The checkout woman scanned the first package, then let the others go by as she counted them. Thankfully, she handled them with the same neutrality she would herbal tea.
Suddenly she shouted, “No, look, they’re not all the same! There are regular ones and then some are extra large. That’s all wrong! Look, there are even some extra extra large.”
Alice nearly choked. “Umm…yes,” she admitted, forcing herself to laugh to seem relaxed.
“You’ve made a mistake. Do you want to exchange them?”
“No, no…I’ll keep everything,” she rushed to answer, before regretting it when she realized what that implied.
The checkout woman swept all the packages back so she could scan them one at a time. Several fell on the floor. Alice bent down to pick them up. So did the handsome man…who handed her a box with a knowing smile. Alice felt herself turn bright red.
The beeps of the scanner echoed, each one a sharp little needle of shame, as she watched the boxes go by one by one.
She quickly paid and threw everything higgledy-piggledy into the cart.
“Have a good evening,” said the handsome man, looking at her with a twinkle in his eyes.
She fled.
Out of the question to go to Customer Service for a refund. Too bad!
She quickly dumped everything from her cart into one of the Catholic Relief Services’ containers.
“Thank you, madam, for your generosity,” a very aristocratic woman in her sixties said. Alice nodded and walked away as the woman was putting on her glasses, a box of condoms in her hand.
14
A total failure.
Nothing to be learned from that disastrous experiment.
Humiliated, yes; happy, no. And there had been not a glimpse of the “path.”
Once home, Alice paced up and down the living room while the water was boiling for her tea. She was angry but refused to admit defeat. She refused to believe she couldn’t learn anything from the mysterious precepts. No one had been able to explain them. Okay. Experimentation hadn’t worked. There was no denying it.
Well…she would try a new experiment.
Never abandon anything after a single failure. She had promised that to herself after failing her baccalaureate exam at eighteen. She had passed the following year and made it through the competition to get into the École Libre des Sciences Politiques two years later. Nothing is ever beyond all hope.
And, sure, she had felt humiliated at the supermarket, which wasn’t fun for anyone. But after all, she was still alive! So she’d already learned something.
It was 6:15. She still had an hour before the nanny arrived. A new idea had just come to mind, and she wanted to try it out immediately. Don’t finish the day on a failure.
She ran into her bedroom and took off her high heels, her fitted suit and silk blouse. She emptied her closet and found an old pair of jeans that she’d cut up years before to turn into a pair of long shorts. She put them on and looked at herself in the mirror. They were shapeless, and her bottom looked deformed. Without a hem, several inches of the edges were frayed to right below her knees.
She put on the old sneakers she kept for jogging through puddles on winter evenings. Finally, she slipped on a sleeveless T-shirt her friends had given her for her bachelorette party: white with a large orange and yellow Superman S in the center, and in big, fat orange letters, the words SUPER MAMA.
She ran into the bathroom and rubbed off some of her makeup, let her hair down, took off her watch and jewelry, then glanced in the mirror.
She looked like no one in particular.
Courage.
She emptied the contents of her handbag into a plastic shopping bag and ran toward the building’s elevator. In the foyer on the ground floor, she ran into the downstairs neighbor. The woman looked at her condescendingly without even bothering to say hello.
Alice put up with the humiliation, which was no worse than the unbelievable irritation she normally experienced when she felt belittled in the presence of this woman, or any other woman she found more sophisticated than herself.
A short walk and five subway stops later, Alice was at her final destination.
Hermès.
The windows of the famous boutique on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré were lavishly decorated with the new spring-summer collection, tastefully arranged, and with price tags that seemed to be aimed at a Japanese or Middle Eastern clientele.
At that very moment, a European woman proved her wrong. She approached the beautiful polished dark wood door, which a doorman was quick to open for her, greeting her respectfully.
For the first time, Alice hesitated. Was she really going to inflict shame on herself by risking the disapproving looks and even comments of the saleswomen? And what if she was escorted out? What if they wouldn’t even let her in? What exactly was she hoping to learn from this?
Idiot! It’s exactly because you don’t know that you need to do it!
What if she was doing this for nothing? What if she learned nothing from it, like at the supermarket? And why hadn’t she learned anything then?
Because she was fighting her shame, she thought. She had done everything to avoid feeling ashamed, averting her gaze, forcing herself to think about something else. In the end, perhaps she hadn’t actually experienced her humiliation?
Good grief, you’re turning into a masochist, you poor thing.
In his tragedy Agamemnon, didn’t Aeschylus ask us to suffer in order to understand? She had to experience the humiliation, let herself feel it, listen to and understand her sensations.
Go on.
She took a deep breath, then walked toward the majestic door.
The doorman did not open it—she had to push it open by herself and go inside. He looked her up and down but said nothing.
The soft lighting and delicately perfumed atmosphere created a very refined ambiance. It was the first time she had gone into this pinnacle of Parisian luxury, and she would have preferred to experience it in other circumstances than the ones she was in now, with a knot in her stomach and a weight on her chest.
Relax, it’s just an experiment.
She glanced around and saw several saleswomen look her up and down with disdain.
That’s it. I’m ashamed.
She felt a mixture of shame and anger, anger toward these saleswomen, anger at the doorman, anger at Jesus with his unbelievably stupid precepts.
I would have liked to see him at Hermès, with his tunic and sandals!
There were customers here and there—not a dense crowd, but a good number all the same. She turned around and saw a young woman come in. A saleswoman, all smiles, walked straight over to welcome her. No one greeted Alice. She had been well and truly ignored.
Obviously, the way she was dressed demonstrated a lack of means to buy the articles for sale. And strangely, Alice found that humiliating in itself: she felt as if she were wearing a sign around her neck that said NOT RICH ENOUGH TO BUY. And that made her feel like setting everyone straight by shouting, “Actually, I can afford these things! This is just a game, an experiment! I have the money to be a customer like anyone else.”
But why? Why did she want them to know?
I want them to know that I am worth something.
And yet she knew very well that her worth had nothing to do with her income. We aren’t what we earn, that’s obvious! But she must have believed the opposite a little, deep down…and immediately she got annoyed with herself.
In any case, why should it be important that these strangers see my worth?
It was true: she didn’t know them and would never see them again. She again felt guilty when she realized that her sense of self depended on how others saw her, on their judgment. What was the point of working on personal development for years to still end up here?
I am not my clothes! I am not my money! I am not what other people think of me!
She felt the need to shout these truths in her own mind to be convinced once
and for all, and to be free of these idiotic illusions, which had been put into her head against her will, illusions that remained, despite the work she had done on herself, illusions that did not even match up to her own values.
And suddenly she realized the negative expressions she had used: I am not my clothes, my money, et cetera. The rejection of those illusions did not state who she was. She felt a kind of vertigo: how can you refuse to be what you aren’t, if you don’t know what you are?
Around her, rich customers walked by without looking at her. The saleswomen continued to haughtily ignore her. To these people, she actually did not exist. She was nothing more than what she was not in their eyes.
Unsettled by her thoughts, her pride wounded, she continued to walk through the boutique, under the dimmed lights, on the thick carpet, amid the luxurious clothing and expensive leather goods. And the more she walked, the more detached she felt from her surroundings, from the people there, and even from herself. Her humiliation slowly transformed into a sort of internal void, a soothing nonexistence.
She strolled through the rooms and different floors of the boutique as if she were floating through the air, and from this state of nonexistence, a feeling of freedom gradually emerged, a sweet, light kind of freedom, a vague feeling that emanated from deep within her, totally liberating her from the habitual pressure of appearances. She let herself taste that strange, new sensation, savor it, and suddenly she felt alive, truly alive.
She was no longer that floating cloud she had been a few minutes before. On the contrary, she now felt more and more present in her body, more and more conscious. Conscious of existing, conscious of being herself, and even of existing beyond herself, beyond the limits of her body. This consciousness was mixed with a feeling of extraordinary joy that rose from within her, a joy that grew and grew, radiating through her entire body, her mind, and all around her, like an invisible but very real aura. It was a kind of joy greater than all the moments of bliss she had known before.
There she was, ugly, sloppily dressed, ignored by everyone, and she felt more alive than ever.
15
Cluny in no way resembles the typical villages that have been renovated down to the smallest detail and that, at first glance, are so appealing until you start wondering if you haven’t somehow landed in Disneyland. Cluny is quite the opposite: it is an authentic medieval city whose beauty is not obvious at first. The narrow streets leading to the town center can give visitors who come for a short visit the impression it is somewhat worn, sad, and with nothing of interest apart from the monuments that tourists find attractive. Cluny’s true beauty appears to people who allow themselves the time to get a feel for the place, to look beyond the old, peeling, whitewashed walls so they can discover a profusion of architectural ornaments that meld into the facades like chameleons on the branches of trees. Some places are like people: their appearance is deceptive. Their true beauty only appears when you look beyond the first impression, and that beauty, far from fading with time, grows deeper, blossoming with the passing years.
Alice liked walking down the narrow streets of Cluny, especially the steep ones, like the Rue Sainte-Odile, the Rue Joséphine Desbois, and the Rue de la Barre. When she strolled along them, she enjoyed a perfectly wonderful view of the rooftops, a rhapsody of old tiles in varying shades of reds and browns, where steeples from the abbey and churches and the old Romanesque Tour des Fromages rose up, crowned in the distance by tree-covered hills, set against a sky that was often blue.
When she got to the end of the Rue de la République, Alice walked faster so as not to give in to the irresistible smell of warm brioche coming from Altmeyer’s bakery. She passed the Fontaine aux Serpents. Its mossy, worn stonework did not catch the eye, and the motto high above it seemed meant for people who just happened to look up. Then they would discover its sumptuous gilt crown. FELIX CLUNIACI LOCUS IN QUO RIDENTI NATURAE SOLI PRESTANT CIVES. As a child, Alice thought that was some mysterious, magical saying. Many years later, she found out what it meant: CLUNY IS A HAPPY PLACE WHOSE INHABITANTS GO ABOUT THEIR BUSINESS IN NATURE’S SMILING SUNSHINE.
She thought back to what had happened to her the day before at Hermès, a quasi-mystical experience. Never in her life had she felt so good. She would give up everything she owned in exchange for the promise to live in that state until the end of her days, full of such joy.
She was ready to do anything to understand the enigmatic precepts of Jesus, starting with the most bizarre, the most incomprehensible ones, for she was now sure that they contained mysterious revelations, incredible hidden truths. And it was perhaps exactly because they were incredible that Jesus expressed himself in parables and not in an explicit way. Alice wanted to decipher those truths, whatever the cost.
She arrived in front of her elderly father’s house and found the door open. She went inside and spotted him in the back garden, wearing a straw hat and working on his vegetables.
“Chérie!” he called out, turning around. “I was hoping you’d come.”
She kissed him, then pulled up an old lime-green wrought-iron chair and sat down in the shade of an old walnut tree. A pair of pruning shears and a few cut roses sat on a round table in front of her. Her father remained standing, leaning on the handle of his spade.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Hot. The AC wasn’t working on the train. And you?”
“Very well.”
She suddenly realized that she normally wasn’t very interested in him, only asked for his news out of habit and was content with the usual response. What if he was only being polite?
She calmly watched him as he took off his gardening gloves and put them down on the table. His features had been shaped by time and seemed to have retained the marks of his life, revealing both his joys and his suffering.
He disappeared and came back a moment later with a little vase of water for the roses.
“Is it very hard getting old?” she cautiously asked.
He smiled. “Aging brings its share of pain, of course, but despite everything, I’m much happier now than when I was twenty.”
She frowned. “You never confided in me that your life was hard when you were young.”
“It wasn’t particularly.”
Alice looked at him closely. “And you’re happier now? Really?”
“Yes, truly.”
“But…your eyesight is worse, your hearing as well. And you’re always telling me that you can’t remember things.”
“True.”
“That you search for words.”
“Yes.”
“That you have to rest after doing an hour of gardening.”
“That’s for sure.”
“That even noise tires you out.”
“All that is true, but it doesn’t prevent me from being happier than when I was twenty.”
Alice looked at him, perplexed. “And how do you explain that?’
He smiled, pulled up a chair, and put his straw hat down on the table. “Age has allowed me to free myself from my illusions, you see. To live in reality. And real life is happier than a life of illusions.”
“You had illusions?”
“They have disappeared one by one as I’ve aged.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
He took a deep breath. “With time, we are progressively freed from everything that made us unhappy when we were young: beauty, physical strength, success, and even intelligence, to a certain extent. All the handicaps we often have at twenty.”
Alice was shocked: she suddenly realized that her father was losing his mind. It felt like a veil of sadness had been thrown over her. How could she not have noticed before? How could she not have seen the early signs? Too focused on herself, probably. She felt on the verge of tears. What if he had Alzheimer’s?
“Papa…how…how do you feel right now?”
“I’m fine, why?”
“Can you…tell me again what you just said? I don’t think you mea
nt it.”
“I was saying that time frees us from everything that made us unhappy when we were young: physical strength, beauty—”
“Papa…please, concentrate. You can’t say things like that.”
He started to laugh.
“Will you stop talking to me as if I were senile?”
Alice forced herself to smile, even though she knew that her concern could be spotted a mile away. “Papa, you know very well that it’s not beauty, strength, and success that make people unhappy. It’s…the complete opposite. Of course, I’m no longer in my twenties, but what prevents me from being really happy are my physical defects, my failures, and sometimes my lack of mental agility.”
He smiled. “That is exactly what everyone believes at your age.”
She sighed. “I’ve never admitted this to you, but when I was a teenager, I hated you for having given me the gene for a nose I thought was too big.”
He burst out laughing. “Be thankful you didn’t inherit my baldness!”
“Papa, there have been serious studies that show that good-looking people get work and high-level positions more easily. They have greater success. The same goes for height: the taller you are, the easier it is. That’s been proven by sociologists, Papa—. Why are you laughing?”
“What’s the use of getting high-level jobs or succeeding if you’re unhappy?”
“But why are you insisting that beauty or other attributes everyone desires make you unhappy?”
He slowly leaned back in his chair. “Finally a good question.”
Alice frowned, partly annoyed, partly reassured about her father’s mental state. He looked at her and smiled.
“Well, go and get us the bottle of burgundy wine I put in the fridge for when you got here,” he said. “Grab a few things to nibble on too.”
Alice got up and came back a few minutes later with a well-stocked tray for their aperitif.
Her father took the bottle and uncorked it with his Swiss Army knife.
“A Philippe Valette Mâcon-Chaintré. He’s passionate about natural wine! He’s been making wine for twenty years and is an absolute master of the art.”
Alice Asks the Big Questions Page 9
