Song of the Amorous Frogs - Part 6

A Paris Story of the 1920s

Eugène Atget Pantheon 1924

(This is a longer work of historical fiction - too long for a single post, so I’m serializing it in 6 parts, one every other day until finished. Apologizing in advance for so many emails. I promise not to make this a habit. You can read any parts you miss on my Substack space, RECOLLECTIONS, REFLECTIONS, FANTASIES, FICTIONS - and I’ll bring all the parts together there when done.)

XI

One warm spring evening, after I’d finished a late supper of the exotic, delicious borscht at Café Gaudeamus, and before going down the hill to the Bal Musette, I walked up toward the side steps of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont at the top of the street, my goal: to look at the Pantheon in the moonlight. High up, atop the dome, the massive cross seemed almost ghostly, washed in celestial light. I stood there for a moment, wondering at the beauty, and power, of a symbol in which I no longer had any faith.

Then I heard music drifting through the open doors of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. It was beautiful music I’d never heard before. Modern, from the sound of it, though I was no student of music, certainly not of modern French music. But what I heard put me in mind of the haunting strains of Vinteuil’s Sonata described by Marcel Proust in his massive new novel, which I was then making my way through – the newly published translation by Scott Moncrieff, since my French fell far short of the challenge of the original.  As in the novel, the music drew me in, first through the door of the church, where a printed program told me that the piece was a new piano trio by Fauré – and then, it drew me to a pew and to another world, of beauty and forgetting that I’d hardly known in the months since Clem had not returned.

The music, flowing through the supernal space, beguiled me. From where I sat, I had a clear view of the cello. Whether it was the beautiful magic of his music, or the sheer beauty of the young cellist himself, I could not look away from him as he played. Black eyebrows struck accents to his pale, intense face, and a shock of black curls bobbed at his forehead as he dug into the notes. His long, tapered fingers flew over the strings, and the masterful back and forth strokes of his bow across his instrument commanded the music, and my gaze.

I sat mesmerized, watching him play and sway through the Andantino movement. Perhaps because my gaze compelled him, our eyes met, only for a moment, during the pause before the Allegro vivo. And then he began to play again.

The instant after the final powerful stroke, with the music still flooding through the sanctuary, as the applause – enthusiastic – began, and the three stood to take their bow, our eyes met again. This time, he made sure they did. And he did not let me look away, even as he smiled and bowed and nodded his head to the audience in appreciation – but most of all to me, so it seemed, in beckoning invitation.

As the applause subsided, and the audience began to move down the aisles and out the doors, and as the musicians put away their instruments, instead of going out, I walked forward, toward the rood screen and alter, toward the musicians, toward him – as I knew he knew I would. We smiled; we said, “Bon soir;” I told him, in my halting French, how his music moved me; he replied, in accented English, “Thank you very much.” All the while, our eyes spoke those things, clandestine things even in Paris, that eyes are best at speaking.

When he had said goodbye to his fellow musicians, and the church had almost emptied, except for us and the attendants, who were eager to close the doors and turn off the lights, we walked down the aisle together, he carrying his instrument, on his other shoulder, not between us, though it had been what first drew us together. But it’s task was done. We stopped for a time in the Place Sainte-Geneviève, where I’d first heard his music, flowing through the door – now quickly closed as soon as we’d gone through it. We stopped long enough to agree that we’d meet again the next night, at Gaudeamus, at 7 for un apéritif before he played again, and then a supper after. And then? Perhaps an evening.

Then he had to rush. He saw his autobus rounding the far corner of the Pantheon, and it would already be late when he reached home, he said. As he hurried up the street toward the stop in front of the École de Droit, he glanced back and smiled and said, “Tomorrow evening.”

I watched as he boarded the autobus, and I watched as it drove away. And then I turned to walk back to the room on Madame’s garden that was now mine alone. I would not go to the Bal Musette that night.

XII

When I unlocked my door, and opened it, I saw an envelope on the floor. I picked it up. As I looked at my name written on it, my heart pounded like a piston. I knew the hand instantly. It was Clem’s.

It was not a letter, with a postmark and a stamp. He’d written only my name across the envelope. And so it must have been delivered in person. He must have delivered it. He was in Paris!

The force of that realization flabbergasted me. I tore it open and took out the sheet and read the words that – HAD BEEN WRITTEN BY CLEM!

“I took the chance you were still here, and came to see you today. I am sorry you were not in. I am in Paris on business until Friday – at the Henri IV – across from Square Paul Langevin – where we used to walk sometimes. Do you remember?” Of course I remembered; I’d walked there, alone, many times since, remembering. “Busy all day tomorrow, but come to me at half-past five. I’ll tell them to expect you. You can go up to my room, if I’m late. We can catch up. It’s been so long.”

So long indeed. Too long, and yet even so, perhaps not long enough.

“PS: I am so sorry that Françoise is no longer with Madame. She was amusing, and sweet, even if a little thick.” Françoise had returned to her home village, somewhere in Normandy or Brittany, in the winter; her aging parents had called her home to look after them. I missed her too, even though she persisted, from time to time, to ask about Clem – and cluck at his absence – until her last days in Paris.

I almost flew down the stairs and across the garden to the house, to ask the new maid, Marie, about the one who had delivered the note.

“Un homme très gentil. Très beau,” adding the last to let me know that she knew more of my life than, perhaps, might be proper. Françoise would not have done that. But Marie smiled almost sweetly as she said it, making us confederates in a diverting secret.

But she had nothing more to offer in answer to my questions: when, name, bearing. I walked back across the quiet garden, my heart pounding less thunderously, and went back upstairs. But I sat in the window far into the night, looking out at the moonlit plane trees, which murmured softly when night breezes passed through their hand-large leaves – murmured, I sometimes thought, CLEM.

XIII

The next morning, after little sleep, I made my coffee as usual in my room, and washed myself, and went to my class with Lhote – as usual. But I could think of nothing but Clem, and how slowly the time passed. Le maître, disappointed perhaps that I had so imperfectly absorbed his teaching, made clear that my drawing that day did not please him. It did not please me either. But that day, drawing hardly seemed to matter. I put away my charcoals and drawing pad the instant I decently could – the instant Lhote had gone to his own studio, and left us to ourselves.

I made my way from the atelier to the Boulevard Montparnasse. The day was clear and warm, even for April in Paris. I walked and walked down the Boulevard, past Le Select, past La Rotonde, all the way to La Closerie des Lilas, not even glancing to see if there might be anyone I knew in any of them.  Then I turned and walked into the long arm of the Luxembourg that reaches out toward the Observatory.

I passed Fontaine des Quatre-Parties-du-Monde without seeing it, and, when I had reached the Luxembourg proper, I walked beneath the pink-blooming chestnut trees and past the boat basin – where the little boys gamboled after their scudding boats as the whole world expected them to do on such days. I walked by without a notice.

I had no awareness of which streets they were that took me to Square Paul Langevin. My feet knew the way, thank goodness, since my mind stayed intently elsewhere. I arrived by 5, in more than good time for the appointment Clem had set. So instead of going into the hotel directly, where – who knew – I might sit alone for hours – I went into the Square, and sat on a bench from which I could see the door of the hotel. I sat there for a long while – I lost any sense of how long – watching and thinking and remembering.

Once again it was the season of pink petals, the season I loved, and the Square was full of the flowering trees that shed them. They covered the ground like pink spring snow. But since there was no breeze this day, they did not swirl up around me as they magically sometimes did. This day they lay on the gravel of the square, beautiful but still.

I remembered when Clem and I had walked among them, here and in other beautiful places around Paris, a year ago. I remembered how they overwhelmed my senses then. They still did, even though those senses had felt so much the pain of his absence since. Now it was a less abandoned joy they gave, but still a muted joy.

I looked up at the hotel and saw a window open on an upper floor. I could not see who opened it. Could it have been Clem? Perhaps. I had not seen him go through the door, but he could have finished his business sooner than he expected. He could be in his room now, laying out something with which he planned to welcome me, after his long absence. I wondered what he would say first when I knocked and he opened the door. Would his face have the same profoundly gratifying look of surprise and joy as that first night when I’d knocked on the door of his room – our room – my room above Madame Le Floch’s garden?  How could I bear it if it did not? But even if it did, what difference, since he was leaving Paris tomorrow – so his note, slipped under my door, had said? One night; “catching up”; hearing, from his lips, what had happened, and, perhaps, why. What difference, when Saturday came, and he had gone again?

I had thought the tears had all been shed. Though I had not really thought so, perhaps, but only hoped. But they had not. My eyes wet with them, and my cheeks, I sat still on the bench, in sight of the door of the hotel, through which I did not see Clem go, for more minutes. So many, that 5:30 passed, and then 6. More than once I almost stood up to go across the Square, to the door, and in. But I did not. And I did not. And I did not. And at last – I had no idea how long it was – I knew that I would not. I knew that I could not.

I stood and walked through the gate into the rue des Écoles. I looked once again up at the windows of the Henri IV as I passed, wondering which window was Clem’s; wondering if he was looking out it, wondering if I would come; wondering if memories of him would make my coming certain. A lingering something made me sad thinking I might disappoint him.

It was spring again. La saison de l’amour had returned. Perhaps the amorous frogs might be screeching their love songs again in the Jardin des Plantes. I did not know. I had not been there in weeks, where he and I had walked so happily, in love, last year. But if they were – I supposed they were, since it was their season – it was a different year. It was different now.

I walked on up the rue and turned into Montagne Sainte-Geneviève – alone. I knew how to walk alone. Clem had taught me that.

As I walked, I knew that my age of innocence, with Clem, had ended – if there had really been an age of innocence since Adam’s fall. I sensed that a new age was beginning. I had no idea what to call it, what it would be. The age of possibility, perhaps? I passed the Bal Musette. Maybe I would be going back there later, who could know? But for now, if I hurried, I would be at Café Gaudeamus by 7.

(This is a longer work of historical fiction - too long for a single post, so I’m serializing it in 6 parts, one every other day until finished. Apologizing in advance for so many emails. I promise not to make this a habit. You can read any parts you miss on my Substack space, RECOLLECTIONS, REFLECTIONS, FANTASIES, FICTIONS - and I’ll bring all the parts together there when done.)