The Light of Paris(54)

“Oui!” Sebastien said, and he looked so pleased by her tiny feat of translation she was almost embarrassed, and made an immediate vow to work more on her French. She would spend her lunch hours reading Le Temps, the newspaper, with her dictionary by her side, and eavesdrop as much as possible in cafés. “They are opening a center for Surrealism, and René is creating these cards they will spread all over Paris, inviting people to come into the center and share their dreams.”

“We believe,” René said, leaning forward again and stroking his mustache with his thumb and forefinger—he was speaking French, and Margie braced herself, but he spoke slowly, thoughtfully, giving her time to catch up, “that dreams are the only place where the mind is truly honest. In our dreams we can find all our unexpressed desires, and our collective wisdom.”

“I see?” Margie said, imagining René, who was handsome but still had the soft cheeks of a boy, sitting attentively at a desk with a pen and ledger, while people sat across from him, relating their dreams, “. . . and then there was this giant flying mouse with the face of my husband, except it wasn’t my husband’s face, but I know it was him, you see . . .” But she didn’t know why this would be useful. She could barely understand her own dreams; she had no idea why anyone else would be interested in them.

“écoutez, écoutez,” one of the men sitting next to René said, abruptly sitting forward as though he had simply been observing and had suddenly decided to join the conversation. Margie thought Sebastien might have called him Georges. His hair fell forward into his face like Sebastien’s, though this seemed to be more from a general lack of combing than from any stylistic decision, and he wore a monocle, as though he were one of Margie’s disapproving great-uncles. She suspected he might not need the monocle, that he simply thought it made him look smarter, though Margie thought it only made him look nearsighted. “Le Surréalisme, c’est l’écriture niée,” he said, holding his hands out in front of him as though laying each word in place.

“Ahhh,” his companions sighed, and applauded for him. Sebastien nodded, leaning back and lifting his glass of wine. Everything he did was so smooth, his long fingers and long limbs graceful as a dancer.

“C’est vrai, c’est vrai,” René said sadly—it’s true, it’s true—as though his friend had just pronounced the wisdom of the ages.

“What does niée mean?” Margie whispered to Sebastien.

“It is something not permitted. Denied?” he asked.

Surrealism is writing denied? Now they were really making no sense at all. Margie felt as though she were in the library again, poring over that Gertrude Stein piece and wanting to weep for a good love story. Georges and René had bent their heads together again over the notebook and were fashioning some other impenetrable sentence. She supposed it was a clever idea. Handing out these business cards would definitely make people wonder what on earth they meant, but she doubted people would seek out the office in particular to inquire. Then again, people did all sorts of silly things to pass the time. And while part of her felt as though she should be ashamed of herself in comparison to their limitless imaginations, another part of her saw how much they were the same. The Surrealists were dreamers, just like she was.

“How is your English so good?” she asked Sebastien, instead of pursuing the meaning of another Surrealist proclamation.

“My father is English. And of course I studied it in school. And now look how helpful it is—I can talk to American girls all the time!” He laughed, this rich, inviting sound that made Margie want to curl up inside him, if only to be so close to such happiness. The Russian women at the end of the table looked annoyed by the noise, and she was half tempted to stick her tongue out at them. She didn’t want people who thought happiness was something to be sneered at polluting the party. Because here she was. Sitting in a café in Paris with bobbed hair, drinking wine with actual artists, talking about Surrealism, with a good-looking man by her side. If only Evelyn could see her now. If only Lucinda from Abbott Academy who had said she was too quiet, a dud, could see her now. If only her mother . . . well, she’d prefer her mother not see her now, she wouldn’t understand, but still.

“Do you always talk to American girls?”

“There are so many of you,” Sebastien said. “You are difficult to avoid.” She could tell he was teasing, the little light in his eyes, the way his eyebrow was raised ever so slightly. And he was right, after all—they were everywhere. Even if she ignored the fact that she lived at the Club and worked at an American library, she heard American accents around her all the time; drawling their way through transactions at shops and cafés, chatting as they walked down streets, the inimitable casual loudness that marked her people.

“Why are so many Americans here now?” she asked him.

“Why are you here?”

Margie shrugged her shoulders, self-conscious. “Freedom, I suppose. It’s so far away from everything. And it’s, you know, Paris.”

“Well.” Sebastien spread his arms slightly, his wine glass tilting, as if to indicate the entirety of the city.

“I know. But we can’t all possibly have something to run from, can we? Some people must be happy just to stay where they are.”