The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant (142 page)

Grippes’s memoir was untitled.

“ ‘The drawing room at the Duchess of B—’s overlooked a leafy avenue and a rustic bandstand in the city of O—. There, summer after summer, the Duchess had watched children rolling their hoops to the strains of a polka, or a waltz, or a mazurka, or a sparkling military march, remote indeed from the harsh sound of warfare that assailed her today.’

“Would anyone believe, now, that Victor Prism could have written this? That Prism could have poured out, even once, the old bourgeois caramel sauce?

“He did. The time was soon after the end of the Second World War. They were the first words of his first unfinished novel, and they so impressed Miss Mary Margaret Pugh, an American lady then living in a bosky, sunless, and costly corner of Paris, that she invited Prism to complete the novel in her house.

“His benefactress, if extant, would be well over a hundred. In his unpublished roman à clef,
Goldfinches Have Yellow Feathers
, Prism left a picture of Miss Pugh he may still consider fair: ‘Miss Melbourne, from a distance, reminded Christopher of those statues of deposed monarchs one can see at seedy summer resorts along the Adriatic. Close up, she looked softer, middle-class, and wholly alarming. Often as Christopher sat across from Miss Melbourne, trying to eat his lunch and at the same time answer her unexpected questions, he would recall a portrait he had seen of a Renaissance merchant’s shrewd, hardy wife. It had something to do with Miss Melbourne’s plump shoulders and small pink nose, with her habit of fingering the lockets and laces she wore as though drawing the artist’s attention to essentials.’

“Miss Pugh had spent most of her life abroad, which was not unusual for rich spinsters of her generation. She seldom mentioned her father, a common fortune hunter, soon shed by her mother—tactful hostess, careful parent,
trusted friend to artists and writers. The ash tree whose shade contributed no little to the primeval twilight of the dining room had grown from a sapling presented by Edith Wharton. As a girl, Miss Pugh had been allowed to peer round the door and watch her renowned compatriot eating sole meunière. She had not been presented to Mrs. Wharton, who was divorced.

“What constituted the difference between Mrs. Pugh, also divorced, and the novelist? It is likely that Miss Pugh never asked herself this question. Most of her interesting anecdotes drifted off in this way, into the haze of ancient social mystery.

“The house that was to be Victor Prism’s refuge for a summer had been built in the 1850s, in a quiet street straggling downhill from the Trocadéro. Miss Pugh had inherited, along with the house, a legend that Balzac wrote
Cousine Bette
in the upstairs sitting room, though the prolific author had been buried a good three years before the foundation was dug.
Madame mère
probably bought the house in the 1880s. Soon after that, the character of the street changed. A considerable amount of low-value property changed hands. Most of the small houses were destroyed or became surrounded by seven-story apartment buildings made of stone, sturdily Third Republic in style. The house we are speaking of was now actually at the heart of a block, connected to the world by a narrow carriage drive, the latter a subject of perennial litigation. Tenants of the apartments could look down upon a low redbrick dwelling with a slate roof, an ash tree that managed to flourish without sunlight, dense thickets of indeterminate urban shrubbery, a bronze Italian birdbath, and a Cupid on tiptoe. The path from gate to door was always wet underfoot, like the floor of a forest.

“Inside, the rooms were low and dim, the floors warped and uneven. Coal fires burned to no great effect except further to darken the walls. Half the rooms by the 1940s were shut off. Miss Pugh was no stingier than any other rich woman, nor had there as yet been an appreciable decline in her income. She was taking it for granted there would soon be another war, followed this time by the definitive revolution. Her daydreams were populated by Bolsheviks, swarming up the Trocadéro hill, waving eviction notices. Why create more comfort than one could bear to lose?

“ ‘To enjoy it, even for a minute’ would have been the answer of a Victor Prism, or, for that matter, of any other of the gifted drifters for whom Paris had become a catchall, and to whom Miss Pugh offered conversation and asylum. Some were political refugees of the first postwar wave, regarded
everywhere with immense suspicion. It was thought they should go back to wherever they’d come from and help build just, Spartan societies. Not so Miss Pugh, who thought they should sit down in one of the upstairs rooms and write about their mothers. Some were young men on the run from the legend of a heroic father, whose jaunty wartime face, smiling from a mantelshelf, was enough to launch any son into a life of firm and steady gold-bricking. Some, like Prism, were trying to climb on the right American springboard for a flying start.

“ ‘What is your ideal?’ Miss Pugh liked to ask. ‘At your age, you can’t live without one.’

“Thirty, forty years ago, ‘ideal’ opened the way to tumbledown houses like Miss Pugh’s that were really fairy castles. The moat was flooded with American generosity and American contrition. Probably no moat in history was ever so easy to bridge. (Any young European thinking of making that crossing today should be warned that the contrition silted up in the early 1970s, after which the castle was abandoned.) Miss Pugh did not expect gratitude for material favors, and would have considered it a base emotion. But she had no qualms about showing a stern face to any protégé who revealed himself to be untalented, bereft of an ideal in working order, mentally idle, or coarsely materialistic. This our poor Victor Prism was to learn before the summer was out. Miss Pugh belonged to a small Christian congregation that took its substance from Buddhism. She treated most living creatures equally and made little distinction between man and worm.

“How did Prism turn into a protégé? Easily: He rang a doorbell. Rosalia answered to a young man who was carrying a manila envelope, manuscript-size, and a letter. She reached for the letter of introduction but did not let Prism in, even though large drops of rain had started to fall.

“Miss Pugh, upstairs in the Balzac sitting room, addressed, from the window, a troubled-looking patch of sky. ‘Hasn’t this been going on long enough?’ Rosalia heard her say. ‘Why don’t you do something?’

“The answer to Miss Pugh’s cosmic despair, or impertinence, was Victor Prism. She had been acknowledged by the universe before now, but perhaps never so quickly. She sat down with her back to the window, read the letter Rosalia gave her, folded it, thought it over, and said, ‘All right. Bring him up.’

“Prism came into her presence with a step that lost its assurance as he drew near. He asked permission to sit down. Having obtained a nod, he placed his manila envelope on a low table, where Miss Pugh could reach it
easily, and repeated everything she had just read in the letter: He was promising but poor. He had been staying with Mrs. Hartley-Greene on Avenue Gabriel. Mrs. Hartley-Greene had been indescribably helpful and kind. However, she was interested in painters, not in writers—particularly writers of prose.

“Miss Pugh said, ‘Then you aren’t that poet.’

“ ‘No, no,’ said Prism. ‘I am not that … that.’

“He was puzzled by the house, believing that it had deliberately been built at the heart of a hollow square, perhaps by a demented architect, for nonsensical people. Rain poured down on the ash tree and naked Cupid. In a flat across the way a kitchen light went on. Miss Pugh pressed the switch of a green-shaded lamp and considered Prism. He turned his head slightly and observed an oil painting of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian. He thought of mile upon mile of museum portraits—young men, young saints pierced with arrows, with nothing to protect them from the staring of women but a coat of varnish.

“The passage of the envelope from his hands to Miss Pugh’s was crucial to his adventure. He wondered if he should speak. At the same time, he hated to let the envelope go. It held his entire capital—two chapters of a novel. He did not know if he would ever write anything better, or even if he could write anything else at all.

“Miss Pugh settled the matter by picking it up. ‘It’s for me to read, isn’t it? I’ll do so at once. Perhaps you could come back after dinner tonight.’

“During
dinner would have suited Prism better: Mrs. Hartley-Greene was under the impression he had already moved out and would not be back except to pick up some luggage.
Goldfinches
gives a vivid account of his retreat: ‘Christopher seemed to leave a trail of sawdust. There were arrow wounds everywhere. He did not know what other people thought and felt about anything, but he could sense to a fine degree how they thought and felt about him. He lived on the feelings he aroused, sought acquaintances among those in whom these feelings were not actively hostile, and did not know of any other way to be.’

“Eighty pages were in the envelope, thirty of them blank. Miss Pugh was not forced to spend every minute between tea and dinner reading, though she would have done so gladly. She read anything recommended to her, proceeding slowly, pausing often to wonder if the author was sure of his facts. She had a great fear of being hoodwinked, for she knew by now that in art deception is the rule.

“What Prism had described was an elderly duchess, a loyal old manservant named Norbert, a wounded pigeon, and a nation at war. His fifty completed pages were divided into two chapters.

“Chapter I: In a city under siege, a duchess wonders how to save the priceless eighteenth-century china presented to her family by the Empress. Whatever food Norbert manages to forage she feeds to her cats. She and Norbert adopt and discard schemes for saving the china. They think about this and discuss it all day long.

“Chapter 2: A pigeon flutters in the window. A cat jumps at it, breaking its wing. The duchess and Norbert hear gunfire moving closer. They discuss a plan for saving the pigeon.

“That was as far as it went. Either Prism did not know what came next or did not want to say. It seemed to Miss Pugh that a good deal had been left in the air. The first thing she asked when he came back that night was if the china was really worth saving. If it was priceless, as he claimed, then Norbert ought to pack it into cases lined with heavy silver paper. The cases could then be buried in the garden, if the ground was soft. That would depend on the season, which Prism had not described.

“She had begun a process that Prism had not foreseen and that was the most flattering success he might have imagined. Everything in the story was
hers
, from the duchess to the pigeon.

“Next, she gave her attention to the duchess’s apartments, which seemed to be in the wing of a palace. Prism had not mentioned the style of architecture of the palace, or its condition. Most palaces nowadays were museums. Miss Pugh advised Prism to give the duchess an address more realistic and to eliminate from her life the threat of war.

“Then, at last, she said the only thing that mattered: She was ready to offer Prism the opportunity for creative endeavor Mrs. Hartley-Greene had been obliged to refuse because of her predilection for painters. Prism could return in the morning, by which time Rosalia would have his room ready. In the meantime, Miss Pugh would comb through the manuscript again.

“In
Goldfinches
, Prism skims over the next few hours. We have only the testimony of Rosalia, which is that he turned up in the morning looking as if he had spent the night curled up in a doorway.

“Miss Pugh was eating her breakfast in the sitting room with the green-shaded lamp and the portrait of St. Sebastian. Through a half-open door Prism caught a glimpse of her large, canopied bed. There was an extra place laid at the table.

“ ‘I was expecting my brother,’ said Miss Pugh. ‘But he has been delayed.’

“Instead of breakfast, Pugh was to have the manila envelope. In his account of the scene, Prism makes a curious mistake: ‘The morning sun, kept from Christopher by the angle of the yellow awning, slid into view and hit him square in the face. His eyes watered, and as if a film of illusion had been removed …’ and so on. There was no awning, no sun; the house was down a well.

“Miss Pugh asked Prism what he thought of Picasso. He understood the question as a test. Her rooms gave no clue to her own opinion; there were no Picassos in sight, but that was not to say there never could be. He drew a square in his mind, as a way of steadying his thoughts, and put Picasso in it.

“All at once, in a rush of blinding anger, he knew what he believed. His first words were inaudible, but as he regained hold on his feelings the sense of his wild protest became clear: ‘All that money. All that
money
. Does he enjoy it? They say he lives in the kitchen, like a squatter. As if the house did not belong to him. He could travel. He could own things. He could have twenty-two servants. He does not deserve to have a fortune, because he doesn’t know how to use one.’

“His hostess plucked at her table napkin. She was accustomed to hearing poor young men say what they could do with money. She had heard the hunger in the voice, the incoherence and the passion. She had often aroused this longing, putting out the bait and withdrawing it, which was the only form of wickedness she knew. She seemed to be reflecting on what Prism had just said. There was no denying it was original. Who ever had seen Picasso at an auction of rare furniture? At the races, straining after one of his own horses? Photographed at a gala evening in Monte Carlo? Boarding a yacht for a cruise in Greek waters?

“ ‘What do you think?’ said Prism boldly.

“ ‘He is the most attractive man in the world. My brother would look good, too, if he could stop drinking and pull himself together. What’s your opinion of his goats?’ Prism shook his head. ‘The sculpture. You can see Picasso doesn’t care for animals. Those goats are half starved. I suppose you’ll be wanting to get to work.’

“Prism in a very short time came to the conclusion he had climbed on the wrong springboard. He saw that the anxiety and frustration of patronage, the backer’s terror of being duped, of having been taken in, was second only to the protégé’s fear of being despoiled, stripped, robbed, and left bankrupt by the side of the road. Miss Pugh did not loosen her grip on his two chapters,
and even Prism’s decision that he wanted to have nothing more to do with them did not lessen the tension.