At nine o’clock, Mme Emile brought up the morning’s mail, and Eugène, leafing through it, took out a letter and handed it to Harold, who ripped the envelope open and read the letter standing in the halclass="underline"
Petite Barbara Chérie
Petit Harold Chéri
I am a shabby friend for failing to keep my word yesterday evening, and not coming to the rendezvous! But a violent storm prevented me, and no taxi in the rain. I was obliged to mingle my tears with those of the sky. Forgive me, then, petits amis chéris.… Yes, I say “chéris,” for a long long chain of tenderness will unite me to you always! It is with a mother’s heart that I love you both! My white hairs didn’t frighten you when we met at “Beaumesnil,” and at once I felt that a very sincere sympathy was about to be established between us. This has happened by the grace of God, for your dear presence has given back to me my twentieth year and the sweetness of my youth, during which I was so happy!… but after!… so unhappy! May these lines bring you the assurance of my great and warm tenderness, mes enfants chéris. Je vous embrasse tous deux. Votre vieille amie qui vous aime tant—
Straus-Muguet
This evening on the stroke of 8h½ if possible.
He put the letter in the envelope and the envelope in his pocket, and said: “Did you ever hear of a restaurant called L’Etoile du Nord?”
“Yes,” Eugène said.
“What is it like?”
“It’s a rather night-clubby place. Why do you ask?”
“We’re having dinner there this evening, with Mme Straus-Muguet.”
Eugène let out a low whistle of surprise.
“Is it expensive?”
“Very.”
“Then perhaps we shouldn’t go,” Harold said.
“If she couldn’t afford it, she wouldn’t have invited you,” Eugène said. “I have been making inquiries about her, and it seems that the people she says she knows definitely do not know her.”
Harold hesitated, and then said: “But why? Why should she pretend that she knows people she doesn’t know?”
Eugène shrugged.
“Is she a social climber?” Harold asked.
“It is more a matter of psychology.”
“What do you mean?”
“Elle est un peu maniaque,” Eugène said.
He went into the study to read his mail, and Harold was left with an uncomfortable choice: he could believe someone he did not like but who had probably no reason to lie, or someone he liked very much, whose behavior in the present instance … He took her letter out and read it again carefully. Mme Straus’s hair was not white but mouse-colored, and though the sky had been gray yesterday afternoon, it was no grayer than usual, and not a drop of rain had fallen on the steps of the Madeleine.
When he and Barbara went out to do some errands, they saw that a lot more of the rolling metal shutters that were always pulled down over the store fronts at night had not been raised this morning, and in each case there was a note tacked up on the door frame or the door of the shop explaining that it would be closed for the “vacances.” Every day for the last three days it had been like this. Paris seemed to be withdrawing piecemeal from the world. At first it didn’t matter, except that it made the streets look shabby. But then suddenly it did matter. There were certain shops they had come to know and to enjoy using. And they could not leave Harold’s flannel trousers at the cleaners, though it was open this morning, because it would be closed by Monday. The fruit and vegetable store where they had gone every day, for a melon or lettuce or tomatoes, closed without warning. Half the shops in the neighborhood were closed, and they had to wander far afield to get what they needed.
Shortly after they got home, there was a knock on their door, and when Barbara opened it, there stood the three Berliners in a row. They had come to say good-by. Herr Rothenberg and the one whose ears stuck out were going home. The one with the pink glasses had managed to get himself sent to a conference in Switzerland. There was something chilling in their manner that had not been there before; now that they were on the point of returning to Germany, they seemed to have become much more German. When they had finished thanking the Americans for their kindness, they took advantage of this opportunity to register with these two citizens of one of the countries that were now occupying the Fatherland their annoyance at being made a political football between the United States and the U.S.S.R.
And the war? Harold asked silently as they shook hands. And the Jews?
And then he was ashamed of himself, because what did he really know about them or what the last ten years had been like for them? Herr Doerffer and Herr Rothenberg and Herr Darmstadt were in all probability the merest shadow of true Prussian aggressiveness, and its reflection in them was undoubtedly something they were not aware of and couldn’t help, any more than he could help disliking them for being German. And feeling as he did, it would have been better—more honest—if he had not acted as if his feelings toward them were wholly kind. They carried away a false impression of what Americans were like, and he was left with a feeling of his own falseness.
AS THEY STEPPED OUT OF THE TAXI at eight thirty Saturday evening, they saw a frail ardent figure in a tailored suit, waiting on a street corner with an air of intense conspiratorial expectancy. She’s missed her calling, Harold thought as he was paying the driver; we should be spies meeting in Lisbon, and recognizing each other by the seersucker suit and the little heart encrusted with diamonds.
Mme Straus embraced Barbara and then Harold, and taking each of them by the arm, she guided them anxiously through traffic and up a narrow street. With little asides, endearments, irrelevancies, smiling and squeezing their hands, she caught them up in her own excitement. The restaurant was air-conditioned, the décor was nautical; the whole look of the place was familiar but not French; it belonged in New York, in the West Fifties.
They were shown to a table and the waiter offered a huge menu, which Mme Straus waved away. From her purse she extracted a scrap of paper on which she had written the dinner that—with their approval—she would order for them: a consommé, broiled chicken, dessert and coffee. They agreed that before the theater one doesn’t want to stuff.
When the matter of the wine had been disposed of, she made them change seats so that Barbara was sitting beside her (“close to me”) and Harold was across the table (“where I can see you”). She demanded that they tell her everything they had seen and done in Paris, all that had happened at the château after her departure.