This Jean-Michel learned to his cost when he realized what a stir he had created by appearing in salmon slacks and a matching shirt, an outfit in which he seemed much less at home than in his CEO suit. Was he already regretting this summer outfit for a bourgeois conqueror, so ill suited for his nerdy physique? The childish pastel color made him look like a chubby baby, anything but sexy, and frankly I wasn’t at all sure I felt up to making a pass at him. Without giving me a moment to consider him from that angle, however, he reprised his role as the model guest.
The first thing he did when my mother appeared was hand her a gift. As a precaution, she went into ecstasies over the wrapping, in case she couldn’t compliment him on his present, so she was pleasantly surprised to unwrap a framed photo of General de Gaulle on the beach at L’Agapanthe during the winter of 1946, when he had come here to consider his options before giving up power and retiring to Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises.
“Jean-Michel, you couldn’t have given me anything that would have pleased me more! I did know that the general had come to L’Agapanthe. But to have actually unearthed pictures of his stay … How did you find out, how did you manage?”
“You’re too kind, Madame, really, it’s nothing …”
“Oh, please, call me Flokie!”
Arm in arm with my sister, Frédéric had just arrived, and he murmured in my ear, “It’s unbelievable—he’s a total suck-up, your guy!”
Marie leaned close to my other ear, as I bit my lips to keep from laughing. “ Frédéric is right, and our boy’s beginning to piss me off with this eager-beaver crap. What about you?”
“And how!”
“Mind you, so much the better, because the Queen of the Night is waltzing off with him right before our eyes,” she added, while our supposed suitor warmed to his task.
“I looked into a few things when I learned that you’d been kind enough to invite me here. And I found out that the bay had been recommended to the general by unusually choice word of mouth, because it was through Churchill, alerted to the charms of the place by the Duchess of Windsor, that Eisenhower came here in 1944 and 1945, after having requisitioned the house, which was American property. He then urged de Gaulle to come here for a quiet stay in 1946, when the house was requisitioned by the French government.”
“You’re a darling!” gushed my mother, suddenly eager to thank him once and for all.
Had she had enough of billing and cooing with him? Or was she changing the subject to avoid embarrassing the Braissants, in case they’d brought her only chocolates? Because she had no doubt whatsoever that Bernard and Laetitia would now offer her something. Was it not customary for a guest’s visit, like a citation framed by quotation marks, to begin with a gift and conclude with a thank-you note? The Braissants, however, just kept sipping their champagne. The idea of bringing a hostess gift had clearly never crossed their minds. Nonplussed, my mother took another tack.
“Can anyone tell me why the Bellini at the Hôtel du Cap, made with peach purée, is not as good as the one at Cipriani’s in Venice, where they use peach extract?”
Coming out of the blue, her question seemed enchantingly frivolous to me but shocking to Bernard and Laetitia, for I caught a pained look exchanged between them. What right had they to judge my mother? That was my prerogative, and I couldn’t bear it when others did so in my place, especially pretentious people who confused prejudices with convictions, disdain with clear-sightedness.
Just then Gay sailed in, spectacular in a femme-fatale lamé sheath and holding a yellow plastic toy that Popsicle was trying to snatch away by leaping in every direction, but my mother serenely pursued her train of thought.
“Anyway, the hotel bar no longer even has splits of champagne. Impossible to fix your own cocktail anymore! It’s so much less jolly …”
“No!” Frédéric exclaimed indignantly, torn between solidarity and sarcasm.
“Oh, yes, and just imagine, now they serve sushi in the restaurant near the swimming pool. This mania for raw food—wherever will it strike next? Sushi in the Midi! It’s ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous,” agreed Laszlo Schwartz, sitting down on the low wall overlooking the lawn.
My mother’s face brightened.
“Laszlo! But you haven’t yet met my daughters’ friends. Here are Laetitia and Bernard Braissant, and Jean-Michel Destret. Laszlo Schwartz.”
Jean-Michel almost fainted when he heard Laszlo’s name. At sixty-two, the German painter was indeed a star of the contemporary art scene, whose exhibitions at the Grand Palais and the Guggenheim in Bilbao had been highlights of the season. And one of his paintings had sold for two and a half million euros a month earlier. Even the Braissants looked impressed. Laetitia, who hadn’t bothered to open her mouth until that moment, crinkled her eyes and cranked up a smile in an obvious effort to charm.
“I read in the papers that you live in Le Gard …” cooed Jean-Michel.
“Yes, I have my studio in Barjac, not far, in fact, from Kiefer’s La Ribaute, but I’ve been thinking about going abroad.”
Practically gurgling with delight, nodding at everything he said, Laetitia seemed almost ready to dissolve, so keen was her absorption in his presence. In any case, she had definitely ditched her leftist intellectual’s contempt for my oh-so-bourgeois mother, whom she now treated obsequiously, having understood her bond with the famous artist. Bernard, evidently on the same wavelength as his wife, now tried to establish direct and gratifying contact with the great man.
“Did you know that Jean-Michel is a passionate collector of your work?”
“Oh, really? I’m flattered,” replied Laszlo.
And yet, I would have sworn that he found them irritating, these newcomers whose sanctimonious admiration appealed to his weaknesses, pushing him to conform to their image of him. Because he already knew that he would play the great man to please them, the way people mimic sadness at the funeral of a relative whose death leaves them indifferent, and he felt pained at this impending imposture.
“And what do you do?” he asked Jean-Michel, to change the subject.
Marie and I had been flitting about, chatting, but now we fell silent, suddenly attentive to a conversation that might prove instructive regarding our “blind date.”
“I’m the director of a company that deals in arms and audiovisual equipment.”
“Good Lord! And I gather that you’re a prime example of the French self-made man?”
“Yes, well, that’s what the press says. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough of us. It’s becoming harder and harder to make it on your own. Passing exams isn’t enough anymore to guarantee entrance into the corridors of power—you must have several generations of success under your belt. Consider the fact that the CAC 40, which lists the top forty companies on the Paris Bourse, is the European index that comprises the greatest number of family firms. As in India.”
Not too bad, I thought, reevaluating his rising stock value, as if he’d been undervalued but was suddenly showing potential. What he’d said was articulate, perceptive, fair, reflecting no class resentment.
“There’s nothing hereditary about good business sense, though. You know the Bamileke proverb: The father was a fortress, the son, a buttress, and the grandson, a butthole!”
“I’m not familiar with the Bamileke, but they’re forgetting that a solid network of contacts makes up for many things.”
“I saw your girlfriend!” Bernard broke in, flashing a naughty smile.
To general astonishment. Because his nonsensical interruption couldn’t have come at a more awkward time, right in the middle of the discussion. Still, now we were curious: Whom did he mean? And what connection could that person possibly have with what they were talking about?
“Who’s that?” replied Jean-Michel, clearly annoyed.
At this point, in spite of Jean-Michel’s less than captivating manner, I’d have bet that Marie was on his side and feeling as annoyed as he was at Bernard.
“Franç
oise.”
“Françoise who?”
“Françoise Hardy.”
“The singer? Who’s married to Jacques Dutronc? But I hardly know her! I only met her that one time, and she was with you!”
It took us all a moment to recover from Bernard’s incredible gall. Name-droppers usually try to take part in a discussion and show a little finesse, leading the conversation in a convenient direction before they make their move, thus posing as people with important connections and clout. Bernard had simply skipped all that.
He really had some nerve, and my indignation made Jean-Michel more sympathetic in contrast. I was almost looking forward to sitting next to him at dinner.
Instead of making his announcement correctly, in a dignified manner, the new head butler let out a shout: “Dinner is served, Madame!”
My mother glared at me for a microsecond before saying lightly, “Girls, time to fetch your father. He must still be on the phone with Sotheby’s in New York, in the library with the Démazures.”
“Where did you dig up the hog caller?” said Marie sweetly as we set out on our mission.
“Watch out. I’d advise you to put a cork in it, because I could return the compliment with those brown-nosing Braissants!”
MENU
Gazpacho
Grilled Sea Bass with Fennel
Risotto with Morels
Salad and Cheeses
Crêpes Royale
Marcel and Gérard were standing at benevolent attention on the covered terrace outside the winter dining room, like parents supervising a sandbox where their children are busy playing. On tablecloths of orange and fuchsia linen strewn with white orchids, silver candelabras and crystal glassware reflected the flickering candle flames onto charger plates by César, signed with golden grooves representing the sculptor’s fingerprints. The effect was so lovely! No one else took this much trouble anymore over the décor for a dinner party, I thought proudly.
My mother called over the guests seated at her table. “Odon, Polyséna, Frédéric, Henri, Marie and Bernard, you are with me.”
“Doesn’t this remind you of school, when the teacher gathers her students on the first day of classes?” quipped Frédéric, to ease the newcomers into our protocol.
“Odon, you’re on my right; Frédéric, Marie, and Polyséna—do please stop chatting, naughty, naughty! Bernard, sit on my left. And Henri, between Marie and Frédéric.”
Inheriting those who hadn’t been summoned, my father solemnly brandished the paper on which his table seating plan had been scribbled.
“Here we all are in the same boat, cast adrift by Flokie,” he announced facetiously.
For just as my mother fulfilled her duties as hostess with the utmost devotion, my father took equally seriously his role as the class clown.
“Let’s see,” he murmured, slipping on his glasses. “But I can’t see a thing with these! I must have left my reading glasses in the library. Laure, dear, would you do the honors?”
“I’ve got the thumb!” Gay crowed triumphantly, having turned over her César plate to check.
“Oho! Much better than getting the finger!” Frédéric called over gaily from the other table, and the two friends exchanged fond smiles.
Jean-Michel was on my right. Without any misplaced pretensions, I naturally assumed that he would strike up a conversation with me, if for no other reason than that he had clearly been trying to bone up on the appropriate social conventions. He would thank me for his invitation to L’Agapanthe as a lead-in to some friendly or simply polite chitchat. He did nothing of the kind, however, and merely smiled at Laetitia, seated on his right. When I recovered from my surprise, it dawned on me that he had been avoiding my sister and me ever since his arrival. Of course I had noticed how he’d been all over my mother, but that was quite probably his idea of the proper courtesy due the mistress of the house. And I had the impression that flattering his “elders” was right up his alley, but so what? That was hardly a dishonorable means to achieve social success, after all. But between that and imagining that he was really trying to avoid Marie and me … His stubborn silence was suggestive, though; still, I really couldn’t see myself having such an effect on a supposedly intelligent man, so I wondered: was he nervous at the prospect of speaking to me, or simply worried that he would commit some gaffe?
Jean-Michel seemed to be studying the napkins and bread and butter plates next to the chargers by César, which we were discussing as the butler replaced them with soup plates of marbled yellow-glazed faience from Apt. In matters of etiquette, I would have been glad to whisper advice to him, but everything in his manner indicated that he would take my kindness for condescension. Too bad! He could just wonder away. As he would surely do throughout the entire dinner.
Debating, for example, when to begin eating what was on his plate. And he would discover that unlike in the United States, where it is customary to wait for everyone to be served before picking up one’s fork, it is the mistress of the house or the most prominently seated woman at the table who gives the signal, even before all the gentlemen have been served. Sitting on my father’s right, Gay would thus be our “hostess.” The butler would then serve the men, and my father last, who might be left on short rations, moreover, for the platter sometimes offered only slim pickings by the time it reached him.
In the same way, Jean-Michel might well be perplexed by the semicircular salad plates, or the dessert plates that would presently appear with a silver-gilt fork and spoon, along with a finger bowl to be placed with its doily to the left of his dinner plate.
Too bad for him, I thought again, and then my generous nature recovered its aplomb and made me fiddle with my bread-and-butter plate, on my left, to show him innocently which was whose.
Laszlo, meanwhile, was grimacing as he bent down sideways and exclaimed, “Can someone enlighten me as to why mosquitoes always attack your ankles? And aren’t they unusually ferocious this year?”
“You’re telling me,” replied Jean-Michel, who started scratching in turn.
Ah, now I’ve got it, I thought, since Jean-Michel obviously had no difficulty smiling and talking with anybody but me. I then put him to one last test, handing him a small bottle of mosquito spray I’d taken from my little evening bag.
“Here, it’s my constant companion. What can I say? Mosquitoes adore me.”
Nothing. No reply. Aside from a feeble smile of thanks before using my spray.
Having no doubt observed my mounting irritation at Jean-Michel’s awkwardness or rudeness (and frankly, at this point I didn’t care which), Laszlo jumped in to rescue me from the lengthening silence. “But the worst time is at night!”
“That’s because like all insects, they don’t sleep,” observed my father, a fountain of information on all creatures great and small. “Sleep only becomes possible when the brain has reached a certain size. Butterflies, for example, do not sleep, whereas whales, orcas, and dolphins sleep with just one brain hemisphere at a time, which allows them to swim without ever stopping.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t like me?” I wondered. But after all, that wasn’t any reason not to speak to me! Just look at that stuck-up stick Laetitia, whose hitherto unsuspected passion for nature documentaries was making my father happy to chat with her. Oh, well, as if I gave a damn! Why should I let a moron like him bother me? I decided to ignore Jean-Michel and join the conversation Gay was whipping up about Marie Antoinette.
“I’m reading a most amusing book by Caroline Weber about Marie Antoinette called Queen of Fashion, in which she describes how the young queen used her opinions and prejudices about dress to demonstrate her influence on the court, which she systematically challenged in the realm of fashion.”
“Isn’t that what Louis XIV had already done?” I asked.
“True, and Marie Antoinette was in fact greatly inspired by him. But she democratized fashion. First with her overdressed and even over-the-top style with those coiffures, the utterly insane bustles, whic
h had such a success that she made the hairdressers and couturiers of that era rich. Then she turned fashion completely around with the simplicity of her shepherdess period at the Petit Trianon, inventing the minimalist white muslin dress worn without a corset—which became all the rage, just like Coco Chanel’s famous little black dress did.”
“Have you read Antonia Fraser’s book?” Laszlo asked.
“No, but I did see the Coppola girl’s movie.”
“Oh, a disaster!” he replied.
“I thought it rather pretty, with all those candy colors,” I said.
“So did I,” Gay chimed in. “Everyone jumped on her. But the film wasn’t pretending to be historically accurate. And it was full of familiar faces.”
“Such as?” Laszlo prompted.
“Natasha Fraser, Antonia’s daughter; Hamish Bowles, a Vogue editor; the socialite Pierre Ceyleron …”
“I’m sure they’re all wonderful people, but they proved unable to save that insipid excuse for a movie. Besides,” Laszlo concluded, “I don’t think anything can top the biography by Stefan Zweig.”
Gérard began to serve the main course, sea bass grilled over fennel, and I still hadn’t exchanged a single word with Jean-Michel. Since my decision not to let that bother me, however, I had made some progress on this question. And I had understood, after trying to put myself in his place, that he was able to chat with Laszlo or my father because he felt all of them were on the same ladder of financial and professional success, albeit at different levels. He could not, however, carry off a casual conversation or exchange with me or my sister because he was lost and had no frame of reference in our house. Wasn’t that why he’d insisted on bringing along his car and driver? To carry with him a bit of his world and a token of his success, to help him confront “the upper crust” of which Marie and I, with our pedigrees, were the incarnation? Because with us he must have felt lacking in something essential, an ease and elegance of being that requires generations to breed true.
The Suitors Page 8
