Man Who Was Late by Louis Begley Read Free Book Online

and what one might call my more permanent life.
    Those were days when Dr. Strangelove and General Jack D. Ripper never failed to amuse us; I rose from the table in the best mood. Ben had told me that rue du Cherche-Midi was a street of monasteries and convents. I was happy to be able to think that Ben did not, after all, return from work to the la Chapelle elegance only to live there like a monk. On Saturday morning, as arranged, we left for the Loire.
    Notaben (undated and unnumbered):
    Yesterday, I took the Cockney to a party given by her friend Marianne. It seemed wise to skip the fiesta Jack and Prudence were organizing at rue du C-M for the fashion and Vietnam War gurus of the
Trib
. I know the type without having the honor of knowingthe individuals—stick French words indiscriminately into their English, accent like breaking stones, voices loud (competitive decibel production), breath sour (effect of whiskey? cigarettes? too much shouting?), passion for undiscovered bistros known only to other Americans.
    Marianne lives
au diable
—obscure cold street, wrong side of the Champ de Mars. Two maids’ rooms (partition knocked down) in one of those bourgeois buildings that teach revolution to servants and justify their body odor. Elevator for the masters; brutally steep, metal stairs for the servants lead to the seventh floor, where are all the
chambres de bonnes
. No individual WCs; one Turkish toilet for the whole floor, crosshatched outlined feet where you place your feet and squat and strain. In the middle of the corridor on which these rooms (cubicles?) give, a cold-water faucet. That’s all. Marianne has a hose she attaches to it, which leads to her room. There it can be in turn connected to a bottled-gas heater. From the heater another hose leads to the ceiling and ends in a shower head. A curtain encircles the entire installation. On the floor, directly under the shower, is a tub to collect the water from Marianne’s ablutions. Reason for my mastery of these details: before the last guests (including Cockney and me) leave, Marianne demonstrates its use and, extensively, her own charms. Someday must ask why she shaves all her body hair except under the arms. Based on investigations to date, this is not the fashion here.
    But I am getting ahead of my story—if there is one to be told.
    Marianne’s room dimly lit—that is the fashion—and filled with French and English receptionists and “hostesses;” the latter are young women who show one around “salons,” i.e. exhibitions of anything one might think of—books, washing machines, crockery from Limoges, cheeses of France…. Two plaster copies of 18th c. heads, one real Louis XVI chair. No American girls; they don’t fit in; too ambitious? Aggressive?
    Sociological note. Solid French-Catholic families don’t believe in education for their nubile and lascivious daughters. Once these adorable young things with first-class manners and unfurnished heads leave the convent school, they crowd into precisely such futile and underpaid occupations; they are so pleased to find a job and “studio” (meaning this sort of hovel) to live in. So established, they have infinite leisure, the Lord be praised, for lubricity!
    Marianne assembled an almost equal number of male predators. Among them, young American lawyer with big ears that stick out like mine—works for a firm I give some business to. Also, Gilbert de Caille, always on the prowl, like a cat. Strange, considering his name. We are enveloped in the odor of sausage, Camembert, and red wine, deafened by a French Chuck Berry. Apropos of sticking out, nothing here sticks out more than my presence. I am older(though Do tells me I look too young for her to be seen with), I am
un monsieur important
, I am too well dressed, I am—they think!—rich. The young lawyer, I can tell, is torn: Should he keep on fondling the blond girl’s knee or talk to me—one never knows, what if I became “his” client?
    The Cockney