For our morning coffee we walked to the far end of the main street. French of a sort was spoken in the bistros and bakeries. We sat on the _terrasse__ taking in the sights. What was there to see here? Or to do? To begin with we'd buy the daily essentials. Then we'd swim. Waves were seldom seen in the bay. You could float on your back by the hour, or lie drying in the sand. Also, you could stroll along the waterline and inspect the topless women-sunning or exhibiting their breasts. Being natural, I suppose. But the eyes of these women informed you that if you spoke to them, they would not answer.
By the time we walked back, the lunch spots were opening. Ribs, chicken, and lobster were offered at about twenty grills that were crowded together, with flames spurting straight up, more flame than you needed for sensible cooking. Each and every joint had its own grinning tout, shouting, laughing and holding up live lobsters, swinging them by the antennae or the tail. If some part of the creature fetched loose and fell to the ground, that was part of the fun.
"Let's get away from this," said Rosamund. She complained about the barbecue smoke. It made her eyes smart. But what she couldn't bear was the torture of the lobsters. Back in New Hampshire when she saw salamanders in the road she picked them up and carried them to safety. I would say, "They may not want to be where you put them." It was wrong of me to tease her for her humane impulses. Tender-mindedness is an uncomfortable problem for all parties. The tender-minded leave it to the less feeling to say, "It's the law of life. We must eat. And aren't the crustaceans themselves cannibalistic?" But all this is evasion. You sprinkle your "interpretation" with schoolbook science. Do these armored lobsters regenerate the claws they lose? This seems to be why we have science classes, as a cover for our heartlessness. Or to refine it, at least. Polonius is at a dinner, not where he eats but is eaten by worms-the payoff for a lifetime of dinners.
You can't apply your humane tape measure to any effect. Before you can fend them off your dead suddenly have surrounded you. What would Ravelstein have said about this? He would have said, "Girlish queasiness." Meaning, perhaps, "She is a tender-minded human being and must work things out for herself. Such a matter has to be thought through by every adult. As for the red salamanders, perhaps they could go into a spaghetti sauce…."
On Saint Martin we were at the lower-eastern-end of the bay, in a two-story house. Below us a tourist family from the North of France took over the garden. They were _en famille__ while we had no special need of it. It was the beach that interested us, just beyond the low wall. We were about thirty feet from the water's edge. A glass-bottomed boat took tourists on a regular schedule to the coral reef just to the north.
I was grateful for the bay. It gave us an enclosure. I am thankful for boundaries. I am fond of having the lines drawn around me. I wasn't here to battle the seas but to swim and to float quietly. To open my mind to Ravelstein. Often Rosamund towed or carried me in water just shoulder-high. She put her arms under me and walked back and forth. She was not a strong young woman-she didn't have to be. Sea water seems more buoyant, you don't have to work to keep afloat, as you would in a lake or pond. Rosamund is slender in build, not skinny, not abrupt. She wears her brown hair down to the shoulders. It's like a limitless asset. Her long eyes turn out to be blue, not the brown her dark hair would lead you to expect. The music she sang as she sailed my body through the water was from Handel's _Solomon__. We had heard it in Budapest a few months earlier. "Live forever," she sang. "Happy-happy Solomon." This chorus sung by her single voice had the rustling sea water under it. Lying on her forearms I saw the moths, pale yellow in slow spinning clusters of hundreds. This must have been breeding time for them. And over the main drag was a cloud of barbecue smoke, and the touts, the children of Belial, laughing blinded by the sun would be swinging live lobsters by the antenna to tempt the tourists.
I felt that I would never take this tropical paradise to my heart. Instead, as Rosamund in her lovely voice sang "Live-for-ever," I thought of Ravelstein in his grave, all his gifts, his endlessly diverting character, and his intellect entirely motionless. I don't suppose that when he directed me to write an account of his life he expected me to settle for what was characteristic-characteristic of me, is what I mean, naturally.
Rosamund and I now changed places, and I carried her through the water, the sand underfoot ridged as the surface of the sea was rippled, and inside the mouth the hard palate had its ridges too. "Shall we stop at Le Forgeron on the way home and reserve a table for tonight? It's about five minutes away on the beach."
Roxie Durkin had given us a note to M. Bйdier, who ran the joint. Rosamund had already signed us up for dinner. In the matter of restaurants you could trust the Durkins. They had seen a lot of Ravelstein in his last years. We had often dined together in Greektown or at Kurbanski's club.
The Durkins had been very thoughtful. Only one favor they had asked for in return. Durkin, a lawyer, had brought some fat volumes to Saint Martin and he had forgotten to copy out several pas sages related to a case he would soon be trying. He had asked us, as a special favor, to look them up and send them by e-mail. Rosamund had several times reminded me of these bound volumes. The landlady had a servant carry them up to our small apartment.
That evening we walked to Le Forgeron along the cooling beach. Shoes and sandals were carried by Rosamund in a reticule. We put them on before entering the gate from the ocean side. There was water trickling pleasantly into the garden-vines and shrubs, flowers. Mme. Bйdier, working in the kitchen, took no notice of us. M. Bйdier looked at Roxie's pleasant familiar note without real interest. He was a large, bald, thick-built man, organized physically with a kind of violence. His message, if it could be put in words, would have run: "I am prepared to do everything a customer [un client] may desire but I am under tremendous pressure and may blow up at any time." He was the sole waiter, and the place was filling up. There was no other helper. His wife did all the cooking. But the tourists, one was given to understand, were not their social equals.
I was aware of the influence of Ravelstein when I made such a sketch. It may as well be admitted that he often figured in daily events. This was because of the power of his personality. It was also because his life had more inner structure than mine, and I had become dependent on his power of ordering experience-it may be that he also wanted to persist. And for his part, he also needed me. Also, many people want to be rid of the dead. I, on the contrary, have a way of hanging on to them. My persistent hunch-it should be clear by now-is that they are not gone for good. Ravelstein himself would have dismissed such notions as childish. Well, perhaps they are. But I am not arguing a case, I am simply reporting. I know one loses mental respectability by acknowledging such fantasies. Even I, you see, yield to accepted opinion. But there may be simple explanations for the persistence of Ravelstein in my daily life. When he died I began to see that it had become my habit to tell him what had happened since we last met.
Nevertheless he had strange ways of turning up, and I shan't pre tend that he didn't come in obliquely from wherever it was that he continued to exist. This should not take the form of a discussion of life-after-death. I am not inclined to argue. It's only that I can't sit on information simply because it's not intellectually respectable in formation.