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By Root 243 0

the future. Hitler and the Japanese, as we had never doubted, were defeated. The war in Korea was an anomaly and far away. The imperial troubles to come were not yet in sight. I had been rejected for the Korean draft when the examining doctor asked when I had had polio. I said never. He said, “Think again,” and then I remembered my eighth or ninth summer, when I came down with a fever which my father said was the grippe. It had never occurred to me that this might have been polio, nor did my parents tell me. The doctor said that my right foot had been affected, something I had not previously noticed. Before I could dispute his diagnosis, I was asked to leave the line of candidates and go home. I disliked being rejected, but on reflection chose not to pursue the issue. Perhaps the doctor decided that the army would be better off without me. Our marriage proved bountiful. Though after many years it ended, the love we celebrated that day survives, undiminished after Barbara’s death last year.

By the time we found our way to the cabin, our friends had already arrived to say goodbye and spilled out onto the corridor. I remember yellow orchids and champagne splits in a silver tub of ice, bits of conversation. Then they left, and I was alone on the afterdeck looking down at the tugs as they backed the ship away from the pier and into the Hudson.

The next day was stormy. By late afternoon, the Ile de France, which had seemed so sturdy when its old-fashioned bows towered over the West Side Highway, was laboring through messy seas. Wrapped in blankets in a deck chair on the glassed-in promenade, I watched the ocean seem to rise almost to the level of the deck and then fall steeply away. Chopin and Satie drifted down from hidden speakers. Lunch, served on deck, had been chicken sandwiches, smoked salmon, and Chablis. I was reading the Maude translation of War and Peace. Edmund Wilson, the distinguished literary critic and essayist, was also aboard, with his wife, Elena. He was on his way to Israel to write about the Dead Sea Scrolls for The New Yorker. Wilson’s abundant output in those years required the services of several publishers. I was one of them, and we had become friends. That evening, Edmund and Elena joined us at the New Year’s Eve gala in the first-class dining room, with its grand double staircase and double-height ceiling. We had been assigned a table for six, and when the four of us arrived we found the great comic actor Buster Keaton and his wife in the other two seats. Keaton seemed uncomfortable in his tuxedo and old-fashioned starched collar. He barely spoke, oblivious to the pitching and rolling ship, unblinking, his mouth a horizontal slit, his eyes straight ahead, as deadpan as the character he played. He seemed to have no idea that Wilson in his world was as distinguished as himself in his. But when Wilson, a gifted prestidigitator who was juggling several festive cotton balls handed out at ships’ galas in those days, suggested to Keaton that he might perform for the passengers, Keaton replied politely but without expression, “No props,” and silently began juggling some cotton balls himself. I remember crêpes Suzette and cherries jubilee aflame as waiters struggled to remain upright beneath their trays, amid fox-trotters sliding this way and that across the polished floor, as the ship rose and fell through violent seas. “No props,” indeed.

In Paris, we lived in a vast, gloomy apartment at 35 rue de la Faisanderie, off Avenue Foch, looked after by an ancient housekeeper who replied to our infrequent requests, “J’ vais au cimetière.” Someone had told us that the Grand Véfour, in the Palais Royal, was the best restaurant in Paris, so almost every day Barbara and I went there for lunch or dinner or both. With American money, everything was cheap, even the best three-star restaurants. On the ship we had drunk La Tâche for five dollars a bottle. The Grand Véfour, which had opened in 1784 as Café de Chartres, is still the most beautiful dining room in Paris, with its gilt mirrors and red velvet upholstery. The menu