At the Edge of Summer

The next weekend it rained without cease and I didn’t come out to Mille Mots at all.

I had a theme to write on Alexander the Great and not nearly enough time to get it done. Macedonia, Egypt, Persia, Babylon—did he have to conquer so many places? I sent a telegram to Maman and then shut myself in my turne with far too many books and maps. When I emerged from the library, blinking, there was an envelope waiting at Uncle Théophile’s apartment, addressed in a round girlish slant. Monsieur Crépet, she wrote, that one spontaneous “Luc” put aside for the formality of a letter.

I’m sorry that you could not come to Mille Mots this weekend. Your maman said that you had much studying to do. Is it more philosophy? Anyway, it’s raining here. You aren’t missing much of anything. I’ve been trapped inside the château so that I’m not swept away into the Aisne (your maman swears it could happen).

So I thought, if you could not come to Mille Mots, I would send Mille Mots to you. Please accept this little drawing, monsieur. It was done with the utmost expression.

Sincerely,

Miss Clare Ross

Tucked into the envelope, folded into thirds, was the sketch she’d been working on the day I found her out under the chestnut tree. Mille Mots, leaning out over the river, with those wild tangles of roses climbing the walls. I leaned to the paper, convinced I could smell them. It was a hesitant sketch, the lines faint and nervous, but it showed promise. She had a good sense of perspective—that much I could tell—and a sure hand. I wished Papa could see it. Though I’d gone weeks before without coming home, I suddenly wanted to be nowhere but.

I washed and changed into a fresh shirt. I was due at the Café du Champion by half past five, while the tourists were still lingering over their Beaujolais, but before the students and laborers arrived. Between serving, I earned extra tips sketching the patrons tucked in at their tables with carafes and good conversation. Several glasses in, most were willing to buy the commemoration of their holiday.

It was a busy evening, with plates from the kitchen, refilled glasses, and many crossed fingers that I was far enough from École Normale Supérieure to avoid seeing any of my classmates. At the end of the evening, over a dish of ragoût, I scribbled a response on a cognac-spattered sheet of drawing paper, my last.

Mademoiselle,

I’ve never gotten more than a note or two from Maman and the occasional cramped letter from my grand-mère in Aix. As yours doesn’t include a treatise on your current health, a reminiscence on how things used to be better a generation ago, or a reminder to wear clean socks, it is already magnitudes more interesting. And to come with such an expressive sketch, I should really feel honored.

I truly do, you know. I remember how reluctant you were to show your sketchbook, how precious your drawings are to you. That you trust me, mademoiselle, it means much.

It’s been raining here as well, but I’ve hardly noticed. I’m only outside when passing from my study turne at the university to my job at the café then back to my uncle’s apartment to sleep. If I disregard the latter, sometimes there’s a spare corner of time for tennis. There’s a German student here, who I tutor in English, and he’s as mad for tennis as I am. Sometimes we’ll have a “lesson” across the net. He can now swear in three languages.

Well, I have a theme due for which I am woefully underprepared. If only I’d spent more time reading Callisthenes and less time accidentally discovering salacious paintings, I might be better prepared….

Forgive me, I’ve had too much serious reading this week and too little sleep. And yet, once more into the breach!

Thank you, truly, for the sketch.

Luc René Rieulle Crépet

I posted it on my way back to the university, along with a brief note to Papa. The demoiselle, she has talent in drawing. Papa, can you teach her the way you taught me? That stack of books on my desk somehow didn’t seem so towering the rest of the weekend.

Her response didn’t come straight away and then I was too into the weekday routine of classes, study, and work, with the occasional late tennis match, to notice. Then Wednesday I came home, dripping in my tennis flannels, to find a letter waiting.

“It arrived last night,” Uncle Théophile said. He pursed his lips. “If you’d come home at a decent hour, I would have told you.”

“I’m sorry, Uncle.” I reached past him for the envelope on the hall table. “It’s been a busy week. I’ve been studying a lot and I’ve been working a lot. I must pay my tuition somehow.”

He looked pointedly at my racket. “I can see that.”

Without changing, I took the letter and racket straight back out the door. Rather than sit across the table from my sour-faced uncle, I’d eat supper at the café after my shift. Again. The other boys in my turne, they always teased that I had it easier living in the city rather than boarding at the university, the way they all did. As draconian as the rules were for boarders, they couldn’t be any worse than Uncle Théophile’s. Home by seven, lights out by eight, no sugar in my coffee, no wine on weekdays. And absolutely no gramophone music.

Gaspard, the owner, rolled his eyes at my tennis flannels, but passed me an apron. “Clear those three tables, and I’ll have Hugues make a plate for you.”

I tucked Clare’s letter into my apron pocket, unread, and went with damp towel to clear the tables for the next customer. Of course, it wasn’t until three hours later that I finally had a corner table, a plate of lentils with tomatoes, a glass of cheap wine, and a moment to read her letter.

Dear Monsieur Crépet,

I don’t believe that it is as dreary as you say. You’re in Paris, after all. Universities, clean socks, unexpected letters. Living on your own rather than with someone telling you what you should or shouldn’t do. What can be better than that?

I haven’t been reading my Callisthenes either (should I be?). Your mother did give me a copy of Les Contes de Ma Mère l’Oye to keep me company. I can’t read more than a handful of words (l’ogre, les roses, la petite princesse) but it’s as marvelous as I remember. It makes me feel that I’m sitting in my nursery with Nanny Proud, my old nurse. She couldn’t read any of the French either, but always pulled me onto her lap to trace the pictures and tell me the stories in her own words. I think she made up half of them.

You know, I remember when your mother brought me the book. It must have been right after it was published, now that I think back on it. Of course then I had no idea your papa was the illustrator. Only that the nice lady who spoke with the lovely accent had visited from France and brought me a beautiful present. You were there, too, on that visit, weren’t you? You and your papa. You brought a rubber ball, but Nanny Proud told me that laddies were too wild to play with. I always wished that I had tried anyway. I’d never had a friend before.

And here I’ve rambled on. Hopefully this letter will give you a moment or two between your essays. If you’re able, maybe you’ll be back at Mille Mots this weekend? At least your mother hopes.

Sincerely,

Miss Clare Ross

The chair across from me squeaked. “What’s this, Crépet?” Stefan Bauer leaned over the back of the chair, fingers laced. “A letter from a girlfriend?”

“No.” I folded the letter and stuffed it back in the envelope. “Just a girl. Who is also a friend.”

“A girl and a friend.” He reached across the table and helped himself to my wine. “Is that not how it is defined?”

“Your English is rusty, Bauer.”

He shrugged and drained the glass. “The whole language is rusty. Only German is strong as steel.”

I pulled my dish closer, hopefully out of his reach. “What are you doing here anyway? I thought you were going home to restring your racket.”

“I am following you. I am…I am stacking you like a deer.” He waggled his eyebrows.

“Stalking.” I retrieved the glass from him and gazed mournfully at the dregs. “And one generally doesn’t steal the food of one’s prey.”

“You forgot your satchel at the club.” He swung my battered canvas bag up onto the table, knocking my spoon onto the ground. “You will want your copybooks and texts, yes?”

I swore in French and opened up the satchel. Nothing was missing. “Thank you.”

Bauer shrugged again. “Now that you and the satchel are reunited, a cabaret?”

I never liked the cabarets like Bauer did. Too many loud-faced women and jingling coins. “I have a lot of reading to do tonight.” I buckled the satchel closed.

“Because of your girlfriend, eh?” He nudged me. “Tell me about her, Crépet.” He swiped my heel of bread and tossed it back and forth between his hands like a tennis ball.

“You’re imagining things. It’s a letter from my maman, that’s all.” I tucked the envelope into the satchel pocket. “When have you ever seen me talk to a girl? You’re delusional.”

“I do not know this English word. But I know that you are a liar.” He pointed. “Your ears, they are pink right there.”

“It’s the wine.” I brushed my hair over the offending ears. “Gaspard serves it strong.”

I couldn’t say why I was evading Bauer. What did it matter if he knew that Maman had a ward staying with us for a little while? Clare was at Mille Mots, and besides, she wasn’t his type.

“Does she have big…” He proved my point with an unmistakable mime.

“I’m not teaching you that word in English, you degenerate.” I retrieved my spoon from the floor and wiped it on my apron.

“But you knew what I was talking about, eh?” He nodded. “She does, does she not?”

“Of course not. She’s only fifteen.” I stuffed a heaping spoonful of lentils into my mouth above Bauer’s cries of “Aha!” I’d slipped.

“Why have I not met her? She does not come to the café with you or to the courts at Île de Puteaux. Young girls like to watch men at sport.”

I swallowed and wiped my mouth. “She’s not in Paris. But I wouldn’t introduce her to you anyway.”

“You are afraid she would see what a real man looks like?” He winked.

I was more afraid she’d see the questionable company I kept.

“Ah, then she is a country girl?” he persisted. “Ein Süßling from home?”

“She’s not a sweetheart.” I bent my head to my plate and ate faster. “She’s my maman’s ward. I hardly know her.”

He leaned his elbows on the table. “This is why you go so often on the weekends to your château. And also why you do not bring me.”

I never invited him to Mille Mots, but it wasn’t because of Clare Ross. The urbane Bauer with his tailored Berlin suits, with his straw hats and his Horsman rackets, with his casual change tossed down on baccarat tables or in the laps of showgirls, he didn’t belong at Mille Mots. Maman, in her aesthetic dresses and reform corsets, Papa in his knickerbockers and painting smocks. The château’s crumbling walls, leaking roof, moth-eaten curtains, halls lined with terrifying paintings and nude sculptures. The maids in their brightly colored uniforms that Maman had designed, “because happiness is more dignified than black.” Marthe in her crowded kitchen, birdcages hanging between the dented pots. Papa’s lunchtime potage, Maman’s English tea, both of them feeding the dogs under the dining table. Papa’s habit of cheerfully coming down to breakfast in absolutely nothing but a dressing gown. Among all of that, Bauer wouldn’t belong.

“You’re right.” I pushed back my chair and picked up my plate. “If I never invite you, I never have to share.”

He nodded approvingly. “You are a sly weasel, Crépet.”

“See you tomorrow?” I reached across the table for a handshake, but he yanked his hand away and offered an obscene gesture instead. He lit a Murad cigarette and disappeared in the after-supper crowd.

Tucked deep in my satchel, I had to forget about the little letter until after my shift in the café. I simpered and scraped, I balanced trays and poured wine, I washed each table a dozen times over. I did three sketches of a young trio visiting from England and they rattled down far too many francs for the souvenirs. I didn’t complain. After the café closed, Gaspard let me sit and study, sharing the light, while he finished hanging up the washed glasses, ready for tomorrow. After he hung the last, he pulled a squat bottle of cognac from a hollow spot behind the bar. He poured a finger out and toasted the thin air. Once I asked him what he celebrated. He tugged at his beard and said, “Another day, conquered. Isn’t that something to celebrate?”

I waited until I was back at Uncle Théophile’s apartment, shut in my narrow bedroom with the desk lamp on, to take out Mademoiselle Ross’s letter again.

I don’t believe you that it is as dreary as you say. You’re in Paris, after all. Paris it was, but not the city I’d fallen in love with years ago. Between classes, study, tennis, and the evening jobs that helped to pay for all of that, I had no spare time. I didn’t have time to sit in the Jardin du Luxembourg. I couldn’t roam the museums on rainy days—the Louvre, with its brass air registers and Rembrandts, the Petit Palais, the Musée de l’Armée, the exquisite little Musée d’Ennery. Sometimes on the weekends I stayed in the city I’d trek up to the nineteenth arrondissement, to Parc des Buttes Chaumont, green and rippling with waterfalls. But I usually didn’t see much of Paris outside of the gray stone and leaning buildings of the Latin Quarter.

I wrapped myself in a sweater—Uncle Théophile kept the apartment as cold as November—and smoothed a sheet of paper on the desk.

Dear Mademoiselle,

If I were you, I wouldn’t envy the life of the university student. Indeed I am in Paris, but I’m not dining at the Ritz. I can’t afford more than beans for supper, washed down with the vilest of wine. I don’t ride omnibuses when my feet work perfectly well. I don’t go to the opera when I have the collective complaining of the three who share my turne.

And I don’t have much more freedom than I did at Mille Mots. I’m living with my uncle, you see. His name is Théophile, a dour, hairless gent who teaches Greek at the Lycée Montaigne. He’s Papa’s second oldest brother, but even Papa can’t stand to be in the same room as him for longer than four minutes. He has an overfondness for boiled eggs and for telling me what to do. I’d begged Maman to let me stay instead with Uncle Jules, who keeps an actress as a mistress and two parrots, but she seems to think Uncle Théophile more reliable. This, coming from a parent who used to send me into the woods with the dogs and call it “school.”

But I do have my tennis. The Racing Club, the Tennis Club, Stade Français—Stefan Bauer and I borrow time on any court that will let us in. Véronique, Uncle Jules’s mistress, calls him my grand adversaire, which is dramatic enough to suit her. Stefan is very good, even better than me, though I’ll disavow all if you tell him so. We’ve been keeping a mental tally of our matches (which he always takes seriously, no matter how casual) and our wins. He’s currently up on me, 26 wins to my 18.

How goes the reading of Mère l’Oye? Have you expanded your French vocabulary beyond talk of princesses and ogres?

Luc René Rieulle Crépet

“Monsieur, extinguish that light!” Uncle Théophile pounded on the bedroom door. “Do you hear me?”

I sighed and folded the letter.

“How can a man get to sleep when it is lit up like a bordello?” he grumbled.

I crossed my eyes at the closed door. “Have you been to a bordello, then, Uncle?”

The pounding resumed. “Go to sleep!”