The Other Side of Silence

“It’s like this, Mrs. French, so you don’t mistake me. We might easily become friends. But suppose we fell out again afterward? You want me to teach you bridge. There are drills. Homework. Suppose I said you were not a diligent pupil? What then? Suppose I had to get rough with you when you played your hand all wrong? Believe me, it’s been known.” I shrugged. “It’s just that like all lobsters I’m anxious not to get myself into hot water. Staff are discouraged from fraternizing with people who stay at the hotel and I wouldn’t want to lose my job. It’s not a great job but it’s all I have right now. The movie business is a little slow down here since Alfred Hitchcock left town.”

“Well, that’s all right then. I never stay there. I hate staying in hotels. Especially grand hotels. They’re actually very lonely places. All of the rooms have locks on the doors and I always find that rather claustrophobic.”

“You’re very persistent.”

“I certainly wouldn’t want you to feel uncomfortable, Mr. Wolf.”

She winced, and I sensed that it was me who’d made her feel uncomfortable, which made me feel bad. That’s a problem I have sometimes; I never like making people feel bad, especially when they look like Anne French.

“Walter. Please call me Walter. And yes, of course, I’d love to come. Shall we say in half an hour? That will give me time to fetch the book and to change my shirt. For a lobster it’s the most painless way there is to change color.”

“I think pink would suit you,” she said.

“My mother certainly thought so when I was a baby. Right up until the moment she discovered I was a boy.”

“It’s hard to imagine that you had parents.”

“I had two of them as a matter of fact.”

“What I mean is you seem like a very serious man.”

“Don’t let that fool you, Mrs. French. I’m German. And like all Germans I’m easily led astray.”

Back home I did a lot more than change my shirt. I washed, and combed my hair. I even splashed on a little Pino Silvestre that a guest had left behind in his hotel bedroom. I get a lot of my stuff that way. It smells like a mixture of mothballs and a Christmas tree, but it does repel mosquitoes, which are a real problem down here and it’s better than my natural body odor, which is always a little sour these days.

Mrs. French’s villa occupied a beautiful garden that was a series of lawned terraces that hung on the edge of the rocks above Villefranche and looked as if it had been landscaped by someone from Babylon with a head for heights. The semi-rusticated pink stucco house had a round corner tower and an elegant first-floor terrace with an awning. There was a pool and a clay tennis court and a guest villa and a caretaker’s house with an empty dog kennel that was only a little smaller than the place where I lived. I took one look at the basket and the dog bowl and thought about applying for the vacancy. We sat on the terrace that faced the floodlit, aquamarine pool and she handed me a bottle of Tavel that matched the color of the stucco and helped take away the taste of my cologne.

Inside, the place was full of books and art of the kind that takes a lifetime to collect, or paint, depending on whether it’s taste or talent you have, and since I have neither, I just stood in front of it all and nodded, dumbly, careful not to admit that I thought it was all a bit like Picasso, and which she might reasonably have taken as a compliment but for the fact that I can’t stand Picasso. These days all his faces look as ugly as mine and it seemed unlikely that my face should be of any interest to a woman who was at least ten years younger than I am. I wasn’t sure what she was up to; at least not yet. Perhaps she really did want me to teach her bridge, but there are schools for that, and teachers, even on the Riviera. Maybe I’m just being cynical, but she showed no real interest in the book when I gave it to her and it stayed unopened on the table for as long as it took us to finish one bottle and open another.

We talked about nothing in particular, which is a subject on which I am something of an expert. And after a while she went into the kitchen to prepare us some snacks, leaving me alone to smoke and go inside the house to snoop among her books. I brought one back to the terrace and read it for a while. But finally she came out and soon after that, to the point.

“I expect you’re wondering why I’m so keen to learn the game of bridge,” she said.

“No, not for a minute. These days I try to do as little wondering as possible. The guests tend to prefer it that way.”

“I told you I’m a writer.”

“Yes, I noticed all the books. They must come in handy when you’re thinking of something to write.”

“Some of them belonged to my father.” She picked the book I’d been reading off the table for a moment and then tossed it back. “Including that one. Russian Glory, by Philip Jordan. What’s it about?”

“It’s a sort of panegyric about Stalin and the Russian people, and the evils of capitalism.”

“Why on earth were you reading that?”