Manhattan geisha was discoursing on the boiseries of the
étage noble
and its remarkably well-preserved toile de Jouy. She was moving on briskly to the next subject, the wrought-iron banister—a tour of the house was bound to follow. Ben’s smile was angelically benign. He had taken the short thin man by the arm and was obviously elaborating on Prudence’s remarks for his sole benefit. This, too, was a new experience for me: I had never seen my friend so equably polite, and this in circumstances that I would have thought certain to spring loose his jack-in-the-box harshness and condescension. The lawyer and another man, Ben’s second-in-command, who I discovered was Scott van Damm, the younger brother of a college roommate, had me pinned against the tapestry; I moved us by degrees toward the window, so that the meeting of Odysseus and Telemachus in Eumaeus’s hut that it portrayed might be more conveniently explained by Prudence. During this maneuver, the lawyer continued a tale of blatant corruption of officials in Algeria, where he also did business, which shocked me—I had, like so many of my contemporaries at Harvard, thought the struggle for Algeria’s liberation from the French was our own; those thin, hard-featured revolutionaries had been our heroes. Perhaps for this reason, I stopped listening to him and wonderedinstead about Prudence: Could she be thinking how well she was managing as the hostess she claimed Ben desperately needed? Before that reverie could become unpleasant, I heard the doorbell. The Decazes had arrived.
Writing today, I find it difficult to avoid letting an anachronistic note of irony or foreboding intrude into a description of the genial, straightforward first encounter between my cousin, her husband, and my host. Ben left the short thin man—the president of the Oklahoma company, I later learned—and greeted the Decazes before I had managed to come to their side. The talk was brisk—in fact a cross-examination of Paul conducted by Ben with hardly any preliminaries and no waste of time. As he inquired into the work Paul did, his law firm, and his experience with American businessmen, I realized that Ben had been quite serious: since I had a cousin in Paris I was fond of, he would help her husband. I supposed, in his mind, it was an elegant going-away present for Prudence and me, consistent with the tendency he had developed to regard my family as being a little on the needy side. And I could see that Ben liked Paul Decaze: he was the sort of Frenchman we then referred to as milk-fed. Born just before the war began or in its early years, brought up on a diet that made them grow to an American size, and athletic, these Frenchmen had clean teeth and a cheerful willingness to speak reasonable English. Ben said, Véronique and you must excuse us; I will throw Paul into the fish tank.
I was alone with Véronique for a moment I was hoping to prolong. She had kept the distinct sort of breathlessness I remembered from many years before, and she was even moreunquestionably beautiful. I liked the way she wore her ash-blond hair in a bun that exposed to view her tightly formed, perfect ears; I admired, with a twinge of envy for Paul’s or her revenues—or the way they managed them—the absolutely straight black skirt ending just at the knee, over very pale stockings, and the black knitted jacket worn over a man’s shirt of dull white silk, dangerously open but revealing only a strand of pearls. Her hands ended in long, cared-for fingers. She put her arm through mine as we talked. There was nothing between Véronique and that entrancing shirt.
Mais c’est la petite Madame Decade, comment vas-tu?
I saw before us the elongated form of Ben’s friend Guy Renard and, more specifically, his keen face, all profile and modeled to do justice to his name, bent over Véronique’s hand where he deposited a ceremonious and satisfied kiss. Naturally, it’s you, he continued in English, thus confirming
étage noble
and its remarkably well-preserved toile de Jouy. She was moving on briskly to the next subject, the wrought-iron banister—a tour of the house was bound to follow. Ben’s smile was angelically benign. He had taken the short thin man by the arm and was obviously elaborating on Prudence’s remarks for his sole benefit. This, too, was a new experience for me: I had never seen my friend so equably polite, and this in circumstances that I would have thought certain to spring loose his jack-in-the-box harshness and condescension. The lawyer and another man, Ben’s second-in-command, who I discovered was Scott van Damm, the younger brother of a college roommate, had me pinned against the tapestry; I moved us by degrees toward the window, so that the meeting of Odysseus and Telemachus in Eumaeus’s hut that it portrayed might be more conveniently explained by Prudence. During this maneuver, the lawyer continued a tale of blatant corruption of officials in Algeria, where he also did business, which shocked me—I had, like so many of my contemporaries at Harvard, thought the struggle for Algeria’s liberation from the French was our own; those thin, hard-featured revolutionaries had been our heroes. Perhaps for this reason, I stopped listening to him and wonderedinstead about Prudence: Could she be thinking how well she was managing as the hostess she claimed Ben desperately needed? Before that reverie could become unpleasant, I heard the doorbell. The Decazes had arrived.
Writing today, I find it difficult to avoid letting an anachronistic note of irony or foreboding intrude into a description of the genial, straightforward first encounter between my cousin, her husband, and my host. Ben left the short thin man—the president of the Oklahoma company, I later learned—and greeted the Decazes before I had managed to come to their side. The talk was brisk—in fact a cross-examination of Paul conducted by Ben with hardly any preliminaries and no waste of time. As he inquired into the work Paul did, his law firm, and his experience with American businessmen, I realized that Ben had been quite serious: since I had a cousin in Paris I was fond of, he would help her husband. I supposed, in his mind, it was an elegant going-away present for Prudence and me, consistent with the tendency he had developed to regard my family as being a little on the needy side. And I could see that Ben liked Paul Decaze: he was the sort of Frenchman we then referred to as milk-fed. Born just before the war began or in its early years, brought up on a diet that made them grow to an American size, and athletic, these Frenchmen had clean teeth and a cheerful willingness to speak reasonable English. Ben said, Véronique and you must excuse us; I will throw Paul into the fish tank.
I was alone with Véronique for a moment I was hoping to prolong. She had kept the distinct sort of breathlessness I remembered from many years before, and she was even moreunquestionably beautiful. I liked the way she wore her ash-blond hair in a bun that exposed to view her tightly formed, perfect ears; I admired, with a twinge of envy for Paul’s or her revenues—or the way they managed them—the absolutely straight black skirt ending just at the knee, over very pale stockings, and the black knitted jacket worn over a man’s shirt of dull white silk, dangerously open but revealing only a strand of pearls. Her hands ended in long, cared-for fingers. She put her arm through mine as we talked. There was nothing between Véronique and that entrancing shirt.
Mais c’est la petite Madame Decade, comment vas-tu?
I saw before us the elongated form of Ben’s friend Guy Renard and, more specifically, his keen face, all profile and modeled to do justice to his name, bent over Véronique’s hand where he deposited a ceremonious and satisfied kiss. Naturally, it’s you, he continued in English, thus confirming