A Sport and a Pastime

Set in provincial France in the early 1960s, the novel is narrated by an unnamed American in his early thirties who has borrowed a house in the small Burgundian town of Autun from Billy and Cristina Wheatland, wealthy American expatriates living in Paris. The narrator, a photographer, travels by train from Paris in September and arrives at a large, old stone house built on the Roman wall, its iron gate bearing the inscription "VAINCRE OU MOURIR" (Conquer or Die). He settles into Autun's rhythms, waking before dawn to church bells and wandering streets where his foreignness is obvious. Early on, he introduces a crucial disclaimer: "None of this is true," he writes, explaining he is "only putting down details which entered me, fragments that were able to part my flesh" (9). He calls it "a story of things that never existed" (9), establishing the fundamental unreliability of everything that follows.

At a party at the Beneduces' apartment in Paris, the narrator meets Phillip Dean, a 24-year-old American with wide-set, intelligent eyes and sun-dried hair, recently back from traveling in Spain with his father, a drama critic. The narrator is immediately drawn to Dean, thinking of "schoolboy heroes" (20). When the narrator describes life in Autun, Dean calls it "the real France" (23). At nearly five in the morning, Cristina remarks that Dean is "a nice boy" and asks the narrator if he wishes he were that young again.

In early October, Dean arrives unexpectedly in Autun, driving a 1952 Delage convertible he claims a friend has lent him. Over dinner, he reveals he dropped out of Yale. The narrator is both impressed and envious, seeing in Dean's life something "more truthful than mine, stronger, even able to draw mine to it like the pull of a dark star" (31). Dean's sister later explains that college was too easy for Dean: He had a mathematics scholarship, passed exams for courses he never attended, and eventually quit altogether.

Through autumn, the two men explore the region, driving through Beaune, Dijon, and Nancy in the Delage. They visit Henri and Juliette Job, a local couple; Henri is a controlling factory manager, and Juliette thinks Dean resembles a movie actor. Meanwhile, the narrator develops an obsessive longing for Claude Picquet, a divorced woman who works at the town hall, but never acts on it. When he learns she is engaged to a younger student, he feels relieved, since her engagement provides a reason for his inaction.

On December third, Dean introduces the narrator to Anne-Marie Costallat, an 18-year-old French girl with pure features and white arms. Born in 1944, she worked briefly for the U.S. Army in Orléans and speaks limited English. From this point, the narrator reconstructs, or invents, the intimate history of Dean and Anne-Marie's affair. He declares himself "an agent provocateur or as a double agent" (49), acknowledging that some things he saw, some he discovered, and some he dreamed, and he can "no longer differentiate between them" (50). He confesses he is afraid of Dean, "of all men who are successful in love" (50).

The narrator describes the lovers' first sexual encounter in a Paris hotel with explicit, lyrical detail, establishing the novel's characteristic fusion of the carnal and the poetic. Dean borrows money from his father and cannot bring Anne-Marie to dinner because her clothes are too cheap. As the affair deepens through winter, the narrator becomes increasingly consumed by imagining the lovers' life, admitting that "my own life suddenly seems nothing, an old costume, a collection of rags" (57). In Nancy, Anne-Marie tells Dean an invented fairy tale that ends with a prince scalded to death. Dean recognizes for the first time that she can "create images strong enough to alter his life" (61).

Background on both lovers emerges through the narrator's account. Anne-Marie's father, a Belgian, left her mother before Anne-Marie was born; her mother endured a difficult winter alone and eventually remarried. Dean's mother died by suicide, drowning herself in the Connecticut River when Dean was six, having burned her diaries beforehand. The narrator warns the reader: "I am not telling the truth about Dean, I am inventing him. I am creating him out of my own inadequacies, you must always remember that" (77).

The relationship oscillates between tenderness and tension. When gendarmes, the French police, pull Dean over near Beaune, his French crumbles and he lies; Anne-Marie's disappointed silence wounds him. At a restaurant in Sens, he becomes self-conscious beside elegant diners, seeing Anne-Marie's face as "a shopgirl's . . . pretty but cheap" (87). She cannot finish the oversized meal and vomits by the cathedral; his cruelty gives way to tenderness. He visits her family in St. Léger, where he cannot communicate with her taciturn stepfather. When Anne-Marie mentions her mother's material needs, Dean responds with acid sarcasm.

In spring, they take their most ambitious journey: a tour of the Loire Valley and the Atlantic coast. They visit the great châteaux, spend six days by the sea, and she calls him Mon mari (my husband). They discuss their future son, whom she wants to name Dmitri. But Dean is gripped by financial anxiety and a growing dread. He counts his remaining money in hotel rooms and feels the life he is living is not his own but "the life of some victim" (156). Dean is filled with "intimations of being found somehow, of being seized and taken away" (143).

Back in Autun, Dean tells the narrator he is leaving for America. He has no money and must talk to his father. He asks for 300 dollars, offering the Delage as collateral. The narrator knows the car is not Dean's to offer but gives him the money, feeling "the act is somehow criminal" (169).

Dean tells Anne-Marie he will return for her. She says flatly: "Non" (171). He swears on the head of his dead mother, describing their future life in America: a studio downtown, windows overlooking a bridge. In her room, he makes love to her "with great tenderness, kissing her shoulders, listening to her breath" (177). Afterwards, he touches her face and finds it "wet with tears" (175). The morning of his departure, he takes Anne-Marie to work and they sit parked outside for a few minutes. He drives off, turning his head for a final wave. The street curves. He is gone.

In a final meeting at the Café Foy, the narrator learns that Dean was killed in a motor accident on a rainy night in June. "I could not believe the news," the narrator states. "It seemed impossible, it seemed false, even if I'd expected it all along" (180). Anne-Marie cries when the narrator takes her hand. She declines dinner, murmurs thanks, and walks out, "moving by people, not touching them, walking rather fast" (181).

Afterwards, the narrator finds a letter from Anne-Marie declaring, "I will die otherwise. I understand now that we can die of love" (182). The Delage sits under the trees, deteriorating, its dashboard clock ticking unheard until one day it stops. The narrator reflects that "Dean never died, his existence is superior to such accidents" (183). He meditates on heroes: "One must have heroes, which is to say, one must create them. . . . They fade. They vanish. They are surpassed, forgotten" (183). Anne-Marie lives in Troyes now, or did. She is married. The narrator supposes there are children. "They walk together on Sundays, the sunlight falling upon them . . . deep in the life we all agree is so greatly to be desired" (183).