Free Paris Stories by Mavis Gallant Page A

sizes.”
    “The women in the family never wondered if men were lying,” she said. “They never questioned being dispossessed. They were taught to think that lies were a joke on the liar. That was why they lost out. He gave me the price of the gold in the band, as a favor, and I left the ring there. I never went back.”
    He put the lid on the box of stamps, and it fitted; he removed it, put it back, and said, “What time do you turn on your TV?”
    “Sometimes never. Why?”
    “At home I have it from six o’clock.”
    The old man came in with a pink-and-white face, bearing about him a smell of cold and of snow. He put down his shopping bag and took things out—chocolate and bottles and newspapers. He said, “I had to go all the way to the station for the papers. There is only one shop open, and even then I had to go round to the back door.”
    “I warned you that today was Christmas,” Irina said.
    Mr. Aiken said to Riri, “When I was still a drinking man this was the best hour of the day. If I had a glass now, I could put ice in it. Then I might add water. Then if I had water I could add whiskey. I know it is all the wrong way around, but at least I’ve started with a glass.”
    “You had wine with your lunch and gin instead of tea and I believe you had straight gin before lunch,” she said, gatheringup the beads and coins and the turpentine and making the table Riri’s domain again.
    “Riri drank that,” he said. It was so obviously a joke that she turned her head and put the basket down and covered her laugh with her fingers, as she had when she’d opened the door to him—oh, a long time ago now.
    “I haven’t a drop of anything left in the house,” she said. That didn’t matter, the old man said, for he had found what he needed. Riri watched and saw that when he lifted his glass his hand did not tremble at all. What his grandmother had said about that was true.
    They had early supper and then Riri, after a courageous try at keeping awake, gave up even on television and let her make his bed of scented sheets, deep pillows, a feather quilt. The two others sat for a long time at the table, with just one lamp, talking in low voices. She had a pile of notebooks from which she read aloud and sometimes she showed Mr. Aiken things. He could see them through the chinks in the bamboo screen. He watched the lamp shadows for a while and then it was as if the lamp had gone out and he slept deeply.
    The room was full of mound shapes, as it had been that morning when he arrived. He had not heard them leave the room. His Christmas watch had hands that glowed in the dark. He put on his glasses. It was half past ten. His grandmother was being just a bit loud at the telephone; that was what had woken him up. He rose, put on his slippers, and stumbled out to the bathroom.
    “Just answer yes or no,” she was saying. “No, he can’t. He has been asleep for an hour, two hours, at least.… Don’t lie to me—I am bound to find the truth out. Was it a tumor? An extrauterine pregnancy? … Well, look.… Was she or was she not pregnant? What can you mean by ‘not exactly’? If you don’t know, who will?” She happened to turn her head, and saw him and said without a change of tone, “Your son is here, in his pajamas; he wants to say good night to you.”
    She gave up the telephone and immediately went away so that the child could talk privately. She heard him say, “I drank some kind of alcohol.”
    So that was the important part of the day: not the journey, not the necklace, not even the strange old guest with the comic accent. She could tell from the sound of the child’s voice that he was smiling. She picked up his bathrobe, went back to the hall, and put it over his shoulders. He scarcely saw her: He was concentrated on the distant voice. He said, in a matter-of-fact way, “All right, good-bye,” and hung up.
    “What a lot of things you have pulled out of that knapsack,” she said.
    “It’s a large