Chapter 1
The departure of the Man in the Wing Chair’s mother left an odd void in the house.
Outside, the bitterly cold weather continued, with snow piling up on window ledges, blocking doors, freezing on tree branches.
Inside, Miss Prim’s work was progressing despite frequent interruptions from the children, who burned off their inexhaustible energy playing, running, and hiding in the rooms, corridors, and staircases of the house.
The librarian spent her afternoons cataloguing heavy, dusty volumes, some with no more value than the fact of having been in the house for many lonely years; others were true survivors, brought long ago to San Ireneo by the family’s forebears.
Miss Prim liked these books. It moved her to think of them there, on those old shelves, bearing witness to the stealthy arrival of night and the dawning of each new day.
“I’m amazed that I’ve never once heard you sneeze, Prudencia. There’s more dust on those books than any human could possibly endure.” The Man in the Wing Chair came huffing and puffing into the library, bundled up in a scarf that nearly covered his face, a hat, thick coat, and heavy snow boots.
“Is that really you under there?” asked the librarian jokingly.
“Laugh all you like, but it’s fiendishly cold outside. You can’t stay out in the garden for more than half an hour,” he replied, removing his scarf, hat, gloves, and coat.
“You should take off those boots and put something warm on. Shall I ask for tea to be brought in?”
“Yes, if you would, I’d be really grateful. Damn, my hands are so cold I can’t untie my laces,” he complained.
Miss Prim went over silently. She bent down, taking care not to kneel, and began undoing his bootlaces.
“That’s very kind. Believe me, I appreciate the significance of the gesture,” he said with a smile.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked sharply, struggling to keep her balance and untie his right boot still without kneeling.
“That I think I can guess the symbolic resonance certain attitudes and gestures have for you.”
“If that were so, I wouldn’t be doing this, would I?”
“Of course you would. Your Prussian sense of duty always triumphs.”
She pursed her lips and continued with her task.
“I think it’s done.”
“Thanks,” he said gently.
Miss Prim went to fetch the tray that the cook had left on the hall table.
Since their recent falling-out, the two women had tacitly agreed to avoid each other insofar as was possible.
They greeted each other as they passed in the hall or came across each other in the kitchen or garden but, beyond this minimum of politeness, relations between them were as icy as the weather.
The librarian was quite happy with this arrangement; after all, she was not part of the domestic staff.
If she needed anything, she asked one of the three girls from the village who worked at the house as cleaners, maids of all work, and ad hoc nannies.
She didn’t need to speak to the dragon at the stove, not at all.
And yet, she reflected as she set out the tea things on the table in front of the fire, she had to admit that Mrs. Rouan was good at her job.
Her cream puffs, wonderfully light cheesecake, delicious carrot cake, and dainty sandwiches—arranged in four stacks of triangles, each with a different filling—were beyond compare.
Her tea trays always featured China tea, creamy milk, and slices of toasted home-baked bread, thickly spread with butter and honey.
Miss Prim was compelled to concede that this was all very much to the cook’s credit.
The Man in the Wing Chair rubbed his hands together and observed in silence as Miss Prim performed the ritual of serving the tea.
The house was unusually quiet as the children were in the greenhouse, watching the gardener take cuttings and lovingly tend the seedlings that would be planted out next year.
“The variety of books that has accumulated in this room is fascinating,” remarked the librarian. “I’ve been playing a game, guessing which belonged to men and which to women.”
The Man in the Wing Chair smiled, slowly stirring his tea.
“Not very difficult. I think it’s pretty easy to identify what’s aimed at women: just check the sex of the author. It’s strange that men mostly write for both sexes, but women write for women. With a few honorable exceptions, of course.”
Miss Prim helped herself to a foie-gras sandwich and took a deep breath before turning to him.
“Women haven’t always written for other women,” she retorted. “It’s a fairly recent sociological phenomenon. Until around a hundred years ago, it was as common for men to read female authors as male.”
“If less pleasurable,” said the Man in the Wing Chair with a laugh.
The librarian put the sandwich down on her plate.
“Would you mind telling me what you’re laughing at?” she asked frostily.
He looked at her with calm delight.
“At you, of course. Isn’t that what I’m always doing?”
“And what’s funny about me at this moment, may I ask?”
“The fact that you always have a psychosociological explanation for everything. You should learn to see the world as it is, Prudencia, not as you’d like it to be.
You don’t have to be very perceptive to see that a small boy will hugely enjoy reading Treasure Island but feel quite sick at the thought of—”
“Little Women, for instance?”
He nodded, smiling. “Indeed, Little Women.”
“Incidentally,” Miss Prim raised her nose self-importantly, “have you read it, finally? Or did you suddenly feel too sick to go through with it?”
The man drew his feet away from the fire, sat up straight in his chair, and moved it closer to the table, leaning forward as if about to play chess. She in turn reclined into her armchair and folded her arms across her chest, awaiting an explanation.
“I have read it.”
Miss Prim’s eyes widened, but she composed herself instantly, resuming her appearance of defiance.
“And?”
“I have to admit, it has a certain charm.”
“Well, well.”
“Yes, and I don’t mind the girls reading it, but it’s of no interest to me.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, it’s a minor novel, cloying and sentimental.”
The librarian sat up, glowering.
“Which is the greatest sin a human being can commit, isn’t it?” she said cuttingly. “You think sentimentality is a sort of crime, even a perversion, don’t you? Ice-cold, intelligent people don’t go in for sentiment. That’s for the common people and uneducated women.”
The Man in the Wing Chair stretched out his legs and leaned back again.
“I wouldn’t say that,” he said. “You’d be amazed at what good taste in literature the common man has shown at various times in history.”
“Times that are past, never to return, I presume.”
“I’m not sure never is the right word, though I suspect it may be. But now you mention it, I have to say that what you said about uneducated women and sentimentality is accurate. Of course nowadays the problem affects highly educated women as well.”
“As in my case, of course.”
“Indeed, as in your case.”
Miss Prim clenched her jaw so tightly that her teeth ground together.
Losing her temper now would be the worst thing she could do when she was being accused of sentimentality.
Instead, she must prove that sentiment did not hamper proper reasoning.
She struggled for a few seconds that seemed to last for ever.
“Tell me,” she said with forced sweetness, “how do you manage to be so cold?”
He looked up in amazement.
“Cold? Me? You think I’m cold?”
“You detest sentimentality; you just said so.”
“That’s true, I do, but it doesn’t make me a cold person.
Sentimentality is one thing, sentiment is another, Prudencia.
Sentimentality is a pathology of the mind, or of the emotions, if you like, which swell up, outgrow their proper place, go crazy, obscure judgment.
Not being sentimental doesn’t mean that one lacks feelings, but simply that one knows how to channel them.
The ideal—and I’m sure you agree—is to possess a cool head and a tender heart. ”
The librarian remained silent for a few moments while she released her jaw. As usual, this discussion with him had given her a headache. She didn’t understand the logic of the conversation. How had they reached this point? When had they gone from women’s literature to the pathology of the emotions?
“Dickens used to read Mrs. Gaskell. Your hero, Cardinal Newman, read Jane Austen. And Henry James read Edith Wharton,” she said determinedly.
“Three good writers. Three intelligent and unsentimental women.”
“The question is not whether they’re good or bad writers, or whether they’re sentimental. The question is whether there was a time when men—great men—read novels written by women.”
“True,” said the Man in the Wing Chair, pushing his seat even farther away from the fireplace.
“But in my opinion this is for two good reasons. One, a woman publishing a novel still had an allure of audacity; and two, women provided a reasonable but different view of the world. Nowadays women’s writing has lost its capacity to make us change our gaze, look at things in a different way.
When I read a novel by a woman I get the impression that the author is doing nothing more than looking at herself. ”
Miss Prim stared fixedly at her employer. She was shocked by how easily he maintained all sorts of outrageous opinions. Most people would feel ashamed of thinking, let alone saying, such things. He said them calmly, almost cheerfully.
“Maybe women look at themselves now because they’ve spent too long looking at others,” she muttered.
“Come on, Prudencia, that’s much too simplistic for you.”
“You’re wrong,” she said, leaping to her feet and going back to the shelf she’d been working on. “Nothing is too simplistic for me. I’m a woman ruled by sentiment, remember?”
The Man in the Wing Chair stood and, gathering up his hat, coat, and scarf, headed to the library door.