Beautiful Soul: An American Elegy Read online

  Blind austerity of men and women at odds. A failure to communicate comes of communicating monologues (in the sense of communicating rooms: the door exists but who has the key?). They look into one another’s faces but not at them. Seeing is a poet’s prerogative; readers are just looking. Talking past each other: even when we practice active listening, repeating everything the other says and affirming what was said, the mind wanders, leaving little trails of thought, word, desire, like smoke dispersing in the air, like extinct fish no one will ever again catch.

  I thought only of M, he said. I would see Simone now and again still, at the flat. I would be lying on my mattress with a lamp, reading, half-listening to the grunts and cries. After a while Simone would enter the circle of light, wearing only Charles’s white shirt, smoking a joint and weaving slightly. She would sit cross-legged on the floor and talk to me of her life. There was no more cruelty from her, but I could tell even after that night something about me amused her; I could hear it in her voice. I would listen to her talk because sometimes she would mention her flatmate. M was the daughter of an American diplomat who had worked in Saigon, and it was there that she began her study of French. Her father had lost his post—some kind of scandal, Simone didn’t know the details, though she dearly wished to—and returned to the United States, but his daughter had gone to Paris and was studying French literature at the Sorbonne. She was a very serious girl, Simone said, but they mostly got along, and anyway she could surprise you. For example, one cold and rainy evening in February M suddenly decided she wanted to go dancing. It was the middle of the week and there wasn’t much on, but M just pulled on her raincoat and took Simone by the hand and took her to the nearest bar—a workingman’s place a few blocks south of their apartment. Even Simone had to pause in the entrance as she took in the black and grimy floor of the place, the men with their rough clothes and stony faces, the total absence of other women. M just sauntered up to the bar and ordered a couple of Pernods. One of the younger men—he had dirty blond hair under his cap, Simone remembered—got next to M and said something to her, something offensive, Simone was sure. M turned away like he wasn’t even there, handed one of the drinks to Simone, who was still just a few feet inside the door, and then stepped lightly over to the jukebox. I imagine her bent over its light, her shapely silhouette from behind as great a provocation to the bar’s patrons as her American accent. It was mostly French pop, awful stuff, Simone said, but then she found what she wanted and pushed the buttons. She expected a rock song, Elvis perhaps—Simone loved Elvis—or the Beatles, who were already a bit of a cliché at the time in my opinion, Gustave said. But it was actually something slow and dreamy, Johnny Mathis I think, and M started swaying to that slow music, a hundred-and-one strings, all alone in that filthy tavern in the spotlight of men’s eyes. I think Simone was afraid, though she didn’t say so, but her way of being afraid was to bristle at every point, sharp, like a porcupine. So she started to dance too, in the now silent room, everything still but the smoke from cigarettes and the two women, who began to dance with each other, and M, who was a good few centimeters shorter than Simone, put her head on Simone’s shoulder, and they danced like that, swaying to the beat for a few moments even after the song had died away. That broke the spell and a man approached the women, a little older than the others, and he looked Simone in the eye (M’s face still hidden, pressed into Simone’s chest) and said, It’s time to go. I, who had been on my back listening, eyes half-closed, now rolled onto my side and saw Simone sitting there in the light reflected off the ceiling from the streetlamp, her face as beautiful as it was blank. She looked at me. Watch yourself, she told me. And then: She’ll be at the party tomorrow night. And then with a kind of shrug rolled herself to her feet and retreated into the dark, and after a while I could hear her voice and Charles’s, indistinct, and then their lovemaking would begin again.

  The party took place late the next night in a Montparnasse art gallery which seemed at first to be empty, white walls, except for the people cramming the main room, packing it with smoke and dancing and drinking and talk. A reel-to-reel recorder had been set up and was playing what sounded to me like backwards music—I want to say it was The Beatles, “Revolution 9,” but it isn’t likely, that album wasn’t released until November of that year, long after this story ends. It must have been Stockhausen or Cage. But let it be the Beatles—imagine the Beatles playing as I searched that gallery that seemed crowded with people and empty of art at the same time. There was a table piled high with pamphlets I browsed for a while in an attempt to get my bearings. The music was utterly undanceable but people were dancing. Over the heads of the crowd I saw a little space in front of one of the speakers where some women were dancing by themselves. I couldn’t see M, but then I saw a bare, sinuous hand rise momentarily out of the pit of heads and bodies and gesture like a bird, or like Isis on the wall of a pyramid. I edged my bulk into the crowd and in a moment I was standing in front of M, who was swaying to her own private beat—it must have been, because the music that was playing had no discernible beat, the lack of melody was beginning to drive me crazy and I couldn’t understand how all the others could stand it, could just go on talking with each other about Mao and what Godard had to say about the Nanterre revolt and how good the pot was. I myself had taken a few hits on a joint earlier, it didn’t affect me, it was literally the atmosphere of the time. M’s eyes were closed and I couldn’t think of what to do but stand there, swaying slightly. I had to lean over and roar in her ear to be heard. Hello, I shouted. She opened her eyes slowly without looking at me directly. It’s Gustave, I said. Simone’s friend.

  Simone’s not here, she said, and gestured vaguely at another part of the room.

  I know. It’s you I want to see.

  Why? she said in English.

  I didn’t know what else to do so I grabbed her by the hand—that bird hand. She pulled away from me.

  Please let’s go outside, I said. Panting a little, eyes unlidded.

  We skirted the walls to avoid the crush. Outside on the street it was raining lightly. I took note of a police van halfway down the block, and three or five flics were standing around in the street next to it, smoking. We stood under an awning.

  Gustave, she said, trying it out. Can I call you Gus?

  I’d rather you didn’t, I mumbled. Then, hastily: Yes.

  We were quiet for a moment. She took out a packet of cigarettes and offered me one. I took it loosely between my fingers and let it hang there. She offered me the flame of her lighter and I shook my head.

  Simone’s told me about you, she said. She looked at me frankly. She says you have a gigantic dick. But it doesn’t seem that big because you’re so big. In fact, that makes it look kind of small.

  Evasive maneuvers seemed called for. You study philosophy, don’t you? I said to the rain.

  I study philosophy, she echoed.

  Plato? I said, knowing immediately it was the wrong thing, the wrong name or note.

  All of philosophy is just footnotes to Plato, she said kindly.

  Who said that?

  His name was Whitehead.

  I’ve heard of Sartre of course, I said. I’ve seen his play. And Beauvoir. Someone pointed her out to me on the street once.

  De Beauvoir, she corrected. Yes, I like her. She knows the truth about women.

  Which is?

  You don’t really want to know, she said, picking tobacco off of her tongue.

  I don’t read any philosophy, I said stupidly. Then, to compound it: I study graphic design. I want to study art, but I study graphic design.

  She smiled up at me. I know.

  The door to the gallery opened and a stream of young women and a few men emerged, giggling. The men, to show their bravado, began to shout at the cops down the street, calling them Fascists and so forth. The cops stood there, heads cocked to one side like curious dogs. I moved a few steps away from them, but when M didn’t move, I came back. She didn’t turn around.r />
  Charles stepped out with a woman on his arm, a new swan, not Simone—this one had a cropped peroxide cap for hair and layers of white foundation to render her face sepulchral and ghostly. This place is dead, Gustave. I’ve got some hash—we’re going to the cemetery. You and your friend want to come along? Before I could say anything M had said Sure, why not, in that sharp flat American way that cut through and mocked the very notion of hesitation. We began to trail behind Charles and the other woman down the Rue Huyghens toward the vast and silent expanse of the cemetery, shut tight for the night. When we reached the boulevard, we steered past the northern entrance and then ran through the parked cars, across the wet street, to the high stone wall. We’ll never get over, M said. Charles looked at me and I went and placed myself spread-eagled against the cold wet wall, ivy tickling my face. He laced his fingers together and M, without hesitating, stepped into his grip and he hoisted her onto my back. I felt the soft weight of her for a moment, then she climbed onto my shoulders and to the top of the wall. The new Swan was next, then Charles himself. Charles and his Swan were giggling, but suddenly they stopped and Charles hissed at me to come on, someone was coming. I glanced to my right and saw a light streaking in the mist. Digging my fingers into the mass of ivy, I hoisted myself to the top of the wall, swung my legs over, and dropped to the hard ground below, where the others were waiting. We held our breaths, listening to the crunch of gravel on the other side of the wall, and then the crunching passed.

  We were in the city of the dead. Rows upon rows of upright stone, some of it carved into angels with and without wings, some of it in obelisks, many crosses, many simple slabs. We walked down the narrow rows in twos, not talking much, passing a joint back and forth. Charles and his Swan were ahead of us—he was hunting for a particular tomb, Proudhon’s I think. I was only astonished to be there, at the center of a silent universe with this beautiful girl who barely came up to my sternum walking beside me.

  Do you think about death? she asked.

  You’re the philosopher.

  I mean your own death. Do you think about it?

  I don’t, I said. I felt again that this was the wrong thing to say—that I was, as you Americans say, blowing it. But I couldn’t pretend to think thoughts I didn’t have. I tried to find a way to say this.

  I want to be a painter, I said with forced loftiness. I’m interested in what I can see. I can’t see death. Only decay.

  Look around and you’ll see both.

  We were indeed surrounded by the dead, and by a dead darkness impossible to find in Paris. It reminded me of home, at night, but inverted: instead of a square of light surrounded by the dark (with the strong ceaseless life of the river felt rather than seen, never far off) we were in what I felt to be a vast field of blackness haloed by the city. Except that the tombs caught the light, wet as they were. The white marble ones in particular seemed to be on fire, but coldly. And the shadows were crazy, falling in all directions like chess pieces swept off the board.

  Brancusi’s around here somewhere, I said, stumbling. And Chaim Soutine. Do you know his work? He was a great friend of Modigliani. He painted carcasses that look like faces. And faces that look like carcasses.

  M smiled up to me. Indeed this counselor, she quoted, is now most still, most secret, and most grave. Who was in life a foolish prating knave.

  What does “prating” mean?

  M shrugged. We had come to a stop at a crossroads between graves while Charles and his girl kept on moving ahead. They were leaning together as though drunk, barely supporting each other, like the shadows.

  Simone says you’re from Vietnam.

  She said that? I’m not. Nobody’s from Vietnam.

  The Vietnamese are, I said stupidly.

  We are all Vietnamese, she said. Quoting again

  Aren’t you an American?

  I lived in America. Not anymore.

  But you’re not from there.

  You’re more American than I am, she said, glancing up at me.

  What does that mean?

  Nothing.

  If you’re saying I’m provincial, you’re right, I said. You can’t insult me with that. In fact, you can’t insult me at all. Charles tries sometimes. He doesn’t understand what it is to come from nowhere and have nothing. But Americans are rich. I’d like to be rich, but I’m not. So you shouldn’t say I’m American.

  She smiled. You’re kind of dumb, she said. I like that.

  I thought she wanted me to kiss her, but it seemed ridiculous. Standing like that, in the wet cemetery (the mist had gathered itself into a proper rain at this point, streaking her dark hair into commas on her forehead), I felt as I’ve felt so often the grotesqueness of my height. She was so far away.

  Gustave, mon vieux, big old man in a bespoke pinstriped suit, pear-shaped shadow on a flimsy chair, dust motes dancing in a last shaft of sunlight pouring past his shoulder, nearly caressing his empty scalp. The listener is occluded, there’s only us, the eavesdroppers, the voyeurs, still trying to grasp the picture that his thousand words are composing. Still talking in other words, his fingers laced together, looking steadily into the camera, violet glints in his gray-blue eyes.

  I began to see M more often, yet there was no question of anything between us. For one thing she had a boyfriend, a Vietnamese student named Ly Cam. I asked her if she only dated Vietnamese men, and she said Yes the way she sometimes did, not to mean yes but to tell me I should stop asking stupid questions. And that’s how she answered all the questions I asked her that were meant, in my clumsy way, to open up a path between us for the kiss I’d wanted to give her in the cemetery that night. One evening we were in a café and I was drunk and I asked her if she wanted to know how strong I was. Yes, she said looking down. But I was drunk enough to ignore the real meaning of that yes, and so without pausing I scooped her up in my arms, spread my legs apart, and lifted her over my head like she was a dumbbell. Everyone was looking at us and hooting, applauding, mocking me. I am strong! I bellowed like a gored ox. I am strong!

  Please put me down, M said in the gentlest voice I’d ever heard, and so after a moment I did.

  In spite of this behavior M continued to tolerate my presence, in the halls and courtyards of the Sorbonne, at the seedy bars she favored, in the apartment she shared with Simone. I was far from the only moth drawn to the flame of those two women, fundamentally similar as women are, yet with completely different capacities for imagination and for danger. Often enough I’d find Ly Cam there, bearded like Che, sitting cross-legged on the floor strumming his guitar and singing Woody Guthrie songs in his own private melange of Vietnamese, English, and French. He was half my size, smaller even, exactly M’s height; if I worried him he gave no sign. And really I gave him no reason to worry, in spite of my clowning: I was simply built on a different scale than he and M, so very less fine-boned in body and in mind, so that he couldn’t have foreseen any connection more profound than curiosity. Ly Cam was very popular: the French students sat at his feet and asked him questions about the war and his sufferings; plus it was reputed that he had access to the best drugs. He played to their sympathies, talking about national liberation and the heroism of Mao and Ho Chi Minh, though M had told me he was the son of an ARVN officer, a personal crony of Diem’s. She said this with an indifference that puzzled me.

  Doesn’t that make him a hypocrite? I asked her one rainy afternoon when I had her to myself, except for Simone and one of her boyfriends shut up in her room, from which occasionally a low growl would emanate.

  He thinks he’s sincere, she answered. Who am I to judge? Do you know who my father is?

  But you sleep with him, don’t you?

  She looked at me pityingly.

  How can you sleep with someone who represents himself one way but is really completely a different way?

  It’s in the past, she said. Who he was in Saigon, who his father is—that doesn’t tell me who he is. And neither does what he says, or what he believes.


  What’s left, then?

  She gave me a direct look. It’s his smell.

  You’re serious?

  Yes.

  So what you’re saying then, I said, getting angry, is that the sex is so good it doesn’t matter that he’s a liar. A fake.

  No.

  Well?

  I don’t just mean his smell, that just seems like the best word for it. It’s his feel. I can feel him. I look at him, I stand a few inches from him, I touch him, and I just know he’s a good person. Plus he listens to me.