“I suppose so.”
The room became so quiet that I could hear the afternoon movie on television in the next room. I recognized the voice of the actor who dubs Robert Redford.
Magdalena said, “Even a few months ago this would have been my death sentence. Now I am simply thankful I have so little time left to wander between ‘perhaps’ and ‘probably not’ and ‘in a way.’ A crazy old woman, wringing my hands.”
I remembered Juliette’s face when she learned that her menopause was irreversible. I remember her shock, her fright, her gradual understanding, her storm of grief. She had hoped for children, then finally a child, a son she would have called “Thomas.” “Your death sentence,” I said. “Your death sentence. What about Juliette’s life sentence? She never had children. By the time I was able to marry her, it was too late.”
“She could have had fifteen children without being married,” said Magdalena.
I wanted to roar at her, but my voice went high and thin. “Women like Juliette, people like Juliette, don’t do that sort of thing. It was a wonder she consented to live with me for all those years. What about her son, her Thomas? I couldn’t even have claimed him — not legally, as long as I was married to you. Imagine him, think of him, applying for a passport, finding out he had no father. Nothing on his birth certificate. Only a mother.”
“You could have adopted Thomas,” said Magdalena. “That way, he’d have been called by your name.”
“I couldn’t — not without your consent. You were my wife. Besides, why should I have to adopt my own son?” I think this was a shout; that is how it comes back to me. “And the inheritance laws, as they were in those days. Have you ever thought about that? I couldn’t even make a will in his favour.”
Cheek on hand, blue eyes shadowed, my poor, mad, true, and only wife said, “Ah, Édouard, you shouldn’t have worried. You know I’d have left him all that I had.”
It wasn’t the last time I saw Magdalena, but after that day she sent no more urgent messages, made no more awkward demands. Twice since then, she has died and come round. Each time, just when the doctor said, “I think that’s it,” she has squeezed the nurse’s hand. She loves rituals, and she probably wants the last Sacraments, but hospitals hate that. Word that there is a priest in the place gets about, and it frightens the other patients. There are afternoons when she can’t speak and lies with her eyes shut, the lids quivering. I hold her hand, and feel the wedding ring. Like the staunch little widows, I call her “Lena,” and she turns her head and opens her eyes.
I glance away then, anywhere — at the clock, out the window. I have put up with everything, but I intend to refuse her last imposition, the encounter with her blue, enduring look of pure love.
The Assembly
M. Alexandre Caisse, civil servant, employed at the Ministry of Agriculture, bachelor, thanked the seven persons sitting in his living room for having responded to his mimeographed invitation. Actually, he had set chairs out for fifteen.
General Portoret, ret., widower, said half the tenants of the building had already left for their summer holiday.
Mme. Berthe Fourneau, widow, no profession, said Parisians spent more time on vacation than at work. She could remember when two weeks in Brittany seemed quite enough.
M. Louis Labarrière, author and historian, wife taking the cure at Vichy, said that during the Middle Ages Paris had celebrated 230 religious holidays a year.
M. Alberto Minazzoli, industrialist, wife thought to be living in Rome with an actor, said that in his factories strikes had replaced religious feasts. (All smiled.)
Dr. Edmond Volle, dental surgeon, married, said he had not taken a day off in seven years.
Mme. Volle said she believed a wife should never forsake her husband. As a result, she never had a holiday either.
Mlle. de Renard’s aunt said it depended on the husband. Some could be left alone for months on end. Others could not. (No one knew Mlle. de Renard’s aunt’s name.)
M. Alexandre Caisse said they had all been sorry to hear Mlle. de Renard was not feeling well enough to join them.
Mlle. de Renard’s aunt said her niece was at this moment under sedation, in a shuttered room, with cotton stuffed in her ears. The slightest sound made her jump and scream with fright.
General Portoret said he was sure a brave woman like Mlle. de Renard would soon be on her feet again.
Mme. Berthe Fourneau said it was probably not easy to forget after one had been intimately molested by a stranger.
Mlle. de Renard’s aunt said her niece had been molested, but not raped. There was an unpleasant story going around.
M. Labarrière had heard screaming, but had supposed it was someone’s radio.
M. Minazzoli had heard the man running down five flights of stairs. He thought it was a child playing tag.
Mme. Volle had been the first to arrive on the scene; she had found Mlle. de Renard, collapsed, on the fifth-floor landing, her purse lying beside her. The man had not been after money. The stranger, described by his victim as French, fair, and blue-eyed, had obviously crept in from the street and waited for Mlle. de Renard to come home from vesper service.
General Portoret wondered why Mlle. de Renard had not run away the minute she saw him.
Mlle. de Renard’s aunt said her niece had been taken by surprise. The man looked respectable. His expression was sympathetic. She thought he had come to the wrong floor.
Mme. Berthe Fourneau said the man must have known his victim’s habits.
Dr. Volle said it was simply the cunning of the insane.
M. Labarrière reminded them that the assault of Mlle. de Renard had been the third in a series: there had been the pots of ivy pilfered from the courtyard, the tramp found asleep in the basement behind the hot-water boiler, and now this.
Mme. Berthe Fourneau said no one was safe.
Mme. Volle had a chain-bolt on her door. She kept a can of insect spray conveniently placed for counteraggression.
M. Alexandre Caisse had a bronze reproduction of “The Dying Gaul” on a table behind the door. He never answered the door without first getting a good grip around the statue’s waist.
Mlle. de Renard’s aunt said her niece had been too trusting, even as a child.
M. Minazzoli said his door was fully armoured. However, the time had come to do something about the door at the entrance to the building. He hoped they would decide, now, once and for all, about putting in an electronic code-lock system.
M. Alexandre Caisse said they were here to discuss, not to decide. The law of July 10, 1965, regulating the administration of cooperatively owned multiple dwellings, was especially strict on the subject of meetings. This was an assembly.
M. Minazzoli said one could arrive at a decision at an assembly as well as at a meeting.
M. Alexandre Caisse said anyone could get the full text of the law from the building manager, now enjoying a photo safari in Kenya. (Having said this, M. Caisse closed his eyes.)
Mlle. de Renard’s aunt said she wanted one matter cleared up, and only one: her niece had been molested. She had not been raped.
Mme. Berthe Fourneau wondered how much Mlle. de Renard could actually recall.
Mlle. de Renard’s aunt said her niece had given a coherent account from the beginning, an account from which she had never wavered. The man had thrown her against the wall and perpetrated something she called “an embrace.” Her handbag had fallen during the struggle. He had run away without stopping to pick it up.
Dr. Volle said it proved the building was open to madmen.