Rameau's Niece Read Free

mountain sunlight.

B EHIND THEIR LIVES stood Edward's schedule, a firm yet supple structure that gave to each day a thousand opportunities. If there were only twenty-four hours, then let them begin! Edward rose not only with the sun, but as if he were the sun. I am here, he seemed to be saying. The day may, indeed must, begin. He ate the same breakfast each morning, but what a breakfast—kippered herring and pumpernickel bread, bacon and eggs, fried tomatoes and mushrooms, Cheerios and sliced bananas, toast and jam and muffins, too. It was a labor-intensive meal, which was perhaps how he could stay so thin and eat so much. He presided over this ecumenical array of bowls, dishes, pots, and pans with smooth efficiency, then, finished, turned to his coffee and his newspapers, sometimes reading aloud to Margaret, unless she objected, which, foul-tempered and puffy-eyed, she often did.
    "I don't care, Edward. I don't care about the Czech Philharmonic just yet."
    "Margaret, one of the things I love about you, and there are so many it fills my soul with joy, but one of the most endearing qualities you have is how sincere you become in petulance." He smiled.
    Margaret, her senses blunted by fatigue and the rich potpourri of breakfast odors, would nevertheless experience his presence then, acutely and pleasantly—the look of him and his touch, without looking or touching—and she would feel rising within her the familiar tide of gratitude and astonishment that she had come to recognize as love.
    Margaret put her hand out and touched his across the table. Far away in Prague, the Czech Philharmonic was actively participating in a democratic revolution. In New York, she was happy and married to Edward. Both of these occurrences seemed equally improbable to Margaret and nearly miraculous. Edward was right: the world was a marvelous place.
    "You really don't mind me," she said. "You like me."
    "Our marriage is a putrid sink of festering lies; a vile, infested prison house into which we have been flung by a careless and callous fate."
    Edward had married Margaret and moved to New York, to Columbia's Comp. Lit. Department, adapting as enthusiastically as the English sparrow, shifting effortlessly from an ancient, orderly university town to the great noise of urban decay. An Americanophile, Edward was a scholar of (of all people and against all academic fashion) Walt Whitman, and he adored the home of his poet.
    Mannahatta! '"A million people—manners free and superb'!" Edward was a man at peace with New York.
    For the next six years, each morning at 7:00, Edward ventured forth into Mannahatta to run around the reservoir. He maintained that it cleared his head, but Margaret noted that running was practically the only exercise that would not affect pectoral muscles in a positive way, and so she was convinced that he underwent the ordeal merely to assure that his British chest would remain sufficiently concave. When he returned home, at exactly 8:40, sweating and loquacious after so much time deprived of both students and books, he would quickly shower and change, eat his extensive breakfast, then walk up to Columbia for his 11:00 class. Home for lunch and a twenty-minute nap. Back to school, for conferences or research or petty, backbiting department meetings, each of which he embraced warmly and without reservation, for they belonged to his life, and therefore to him, and so beamed with a pleasant and interesting reflected light. Home for dinner at 6:30 sharp, whether he had an 8:00 class or not. When he did, home at 10:15. If not, work at home until 11:00. Asleep at 11:30. Up at 6:30 for another round.
    If there were exceptions to this routine—a dinner date, a lecture to give, a concert—the schedule rippled effortlessly and made room. Margaret had never met a more orderly, less rigid soul. Edward's mind, nearly promiscuous in its passionate interests, opened to every new possibility, with one exception: the possibility of failing to