Levels of Life by Julian Barnes Read Free Book Online Page A

decor. He finds it a terrible mishmash of medieval sideboards and marquetry cabinets, Chilean figurines and primitive musical instruments, and ‘flashy wog objets d’art’. The only sign of authentic personal taste is an array of polar-bear skins in the corner where Bernhardt (who often, as this evening, dresses in white) likes to hold court. Amid such artistic rag-and-bonery, Goncourt also notices a small but intense emotional drama. In the middle of the studio is a cage containing a tiny monkey and a parrot with an enormous bill. The monkey is a whirr of motion, zipping around on the trapeze, and constantly tormenting the parrot, pulling out its feathers and ‘martyrising’ it. And though the parrot could easily cut the monkey in half with its beak, it does nothing but utter plaintive, heart-rending cries. Goncourt feels sorry for the poor parrot, and comments on the dreadful life it is forced to endure. Whereupon it is explained to him that bird and beast had once been separated, but that the parrot had almost died of grief. It only recovered after being put back into the cage with its tormentor.)
     
    He sent flowers ahead. He watched her impersonate Adrienne Lecouvreur, that actress of a previous century, poisoned by a love rival. He went to her dressing room. She was charming. There were the usual faces. They spoke in the usual way, muttered the usual opinions. He sat with Mme Guérard, discreetly quizzing her, trying to find some new tactic, some hidden fulcrum … when there was a slight hush, and he looked up. He saw her on the arm of a stunted little Frenchman with a monkey face and a stupid cane.
    ‘Goodnight, gentlemen.’
    In reply, there was a murmur of complicit unsurprise, exactly as there had been on his own first evening with her. She looked across at him and nodded, then calmly switched her gaze. Mme Guérard rose and bade him goodnight. He watched Madame Sarah depart. He had been given his answer. The water was freezing and he had not so much as a cork overjacket to protect him.
    No, he was not angry. And the dressing-room dandies at least had the good breeding not to draw attention to what had happened, nor to imply that something similar – no, precisely the same – had befallen them on previous occasions. They offered him more champagne and asked politely about le Prince de Galles . They kept their propriety and respected his. In this, at least, he could not fault them.
    But he would never join their number, never be a member of the smiling retinue of former lovers. He considered that sort of behaviour rather beastly, in fact immoral. He refused to be turned from a lover into a dear friend. He was uninterested in that transition. Nor would he club together with others of the same status to buy her some new exotic gift – a snow leopard, perhaps. And he was not angry. But, before the pain set in, he had the time to be rueful. He had laid everything out, the best of himself, and it had not been enough. He had considered himself a bohemian, but she had proved too bohemian for him. And he had failed to understand her explanation of herself.
     
    The pain was to last several years. He eased it by travelling and skirmishing. He never talked about it. If someone enquired into his black mood, he would reply that the melancholy of the padge-owl was afflicting him. The enquirer would understand, and ask no more.
    Had he been naive, or overambitious? Both, probably. In life, you might be a bohemian and an adventurer, but you also sought a pattern, an arrangement to help you through, even if – even as – you kicked against it. Army regulations gave you this. But elsewhere: how could a man tell which was a true pattern and which a false? This was one question which pursued him. Here was another: had she been on the level? Had she been natural, or feigning naturalness? Constantly he went back over the evidence of his memories. She had said that she always kept her promises – unless she didn’t mean to