Happy Are the Happy

by Yasmina Reza

  Chantal Audouin

  A man’s a man. There are no married men, no men who are off limits. None of that exists (as I explained to Doctor Lorrain the day I was committed). When you meet someone, you’re not interested in his marital status. Or his sentimental condition. Sentiments are mutable and mortal. Like every earthly thing. Animals die. So do plants. Watercourses aren’t the same from one year to the next. Nothing lasts. People want to believe the opposite. They spend their lives gluing pieces back together, and they call that marriage or fidelity or whatever. As for me, I don’t burden myself with such idiocy anymore. I try my luck with whomever I like. I’m not afraid of coming up short. And in any case, I’ve got nothing to lose. I won’t be beautiful forever. My mirror’s already growing less and less friendly. One day Jacques Ecoupaud’s wife – Jacques Ecoupaud, the minister, my lover – one day his wife called and suggested we meet. I was stunned. She must have been nosing around in his computer, and she’d come across some e-mail exchanges between Jacques and me. At the end of the conversation, before hanging up, she said, I hope you won’t tell him anything about this, I’d like it to remain strictly between us. I called up Jacques immediately and said, I’m seeing your wife this Wednesday. Jacques seemed to know all about it. He sighed. It was a coward’s sigh, and its meaning was, well, since there’s no way around it. Couples disgust me. Their hypocrisy. Their smugness. To this day I’ve been unable to do anything to resist the attraction exerted upon me by Jacques Ecoupaud. A lady-killer. My male counterpart. Except that he’s a junior government minister, a secretary of state (but he always says minister). With all the appurtenances. Cars with tinted windows, chauffeur, bodyguard. A restaurant table always set aside for him. Me, I started from less than scratch. I don’t even have a high school diploma. I climbed up the slope without anyone’s help. These days I’m in event decoration. I’ve made a little name for myself, I work in the film world, in politics. Once I dressed a function room in Bercy where a National Seminar on the Performance of Self-Employed French Entrepreneurs was being held (I can still remember its title; we stuck flags into the flower bouquets). That was the event where I met Jacques. The Secretary of State for Tourism and the Craft Industry. A pathetic title, if you consider it closely. The kind of no-necked, stocky man who steps into a room and scans it to make sure he’s caught everyone’s eye. The hall was packed with entrepreneurs from the provinces who’d come to Paris like visiting nobility, accompanied by their dressed-to-the-nines wives. During the event, a vice-president of a chamber of trades made a speech. I was at the back of the hall, near a window, and Jacques Ecoupaud came up to me and said, you see the guy who just started talking? Yes, I said. —You see his bow tie? —Yes. —It’s a bit large, don’t you think? Yes, it is, I said. It’s made of wood, said Jacques Ecoupaud. —Wood? The boy’s a craftsman, a framing carpenter, Jacques said. He made a bow tie out of wood and shined it up with Pledge. I laughed and Jacques laughed, with his laugh that’s half seduction and half electoral campaign. And you see the one with the velvet James Bond briefcase? Jacques asked. Do you know what his name is? It’s Frank Ravioli. And he sells dry dog food. The following day Jacques parked his Citroën C5 outside my apartment building and we spent the first part of the night together. Usually, where men are involved, I’m the one who leads the dance. I turn them on, I wrap them up, and I clear out just at daybreak. Sometimes I let myself go with the flow. I get a little attached. It lasts while it lasts. As long as I’m not bored. Jacques Ecoupaud pulled the rug out from under me. To this day I cannot understand what it was that made me so utterly dependent on that man. A no-neck guy who comes up to my shoulder. A standard-issue sweet-talker. He immediately presented himself as a great libertine. Like, I’m going to corrupt you, little girl, that sort of thing. He always called me little girl. I’m fifty-six years old and five feet ten inches tall, with an Anita Ekberg – type chest. Being called little girl moved me. It’s stupid. A great libertine, and you can say it again. I still don’t know what it means. As for me, I was ready to experience things. One evening he came to my house with a woman. A brunette around forty who worked in public housing. Her name was Corinne. I served aperitifs. Jacques took off his coat and tie and sprawled on the sofa. The woman and I stayed in our armchairs and talked about the weather and the neighborhood. Jacques said, make yourselves comfortable, my dears. We undressed a little, but not completely. Corinne seemed accustomed to that kind of situation. The girl with no emotions who does what she’s told. She took off her brassiere and hung it on a potted chrysanthemum. Jacques laughed. We were both wearing the same type of lingerie, designed to arouse a dead man. At a certain point, Jacques spread out his arms symmetrically and said, come here, both of you! We each sat on one side of him, and he closed his arms around us. We stayed like that for a while, giggling, stroking his big hairy belly, tickling his fly, and then all at once he said, come on, girls, get closer! That sentence still makes me feel ashamed. Ashamed of our position, of the bright light, of the way Jacques was completely lacking in imagination and dominance. I’d been expecting the Marquis de Sade, and I found myself with a flabby fellow who wallowed on my sofa and said, come on, girls, get closer. But in those days, I let everything pass. If men wanted to acknowledge a single quality in us, that would be the one. We rehabilitate them. We lift them up as soon as we can. We don’t want to know that the driver is a former customs officer, that the bodyguard is a yokel from the South who used to work in security for the department of Cantal. That the Citroën C5 is the worst of all fleet vehicles. That the great libertine had set out to corrupt us without even bringing along a bottle of champagne. Thérèse Ecoupaud – Jacques’s wife – arranged to meet me in a café near the Trinity church. She told me, I’ll be wearing a beige jacket and reading Le Monde. A fun prospect. I planned to get a manicure and to have my hair dyed the day before our date. The hairdresser made me an even more golden blonde than usual. I spent an hour choosing my outfit. I opted for a red skirt and a green crew-necked sweater. A pair of high-heeled Gigi Dool shoes. And to make the most of my arrival, a little putty-colored English-style trench coat. She was already there. I spotted her at once. Through the window, from the street. Probably my age, but looking ten years older. Slapdash makeup. Short, badly cut hair with visible roots. Blue scarf over a loose beige jacket. I thought right there, it’s over. Jacques Ecoupaud, that’s all over. I almost didn’t go into the café. The sight of the legitimate, neglected wife was much more lethal than all the disappointments, the waiting, the broken promises, the plates and candles set out for nobody. Her table was practically on the terrace, in full view. She had her spectacles perched on the end of her nose, and she was absorbed in reading her newspaper. Like a Latin professor waiting for her student. In her preparations to meet her husband’s mistress, Thérèse Ecoupaud hadn’t paid the slightest attention to her appearance. What man can live with a woman like that? Couples disgust me. Their reciprocal wizening, their dusty connivance. I don’t like anything about that ambulant structure, or about the way it cruises through time taunting those who are alone. Nevertheless, I went to the café. I extended my hand. I said, Chantal Audouin. She said, Thérèse Ecoupaud. I ordered a Bellini to get on her nerves. I unbuttoned my coat but didn’t take it off, like a woman who has only a little time to dedicate to the present obligation. She let me know immediately that she felt nothing but indifference. I hardly got a look from her. She was intent on rolling her coffee spoon between her thumb and index finger. She said, Madame, my husband sends you e-mails. You answer him. He makes declarations to you. You incite him. When you get upset, he apologizes. He consoles you. You forgive him. Et cetera. The problem with this correspondence, Madame, is that you think it unique. You’ve constructed an imaginary tableau, where on one side there’s you, the warrior’s safe haven of repose, and on the other his tiresome wife and his public service career. You’ve never imagined that he could be maintaining other liaisons at the same time. You’ve thought you were the only woman in whom m
y husband confides, the only one to whom he would send, for example, a message at two a.m., referring to himself as Jacquot (but I won’t dwell on such foolishness): “Poor Jacquot, alone in his room in Montauban, missing your skin, your lips, and your …,” you know the rest. The same text for each of his three recipients. That night, there were three of you who received that message. You were more eager than the others, you replied with great warmth and, how shall I say it, innocence. I wanted to meet you because it seemed to me that you were particularly enamored of my husband, Thérèse Ecoupaud continued. I guessed that you’d be happy to receive this information about him so that you could avoid falling from too great a height, the horrible woman said. I asked Doctor Lorrain, I said, doesn’t it seem normal to you, Doctor, that a person would try to kill herself after such a scene? Of course, the best solution would have been to kill the man. I applaud women who slaughter their lovers, but not everybody has the right temperament for that. Doctor Lorrain asked me how I felt about Jacques Ecoupaud now that I was getting better. I said, he’s a sorry little man. Doctor Lorrain raised his arms in his white coat and repeated my words, as if I’d just found the key to independence: a sorry little man! —Yes, Doctor, a sorry little man. But as you see, sorry little men can still fool idiots. And how does it help me now to see him as a sorry little man? The thought of that sorry little man degrades me, it does me no good at all. What makes you think confronting reality soothes the heart? Igor Lorrain nodded like a man showing that he understands everything and wrote I don’t know what assessment in my folder. After I left his office, I ran into one of his other patients, my favorite, on the stairs of the clinic. He’s a long-limbed, brown-haired young man with beautiful bright eyes, always smiling. A Québécois. He said, hello Chantal. I said, hello Céline. I’d told him my name was Chantal, and he’d said his was Céline. I think he believes he’s Céline Dion, the singer. But maybe he’s joking. He’s always got a scarf wrapped around his neck. I see him roaming the corridors or, when the weather’s good, strolling along the alleys in the garden. He moves his lips and says words you can’t quite hear. He doesn’t look straight at people. It’s as though he’s addressing a distant fleet, as though he’s praying on top of a rock, hoping to attract the ships he spies far out at sea, like someone in a mythic tale.

  Jean Ehrenfried

  Darius sat in the huge orthopedic chair, in which, if you ask me, no one can be comfortable. He sat down and slumped against the back of the chair like a defeated man. If anyone had come into the room just then, they wouldn’t have been able to tell which of us – Darius, collapsed in the chair, or me, lying bandaged in the bed and hooked up to a drip – was the more pitiful. I waited for him to speak. He sat there for a while, and then, with his neck thrust forward by the sausage-shaped headrest, he said, Anita has left me. Even though I was reclining on my hospital bed, I found myself looking down at him. The fact that he’d been able to pronounce those words with that crestfallen look on his face struck me as verging on comical. And all the more so when he added, in a barely audible voice, she left with the landscaper. —The landscaper? —Yes, the guy who’s been designing that shitty garden in Gassin for the past three years, who’s making me spend a fortune on scary sub-Saharan plants. I first met Darius long before he was kicked out of the Third Circle, one of those exclusive clubs where oligarchs from both right and left connive together, steeped in right-mindedness and filled with devoted allegiance to the power of money. At the time I met him, he was the director of several companies, one of them a team of engineering consultants and another that manufactured smart cards, if memory serves. As for me, I had just left the international division of Safranz-Ulm Electric to take over as chairman of its board of directors. I was filled with affection for that young man, nearly twenty-five years my junior, and his Oriental charm. He was married to Anita, the daughter of a British lord, with whom he had two children, both of them more or less messed up. Darius Ardashir was as cunning as could be. He slithered into the system with disarming nonchalance, showing great aptitude for the mutual boosting, the favor-swapping, the manipulation of pawns in high places. He was never in a hurry, his feelings never hurt. The same way with women. Eventually he made a fortune as an intermediary in some international contracts. He got entangled in various cases of corruption, the thorniest of which concerned the sale of a border surveillance system to Nigeria, which incidentally led to his ouster from the Third Circle (the way I see it, a club that expels its rogues is a fucked-up club). Some of his connections did a bit of time in prison, but he himself escaped without any real damage. I’ve always found him a resilient man and a faithful friend. When I was attacked by this blasted cancer, Darius behaved like a son. Before engaging in a serious conversation with him, I pressed all sorts of buttons in an effort to raise the head of my bed. Darius contemplated my efforts and the succession of preposterous positions they resulted in with dull eyes and without moving. A nurse came in – I’d no doubt rung for her – and said, Monsieur Ehrenfried, what are you trying to do? —Sit up! —Doctor Chemla will be dropping in. He knows you’re not running a fever anymore. —Tell him I’m fed up and I want him to let me leave. She tidied my bed and tucked me in like a child. I asked Darius if he wanted something to drink. He declined, and the girl left the room. I said, all right, this landscaper, isn’t he simply a moment of passing madness? —She wants a divorce. I let a minute or so pass and then said, you’ve never paid much attention to Anita. He gave me an astonished look, as if I’d uttered some insanity. —She had the best life in the world. I understand, I said. —I gave her everything. Name one thing she didn’t have. Houses, jewelry, servants. Extravagant trips. She won’t get anything, Jean. All my assets are in my companies. The villa in Gassin, the house on Rue de la Tour, the furniture, the art, nothing’s in my name. Those two can die for all I care. —You cheated on her day and night. —What does that have to do with anything? —You can’t begrudge her taking a lover. —Women don’t take lovers. They get infatuated, they make it into a big drama, they go completely crazy. A man needs a safe place to go to so he can face the world. You can’t deploy if you don’t have a fixed point, a base camp. Anita’s the house. She’s the family. If you want a breath of fresh air, it doesn’t mean you don’t want to go home. I don’t get attached to women. The only one that counts is the next one. But that stupid bitch goes to bed with the gardener and wants to run off with him. What sense does that make? While listening to Darius, I was watching my IV drip. The drops looked strangely irregular, and I was on the verge of calling the nurse. I said, would you have accepted it if she lived the way you do? —What does that mean? —If she had insignificant affairs. He shook his head. Then he reached into a pocket, extracted a white handkerchief, and folded it carefully before blowing his nose. I thought, that gesture’s the exclusive property of this particular type of man. He said, no, because that’s not her style. Then, in a mournful voice, he added, I was in London the past two days – an important trip, which she totally wrecked for me – and on the way back, the TGV stopped a few minutes north of the French border, in some outlying area. Right in front of my window there was a little detached house, red brick, red roof tiles, well-maintained wooden fence. Geraniums in the windows. And more flowers in hanging pots on the walls. You know what I thought, Jean? I thought, in that house, someone has decided you have to be happy. I thought he was going to continue, but he fell silent. He was staring at the floor with a face full of gloom. I said to myself, he’s at the end of his rope. If a Darius Ardashir starts finding evidence of happiness in brickwork and macramé, that’s the hallmark of total dejection. Or a simpler sign, I thought, and a more troubling one as far as he was concerned, was the mere fact that he could refer to happiness as an end in itself. As for me, I thought I should summon the emergency medical staff, because the IV tube was carrying air bubbles to my arm. Do you know how old Anita is? Darius asked. —Are those bubbles normal? —What bubbles? Those are drops. It’s the product. —Do you think so? Lo
ok closer. He took out his glasses and got up to observe the tube. —They’re drops. —Are you sure? Tap the bag. —What for? —Just tap it, tap it. It helps. Darius tapped the bag of intravenous fluid a few times and sat back down. I said, I can’t see anything anymore. I’m sick of being hooked up to all this plumbing. —Do you know how old Anita is? —Tell me. —Forty-nine years old. You think that’s the age to develop blossoming ambitions, romantic passions, and other nonsense? You know, I often think about Dina, Jean. You had a wife who understood life. Dina’s in heaven. You all don’t have Paradise, do you? Jews? What do you have? —We don’t have anything. —Well, she’s surely in a good place. She left you your sons, very nice boys who take care of you, and your daughter too, your son-in-law, your grandchildren. Dina knew how to create an environment. When you’re old, having a hand to grab on to is important. Me, I’m going to end up like a rat. Anita will tell you I got what I deserved. Another idiotic phrase. What does whatever I deserve have to do with any of this? I have a magnificent apartment, magnificent properties, what do people think, do they think all that just falls out of the sky? It happens because I’m killing myself, I leave at eight in the morning, I go to bed at midnight, and she doesn’t understand that I do it for her? And the boys – a pair of zeros who are going to squander everything – they don’t understand it’s for them? No, they don’t. They complain, complain, complain. And have a fling with a moron who plants frangipani. I would’ve liked it better if she’d run off with a woman. I asked him, are you all right in that chair? —I’m just fine. The previous evening, Ernest sat there for less than a minute before opting for the folding chair. While I listened to Darius, I remembered an afternoon of tidying up that Dina and I had spent at home. We found some old-fashioned linens, hand-embroidered, passed down from her mother, and a lovely Italian dinner service. We said to each other, what’s the use of all this now? Dina spread out a well-ironed, yellowing tablecloth on a sofa. She lined up the inlaid porcelain cups. As time passes, objects that once had value become useless burdens. I didn’t know what to say to Darius. The couple is the most impenetrable thing there is. You can’t understand a couple, even if you’re part of it. Doctor Chemla came into the room. As smiling and congenial as always. I was glad he’d come, because I was getting gangrene in my arm. I introduced them: Darius Ardashir, a dear friend, Doctor Philip Chemla, my savior. And I immediately added, Doctor, don’t you think my arm is swollen? If you ask me, the fluid’s missing the vein. Chemla palpated my fingers and my forearm. He looked at my wrist, turned the thumb wheel that regulated the IV flow, and said, we’ll finish this bag and that’ll be it. You’ll be home tomorrow. I’ll come back and see you this evening, we’ll take a little walk in the corridor. After he left, Darius asked, what exactly did you have? —A urinary infection. —How old is he, this doc of yours? —Thirty-six. —Too young. —He’s a genius. —Too young. I said, so what are you going to do? He bent forward, spread his arms like a guy lifting the void, and let them drop back down. I saw his eyes wander over my night table, and he said, what are you reading? —The Destruction of the European Jews, by Raul Hilberg. —That’s all you could find for the hospital? —It’s perfect for the hospital. When things aren’t going right, you have to read sad books. Darius picked up the thick volume. He flipped through it dull-eyed. —So you recommend this? —Heartily. He managed a smile. Then he put the book down and said, she should have warned me. I can’t accept that she cheated on me in secret. Despite Chemla’s inspection, I still had the feeling that my arm was swelling up. I said, look at my arms, do you think they’re the same size? Darius got up, put his glasses on again, looked at my arms, and said, exactly the same. Then he sat back down. We remained in silence for a brief while, listening to the noises in the corridor, the gurneys, the voices. Then Darius said, women have swiped the martyr’s role for themselves. They’ve theorized about it out loud. They groan and make people feel sorry for them. Whereas in reality, the real martyr is the man. When I heard that, I thought about something my friend Serge said right at the beginning of his struggle with Alzheimer’s. For some unknown reason, he wanted to go to Married Man Street. No one knew where Married Man Street was. Eventually, it dawned on his friends that he was talking about Martyrs’ Street. I related this story to Darius, who knew Serge distantly. He asked me, how’s he doing now? I said, as well as can be expected. The main thing is not to contradict him. I always tell him he’s right. Darius nodded. He looked at a point on the floor near the door and said, what a marvelous disease.