In any case, I don’t know how to lift up my head and dream away, just dream myself away from this punishing walk. All I can do is gather up my courage, set out, and get it over with.
But the heady scent wafting from the fig tree arching over the asphalt on my right soon carries me into another world of sweet languor, shady and cool. The moment is too brief and the fragrance too fleeting for me to realize that this is where I would like to stop and linger. Baffled by this new feeling, I have a hard time grasping the idea that simply breathing this soft and syrupy perfume would make me happy. It never occurs to me to dawdle, to stop and savor it. No one has suggested this to me or given me leave to do it. I only know what I’m supposed to do, and I have a long way to go.
So I walk on.
There is no shade anywhere except a narrow band, like a lane of shadow, cast by the low wall behind which lie our neighbors’ modest, even humble homes.
A man is watching me with curiosity. A little nervous, I politely say hello because I don’t want to seem like a stuck-up little girl. The neighbor doesn’t smile or reply. But it doesn’t matter.
I have to get going. Especially since I’m afraid of the dog barking behind the gate. I don’t dare look over there, for fear of offending the man. I wouldn’t want him to think I’m comparing his house with mine, or to feel judged, spied on, stared at, even though that’s what he’s doing with me.
I quicken my pace under the sun beating down on my skin lacquered with sweat. Trying to escape the bite of the sun, which stings like sea salt, I hug the little wall so close I’m almost scraping my side. When the pathway leads to a real road, the only available strip I can walk along becomes as thin as a ribbon. I put my feet one in front of the other like a tightrope walker, afraid of being swept away by the cars zooming past, but I can enjoy the refreshing sense of speed left in their wake. The cars are convertibles, as brightly colored as sourball candies.
Their hair streaming in the wind, the smiling passengers look happy, ready to take mysterious pleasure in what I do out of obligation: I must swim and play tennis every day to become an accomplished young woman. And I arrive at last.
The entrance gate, the front steps, the familiar doorman, and finally the gentle and often breezy slope leading down to the sea and the swimming pool. The winding path to the oppressively hot and dusty clay tennis courts is shady and more protected. The boring lessons drag along. I do as I’m asked. And I watch the other visitors to this palatial hotel, who seem so free, so cheerful. Why? I just don’t understand their happiness. I understand only schedules and obligations.
The hour limps by. Soon I’ll be done.
Sunday, 1:00 p.m.
The Hôtel du Cap seemed completely transformed to us, through the combined efforts of passing time and new management. They take credit cards now but no longer issue free beach passes to a privileged few. Thus Marie and I felt our welcome blow now cold, now hot, between a new protocol, made of rules and prohibitions suited to an impersonal and almost banal establishment, and the familiar charm of a priceless and singular place; between the pool attendant who inquired haughtily if we were guests at the hotel, and Michel, the Eden-Roc doorman who asked for news of the family while kissing us on the cheek.
“What’s the event?” I asked him.
“The grand terrace has been reserved for a conference.”
“Ah, I see! But we can still go there, can’t we?”
“Yes, of course, go right ahead.”
Marie and I toured the gastronomic restaurant, which no longer used the same china as before, and the main dining room, prettily repainted in white. Then we went down to the bar, where the lighting, mixing with that of the swimming pool, kept shifting from blue to green, and from rose to violet.
“It’s really something, that design gadget! It gives the restaurant a fake nightclub atmosphere, don’t you think?” asked Marie.
“Oh, my, that’s quite a problem.”
“But … what is the matter with you?”
And then I told her that there was a buyer for L’Agapanthe, and gave her the gory details of my doings with Alvin, and revealed my sadness at having spoken so little to her that weekend.
“In any case, those suitors? That idea was a farce,” she said dismissively. “God only knows what got into us.”
I remembered what Frédéric had said to me. But when I spoke to her, it was about what might have been the real heart of the matter.
“I think I wanted nothing to change, I wanted to be able to keep the house, to stay together the way we were when we were little, but that’s impossible. Anyway, to stay together, we have to evolve, to become more friends than sisters, and each have a life of our own. Because when we attempt to re-create our childhood, we remain—for life—the children of our parents. Haven’t you ever wondered why we aren’t married?”
“Well, because we haven’t met our husbands yet!”
“No! It’s because we weren’t ready! We could have vetted every single guy on earth and it wouldn’t have worked. First off, because you don’t recruit a lover the way you do an office employee, and all that fancy planning never works, you simply have to fall in love. And second, it was an absurd idea to tie our love life to L’Agapanthe, which is a family home, and therefore our parents’ house.”
“True, and nothing worked in that mix, anyway. None of the suitors liked the house and we didn’t like them in the house.”
“Ah, except for Béno!”
“Oh, thanks a lot!”
“Seriously, how are you with that?”
“Don’t worry, I’m fine. I’ve gotten over it, really.”
“And that dog in Rio, are you still upset about that?”
“No, I’m over that, too.”
“So it’s just too bad about L’Agapanthe?”
Marie was about to agree when she looked off suddenly to my left, and I heard a voice I seemed to know, speaking English.
“Laure! You remember me?”
I turned, and there he was, nodding briefly in greeting to Marie.
“Rajiv! What are you doing here?”
“I’m running a conference!”
“Oh?” I said stupidly, unable to say anything more because I was so stunned to see in daylight this man who had such an effect on me.
“It is a discussion on economics as a moral science.”
“And that is …?”
“The idea that economics, unlike physics or chemistry, is not a hard science devoid of ideological bias, but is a discipline that requires ethical scrutiny and a deep understanding of the role political action plays within it.”
“That’s wonderful!” I exclaimed with a joy made real not only by my sincere interest but also by my longing to say something that would please those green eyes set like jewels in lashes as black and silken as velvet.
“You think so?” He was clearly surprised by my enthusiasm.
Embarrassed at having overdone it, I felt myself blush. Just as I was about to stammer something to fill the silence, I saw how moved he was by my emotional reaction.
“Would you like to come in?” he said with a grin, which brought laugh lines out by his eyes and put dimples in his cheeks.
“I …” I hesitated, glancing at Marie in a welter of conflicting feelings. How could I walk out on her in the middle of our important discussion? But how could I pass up this invitation from Rajiv, whose relaxed ease and gentle presence had practically left me in a daze?
“Actually, I was just about to tell Laure that I had to be on my way, I have a plane to catch,” announced Marie with what only a sister would have recognized as a sly smile.
With a grateful glance at Marie, I turned back to Rajiv.
“Then yes, thank you, I’d like that very much.”
The breeze picked up, and standing next to Rajiv, I smelled the delicate but intoxicating aroma of fresh, warm bread he had about him. In that moment, I wondered if it would be there in his wake that I would find my place.
&nbs
p; Thank-you letter
To Patrick Ettinguer
September 3, 1967
Dear Patrick,
While we were chatting on the phone the other day, a whole stream of images was flitting through my thoughts, reminding me how much memory has its own seasons. The languid beckoning of summer takes me back each year to L’Agapanthe through one cue or another—blooming plumbago or a lush green lawn—and even as I was speaking, I was following their lead: there was Uncle Jean with his smile and red hair; Aunt Flora emerging from an elevator as from a tabernacle and sweeping down the right-hand steps on her way to the beach.… Why do we always take the stairs on the right, never those on the left? There was the clicking of Montrelay’s clogs and the soft thudding of Pradenne Jacques’s espadrilles. Meyer’s ineffable dive into the sea, like an envelope plunged swiftly into a minister’s portfolio. The fidgety tinkling of ice cubes in Leo’s tomato juice. Edmond’s unforgettable striped sweater, which made me lose all my Ping-Pong matches because I could never keep track of the ball against those stripes. There was Roland, always bowing and scraping, and Guillaume, whose inexorable march out to announce our mealtimes always came to a sudden halt on precisely the same flagstone in the loggia. Ada’s voice on the stairs. And Jean de Bergh, who never failed, before joining any conversation, to cross his left leg over his right and then polish his glasses, so that I wondered no less unfailingly whether he intended to listen with his eyes and see with his ears. I remember Sacha de Courcy’s bedroom eyes, his voice, his hands on the guitar; the large intimidating dinners and the small enchanting ones; the tall Castros and the tiny Blériots. And against this human backdrop, there was the library where I discovered Flaubert, the pink loggia, the indolent water lilies in the basin of the small fountain, the lawn damp with dew, the sea urchins under the diving board, the shoals of mullet, and the water’s transparent depths, murmuring as in a dream. Those small terraces where no one ever lingered (there again, why?), inhabited by flowers that seemed careful not to breathe forth their perfume in full bloom, as if honoring a kind of compromise between delight and decorum, which our parents’ generation observed in their own homes and in all things. Our generation seems to live like a car eternally caught between the accelerator and the brakes, with a mobile perpetuum of noise, like a musical canon, looping from airplanes to lawn mowers. Which reminds me of Jean the gardener’s mower and rake, their sound track tolerated for its regular hours, like a mechanical angelus in the monastic order of lawns …
4 Old Father Fox, who was known to be mean,
Invited Dame Stork in to dinner.
There was nothing but soup that could scarcely be seen:
Soup never was served any thinner.
And the worst of it was, as I’m bound to relate,
Father Fox dished it up on a flat china plate.
Dame Stork, as you know, has a very long beak:
Not a crumb or drop could she gather
Had she pecked at the plate every day in the week.
But as for the Fox—sly old Father:
With his tongue lapping soup at a scandalous rate,
He licked up the last bit and polished the plate.
Pretty soon Mistress Stork spread a feast of her own;
Father Fox was invited to share it.
He came, and he saw, and he gave a great groan:
The stork had known how to prepare it.
She had meant to get even, and now was her turn:
Father Fox was invited to eat from an urn.
The urn’s mouth was small, and it had a long neck;
The food in it smelled most delightful.
Dame Stork, with her beak in, proceeded to peck;
But the Fox found that fasting is frightful.
Home he sneaked. On his way there he felt his ears burn
When he thought of the Stork and her tall, tricky urn.
—Jean de La Fontaine, “The Fox and the Stork”
* Jean-Denis Bredin is a prominent French attorney and a member of the Académie française.
The Characters
THE FAMILY
Laure ETTINGUER, the narrator.
Marie ETTINGUER, the sister.
Flokie ETTINGUER, the mother.
Edmond ETTINGUER, the father.
THE PILLARS
Gay WALLINGFORD, a cultured woman of the world.
Frédéric HOTTIN, a playwright and the “uncle” Laure would have loved to have.
THE LITTLE BAND
Odon VIEL, an astrophysicist, the Nobel laureate of the group.
Polyséna DÉMAZURE, an Italian who is hard to understand in any language, married to Henri.
Henri DÉMAZURE, an international lawyer.
Laszlo SCHWARTZ, a famous artist, Flokie Ettinguer’s “crush.”
THE ODDBALLS
Charles RAMSBOTHAM, an eccentric English lord, passionately interested in gorillas.
Georgina de MARIEN, a Peruvian heiress, a nomad de luxe, and the recognized companion of Edmond Ettinguer.
THE END-OF-JULY REGULARS
Jean-Claude GIRAULT, a model of good manners and the perfect guest.
Astrid GIRAULT, Jean-Claude’s wife, prone to gaffes but very nice.
THE NEWCOMERS, WEEKEND OF JULY 14
Jean-Michel DESTRET, the first suitor, a French self-made man and a nerd.
Laetitia BRAISSANT, a political public relations agent and a leftist freeloader.
Bernard BRAISSANT, a political journalist and a freeloader like his wife.
THE NEWCOMERS, WEEKEND OF JULY 21
Béno GRUNWALD, the second suitor, a hedge-fund owner, jet-setter, and playboy who lives in London.
Mathias CAVOYE, a second-rate art dealer.
Lou LÉVA, an unscrupulous starlet.
THE NEWCOMERS, WEEKEND OF JULY 28
Alvin FISHBEIN, the third suitor, an American billionaire obsessed with organic food and yoga.
Nicolas COURTRY, a French Internet billionaire, Laure’s ex-boyfriend, who divides his time between New York and California.
Vanessa COURTRY, a bombshell of beauty and sex appeal who is married to Nicolas.
Barry SULLIVAN, called ANAGAN, Alvin Fishbein’s personal guru, a teacher of Jivamukti yoga.
THE STAFF
Roberto, the head butler.
Marcel, the under-butler.
Gérard, Roberto’s temporary replacement as head butler.
Pauline, the senior Ettinguers’ chambermaid.
Colette, a chambermaid.
Roland, the chauffeur.
And the chef, the caretaker, the gardener, and various kitchen underlings.
THE CAFETERIA CLUB
CHERYLA, a world-famous singer.
Héloise SALLOIS, the wife of François SALLOIS, a banker and French heavyweight in mergers and acquisitions.
Alain GANDOUIN, a French intellectual and adviser to politicians and business leaders.
And Maurice Saatchi, Lord Hinlip, Karl Lagerfeld, Martha Stewart, Diane von Furstenberg, Barry Diller, Christian Louboutin, Louis Benech, Larry Gagosian, Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Ty Warner …
Staff Menu Notebook
LUNCH: Crab and avocado cocktail, tagliatelle with rabbit and mustard sauce, salad/cheeses, apple tart
DINNER: Leftovers, quiche, salad/cheeses/fruit
LUNCH: Tomatoes and mozzarella, roast chicken breasts, sauce diable, grated potato pancakes, salad/cheeses, lemon tart
DINNER: Leftovers, pasta bolognese
LUNCH: Tomato salad, cauliflower gratin, cutlets, salad/cheeses, vanilla pudding
DINNER: Quiche, roast lamb, ratatouille, salad/cheeses/fruit
LUNCH: Composed salad, roast chicken, fried potatoes, fruit
DINNER: Leftovers, potato omelet, salad/cheeses/fruit
LUNCH: Tomato salad, sauté of pork, salmon pâté, ratatouille
DINNER: Leftovers
LUNCH: Carrot salad, deviled eggs, sauté of pork, cauliflower gratin
DINNER: Leftovers, ratatouill
e omelet
Kitchen Cabinet Inventory
CUPBOARD A
1 mandoline
1 automatic piston funnel with stand
6 frying pans + 4 new + 4 old
8 crêpe pans
3 blini pans
2 extra large cooking pots
1 copper casserole
2 food mills
CUPBOARD B
27 large springform pans
19 small springforms
grill racks
7 savarin molds
3 brioche pans
5 charlotte molds
3 mango pitters
1 loaf pan
6 tart plates
7 madeleine pans
2 large ice-cream scoops
4 small melon-ball scoops
2 terrine molds
The Suitors Page 24
