Solo Faces (16 page)

“I think it’s mainly an ability to look good in old clothes.”

“I don’t know where he’s gone,” Simone said. “He was very unsettled. Actually I felt sorry for him. I knew he would leave, it was only a matter of time. His ambition, as far as I can see, is very unclear.”

“His ambition?”

“You know him better. Don’t you agree?”

“I’m not sure what his ambition is. There’s no question, though, where he’s going. He knows exactly.”

“Where is that?”

“Oblivion,” she said. It was not so much a prophecy as a dismissal. She was casting him out of their lives. He would wander elsewhere exiled, a vanishing figure. “You know, he has a child in Grenoble, a son.”

“He’s married?”

“No, no. She’s one of his many wives. He has greater and lesser wives.”

“Original,” Simone said dryly though the idea intrigued her.

They were not wives, they were not meant to be wives. They were witnesses. For some reason he trusted only women and for each of them he assumed a somewhat different pose. They were the bearers of his story, scattered throughout the world.

H
E WAS DRIFTING DOWNWARD
, from the world of cafés and lights to another of dismal streets and long walks home after midnight when the Métro had closed, a city of chance encounters in the company of a girl he first saw outside American Express who also had no place of her own. She was blonde, clean-faced, an heiress.

“I think I read about you somewhere,” she said.

It was at a party in someone’s apartment. A thin-legged dog with a coat of beautiful brown ran ceaselessly from window to window looking out. There was endless striking of matches to light a small pipe.

“Aren’t you famous?” she asked. Her name was Susan de Camp. She was sitting across from him. Very matter-of-factly she pulled up her skirt as she spoke and crossed her legs. The pure, narrow white of her underpants was directed straight at him.

In spite of her life she had a healthy appearance. She was tanned from being in Sicily. Her arms had a golden down. She was scrubbed, alert, casual.

“Where are you staying?” she asked. He was her friend, she’d made up her mind. “Can I trust you?” She had gone to good schools, a brilliant student, in fact. She’d been married to a man in Kenya. “He was fabulous, but he was a drunk. He’d been married at least three times I found out later. You want to go in here?” she asked. “This isn’t a bad place.”

It was on the corner of rue Verlon. The windows were glazed from the cold. Inside were a number of women, waiting.

“They’re always here,” she said. “I like to come and watch them. Can you imagine the stories they could tell? I always say hello.”

“Bonsoir,”
he greeted them with a sweep of his arm. Several of them replied.

“I told you,” she said. “They’re my friends. Probably they know Gordon.” Her ex-husband—he had been a publisher, a pilot, he owned a coffee plantation. He was still madly in love with her.

“Where is he now?”

She gave a slight shrug as if bored by the conversation.

“I have some friends near here,” she said. “You want to go there?”

That night he lay beside her brooding, more and more discontent, for half an hour, trying to make pleasure finally open its wings.

“That’s all right,” she said. “Really. I’m used to it.”

A sense of disgust and uselessness filled him. The act of love, even disinterestedly or in degradation, is still the central act of all. Rather than disappoint her, the failure seemed to bring her closer to him. Perhaps, in fact, she was used to it. Perhaps she even preferred it.

“Really,” she confided. “I’m fine.”

During January they wandered together. In the stuffiness of endless bars they sat waiting to meet someone or merely waiting. The afternoons were somber. Often it rained. Paris is like a window. On one side there is comfort and well-being, on the other everything is cold and bare, the streets, the cafés, the cheap, ascending smoke. He thought of Chamonix and the clear morning air, standing in the station, the weight of a pack upon him and the solemn, reassuring clank of metal, like chain, from the loop hung on his shoulder. Here, hardship was misfortune; there, it was the flavor of life.

Susan sat bundled up in a scarf and a camel’s hair coat. She had tried everything, gone beyond all possible forgiveness of her family, she loved to joke about it, sending them telegrams saying she was so cold she couldn’t get out of bed, she was hungry, she was sick.

“Let’s go over to the American Library,” she suggested, “maybe somebody’s there. There’s a guy named Eddie who’s writing a book on the Middle Ages. Maybe he’ll buy us dinner,” she said. “I went home with him once.”

They walked along the river. There were small fires burning on the
quai,
men sitting beside them. He felt a sense of camaraderie toward them, they were outcasts, free. He grinned at them, he was at ease.

One of them held out his palm.

“J’ai rien,”
Rand said, almost proudly. He turned his pockets inside out to show them.
“Rien.”

“La veste,”
the man said hoarsely.

“Oui, la veste,”
the others cried.

“They don’t believe you. What about your jacket?”

“This? Someone gave me this.”

The scornful cries followed them from a distance.

“I don’t think you convinced them.” Her face was hidden in her collar.

“You don’t believe I’ve lived like that?”

“Oh, I believe it.”

“They’ve been drinking,” he explained.

That night he looked at himself in the mirror. His face seemed uninteresting. The longer he stared at it, the duller it became.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m out of shape.”

“You look terrific.”

“Don’t I?” he said. He didn’t hate her, she was decent, friendly, it was himself he was tired of. He was tired of following her around, of having her pay for things. He had passed forgiveness also. He could not imagine what he was doing here, what he was waiting for, what he expected to find.

Paris—it was like a great terminal he was already leaving, with a multitude of signs, neon and enamel, repeated again and again as if announcing a performance. The people of Paris with their cigarettes and dogs, the stone roofs and restaurants, green buses, gray walls, he had held their attention for a moment. The
affiches
with his face on them were vanished but he had stayed on. He saw it clearly as, at a certain place in life, one sees both the beginning and end: Paris had forgotten him.

T
HE SKY WAS FLAT,
the sun a flaw in it. A layer of silence lay above everything. Beneath it, in the streets, sounds were hollow as if in a tin. A winter day in Chamonix, a day when the whiteness eats one’s bones.

The Carlton had the look of a building that has been bombed out and only one wing remains. The balconies had iron railings, the windows were faced in stone. The mansard roof was covered with snow which a man was shoveling. There was something attached to his boots. It was crampons, the points of which, it later turned out, were punching holes in the roof. A voice called up from below,

“Hey, Vern! Vern!”

The shoveling continued. The snow fell in wavering sheets through the air.

“Hey, Rand!”

Hat pulled over his ears and parka patched with tape, he went over to the edge. Someone was waving from the street.

“Who’s that?” he called.

“Nick! Nick Banning!”

“Who?”

Banning was a doctor, in his first year of residency, but he looked the same. He looked young.

“What are you doing up there?” he asked when Rand came down.

“What am I doing? Christ.” He was unshaven, his eyes red-rimmed. “What are you doing in Chamonix?”

“I came to see the sights.”

“Well, there’s Mont Blanc.”

Banning ignored it. “I read all about you,” he said. “I was telling everyone: I know him! It was sensational.”

“It was all right, I guess.”

“All right?”

“If you want the truth, it nearly ruined me.”

“You look great.”

“I know.”

“It couldn’t have ruined you.”

Rand took off his hat and rubbed his face with it.

“It came close,” he said.

“You were a hero!”

“I just talked a lot. The French have an expression”—he remembered Colette—“
il faut payer,
you have to pay.”

“You’re going to have to explain that to me.”

“It would take awhile.”

Banning had driven from Geneva in a rented car. His pack and sleeping bag were in the back seat. He’d planned to find a place to camp, even in the middle of winter.

“I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to do something like this,” he confessed.

“With me it’s the opposite problem,” Rand said.

“Do you know anywhere I could sleep?”

“You can stay with me. There’s always room for a friend. Speaking of friends, how’s Cabot?”

“You should have been there when he heard about it. He tried to call you, but you’d gone to Paris.”

“Really? Is that true?”

“I haven’t seen him for a while,” Banning said. “I just haven’t had the time. I hear a lot about him.”

“Where is he?”

“California.”

“I’ve written to him a few times,” Rand admitted. “Not lately.”

“He’s a strange guy. He’s like a searchlight. When he turns your way, he just dazzles you. Afterward, you’re left in darkness, you might as well not be alive. Don’t misunderstand, I like him. He’s in a class by himself. I think he’d do anything for you, but he’s absolutely driven. He wants to be first. He wants to be number one. You know that.”

“Maybe he will be. Who’s he climbing with these days?”

“Various people.”

Rand nodded. The conversation was depressing him. The street seemed empty, sound had drained away.

“One thing I’d really like to do,” Banning said. “I’d like to see the Dru. Can I get up there this time of year?”

“Not in the snow,” Rand said. “It wouldn’t be too easy.”

“Where is it?”

“Oh, it’s up there. I’ll take you to a place where you can see it later.” He seemed vague, disinterested in the idea.

Toward evening he was livelier. They went to the Choucas where a photograph of him hung on the wall. He began to tell stories of Paris, sleeping in various beds, being hailed on the boulevards.

“They don’t expect me to do anything ordinary anymore, that’s the trouble.”

“So, what are your plans?”

“Well, don’t say anything about this, but there’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. In fact, we even talked about it once. The Walker.”

“I remember.”

“That was before I ever came over here. I’d never even heard of the Dru. The Walker, that was always the great legend.”

As he was talking, his mind drifted back to the days when he first had climbed. He was fifteen. He remembered seeing another climber, older, in his twenties, rolled-up sleeves, worn shoes, an image of strength and experience. Now, with absolute clarity, he saw that climber again, his face, his gestures, even the very light. It seemed that in spite of all that had happened in between, the essence, an essence he had seen so vividly in that unknown face still somehow eluded him and he was struggling again, still, to capture it. He was going to do the Walker, he said. He had barely spoken the words before adding,

“I’m also going to do the Peuterey.” He felt no pride, no pleasure in announcing it. It was somehow flat. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Banning was listening politely.

“Can you imagine what it would be like to solo the Walker? What kills them is, I’m not really a great climber. I’m not that talented.”

“Come on.”

“There are lots of guys with more talent.”

“Not really.”

“Lots of them,” Rand insisted. The wine had been vanishing, glass after glass. The noise of other conversations rose around their own.

They drove on a snow-covered road. The night was clear. A cold moon illuminated everything, the sky was white around it. Shreds of cloud blew across like smoke. They passed the empty fields of the Biolay. The pines were dark. There was not a house or light. Banning slowed down.

“Are you sure this is the road?”

Rand merely motioned onward. A kilometer farther they came to a barn that was standing by itself. In front of it was a stone trough. Rand broke the crust of ice.

“You want some water?” He was drinking from cupped hands. “Cow water,” he added.

He led the way inside into a room meant for storage. It was clean, the floor was of heavy boards. By the light of a lamp, Banning looked around—some clothes, equipment, a shelf of books, a radio.

“The batteries are dead,” Rand said. He was lighting the stove. Soon there was a fierce crackling of wood, loud as shots. “It warms up pretty fast,” he said.

“How’d you find this place?”

“Oh …”

“Do you have to pay much?”

“Nothing. Of course, it isn’t worth anything.”

“Anyway, you’re by yourself.”

“This is the lowest refuge. Capacity: one.”

“That’s all?”

“At the moment. You want to dry your boots?” He began unlacing his. He sighed. “It’s a long struggle.”

“In Chamonix?”

“There are times you even think you’re ahead. You know, there was always one thing about Cabot: you’re up there together, nothing, just space under both of you, but somehow you’re a little farther out than he is, you’re risking more.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. That’s just the way it is. You know what I liked about him, the thing I envy most? Carol, his wife.”

“I’m getting married next month myself. Hey, what’s this?” He had picked up a book.

Rand looked up. He reached for it. “Let me have that,” he said. “Do you know anything at all about this guy?”

“Who is it?”

“Mayakovsky. I have to find out more about him.” He was flipping through the pages.

“Never heard of him.”

“And you’re a doctor. Here. Have you ever read his last letter? He wrote it to a girl friend. You know, he shot himself.
The small boat of love is shattered against the flow of life. I’m through with it. Useless to dredge up the sorrow, the sadness, the …”
Here he faltered. “I don’t know how to say it,
les torts réciproques …Be happy. V.M.”