Sophie looked straight at Deborah over her espresso. “ Marc died recently.”

“Marc Dubois?” Deborah frowned. “Oh, no—”

Deborah couldn’t meet Sophie’s eyes, so she looked out the cafe window, but it felt like looking outside from an aquarium: the world passing them by outside – busy, disinterested—all the life that other people younger than her and Sophie seemed to have enough of. 

At 64, Deborah was still in good health, so she shouldn’t obsess about this now, she admonished herself. But recently she had begun to become more rattled when somebody died.

“How—?” She began.

Sophie just shook her head. “It was too quick.” 

There was something dismissive about Sophie’s matter-of-fact statement as if it was a personal insult to her that somebody had left this earth.

“I’m sorry,” Deborah said.

Sophie shrugged and regarded the thick flood of people outside. “Don’t be. He was 88. Had been sick for a long time.”

“It’s still … well, sad, isn’t it?” 

“He was an asshole,” Sophie said flatly.

“What? I thought you two were—”

“Oh, for a little while, but that was in, what, 1974? Can you believe that? But we stayed in touch over the years, only … his letters became meaner and meaner.”

Deborah felt dizzy. Just as she always did when she was unexpectedly sucked into another of Sophie’s dramas.

One moment: the comforting hum of Le Select which she had chosen exactly for its blend of nostalgia and touristy streamlining. (Sophie appeared to have misgivings when they went in, but she didn’t say anything.)

And now …

“I can’t believe you mean that,” Deborah tried. “I didn’t meet him more than a couple of times, but he always seems like a good man.”

“He was good at seeing that way, yes”, Sophie said curtly.

“But what happened–between you two?” Deborah clinked the spoon against the fragile porcelain cup.

“It was subtle, at first,” Sophie said, the ghost of a smile – more a tic – playing on her lips. “Little digs at my work. Questioning its …  relevance.”

Deborah raised an eyebrow. “He didn’t believe in it, then?”

Sophie stubbed out her cigarette with a force that startled Deborah. “He believed in something,” she said. “In himself, maybe. And for a while… in me.” A wry smile touched her lips. “Initially, I think he saw me as some kind of…revolutionary muse. An echo of his lost youth. I thought it would pass as we both grew old, but … no. Pathetic, really.”

Silence settled between them. The setting sun cast the boulevard in a long, golden light, revealing the cracks and scars of the aging buildings.

“So you became angry with him?” Deborah asked softly.

Sophie shrugged. “I am more angry with myself,” she said. “For letting his validation matter.”

“Just because he didn’t agree with you,” Deborah said, “that’s … not the same as being ‘mean’.”

Sophie smiled like a cat about to eat a mouse. “Are you lecturing me, Deborah?”

Deborah laughed nervously. “Never.” 

For Deborah, the cafe seemed to fade even more around them. The oncoming twilight had painted the boulevard in blue and gold. But it was like it – and she – was part of a painting. Frozen in time.

“Where should we go after here?” she forced herself to say.

“I thought you wanted to hear about Marc?”

“Were we talking about him? It seems like … I don’t know. Anyway, I didn’t know him that well.”

“No. You did not.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Now there’s something.” Sophie smiled again like the cat. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Deborah’s tone hardened. “Tell me what happened, or let’s talk about something else.”

Sophie looked away, out on the boulevard, her gaze suddenly growing distant. “We did have … a lot of good times. And then, I write one book he doesn’t like—he thinks it’s a betrayal, and then all of a sudden everything has changed. I mean, I never criticized some of the films he did that I did not like. Never”

Deborah was quite sure that wasn’t true—that Sophie had critiqued Marc’s work before—but she didn’t say anything. “So what was that book you wrote—when?” 

“You know what it was … “ Sophie started, reaching again for her pack of cigarettes. “‘The Persistence… ‘“

“‘—Of Illusions’,” Deborah finished, recalling the title. “But that was over 10 years ago!”

Sophie lit a new cigarette with a practiced flick of her lighter, inhaling deeply before answering. “So?”

Deborah shook her head slowly. “You told me about it then, but then it … kind of faded out. I thought you had moved on.”

Sophie’s short sharp laugh was so loud, that it momentarily attracted the attention of a couple of tourists at a nearby table. “There’s the modern solution to everything—‘move on’.”

Deborah was not trying to hide her irritation now. “Was Marc Dubois really on to you all these years—or were you on to him, because he didn’t accept the book back then?” 

Sophie shrugged. “A bit of both, I guess.”

“Oh, Sophie …” 

“Don’t ‘oh’ me,” Sophie snapped. She took a long drag of her cigarette, her words spoken through a veil of nicotine. “Marc never accepted that he had, well, become a subject of the very system he and I tried to dismantle. That he had bought into the illusion of freedom under capitalism.”

Deborah’s expression remained carefully neutral. “Sophie,” she said calmly, “If I recall … he accepted some money from TF1 to do that series on Algeria.”

“And Arte, and France 4, and numerous others.” Sophie’s voice was brittle. “Same subjects, but now he worked for the enemy— state or corporation, it doesn’t matter.”

“You talk like it’s war.” 

“It’s always been war, cherie!” 

“To you, maybe.” Deborah had to force her voice to remain even. “What was so terrible about those fees and grants? He would get the message out, wouldn’t he? How many people would have understood just how badly France behaved in Algeria—or Senegal for that matter?”

The memory of their shared disgust at the news of her father’s and Sophie’s father’s business deals – the contract to supply mining equipment to the new copper mine in Senegal – flickered through her mind. Even back then, it had been more a shared feeling or a series of feelings and moods than a topic of serious analysis. Back then they mostly exchanged whispers and shared frowns.

A wave of weariness washed over Deborah as she realized that little had changed in 50 years.

“Well, my father certainly never did understand it,” Sophie said, inhaling deeply between each sentence now.

“He sold the company before he died.”

“And never regretted a thing,” Sophie muttered, taking another drag of her cigarette. “But listen … ” her gaze became more intense, “If you make documentaries about social causes, you have to—have to— stay clean. You can only finance things yourself or receive funds from equals. If you compromise on that, you’ve compromised your credibility.” 

Deborah let out a sigh. “What about the actual show, the message itself—don’t you think people should make their minds up about whether or not it is credible?”

“The messenger is the messenger, Deborah,” Sophie replied impatiently. “People don’t care much about distinctions—or they don’t want to. And people will readily buy into a system that enslaves them as long as it allows them a fleeting taste of happiness … and lots of mindless pleasures.”

Deborah shrugged. She remembered Sophie’s first scathing letter when she told her she had married a Chinese businessman. It had almost been over there and then, but there were also other letters. Emails. Calls. Apologies of sorts. Or maybe distractions.

“You watched the docus.” Sophie had found her prosecutorial tone. “What did you think?”

“Only because you wanted me to,” Deborah replied. “But I thought they were good,” she added quietly. “However at the time … I had other things to think of.”

“Yes,” Sophie said, her voice less sharp, “How is Caroline these days, by the way?”

“She’s fine,” Deborah said. “Don’t worry about her. We were talking about your ex … “

“He was not my ‘ex’.” 

“Oh, come on,” Deborah blurted. “You invite me all this way for your award ceremony … but we still end up with the same old discussions, and I know what you want to tell me … “

Sophie straightened in her chair, her expression carefully controlled, “I don’t want to tell you anything,” she countered, her voice regaining its accustomed sharpness. “Except the truth—Marc Dubois is dead, and he had been dead to me for many years … He gave up.”

“Maybe he just disagreed with you,” Deborah replied firmly. 

For a long moment, their eyes locked, but no one seemed willing or able to take it any further.

Deborah took a deep breath. “Do you want me to go back to the hotel,” she asked calmly, “or should we go somewhere else?”

Sophie let out a breath. No smoke this time. “We … kept up that argument for 10 years. And then … lung cancer. Three months, and he was gone. I would’ve invited him to the ceremony, of course. Even if he would probably have said no.”

“I am truly sorry,” Deborah said again.

“Yes, I suppose I am as well,” Sophie said, looking out on the boulevard again, in the distance.

She stood up abruptly. “Let’s go. Let’s go to … I don’t know … over to Jardin de Luxembourg? You used to love that place.”

“Let’s do that,” Deborah said and stood up as well.

*

The early evening air bit, a sudden chill despite the fading sun painting the boulevard in amber and blue. Sophie led the way on the 10-minute walk to the park, all brisk steps, and hunched shoulders as if bracing against a wind only she could feel.

Sophie suddenly stopped. Turned towards her.

“Do you miss it, Deborah?” she asked.

“What? Paris?”

“No.” Sophie’s gray eyes were still burning with … something. “I mean, those days … the May days?”

Deborah shrugged. “I have wondered about that now and again, sure.”

“When—exactly?” Sophie pushed.

Deborah’s brow furrowed, not really angry but bewildered now by what seemed more and more like a genuine confession – “When? Does it matter?”

“I suppose not. Let’s go. We’re almost there.” Sophie locked her arm with Deborah’s. “Afterward, we can head to my apartment. If you want?”

“I … do.”

The street felt very real now, and the people in the cafes even more, those lovers, friends, tourists, and who knew what else. What could Sophie’s life have become had she never … and where would she, Deborah be, had she chosen—which she hadn’t of course, because back in those heady, wild days there had never really been anything much to really choose about.

All those paths. And now they were just heading through the Jardin. Exactly as they had done 50 years ago.

“I don’t miss the cobblestones,” Deborah then said. “I do miss the future we had.” 

*

Deborah’s five-star hotel room felt like a stark contrast to the book-lined austerity of Sophie’s Latin Quarter apartment, where they had gone to drink and talk the rest of the evening. Now it was very late. But Deborah’s husband had not gone to bed. 

Marcus Chen Nianshen, relaxed in an armchair, sipped his red wine, and seemed as absorbed in his new printing of The Tao of Physics, as when she had left.

But when she closed the door behind her, he immediately put it down. “How did it go?” 

“Sophie’s still … well, you know …” Deborah began hesitantly, putting her keycard on the table in the room’s lobby. 

Nianshen set his book aside, his gaze curious. “Still Sophie? I gather she gave you the full Delacroix treatment—scathing pronouncements on the evils of late capitalism, laced with a dash of existential despair?”

A weary smile touched Deborah’s lips. “Something like that. Still preoccupied with Marc Dubois’s death, it appears, and that book he hated so much.”

“The one about the failure of revolutions?” Nianshen chuckled, remembering Deborah’s earlier descriptions of the book, those echoes of intellectual debates that he often found more amusing than insightful. “I still don’t understand why that bothers her so much, even now. And didn’t she just get that fine prize for it—bestselling academic book in the last decade?”

“Yes. She should be happy. I guess.” Deborah looked out the window at the cityscape. She’d lived here as a teenager and that young, clueless student she used to be had first met Sophie here. 

“But tonight … something felt different.” Her voice dropped. “I think Marc’s death … it brought back old … hurts, but I can’t figure out if she is mad that he never accepted the book—her book. Or that she didn’t get the last word.”

Nianshen took another sip of wine, observing his wife with a blend of concern and a hint of impatience. “Why do you even bother, Qīn’ài de? She disapproves of everything you do, from your marriage to … well, pretty much your entire life these days.”

“She does.” Deborah fingered her necklace absently while looking at the glass doors to the balcony, but not actually opening them.

“Look,” Nianshen said, “you know I value your past friendships and admire what you told me about that spring and summer of ‘68 when you were both … well, so much younger of course.” Nianshen sipped a little wine.  “But really—does Sophie offer anything besides those endless critiques and intellectual pronouncements ?”

Deborah straightened in her chair. “You wouldn’t understand,” she said quietly.

“Then make me.” Nianshen looked genuinely puzzled now.

Deborah looked at the soft glow of the bedside lamp. Nianshen could make such nice suggestions – like always doing this in that room… A wry smile touched her lips. He was so predictable, even after … years. “Okay,” she said quietly, as much to herself as for Nianshen. “There was an interview with Sophie in Le Monde—after the award ceremony.”

“Yes, the ceremony … ” Nianshen said.

“The whole thing got summed up in Le Monde. They asked her,” she continued. “Those journalists. The usual stuff about how she’d managed to remain so uncompromising for all these years, blah blah blah… but they asked her—about private things, too—the ‘human angle’… her old friends from the May days. And whether any of them had stayed in touch.”

“And?” 

“She said she had one friend left, who had known her since those days. Who always comes back.”

Nianshen looked at her squarely. “She said that about you?”

“She didn’t name names and I have not asked,” Deborah corrected. “But it made me think: Maybe I’m hanging onto the one person left … who gets it. The only one who can … go back 50 years with me like it was yesterday. You can’t find friends like that every day, especially at our age.” 

Nianshen leaned forward, reaching for her hand. “Qīn’ài de,” he said gently, “I hate to say it but you are drawing the wrong conclusion … with the time we have left, we should be more careful whom we use it with.”

Deborah shrugged. “Is that a business calculus? ‘Net beneficial friendship’?”

“If you put it that way,” Nianshen said. “There are good sides and bad sides to everyone, and from what you have told me Sophie has been after you since the late 80s, if not before. Who you married. Your choice of career. Who you voted for—everything. Those are very red numbers for me.”

“Maybe I just needed to vent the negative things,” Deborah sighed, “I never needed to say much about the positives. I just took them for granted, but if I focus more on them, they are there. Very much so. I won’t forget this evening.”

“You two didn’t argue then?”

“At the cafe, but not in her apartment. That … was like the old days.”

Nianshen got up and found a glass from the bar. He motioned for Deborah to finally sit down, on the big couch opposite the reading chair. Then he poured the rest of the wine from his bottle into her glass.

“It sounds like your account is in the black, then,” he said. “But don’t forget to audit it again next year.”

*

SOPHIE DELACROIX & DEBORAH, Paris, Fall 2016

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71A-060824

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