The Rules of the Game
FILM BY JEAN RENOIR (1939)
CHRISTINE de la CHESNAYE, lady of the house:
Jean isn’t here?
CELESTIN, kitchen boy:
Ah, no, Madame la Marquise! He has gone to Orléans in the van, for the fish.
CHRISTINE de la CHESNAYE:
Do explain to him about Madame de la Bruyère’s diet. She eats everything, but no salt.
MADAME de la BRUYERE, guest:
No, on the contrary, lots of salt, but it must be sea salt, added only after the cooking. Oh, it’s quite simple, a child would understand. After the cooking!
CHRISTINE de la CHESNAYE:
Do you have any sea salt?
…
(At the servants’ table)
LISETTE, personal maid to the marquise:
Some asparagus?
GAMEKEEPER:
No, thanks, I never eat canned. I only like fresh, because of the vitamins.
…
CELESTIN:
Chef, did you remember the sea salt for old lady la Bruyère?
JEAN, the chef:
Madame la Bruyère will eat like everyone else. I will put up with diets, but not with fads.
…
JEAN:
La Chesnaye may be a Jew, but the other day he summoned me for a dressing-down over a potato salad. As you know, or rather, as you do not know, for a potato salad to be worthy of the table, the white wine must be poured over the potatoes while they are still boiling hot, which Célestin had not done because he doesn’t like to burn his fingers. Well! The boss, he picked up on that right away. You may say what you like, but that—that is a man of the world.
“Roberto isn’t here?” I asked.
“No,” replied one of the butlers in the pantry. “He’s out shopping.”
“Of course, silly me …”
Roberto, the head butler, was responsible for buying our bread, newspapers, flowers to make up bouquets, the fruits and cheeses he arranged on serving platters, on dishes for the guests’ rooms, and in baskets for centerpieces. He was also in charge of slicing the larger fruits served at breakfast and shelling the fresh almonds set out on the little tables in the loggia during cocktails.
“What would Madame like for breakfast?” asked Marcel, opening a large cupboard.
Some twenty trays laden with coffeepots, milk pitchers, and jam jars of brightly colored Vallauris china were lined up inside, next to a small notebook hanging from a hook. Warped and blistered by moisture, this recorded the customary preferences of our guests. Beneath Lady Wallingford’s name was written “Lemon tea + plain yogurt + fruit + Herald Tribune,” whereas the requirements of Laszlo Schwartz demanded an entire paragraph: “Scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, croissant, toast, jam (no orange marmalade), café au lait, Herald Tribune, Nice Matin, Le Figaro, Le Monde.”
“Tea with milk?” replied Marcel, astonished by my request, “but usually you have—”
“Black coffee, yes, I know. I apologize for changing my mind like this, Marcel, which doesn’t make things easy. It’s a good thing not everyone is like me!”
I went back to the loggia, a sort of covered patio extended by an awning above the terrace, which looked out over the lawn and the sea. Furnished as a living room, the loggia was connected to all the reception rooms in the house, thus serving as a forum to the “city of L’Agapanthe,” a center for intrigues and conversation. I sat down beside Gay and Frédéric in one of the wicker armchairs from the 1940s, across from the huge green linen sofa where my mother held court from the moment breakfast began. Comments on the day’s news were enriched by the appearance of each freshly awakened guest, and everyone got quickly up to speed. What had the finance minister said yesterday evening? How many dead from that earthquake? How had this or that guest slept? Who wanted to go for a swim or into town?
“Which of your clients have already arrived?” was the first thing I asked my mother.
I should explain that my parents, always happy to “go slumming,” liked to call their guests clients, often comparing L’Agapanthe to a family boardinghouse and themselves to its “bosses.”
“Well, aside from Gay and Frédéric right here, there are the Démazures, Henri and Polyséna … and also Schwartz, who arrived two days ago.”
“Bingo!” I thought, wishing Marie had been there to exchange knowing smiles with me, because my mother had just betrayed once again her attraction to Laszlo Schwartz by using only his last name, unusual behavior for one so addicted to etiquette. In fact my mother was scrupulous about using absolutely everyone’s first and last names, saying for example, “Henri Démazure just telephoned.” If writing or making an introduction, she would add the person’s title, if necessary: “Let me introduce you to the Baroness de Cadaval” or “Lord Fraser.” Unless she were speaking of a merchant or other businessperson, in which case she graced the last name with a “Monsieur” or “Madame” that was all the more condescending for its appearance of respect. This led to remarks like, “Monsieur Lefèvre, you won’t forget that estimate for my living room curtains, will you?”
So, although my mother was careful to appear casual and unconcerned whenever she mentioned Laszlo Schwartz, modulating her tone with a care she imagined went unnoticed, we couldn’t help detecting her interest. True, Laszlo was attractive. Tall, elegant, with an imposing silver mane, and intimidating in the manner of those who make it clear that they follow only their own rules, he could even appear haughty. He did to my mother, in any case, who was timid and insecure by nature, in spite of all her elegance and irreverent airs, and who would have found him overpowering if he hadn’t been introduced to her by the Démazures, whose friend—inexplicably—he was.
Enthralled by his talent, fame, and freewheeling conversation, she was still amazed that he paid attention to her. For Laszlo, who had always been curious about the rich, had swiftly succumbed to her hospitality and had also begun to flirt with her. Openly, but without any real impropriety, for the pleasures of the chase, of gently teasing a sophisticated woman—and for the more refined rewards of experimenting with a dalliance from another age, which he had never had the time or means to explore.
“And Odon Viel, he’s not coming this year?” I asked her.
For we were still missing our astrophysicist, the Nobel Prize winner of the family, whose major failing was to believe us all capable of fathoming the nuances of quantum mechanics and molecular and atomic physics. Viel would complete my mother’s group of intimate friends—along with Gay, Schwartz, and the Démazures—whom she proudly called her little band, and whom Marie, my father, and I referred to as her pets. They were cultured people, intellectuals and, with the exception of Gay, sometimes crashing bores, according to my father, who much preferred eccentrics like Georgina de Marien or Charles Ramsbotham, whom my mother dismissed as “oddballs” or “duds.”
“As it happens,” she told me, “he’s arriving at Juan-les-Pins on the six o’clock train.”
“Someone,” intoned Gay lugubriously, “should perhaps explain to dear Odon that it’s now cheaper to travel by plane than by train. Because I truly doubt that his ticket was a better buy than the thirty euros for a ParisNice on EasyJet, even with his beloved senior-citizen card and those discounts he so adores.”
Her theatrically sinister delivery tickled Frédéric and me so much we couldn’t help laughing. To hear Gay talking about the price of public transportation was simply bizarre, because she was a great lady. An elderly one, now, but still lovely: she was tall, thin, and had such class! Like Ava Gardner in a Hollywood film, she always seemed ready to grab the spotlight, even first thing in the morning in her champagne-colored satin dressing gown and matching mules with Popsicle, her Maltese bichon, on her lap.
She wasn’t the type to sit around mulling over her memories, so no one ever asked her about her life. Except me, and the one time I did ask her I learned she’d had her share of tragedies. She had started out in life as an adventuress,
at least so I imagined, by reinventing herself with a new name, Gay. That career had ended in the camps, however, a part of her life she never mentioned. After that, she’d collected husbands, the last of which, Lord Wallingford, had brought her into society and left her a widow.
Frédéric and I were still laughing when my mother—who has always been peeved by our complicity—asked me loudly about Marie.
“And your sister, when does she get here?”
“At five. On EasyJet, actually. With the Braissants.”
When she pretended to be momentarily confused, I added, “You know, Laetitia and Bernard Braissant, friends of hers …”
“What is it they do again?”
“They work in the media, communications.”
“Oh, yes, television, or something along those lines,” she replied with a shrug of disgust.
“Well, let’s say public relations for her and journalism for him.”
“How awful! When I think that your father and I had managed until now to avoid having any journalists in this house …”
Her comment was all the more unfair since our parents hadn’t raised the slightest objection when Marie and I had gone over our guest list with them. And Marie had been particularly careful to reassure them about the exclusively political nature of the Braissants’ professional interests, because she knew how much they distrusted journalists. Besides, Marie and I thought largely as our parents did, since we considered journalists incapable of loyalty to anyone once they smelled a possible scoop, and they were often disinclined to respect the boundary between what was fair game or not—that famous “off the record” they flung all over the place to create a climate of confidence they would betray the first chance they got, overwhelmed by the desire to release an exclusive report or write the breaking story.
Our parents had often told us: If you’re a public figure, it’s impossible to be friends with a journalist. How can you ask a friend to put feelings before professional interest? Besides, such discretion represents a sacrifice so exorbitant that you’ll wind up paying for it ten times over. The proof? Allow a journalist “friend” to write an article about you: afraid of being accused of concocting a puff piece, the writer will come down harder on you than anyone else. And it’s always possible that the critique, based on intimate knowledge of your life, will wind up being too painfully intimate by far.
My mother, however, had picked the wrong target, because if any one of our guests was open to her accusation, it was surely Jean-Michel Destret. Marie and I really did think it hopelessly vulgar to chase after notoriety the way he seemed to do, waltzing delightedly across television sets and through photo sessions on his way to the ghastly stardom of the VIP: a catchall category comprising the likes of sarcastic old novelists, decrepit social butterflies giddy with gratitude for a photo in the advertising section, and empty-headed pundits pontificating at full blast in televised debates. So if either Marie or I took an interest in this Destret, his deplorable taste for publicity would require prompt correction, because the Duchess of Windsor’s “You can never be too thin or too rich” paled in importance, in our eyes, before the wisdom of “You can never stay too far away from the press.”
Fortunately, my father chose to make his appearance at that moment, nipping my mother’s growing ill humor in the bud.
“Good morning, everyone!” he cried cheerily, then gave me a kiss.
Raising an eyebrow in my direction, he asked how I was doing, to which I replied with a demure flutter of eyelashes and a smile. He must have sensed that I’d be well advised to cede center stage to my mother, leaving her to reign uncontested over her husband and guests, so I sat back, and a child once again, let the grown-ups do the talking.
My father couldn’t keep quiet for long about his passion for art. For a good part of the night, three Renaissance paintings had kept him awake, lost in the contemplation of color slides sent to him by Sotheby’s, which he quickly showed us with greedy zeal.
There was a Cranach the Elder (1472–1553) titled Young Woman Holding Grapes and Apples; a Titian (1485/90–1576), Mary Magdalene Repentant; and Descent into Limbo by Andrea Mantegna (1430–1506).
His enthusiasm was touching.
“So, you’re tempted by all three?” Gay asked him.
“Oh, no! I’d love that, but it’s impossible. Besides, I’m not really captivated by the Mantegna. It’s superb, but the subject is quite austere. And it’s simply too expensive.”
“But it’s tiny! 38.8 by 42.3 centimeters, that’s eensy-weensy!” cackled Frédéric, holding the Ecktachrome up to the light. “Me, I’d go for the Cranach, and what do you know, it’s a steal at only one and a half million!”
“Yes, but the Cranach’s 81.5 by 55 centimeters: it’s smaller than the Titian estimated at four to six million dollars, which measures 119 by 98.5 centimeters. And that comes to, per square centimeter …”
“You sound like a couple of accountants!” exclaimed my mother. “It’s shocking!”
My mother was not really shocked at all by these trivial comments and was herself often quite blunt when speaking of artworks, which were all the less sacred in her eyes because we lived among them. My father was the collector and scholar of the family, a man who studied art history for several hours a day, but my mother wanted to remind us that she had a good eye, too. And it was true that through her familiarity with the works coveted or purchased by my father, and by visiting assiduously all the museums in the world and observing dealers in art and antiques at their trades, my mother had acquired such expertise that she rarely erred in her evaluation of a canvas. As on the day when she had appalled a well-known dealer in New York who was showing us a Caravaggio.
“Actually, it should be cut in two! Because the infant Jesus lighting up the picture is sublime, as is the angel in the bloodred robe whirling above him. But the entire right side is a botch …”
And she was right, because carbon 14 dating revealed that the right side of the painting was speckled with pentimenti and overpainting.
“I’m with Frédéric, I’m leaning toward the Cranach,” announced my father. “Especially since it’s the gentlest, most civilized version of a subject he used several times. In general the young woman holds a severed head, whether it’s Judith with the head of Holofernes, or Salome with John the Baptist’s, or Jael with Sisera’s.”
Henri and Polyséna Démazure, wearing varied shades of blue, now made their entrance into the loggia to such spectacular effect that everyone suddenly realized we were all dressed in blue, except for Gay, who was in yellow.
“What happened?” Frédéric asked her in mock dismay. “You didn’t receive the bulletin informing us that blue was the color of the day?”
After a courteous little laugh, Polyséna hurried to revive the conversation about art, eager to take advantage of this chance to mention the beautiful book she was working on, in which photographs of current celebrities—actors, politicians, singers, sports icons, and TV stars—were paired with their doubles from the past, immortalized in famous portraits dating from the quattrocento. James Gandolfini, lead actor in The Sopranos, revealed a striking resemblance to the Doge Giovanni Mocenigo, as painted by Gentile Bellini, while Sonia Rikyel seemed to have inspired Otto Dix’s portrait of the dancer Anita Berber.
“I suppose Cate Blanchett corresponds all by herself to a number of Holbein portraits,” observed Gay.
“And Nicole Kidman might find herself as a beauty with rippling red hair by Dante Gabriel Rossetti,” added my mother.
I saw my father’s face cloud faintly with annoyance. Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman meant little to him in comparison to the grandmasters of painting, about whom, on the contrary, he could hold forth forever, but he preferred to keep quiet rather than offend Polyséna.
“Well, Laure,” said Frédéric brightly. “It’s high time to get a move on! You promised to drive me into town, remember?”
Like many fun people who disdain to conform to modern life, Frédé
ric had no idea how to drive. Surprised for a moment, then grateful for the diversion, I was about to reply when my mother beat me to it.
“Don’t be silly!” she told Frédéric. “Roland, the chauffeur, will take you. And if it’s to buy your Paris-Turf, I don’t see why you can’t ask Roberto to get it for you.”
“Flokie, darling,” said Frédéric, rising to kiss her hand, “you’re a sweetheart, tried and true, but I absolutely need Laure for my little jaunt because I’m going hunting for a present for her birthday, which—as you know—is only a few days away.”
Mollified by this logical explanation for Frédéric’s desire for my company, my mother let us go.
“Just give me time to call my son,” I told him.
“Fine, come get me in my room when you’re done—I know it might take some time …”
And he was right. I missed my son so much when he was with his father that I could bear the separation only by breaking it up with phone dates, replacing “See you next month” with “Till tomorrow” or “Talk to you later.” And he missed me. He was only seven, and he needed me. But his moods varied, and that day, busy getting ready for some fishing with his father, he barely said hello. I felt hurt, but relieved as well, because that meant he was happy.
“So, what’s the form?” said Frédéric after we’d settled in with our coffee on the terrace of the Hôtel du Cap.
He always came on like a punter checking bloodlines when asking about the pedigree of one of my lovers or a guest at L’Agapanthe.
The Suitors Page 5
