Authors: Edmund White
Soon they were on the highway in the big new American rental car. It glowed and bubbled in the dark like a jukebox. Snow began to fall so thick that it created in the beams of their car lights a rippling
white banner. Cars descending from the north crept past, tiny under thick white carapaces. The radio warned of snowstorms, but Julien and Austin were too excited to pay any attention. For so long they’d been hemmed in by legal restrictions, for so long almost everything they’d done had been according to a schedule or to advance their interests, for so long they’d sat in dim rooms feeling alone and scared that now they surrendered to a surge of energy, a loud, boyish joy, archaic, rude. “Yes!” Austin shouted, pushing half his body out the window and giving a power salute to the elements.
Soon the snow was falling so fast and heavy that they could no longer see the road or the place where their lane spilled over onto the gravel embankment. Austin got out of the car and walked ahead, locating the gravel edge with his steps. Julien drove the car slowly, following Austin. After twenty minutes of inching along, Austin on foot and Julien behind the wheel, they were overtaken by a team of snow-plows, wheeling red and yellow lights and sweeping both lanes clear. They followed in the path of the plows, their radio station consecrated to Motown’s greatest hits, which they turned up louder and louder. Julien—his face bright under his knit cap and his smile all the whiter framed by his beard coming in so black and full—laughed and looked younger and happier. He was still just a young guy, just twenty-eight, and all this talk of dying seemed suddenly pretty abstract. The music was so loud they couldn’t talk but they kept looking at each other, their smiles cinematic in the whirling brilliance of the plow lights. Austin decided they should never talk about AIDS; it was an abstract thing that would never take hold if they ignored it.
Around ten o’clock they entered Québec at the height of its winter carnival. A parade of little kids tootling on small, one-note trumpets marched past in red parkas. People were selling “caribous,” a hot mulled drink, and crowds surged into and out of bars, which were covered with tiny, twinkling lights, and carried off plastic cups. Floats rolled down the steep, stony streets—here was a Styrofoam Asterix with his pals in striped blue and white trousers, all wearing blond, drooping mustaches and silver helmets, seated on a papier-mâché camel, heading across the desert away from an onion-domed palace toward—well, the sign read “
GAULE CMX. KM
.”
The buildings, as best they could see by the electrically wired gas
lamps, were all constructed of stone from which protruded wooden window frames that housed small panes, frosted over. Icicles dangled from the gutters and one long icicle even hung from Snoopy’s giant cheek as he glided past on a float.
Julien’s face lit up from within. His eyes sparkled, even his skin shone in the flash of lights and cameras, and there was something solid in his bearing as they threaded their way just beyond the city’s old fortifications. All around them were giant ice sculptures carved and molded by artists from every arctic land, including Siberia and Iceland—ten-foot-high ice tables and chairs, a bathtub-sized ice replica of the Queen’s crown, an ice ski resort complete with ice lodges and ice figures descending icy slopes.
They wandered through the streets, getting drunk on caribous. The little kids, no longer marching, blew their trumpets at random and laughed. All the picturesque guest houses were full but they found a room in a twelve-story modern tower outside the gates and from their balcony they could look down on the entire town twinkling with fairy lights as whole families, cocooned in their matching quilted down coats, moved like gaudy, segmented caterpillars across the white streets under a sumptuous black sky.
A
fter that happy weekend in Québec City, Julien flew home to Paris. There, three weeks later, he received his American papers and once again headed for Boston. Austin met him at the airport—this hateful prison he knew too well—and drove him in the Sirocco to Providence. Julien was fascinated by the big, wooden houses; he said, “In Paris there were so many fires in the Middle Ages that wood was made illegal. Here, if things aren’t wood they’re made of brick, but back home brick isn’t considered a noble material, although at the time of Louis XIII it had a brief fad. No, for us stone is the only acceptable material, the only noble material.”
Austin said, “That’s because the French were building for the centuries to come. Americans once believed in the future, but that was two hundred years ago and they were too poor to build anything big and ambitious.”
Julien added pleasantly, “You have to be religious to build for the future.” He was struck—even disconcerted—by the big lawns that flowed over from one house to the next with no walls to fence off each property; this lack of wariness seemed unnatural to him.
He had nothing but contempt for the aesthetic philosopher’s house, which he saw as jerrybuilt and filled with junk. He was appalled by the “formal” dining room with its ten chairs placed symmetrically
around the oak table. He decided if things weren’t so symmetrical they’d already be better. He took up the frightening orange rug and then pushed the table against one wall.
“But, Julien, you’re destroying the parquet!” Austin shouted. “You’ve gouged it—look!” He could already picture the philosopher’s bill for damages.
“Parquet? These are just slats
(lattes).”
Austin tried to convince Julien that this ugly store-bought furniture was expensive in America and that even if he held it in contempt it was obviously precious to the professor who, after all, was an aesthetician.
Julien just snorted and assured Austin that no one could conceivably have reflected even an instant on this odious decor. He banished several armchairs to the dank, sooty basement, stabbed wildly at the stereo controls until he’d broken something, even attempted to take down Mrs. Professor’s lace pictures but discovered that their frames were screwed into the wall and ended up covering them with brown wrapping paper.
Through a rich friend of Austin’s they’d been lined up with the leading AIDS specialist in New Haven. Julien drove them into the city, though he cursed the low speed limit and the inadequate or misleading road signs.
Dr. Goldstein’s AIDS research laboratory had received a major gift from Austin’s friend and so he was extremely deferential, though he would have been warm in any event because he was that kind of guy. Tall, slim, sixty, he told them that he swam a mile every morning at six, that he taught at Yale, that he’d just come back from Israel, where he’d lectured and toured with his son. He pointed to a photo of his son in which the kid was dressed in a dark suit with an embroidered prayer shawl around his shoulders and a white yarmulke hairpinned in place.
He became more and more expansive and Austin’s powers as a simultaneous interpreter were put to the test. Julien never once looked at Austin and even seemed annoyed by his translating, as though he were interrupting. He nodded and smiled and drank in everything the great man was saying and even murmured,
“Merci, Docteur, merci infiniment.”
When the conversation devolved toward AIDS, Dr. Goldstein gave them a tour of his lab, which involved twenty technicians at work on different floors of the hospital, including one sterile zone where the technicians had to be gloved, masked and even vacuumed clean on the way in. On the way out their paper clothes, once shed, were put into sealed coffins and their street clothes and especially their shoes were meticulously sterilized.
Austin in all fairness couldn’t imagine how the doctor could be more human, attentive or informative; maybe Austin resented him only because Julien was so obviously under his spell. He then examined them separately. When Austin had stripped off all his clothes, the doctor looked him up and down and said, “A fine figure of a man,” which surprised Austin, since he was convinced he was nothing but a collection of flaws, starting with his age.
He spent much more time with Julien, then brought them both back to his office for a final chat. “Do you have health insurance?” he asked Julien.
“No. I—no.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll figure something out.”
“Merci infiniment.”
“Think nothing of it. You know, AIDS is no longer the death sentence—”
“Le SIDA n’est plus la condamnation à mort que c’était autrefois,”
Austin whispered as unobtrusively as possible.
“Ah, non? Tiens,”
Julien said coolly, as though he’d just learned a surprising if incidental fact.
Dr. Goldstein talked about the important work that was being done, not just in his own laboratory but even (here he smiled ecumenically) at the Institut Pasteur.
“Pasteur,” Julien said, nodding with pleasure in advance of Austin’s translation.
“Today we think of AIDS as a serious but by no means necessarily fatal disease, like diabetes.”
Austin translated the words, but in his heart he knew they were false.
Dr. Goldstein prescribed AZT for Julien as well as a Pentamadine inhalation every two weeks as a prophylaxis against the kind of galloping
pneumonia associated with AIDS. Julien was sent off to have a blood sample taken. While they were waiting Austin asked, “Don’t you think Julien must tell his ex-wife that he’s positive?”
“Yes, of course.”
“She’s pregnant,” Austin said. “Presumably not by Julien. At least she says it’s by someone else.” He paused. “But he and she have … made love until very recently.” Austin wasn’t sure at all of what he was saying. “Is there a chance I might be the one who infected Julien?”
“Yes,” Dr. Goldstein said. “An extremely remote one.”
On the way home Julien said, “I feel so much better. He’s a great man, isn’t he?”
“Yes. He agrees with me you should phone Christine.”
“I will. Of course. I must.” He drove silently for a while, mile after mile of forest scrolling past them on the highway. “It’s just very difficult.”
“Of course it is.” Austin realized he’d never seen Julien so ill at ease. Usually he’d just push a situation aside, scornfully, if it made him feel guilty; certainly he never admitted he might be wrong or have endangered someone else.
Now he squirmed and smiled as he spoke into the telephone, said
“Oui”
solemnly, many times, lowering his head and voice, started to defend himself, then interrupted his high-pitched objection and sighed, “You’re right. Of course. You’re perfectly right.” When he hung up he said, “She’s very worried about little Allegra. If she’s positive she may try to abort, even though she’s in the second trimester.” He didn’t eat dinner and went to bed early. When Austin tiptoed into the bedroom three hours later he saw the pale street light reflected in his open eyes. He blinked. Austin left quietly and slept in another room.
Two weeks later Christine called back to say she was negative and the baby would be safe. Now that she was relieved about her own future she had the leisure to become concerned about Julien’s. He said, “My future? Six months of it. I’ve had it.” But then he laughed and said, “We’re going to buy a dog.”
During the academic exam period in early February, which came
soon after Julien’s arrival in Providence, they hopped a small plane to New York through a storm (Julien was airsick all the way and vomited three paper sacks full). At La Guardia they met Peter and flew in a 747 to Miami and from there they took yet another flight to Cancún in the Yucatán. Originally Austin and Julien were going to travel to Mexico alone, as a couple, to relax after the ordeal with the Immigration authorities and Julien’s discovery of his HIV status. But Peter had been so palpably hurt that Austin had felt bad. “Are you going to push me out of your life now that Julien is finally by your side again?”
Their hotel, which looked as though it had just opened, loomed over the beach, balcony after balcony. On each balcony a hot tub bubbled and steamed, lit from within.
Most of the rooms were dark and empty and the few tourists in the lobby were speaking French Canadian. A mile inland tiny Mayans with silky black hair and wizened faces were sitting and sweating in the dark, eating tortillas in a smoky room with a beaten earth floor. Along the coast these massive hotels, which looked like battle stations that had just landed from alien solar systems, throbbed with air-conditioning and glittered with lights beyond open ditches smelling of sewage. A few of the Mayans in uniform crept timidly across the vacant lobby wielding brass dustpans and brass-handled brushes, but all of the waiters and bellboys were big, laughing Americans with sideburns and sunburns.
The next morning Peter drove them in a rented Volkswagen down the coast. It was hot, in the nineties, and he opened his window. Julien, who was in the back seat, said, “Would you mind closing it?”
“Closing?
Why? It’s boiling hot.”
“I’m not well. I have very delicate …
poumons.”
“Lungs,” Austin translated.
“The fresh air will do you good,” Peter said. He turned to Austin for a confirming smile, but Austin just raised his eyebrows ambiguously. He wanted to stay out of it. He pointed out the occasional entrances to ranches, marked with unobtrusive hand-painted signs. “Do you think they have cattle? The underbrush is so thick—it’s really a jungle. Why would anyone call this jungle a ranch?”
Austin kept translating bits and pieces into French, but Julien
stared stonily ahead and once Peter made a little click of irritation with his tongue, as though French had been an understandable weakness in Europe but now Julien must stop being indulged.
Julien was wearing two winter scarves and had his collar turned up. At last, his voice choked with emotion, he said, “I’m asking you once more to close your window. You’re endangering my health.”
“Why? How?” Peter snapped. “Look, we’re all three positive, and I have AIDS or at least ARC, but if you’re worried that fresh air will cause pneumonia you’re wrong. That’s just some crazy French superstition about drafts. What’s
draft
in French?”