Saturday, 7:00 p.m.
I found my mother having tea in the loggia with Laszlo, Gay, Frédéric, and the Démazures. In good spirits? Overexcited? I tried to look at her in a normal way in spite of my suspicions, which I sensed would be difficult to shrug off.
“But … where is Odon?” I exclaimed, with a gaiety intended to mask my concern. “If he were here, the Little Band would be at full strength!”
“Not back from Vallauris yet. Listen, I’ve entrusted Charles with a mission. He was at such loose ends … and as it would never occur to him to open a book, I had to keep him occupied.”
“You know your mother,” added Laszlo. “A heart of gold. She had the bright idea of asking Charles to do her the favor of organizing the wine cellar. So don’t be surprised if you see him emerge in triumph from the lower depths, because he surfaces from time to time to give us bulletins on his progress.”
“He’s phenomenal!” confirmed Frédéric. “Speaking of which, after the wine cellar, you ought to sic him on the library so he can arrange all the books in alphabetical order.”
I suddenly felt completely alone. Which was only natural, since I hadn’t talked to Marie all weekend, and given that nothing was likely to change on that front until Béno’s departure, I decided to go down to the beach in hopes of running into my father.
“Oh! Just the person I wanted to speak to,” he said, coming out of the water. “Georgina went on up already. You didn’t see her? She’s not well, and I’m worried about her, she seemed both wild and depressed. In fact, she scared me a little.”
“Yes, because you didn’t know what to do, but maybe she is just sad and that proves she’s alive.”
“You want to know something? It’s lucky your mother isn’t that way!”
“You think so? I’m not sure about that …”
“No, believe me, beneath that fragile exterior, she’s a rock! In fact, I’ve always preferred women like Flokie to those who seem like tough gals when they’re really spun glass, like Georgina. Because me, I need someone solid to lean on.”
MENU
Asparagus Vinaigrette
Poularde Mancini
Salad and Cheeses
Apple Soufflé
Entering the summer dining room, I saw that my mother had seated everyone very nicely: she had kept Odon and Laszlo to help her with Charles (whom she hadn’t brought herself to seat on her right), while sending Frédéric and me to liven things up at my father’s table, where we’d been placed the previous evening.
Slipping a knife under his plate to tilt it and so pool the vinaigrette from the asparagus, Frédéric began teasing Béno.
“You’re a financier, a collector, a jet-setter, a man of property, and who knows what all else. And I heartily approve, as I myself am a night owl, a playwright, and a pillar of this house. But some would say that you’re spreading yourself too thin. Don’t you ever, as I do, worry that you’re doing everything the wrong way?”
“Oh, you’re right, I probably do everything wrong. What do I do well? Let’s see … Oh, yes: I sleep well!”
Yes, Béno certainly had the gift of charm. But he was still driven to vamp his audience, because he now undertook to explain to us his family’s crazy lexicon based on favorite anecdotes, such as the “Your Uncle Syndrome.”
“It all started with the fact that my great-uncle was as puffed up as a marshmallow with his own importance. He was a bureaucrat of the utmost obscurity, yet he thought himself so closely engaged with momentous events that he felt he was on an almost equal footing with the great men of his day. Convinced of this herself, his wife used to tell us, for example, in accents of deep concern, that ‘your uncle is angry with de Gaulle’ whenever the president (whom my uncle had never met) had taken a decision that displeased him. As if de Gaulle always took my uncle’s opinions into account when he decided on a course of action, and chose to ignore his opinion only to exasperate him. Ever since, whenever someone takes himself for God’s gift to creation and puts on airs, we say he’s your uncle.”
“Well,” observed Henri Démazure, “then it seems certain French writers suffer from the same syndrome, because I know some people who write biographies of great men simply to compare themselves with them.”
“Just whom did you have in mind?” inquired Gay.
But my father, fearing a tedious detour into Left Bank gossip, made a preemptive strike: “Have you got any more like that, other family expressions?”
“Oh, yes, for example, the little wild strawberries.”
“The what?”
“It’s a term we invented for people who imagine that there’s nothing like a dollop of criticism to properly season a compliment. For example, saying ‘Your dress is ravishing,’ then adding, to be more convincing, ‘I can’t say the same for your coat.’ It seems idiotic, but you wouldn’t believe how many people do that.”
“But what does that have to do with wild strawberries?”
“Nothing. The name comes solely from the time a guest at my grandparents’ house in the country, wishing to be gracious about the strawberries served for desert—a luxury at the time—along with some wild strawberries picked by the children, had exclaimed, ‘These strawberries are delicious! Not like the little wild strawberries, which are awful!’ ”
“Wonderful!” my father said, laughing. “Sorry, dear,” he told me, “but after all, it is a more poetic way of describing people than the psychologizing jargon of today!”
“Yes, I see what you mean,” observed Gay. “It’s the triumph of Proust’s maladroit Aunt Léonie over Flaubert’s cataloging obsessives, Bouvard and Pécuchet! ”
“Precisely!”
Seeing a chance to take over the conversation with a nod to me, Henri Démazure began to defend my profession.
“Psychiatrists are fascinating, though! I’m reading a book now by one of them, Patrick Lemoine, in praise of … boredom! In fact it’s called Being Bored, How Wonderful, published in 2007 by Éditions Colin …”
“Oh, really!” said Gay, scratching her dog’s ears under the table.
“Anyway, Lemoine talks about two sorts: pathological boredom, a symptom of psychiatric illness, and the normal kind, which he considers indispensible for the construction of the self.”
After a swallow of Gruaud Larose, Henri pressed on: “He claims that when children are bored, they develop their imaginations and become more independent in a natural way, and that without boredom, their healthy individuality and creativity would be compromised. But these days, parents are growing less and less tolerant of boredom in their children’s lives. Just consider how they drag them from the soccer field to the swimming pool or a tutoring session …”
That was when I noticed that Marie had hardly touched her poularde Mancini, even though it was her favorite dish. Had love taken away her appetite? And my father was growing impatient because Henri, carried away by his thoughts, hadn’t realized that the butler was waiting stoically to his left, presenting him with a dish as hot as it was heavy.
“… and he says it’s rooted in the proscription against masturbation.”
“Fancy that!” exclaimed my father, whose relief at seeing Henri serve himself at last probably sounded like sincere interest in the conversation. Henri, in any case, was warming to his theme.
“Aristotle affirms that melancholy is the affliction of the superior man. And to be melancholy, in those days, meant being inactive, meditative, sad, humble, and therefore of superior intelligence, since hyperactive people were rarely geniuses.”
Failing to pickup my father’s desperate glances around the table in a mute appeal for help, Henri charged ahead.
“Moreover, when you take a look at history, boredom has always been on the winning side, from tedious old Louis XI, called the Prudent, who triumphed over the warrior Charles the Bold, to the Catholic faith, which had a troubled relationship to boredom and idleness, so conducive to impure thoughts and actions—although this didn’t prevent the church f
rom inventing the convent, a whole universe of boredom!”
Gay was probably thinking up a way to stop Henri in midflight as she sat delicately cutting her mimolette and Gouda with cumin into tiny cubes, as she did every evening, before popping them in her mouth …
“Of course, everything changed when the Anglo-Saxon—and therefore Protestant—model took over the world, and the notion of leisure (etymologically, that means licit, in other words, permitted) replaced that of vacation (derived from the concept of vacancy) …”
… because with a definite wink at my father, she abruptly broke in: “Speaking of vacations, my dear Henri, have you any plans for the rest of the summer?”
Turning back to Marie, I saw that she seemed strained, so closely was she watching Béno in hopes of catching a glimmer of interest in his eyes, but like everyone else, he was probably more captivated by the soufflé, and the way the piping-hot apples, like lava from a volcano, overflowed from the core of ice cream perfumed with flecks of vanilla that crunched between our teeth.
“I adore desserts that combine hot and cold things, don’t you?” asked Marie.
“Yes, absolutely,” agreed Frédéric. “Let’s see, what others are there? Ah! There’s the Norwegian omelet, crêpes royale …”
Then I understood that something clearly wasn’t right. Because Béno, who should have smiled at Marie when she spoke up, had kept his nose in his dessert, as if avoiding meeting her eyes. I didn’t have time to get any further with this, however, because we were all leaving the table.
I was going over to Marie to make her tell me what was going on when Béno stepped in front of our mother.
“My dear Flokie, may I ask you to excuse me. I promised Cheryla to be her escort for the rest of the evening, so I will discreetly slip away,” he announced, then turned on his heels and left without even looking at my sister, who was visibly dumbfounded.
“Shall I be ‘mother’ and pour the tea?” asked Odon, sensing a tension in the air that he didn’t fully grasp and pleased to be acquitting himself so easily of the playful duty he knew he must perform in this house, which demanded from its guests a lightness of being often at odds with the seriousness associated with their professional success.
In short, busy with their herbal tea ceremony, my parents and their guests picked up the conversation as if nothing had happened, never noticing my sister’s distress. “Let’s go for a walk!” I said brightly, leading her off to the library, where she instantly dissolved in tears.
“My poor lamb!” I murmured, taking her in my arms.
“But the way he behaved—what can it mean?” she gasped between sobs.
“But what do you mean? You didn’t have an argument, some sort of fight? He hasn’t said anything to give you a clue why he’s acting like this?”
“No, nothing! He made love to me the whole afternoon with all sorts of sweet talk and promises.… It was only at cocktails that he began to seem distant. Then at the table, that was the giveaway, when he turned really weird. But to go from that to … to … It’s insane!”
“Nothing happened? No phone calls, no nothing?”
“Well, yes, Cheryla called him just before dinner, and he went off to talk to her. But what are you telling me? That he dropped me for her? All it took was one phone call to stand me up like that?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“But that’s not possible! If you knew what things he said to me … he was so touching … Oh, he was just using me!”
“No, I’m certain he wasn’t lying to you, I bet he believed everything he said when he was with you. That’s even why you believed him, because he was sincere.”
“But then …”
“He’s a seducer, and like all seducers, he’s always sincere in sequence. He says different things to different people at different moments.”
“But why?”
“Because he loves only the conquest. And once he’s seduced a woman, he needs to move on to the next one.”
“But that’s vile!”
“Yes, but it has nothing to do with you! So, since that’s the way things stand, you’re a whole lot better off without him, because it’s his vocation to make women unhappy.”
“Even those more beautiful and glamorous than I am?”
“Yes, even those, since that’s just simply how he functions. And I’m telling you, he’ll do the same thing to Cheryla.”
“You think so?” Marie murmured hopefully.
“I’m sure of it. So, that consoles you, the idea that she’ll go through the same hell as you?”
“Oh, well, yes! Listen, can I sleep in your room tonight? I don’t want to be in mine in case he might try to visit me, because I wouldn’t be able to resist him. And I don’t want to be there in case he doesn’t try, either, because that would make me just as miserable. You understand?”
Everyone had gone to bed by the time we left the library, so after taking off our shoes so the heels wouldn’t clatter across the travertine hall floor, we turned out all the lights, one after the other.
It had been a long while since Marie and I had shared a bedroom, and I couldn’t help enjoying, in spite of her sorrow, how we talked in the dark the way we had as children. And now we were doing it again, except that it was our inventory of all possible ways to get even with Béno that kept us awake until the wee hours of that night.
Sunday, 9:30 a.m.
But we never got the chance to test our findings the next day, because Béno cut and ran at breakfast.
“My dear Flokie, I’ve come to thank you and to take my leave because Cheryla has very kindly offered to drop me off in London this morning. And so, unfortunately, I cannot stay for breakfast. Please believe me, I’m truly sorry, but you know how it is, hitchhiking by plane …”
Then, without even a semblance of bidding good-bye to Marie in particular, he merely said, “Laure, Marie, thanks for this weekend, and I hope we’ll see one another one of these days … in London or Paris, who knows?”
His behavior was so monstrous that Marie simply froze, appalled into numbness. But I knew it wouldn’t last, that her unhappiness of the day before would flood through her afresh, so I tried to get her off on her own.
“Hey, come on, let’s take our usual swim in the bay—we haven’t done that yet this year!”
“And if you’re lucky, girls,” piped up our father, “you’ll bump into the whale calf that’s wandering lost along the coast. I just read about it in Nice-Matin.”
“Wait—I’d be scared stiff to wind up nose to nose with a whale!” exclaimed Marie. “Why are you trying to drag me into a major sporting exploit right at this moment?”
“Ah … because it’s one of our rituals, like doing the fridge or swimming at midnight,” I stammered, before whispering, “At least we’d be off on our own, and it would help clear your mind, which would be no small thing, given the circumstances. Plus I’ve got some serious developments to tell you about …”
“Oh, well, why didn’t you say so in the first place! See you later, everyone! We’re off for a swim!” she caroled in a jolly voice I didn’t trust at all.
And I was right, because that burst of euphoric indifference sank into a wave of sadness that swept over her just as we began our swim. In an effort to distract her, I pointed out some flying fish in front of us and started babbling off the top of my head.
“You remember the Polish exhibitionist who used to swim over from the Hôtel du Cap to enjoy being admired half naked in the loggia among the guests? It’s been years since I’ve seen her. I wonder whatever happened to her—we’ll have to ask Mummy and Papa …”
Then I just kept quiet and let her cry. Anguish and sorrow, I know them. And although I’m no genius at it, all day long I calibrate my silence to give free rein to my patients’ emotions, or stanch the pain of some torment with a word—attentions much easier to manage in my office than swimming in the sea with my dear sister! So I had to keep reminding myself that Marie needed to feel her grief in
order to rise above it. And as I swam, I saw again, as I did every year, how the bay that seemed quite modest from our beach was so vast that we would need a good hour and a half to swim along its shore.
Judging my moment, I asked Marie, “Don’t you find it hard to swim and cry at the same time?”
“Yes, it’s exhausting, and I’m fed up!” she confessed ruefully, and we both slowed down. Luckily, the water was calm, as it often was in the morning, and since we were both strong swimmers, we adjusted to a more leisurely stroke so we could talk without running out of breath.
“So, are you ready for my update? You’ll see, it’s some heavy stuff.”
“Fine, I’m ready for a change of pace.”
I began at the beginning: the mix-ups over the visit of the real estate agent, my distress at the possible sale of the house, then my panic at the idea that she and Béno might become the owners of a jet-set L’Agapanthe, and finally, our mother’s addiction to cocaine.
“Oh, that I already knew—”
“You’re not serious!”
“Yes, really; I caught her one day sticking it up her nose. I never told you?”
“Are you kidding? Of course not—I would never have forgotten that!”
“That’s strange, I could have sworn I told you. I must have thought about it so many times that I wound up thinking that I had.”
“Never mind, but tell me what happened.”
“Well that’s just it, nothing, that’s what was so bewildering about the whole thing. All she said to me was, ‘So? It’s simply the best way to stay thin,’ and then she shrugged: ‘What do you want me to say?’ ”
The Suitors Page 18
