Man Who Was Late Read Online Free PDF Page A

of nudity intercede for the poet.
    I have wondered whether there too was a sign Ben had intended me to decipher.
    But the most precious content of the lode of trivia, mischief, and lyric self-expression Ben bequeathed to me were notes, many typed (when Ben was traveling with his portable Olivetti), others written in his large slanting hand, rarely dated, a large majority filed in apparent chronological order under the name “Notaben”—the sort of pun of which Ben was monotonously fond—and a few letters addressed to him. Ben did not make copies of letters he had written, but there were in Pandora’s Boxes some drafts of letters he had written inFrench. Apparently, he was not sure of getting them right on the first try.
    Some of these materials are reproduced in the narrative that follows. I changed certain names and details that might reveal the identity of my cousin, the woman I call Véronique.

II
    T OWARD THE END of August 1969, Ben moved to Paris, taking charge of his bank’s long-established office in the place Vendôme. At the time, for a young partner, this was the equivalent of canonization. For someone of his tastes, it could also be seen as the entry into the Garden of Earthly Delights: when Ben turned his back on the green and gold expanse of his Empire desk top, his eye would behold the verdigris of Napoleon’s column; he would lunch at the Ritz unless, to please a client sophisticated enough to know that Maxim’s must be shunned in the evening, he determined to stroll down the rue Saint-Honoré to the rue Royale and welcome his lunch guest in the sanctum of the omnibus. It was understood that the assignment was for the usual period of two or three years only, and that he would continue to follow matters of certain clients occasionally requiring his presence in New York. Ben decided to keep his apartment on Central Park West: it was where Sarah and Rebecca had last stayed with him. Now that they were in college they might be induced to return—especially if he wasn’t there! The day before he sailed we took our customary noontime meal. Although we were in Vermont as we were every August, I came down to the city for the occasion. He handed me a set of keys and said the maid had been told to expectmy presence on weekdays: for work, he emphasized, not trysts, it being Ben’s theory that I used my cubicle at the magazine principally as a telephone booth and would never finish the book I was writing on Indian use of the land in Maine unless I was removed to the comfort and silence of his library. Another gesture of affection was to come: Ben remembered that my wife and I had not been to Europe since our honeymoon. Would we not leave the children in the care of the current señorita and visit him in Paris as soon as he had a place to live? He was going to look for one that would make good memories for him and for us. I accepted on the spot. Prudence would agree—of that I was sure. Like many of Ben’s friends’ wives, she had a soft spot for him.
    Here, I later learned, is how Ben found his Paris apartment.
    Excerpt from Notaben 73 (undated):
    What is a nightmare? A daydream come true. So holds an old Bessarabian proverb I will use as the epigraph of my treatise on apartment hunting, but only if it translates well into many languages. My work will be a worldwide success.
    The little marquis
de rien du tout
took me to see one at the very top of Montmartre. Climb lots of stairs, unacceptable mental image of me and my bags—assuming Figaro doesn’t rush down to get them. Effort rewarded by heart-stopping views: (1) All of Paris, stretching beyond the Invalides. In the slight mist, as I squint against the setting sun, it lies before me like a burnt offering. (2) The owner’s longlegs, tanned and creamy, only a little soft in the thigh (she must be over 40). Am I reaching an age where a woman a couple of years older than I will begin to seem too old?
    I love the century I live in. She receives her