Rameau's Niece (28 page)

Oh, I should have stayed safely coiled among Martin's speaker cables. Or lain on my narrow cot, harangued by the tolling of Richard's clocks. Or better yet, I should have stayed at home. With Edward. Where I belong. Where he belongs. But now, there is no home. There is no Edward. Edward does not exist. Not even logically.

Margaret quietly slipped into her clothes and wrote Dr. Lipi a note. "Organs produce needs; and conversely, needs produce organs. But I can't see you anymore. I'm married. Teeth be with you, Margaret."

I
'M MARRIED.
A true statement. I am an adulteress married to an adulterer. You can't be an adulteress without being married. I'm married, all right.

She went back to Richard's, back to the narrow, bumpy, sagging cot among the chaotic chimes, and she wept. She wept all night, getting up now and then to look at her swollen face in the mirror, a sight that filled her with such intense self-pity that she began to weep again, harder than before.

The sun would soon come up, or so one would assume from the weak light that made it through the dirty window of Richard's maid's room. But then, the truth of whether the sun would come up or not was impossible for her to determine, wasn't it? She had not yet actually seen it come up, had she? So, she thought, what is the nature of the evidence that assures us, lying swollen-eyed on our pallet, of any real existence or matter of fact beyond the present testimony of our senses or the records of our memory? Even if I have seen the sun come up a thousand times before, even if I have read books about it coming up, even if I have it on the best authority that it comes up every single day, it is possible that today is the day the sun does not come up. Causes and effects are discoverable not by reason but by experience. I cannot reason with certainty that the sun will come up. So there is no certainty.

Margaret, that's just stupid, Margaret thought. Your life is over, but the fucking sun will come up and you know it. The desire for knowledge is a
folie a une.
And you are a fool.

Observe, observe. You observed Dr. Lipi. You observed for half the night, didn't you? And what did you see? Things you had no business seeing. And how about observing your husband shtup-ping your friend? How about observing that without Edward you are nothing? You feel like nothing, you want nothing, you are nothing.

Even in my disconsolate state, I considered going to my pupil in an attempt to turn her away from her false ideas, to take her hand and lead her with me toward the bright lamps of knowledge and truth. But all my previous attempts, my tireless efforts to instruct her and encourage the autonomy of her mind, seemed to mock me cruelly.

Defeated and confused, with the excuse that I suffered from the fatigue of my journey from Geneva, I repaired to my room. Alas, little rest did I find there, so closely in my mind did I link it with Rameau's niece and the lessons we had shared in that place.

Unable to remain still, walking up and down, sitting, then rising again, I determined to leave the house of the Marquise de-, to return to Paris immediately.

My things had yet to be completely unpacked, and so very little preparation was necessary. I waited for the mail to arrive, then informed my hostess and the assembled company, which included my promising, ah, too promising, pupil, that I had received notice that I was wanted right away in Paris on further business, and I was not questioned.

Farewell, little pupil, I thought. And good-bye as well to philosophy. No longer would the thrill of enlightening a young mind be mine. No longer would I struggle with a problem of understanding, tired but persevering until, at last, truth broke through ignorance, bursting forth as the sun bursts from the clouds.

Margaret felt her forehead. Surely she had a fever. No, she didn't have a fever. No such luck. She was just hot and miserable and nothing. The phone rang, but she didn't answer it. She took a shower. Just like Edward, she thought. Then she took another. Neither shower worked. Edward was still gone. She was still a fool.

What had she been doing all these months, chasing after men and women, running away from Edward? Why? Well, if one hopes to find the answer, to find the meaning, one must understand the use. But what use was it?

The phone kept ringing, on and off, all day, six rings each time before the machine answered. Margaret couldn't stand it. It interrupted her woe. Ding-a-ling-a-ling. Ding-a-ling-a-ling. It rang as the clocks chimed. It rang after the clocks had signed off. She finally turned down all the bells on all the phones. Then, having taken two showers, she realized she had to do something different, so she took a bath.

She lay in Richard's tub in his bathroom with the black and white tiles and looked at her feet. She had looked at her feet in the bathtub in Prague. Now they were the feet of a fool.

There was nothing to eat. Margaret had not eaten anything but peaches and brownies and wine for two days. Imagine someone who actually cleaned out the refrigerator before going away, who edited the refrigerator. Nothing. Not a frozen pea. She'd have to go out. But she couldn't go out to a restaurant, crying and throwing herself dramatically on couches here and there. Restaurants didn't have couches.

I will have to order in. Just like the old days. From the Greek coffee shop. Surely there is a Greek coffee shop nearby. But what is it called? She looked in the phone book under American Restaurant, Athens Restaurant, Three Guys, Two Guys, Four Guys Restaurant. What do they call coffee shops on the East Side? One Guy?

She lay down on Richard's bed, exhausted. His room had air-conditioning. His bedroom was large and clean and charming, and she would stay here forever and watch the hands on the clocks make their endless journeys. Richard could stay in the maid's room. He wouldn't mind. He would understand. She smiled. Richard loved her and looked after her in a bustling, disapproving way, but even in her present mood, she had to smile at the absurdity of the thought of Richard sacrificing his beautiful bedroom to her and moving into the maid's room.

The phone must be ringing again. Margaret heard the click as the machine answered it. It was right by the bed, but she had turned the volume all the way down. She didn't want to hear any of Richard's conversations with anyone but herself. The fact that Richard was anything other than her editor continued to diminish him in her eyes.

She went back into the maid's room and sat at the card table. She looked through her notebooks. In a margin, she had written out a quotation about empiricism but had not written where it came from: "Naive realism leads to physics," it said, "and physics, if true, shows that naive realism is false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false." You can say that again, Margaret thought.

"Margaret?"

It was Richard, home from the Berkshires. She heard keys, paper bags crinkling, footsteps.

"Margaret, are you here?"

Margaret sat on the bed at the card table and hoped Richard would not notice she had been crying. Had she left wet towels on his bed? How puffy were her eyes? Of course he'd notice, and then she'd have to explain.

Richard appeared in the doorway of the hideous slave quarters. At the sound of his sweet, questioning voice, at the sight of him, Margaret felt the loneliness of her miserable state with an abrupt, sickening clarity. Here was Richard, her friend, the only friend she had left.

"Oh, Richard!" she cried out. She threw herself into his arms and wept. "Richard, what am I going to do?"

"Margaret," he said, "you have no clothes on."

That was true, Margaret thought, sobbing, her face buried in Richard's neck. Buck naked. Well, at least he hadn't noticed her puffy eyes.

"Richard!" called a voice. A familiar voice. Whose voice? Not Richard's voice. Not hers, although it was almost her voice. Oh, yes, it was Edward's voice again. "You left the door open ... Margaret!" said Edward's voice.

Margaret jumped back from Richard. The room was quiet. The clocks, even, were quiet. Margaret wondered if she ought to blush. If she did blush, would the blush spread all over her body?

"Margaret," Edward said in a horrifyingly hushed, controlled voice. "I never expected this."

Which this? she wondered lazily. She felt as if she were under water.

Edward gestured toward Richard.

Oh,
that
this, she thought.

"I have
my
clothes on," Richard said.

"I'm sorry," she said. She was still crying. "I'm sorry, Edward, sorry about everything."

"Sorry? You're both insane," Richard said. "There's nothing to be sorry about!"

Nothing, she thought. She put her face in her hands. Nothing at all.

The two men stared at her as she stood before them, naked and weeping. Like a Renaissance Eve, she thought. Poor old Eve.

Margaret reached for a crumpled silk ball on the floor, her skirt. Cover thyself, she thought. She pulled it on and looked down at her still naked breasts.

"Oh, well,
that's
better," Richard said, as he too looked at Margaret's breasts, his face registering the kind of hostile despair Margaret had noticed on the faces of people stepping over homeless derelicts and their bare, filthy feet.

"I've been looking all over for you," Edward said. "I've called everyone I could think of. I called here. I called everywhere. I've been running around the city looking for you."

"You have?" Margaret said. He had? He had been looking for her? Why? Surely not to tell her what she already knew, that he was having an affair with Lily. She trembled with humiliation, then remembered Dr. Lipi, and her humiliation increased. She sniffed and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

"Now I've found you, haven't I?" said Edward, his voice soft, almost sad.

He had been looking for her. All over. You look for someone when you want to find them. You want to find them when you want them. You want them when you love them. Did that mean he still loved her? He loved her after all? Edward loved her! And she loved him! She didn't care what had happened. To either of them. She cared only that he loved her, he had searched for her, he wanted her, and he had found her.

"Yes, Edward," she whispered. "You found me."

"Finders keepers," muttered Richard, and he retreated to his own room, closing the door loudly behind him.

Thank God you found me. She looked up at him. He was so beautiful to look at, his voice was so beautiful to listen to. He knew everything. He taught everything. He took everything. He shared everything. And now he was back. Back to take her back. He had searched for her and he had found her.

"Edward," she said. But as she moved toward him, Edward shook his head, turned, and walked out of the room.

"Edward?" she said, following him with a startled, scurrying gait. "Where are you going? You found me. I found you. What are you doing?"

At the front door, she caught up with him. She stood half-naked in her silk skirt, holding his arm, pulling on it.

Edward turned around, slowly, fixed his eyes on her like locks, padlocks, click, no keys, caught forever. "Margaret," he said, then he turned away, but the locks held tight. "Margaret," he said as he walked out the door, as he left her, left her locked in his gaze forever, as her husband walked out the door and left her, "I have eyes. I have eyes, and I can see."

I went up the stairs to gather my personal belongings and to supervise the removal of my trunk, and then sadly I made my way to the carriage. I sat down with a heavy sigh. I had stepped down from that carriage only hours before, and with what a light heart, what hopes for nocturnal discussion and debate! Now I was back in the conveyance, on my way to Paris, stripped of every aspiration; every inclination to pursue knowledge and truth had been dampened in my cold breast. The truth? The awful truth. Truth was more than a human being ought ever have to bear.

There was in that carriage, on the seat beside me, a large blanket provided by some overzealous servant. It was a warm day, but in my state of unhappiness I should not have cared if it had been a cold one. I had no interest in comfort. Comfort, the idea of comfort, seemed to me at that moment to be an affront, and in my unsettled state of mind that blanket appeared to ridicule me. Useless and unwanted, it was a blanket that reminded me of myself. I pushed it impatiently away.

THE BLANKET
: Sir!

MYSELF:
Who is under there? What sort of mischief is this?

THE BLANKET:
Sir, it is I, your pupil, Rameau's niece.

She uncovered herself and, in spite of my anger and disappointment and general misery, the sight of her, so close to me, so disheveled among the folds of the blanket, caused a stirring of intellectual interest that I had thought I should never experience again. She brushed her hair from her flushed face, and her eyes, always bright, seemed to be lit with a new fire; her lips, so sweet to my memory, looked sweeter still than ever I had seen them.

SHE:
Do not be angry with me, sir. I could not bear it.

MYSELF:
You must not be here. If anyone should find out—

SHE:
What care I for the opinion of anyone else when the opinion of the one who has taught me what opinion means is turned against me? What does it matter if every face turns away from me, if only this one dear face would turn back and let me gaze upon it?

As she spoke, her little hand gripped mine with surprising strength. Tears fell from her eyes, wetting her smooth cheeks.

MYSELF:
You seem to have enjoyed the gaze of others, one other, at least, with rare enthusiasm. Can the removal of mine really cause you such pain?

SHE:
Can you look at me as I am now and ask that question? Is not my distress only too apparent? Have I not risked much to come to you, to be with you, to beg you?

MYSELF:
Beg me? And for what do you beg?

SHE:
For understanding.

MYSELF:
That is all I have ever sought.

I said as much, and as I said it, my anger turned to tears, and my face, far from turning away from my pupil, pressed against her own delicate face, our tears mingling.

SHE:
Understand me!

MYSELF:
All I have ever wanted is to understand you.

SHE:
Understand me here.

MYSELF:
Here?

SHE:
Now.

MYSELF:
Now?

She had thrown the blanket to the floor, and, although the carriage was not ideal for a discussion of this nature, the urgency of the situation required that we make do as best we could under difficult circumstances.

Wherever the repetition of any particular act or operation produces a propensity to renew the same act or operation, without being impelled by any reasoning or process of the understanding, we always say that this propensity is the effect of custom. And so custom dictated that we renew an act, an operation dear to us both, and so we were impelled to begin, and so began with joyous familiarity the act.

MYSELF:
There are two ways of investigating and discovering truth.

SHE:
I urge you to demonstrate them to me with the full weight of your considerable intellect.
MYSELF:
The one way hurries on rapidly, leaping from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms. This is the one now in use.

SHE:
Yes, that is so.

MYSELF:
It is not a satisfactory method.

SHE:
No, as I discovered when I sought truth with another, less learned guide.

MYSELF:
The other method, my method, constructs its axioms from the senses and particulars by ascending continually...

My pupil was agreeing with my proposition in a most enthusiastic way, which, while gratifying, was somewhat alarming considering our position, that is traveling in a carriage on the public highway.

MYSELF:
Continually and gradually...

The noise of our discussion was quite audible, and, fearing discovery, I urged discretion by placing my hand across her little mouth, an act that seemed only to intensify her excitement at our endeavor, for she continued her unmistakable sounds, and her breath on my hand was hot and quick.

MYSELF:
Ascending continually and gradually till it finally arrives at the most general axioms.

Only then did we both sink back with a sigh. In the carriage, there was tranquillity.

SHE:
Did you arrive?

MYSELF:
Did you?

SHE:
As a being endowed with sensation, you must know the answer to that question.

After some time and some miles, I addressed my pupil, for she was once again my pupil.

MYSELF:
Can you tell me what the existence of a being endowed with sensation means to that being itself?

SHE:
It must mean the awareness of having been itself from the first instant of consciousness down to the present moment.

MYSELF:
And this awareness is grounded in the memory of its own actions.

SHE:
Alas, I should like to forget some of my own actions, that is, those actions that have caused you so much pain and me so little satisfaction.

MYSELF:
But if there were no memory, there would be no awareness of self, because if a creature were aware of its existence only during the instant of that awareness, it would have no history of its life.

I looked at Rameau's niece, her dark auburn hair falling over her neck, creating a pleasing distinction of color from the paleness of her tender skin. The strings of her petticoat lay loose, the petticoat itself lifted up, together with her shift, navel high, and I slipped them higher yet,

MYSELF:
You are young and still inexperienced, but there is no man or woman so young and inexperienced as not to have formed, from observation, many general and just maxims concerning human affairs and the conduct of life. But it must be confessed that when a man, or in this case a woman, comes to put these in practice, she will be extremely liable to error, till time and further experience both enlarge these maxims and teach her their proper use and application.

It was a long way to Paris, and my student lying there beside me, ever eager to learn, not wishing to squander this opportunity of intimate and secluded pedagogy, began quietly but intently to enlarge the maxim before her, and together we spent some time further investigating its proper use and application.

As our journey neared its close, my student turned her face to mine.

SHE:
Does this mean that you forgive me?

MYSELF:
The inquiry of truth, which is the lovemaking or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of mankind. I have inquired with you, I have known your presence, I believe and enjoy you.

SHE:
I have been misled by faulty logic, by the inveterate errors that are founded on vulgar notions. But my search for the truth has at last brought me back to you.