Free As Max Saw It by Louis Begley Page B

smell of the vegetables she stirs in the frying pan for dinner clings to her skin. There is a way she has of bringing him cups of tea when he works at his desk that makes him unable to concentrate. When he packs her off to the Harkness he gives her a key and tells her she must call before she comes over.
    In no time at all, she asks if she may introduce a new friend. He is a Chinese scholar, that’s what he calls himself, at the Business School; same model, Max thinks, as the friend he imagined she might have at Beida. They have dinner à trois in the Chinese restaurant on Massachusetts Avenue across the street from Wigglesworth. The scholar insists on paying. Miss Wang continues to sleep with Max, but it’s all much lighter now; they have a good time when they talk, like in Beijing; her first examinations are approaching, and he helps her get prepared. One day, he receives a letter from Miss Wang. It covers two large sheets of pink paper with flowers in the upper-right-hand corner. The handwriting is beautiful; there are really no mistakes in her English. She thanks him for her new life and apologizes. The scholar and she are in love. She is returning the key to Sparks Street. It’s just as well, considering how much time Camilla is spending there.
    S HE HAS BLOND HAIR , green eyes, and long legs. Doesn’t use deodorant; or perfume, either. First woman he hasknown whose armpits aren’t shaved. An English girl, living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Backed by a first-class degree from a women’s college at Oxford, she does something or other at the Fogg. It turns out to be conservation of prints and drawings. The father is a fashionable don at Oxford. He teaches philosophy and publishes catchy articles in the
New York Review of Books
. Mother, a psychoanalyst. They know everybody; that’s made clear when Max meets Camilla at the Kahns’ Sunday lunch.
    Camilla and Max go to his apartment directly from lunch. He still lives on Sparks Street, looking for something larger. Would she like a brandy? He puts a recording of
Dido and Aeneas
on the turntable, makes sure that she sits down on the sofa, where he can be beside her, and not on an armchair. His visits to England have been very brief. The way she talks is amusing. Is it the Oxford accent, or an abbreviated form of speech that’s even more refined? At times, during lunch, he didn’t understand what she was saying. He fiddles with the snifters, which are too large, and the bottle.
    She says, Aren’t you taking me to bed?
    He has never made love like this before. There are no preliminaries. The borders that are crossed he would have thought were lifetimes away.
    It’s six o’clock. She picks up her clothes, urinates loudly leaving the bathroom door open, uses his toothbrush, and tells him she may be found in the telephone book.
    He calls—the next day.
    T HE MARRIAGE to Camilla is contracted carelessly.
    She loves gardens. The apartment on Highland Terracethey move into, really the wing of a large house, belongs to the aged widow of a Medical School professor, a cousin of the Storrows. It has a brick-lined patio. Around it, beds where the widow’s gardener has planted perennials. The widow agrees to give them a right of first refusal; as she has no intention of selling the house, it will be of use only when she dies. Camilla is very cheerful. She whistles when she is in the house, wears jeans and Max’s worn-out shirts, and bicycles to the Fogg. She has replanted the handkerchief-sized garden. The gardener—initially skeptical—approves of the result, and weeds and waters when they are away. She is keeping the apartment very bare; Max has so many books one doesn’t need anything except a bed. A bed they have. Other furniture arrives later. Max has never been so happy.
    Camilla longs for the country. Her parents live in an ancient stone house, a half hour outside Oxford; that’s how she was brought up. If they only had a place to get away to on weekends, and for