The Chateau by William Maxwell Page A

successful, and third meetings that are even less satisfactory. If on your desk there are too many unanswered letters, the only thing to do is to write to someone who hasn’t written to you lately. And if sometimes, hanging by your knees head down from a swinging trapeze high under the canvas tent, you find too many aerial artists are coming toward you at a given moment and you have to choose one and let the others drop, you can at least try not to see their eyes accusing you of an inhuman betrayal you did not mean and cannot avoid. Harold Rhodes isn’t a monster, he doesn’t try to escape the second meetings, he answers some of the letters, and he spends a great deal of time, patience, and energy inducing performers with hurt feelings toclimb the rope ladder again and fling themselves across the intervening void. Some of them do and some of them don’t.
    That’s all very interesting, but just exactly what are these two people doing in Europe?
    They’re tourists.
    Obviously. But it’s too soon after the war. Traveling will be much pleasanter and easier five years from now. The soldiers have not all gone home yet. People are poor and discouraged. Europe isn’t ready for tourists. Couldn’t they wait?
    No, they couldn’t. The nail doesn’t choose the time or the circumstances in which it is drawn to the magnet.
    They would have done better to do a little reading before they came, so they would know what to look for. And they could at least have brushed up on their French
.
    They could have, but they didn’t. They just came. They are the first wave. As Mme Viénot perceived, they are unworldly, and inexperienced. But they are not totally so; there are certain areas where they cannot be fooled or taken advantage of. But there is, in their faces, something immature, reluctant—
    You mean they are Americans
.
    No, I mean all those acts of imagination by which the cupboard is again and again proved to be not bare. And putting so much faith in fortunetelling. Playing cards, colored stones, bamboo sticks, birthday-cracker mottoes, palmistry, the signs of the zodiac, the first star—she trusts them all, but only with a partial trust. Each new prognostication takes precedence over the former ones, and when the cards are not accommodating, she reshuffles them and tells herself a new fortune. Her right hand lies open now, relaxed on the pillow, her palm ready and waiting for a fortuneteller who can walk through locked doors and see in the dark.
    Unaccustomed to sleeping in separate beds, they toss and turn and are cold and have tiring dreams that they would not have had if their two bodies were touching. But they won’t be herelong, or anywhere else. Ten days in Paris after they leave here. A night in Lausanne. Six days in Salzburg. Four days in Venice. Four more days in Florence. Ten days in Rome, a night in Pisa, two days in San Remo … No place can hold them.
    And it is something that they are turned towards each other in their sleep. It means that day in and day out they are companionable and happy with one another; that they have identical (or almost) tastes and pleasures; and that when they diverge it is likely to be in their attitude toward the world outside their marriage. For example, he thinks he does not believe in God, she thinks she does. If she is more cautious about people than he is, conceivably this is because in some final way she needs them more. He needs only her. Parted from her in a crowd he becomes anxious, and in dreams he wanders through huge houses calling her name.

Chapter 4
    W HAT TIME IS BREAKFAST ?” he asked, rising up from his bed. She did not know. They had forgotten to ask about breakfast. They saw that it was a dark, rainy Monday morning.
    They washed in ice-cold water, dressed, and went downstairs. He peered around the folding screen, half expecting the household to be assembled in the drawing room, waiting for them. The