Man Who Was Late Read Online Free PDF Page B

her furniture (reasonably good), paintings (of the period and inoffensive), bed linen, table linen, and forks and knives, and there is nothing like these toothy Long Island transplants when it comes to fixing and fittingout a house. With Léandre’s sister, it would have been all show: Aubusson in the hall,
l’entre-deux-guerres
in the kitchen. With my lovely Olivia we have the Aubusson all right, but the kitchen is one where dear Ben will not mind tossing a salad, particularly if Gianni has laid it all out, as he always does, before taking his Thursday and Sunday evening. Gianni pours another martini: good man, already trying to ingratiate himself.
    Jack and Prudence are in luck. Now we are in the American mode; I shake Olivia’s hand on the deal. She had worried I would want to move her stuff out and move my own in. I make her happy—my clothes are all I am bringing. She thinks it charming I left my pad in NY intact. Of course, such a good building! She means that’s how people used to live.
    Lest she think some more and decide I am a spendthrift and so double the rent (thus far moderate), I say I will need my NY apartment for business trips; hotels now awfully expensive and unreliable. This she understands. What would she think if I said to her—so practical, so brave in her old age, willing to leave her home of 35 (or is it more?) years and move back to NY (to be sure, she too has kept her house there) just to save on taxes for her loutish lawyer son—that I couldn’t bear to close the only home I have? Acquired post-Rachel! Worse, that I can’t decide to transport my ten sticks of worldly goods to Paris, install those same ten sticks in someplace I have first caused to be painted, decorated, etc.; that I have no idea why I do anything I actually manage to do, except, of course, my work.
    That must be the point of the epigraph. I have no place I need to be (except my office) and no person I need to be with (except the boys at the office).
    Admirable condition of freedom: one would suppose I might continue living at the Ritz—possibly talk the bank into paying for it—and wait to see what happens. Or, for instance, live up on Montmartre where “people” don’t live. I could meet some nonpeople, spend my next vacations at Club Med. Unfortunately, I can’t bear freedom. Antidote for freedom: multiply Ben’s obligations. Thus, I am still one foot in New York but already I have Jack and Prudence as houseguests in Paris at a house I haven’t yet looked for; thus, I must quickly find a “home” where they can be guests (a place that makes good memories, that being the idiotic phrase I had the bad taste to make); thus, with my equally renowned efficiency I find such a place and obtain possession thereof—including
il bravo Gianni
, very authentic and beautifully restored boiseries, and a parking space for my car in my very own courtyard. Car = freedom. Should I give up the parking space and the car, or console myself by the thought that I am subject to another servitude? The beastly thing will need to be serviced and either I will have to see to it or, better yet, con Gianni into taking it on!
    A dream come true, right?
    I am not convinced that this particular message from the other world is fully reliable. In life, Ben was not impenetrable; I presume to believe that the prospect of our visit was, in fact, welcome. This is one of the undated Notabens: When did he write it? Before our visit, as the text indicates, or later, as an exercise in style or to explain subsequent events or disappointments? The number he gave it is of little help in this respect: I have come to think that Ben numbered notes and letters at random or in accordance with a system known only to him. Most important to me, I cannot dismiss the possibility that, whenever the text was written, he was striking a pose, as he did in so many circumstances, not because he was a poseur but out of discouragement. Ben liked to joke that he was his own