An American couple are paying guests in a château in the Touraine after the war; their french is poor, they bring nylon stockings to give to the cook and the maid; they know not what to expect but they're willing for anything, and curious about this battered France, her codes, her closed core, her fictions and disclosures. How can you ever know what happened in this house, around it, through it, however bereft you will be to leave, you will leave, and later write a book about it. Not being rude. Being thorough, and observant, polite and contained, willing, apologetic, curious, always.
Two children wait in the house in Paris in the 1930s, one for a mother the other for a train; the train arrives and the mother doesn't. Waiting, in transit, makes you observant.
A woman came out with a tray of mimosa and the raw daylight fell on the yellow pollen: but for that there might have been no sky.
The Château by William Maxwell, and The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen. Two french buildings with novels inside them. This is how I pass the days. After The House in Paris I read The Death of the Heart. The days are cooler, windy, with rain, more incision than blessing.
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