The Stars Above Veracruz by Barry Gifford

Author:Barry Gifford [Gifford, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Short Stories
ISBN: 9781560258070
Google: xCpQX-5MqeQC
Amazon: 1560258071
Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press
Published: 2006-12-13T08:00:00+00:00

I got almost

all the way now

through my life

and I never hated

another person

no matter what

anyone done

How many people

you know

could say this

without it

be a lie?

The Sculptor's Son

Paris

SEVERAL YEARS AGO, WHEN I WAS SUFFERING THE AFTERMATH OF divorce from my first wife, I fled to Paris in an attempt to restore myself. At a dinner party one night while I was there, I met a young doctor who told me an interesting story. Didier was several years younger than I, charming and cheerful. Just talking with him buoyed my spirits. He asked me what I was doing in France and after I’d told him, he smiled and said that his father seemed to have an answer for dealing with failed or passe relationships. I responded that I was eager to hear about it.

Didier’s father, he told me, had been married six or seven times, Didier was not sure, and had had almost that many live-in mistresses. Didier’s mother had been the second wife. There were eleven children in all, never more than one with each wife or mistress. Didier’s father owned a large house outside Paris, a house that had steadily grown larger and more compartmentalized over the years. The reason for this expansion was a result of Didier’s father’s solution.

Each time his father decided that a marital or pseudo-marital situation had deteriorated irreparably, Didier explained, he began building a partition within the house or an addition to it, creating new living quarters for himself. He never asked his lame-duck partner to leave or even to divorce; he just stopped arguing, cut himself off from her and created another space to occupy. Some of the women became upset, Didier said, and immediately or eventually moved away; others, for various reasons, particularly those with children, stayed on. Didier’s father made no attempt to explain his actions; soon the pattern became obvious, then expected.

How many women still lived in his father’s house? I asked Didier. Nine, he answered, including his father’s present wife, who was pregnant. Do the women get along? I wanted to know. Some do, some don’t, said Didier. It’s like a small town. For the sake of the children, of whom there are six—soon to be seven—in residence, he said, the women make an effort to be decent to one another. Are the estranged wives and former mistresses allowed to bring other men to the house? Of course, they can, replied Didier, they can do whatever they like; except the men cannot live at the house, only visit. My father insists, quite reasonably, I think, that his financial responsibility is to the women and his children only. If one of the women enters into a domestic relationship with a man, or becomes pregnant by a man other than my father, she is made to leave. His father, Didier assured me, was not an ungenerous man; each woman was always amply provided for.

I asked Didier what his fathers profession was. He’s a sculptor, Didier said, quite a successful one. But the family has been wealthy for generations; they own banks in Switzerland and America.

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