The
food turned out to be some generic Oriental cuisine, with sticky rice,
soft and tasteless noodles, a chicken mixture thick with monosodium glutamate,
and overcooked, unrecognizable vegetables in soy sauce. We could have
had a nice French meal, I reflected, in some small restaurant in the cinquième
not far from where Roger was dining and close to our hotel. Ah, well:
George had thought that we'd like to sample this side of life in Paris.
After we were served, we made our way into the room where I'd noticed
the Odalisque figure and, standing, wedged next to some videos, we managed
to eat.
Some while later,
paper plates cast into a barrel and a final wine in hand, we circulated
among the other guests and again sat outside for a while. I made the acquaintance
of a German--somewhat predatory--a young Finnish woman, and assorted others
from Europe and America. No common bond seemed to unite them, beyond being
in Paris, being foreign in most cases, and having that air of expectation
that I'd noticed before. George and Grace got involved in a conversation
with another American, whose line of endeavor I hadn't caught, and Elinor
went off to find the toilettes, leaving me alone. The German was
no problem: eschewing subtlety, I simply said that oh no, I wasn't there
to meet people; it was just that my husband couldn't attend that evening,
nor my friend's, both occupied otherwise. True enough. He went off; I'd
earned another moment of solitude.
But here, suddenly,
came Jim McCready, with a clipboard, a pen, and a badly-photocopied questionnaire
for me to fill out. At least I was seated. Name, nationality, address
in home country, telephone number there, Paris address and phone number,
e-mail address, profession--all right: I printed the information, though
why he'd want my New Orleans phone number I couldn't imagine. Then age
(I don't give that out willingly), sex . . . sexual preference (check
one or both) . . . sex at birth . . . Good God! I'd wandered into some
multi-sex bordello, a seraglio of a new sort.
As though to bear
me out--and while George and Grace were still occupied in conversation
and Elinor had not yet come back--McCready returned, ready to claim his
clipboard and form, I supposed, but flanked this time by Maxine. "You've
met, I understand," he proclaimed cheerily; "Max here tells me that he
used to work at your museum, or . . . " (and here he turned to his companion)
". . . institute, was it, Max, in New Orleans? I hadn't realized you had
been acquainted in the past."
For an instant, I
thought there was a mistake, akin to those in dreams: someone you know
is not really that person, but instead a changeling, a monster. "Max"
could refer to anyone, but he meant one thing alone. Yet it was visibly
the same person, and McCready had confirmed the connection with the museum.
Nothing, then, was stable, not even the sex you're born with. Another
seam in the social fabric had been rent a little more, before my eyes,
more or less; the transformation had been facilitated, no doubt, by medical
means, but it is the social confirmation of identity that really counts;
one must have witnesses.
Somehow, I managed
to thrust the clipboard, with its form, into his hand, the pen not even
rolling off; the last questions were unanswered but they would have remained
that way anyway. I was mute; the seconds passed the way they do right
before an oral examination that will decide on your whole life. The presence
of our former intern at McCready's side was paralyzing. Finally a few
words must have sputtered out as from a bad spark plug, something, I think,
to the effect that yes, it was called the Orleanian Institute, and was
both a public museum and a research facility, specializing in American
and European art, especially French . . . The red wine must have helped:
alcohol clears the throat, if not the mind, and it had oiled my tongue
enough for a few coherent sentences to get out, a bit overblown but at
least making their way to their end. "And are you interested in art?"
was all I could think to add.
"Well, Max here has
certainly gotten me to pay a lot more attention than I used to . . . not
just to the art all around me here in Paris" (and he gestured in magnanimous
acknowledgment of its enormous riches) "but to some of its finer points
. . . prints, especially, in which, you know, he's an expert . . ."
The two had come
fishing for me because part of the fun of radical behavior is showing
it off. Yet Maxine's, or "Max's," expression was that of the cat who ate
the goldfish but, unfortunately, found it instead to be a sea urchin,
all spiny and indigestible. The coup had been wonderful in the thinking
of it, but the carrying-out left one of the perpetrators somehow uncomfortable,
wishing it were over. Was that a relic of the old Maxine, timid and diffident,
lacking in confidence? Or was it the new Max, not quite at ease with his
altered self? McCready beamed, in any case, a conjurer happy with his
tricks.
By this time, George,
with Grace at his side, had freed himself from the American who had buttonholed
him, and at the same moment I saw Elinor emerging into the garden. I hated
to abandon the women to the questionnaire, and even more so to McCready
and his companion, so, rushing up, I asked Elinor to direct Grace and
me to the petit endroit before we left for the métro. George
would have to fend for himself.
"Quick! Show us the
way to the toilets, and stay inside, if you can; don't go near McCready
and Maxine, in any case! And avoid them if they come in here!"
"What's the matter?"
"I'll tell you later,
in the métro or back in the hotel. . . yes, that's it; let's go
to the hotel bar, where we can talk. I'll need something strong after
this. Roger will be back, won't he? So he can hear also."
So Elinor pointed
the way up the staircase. After I'd come down, pushing aside with my elbow
en route a man with fish eyes swimming in their white pool, and then Grace
too had finished, we three went back to the garden, spied George under
a tree with the Finnish girl I'd met, grabbed him more or less, and started
on the side path through the garden to the street. Whatever the sleeping
arrangements may have been at the villa, involving God knows whom and
doing what, we did not want to face any further conversation with its
denizens. The whole thing about society in the past was that you knew
what to expect. Well, this was a society with its own rules, one of which
was ambiguity, ambivalence, make-believe perhaps, or the social equivalent
of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, saying that you are what others,
in your presence, cause you to be, after you've affected them.
One more scene remained
to be played out, however; "Max," more self-assured this time, would see
to that. It was drama for Elinor, comedy doubtless for the others. Just
as we rounded some bushes at the gate, McCready and Max emerged from the
half-shadows.
"Oh, there you are,
Elinor and Harriett." It was the voice from the past, if a bit different.
"We weren't able to finish our conversation; I'm glad I've caught you."
(Caught was the word all right; it was doubtless a set-up.) "Do
you recall, Elinor, that I wanted you to revise that article on the house
prints you'd assembled? I wonder whether you ever did anything with it;
I don't suppose you were able to place it anywhere. I've published some
major things on domestic architecture since then."
As George and Grace,
not having been addressed, just walked toward the street, Elinor, though
briefly taken aback by the implied self-praise, answered smoothly, "Oh,
yes; it appeared in Studies in Southern Architecture. Without revisions,
I might say." She then thought to add: "You know, what you suggested when
you scribbled on that copy was really not necessary at all; it would have
been pursuing hares needlessly, Maxine."
Maxine. If
the remark on the needless revisions was, deservedly, very pointed, the
address was innocent; Elinor hadn't been present when McCready had used
the name Max and the pronoun he. I should have told her
instead of warning her away.
McCready, as the
new mentor, obviously, picked up the thread. His amiable Southern tone
and expatriate friendliness were gone. "I don't suppose . . . Elinor,
that's your name? . . . that your writing is quite up to that of my friend
here. And, by the way, he's called Max. And he tells me that, far from
what you probably suppose, his time at the Institute and especially his
work with you were really not very productive--quite a loss for his career,
really; he should have come to Paris sooner."
Elinor looked stunned.
The arrows had reached their target: visibly astounded by the revelation
about Max--she couldn't miss it--she was also wounded, even as she recognized
the obvious spite and bias in McCready's words.
As she collected
herself, I observed, "Whatever his name, how strange to insult your guest,
Mr. McCready." If he could speak for Max, I could certainly intervene
on her behalf. "A paying guest, of course."
Elinor turned, meanwhile,
toward Max. Her remarks fit her sterling character. "You know, you were
important to me as an apprentice; I attempted to assist you in every way.
It is a pity that it meant little to you; it meant something to us. After
all, we are humanists, not technocrats or robots. Art was made for man,
not man for art." She began to look away but stopped. Her voice caught,
but she managed to say: "And that is why even this extraordinary thing
. . . this work of body art . . . that you . . . have done on yourself
. . . I can understand . . whatever you may think about me."
We met George and
Grace in the street outside. There was another catch in Elinor's voice
as she exchanged a word or so with them, and on the métro platform,
I saw tears in her eyes. Our brandy in the hotel bar with Roger, whose
evening was no doubt very dull compared to ours, would not be a cheerful
moment. Though we would be back in the world as we knew it, conventional,
ordinary, the tapestry had now worn through, its ratty side visible. Whatever
Max felt about his new persona, we had certainly been impressed more that
night than by previous intimations of publications to come or even that
scene in Elinor's office. Of course this persona wasn't just for our benefit,
but I reflected that the old rallying cry of nineteenth-century artists
and bohemians, épater le bourgeois, was not dead. Elinor was épatée,
surely, but she had spoken well. She would not, I thought, turn away from
the next promising intern who appeared.
© 2005 Catharine Savage Brosman
Catharine
Savage Brosman has published five collections of poetry, including Watering
(Georgia) and the latest, The Muscled Truce (LSU), as well as two
volumes of personal essays, the more recent of which is Finding Higher
Ground (University of Nevada Press). A new collection of poems, Range
of Light, will appear at LSU Press. Louisiana Literature has published
some of her short fiction. Other prose and poems have appeared in the
Sewanee Review, Southern Review, South Carolina Review,
Critical Quarterly (UK), and Europe (Paris). She lives in
New Orleans.
