what the Frenchman still thinks about women.’ The soup course was finished and the little woman – dressed now in a maid’s formal uniform – collected the dishes. ‘Don’t stack them,’ M. Datt whispered loudly to her. ‘That’s how they get broken. Make two journeys; a well-trained maid never stacks plates.’ He poured a glass of white wine for each of us. ‘Diderot thought they were merely courtesans, Montesquieu said they were pretty children. For Rousseau they existed only as an adjunct to man’s pleasure and for Voltaire they didn’t exist at all.’ He pulled the side of smoked salmon towards him and sharpened the long knife.
Jean-Paul smiled knowingly. He was more nervous than usual. He patted the white starched cuff that artfully revealed the Cartier watch and fingered the small disc of adhesive plaster that covered a razor nick on his chin.
Maria said, ‘France is a land where men command and women obey. “Elle me plait” is the greatest compliment a woman can expect from men; they mean she obeys. How can anyone call Paris a woman’s city? Only a prostitute can have a serious career there. It took two world wars to give Frenchwomen the vote.’
Datt nodded. He removed the bones and the salmon’s smoke-hard surface with two long sweeps of the knife. He brushed oil over the fish and began to slice it, serving Maria first. Maria smiled at him.
Just as an expensive suit wrinkles in a different way from a cheap one, so did the wrinkles in Maria’s face add to her beauty rather than detract from it. I stared at her, trying to understand her better. Was she treacherous, or was she exploited, or was she, like most of us, both?
‘It’s all very well for you, Maria,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘You are a woman with wealth, position, intelligence,’ he pause, ‘and beauty …’
‘I’m glad you added beauty,’ she said, still smiling.
Jean-Paul looked towards M. Datt and me. ‘That illustrates my point. Even Maria would sooner have beauty than brains. When I was eighteen – ten years ago – I wanted to give the women I loved the things I wanted for myself: respect, admiration, good food, conversation, wit and even knowledge. But women despise those things. Passion is what they want, intensity of emotion. The same trite words of admiration repeated over and over again. They don’t want good food – women have poor palates – and witty conversation worries them. What’s worse it diverts attention away from them. Women want men who are masterful enough to give them confidence, but not cunning enough to outwit them. They want men with plenty of faults so that they can forgive them. They want men who have trouble with the little things in life; women excel at little things. They remember little things too; there is no occasion in their lives, from confirmation to eightieth birthday, when they can’t recall every stitch they wore.’ He looked accusingly at Maria.
Maria laughed. ‘That part of your tirade at least is true.’
M. Datt said, ‘What did you wear at your confirmation?’
‘White silk, high-waisted dress, plain-front white silk shoes and cotton gloves that I hated.’ She reeled it off.
‘Very good,’ said M. Datt and laughed. ‘Although I must say, Jean-Paul, you are far too hard on women. Take that girl Annie who worked for me. Her academic standards were tremendous …’
‘Of course,’ said Maria, ‘women leaving university have such trouble getting a job that anyone enlightened enough to employ them is able to demand very high qualifications.’
‘Exactly,’ said M. Datt. ‘Most of the girls I’ve ever used in my research were brilliant. What’s more they were deeply involved in the research tasks. Just imagine that the situation had required men employees to involve themselves sexually with patients. In spite of paying lip-service to promiscuity men would have given me all sorts of puritanical reasons why they couldn’t do it. These girls understood that it was a vital part of their relationship with patients. One girl was a mathematical genius and yet such beauty. Truly remarkable.’
Jean-Paul said, ‘Where is this mathematical genius now? I would dearly appreciate her advice. Perhaps I could improve my technique with women.’
‘You couldn’t,’ said Maria. She spoke clinically, with no emotion showing. ‘Your technique is all too perfect. You flatter women to saturation point when you first meet them. Then, when you decide the time is right, you begin to undermine their confidence in themselves. You point out their shortcomings rather cleverly and sympathetically until they think that you must be the only man who would deign to be with them. You destroy women by erosion because you hate them.’
‘No,’ Jean-Paul said. ‘I love women. I love all women too much to reject so many by marrying one.’ He laughed.
‘Jean-Paul feels it is his duty to make himself available to every girl from fifteen to fifty,’ said Maria quietly.
‘Then you’ll soon be outside my range of activity,’ said Jean-Paul.
The candles had burned low and now their light came through the straw-coloured wine and shone golden on face and ceiling.
Maria sipped at her wine. No one spoke. She placed the glass on the table and then brought her eyes up to Jean-Paul’s. ‘I’m sorry for you, Jean-Paul,’ she said.
The maid brought the fish course to the table and served it: sole Dieppoise, the sauce dense with shrimps and speckled with parsley and mushroom, the bland smell of the fish echoed by the hot butter. The maid retired, conscious that her presence had interrupted the conversation. Maria drank a little more wine and as she put the glass down she looked at Jean-Paul.
He didn’t smile. When she spoke her voice was mellow and any trace of bitterness had been removed by the pause.
‘When I say I’m sorry for you, Jean-Paul, with your endless succession of lovers, you may laugh at me. But let me tell you this: the shortness of your relationships with women is due to a lack of flexibility in you. You are not able to adapt, change, improve, enjoy new things each day. Your demands are constant and growing narrower. Everyone else must adapt to you, never the other way about.
‘Marriages break up for this same reason – my marriage did and it was at least half my fault: two people become so set in their ways that they become vegetables. The antithesis of this feeling is to be in love. I fell in love with you, Jean-Paul. Being in love is to drink in new ideas, new feelings, smells, tastes, new dances – even the air seems to be different in flavour. That’s why infidelity is such a shock. A wife set in the dull, lifeless pattern of marriage is suddenly liberated by love, and her husband is terrified to see the change take place, for just as I felt ten years younger, so I saw my husband as ten years older.’
Jean-Paul said, ‘And that’s how you now see me?’
‘Exactly. It’s laughable how I once worried that you were younger than me. You’re not younger than me at all. You are an old fogey. Now I no longer love you I can see that. You are an old fogey of twenty-eight and I am a young girl of thiry-two.’
‘You bitch.’
‘My poor little one. Don’t be angry. Think of what I tell you. Open your mind. Open your mind and you will discover what you want so much: how to be eternally a young man.’
Jean-Paul looked at her. He wasn’t as angry as I would have expected. ‘Perhaps I am a shallow and vain fool,’ he said. ‘But when I met you, Maria, I truly loved you. It didn’t last more than a week, but for me it was real. It was the only time in my life that I truly believed myself capable of something worthwhile. You were older than me but I liked that. I wanted you to show me the way out of the stupid labyrinth life I led. You are highly intelligent and you, I thought, could show me the solid good reasons for living. But you failed me, Maria. Like all women you are weak-willed and indecisive. You can be loyal only for a moment to whoever is near to you. You have never made one objective decision in your life. You have never really wanted to be strong and free. You have never done one decisive thing that you truly believed in. You are a puppet, Maria, with many puppeteers, and they quarrel over who shall operate you.’ His final words were sharp and bitter and he stared hard at Datt.