She said he looked tired, she said it was probably the jet lag, the new country, the strange food. She suggested that perhaps he ought to lie down in the room for a few hours, that later she could prepare a tray for him and bring it over to the yellow house.
“Gosh,” Miller said, “but my project.”
She said he had five weeks, his project could wait, that no one really got any work done the first day.
His bed turned down, his yellow pillows fluffed, the shutters on the windows angled to adjust the sun, he was installed in Van Gogh’s room at Arles like a painting.
Madame Celli took away his water pitcher and returned it full. She set it down beside him on the rush chair. “I’ll put your drinking glass where you’ll be able to reach it. Will you be all right?”
“Really,” he said, “I’m fine. Much too much is being made of my indisposition. It’s probably the jet lag, the new country, the strange food. All I need is to lie down for a few hours.”
Madame Celli looked at Hartshine. Hartshine looked at Miller. “That’s the ticket,” Hartshine said.
“No harm done,” said Miller, “no real damage. Unless— ”
“What?”
“Oh. Well. Nothing. Never Mind.”
“No,” coaxed Hatshine, “what?”
“What I asked before. I really never did say anything, did I?”
“When? What? Complain about the food you mean? No.”
“Did I make a scene? Did I shout out loud for the waiter!”
“No,” said Hartshine, “of course not.”
“Well, all right then,” Miller said, “then I was only hallucinating. I thought I might be. No one seemed to be paying any attention. Of course, with that crowd, what would you expect? They just carry on dum de dum, la de da, ooh la la, with their usual business. Nothing gets to them, nothing. A fella from Indianapolis would have to have a Sherpa and a Saint Bernard if he wanted to scale their ivory towers. He couldn’t just do it with a cry for the waiter! Those guys don’t hear the regular ranges. And who can blame them, guys like them? No, they’ve their priorities. My God, they do! Where to set the minute hand on the Doomsday clock, or fix the borders in the New Geography. Handling the headlines, worrying the world! It was a good thing it was only a hallucination I had. God forbid I was starving, God forbid I really needed a waiter in those conditions. Because you want to know something? What I actually cried out in that hallucination was noise from the soul, the ordinary screeches and lub dubs of my Hoosier heart. Oh my.”
“I like the way this man opens up with relative strangers,” Paul Hartshine said. “I like how he gets up in your face.”
Madame Celli said, “Let the poor man rest. I’m afraid we’re exhausting him.”
“No you’re not,” Miller said, “you’re not exhausting me. I’m glad of the company. Truly.”
He was. Madame Celli was earthy. Not, he supposed, his usual type, but a real babe. Older than him certainly— forty, a year or so more maybe. Not matronly though. Anything but, as a matter of fact. How could he put it? Well, European. Probably she had hair under her arms. Probably her legs were not clean-shaven. (She wore dark stockings, he couldn’t tell.) Possibly her teeth were bad. Possibly she wore no underwear. The broadness of her perfume might have covered certain feral odors, scents— stirring messages from her glands and guts and organs. (Bidets would dissolve beneath her acids and grimes.) Hair plugged up her nipples. She was as foreign as the forbidden flavors and fluids of his calamari, the queer sweets and salts of all his difficult delicacies. (This odd, inexplicable concupiscence. On top of the drink on top of the jet lag on top of the anger on top of the hallucination on top of the hunger.) Sullenly, Miller recalled his pique at the memory of Madame’s modest flirtation with Hartshine at lunch that afternoon. Would the fellow hang about all day? Reversing himself, Miller announced impatiently, “I’m better, I’m better. I’m tired is all. I need to get some sleep.” Then, almost as if it were a threat, “I better get some sleep.”
“The time!” the babe spoke up suddenly. “Monsieur Hartshine, have you forgotten the time? You will have missed your bus if we do not leave off. They will be going to the Alyscamps without you. Show me your ticket. Yes, that is just the one Rita sold you this morning. Run, you must hurry if you would catch your coach! Please, Paul,” she warned, “under no circumstances should you go to your room for your camera! The camera is of no importance whatever, it is insignificant. There will be plenty of other opportunities for the camera. I vow you that. But for now entirely disregard it. And anyway Rita has many beautiful views of the Alyscamps, both wallet size and eight- by-ten, which you may purchase at the Fellows’ official discount. Run, there is no time! Run and scamper! It would be too tragic if the coach should leave without you!”
Now I’m in for it, Miller thought. Now I am. What will this savage woman do to me? My condition, he thought. He wasn’t up to any rough stuff. The jet lag, et cetera. On top of on top of. On top of Old Smoky. He closed his eyes and waited for the wild rumpus to begin.
When he opened them again in the strange country Hartshine and Madame Celli were nowhere to be seen of course.
Rita was the assistant in Madame Celli’s office. She put through long-distance calls for the Fellows, she sold them stamps, exchanged money, cashed their checks. She took their wash to the launderette for them if they were desperate or particularly helpless, arranged for the odd emergency trip to the doctor or dentist and, through a brother-in-law who owned a bus, organized tours and day trips for the group. Speaking into a microphone in one of her several languages, she went along on these and provided a running commentary as their tour guide. Frequently, if the brother- in-law was unavailable, she drove the bus herself.
She was a bright, cheerful, pretty girl in her early twenties, supremely efficient, energetic, and, according to Russell, who knew about such things, was already regarded as one of the finest factotums in all of Europe. It was she, in fact, rather than Kaska, who prepared Miller’s tray and brought it that evening to the yellow house.
He hadn’t had anything acceptable in his stomach since before landing in Paris — could it have been only that morning? — and was beginning to feel hungry, though he was relieved to see that all the girl had brought him to eat was bread and butter, consommé, tea, and some fresh fruit. If she kept him company while he ate, he said, she could take the tray back, she wouldn’t have to make two trips. It really hit the spot, he told her. After the rich, heavy meal of that afternoon, he told her, it was really delicious. Really. (It was Rita who informed him that the French took their big meal at lunch. If he wanted, she said, from now on he could have his consommé, bread and butter, fruit salad, and tea in the afternoons. Perhaps, she suggested, Monsieur might enjoy a nice cheese with that, a pleasant pâté, nothing too harsh. She would tell Chef. He could have omelettes for his suppers. Miller jumped at the chance. “You must think I’m a real wuss,” he said, thinking perhaps she might not know the word. “Neither wuss nor wimp,” she reassured him. “The taste bud is not a secondary sex characteristic.”)
He asked about the afternoon tour, if he’d missed much, and was surprised when she replied that he had actually, yes. They had gone to Les Alyscamps, she said, and walked between the tall trees the length of L’Allée des Sarscophages beside the rows of limestone coffins where eighty generations were buried. What she told him did not seem delivered, a piece of her patter (though it occurred to Miller that of course it must be), but came out of her mouth almost conversationally. She described how Arlésienne wedding guests would leave the church directly after the ceremony, come out to L’Allée des Sarcophages and, sitting on the coffin lids, make a picnic of champagne and éclairs. Quite coincidentally, she said, such a picnic had occurred just that afternoon, he’d missed that.