"So this is how you spend your summers?" he said.
As often as possible he went to Paris for a week or, even better, for a month. Paris, he granted, was no longer what it used to be. Nevertheless he often quoted Balzac's statement that no event anywhere in the world was an event until it was observed, judged, and certified by Paris. Still, the good old days were gone. Czarinas and kings no longer imported poets or philosophers from Paris. When foreigners like Ravelstein spoke to a French audience on Rousseau, the lecture hall was packed. One could say that genius was still welcome in France. But very few French intellectuals got high marks from Abe Ravelstein. He did not care for foolish anti-Americanism. He had no need to be loved or pampered by Parisians. On the whole, he liked their wickedness more than their civility.
Paris (this is an important aside) was where Abe Ravelstein and Vela had their first falling out. He was there when she and I flew in to accept a prize given to foreign writers. We were staying at the Pont Royal Hotel. Impatient, in high spirits, keen to see me, Ravel stein called out from the anteroom and without waiting for an answer he rushed in. He intended to hug me-or Vela, if she should happen to be first. But she was in her slip and she wheeled round and ran, slamming the bathroom door. But Abe and I, happy to see each other again after so many months, hardly gave a thought to Vela, or to Ravelstein's impropriety in barging into the bedroom. He should at least have knocked. It was her bedroom, as she was to remind me.
I might have known from the dainty anger of her running that Ravelstein was guilty of an outrage. I was unwilling to take her notions of good conduct into account. She said afterward that she could never forgive him for blundering into her room. Why did he rush in without warning, before she was dressed?
"Well, he's impetuous," I said. "With a man like Ravelstein it's… it's one of his charms that he acts on impulse…."
This didn't soften Vela. Every word I spoke to explain Ravelstein or to defend him went immediately into her retaliation stockpile to be fired back at me. "I didn't come to Paris to see your pals," she said. "Or to have them walk in on me when I'm half naked."
"You show more of yourself at the beach," I said. "In what the fashion minimalists call a bathing suit."
Vela dismissed this, too. "It's a different context and you have a right to make preparations. You talk to me in a very superior way, as if you are putting me down as an ignorant woman. You should please remember that I stand as high in my field as you do in yours."
"Of course you do. And even higher," I said.
I am accustomed to being downgraded by businesspeople, lawyers, engineers, Washington hotshots, various scientists. Even their secretaries, who get their notions of what matters from television, hide their smiles behind their hands and give one another the high sign when I turn up-some incomprehensible goofball.
So I allowed Vela to be as superior as she pleased, while Ravel-stein said I should have more proper pride and that it was phony of me to be so meek. But I wasn't inclined to go out of my way to defer to so many critics. I had a good grasp of reality and of my defects. I permanently kept in mind the approach of Death, who might at any time loom up before you.
Anyway, I should have anticipated that Vela would make a big thing of Ravelstein's "impropriety." She had been preparing to have it out with me over Abe, and his barging into our bedroom at the hotel gave her just the opening she was waiting for.
"I don't want to see him here again," she said. "I ask you also to remember that you promised to take me to Chartres."
"I said that I would. And of course I will take you-I mean, we'll go there together."
"And let's invite the Grielescus. They're old friends. Professor Grielescu will join us. Nanette wouldn't-she stopped taking such trips long ago. She doesn't like to be seen by daylight."
I had noted this myself. Mme. Grielescu had been a glamorous lady in her time one of those _jeunes filles en fleur__ you read about long ago. Grielescu was a famous scholar, not exactly a follower of Jung-but _not__ exactly not a Jungian. He was a hard one to place.
Ravelstein, who didn't bring wild charges against anybody, said that Grielescu was mentioned, by scholars who specialized in such things, as an Iron Guardist connected with the Romanian prewar fascist government. He had been a foreign service cultural official in the Nazi regime in Bucharest. "You don't like to think of such things, Chick," said Ravelstein. "And you're married to a woman who scares you. Of course you'll say she's a political ignoramus."
"About politics she understands very little…."
"Naturally, she believes that a scientist must be above and beyond such stuff. But these are her pals. We may as well look straight at the facts."
I said, "I will admit that Radu Grielescu sets the standards for male conduct in those East European circles."
"You mean the courtly gentleman bullshit."
"Yes, that's more or less it. The considerate man, the only right kind, remembers birthdays, honeymoons, and other tender anniversaries. You have to kiss the ladies' hands, send them roses; you cringe, move back the chairs, you rush to open doors and make arrangements with the maitre d'. In that set, the women expect to be petted, idolized, deferred to, or romanced."
"Those jerks playing _chevalier а votre service__?-Of course it's just a game. But the women get a kick out of it."
The trip from the Montparnasse Station to Chartres was fairly short. If I took Vela to view the cathedral, I'd prefer to do it on a market day in strawberry season. But Vela had no real interest in Chartres except to be taken there. She didn't give a shit about Gothic architecture or stained glass. She only wanted her will to be done.
"Vela sets all kinds of conditions for you to meet, doesn't she?" Ravelstein said. "Didn't she make you bring all her luggage?"
"That's true. I came via London."
"And she couldn't cancel some appointment back home, so you flew separately. And brought her party dresses…"
He didn't admire me for doing such errands. He made this super clear. The picture he had drawn of my marriage was anything but flattering. Writers don't make good husbands. They reserve their Eros for their art. Or maybe they just don't focus. As for Vela, he judged her even more severely. "Maybe I shouldn't have rushed into the bedroom." He granted that, but added, "There wasn't all that much to be seen. Anyway, I wasn't interested. She was far from ex posed. She had on her slip, and all kinds of other stuff under that. So what's all the hue and cry?"
"Protocol," I explained. Ravelstein disagreed. "No, no. Not protocol. It doesn't even look like protocol."
I don't often have a problem with words. What I meant to say was that she was simply not ready to be seen. Unless you had lived with her, you wouldn't know what she did in the morning with her hair, her cheeks, her lips (especially the upper lip)-the phases of her preparations. She had to be seen as a beautiful woman. But it was beauty-parade beauty, and required preparation at a West Point or Hapsburg hussar level. I will be suspected of prejudice. But I assure you that I am confronted with some very real oddities-I happen to be a serial marrier and I had here a problem of self-preservation.
Ravelstein said, "Doesn't Vela come from the Black Sea region?"
"What if she does?"
"The Eastern Danube? The Carpathians?"
"I can't place it, exactly."
"It's not too important," Abe said. "A grande dame on an Eastern European model. No modern Frenchwoman would put on such an act. Often people from Eastern Europe cling to France, they have no life at home, home is disgusting, and they need to see themselves in a French light only. This applies to somebody like Cioran or even our friend-your friend-Grielescu. They hope to turn into Frenchmen. But your wife is even more peculiar…"