by Michel Déon
In the early years after his return to France, Augusta had regularly reminded Arthur of her existence by her appearance in photographs in the society pages of glossy magazines he happened to see from time to time, such as Vogue and Tatler: ‘Mr and Mrs de Souza at the ball given by Princess X’, or at a charity dinner, or a gallery opening in New York or London or Rome. She was unchanged, although she rarely smiled. With mild Schadenfreude Arthur imagined her as sad at the side of the swaggering de Souza. He covered her with jewels, and she was never without a red rose pinned in her décolletage. Sometimes he saw Getulio with them, his hairline receding a little more each year, yet the onset of baldness somehow accentuated his elegance, in contrast to his brother-in-law’s flashiness.
*
One evening, at one of those Parisian dinners he much enjoyed, provided they did not happen too often, the attractive woman on his right, in her thirties and wearing a white suit and a red rose on her lapel, suddenly said, after they had been introduced, ‘You can’t imagine how pleased I am to meet you. Augusta talks about you every time I see her.’
Arthur turned so pale that she said anxiously, ‘Are you feeling ill?’
‘No.’
‘Have a glass of water.’
Water was not enough. For several seconds he felt he was teetering on the edge of an abyss. When his voice came back, he smiled at his neighbour.
‘It’s nothing serious. I get these turns now and then; they give me the illusion that I’m having an out-of-body experience. Somewhere on the other side of the planet I must have a double who needs me for a minute or two.’
‘I don’t believe in such things,’ the woman said. ‘Unlike Augusta.’
‘I haven’t seen her for at least ten years.’
The woman looked surprised. Who did she suspect of lying? Augusta or him? For the first time – he had been too distracted before – he realised the significance of the red rose and white suit.
‘I imagine this isn’t a chance meeting. I should have noticed Augusta’s favourite colours from the outset.’
‘At last! And if you don’t remember her, I can guarantee she hasn’t forgotten you.’
‘Did she give you a message?’
‘No, she just suggested that I wear white, and a red rose. I had to beg our hostess to let me sit next to you, which wasn’t an easy matter. You’re very sought after.’
‘That’s news to me. How did you get to know her?’
‘She was my sister-in-law, although not for long. Yes, I married Getulio. An absolute charmer, but far too high-maintenance. You get tired of that in the end, don’t you? Getulio and I were divorced two years ago. I think he’s living in Jamaica now. He’s a fan … of the sun. Can I tell Augusta that white and red still have an effect on you?’
‘You can tell her that I got the message.’
Almost as soon as the dinner was over, he made his excuses, saying he felt light-headed and needed to rest, and left to walk the streets of Paris until daybreak.
Another coincidence persecuted him to the point of obsession. The city’s advertising columns were plastered with a red and white poster that showed a coffee-skinned beauty emerging from the waves onto a tropical beach, her soaking-wet dress clinging to her body. She did not look at all like Augusta, but the film was called Augusta. Its success kept the posters in place for weeks on end, and Arthur could not open a newspaper or a magazine without the name he wanted to belong to him alone jumping out at him. When the actress playing the title role arrived in Paris, the press and television went wild. She was everywhere, and despite her name being Janet Owen everyone called her Augusta. The image of the ‘other’ Augusta shimmered over the city before it gradually dispersed into the suburbs, then the provinces, in the film’s dubbed version. Insidiously this other Augusta took over Arthur’s dreams, and for a while he even considered asking one of the producers he knew – film people who turned to him when their budgets overran – for a favour. It could not be that difficult to meet Janet Owen, who had extended her visit to France, startled by the success of the film (which had not done well in the United States). But to say what? That in a made-up story she had another woman’s name, the sound of which still affected him deeply? In any case the resemblance stopped there. Janet Owen walked out of the sea like a dark-amber sculpture. The real Augusta didn’t like the sea and never swam.
In Seville, another year – it doesn’t matter whether it was before or after the dinner or the film, his arbitrary allocation of lived time having been frozen and there being no longer either present or past in anything that concerned him personally – in Seville then, in the Museo de Bellas Artes, Arthur, with Brustein at his side, stopped dead in front of a little-known work of Zurbarán. Brustein told him that the painting was also not regarded as one of the artist’s best and in fact even its authenticity was contested. But St Dorothy, standing in profile like an Egyptian portrait, carrying a porcelain plate with three not very fresh persimmons on it, her waist tightly tied in a billowing dress of violet taffeta, a yellow scarf with black stripes wrapped around her chest – St Dorothy hauntingly resembled Augusta in her youth. The similarity was all the greater because the painter had draped her throat with gauze that, tied in her upswept hair, also floated behind her, lifted by a light breeze from a window that could not be seen but was certainly open to the sun’s rays, which were reflected in her dress’s taffeta. Augusta liked gauze scarves; she collected white, pink and red ones which she liked to wrap herself in on evenings when she went out with bare shoulders. More than a straightforward resemblance of features, St Dorothy’s profile also affected him with its concentrated expression that exactly recalled Augusta’s at serious moments in her life, moments whose oppressiveness she could chase away with a tinkling laugh that was as unsettling as her abrupt withdrawal into herself, light years away from those who were talking to her.
Fascinated by the portrait, which he thought both real and premonitory, Arthur returned to see it at the Museo de Bellas Artes every morning that he was staying with the Brusteins. In fact, it was Zurbarán’s Dorothy that he spent Semana Santa in Seville with, far more than the Brusteins, so that eventually Brustein – alerted by Begonia, more sensitive than he was to their guest’s absences and distractedness – became alarmed.
‘Arthur, you’re not the same guy. Some idea has gotten hold of you. I don’t know what it is, but I’d like to help you.’
And so Arthur, who never told anyone anything, suddenly started to talk about Mendosa and de Souza, and told his friend the whole story. He felt a massive relief afterwards, followed by a short-lived anxiety: that in admitting a torment he had been concealing for years, would he not exorcise it, like the patients who emerge from their analyst’s consulting room cured, after confessing that they dreamt of sleeping with their mother or stuck pins into the heart of their little sister’s dolls? Fortunately nothing of the kind materialised: the pain remained that made him different from others.
‘De Souza went down the tube,’ Brustein said, ‘in a manner of speaking. He’s ruined, the way wheeler-dealers like him tend to be: enough to get by, somewhere in Switzerland, Lugano I believe, but no more. I hear he’s planning a comeback, but the banks are catching up with him. As for his brother-in-law, your Getulio Mendosa, after a failed marriage – you met his ex-wife – he lives from gambling. An unpredictable existence. Begonia met him last year at the Duchess of Alba’s during the Romería del Rocío. She described him as a tremendously attractive man, constantly on the lookout for poker partners. By the way, she mentioned you, and he was startled. “I knew him slightly at Beresford,” he said. “Some sort of accountant. He wanted to marry my sister. I put a stop to it.” You’ll appreciate why I said nothing. Anyhow, it’s not important now, after what you just told me.’
Despite the omnipotence of illusions, Arthur knew very well that St Dorothy would not step down from her frame but remain Zurbarán’s prisoner, painted with such tenderness and care that she might well have been his
lover. There was no prospect of her venturing onto the museum’s polished parquet floor and making her way out into the street to mix with the crowd, whipped up by the singers of vehement saetas and the sight of hooded penitents bent double under the weight of pasos. Nor would she breathe the savage smells in which Seville simmered during Semana Santa, the scents of roses, carnations and arum lilies mingled with sweat, incense and mule droppings. Basic common sense told him not to go back to the museum, yet three months later he could not resist. The painting was no longer there. A card informed him that St Dorothy had left Seville as part of an international touring exhibition. He breathed a sigh of relief.
One morning – it must have been about fifteen years after his return from the United States – arriving at the café Les Deux Magots where he regularly had breakfast, Arthur was surprised to see Getulio sitting at a table at the back of the room under a mirror that reflected the sight of his bald crown and the tight curls that spilt over his collar. Hunched into a crumpled, grubby raincoat, he looked as if he was shivering despite the room’s overheated atmosphere. Eggshells, sandwich crumbs, the cold remains of a Welsh rarebit and three pots of coffee were scattered over his table, but the most striking thing was his look of distraction, lost in the thoughts conjured up by an empty cup and the leftovers of a lavish breakfast. Arthur was briefly racked with doubt: was this listless-looking man really Getulio, the Getulio who, the moment he set foot in a public place – café, bar, restaurant, theatre foyer, plane, train or boat – would instantly spot a familiar face and hail its owner before overwhelming them with protestations of friendship? If he was to be believed, his circle of friends girdled the globe, and wherever he found himself he was never alone: even in a village in Amazonia, among Indians of whose blood he might well have a drop or two himself, mixed with his African and Portuguese blood, he would soon find a friend.
‘You look like a man on the run,’ Arthur said, putting a hand on his shoulder. Getulio started as if he had just woken from a nightmare.
‘On the run? Me? No, no … not today, but I can’t get warm. I was up all night.’
‘You’re still going to nightclubs!’
‘I was on the street, then I slept a bit on a bench in a square and in the first open Métro station I could find, before I took refuge here.’
‘Are things as bad as all that?’
‘The worst is yet to come. Any minute now the waiters are going to frogmarch me to the door and chuck me out. I’ve avoided the offence of making off without payment because I didn’t order any alcohol, so they won’t call the police. But I couldn’t stand a scene. So vulgar …’
Arthur called a waiter. Getulio beat him to it.
‘A double brandy, please.’
Turning to Arthur, he said, ‘You came at just the right time. I’d have been done for if you hadn’t turned up. Really done for. I’m supposed to be leaving for Roissy in a few minutes, and I couldn’t see how I was going to get there.’
He took an airline ticket out of his pocket.
‘I’m getting married tomorrow in Hong Kong.’
‘Unshaven? With a week-old beard!’
‘The hotel won’t let my bags go. I’m two weeks overdue with the bill.’
‘So you’re leaving, just like that?’
‘That’s what you do when you start a new life.’
He drank the double brandy down in one. The shock was so violent it brought tears to his eyes.
‘I didn’t know alcohol could make you cry,’ he said, laughing and wiping his eyes with a paper napkin.
The colour flowed back into his grey cheeks. He picked up the airline ticket, folded it, and put it back in his pocket.
‘In twenty-four hours’ time everything is going to be different. I’m marrying a Murphy.’
‘Elizabeth?’
‘No, Helen, her aunt. Maybe even her great-aunt. Seventy-two years old, quite delightful, crazy about music, a painter, great friend of Picasso. Her yacht is meeting her in Hong Kong and we’re leaving for Malaysia straight after the wedding.’
*
Arthur paid the hotel bill in Rue Castiglione, retrieved Getulio’s bags and, to complete the celebration, hired a limousine with a liveried chauffeur. At the airport he helped Getulio check in his bags and paid his excess weight charge.
‘Life is a magnificent gift God gave to humanity,’ Getulio said as they walked a few steps together before stepping onto a travelator. ‘I was wrong to despair. I’ve been protected ever since I was born. It’s the first time I’ve ever doubted Him. He wanted to test me, the way He tests the best of His sons. I’ll pay you back, naturally, as soon as I arrive in Hong Kong. Would you prefer dollars or sterling?’
‘I don’t want anything from you.’
‘No, no, I insist.’
‘All I ask is that you tell me whether Augusta is happy or not.’
Getulio stopped, frowning.
‘Now you’re taking advantage of the situation in which I find myself. Remember that I am, very temporarily, in your debt.’
‘And what would you say, my dear debtor, if I were to knock you down and make you miss your flight and your new racket.’
‘You wouldn’t!’
Arthur admitted the truth of this. It was not his style, even though the desire was there in every cell of his body.
‘All right, I wouldn’t. But I enjoyed your being scared for a few moments. It more than compensates for the hotel bill, the limousine, and your breakfast at Les Deux Magots.’
‘I’ll send you a cheque as soon as I arrive. I don’t want to owe you anything. And this time … it’s goodbye, for ever!’
He took a step onto the travelator that led to the gates. Arthur held him back with such a firm grip that he staggered.
‘I’ve said goodbye!’
‘Not yet. Answer my question!’
‘In that case: yes, Augusta’s perfectly happy, and most of all she doesn’t want to know anything about you.’
‘Give me her address.’
‘Not on your life.’
‘Getulio, one day I’m going to crush you. I should have done it plenty of times. This morning especially. I only feel sorry for you because of her.’
‘I don’t give a fuck about your pity, and you won’t crush me as easily as that.’
‘We’ll see, won’t we?’
They parted then, equally resentful of each other. Getulio had already been carried some way by the travelator when he turned round and, cupping his hands to his mouth, shouted back at Arthur, ‘You’ll never have her!’
A few days later the Herald Tribune printed some photos of Getulio’s marriage, accompanied by a brief commentary:
Mrs Helen Murphy, divorced a month ago from the banker Chen Li, was married on Friday to Mr Getulio Mendosa, a wealthy Brazilian shipowner. Afterwards they left for a cruise to the Sunda Islands on board the Helen, a yacht that was a gift from her ex-husband. Mrs Murphy is a board member of Murphy and Murphy’s Bank and the aunt of the actress Elizabeth Murphy.
Getulio a wealthy shipowner? Surely that was an error. A charlatan was what he was, despite possessing an entrepreneurial streak. As for ‘wealthy’, that was gilding the lily. Used to a life of luxury would be closer to the mark. That as a young man, and Augusta’s guardian angel, he had known wealth, Arthur had no doubt, but those assets had been exhausted long ago by the grand gestures that no fortune can ultimately withstand. The aggressive guard he had mounted over Augusta had only been a sordid calculation to make sure she married ‘well’ and found her place in a world that would make room for her fabulous brother. De Souza’s wealth had collapsed for as yet unknown reasons. It was of no importance … marrying into Murphy and Murphy’s would relaunch Getulio at a moment when his back was to the wall: nearly forty, balding, menaced by his creditors and his waistline, all resources gone, all he had left was his role as gigolo to an ultra-wealthy woman who was quite possibly not in full possession of her faculties. He would make her laugh the way he had
made Arthur laugh when he paid his hotel bill in Rue de Castiglione.
