Love Story

by Janine Boissard

  “Keep the list. I’ll discuss it later with him.”

  “At your service.”

  The man was also visibly relieved to see me. Was the singer as formidable as that?

  He gave a key to a young man who soon took my bag. Never before had my bag known such honors. Mrs. Morin extended her hand to me.

  “It won’t be me who will come for you later,” she warned me with some sadness. “The mayor and Mrs. Picot, the concert organizer, will be waiting for you at the hall at eight. We’ll see each other, I’m sure, at the dinner.”

  A huge bouquet of roses was waiting for me in my room. The room was so vast that it could have contained three desks the size of the one I used at The Agency and the whole of my studio apartment, which was near the Sacré-Coeur in Paris. Tapestries, paintings, golden sconces, double curtains, stylish furniture, and soft carpets: a majestic bedroom in which the television was completely out of place.

  So much luxury was oppressive. I went to open one of the two high windows to return to reality. The windows looked out onto a courtyard surrounded by stone walls covered in garnetred vines. Evening was falling, caressed by a warm breeze that stirred the veil-like curtains. It smelled of autumn, my favorite season, a season of burrowing behind shutters closed early and reading by lamplight.

  Agatha only liked the sun, bright light, to strip at the beach. She had called me the night before to wish me a happy birthday. In the end, the “tall one” hadn’t become a teacher; she had married a lawyer in Deauville and raised their two children.

  My parents had also called me. “When are you coming to see us?” Mom asked as usual. The career I had chosen both impressed and troubled them: Was it a “good” career?

  I returned to the room and stepped in front of the door that adjoined Claudio Roman’s room. I listened: no noise. It was six thirty. What was I supposed to do? Go immediately to introduce myself?

  He wishes not to take any calls.

  I’d wait for the lemonade.

  I took my clothes out of my bag and draped them on the bed: black skirt, white silk blouse, royal blue bolero. My height forbade too much whimsy, but I had become slender.

  The bathroom was in the same style as the bedroom: pink marble and gold taps. In a small basket near the twin sinks, there was a profusion of lotions: bath and body oils, soaps, shampoos, shower cap, nail files. Behind the box of tissues, a nail file had been forgotten. By Corinne Massé? Yesterday she had accompanied the singer during his rounds with the media, so she had stayed in this room, used this bathroom until this morning.

  She just left him, David May had said without any other explanation.

  What had happened for her to abandon the tenor the same day as the concert? And for the hotel staff to be so visibly relieved to see me?

  I threw the nail file away, washed my hands, and brushed my shoulder-length hair. In the mirror, the “not bad” girl smiled at me and her face lit up. So my late night hadn’t done too much damage. In any case, it didn’t matter: Claudio Roman wouldn’t see that face. It would be through my voice that he would get to know me.

  Too bad, because some said that it was cracked.

  A melodious bell rippled at the door. It was the same young man who had brought up my bag. He put a plate with a glass of lemonade and a bucket of ice on the table. I signed the check. “Good luck,” he whispered before leaving.

  Seven o’clock. This time, I had to go to his room.

  I took the plate and knocked on our shared door. No answer. And what if the singer was sleeping? Should I go in and wake him at the risk of being bawled out? He had decided not to get a replacement, David had said. One thing was certain: I would not be welcome.

  I turned the door handle.

  The room was steeped in half-light; no lamp was lit. An odor of stone and vine rose from the two big open windows. I could hear the rumble of traffic in the distance. I took a few steps inside.

  Claudio Roman was stretched out on his bed, completely immobile. I saw him as only a form in a full, dark, velour bathrobe. Garnet? His forearm covered his face as though to protect it.

  The tuxedo he would wear tonight was on a hanger not far from the bed; a white shirt was folded on a chair.

  He manages very well with the daily things, David had said.

  Embarrassed by the plate I was carrying, I went a little closer, afraid of surprising him, of scaring him.

  “So you are Laura?” he asked.

  I froze, breathing stopped. That voice.

  “You can turn on the light, if you want.”

  I turned around, put the plate on a table, and went to the light switch near the door.

  The hanging lamps, sconces, and lamps on the night tables all lit up at the same time.

  My heart leaped.

  Claudio Roman had taken his arm away from his face. Leaning on an elbow, he looked at me. No, I couldn’t believe that he couldn’t see me.

  He was handsome, with his thick brown hair, his beard, his full lips, and his dark eyes resting on me, planted on me. Handsome and wild, handsome and wounded.

  “So what are you waiting for?” he asked. “Come here!”

  He held out his hand. Suddenly I wanted to turn and flee, hide far away. I never should have accepted this task; I was too small, too fragile to be up to it.

  I went to the bed.

  “Don’t you have anything to say to me?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s seven o’clock. I’ve brought your lemonade. We’re expected at the hall at eight o’clock.”

  My voice was a disaster: hoarse and trembling. There was a brief smile.

  “Thank you for taking care of an unhappy blind man. It seems to me that you are twenty-five years old. I hope I haven’t disrupted your plans for the evening.”

  “My night out was yesterday, to celebrate my twenty-sixth birthday.”

  He smiled again and tapped the side of his bed, a bed bigger than the one in my room.

  “Come here and sit down,” he ordered.

  I sat down where he indicated. I could see the color of his irises, but when I dared to look, I felt like a thief, an intruder.

  He reached his hand out toward my hair and briefly touched it to determine its length.

  “Color?”

  “Chestnut.”

  “Light chestnut? Dark chestnut?”

  “Medium.”

  His fingers fell to my face and took a delicate tour. I held my breath. It was as if he possessed me, destroyed my will, and there was nothing I could do. He grazed my lips, my nose. I closed my eyes. His fingers rested there.

  “Your eyes?”

  “Green.”

  His hand left my face. He leaned toward me and breathed me in.

  “You don’t wear perfume, Laura?”

  “Sometimes. Rarely.”

  “Your boyfriend doesn’t like it?”

  I didn’t reply.

  As he stretched out more, his bathrobe opened to reveal his naked chest, sprinkled with dark hair. A warm odor rose from his body. I turned away.

  “Do you know that one of the lieder that I’m going to sing tonight is called ‘Laura’? ‘Evening sentiments for Laura…’ What do you think about that?”

  “I can’t answer. I’ve never heard it.”

  That disarming voice, almost plaintive, was it really mine? Usually I laughed when I was embarrassed. It was a defense I had acquired a long time ago. It seemed that I no longer had control over myself. All that I had lived up until then, all that I had learned to be, that I seemed to be, was destroyed.

  And how could I laugh in the face of this strength and this beauty, this pain, this anger that I felt was ready to explode just a few inches from my heart?

  This giant prisoner.

  “Didn’t you mention something about lemonade?” he asked. “Put it on the night table, please. And come back at eight o’clock. I’ll be ready. It’s dangerous to make the wild beasts wait.”

  4.

  Several hundred people were pressed
into the great room of the city hall, men in dark suits, women in dresses or suits. There were several fur stoles. David May had given me wise advice.

  And yes: I wore heels.

  On each gold-trimmed chair with red velvet cushions there was a leaflet with the translations of the lieder that Claudio Roman would sing in German. I was seated in the first row, on the side, near the stage.

  The singer had just appeared, discreetly guided by the pianist. He wore his tuxedo, shirt and white bow tie, no eyeglasses, his face liberated. The audience rose to applaud him with, it seemed to me, a kind of gravity mixed with fervor, and I once again felt a kind of brutal shock and the impression of being dispossessed of myself.

  In a long black dress, brightened only by a pearl necklace, Claire Lelong, his usual accompanist, was a pretty brunette. Like him, she had arrived the day before to rehearse.

  Claudio Roman stood near the piano, facing the onslaught of gazes that he couldn’t meet.

  A giant prisoner, I had thought.

  Tall, wide shouldered, chest swelling, he gave the impression of power, while on his face, leaning toward the audience, there was a challenge: I don’t see you, but you will see.

  A challenge directed at the wild beasts?

  Silence fell; the recital began.

  I hadn’t dared to admit to David May that I didn’t know the voice of the great tenor. Discovering it that night—at once dark and colorful, shadow and light—I told myself that there wasn’t a more perfect, more moving instrument than two vocal cords in direct contact with the soul.

  O solitude, with what gentleness

  you know how to respond to me.

  He sang appeasement.

  All along my way, it would be my tearful eyes With which I would

  watch the far horizons.

  He sang of wounds.

  I saw myself clearly.

  This sudden change in my life, this impression of losing myself, this dizziness…and, in his room, the weakness while he explored my face…his voice, now tender and ardent, now full of pain and revolt, made me understand all that.

  I was going to love this man. I loved him already.

  Go ahead and laugh.

  A fan’s love for a star. The unknown little provincial girl and the man who had everything: handsome, rich, women at his feet. Even better: the wounded man. And here the innocent young girl found her heart’s desire.

  Pure Barbara Cartland.

  I was a specialist in this subject because my mother collected those books and kept them on the shelves in the dining room. I had devoured all of them before getting into more serious literature.

  But no. It wasn’t quite Barbara Cartland. The essential element of the fairy tale was missing: the heroine wasn’t beautiful, just “not bad.” And she wasn’t a virgin, either. While she didn’t give herself to just anyone, she had known several men, enough to be wary of love at first sight, which extinguished itself in tears and sometimes war. Enough to know that love rarely lasted forever and to have chosen to live without a boyfriend, preferring the sting of solitude over the pain of disappointment.

  And still…

  Looking at this man—about whom, yesterday, I didn’t know more than what was said in rumors, with whom, just a while ago, I hadn’t been able to string three words together, this public man, this blind man—I was filled with certainty.

  It was him.

  It was him, and it would never be me for him; I knew that, I didn’t care.

  So, what? Who was he? A kind of god admired in secret, in silence? A model, a goal, an ideal? Some model: a womanizer, indelicate, a cad.

  Without a doubt I had fallen in love with a voice and with he who possessed it. A voice of storms and light winds, of waves crashing on rocks, of a sea calmed and raging; a man’s voice that expressed the world’s beauty, its cruelty, and our solitude.

  He sang “Laura.”

  From your gaze, full of warmth,

  Lean toward me and look at me gently.

  The supper that followed the concert was held at the hall. Claudio presided over the table of honor between two pretty women—ripe wheat, golden wheat—whom he tried to woo. He ate with slow, uncertain gestures, and that touched my heart. The important people around him hung onto his every word. He laughed hard and drank too much.

  You shouldn’t lose sight of him, yet be discreet, David May had suggested.

  The table where I was seated was close to his, and many of us never let him out of our sight.

  “Do you often accompany the master on his trips?” asked the woman sitting next to me, a woman of about fifty, superbly dressed for the occasion, who seemed to know the tenor’s repertoire by heart.

  “It’s my first time,” I said. “In fact, I’m replacing his usual publicist.”

  “Oh really?”

  She didn’t try to hide her disappointment; I wasn’t close to “the master,” I wouldn’t have any juicy revelations to impart with which she could wow her friends tomorrow.

  Claudio’s hands had touched my hair.

  Color?

  His fingers had grazed my mouth, my nose, my eyes.

  It was after one o’clock when I preceded him into his room. The plate with the lemonade had been removed. On the turned-down bed, near the pillows, pajamas had been laid out. The curtains had been closed.

  I hung his coat in the closet. He seemed tired, as though extinguished. In the car that brought us back to the hotel, he hadn’t said a word.

  He lifted his head and turned around, taking a long, deep breath.

  “Can you open the curtains, Laura? And one of the windows too.” He touched his throat. “Open one halfway only.”

  The courtyard was dimly lit, and when I partially opened the window, vague odors rose up from below, tamped down by the night. I had the feeling that the fragrances came from him.

  “Do you need anything else, sir?”

  His hand groped in the air, looking for me. I went nearer. His hand seized my shoulder.

  “What did you think of ‘Laura?’ What did my voice tell you tonight?”

  The response came almost against my will.

  “It taught me to see the colors of life more clearly.”

  5.

  “So?”

  That was the word that each person flung out at me Monday morning when I returned to The Agency. All the girls gathered around me; me, the queen by proxy.

  So, how was Claudio Roman? As handsome, rude, talented, and unpredictable as everyone said? And his eyes? How were his eyes? Someone who wouldn’t know him, who wouldn’t know, could he guess that he had lost his sight?

  And how did he behave with you, Laura? Was he kind? Seductive? Or just cold and indifferent?

  I only told them that my name was in the Mozart piece. That wasn’t a betrayal, and they were enchanted: so romantic.

  I had reread the song and found these words:

  The curtain falls.

  For us, the play is finished.

  Was the play finished for Claudio and me? His voice would remain. And a few words spoken for the sole benefit of “little Laura.”

  When he arrived, Henri Desjoyaux stopped in my office.

  “David told me that everything went well. Bravo, Laura. I had no doubt.” He smiled at me mischievously. “It seems that you two played hooky…?”

  Saturday morning, Claudio had asked me to accompany him into the city. The weather was warm and sunny, and our train wasn’t leaving until 3:15.

  In the hotel’s reception area, several people offered to help the singer. He dismissed them with one gesture.

  “Laura is here to guide me.”

  They had suggested lunch at one of the city’s fine restaurants at the hour of his choosing, an isolated table, good service, and with only a few handpicked admirers.

  “I already have an engagement, thank you.”

  His tone was firm and no one dared to insist, but their disappointment was visible. I would have liked to excuse myself for Claudio. Ho
wever, he had accepted the offer of a car to pick us up at the hotel to take us to the train.

  “There, we’re free,” he said with satisfaction when we were outside the hotel.

  And I understood that one of my jobs was to be the excuse that helped the star to escape his fans.

  He took his sunglasses out from his pocket and adjusted them on his nose. He wore corduroy pants, a sweater, and a windbreaker. His outfit made him look younger.

  “I suppose that you’ve never guided a ‘visually impaired’ person, as they say,” he said in a mocking voice, as he had yesterday for the “poor blind man.” “You just have to illuminate the forests, divert the rivers, and crush the assassins.”

  He took my arm, he just over six feet, me just over five feet. I felt like a child who had been asked to do a task too difficult for her. I had to admit to him that I didn’t know the city.

  “So I will introduce you, then.”

  As a child, he had come to Auxerre many times with his parents, who had good friends here. What I should have known to begin with was that Cadet Rousselle was the most celebrated inhabitant of Auxerre.

  He showed me Rousselle’s house, at the foot of the old clock tower, then the fountain with the statue of the usher in red and green clothes and the more modest statue of Marie Noel, the poet.

  “She sang with her pen.”

  We passed along narrow streets, almost paths, between walls devoured by foliage behind which hidden houses exhaled the perfumed breaths of their gardens.

  It was the odors he was looking for. He walked, nose up, nostrils flaring, and I never knew if he was breathing or sighing, if the walk was making him happy or sad.

  “Tell me what you see, little Laura.”

  I chose that which said the most: this woman who spread a sheet out on the lawn (Mom said that grass made whites more white); that group of children on bicycles, with a little one who struggled to keep up with them; a couple of Japanese tourists who took each other’s photographs. And I saw the sheet, the bicycle, and the camera for the first time because Claudio Roman couldn’t see them.