The Age of Desire by Jennie Fields Page A

she’s ever inhabited. The Comtesse slinks over to the sofa. Her feet are brown and sinewy, as glossy as polished bronze. Edith doesn’t think she’s ever been greeted by bare feet before. As a matter of fact, she’s seen few unshod feet in her entire life. She never once saw her own mother’s. There is something louche about bare feet—and thrilling.
    “Since last we met, I finished reading
Les Éblouissements
and was enchanted,” Edith announces. She feels passionate about de Noailles’s poetry. She is galvanized by her ability to marry nature with sensuality. The simple, organic poems remind her again and again of Walt Whitman, whom she desperately admires. “Were you writing poetry just now?” Edith asks.
    “I couldn’t write a thing today,” de Noailles says. “Do you have days where no words will come when you beckon them?” She stares directly into Edith’s eyes. “One’s heart is a shepherd. If only the words would follow like a docile flock. Too often they wander off on their own and we spend days looking for them.”
    Edith laughs, and can’t help feeling that though Anna de Noailles is much younger, she is the wiser.
    “Are you living in Paris now?” de Noailles asks.
    “Just until the end of spring.”
    “And then, New York?”
    “And then we go to our country place in Massachusetts, not far from New York.”
    “And what do you think of Paris?”
    “I feel at home here. I spent a lot of time in Paris as a child.”
    “I could live nowhere else,” de Noailles says. “But the French are a locked house. I was born in France, yet my father was a Romanian, my mother Greek. They think me a foreigner so I’ll never be invited inside.”
    “And if they don’t accept
you
, Comtesse, it’s certain
I
won’t be allowed beyond the front gate,” Edith says.
    “And yet Paris is the center of the world,
non
?”
    The
bonne
reenters the room balancing a heavy silver tray. Plates of sweets accompany the service: petits fours and biscuits with jammy centers. De Noailles poses high her birdlike wrists to pour the tea. Falling from so far above, it sings a melody into the cups.
    “Since Rosa’s, I’ve spoken often of your book,” de Noailles says. “I was surprised how many people have already read it. You should hear what they say! I’m angry at myself for not knowing English better.”
    “It won’t be long until the French translation is done.”
    “And where will it appear?”
    “Perhaps the
Revue de Paris
, if they are willing to publish it.”
    “They published my first poems. I was just a girl. But it seems they publish little by women these days.”
    Edith takes a sip of tea, which seems particularly strong and fortifying. “Does anyone publish much by women?”
    De Noailles shrugs and nibbles at the edge of a petit four. “There are so few of us who write, Madame Wharton. Or perhaps many women write—but only a few put their work up for public inspection. Are you mostly read by men or women?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I’d wager women. Women read with their hearts. They’re more eager to journey on words, because their lives are narrower.”
    “I never thought it mattered,” Edith says. “As long as people were reading my books.” But as Edith ponders it, in fact she has been most pleased when men think her worth reading. She feels herself redden with guilt.
    Anna de Noailles glances up.
    “Men validate us, don’t they?” she says, as though Edith had spoken her thoughts aloud.
    Edith nods.
    “Ah,” de Noailles says. “We are traitors.” And then she laughs. Her laugh is free and young and full of hope.
    De Noailles gets up suddenly and walks to the cabinet by the fireplace. She exudes the darkest mysteries of sensuality in every move she makes. In some odd, subtle way, she even stirs Edith. From a shelf she draws a hammered-silver flask. It sparkles in the firelight. Without asking, she pours some of its contents into Edith’s tea and then into her own. “We