Reader for Hire Page 3

  Yes, the envelope is definitely perfumed. A slightly stale patchouli. I open it all the same and read it. Sure enough, this woman is a general’s widow. She’s eighty years old. She spends most of her time in bed. She’s bored. She’d like someone to come and read to her. The letter isn’t very easy to decipher. The writing buckles dramatically, especially at the ends of lines, as is often the case with older people whose eyes and fingers aren’t what they used to be. But this missive still has something authoritative about it and a surprising dignity. There must be a whiff of aristocracy about the old lady. Besides, at the end she asks me about the terms of my employ, proof that she sees a reader as a servant. I say the words out loud a couple of times in the room – my employ, my employ – like the character Sganarelle, a role I’ve played. The walls throw back an echo of the words, multiplied again and again, almost ad infinitum, with a long reverberation on that open oy. How funny. Comical even. I used to love playing Molière, and was apparently good at it, particularly the servant girls (not just Sganarelle). Here’s an opportunity to be a servant. But what should I read to Madame la Générale? At eighty, she probably ought to steer clear of Maupassant’s supernatural stories. Otherwise it won’t be hospital but the morgue. I’d better not make a speciality of killing off my customers.

  I didn’t actually read all of the letter, perhaps for want of enthusiasm or conviction, a subconscious semi-denial. There’s a postscript that’s even more trying to decipher than the rest and I didn’t look at it at first. In it La Générale says this: I forgot to point out that I am not on good terms with most of my family because of my political views, which illuminates my loneliness. For obvious reasons I find this intriguing. Is La Générale a barmy old reactionary? The which illuminates my loneliness is extraordinarily odd. It seems to say the exact opposite of what it wants to mean. Probably: which explains my loneliness. Could this awkwardness, this inaccuracy, be down to a limping familiarity with the French language? It could. Then I notice something I hadn’t spotted before: the letter is signed Générale Dumesnil, née Countess Pázmány, a foreign name, Hungarian perhaps… I can hear the words ringing in my ear: which illuminates my loneliness. I repeat them several times. The blue walls throw them back at me. I close my eyes and picture a lamp glowing in a dark cellar. Its vaulted ceiling illuminated by the flickering light. Loneliness illuminated by a candle, by candlelight, like in Georges de La Tour’s paintings. Night-time, all that darkness and the back-lighting effect going on behind my eyelids.

  Here I am, holding the letter, feeling truly overwhelmed. Do I have to go to this countess? What sort of impossible situation am I going to end up in this time? The smell of patchouli wafts up to my nostrils; it’s a bit sickly. Who does this coquettish old girl think she is? I’m so comfortable right here. Some days I think I’d do better never to leave the house.

  I decide I should pay another visit to my ‘old master’. He doesn’t seem in a terribly good mood today. Or even in the best of health. Bags have developed under his eyes. And his brow is knitted. It’s exam time, marking time, a time when dissertations come in from every direction. I ask, just to make conversation, whether he’s still playing tennis. No, he retorts rather curtly, I go jogging now. For a moment I picture him in his tracksuit running along an avenue of silver birches, or plane trees, on a carpet of the first fallen leaves, sweating, puffing (no: trying to regulate his breathing), his elbows tucked in to his body. But his brow has already eased. No doubt about it, I’ve proved it yet again: he’s glad to see me, even when I’m disturbing him. He doesn’t let it show straight away, but it’s always clear eventually. I’m very glad too. I find him reassuring. And, in my current confusion, I need his advice.

  I start by telling him about Eric. He listens while signing some papers, then suddenly puts down his pen and stares at me for some time, looking genuinely perplexed. It feels as if he finds the story completely ridiculous. But I haven’t altered it a jot, or exaggerated at all. It’s your fault, I tell him, because it was you who made me choose Maupassant’s short story ‘The Hand’ for my first reading. That’s true, he says, getting to his feet abruptly, I did! He stuffs his pipe. I did, it’s my fault! But perhaps you should have taken into account who your listener was. How sensitive he was, his condition… don’t you think? Wouldn’t that have been sensible? He’s pacing swiftly about his office, pipe in hand, then in his mouth. He sits back down, looks at me again. You know perfectly well there’s a text–reader connection that can’t be overlooked. I get the feeling that this is the professor speaking and I feel like laughing. I smother the urge by looking away as if I feel guilty.

  When I tell him Eric is now much better and even wants me to carry on being his reader, with his mother’s consent, he’s the one who looks highly amused. I’m not surprised, he says. You always end up wrapping people around your little finger! But maybe it was your voice that completely won him over. A young man… and one who’s trapped inside his own body… You have such beautiful intonations… Oh! I say. He stands up, comes over to me and puts a hand on my shoulder. I sense this is the right moment to reveal the second approach I’ve had. Right, he says, interesting, but this time you’ll have to take precautions, not make any wrong moves, because she may be a batty old woman but she may also be a rich widow, and then you’re bound to be on the way to a lucrative career. He’s obviously making fun of me, but not unkindly. I’m floundering, not sure what to say, when he whisks away from my shoulder and springs towards his bookcase, as he did the other day. Another old book with a brown cover. A novel by Zola this time. He’ll never get beyond his naturalists! He searches, flicks, leafs, with the elegant gestures of those who have read a great deal and know they will soon flush out the required page. Zola’s The Masterpiece! he cries. A wonderful book, you must know it. A magnificent but tragic portrait of a painter, it could be Cézanne… Anyway, right from the start there’s a story about a funny scrap of a girl called Christine. The hero finds her outside his studio one evening in the pouring rain. He takes her in, gets her to talk. She tells him she’s just arrived in Paris from the country – completely alone, completely lost, completely terrified – in order to be… to be what?… Ah, to be what?… To be a reader for a general’s widow! Right, here’s the passage. He tilts the book towards the light, towards the window that looks out over the campus lawns.

  In only a few words, Christine told her story. She had left Clermont the previous morning to come to Paris, where she was to take the position of reader for a general’s widow, Madame Vanzade, a very wealthy old woman who lived in Passy. The train was scheduled to arrive at ten past nine and all the arrangements had been made. A chambermaid was to meet her, they had even exchanged letters agreeing on how she could be identified, by a grey feather in her black hat…

  Roland Sora looks very satisfied to have found these few lines of text. It’s a perfect match, he says, you’re taking the position of reader for a general’s widow. The best thing would be to read her this passage, this book. It would be perfect! I feel very wary. What if Zola has worse surprises than Maupassant’s in store for me? These writers who deal in realism are the ones who come up with the most outlandish things. And perhaps my old Générale doesn’t want to be shown a ridiculous reflection of herself, but would prefer refined or poetic material to ease the pains of her advanced years. And actually, here I am forgetting she’s also a Hungarian countess: perhaps she’d like Hungarian authors… Roland has come back over to me, holding the closed book in his left hand. With his right hand he straightens a few stray hairs in the middle of my fringe. You should wear a hat with a grey feather! he says.

  I ask him whether he knows any Hungarian authors. I haven’t explained the reason for my question, though, so he studies me with the rather suspicious sort of astonishment he reserves for when I disconcert him (and, sadly, that happens quite often). Petőfi, he says… Then, as if finding that too banal for a university professor, he thinks for a moment and goes on to add, György Konrád, an
excellent novelist… Or Somlyó, a wonderful poet… I ask him to write them down for me, but all of a sudden he claps his hand to his forehead. The Hungarian authors have just reminded him he has an important thesis about comparative literature to read for tomorrow and he practically shovels me out. With his most charming smile, mind you. He even takes his thoughtfulness so far as to escort me to the end of the corridor. A few students smile at him. A colleague gives him a friendly wave. I feel a slight nostalgia for this place where I was once rather at home. But it’s changed. There used to be posters and tracts in every direction, and a smell of revolution. Now there are just Styrofoam cups and scraps of old tissues on the floor, and a smell of Coca-Cola.

  Another reading session with Eric. Everything goes well this time. He wanted more Maupassant, as if to prove he wasn’t afraid of the author and was not ready to give up on him. But this time I’ve chosen a perfectly innocuous story, ‘The Necklace’, which I remember well, having read it at some time as a teenager. I can’t recall exactly where or when, but I can picture a barn on a rainy day, me sitting in the straw reading that story. It’s all about a party and some spectacular diamonds. I felt they were glittering right there in among the straw that was prickling my thighs. The woman wearing them – or, to be more accurate, who had borrowed them to wear them – was radiant. Giddy with happiness and pleasure. And now, all of a sudden, right in front of this incapacitated boy:

  She danced deliriously, with exhilaration, intoxicated by the pleasure, her mind a blur, triumphing in her beauty, glorying in her success, in a sort of cloud of happiness conjured by all the compliments, all the admiration, all the desires awakened, and by a victory so complete and so very dear to every woman’s heart…

  I can tell Eric is positively quivering. I even wonder whether I’ve made a bad choice again, the inverse of my previous mistake: the image of this woman, her giddiness… But no, he’s very calm. He is quivering in anticipation of a happiness he hasn’t experienced. The words exhilaration, intoxicated, desires awakened are strong ones for this child, who is obviously intelligent and who – I now know, I know only too well – is hypersensitive. My sensibilities were sharply awakened too, back in that barn while the rain fell hot and heavy. (Where was it? When was it?) Why shouldn’t he have a right to life? To the intoxication of life?

  I’m wearing jeans today and I suddenly get the feeling he’s very disappointed. It may be a false impression, or an absurd one, or an utterly subjective one. But from the way he’s moving his head and letting his eyes wander, hovering over me, then snatching them away as if looking at something inside his head, with a peculiar combination of embarrassment and impatience, I get the feeling he’s not pleased that my legs are bundled up in this sturdy fabric.

  After a while the story seems to be having an effect. Yes, he’s listening! I’m not reading for nothing. I’m doing it for a reason. In fact, it’s almost as if Eric registers every little word I utter, like the sensitive point of a seismograph. Yes, a secret trembling, captured with extraordinary precision: that’s the sort of attention he’s paying to this text by the minor master Maupassant, a text which, in my opinion, is on the bland side but which describes shimmering, glistening things. What matters is not how the words are written, but how they come out of my mouth and my body. In the same way that it mattered how they danced before my eyes back there in that barn, in the straw, while the rain fell. I feel a great surge of pity for this paraplegic child, a surge of tenderness that he doesn’t even suspect. Why shouldn’t he have a right to happiness, to the rain and the sun?

  At Générale Dumesnil’s house I am greeted by a maid-servant. I won’t use a more ordinary word because, in her starched apron, she really does have some style and a fairly high opinion of herself. She shows me into a bedroom, where the only thing I can see is a bed. A vast, disproportionate bed that seems to take up the entire room. And here, in an accumulation of cushions and books, is La Générale. There is also a large, almost mauve-coloured pedigree cat in among the blankets. La Générale waves me over and says, Come in, come in, Nouchka. Come closer. Sit yourself down. Why Nouchka? Perhaps a habit and a sign of courtesy, but I make a point of not considering the question. The only thing I notice for now is her accent, which is clearly from Central Europe, probably Hungary, and which is especially noticeable in the rolling way she pronounced the name Nouchka. She looks very pleased to see me; she invites me to sit on a rather low stool, dismisses the servant and sets about explaining her situation and her problems.

  Her eighty years have clearly not compromised her robust character and she is obviously one of those self-indulgent people whose gushing onslaught of confidences you have to accept with resignation. I brace myself, duly resigned, while maintaining outward signs of perfect politeness, because I feel my new profession is in the process of ‘settling in’. With a sweeping gesture of the back of her hand, La Générale draws my attention to all the books scattered over her bed and says that, alas, she can no longer read them, her eyes are forsaking her. She reaches across to take three different pairs of glasses from the bedside table and throws them down on to the covers with something close to disgust: not one of the three pairs is of any help to her now. She’s going blind. Which I promptly realize is obvious from the sort of fog in her eyes, although they are still very beautiful and very pale, but also from the way she looks just to one side of me when she appears to be peering right at me. Oh yes, she says, cataracts! She pronounces this word in such a gorgeous, rolling, utterly Magyar way that this time there is no doubt about her origins. Reading was her passion. But not just any reading. It’s important that I understand this, because she’s expecting me to compensate for her eyes’ failings. No, not just any old books, but her favourite authors, and one in particular: Marx.

  I ask her to repeat herself, afraid I’ve misheard because of her accent. But that’s what it was: Marx. Yes, Marx, she says, and secondarily (here again, a magnificent rolling of that adverb) Lenin. Realizing that I am hesitating, she steeples her knees under the covers to move the blankets and cushions, shoo away the cat and make some of the books topple towards me. I watch them tumble pell-mell at my feet: Capital, The German Ideology, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Now gauging the extent of my surprise, she launches into an account of her life and her views, not giving me the chance to utter a single word.

  She is a countess, a genuine Hungarian countess: Countess Pázmány (she signed her letter to me as such, she does hope I noticed). Her husband was a French officer, Général Dumesnil, posted to Budapest, where they met before the war. He was a military attaché (and a mere lieutenant at the time) and she was viewed as one of the most feted women among the Hungarian aristocracy. She was introduced to her future husband at a ball when she was wearing one of her most precious heirlooms (a delicious rolling sound, deep and yet also fluty), a sparkling necklace. It was love at first sight. They were married and were happy together. Until the day she realized that all these military attachés were just spies and double agents, camouflaged secret-service agents working… for whose benefit? For the CIA (they may not have said CIA at the time, but it amounted to the same thing). She was convinced of it, perfectly convinced, and she could prove it. She’d watched her husband at work at fairly close quarters. The 1949 revolution had swept all that aside. She was still there when the socialist bloc was set up, and she saw the victory of the Workers’ Party. In the heat of the moment, like everyone else, she was frightened, and her husband asked to be sent back to France – he was by then a general and had been posted back to Budapest after the war, but he didn’t feel at all comfortable being married to a countess and thought things were about to take a very nasty turn for her and for him. They had come to France and taken early retirement in this dismal little town. France had always felt cramped to her. But here, in this hole, it couldn’t have been any worse. In hindsight and seen from this distance, it felt as if, in comparison, her own country had been brought to life by a historical upheaval as powerful
as a natural catastrophe (she gives these words another magnificent Magyar roll, then pauses as if exhausted by the effort, catches her breath…). She could now gauge the scope of its effect; there were casualties, of course, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. In any event, she would never budge now. She could be insulted, dragged through the mud, labelled a Red (which was what her husband said), but she was convinced of the benefits of this historical upheaval… For good measure, she adds that, yes, the repression of the 1956 Uprising was difficult and painful, but sadly there had been no choice: it was that or counter-revolution… There was no question of allowing a counter-revolution… Kádár had done the right thing, he was a great man… and this was proved by the fact that he had stayed in power ever since and was now respected all over the world… a hero… perhaps even a saint…

  To my amazement, she leans towards the drawer in her bedside table, takes out a photograph of Kádár and kisses his forehead as she might an icon or a religious image. He saved them from the unthinkable, she says, the unthinkable! And he displayed an unusually calm, firm approach. You can see it in the forceful set of his chin, from his jaw and the rather high cheekbones you sometimes get in my country… They say we’re a race of Eskimos, you know, of Lapps, something like that, right in the heart of Europe…