In front of the elaborately carved mausoleum that houses the remains of Abélard and Héloïse, they pause for a moment. The tomb is surrounded by an iron fence but is littered with flowers and bits of paper that have been thrown inside.
I read in the guidebook that those pieces of papers are letters to Abélard and Héloïse written by people who want their own love to be requited, Nina tells Philip.
And I read that those are not Abélard and Héloïse’s remains, Philip answers.
Cynic.
And with one sure, swift gesture, Nina tosses the carnations inside the mausoleum. The flowers clear the iron fence and land squarely on top of the carved prone figures of the lovers.
Good throw, Philip says. Then, taking her in his arms, he adds, Your love is requited. Is mine?
I’m hungry, he also says before she can answer. Let’s go and have lunch.
Over the years, they have visited the cemetery several times. Each time, they walk down different avenues, look at different tombs: Colette, Richard Wright, Simone Signoret, Félix Nadar, Max Ernst …
The walks in the cemetery inspire them—perversely
perhaps, in the face of so much death—with a kind of childish hilarity. They tell jokes, play games: Which is the most ornate tomb? the most tasteless? their favorite?
Philip’s favorite is the highly polished, black marble tomb shaped like a triangle, of S?deq Hed?yat, a Persian writer who committed suicide.
Nina’s favorite is the tomb of the Armenian general Antranik Ozanian.
He looks like Vittorio De Sica. The mustache.
I thought you didn’t like mustaches, Philip says.
I like the statue of the horse, she says.
Instead of following the others, Philip’s horse puts his head down and resolutely begins to eat the grass. Philip is afraid of horses. And horses sense his fear and take advantage of him.
Pull his head up! Give him a kick! The cowboy leading their group on a trail ride yells at Philip.
Nina has persuaded Philip to spend the week of Louise’s spring break at a dude ranch in Arizona.
Louise wants to go. And it’s a change, she says.
Nina is riding a lively pinto named Apple. Right away, the cowboy notices her seat, her hands.
I see you’ve ridden before, he says.
Louise, also, rides well.
Philip’s horse, a big sorrel gelding, refuses to move and the cowboy trots over on his own horse and, determined, he cracks his whip over the sorrel’s hindquarters. Jerking his head up in surprise, the sorrel bolts forward and Philip loses his balance. To keep from falling off, he grabs at the pommel.
Dad! Louise says, before she starts to laugh.
Turning her head away so that Philip cannot see her, Nina, too, laughs.
Keep him moving, the cowboy tells Philip. Shorten your reins, keep his head up.
Show him who’s boss, Phil, the cowboy adds.
Few people call Philip Phil.
Did Iris?
My darling Phil.
Mon petit Philippe
—Nina thinks of Tante Thea. Generous and kind, she takes Nina and Philip to the theater, to the ballet, to expensive restaurants. She takes Nina shopping. When Tante Thea dies, she leaves Nina her diamond pin in the shape of a flower.
When did she last wear the pin? Nina tries to recollect. To a black-tie dinner honoring one of Philip’s colleagues, a Nobel laureate in physics.
Tell me again what he won it for, Nina asks as she tries to open the safe.
For the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction.
For what? Say that again. And is it three turns to the left to 17? Or three turns to the right to 17? Nina says.
Asymptotic freedom shows that the attraction between quarks grows weaker as the quarks move closer to each other and, conversely, that the attraction grows stronger as the quarks move farther apart. Are you ready, Nina?
Nearly.
The discovery established quantum chromodynamics as the correct theory of the strong nuclear force, one of the four fundamental forces in Nature.
Didn’t he and his wife write a book together? Philip, I still can’t get this safe open.
Yes—about how scientists arrive at their theories of the universe and why there is something instead of nothing. His wife, too, is a brilliant mathematician. Nina! What are you doing in there? We are going to be late, Philip almost shouts.
Here, let me.
How many times have I showed you? Philip says more quietly, when he has the safe open. It’s so easy.
Easy for you, Nina says, suddenly close to tears.
I just don’t want us to be late, Philip says.
In the car on the way to the dinner, fingering the diamond flower pin to make sure it is securely fastened to her dress, Nina says, Let me tell you about my theory of the universe, Philip.
Her theory of the universe is that there is no theory.
Their last visit to Père Lachaise is on a winter day. The tree limbs are bare; the cypresses loom dark and forbidding. The pots of too-bright artificial flowers placed around the tombs make the sky, by contrast, appear grayer, more somber.
Damp and cold, Nina shivers in her down coat. Don’t you want to be buried next to me? she asks.
They are stopped in front of the tomb of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.
Putting his arm around her shoulder, Philip says, And don’t forget to throw my ashes to leeward or else they’ll blow back in your face.
Sitting next to the bed, she shuts her eyes for a moment and replays the scene of their meeting in Paris.
Vous permettez?
Je vous en prie.
Ordinary and familiar phrases that give her pleasure.
What is your book about? he also asks her.
Afterward, they walk together along the boulevard Saint-Germain toward the boulevard Saint-Michel. She notices his limp but says nothing. By then, they have established that they are both familiar with the same city back home, the same shops and restaurants, which may be enough reason for them to see each other again. On the way, they stop at a bookstore where she locates the works of Nathalie Sarraute. She pulls
Tropismes,
the book she is reading, off the shelf for him.
I’ll buy it, Philip says. A promise to her, perhaps, that they will see each other again.
She should reread
Tropismes,
she thinks, opening her eyes.
She should make a list:
War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Middlemarch;
all of Dickens, Jane Austen, Trollope …
The novels of Balzac, Zola, Flaubert.
A few days later, they argue.
Did you read it? Nina asks Philip.
They are having dinner together in an inexpensive restaurant in the Latin Quarter, a few blocks from the gallery where she works. It is late and she is tired.
Read what? Philip is looking through the wine list. Is a Côtes du Rhône all right?
The book you bought.
Tropismes.
Already, she has decided that she is not going to sleep with Philip. She orders the snails cooked in garlic.
Philip frowns and shakes his head. I tried, he says.
He orders the soup.
I couldn’t get past the first page.
Really? You couldn’t read it? Nina is offended. Those beautiful interior monologues?
They’re incoherent, Philip answers.
Ils semblaient sourdre de partout, éclos dans la tiédeur un peu moite de l’air
—he recites.
And who is this cousin of yours related to her by marriage? She interrupts, changing her tactic. I am not sure I believe you.
I’ll introduce you, he says, smiling.
Many years later, in Boston, Nina goes to hear Nathalie Sarraute read. Old, elegant, and imperious is how she describes her to Philip.
I am not surprised, he says.
Oh, and what about her cousin? You never did introduce me to him, remember? Or did you make him up?
She not he, Philip says. The cousin is a
cousine.
Tante Thea’s eighteenth-century yellow stucco country house stands at the end of a long driveway bordered by chestnut trees; her property abuts the forest of Chantilly. Lunch on Sundays tends to be a long and lively affair, with plenty of food, red wine, and, for dessert, a homemade fruit tart topped with heavy cream. Family, friends, neighbors sit crowded together around the mahogany dining room table, everyone talking fast and at once about de Gaulle,
the nouveau franc
—worth 100 of the old franc and how confusing Tante Thea finds it still—the Algerian crisis and how garbage cans have been placed on the runways at Orly Airport to keep the Algerian rebel paratroopers from landing—and to keep everyone else from landing, one of Tante Thea’s sons points out.
Didier and Arnaud, Tante Thea’s sons, are there for lunch. Both are married, successful, and athletic. Didier especially. He and Nina flirt a little and Anne, his wife, does not seem to mind.
Didier is in love with Nina, she teases.
In spite of herself, Nina is attracted to Didier’s self-assurance, his sturdy good looks, and the way he wears his tailored blue shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal his forearms.
After lunch, complaining of tennis elbow, Didier persuades Philip to be Anne’s partner in a game of doubles against Arnaud and his wife; upstairs, Tante Thea is taking a nap, and he asks Nina to take a walk in the forest with him—only he doesn’t ask her.
We’ll go for a walk, he says. A little exercise will do me good, he adds.
It is late in the spring but some of the chestnut trees are still in bloom and their blossoms mingle with the leaves of the trees to form a canopy over the forest floor, a green carpet densely
packed with low bushes, grasses, and clusters of delicate little white flowers that Nina does not know the name of.
Neither does Didier.
Crisscrossing the forest are well-maintained paths—
allées
they are called—some of the names are marked on signposts.
It must be easy to get lost, Nina says.
I’ve walked here ever since I was a child, he answers. I know the forest by heart. In the fall, I go hunting here.
Fox hunting?
Stag hunting.
They talk about the different American schools. One of Didier’s daughters wants to go to college in the States. Nina describes the one she went to.
Then, coming toward them, they hear the sound of galloping hooves.
Careful, Didier says, taking Nina’s arm and drawing her to the side of the path as two riders, crouched jockey style, gallop past them.
The sandy soil is good terrain for training horses, Didier says, still holding on to Nina’s arm.
She starts to answer how she, too, likes to ride, but Didier has pulled her to him and is kissing her. She tries to pull back but he has hold of her arm and is twisting it behind her, forcing her to lift her face up to him. His mouth presses so hard against hers that she feels his teeth. Then, half dragging her farther into the forest, he forces her to the ground.
Nina hits the side of her head on something.
Didier! she cries out. Don’t, please!
I wanted to make love to you from the first moment I saw you, he says.
Already, he is on top of her and, with one practiced hand, he pushes up her skirt and is pulling down her underwear.
At first, she struggles against him; then, looking past him at the treetops overhead, she lets him.
Afterward, walking back down the
allée,
Didier stops to pick a few of the delicate white flowers that neither of them knows the name of and he puts some in Nina’s hair.
Kissing her lightly on the cheek, he says, Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?
Shaking the flowers out of her hair, Nina does not answer him.
In the rented car on their way back to Paris, Philip asks, How was your walk with Didier?
Fine.
They are stalled in traffic, long lines of cars ahead and behind them. A few motorcycles weave noisily and triumphantly in between the cars; drivers honk their horns uselessly. Also, it has begun to rain, a light drizzle.
How is it everyone always drives home from the weekend at the same time? Philip asks. I should make a study of the probability. He turns on the windshield wipers; they make a grating sound on the glass.
Perhaps there’s been an accident. I hate that noise, Nina says.
Glancing over at her, Philip asks, What did you two talk about?
Me and Didier? He asked me about American colleges for Cécile, his daughter. Next year, after she passes her Bac.
The cars begin slowly to move again.
Doesn’t that jerk know how to signal? Philip makes an angry gesture with his hand at the driver in front of him.
We saw some horses galloping down the
allée
—they were racehorses, I think, Nina volunteers.
Those
allées
were designed by André Le Nôtre for the Prince de Condé, Louis XIV’s cousin.
I know, you’ve told me.
Is something wrong? Philip says.
A headache, Nina answers, touching the side of her head. I think I’m getting a migraine.
Sometimes, when Philip comes back from being away, she sniffs through his laundry, searching for the scent of an unfamiliar perfume—patchouli, jasmine, tuberoses.
What is her name?
The name of a city.
Sofia.
Lies of awful omission.
She had an abortion.
She pours the last of the wine.
Should she tell him?
In the dark room, she tries to make out Philip’s features.
Can he hear her?
Somewhere—where she cannot recall—she has read how each of us is a bundle of fragments of other people’s souls, the souls of all the people we have known.
She does not believe this.
She is not a fragment of Didier’s soul.
Didier died a few years ago, of colon cancer, and Nina wrote Anne, his wife, saying she remembered how he was full of joie de vivre and how he always embraced life.
Embraced her, she thinks.
Outside, she hears a car slowly drive by. Nina goes to the window and, parting the curtains, she catches a glimpse of the taillights before they disappear into the dark. Who, she wonders, is out at this time of night? And where are they going? There are only a few houses on the road and, at this hour, she supposes, all their occupants are asleep.