Parisian Promises Read online

  “But,” Madame continued, “a young woman in today’s dangerous streets might get caught in a crosswind. Isn’t that what happened? You look like you were either tossed in a storm or in a rough bed? Which one was it?” She squinted––clearly hoping for the latter.

  Monica hesitated and drew back her hand from Madame’s grasp. Slowly she poked at her cuticles, drawing a drop of blood as she pricked the skin. “I guess it was a bit of both, Madame.”

  “And the rough action in bed was not to your taste?” Madame probed. Monica blushed and looked down at her bare feet. “Don’t be such a prude, my dear! Anyone can tell what you’ve been up to. What I want to know is why, after an absence of two nights with your amour, you arrive back here looking distraught. What went wrong?”

  “The beginning of the first night with Jean-Michel was perfect, like a dream come true… and then, he, uh, he…”

  “Did he hurt you?”

  Monica clamped her legs together, and remembered the thrill of Jean-Michel’s bite on her inner thigh. “I, I guess not. I mean, I’m dying to see him again. It’s just that, well, I…”

  “Why don’t you just sit here and calm down, and let me tell you about the awful events taking place in Paris the last couple of days. They are the reason I need another drink.” Madame reached for the bottle on the little table next to her chair, and poured herself another generous glass of Armagnac. “You may have heard that two days ago a man blew himself up in an exquisite wine cellar, leaving behind only his foot, and destroying all the Bordeaux. Isn’t that such an ironic kick?”

  With one of her dainty shoes, Madame nudged her dog’s ball towards a corner of the salon, and laughed as if she’d just uttered the cleverest bon mot and scored a goal simultaneously.

  “Gee, I’m sorry to hear that, Madame.”

  “But that was not enough. It appears that these Basque revolutionaries caused even bigger damage in a series of explosions near the French-Spanish border. Can you believe that these imbeciles roam our Parisian avenues every day, plotting ways to humble the Spanish government for not honoring hundred-year-old pacts, and for forbidding them to speak their prehistoric language? It’s so very passé.” Madame yawned for theatrical effect. “Now, in my day, we never hurt innocent bystanders with our Résistance activities. We knew how to entice the odious German officers into divulging secrets that we then passed on to other more militant members of the Résistance, and then––”

  “I’m sorry, Madame, but I’m really tired. Would you excuse me?”

  “But I insist that you tell me what happened to you. You’re my little charge, my responsibility.” She stroked Monica’s cheek as if she were a sad child.

  “Thank you. OK, I’ll stay a bit longer. But please tell me about what’s been happening the past few days–it sounds so scary.”

  “It seems that these Basque revolutionaries pair up with their girlfriends to cause havoc. Hold on. Our tattle-tale concierge just handed me this newspaper clipping.” Madame rose and teetered over to a Chinoiserie desk stacked with old ecru invitations to past galas. She picked through one or two, sighed, and finally retrieved the wine-stained newspaper article. “It appears that Paris is a hotbed of cool-as-cucumber radicals who plan their future attacks––back in their own country––from the teeming cafés of the Quartier Latin.”

  Madame handed the news clipping to Monica, but Monica squinted at it, uncomprehending, and handed it back.

  “My French isn’t that good, yet,” she apologized.

  “Well, then you must get yourself a French boyfriend, or better yet––a French lover or two. What do you think?” She rubbed her hands in anticipation.

  Monica shrugged. “What does the article say about the girlfriends of these, uh, revolutionaries?”

  “These Basque women activists join their men because they have an emotional attachment to them and not necessarily because they have an ideological commitment to their cause. It says that every time the Spanish police nab these women, they inevitably admit to having a loved one in prison or active in a commando unit.”

  “That’s admirable, I guess,” said Monica. “I mean, these women also believe that they can change the world. I don’t really know who the Basques are or what they’re fighting for, but I believe that if you love someone, you have to take their joy as well as their pain.”

  “Nonsense, child! A woman must embrace the cause or get out of the fight. When most of these Basque women go to trial, they blame their love for their men as compelling them into subversive activities. Such drivel! Either a woman jumps into the fight, with all her wits, or she stays out. Can you believe that this woman––” Madame pointed to the stained newspaper clipping––“this woman, she stated in court that all she wanted was to be able to speak her Basque language in public without getting punished. She said she didn’t want to be perceived as a bad girl! You would think that she was at confession, not in a courtroom. She should not worry if she will be perceived as a good or bad girl–it’s always about the cause, not the man. We didn’t equivocate in the Résistance, I can tell you. We did what we had to do, and I never lost a minute of sleep over it. To be a tough woman you need balls of steel, my dear.”

  Both women paused to reflect on their perspectives of love and war. Madame sipped her Armagnac with her eyes closed, and Monica stared out the window of the somber salon. Their decades of age difference showed itself like the all-too-evident difference between a Beaujolais Nouveau––aromatic but too fresh––and vintage Bordeaux––beautifully balanced and nuanced.

  Afraid that Madame was about to launch into a long personal history again, Monica asked the whereabouts of her housemates.

  “Pfft, half of them have left me high and dry. Karen didn’t even say goodbye––she just left a note telling me that she is moving into a dorm room with other Americans. Good riddance! She’ll never learn a word of French living with Americans.”

  “What about Annie and Lola?” Monica frowned.

  “It appears that Annie has been seduced by a literature professor––a known Sorbonne lecher. There’s no bigger fool that a young woman who thinks her Svengali will transform her into … into, whatever it is that la petite Annie wants to be. I haven’t seen her for days.”

  “Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go and say hi to Lola––”

  “Ha! That clever girl is down in the Loire Valley, doing some kind of assignment on the castles of the Loire. Or so she said. We all know that belle rousse does what she wants––she’s audacious!”

  “Do you think that she went with our art class?” Monica was suddenly worried. Maybe she was missing out on an important assignment.

  Madame shrugged.

  “She did not say, but …hmmm. Maybe you should leave tomorrow morning and join her. Better yet, go and sketch at the wonderful grounds of my dear old friend’s château in Chinon. I’ll contact my friend in the morning. We will get you packed right away.” Madame was worried about Monica. She didn’t know all the details, but it seemed vital to distance Monica from the man who so quickly had turned her from a fresh-eyed girl to one who had barely weathered the eye of the storm.

  “Oh, I’m not sure I should go … unless my art class is there. I’d rather stay in Paris and wait for Jean-Michel to contact me.” Monica peeled back another bloody hangnail.

  Madame grimaced at the slow and methodical way that Monica inflicted pain on herself. She shook the ice cubes again, as if she were sitting at the crap tables in Monte Carlo, and took a sip. Days ago, Monica had seemed happy, as if she were on a hot roll of the dice herself, throwing winning number after winning number. But her behavior tonight––looking bruised and dazed, and peeling back her bloody cuticles without flinching––suggested that Monica was losing her throws to the house, to this Jean-Michel, who had somehow intimidated and overpowered her and allowed her to walk home barefoot, dangling a single strappy heel, shaming herself in front of all of Paris.

  “Now I do recall,” Madame s
aid slowly, “Lola said she was going on an art class assignment to the Loire Valley.” This was of course a lie. But she had to get Monica out of Paris, to let her frail and obviously battered heart recuperate away from this domineering scoundrel.

  “Are you sure that your friend will let me stay at her château until I make contact with Lola?” Monica sounded hopeful.

  “But of course, my dear. You go and pack and forget this cad, this Jean-Michel. Besides, who says you must have just one boyfriend? It’s so much fun to have two––or more.”

  Monica had to laugh at Madame’s nerve. “I don’t think I can do that.”

  “But of course you can, and you will.” Madame raised a painted eyebrow. “Next time, make the man chase you. It is cliché, yes, but true, darling. You must play one against the other. Men so love games and the hunt. Make them pant with exhaustion at the chase, but never ever give them your heart. Jamais!”

  Part Two

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Insanity of l’amour

  By the time the train left the Gare d’Austerlitz station and headed south to the Loire Valley, Monica’s mind was throbbing with conflicting memories of the lust and fear she’d experienced at the hands of Jean-Michel. She couldn’t figure out how to untangle the serpentine wires short-circuiting all her thoughts. Distracted and anxious, she peeled the scabs that had formed around her cuticles overnight, and was almost pleased to revive the pain–– a piercing pain that ran from her jumbled gray matter and through her weak heart, ultimately releasing itself through the drops of blood spitting from her fingertips. Had she really been struck by a dual bolt of lust and love? Is this what the Romantic French authors meant by a coup de foudre, a thunderbolt of love at first sight? And if so, why was she so riddled with doubts about Jean-Michel, while simultaneously yearning to jump back in his arms?

  Monica’s already erratic thoughts grew increasingly aggravated by the quivering walls of the second-class coach and the jolts from the stiff wooden bench where she sat morosely. As the train left Paris behind, the city giving way to a countryside blurred by the train’s dirty windows, Monica couldn’t believe that her Paris sojourn had gone haywire before it really ever started. She planned to use this time in the Loire Valley to gather her thoughts––if she could harness them––and to maintain a distance from Jean-Michel.

  Monica and her housemates had promised to look out for one another as they ventured off in search of their Parisian fantasies, but each woman had bolted at the first chance of chasing her own dream––and had forsaken the others. Perhaps Annie had found a sublime love with her lascivious professor. By now she might be following the romantic tracks of her nineteenth-century idol, George Sand, the writer who long ago donned a man’s suit and tie, left her country home not far from the Loire Valley, and committed herself to a serious life of letters in a man’s literary world of Paris. Ironically, Sand also promoted an idealized and romantic notion of love––a feminine ideal, a love-at-all-costs ethos––that damaged her own personal life. One after the other, all of Sands’ numerous lovers broke her heart.

  Annie, Lola, and Monica all admired Sand, though for different reasons. Annie liked Sand’s idea that love contained the power to elevate the soul. Lola praised Sand for being ahead of time and amassing all the lovers she wanted, including Frédéric Chopin. (“Now that was bitchin’, bitch,” Lola had shouted when Annie told them Sand’s life story.) But Monica was simply enamored with Sand’s famous quote: There is only one happiness in life––to love and to be loved. It echoed her exact sentiments about experiencing a lasting love in Paris. Monica believed that despite all the cynicism about love and commitment, Sand was onto some universal truth: that it was still possible to expect, pursue, and attain a pure love.

  Although the surreal experience of the last three days had thrown Monica off-kilter, a part of her did not want to succumb to this churning malaise. It was threatening to ruin her year in France, and she really didn’t want to let that happen. Jean-Michel had shaken her emotional and rational foundations; his intensity had brought to the surface dark depths Monica didn’t even know she possessed. Now, in the wake of Jean-Michel’s strange and frightening behavior, her mind was whirling in a cyclone of confusion.

  Monica closed her eyes, lulled to sleep by the rhythm of the train and the sight of placid fields and a featureless sky. But even sleep wasn’t peaceful. Daliesque images invaded her dreams: instead of soft melting clocks, Monica saw a collage of melting toucan bills peeling at her skin, bats screeching words in Latin, and Jean-Michel’s fangs biting into her inner thigh as he held two eggs in oversized hands.

  She woke up, unsure if she’d cried out in the dream or in the train, the image of Jean-Michel’s leering face imprinted in her memory. These visions were not quite identical to Dalí’s Metamorphisis of Narcissus or his Persistence of Memory, two paintings she’d studied in her art history back at Cal State. In that class, the paintings had stumped her, and she hadn’t been able to interpret them at all. But on this train ride, her own surreal dream seemed to make sense. It revealed that she was at a crossroads, Monica decided; it was telling her to wake up from her childish dreams about finding the perfect love, to be conscious about her actions––and relentless about getting everything out of life. After all, even the bats in her dream had cried out their advice: carpe diem, carpe diem!

  As the train approached the city of Tours, Monica stood up to get her bag. She stared out the dusty window, expecting to see the famed châteaux at a distance. Instead all she saw were dapple-gray horses trotting past a slate-roofed farm house. A pang of homesickness struck her. She was so far away from Rocky and from her mother. But instead of crumbling into tears, longing to brush Rocky’s coat and to comfort her mother, Monica felt a surge of energy ripple through her body. She owed it to herself and to her long-suffering mother – and perhaps even to the heroic efforts of Madame during World War II––to make the most of her year in Paris. This was her chance to be happy-go-lucky and young, her chance to change the trajectory of her life.

  The horses frolicked in the pasture, and Monica gazed at them with a rueful smile. She’d worked too hard at the stables and at Cal State to pay for this one year of study in France, and she had to make the most of it, as Madame was always urging her. That zany old lady had lived a full life of heroism, glamour, danger, love, and wealth. Today, because of a single commanding phone call from Madame, a chauffeur would be waiting for Monica at the train station in Tours and driving her to the château belonging to the Vicomtesse Agnès Challant de la Guerche. Monica resolved to follow Madame’s advice: be joyful and get a boyfriend––or better yet, snatch two, as Madame insisted, “and play one against the other.”

  Just as Madame had promised, someone was waiting to pick her up––a hunched-over driver with gnarled hands. He lifted his soiled cap and said, “Mademoiselle, I am here to drive you to Les Charmilles, but Madame la Vicomtesse is unable to entertain you today. She said I was to set up an easel anywhere on the grounds and for you to paint in plein air.”

  He grabbed Monica’s overnight bag and threw it onto the back seat of a scruffy Citroën Deux Chevaux. When he told her that his name was Serge, he lifted his cap again, something he did every time they drove through a village en route to the château. Whenever he saw someone he knew, he honked the car horn and tipped his cap.

  “We will soon be there,” Serge told her when they passed the Indre River, shimmering with reflections of the spires and turrets of the château of Azay-le-Rideau. A petite gray-haired woman began crossing the road and Serge stopped the car, tipping his cap. He ignored the impatient honks of drivers waiting behind him, and didn’t drive on until the woman reached the other side of the road.

  “Oh, Mon Dieu, how I love that woman!” he said. “I still feel the stab of when she left me for Loïc.”

  Monica felt sorry for the lovelorn Serge. “Je suis desolée,” she murmured in hesitant French. “Was it a long time ago?”

  “
Oh, on the contrary, Mademoiselle, it was just two years ago,” Serge replied, “but you are also right. The first time she left me for Olivier was thirty years ago.” He wiped his eyes with one frayed shirt cuff. “You think I am a fool, and you are right. I am a fool in love with Victoire. I will never get her out of my mind or my heart.”

  He took one hand off the wheel to pound his chest and then started driving faster than ever, shifting the gears of the Deux Chevaux like a madman.

  “Don’t ever fall in love, Mademoiselle,” he told Monica. “It is better to have a heart like an artichoke. That’s the way Victoire always was and still is––a tasty artichoke with a heart for every man. Did she look sad to you for breaking my heart, so many hearts?” Serge ground the clutch and Monica winced. “Mais, non! She gloats after each and every one of her conquests and what do I do? I, I cry myself to sleep…like a lost child.”

  The Deux Chevaux sputtered up a long gravel driveway, and old Serge let out a guttural sigh that rivaled the noisy motor. “I’ll tell you the truth, Mademoiselle. I’m in pain. Yes, this is true.”

  He stopped the car outside what looked like an old stable block, and clambered out to fetch Monica’s bag from the backseat. Monica stepped onto the driveway and stared up towards the house looming at the end of the gravel drive. She wondered if she was still dreaming. The grand manor house was a classic Loire Valley château, with pale Touraine stone walls and a slate mansard roof punctuated by dormer windows. It was so beautiful, so vast, that Monica felt short of breath.

  Serge stroked the side of the car as if he were caressing the curves of Victoire’s lean torso.