losing her footing and out of character, “I can’t afford it.”
“Oh? I haven’t set a price. How do you know? You haven’t made an offer. And most instruments like these are passed down, with never a price.”
“But you have a family.”
“A daughter who doesn’t play – and it must be played. That’s why it exists.”
“How much would it be worth if you did sell it?”
“I have no idea, but it’s not one of those things to which a high monetary value is attached. If it were, I would have sold it to help my grandchild, who’s sick.”
“Is that what the insurance is for?”
“Yes.”
“I see. Jules?” It was extremely pleasurable when she addressed him that way for the first time. It changed things and relaxed her. It also made him seem very old, so she thought that perhaps she shouldn’t have done it. “I’m interested, perhaps, in purchasing your cello, as you cannot work ….”
“Ah,” he said. “What a surprise.”
“Yes. May I try it? And will you guide me in playing it, because things that are aged are so often idiosyncratic?”
“Very much so,” he answered, meaning, also, yes.
She leaned forward and asked, not in a whisper but quietly and skeptically, “Are they watching you? Would anyone care?”
“They questioned me. They were here just recently. As unlikely as it seems, I wouldn’t rule it out. But don’t worry.” He gestured toward the cello.
She took hold of it. “What would you like me to play?”
“Play what you brought.”
“The Bach.”
IN WHAT FOLLOWED, they passed the cello back and forth, and in so doing, touched lightly. Although this might have made them less comfortable with one another, it made them more comfortable, particularly because after each touch came the Bach. Sometimes he had to cross the gap and sit next to her, and when he did she reddened and her perfume rose. She was life.
He wanted so much to stay with her that when she had to leave he saw her to the gate and beyond. As soon as they stepped into the street he saw the spectre of Damien Nerval catercorner in a car and pointing a large telephoto lens in their direction. Undoubtedly the camera had a motor drive, and the interior of the car now sounded like the inside of a cuckoo clock just before the cuckoo pops out.
Jules placed his hand against élodi’s left side, pivoted so his back was to Nerval, and said, “Don’t look. They are watching. We should talk a while.” He had been right about what he would feel – the silk, taut musculature, lovely breathing.
“They can find out that I’m enrolled, that I chose you as …” she began.
“I know. But if we talk …” he said.
“So what?”
“Perhaps,” he dared, “we should pretend to kiss? That might put them off.”
She thought it was funny that, suddenly, he was as awkward as a preadolescent. As seductive as she had ever been, with intense physical pleasure coursing through her as she spoke, she asked, “What level of verisimilitude do you have in mind?”
“I suppose it would have to be unambiguous.”
“I think that’s right.”
He had never intended to kiss or embrace her, and was afraid to do so. “I’d be afraid of joining my imperfection to your perfection. Afraid that I would be like someone who’s just gotten up in the morning.”
“I know what you mean,” she said, “but I get up in the morning, too. So let’s by my perfection find your imperfection out.”