When they got home, the Americans went straight to their room, intending to rest before dinner. Harold had just got into bed and pulled the covers up when they heard a knock. Barbara slipped on her dressing gown, and before she got to the door it opened. Though one says the nail is drawn to the magnet, if you look very closely you see that the magnet is also drawn to the nail. Mme Viénot had come to tell them about her visit to the mayor of Brenodville.
“… I said that the ferry at Chaumont was extremely dangerous, and that some day, unless something was done about it, a number of people would lose their lives.… You won’t believe what he said. The whole history of modern France is in this one remark. He said”—her eyes shone with amusement—“he said: ‘I know but it’s at Chaumont.’ … How was your afternoon?”
She sat down on the edge of Harold’s bed, keeping him a prisoner there; he was stark naked under the covers.
Since she did not seem concerned by the fact that his shoulders and arms were bare, he did his best to forget this, and she went on talking cozily and cheerfully, as if their intimacy were long established and a source of mutual pleasure. He realized that, with reservations and at arm’s length, he really did like her. She was intelligent and amusing, and her pale-blue eyes saw either everything or nothing. Her day was full of small but nevertheless remarkable triumphs. In spite of rationing and shortages of almost everything you could think of, the food was always interesting. Though the house was cold, it was also immaculately clean. And there were never any awkward pauses in the conversations that took place in front of the empty Franklin stove or around the dining-room table.
She told them how she had searched for and finally found the wallpaper for this room; and about the picturesque fishing villages and fiords of Ile d’Yeu, where, in happier circumstances, the family always went in August, for the sea air and the bathing; and about the year that Eugène and Alix had spent in Marseilles. Rather than be a fonctionnaire in Paris, Eugène chose to work as a day laborer, carrying mortar and rubble, in Marseilles. They lived in the slums, and their evenings were spent among working people, whom he hoped to educate so that France would have a future and not, like Italy, merely a past. He was not the only young man of aristocratic family to dedicate himself to the poor in this way; there were others; there was, in fact, a movement, which was now losing its impetus because the church had not encouraged it. Eugène should perhaps have taken holy orders, as he once thought seriously of doing. It was in his temperament to go the whole way, to go to extremes, to become a saint. Shortly before the baby was born, they came back to Paris. Alix did not want their child to grow up in such sordid surroundings. He was not very happy in his job at the Ministry of Planning and External Affairs, and Mme Viénot could not help thinking that both of them were less happy than they had been before, but the decision was, of course, the only right one. And after all, if one applied oneself, and had the temperament for it, one could do very well in the government. Her son-in-law, for instance—“I hope you didn’t repeat to M. Carrère what I said about his being talked about as the future Minister of Finance?”
Harold shook his head.
“I’m afraid it was not very discreet of me,” she said. “Jean-Claude is quite different from the rest of his family, who are charming but hors de siècle.”
“Does that mean ‘old-fashioned’?”
“They are gypsies.”
“Real gypsies? The kind that travel around in wagons?”
“Oh mercy no, they are perfectly respectable, and of a very old family, but— How shall I put it? They are unconventional. They come to meals when they feel like it, wear strange clothes, stay up all night practicing the flute, and say whatever comes into their minds.… Is there a word for that in English?”
“Bohemian,” Barbara said.
“Yes,” Mme Viénot said, nodding. “But not from the country of Bohemia. His mother is so amusing, so unlike anyone else. Sometimes she will eat nothing but cucumbers for weeks at a time. And Jean-Claude’s father blames every evil under the sun on the first Duke of Marlborough—with perhaps some justice but not a great deal. There are too many villains of our own époque, alas.… I am keeping you from resting?”
Reassured, she stayed so long that they were all three late for dinner. The box of diamonoes remained unopened on Mme Viénot’s desk in the petit salon, and the evening was given over, as before, to the game of conversation.
ON WEDNESDAY MORNING the cook prepared a picnic lunch and the Americans took the train to Amboise. There was a new bridge across the river at Amboise, and so they did not have to risk their lives. After they had seen the château they went and peered into the little chapel where Leonardo da Vinci either was or was not buried.
Down below in the village, Harold saw a row of ancient taxis near the Hôtel Lion d’Or, and arranged with the driver of the newest one to take them to Chenonceau, twelve kilometers away. After they had eaten their lunch on the river bank, they went back to where the row of taxis had been and, mysteriously, there was only one and it was not their taxi, but the man Harold had talked to was sitting in the driver’s seat and seemed to be waiting for them. It was a wood-burning taxi, and for the first few blocks they kept looking out of the back window at the trail of black smoke they were leaving in their wake.
Crossing a bridge on the narrow dirt road to Chenonceau, they passed a hiker with a heavy rucksack on his back. The driver informed them that the hiker was a compatriot of theirs, and Harold told him to stop until the hiker had caught up with them. He was Danish, not American, but on finding out that he was going to the château, Harold invited him into the car anyway. He spoke English well and French about the way they did.
The taxi let them out at an ornamental iron gate some distance from the château itself. They stayed together as far as the drawbridge, and then suddenly the Dane was no longer with them or in fact anywhere. Half an hour later, when they emerged from the château with a dozen other sight-seers, they saw him standing under a tree that was far enough away from the path so that they did not have to join him if they did not care to. The three of them studied the château from all sides and found the place where they could get the best view of the inverted castle in the river. The formal gardens of Catherine de Médicis and Diane de Poitiers were both planted in potatoes. A small bronze sign said that the gardens had been ruined by the inundation of May 1940, and since the river flowing under the château at that moment was only a few inches deep, they took this to be a reference to the Germans, though as a matter of fact it was not. They rode back to Amboise in the wood-burning taxi and, sitting on the bank of the Loire, Harold and Barbara shared what was left of their lunch and a bottle of red wine with the Dane, who produced some tomatoes for them out of his rucksack and told them the story of his life. His name was Nils Jensen, he was nineteen years old, and he had cut himself off from his inheritance. It had been expected that he would go into the family business in Copenhagen and instead he was studying medicine. He wanted to become a psychiatrist. He could only bring a small amount of money out of Denmark, and so he was hiking through France. Harold saw in his eyes that there was something he wanted them to know about him that he could not say—that he was well bred and a gentleman. He did not need to say it, but he was a gentleman who had been living largely on tomatoes and he badly needed a bath and clean clothes.
He had not yet decided where he was going to spend the night; he might stay here; but if he went on to Blois he would be taking the same train they were taking. He had not yet seen the château of Amboise, and so they said good-by, provisionally. The Americans went halfway across the bridge and down a flight of stairs to a little island in the middle of the river, and there they walked up and down in a leafy glade, searching for just some small trace of the Visigoths and the Franks who, around the year 500 A.D., met here and celebrated a peace treaty, the terms of which neither army found it convenient to honor.