Across the room a long-deferred, often-imagined reconciliation is taking place on the wall, behind glass. The Prodigal Son, wearing a robe of stone, kneels on one knee before the Prodigal Father. One arm reaches out and touches the old man’s side. One arm, upraised, touches his face. The old man sits, bearded, with a domed forehead, a large stone mouth, blunt nose, and eyes nearly closed with emotion. He has placed one hand against the young man’s head, supporting it, but not looking (why is that?) at the face that is looking up at his with such sorrow and love.
The iron balcony, polished by the rain, turns darker, shines, collects puddles. Water dripping from the eaves is caught in the first fold of the awnings.
The sleepers’ breath is shallow. His efforts to take her in his arms meet with no response. He cannot blame her for this because she is asleep. The sky goes on turning lighter and whiter. It has stopped raining. A man (out of whose dream?) comes up the rue Malène and, noiseless as a cat, his vibrations sinister, crosses the Place Redouté and disappears down the same street that Sabine Viénot took. But that was last night and now it is morning.
Crowded to the extreme edge of the bed by his half-waking and half-sleeping lust, she turns.
“Are you awake?” he says softly.
“Yes.”
“We’re back in Paris.”
“So I see.”
Beside the door to the hall a bookshelf, too far away to read the titles. Then an armchair, with her dress and slip draped over the back and on the seat her bra, panties, and stockings in a soft heap. Her black wedge-soled shoes. Back of the chair a photograph—a detail of sculpture from a medieval church.
“Why the Prodigal Son?”
There is no answer from the other side of the bed.
He continues his investigation of the room. A low round table, elaborately inlaid, with two more period chairs. The radiator, and then the French windows. The room is high up, above the treetops, and there are windows directly across the way, an attic floor above that, and a portion of blue sky. Love in a garret. A door leading into the next room. A little glass table with knickknacks on it. Another chair. On this chair, his clothes. Beside it his huge shoes—careless, scuffed, wide open, needing to be shined. Then the fireplace, with a mirror over it. Then an armchair, with the green spread and pillow covers and bolster piled on it. And over the bed an oil painting, a nude lying on a bed, plump, soft-fleshed, blonde. Alix—but not really. It is eighteenth century. He turns over.
“She was living for his return,” he said. “That’s all she talked about. And then when he came, they quarreled.”
“Perhaps they didn’t quarrel. Perhaps they just said good-by and she went back to the château.”
“Then why was she avoiding us? It doesn’t make sense. She must not have gone home by the road that goes past the cemetery. She probably didn’t want us to see that she had been crying. All week long she kept waiting for a letter and there wasn’t any letter.”
“He called.”
“That’s true. I forgot that he called on Thursday. But all week end he wasn’t himself. He wouldn’t go swimming. And he didn’t have a good time at the party. Did she?”
“Apparently.”
“And the rest of the time, they were off somewhere by themselves. In the back part of the house … You don’t think it has something to do with us?”
“No.”
“I feel that it must have something to do with us.… She may not have wanted us here, sleeping in their bed and all.”
“She said she was very glad.”
“Then it must be all right. She wouldn’t lie about it, just to be polite. If they quarreled, I can understand his not wanting to talk afterward. But in that case, why the long cheerful conversation with the man in the corridor?”
She turned over on her back and looked at the ceiling. “It’s an effort for them. They have to choose their words carefully in order to make us understand.”
“It’s an effort for us too.”
“They may not always feel like making the effort.”
“Nothing was too much effort at first.… Did Sabine say ‘Eugène is not like other French boys’? That may be what she meant—that he was friendly one minute and not the next. Or maybe when his curiosity is satisfied, he simply isn’t interested any more.… I suppose the streets of Paris are safe, but I felt very queer watching her go off alone at that time of night. You think she got home all right?”
“Oh yes.”
“I would have offered to take her home myself, but I didn’t see how I could leave you, at that point.… How can she go on being nice to him?”
“She knows him better than we do.”
He turned back again and, finding that she was curled up in a ball and he couldn’t get at her, he put his hand between her knees. He felt her drifting back into sleep, away from him.
“What time is it?”
He drew his bare arm out from under the covers and looked at his wrist watch. “Five minutes of eight. Why?”
“Breakfast,” she said. “In a strange kitchen.”
He sat up in bed. “Do you wish we’d gone to a hotel?”
“We’re here. We’ll see how it works out.”
“I could call the Vouillemont.… I didn’t know what to do last night. He seemed genuinely apologetic.… If we never had to see him again, it would be simpler. But the suitcases are coming here.”
She pushed the covers aside and started to get up, and then, suddenly aware of the open window and the building across the street, she said: “They can see us in bed.”
“That can’t be of much interest to anybody. Not in Paris,” he said, and, naked as he was, he went to the curtained windows and closed them. In the dim underwater light they dressed and straightened up the room, and then they went across the hall to the kitchen. She was intimidated by the stove. He found the pilot light and turned on one of the burners for her. The gas flamed up two inches high. They found the teakettle and put water on to boil and then searched through the icebox. Several sections of a loaf of dark bread; butter; jam; a tiny cake of ice. In their search for what turned out to be the right breakfast china but the wrong table silver, they opened every cupboard door in the kitchen and pantry. While she was settling the teacart, he went back across the hall to their bedroom, opened one of the suitcases, and took out powdered coffee and sugar. She appeared with the teacart and he opened the windows.
“Do you want to call Eugène?”
He didn’t, but it was not really a question, and so he left the room, walked down the hall to the front of the apartment, hesitated, and then knocked lightly on the closed door of the study. A sleepy voice answered.
“Le petit déjeuner,” Harold said, in an accent that did credit to Miss Sloan, his high-school French teacher. At the same time, his voice betrayed uncertainty about their being here, and conveyed an appeal to whatever is reasonable, peace-loving, and dependable in everybody.
Since ordinary breakfast-table conversation was impossible, it was at least something that they were able to offer Eugène the sugar bowl with their sugar in it, and the plate of bread and butter, and that Eugène could return the pitcher of hot milk to them handle first. Eugène put a spoonful of powdered coffee into his cup and then filled it with hot water. Stirring, he said: “I am sorry that my work prevents me from doing anything with you today.”