Time Garden
Written for Snowy.
Gideon was only a very young man when he went to Paris for the first time.
He stood by his mother's side as he looked around at the tall buildings and the churches and houses with his wide grey eyes. He had never before seen a place like this--it did not even look like the sketches they showed him in New York before he left.
The first place he went with his parents was the cathedral of Notre-Dame, and he stared up at the tall glass windows wondering how many men it had taken to make them. They were so high up, and he tried to imagine how anyone could get up that high and put them in. It was like looking at the sky-scrapers in the city at home. Gideon put his head back to see the ceiling, and sighed.
His parents also took him to see the Sorbonne and the Louvre, and the Arc de Triomphe. He went to the Palais de Justice and stood outside it, wanted to touch the stone pillars. Every place he went, he stood for a long time just looking; his mother had bought for him a notebook before they left America, and he tried to draw the buildings and the paintings and the people, although he did it very badly. He had never been much of an artist. But he stood for ages, tilting his head, closing his eyes, touching anything he was allowed to touch. He seemed far more like a middle-aged man who had realised for the first time the wonderful things that were in the world, and who was determined to see them just the right way now that he knew they were there, than he did a thirteen year old child, and his mother was seized with a sudden sadness as she watched him leaning over a bridge and peering into the Seine, and throwing in a stone whose path he traced thoughtfully before it sank into the water.
The secret was that he wanted to go home. He knew that he was seeing a wonderful place that he might never see again, and that anyone ought to be excited to be in Paris; but he was missing his room at home, and reading the newspaper in the morning, which he couldn't do here because he knew no French. He missed knowing his way around. Besides, he thought too much; he knew that. He couldn't help it. He looked at the Arc de Triomphe, which was not yet entirely finished, and he saw that it was unfinished, and he felt that it was unfinished, and somehow it made him solemn. He felt as though all of Paris was unfinished, as though it were all one big rough draft; and he knew it wasn't so, but he felt it anyway; and all he wanted was to go home.
So, on the seventh day he was in Paris, he lost himself.
They had gone to the Luxembourg, and Gideon walked along quietly until he saw that his parents were engaged in looking at a particular sculpture, and then he quickly wandered between several rows of hedges until he felt a long way away from them. He went on a little bit longer, until he came to an open spot, and then he sat down on a small bench and tried to draw the people as they went by. It was summer, and the beautiful Parisian women were out with their parasols and their paramours; the young men and the old men stood in circles and talked with one another, perhaps about politics or arrangements with the cook or arguments with lovers or the birth of nephews, and Gideon tried to look and watch their movements and find out all he could.
He liked to find out about people.
When it began to get quieter, though, and the people began to wander off, he started to feel lonely. He tucked his legs under him and sat on his bench and hoped, sensibly, that his parents would be more likely to find him if he stayed in one place. If they went looking, they must come to this place eventually. So he rested his head on his arms and lay and watched for them to come by. It had occurred to him quite a while ago that he had done a very stupid thing, and that he was suffering for it, but he couldn't feel properly penitent. His child self, inside him, was wondering worriedly what would happen if his parents never came, if he had no where to go by the time it got dark; and his old man self was questioning how badly he was going to be punished for getting lost. His Gideon self just wanted to go home.
For a long while, he sat and watched and thought. Then, suddenly, he heard a woman's voice, quite near, speaking in French, and he sat up quickly. The woman standing by his bench, looking at him--she had blue eyes and her mouth was turned into the same curious, solemn frown that he always wore when he was trying to find out about people.
She began to speak again, and Gideon said interestedly,--
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but I don't speak French. I'm American."
The woman put a hand to her lips, making an Oh! face, and smiled. "American? You speak Anglais."
"Everybody in America speaks English." Gideon stopped and reconsidered. "Well, the ones who came from England do. If they came from Poland, they speak Polish." Every morning, Gideon was given a penny and went out to buy the newspaper from a Polish boy his age who lived along the street.
"Polish?" said the woman, sounding it out.
"Yes," Gideon answered firmly. "Polish."
"You are a clever enfant, mon gar�on. But you are sitting here all alone!"
"I'm waiting for my mother and father."
Of course, Gideon had been told not to speak to people whom he didn't know; everyone was told that. Somehow, though, he didn't feel particularly cautious, and he liked the way her face looked the way he felt when he was thinking. She reminded him of the grey cat who lived upstairs; she made him think of being warm, and of his mother when she had dressed up to go out.
"But alone! They left you by yourself, enfant?"
"No. I lost myself. I didn't want to walk with them." Gideon's voice was very matter-of-fact, and he kept looking at the woman solemnly.
"Ah, je comprend. May I sit with you? I'm waiting for mon mari."
"All right," said Gideon.
The woman sat. "You must pardon my Anglais. It is very bad. Mon mari, he is teaching it to me, but I am a slow learner."
"I don't know any French."
She paused, but she understood the logic, too. Gideon gave her a quick smile.
"Tu as raison! Mon nom, it is Cosette."
"My name is Gideon. I live in New York."
"In the city? Marius--he is mon mari--he has promised that someday we shall go to New York City and see the theatres and the buildings. He says everything will be tall there."
"Everything is tall here," Gideon told her. "I think it's taller than New York, but I'm not certain. It's hard to tell when I'm not there."
Cosette considered him for a moment, and tossed her head, so that the big ribbons on her blue bonnet swished. He noticed that she was wearing white silk gloves, and took out his notebook and pencil stub unobtrusively. "How long have you been waiting for your maman and papa?" she asked finally.
"I don't know exactly," Gideon said. "Perhaps it's been three hours? I don't know."
"Three hours! That's a long time to wait." She pouted in a rather anxious way, frowning at him and drawing her eyebrows together.
"How long have you been waiting for your mari?" asked Gideon. It seemed to him that he had pronounced the word very badly.
"Enfant redoutable et impudent!" said Cosette, laughing. "Perhaps it's been three hours, I shall confess to you. But I, I am a woman, and you are un enfant, and it is not safe for you to be alone."
"Father tells me that I am close to being a man."
"You are close to being a young man, I think--how old are you?"
"Thirteen."
"A young man. At fifteen, you shall be a young man. You shall be a man when you are twenty. Mon mari, he is twenty-five, and a man."
"How old are you?" He felt entitled to ask her any question she'd asked him, and she didn't seem to mind. She smiled, and said,--
"Twenty-three. I have a beautiful small son, who I think shall have hair like yours when he is older." One of her gloved hands reached out and touched Gideon's curly red hair tentatively, and he thought that she was just pretending to be grown-up when she called him 'enfant'. Privately, he thought she was shy. Her blue eyes were shy. "I have a beautiful little daughter who is three years old, also. Son nom est Marguerite."
"I have a sister, but she lives in Connecticut. She has blue eyes, like you."
"And red hair, like yours?"
"Yes."
"What is her name?"
"Agnes."
"If she lives away from you, she must be married, also. Does she have enfants, as I do?"
"Four. She has twins and Jane and Tom."
Cosette smiled again, happily, folding her gloved hands in her lap. "It is good, I think, to have enfants. I am glad for all ladies who have them. It is easy to be happy."
Gideon tilted his head to look at her. It seemed as though she was working very hard to remember her English properly, because she spoke in stops and starts; but he thought she was doing a very good job of it. There was something in her accent which he liked very much, as much as he liked her face and the way she made him think of good things, and he rather wanted to give her something. Of course, he had nothing to give. He froze for a moment, struggling between ideas--a boy of thirteen could not offer his coat, and anyway she was wearing a wrap; it wouldn't be proper of him to put his head against her shoulder, impulsively, because he was too old for that; he had nothing in his pockets which she would like--and finally he sighed greatly. Cosette turned to him quickly.
"You are all right, enfant? You have not been waiting too long? We shall look for your maman and papa if you want to find them. Je suis--I am sorry--"
"No," said Gideon. "It's not that. I don't have anything--I like you." Well, it was the easiest way of telling her, since he had nothing to give.
She laughed prettily, holding out her arms and hugging him in the wide sleeves of her dress. The dress smelled of dust, and he thought she mustn't wear it very often, then. "Ah, ah, mon enfant G�deon! I like you too, beaucoup, cheri. Ah!" Suddenly she let him go, holding him back a little to look at his face. "But why do you say that?"
"Because you're nice. You're like Good Things. Like--" Like being able to read the newspaper, he thought confusedly, like knowing what time it is. Like his room, where everything was orderly and familiar and good, but not quite, because she wasn't orderly. Her laugh wasn't orderly. It was just pretty. "I want--I want to go home, and you're like home. You speak English."
"Badly," she reminded him. She had suddenly become shy again. "It is very bad Anglais I speak."
"No, it's good. It sounds like you. If you didn't put in the right words, it would be wrong."
"Ah, what he says!"
Gideon didn't answer, frowning slightly past her shoulder. He was not saying what he wanted to in the correct way. He couldn't say it the right way, and it bothered him a great deal. He wanted the things he said to come out right.
Cosette touched his red curls again, fancifully, like a young girl. "Vous me faites le sourire, enfant. You say such things. I am so hoping that my little boy shall be like you when he is a man."
Then Gideon laughed, shrugging his shoulders. "Bad luck! He'll run away from home and meet ladies in the park."
"Hush!"
"Here." He tore a page out of his notebook, and wrote his full name--Gideon Michael Spilett--on a sheet of paper with his pencil stub, and handed it to her. "Someday I'll be famous, and this way you'll know about me when you read the newspaper. You can give me your name, too, if you want."
Cosette shook her head. "Non, non, for I shall not be famous, and you should not find me in le journal. I shall give you something else." She took off one of her white silk gloves, and gave it to him. "Voila! You can tell all your friends in New York City about the lady in France who gave you her glove, and they shall be very impressed, oui? They shall envy you very much. They need not know about mon mari et mes enfants."
She was putting in more French, and Gideon thought she was getting tired--but that made sense. It had been a long time since he had lost his parents, and he could hear a clock somewhere making a lot of noise for a long while, which meant that it was late. He put her glove into his pocket and tipped his cap, grinning. "That's right. And you can tell everybody you knew me before I was famous."
"Ah! Believe me, I shall," she told him.
"Good," said Gideon. "But I expect you want--" At that moment, he looked up, and saw his father striding quickly towards them. "Look, there's my father."
Cosette turned. "Ah, so you were telling me the truth! I begin to disbelieve you. I suppose you shall leave me?"
"I'm afraid I have to. I'm going to be beaten for being lost so long." He smiled ruefully and kissed her hand, the way Frenchmen always did in plays. "Goodbye."
"Au revoir, mon enfant. You are not going to forget me as soon as you go home, are you?"
"'Course not!" Gideon said. Cosette kissed both his cheeks, and her bonnet brushed his nose, smelling of dust the way her dress had. For some reason that he wasn't entirely sure of, he felt sorry, and he took her bare hand and pressed it quickly, tightly, and then jumped up. "Good-bye!" he called over his shoulder.
"Au revoir!" she called back, waving her hand.
"Gideon!" his father said, partly angry and partly worried. "Who was that woman?"
"She was sitting with me while I waited for you. I'm awfully sorry I got lost," Gideon said quickly, hoping to avoid being lectured. "I didn't notice you'd stopped behind. She was very nice. I'm sorry."
"For heaven's sake...!" But his father didn't say more, not just then, and Gideon followed after him humbly. Behind them, Cosette was still waving a little.
~~~
Gideon was a very old man when he went to Paris for the second time.
This time, he was not alone; he was accompanied by a very pale man whom he called Harbert--this time, he was walking with a stick, handsomely carved, which he leaned upon heavily. He wore a thick greatcoat and a suit beneath it; but he carried a notebook, just as he had before.
He visited all the old places, some of which had changed, some of which had stayed the same. The Arc de Triomph had been finished for seventy years. When he had gone everywhere he had gone before, he went to the Luxembourg Gardens, and Harbert came with him.
In the Gardens, he went looking for a certain bench. Harbert went along without seeming to know what they were looking for or to mind that he didn't. It was like a game, an old game that he didn't know how to play, and he was being taught the rules by someone who couldn't tell him what they were, so that he had to guess them from watching. He guessed that Gideon was looking for something, admittedly, but he didn't know what was being looked for, and he glanced from side to side as they passed through the Gardens, hoping to see something memorable.
At last, they stopped several metres from an old stone bench. Harbert, surprised, gazed about, and saw nothing but this bench, and a woman sitting on it. She was very old, too, but beautiful in an old way, with her white hair pinned up beneath a wide hat, in the current fashion, and her calm blue eyes gazing out at something far away.
Gideon moved forward again, and then paused, sighed, closed his eyes.
"Cosette."
The old woman startled, gracefully, and turned around.
"Monsieur! Vous m'avez effraye!"
"N'avez pas peur. Je suis G�deon," he said softly. Her eyes widened, and she put a thin, wrinkled hand to her lips. She was not wearing gloves.
"G�deon! You speak French now, mon enfant!"
"Ah, that is nothing special. You have always spoken French."
"You're cheating again." She laughed a little. "When we last met, you cheated, but I thought it was called logic then. I read about you in the paper all the time, you and your friend Mr. Smith. I read about you in the papers forty years ago."
"So you did. I read about myself, too. It was not what I had expected to become famous for."
"Escaping from an enemy city in a balloon! I do not think, enfant, that anyone would expect to become famous in such a way. They said in the paper that you lived on an uninhabited island for four years."
"Something like that. Harbert was there with me." Gideon gestured at Harbert, who ducked his head cheerfully.
"Is he your son?"
"No, he is the son of a good friend of mine. I'm afraid I never married."
"Oh, you make me sad! My Marius, he has died ten years ago. I come here and sit every day; I watch the sun going down in the winter, and in the summer, I watch the people walking. This is the most beautiful place in the world, enfant. I think of you here. I thought I might forget you. It has been seventy years! Seventy years! My beautiful children grew up many years ago."
"I hope the boy was like me."
"Pierre? He was just like you." Cosette smiled at him fondly, briefly. "He had beautiful red hair, and he kissed the girls' hands. Just like you."
"I thought perhaps you'd like to know--I still have your glove."
"Oh, I know that," said Cosette. Gideon paused, and then he, too, smiled.
"Yes. I should have realised that."
"What has happened to us, enfant? You are not an enfant any longer, and I am not a silly young girl. I am a foolish old woman. You are a famous man, with your own newspaper and your exploits. What do we know of one another? I wish time did not go so fast. I am all alone. Je suis si seul maintenant."
"Time does go fast," Gideon agreed, looking ruefully at his stick. "But, you see, I thought we still knew one another. I came to Paris to find you. I had been afraid that you were alone, and I wanted you to know that I hadn't forgotten you. I know that it's strange to be old. I know that it's rather lonely. And I was afraid you had perhaps died."
"Not yet. But it is not long, you see. Already, I am ninety-two years old. I am so tired, enfant. It is not long."
"I wish you wouldn't say things like that."
"Oh! You are still the same boy, aren't you? The trouble is all because of me, because I'm not the same girl. I'm sorry."
"You needn't be sorry."
"Oh--" Cosette put her face in her hands. Quickly, rather meaninglessly, Gideon saw that her dress had changed with the times. She was wearing the long-sleeved, loose-bodiced dresses women wore now, the thin skirts that fit the body, the little tailored jackets that were to be worn over them; instead of the wide-sleeved dress he'd first seen her in, the one with the great wide skirt and tight, fitted bodice. He made an automatic note of it, in the way of a reporter. How times changed! He knew what she meant when she said that time went fast, but the truth was that he didn't mind, and he could see she did. He put his arms around her impulsively and rocked her, the poor little old woman with her white hair and weeping blue eyes, and he the sombre-looking old man with his suit and coat and walking stick. "Oh, G�deon, enfant," she said, her voice muffled through her hands and strange because of the tears, "how long it's been! Why, we only saw each other for thirty minutes when we first met! I thought I'd forget you! I have forgotten everything else! J'ai perdu ma m�moire, et j'ai peur! Pourquoi est-ce si important? Il y a si longtemps!"
"Hush, hush," Gideon whispered, rocking her gently. He looked over her shaking shoulders and saw Harbert watching them anxiously. Poor fellow! "Harbert--"
"Non, non," said Cosette, trying to sit up and wiping at her eyes with her handkerchief, which she'd fetched out of her pocket while her face was buried in his shoulder. "I am all right. Don't worry the boy. I'm so sorry. You see, I am a terrible old woman. When I was a girl, I was always smiling, and now I weep."
Gideon put his hands on her shoulders and held her at arm's length, studying her face as she dabbed at her eyes. "When you were smiling, you weren't alone. It's all right. I had only meant to find you and say hello and let you know that I hadn't forgotten about you. I didn't want to upset you."
"No. And you haven't, you haven't. I just remember being young, and having my Marius with me, and I get lonely. It's not because of you."
"Certainly it's because of me. I shall be quite offended if it isn't because of me. I just wanted you to know why I'm here."
"Yes, I know."
"Is there anything I can give you? Anything in the world? I hadn't meant to upset you, and I did want to give you something, as I have your glove." He smiled dolefully. "I've never known. What do women want?"
"I don't know that."
"I could buy you jewellery. Harbert tells me that his wife likes flowers. Or is there just some thing that you've wanted for years and never yet felt incentive enough to buy? I shall get it for you."
"Oh, no, there's nothing like that!" Cosette laughed a little, and sniffled. "No..."
"Then what do you want? You must have something, or I shall be disappointed."
"Ah, G�deon. Je baisais tes joues autrefois. Baise les miennes; c'est tout-ce que je veux."
"Is that all?"
"Oui, c'est tout."
"All right." Gideon kissed her cheeks, first the left one and then the right, in the order of the holy candles at church. This time there was no brush of a bonnet; only his thick grey sideburns against her wrinkled little face. Still, when he pulled back, she was smiling.
"Merci beaucoup, mon enfant."
"You're very welcome. I rather wish I could do something else."
"No, no, that's all." Suddenly, she rose, looking off into the garden. "Oh, see, my children want to go home. My father is waiting like your father; he is anxious for me to come because he has been looking for me. Thank you. I'm so glad you came. I was all alone, but now I am better, you see? Now it is all right."
"Do you want me to help you home?" Gideon asked cautiously.
"I can find my way." She turned back to him and smiled for a moment, laid her hand on his, and then began walking away, the ruffled hem of her skirt dragging a little on the ground. Gideon thought he heard her call over her shoulder, "Au revoir!"--
so he called back, "Good-bye!" after her. Then she was gone.
Harbert touched his sleeve. "We had better go if we want to meet Pencroff," he said, seeming to know that he oughtn't to ask about the woman Gideon had sat with. "He's going to sulk if we're late. You know how he is about getting onto boats in time."
"I know." Gideon smiled. "I know. Let's go."
And he followed Harbert out of the Gardens. He did not go back to Paris again.
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