“Go on with the story, please, and don’t be bad.”
“All right. The aforesaid Andy’s mother thought she would bring down my stuff so I could have it with me and be able to do some work while we had the holiday together. She was going to bring it to me as a surprise. She hadn’t written anything about it and when I met her at Lausanne I didn’t know anything about it. She was a day late and had wired about it.
The only thing I knew was that she was crying when I met her and she cried and cried and when I would ask her what was the matter she told me it was too awful to tell me and then she would cry again. She cried as though her heart was broken. Do I have to tell this story?”
“Please tell me.”
“All that morning she would not tell me and I thought of all the worst possible things that could have happened and asked her if they had happened. But she just shook her head. The worst thing I could think of was that she had tromper-ed me or fallen in love with someone else and when I asked her that she said, ‘Oh how can you say that?’ and cried some more. I felt relieved then and then, finally, she told me.
“She had packed all the manuscript folders in a suitcase and left the suitcase with her other bags in her first class compartment in the Paris-Lausanne-Milan Express in the Gare de Lyon while she went out on the quai to buy a London paper and a bottle of Evian water.
You remember the Gare de Lyon and how they would have sort of push tables with papers and magazines and mineral water and small flasks of cognac and sandwiches with ham between sliced long pointed-end bread wrapped in paper and other push carts with pillows and blankets that you rented? Well when she got back into the compartment with her paper and her Evian water the suitcase was gone.
“She did everything there was to be done. You know the French police. The first thing she had to do was show her carte d’identité and try to prove she was not an international crook herself and that she did not suffer from hallucinations and that she was sure she actually had such a suitcase and were the papers of political importance and besides, madame, surely there exist copies.
She had that all night and the next day when a detective came and searched the flat for the suitcase and found a shotgun of mine and demanded to know if I had a permis de chasse I think there was some doubt in the minds of the police whether she should be allowed to proceed to Lausanne and she said the detective had followed her to the train and appeared in the compartment just before the train pulled out and said, ‘You are quite sure madame that all your baggage is intact now? That you have not lost anything else? No other important papers?’
“So I said, ‘But it’s all right really. You can’t have brought the originals and the typed originals and the carbons.’
“‘But I did,’ she said. ‘Roger, I know I did.’ It was true too. I found out it was true when I went up to Paris to see. I remember walking up the stairs and opening the door to the flat, unlocking it and pulling back on the brass handle of the sliding lock and the odor of Eau de Tavel in the kitchen and the dust that had sifted in through the windows on the table in the dining room and going to the cupboard where I kept the stuff in the dining room and it was all gone.
I was sure it would be there; that some of the manila folders would be there because I could see them there so clearly in my mind. But there was nothing there at all, not even my paper clips in a cardboard box nor my pencils and erasers nor my pencil sharpener that was shaped like a fish, nor my envelopes with the return address typed in the upper left-hand corner, nor my international postage coupons that you enclosed for them to send the manuscripts back with and that were kept in a small Persian lacquered box that had a pornographic painting inside of it.
They were all gone. They had all been packed in the suitcase. Even the red stick of wax was gone that I had used to seal letters and packages. I stood there and looked at the painting inside the Persian box and noticed the curious over-proportion of the parts represented that always characterizes pornography and I remember thinking how much I disliked pornographic pictures and painting and writing and how after this box had been given to me by a friend on his return from Persia I had only looked at the painted interior once to please the friend and that after that I had only used the box as a convenience to keep coupons and stamps in and had never seen the pictures.
I felt almost as though I could not breathe when I saw that there really were no folders with originals, nor folders with typed copies, nor folders with carbons and then I locked the door of the cupboard and went into the next room, which was the bedroom, and lay down on the bed and put a pillow between my legs and my arms around another pillow and lay there very quietly. I had never put a pillow between my legs before and I had never lain with my arms around a pillow but now I needed them very badly.
I knew everything I had ever written and everything that I had great confidence in was gone. I had rewritten them so many times and gotten them just how I wanted them and I knew I could not write them again because once I had them right I forgot them completely and each time I ever read them I wondered at them and at how I had ever done them.
“So I lay there without moving with the pillows for friends and I was in despair. I had never had despair before, true despair, nor have I ever had it since. My forehead lay against the Persian shawl that covered the bed, which was only a mattress and springs set on the floor and the bed cover was dusty too and I smelt the dust and lay there with my despair and the pillows were my only comfort.”
“What were they that were gone,” the girl asked.
“Eleven stories, a novel, and poems.”
“Poor poor Roger.”
“No. I wasn’t so poor because there were more inside. Not them. But to come. But I was in bad shape. You see I hadn’t believed they could be gone. Not everything.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing very practical. I lay there for a while.”
“Did you cry?”
“No. I was all dried up inside like the dust in the house. Weren’t you ever in despair?”
“Of course. In London. But I could cry.”
“I’m sorry, daughter. I got to thinking about this thing and I forgot. I’m awfully sorry.”
“What did you do?”
“Let’s see I got up and went down the stairs and spoke to the concierge and she asked me about madame. She was worried because the police had been to the flat and had asked her questions but she was still cordial. She asked me if we had found the valise that had been stolen and I said no and she said it was dirty luck and a great misfortune and was it true that all my works were in it.
I said yes and she said but how was it there were no copies? I said the copies were there too. Then she said Mais ça alors. Why were copies made to lose them with the originals? I said madame had packed them by mistake. It was a great mistake, she said. A fatal mistake. But monsieur can remember them surely. No, I said. But, she said, monsieur will have to remember them. Il faut le souvienne rappeler. Oui, I said, mais ce n’est pas possible. Je ne m’en souviens plus.
Mais il faut faire un effort, she said. Je le ferais, I said. But it’s useless. Mais qu’est-ce que monsieur va faire? she asked. Monsieur has worked here for three years. I have seen monsieur work at the café on the corner. I’ve seen monsieur at work at the table in the dining room when I’ve brought things up. Je sais que monsieur travaille comme un sourd.
Qu’es-ce que il faut faire maintenant? Il faut recommencer, I said. Then the concierge started to cry. I put my arm around her and she smelled of armpit sweat and dust and old black clothes and her hair smelled rancid and she cried with her head on my chest. Were there poems too? she asked. Yes, I said. What unhappiness, she said. But you can recall those surely. Je tâcherai de la faire, I said. Do it, she said. Do it tonight.
“I will, I told her. Oh monsieur, she said, madame is beautiful and amiable and tous le qui’il y a de gentil but what a grave error it was. Will you drink a glass of marc with me? Of course, I told her, and, sniffing, she left my chest to find the bottle and the two small glasses. To the new works, she said. To them, I said.
