Free Across the Bridge by Mavis Gallant Page B

lap; and swallowed a piece of bread.
    M. Turbin said he was sorry. He had taken it for grantedthat any compatriot of the great Louis Pasteur must have seen a needle or two. Needles were only a means to an end.
    Mme. Brouet glanced at her husband, pleading for help, but he had just put a bite of food into his mouth. He was always last to be served when there were guests, and everything got to him cold. That was probably why he ate in such a hurry. He shrugged, meaning, Change the subject.
    “Pascal,” she said, turning to him. At last, she thought of something to say: “Do you remember Mlle. Turbin? Charlotte Turbin?”
    “Brigitte?” said Pascal.
    “I’m sure you remember,” she said, not listening at all. “In the travel agency, on Rue Caumartin?”
    “She gave me the corrida poster,” said Pascal, wondering how this had slipped her mind.
    “We went to see her, you and I, the time we wanted to go to Egypt? Now do you remember?”
    “We never went to Egypt.”
    “No. Papa couldn’t get away just then, so we finally went back to Deauville, where Papa has so many cousins. So you do remember Mlle. Turbin, with the pretty auburn hair?”
    “Chestnut,” said the two Turbins, together.
    “My sister,” said Dédé, all of a sudden, indicating her with his left hand, the right clutching a wineglass. “Before she got married, my mother told me …” The story, whatever it was, engulfed him in laughter. “A dog tried to bite her,” he managed to say.
    “You can tell us about it another time,” said his sister.
    He continued to laugh, softly, just to himself, while Abelarda changed the plates again.
    The magistrate examined his clean new plate. No immediate surprises: salad, another plate, cheese, a dessert plate. His wife had given up on Mlle. Turbin. Really, it was his turn now, her silence said.
    “I may have mentioned this before,” said the magistrate. “And I would not wish to keep saying the same things over and over. But I wonder if you agree that the pivot of French politics today is no longer in France.”
    “The Middle East,” said M. Turbin, nodding his head.
    “Washington,” said M. Chevallier-Crochet. “Washington calls Paris every morning and says, Do this, Do that.”
    “The Middle East and the Soviet Union,” said M. Turbin.
    “There,” said M. Brouet. “We are all in agreement.”
    Many of the magistrate’s relatives and friends thought he should be closer to government, to power. But his wife wanted him to stay where he was and get his pension. After he retired, when Pascal was grown, they would visit Tibet and the north of China, and winter in Kashmir.
    “You know, this morning –” said Dédé, getting on with something that was on his mind.
    “Another time,” said his sister. “Never mind about this morning. It is all forgotten. Étienne is speaking, now.”
    This morning! The guests had no idea, couldn’t begin to imagine what had taken place, here, in the dining room, at this very table. Dédé had announced, overjoyed, “I’ve got my degree.” For Dédé was taking a correspondence course that could not lead to a degree of any kind. It must have been just his way of trying to stop studying so that he could go home.
    “Degree?” The magistrate folded yesterday’s
Le Monde
carefully before putting it down. “What do you mean, degree?”
    Pascal’s mother got up to make fresh coffee. “I’m glad to hear it, Dédé,” she said.
    “A degree in what?” said the magistrate.
    Dédé shrugged, as if no one had bothered to tell him. “It came just the other day,” he said. “I’ve got my degree, and now I can go home.”
    “Is there something you could show us?”
    “There was just a letter, and I lost it,” said Dédé. “A real diploma costs two thousand francs. I don’t know where I’d find the money.”
    The magistrate did not seem to disbelieve; that was because of his training. But then he said, “You began your course about a month ago?”
    “I