Love Story

by Janine Boissard

  “He will be Alfredo.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I know. That’s all.”

  “And you’ll take him to New York to see the famous Dr. Miller?”

  I took a deep breath before continuing. “I applied for a passport yesterday after leaving Leblond’s office. Mine had expired.”

  Take that, little Bulgarian! Choke. With his thick glasses and his open mouth, he looked like an asphyxiated toad. I would have laughed about it if I weren’t like the frog who wanted to be a prince.

  “I assume that you bought the airline tickets while you were there?” he jeered, his breath returned.

  “I hope to buy them soon.”

  “And who’s going to pay for them? You?”

  His voice croaked, ironic, almost nasty. Suddenly I was frightened. No problem for those who can pay, Leblond had said. I hadn’t asked myself the question about money: Claudio could pay. But it was David who managed his money, who gave me the credit card and cell phone that I used at will during our travels.

  “I’ll pay if I have to.”

  “And you’ll pay for the hotel? The clinic? Dr. Miller’s fees? Or do you think he works for free? That he’ll operate on Claudio because of his beautiful eyes? Excuse me, because of his beautiful voice? My dear Laura, a year of your salary wouldn’t be enough.”

  He had an odious laugh. I hated him, him and his big belly, his big glasses, and his big case of the jitters. That was the problem: he was scared. Of Claudio’s reaction, of the possible failure of the transplant. He refused to confront it. We’ll stay just the way we are, we won’t move, the little one will calm down.

  The father left, Maria had said. The surrogate father was not doing much better.

  As though I weren’t afraid…

  “You’re right, David. If you’re not behind me, I can’t do anything. I don’t have the money.”

  I was sick of the tears that were burning my eyelids when I wanted to bang my fist on the table. Enough of being the little one whose voice didn’t carry far.

  Not surprising, since my voice was cracked.

  “Why are you doing it, Laura?” the agent asked more gently.

  I heard Claudio’s cry at the Nice opera.

  Keeper, will the night end?

  “I can’t stand to see him suffer.”

  I love him.

  Of course, that’s what David hears. I read it in his face. Another one has succumbed to the great tenor’s charm…and is deceiving herself.

  Before he could say it, I cut him short.

  “Don’t forget that I’m the little sister. You were the one who asked me to be that.”

  With a sigh, he rested his hand on mine.

  “OK. Let’s study the situation without getting worked up about it. Let’s imagine that you manage to convince Claudio; I don’t believe it for a second, but let’s imagine. And let’s imagine that the operation is a success. Claudio regains his sight. What happens then? Have you thought about that, Laura? The situation returns to the way it was before. He no longer needs a guide; a single publicist who organizes all of Paris is all he needs. A publicist, excuse me, more qualified than you. The result? You lose your job.”

  “How dare you!” I screamed. I was drowning in indignation. That was the worst, the most disgusting argument that David could use to make me give up my idea.

  “You dare to think that I would leave Claudio in his unhappiness just so I wouldn’t lose my job? What do you take me for?”

  He looked away.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

  He drank his coffee in silence. He was ashamed, and so was I—for him. The cell phone in my pocket rang and we both jumped. It was Claudio’s special phone, like his gold credit card. The guide’s equipment, all charges reimbursed.

  “Excuse me.”

  I rose and walked several steps away.

  “Why didn’t you come yesterday?” Claudio groused in a hoarse voice. “What the fuck were you doing?”

  “I came yesterday morning. Didn’t Maria tell you? You were sleeping.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping all day.”

  “David was there.”

  At the table nearby, David didn’t miss a thing; he knew with whom I was speaking.

  “Come!” Claudio ordered. “Come right away. I have things to do with you.”

  I looked at my watch: noon.

  “In a half hour.”

  I put the phone back in my pocket. If, one day, I no longer felt this weight, like a breath at once light and heavy; if, one day, Claudio no longer ordered me to come, with a voice that resembled his hand when it searched for my shoulder, that would mean that I had succeeded.

  He would no longer need me.

  I returned to David.

  “Yesterday he was disturbed not to have seen you. He was afraid that you were angry with him.”

  I laughed.

  “My God, why would I be angry with him?”

  I picked up my bag lying at the foot of my chair.

  “I’m going over there, David. He’s waiting for me.”

  “And you’re going to talk to him?”

  “Right away.”

  “If you’re sure you want to be shown the door.”

  15.

  Delicious odors drifted out of the kitchen. I could hear Maria moving around. On a small table in a corner of the living room, two places had been set, a bottle of wine opened.

  Claudio was sitting in an armchair, facing his garden, which was tinged with blue from the cold and sun. He squeezed his cell phone between his hands and I was touched. His link to life; his link to me.

  To announce my arrival, I dropped my bag on the floor. He turned his face in my direction.

  “Laura?”

  I went toward him.

  “I’m here, Claudio.”

  He wore a light blue shirt, no tie. He hadn’t shaved.

  “Maria set your place. You’re having lunch with me.”

  “On condition that I like the menu…”

  His face remained closed. I dragged a chair close to his armchair. He didn’t search for my hand. Last time, he had grabbed it to put it on his groin, and that gesture lingered between us. It was up to me to erase it.

  “Terrible time for the birds,” I said. “At home, when it’s cold like this, we hang a piece of lard from a tree. That saves some of them.”

  Maria came in wearing a pretty, colorful blouse. She gave me a complicit smile.

  “There’s sole meunière,” she announced.

  I returned her smile.

  “A self-respecting Normand never says no to sole.”

  We went to the table immediately. The fish was enormous. I liked watching Maria prepare it for us; it reminded me of Mom. Along with the sole were new potatoes and parsley. She served us wine, then retreated back to the kitchen.

  “Where were you when I called?” asked Claudio.

  “At the George V with David.”

  “Have you begun to cancel my engagements?”

  “Not yet. But we spoke about you.”

  He groped for a piece of bread. I brought a piece to his hand.

  “I’m not canceling you,” he said with a laugh. “You’ll continue to come here.”

  My heart was wrenched. He won’t need you anymore. If I didn’t speak now, I would never have the courage.

  “Don’t you want to know what David and I talked about?”

  He lifted his shoulders without replying.

  “In fact, we had a fight. Yesterday I went to see Dr. Leblond. He scolded me for it.”

  His fork clinked on the plate.

  “Dr. Leblond? Are you having problems with your eyes?” he asked stormily.

  “I have big problems with yours.”

  “And who told you to bother yourself with that?”

  “No one. I decided myself.”

  He rose in a sudden movement that made the table shake and walked to the piano. He bumped into it before leaning on it. I couldn
’t breathe. How could David leave him like this? How could he not do everything so that one day Claudio would walk without holding his hands out in front of him like someone begging for light?

  I went up to him.

  “Dr. Leblond has a friend in New York who can operate on you as soon as you want. There’s no wait over there for a cornea transplant.”

  “Don’t you know that I don’t want a transplant?” His voice was trembling with rage. I had to tell him as much as possible before he showed me the door, so I continued. My only worry was to stop my voice from trembling.

  “Whatever happens, you’ll still see some light.”

  “What light?” he cried. “What light are you talking about?”

  For most of us, vision is calculated in factors of ten. For Claudio, it was in factors of hundreds, Leblond had told me.

  “In any case, you don’t have any choice,” I said.

  He was taken aback. I was tormenting him.

  “How’s that: no choice?”

  I held out my hand and pressed it onto his chest. He jumped when I touched him.

  “With Alfredo prisoner.”

  He froze.

  “You know, you’re a pain in the ass!” he cried.

  He moved away from the piano and went toward the French window, evading me with his uncertain steps, hoping to escape me, my poor love. I followed him. I had spoken of Alfredo and I was still there.

  Maria appeared on the threshold of the living room. She looked at us, then at her beautiful sole, which was getting cold on our plates, and she tiptoed away. Help me, Maria.

  Claudio pressed his chest against the window. I wanted to take his hand; he pushed me away.

  “Do you remember your promise?” I asked.

  He took some time to answer; maybe to remember the promise.

  “What promise?”

  “One day you accused me of never asking you for anything, and you promised to give me whatever I wanted, the moon if necessary. I’m asking for that today. I’m asking you to come with me to New York to be operated on by Dr. Miller.”

  He turned his stupefied face toward me.

  “Who do you think you are, little one?”

  “I believe in promises, that’s all. I’m asking you to keep yours.”

  It was absurd, infantile, laughable. The moon. But all the while, he hadn’t shown me the door.

  “Well, the answer is no.”

  “In that case, I can no longer work for you, Claudio. I can’t stay with someone I no longer trust.”

  Was it really me who said those words? They stupefied me as well. Did I think, in my immense arrogance, that I was indispensable to this man? Did I hope that he would throw himself at my feet and say, “Stay. I don’t want to lose you”?

  “Blackmail now,” he breathed. “Are you blackmailing me, field sparrow?”

  “I want you to have the operation. I know that you’ll see again.”

  “And who told you so? The moon? The stars?”

  “Dr. Leblond. He believes it as much as I do.”

  I embellished a little; too bad. If I needed to, I would have sworn on my life.

  “Call him if you don’t believe me,” I added with defiance.

  Then he laughed.

  I knew every laugh of Claudio’s. They were usually the laughs of rebellion or hopelessness, sometimes nasty, rarely joyful or full of pleasure. In this laugh, I heard something new and terrifying, like a simmering, a hesitation, a fracture, a question. Hope was making inroads. I had succeeded in opening the door a little.

  I took his hand and put it to my lips.

  “Allow me to make the journey with you, Claudio. I won’t leave you alone for an instant. I’ll stay with you until the end.”

  He freed himself.

  “Leave me alone,” he said gently. “I beg you: go.”

  16.

  He called David to demand that we leave him in peace. I was included in the “we.” He wouldn’t open his door for anyone, and it was useless to try to call him because he wouldn’t answer. If necessary he would disconnect his telephone.

  “I warned you,” David said, triumphant and serious.

  We told Monique, my assistant, that Claudio had a bad flu and a fever. She should cancel his appointments and trips until further notice and stay at The Agency to take calls and relay them to us.

  In any case, the press should not hear that Claudio had decided to quit singing. If one journalist knew, everyone would be talking about it. His house would be besieged. Maria, the only person whose presence he still tolerated, was charged with keeping him calm and with noting the messages left on his answering machine.

  I no longer lived, moving from hope to despair.

  Hope.

  A mountain range by himself, Dr. Leblond had said. He needed time to think. How could I have imagined that he would decide on the spot? I heard the quiver in his laugh. The gentleness with which he asked me to leave indicated that he hadn’t wanted me to hear it. He’d call. I kept the doctor’s calling card in my pocket, next to my cell phone.

  Despair.

  He had made his decision: no transplant. No to my ridiculous blackmail. He’d cancel me with the rest of them. David would find him someone else. I would have lost him for nothing.

  The idea that he would suffer alone, the fear of an “irreparable act,” would torture me. Ten times I came close to running to his house to beg his forgiveness, to beg him to take me back.

  The field sparrow had clipped wings.

  Wednesday, I went to see Monique at The Agency. She had received two calls from Hélène Reigner, disturbed because she couldn’t reach Claudio at his home. Following orders, Monique had told her that he was ill and wasn’t receiving anyone at the moment.

  Thursday morning, I went to see where my passport was (when she has something in her head, that one…). They promised me it would be ready the next day. Then I drove to the quay along the Seine, where I bought a small wooden house that I would fill with a block of lard and hang from a tree for the birds. Finally, at a bookstall on the other side of the Seine, I bought myself The Lady of the Camellias.

  So I could think of other things.

  It was three o’clock. I pecked at a piece of cheese and crunched an apple in my sparrow’s perch. It was snowing. While watching the flakes whirl, I leafed through the story of Arnaud and Marguerite, who became Alfredo and Violetta for the opera.

  You who believe in love, Violetta is love, Claudio had cried the other night in his garden.

  Was it love to pretend to the man for whom I lived, body and soul, that I didn’t love him anymore in order to free him? Did love demand such a sacrifice?

  Someone was at my door.

  It was probably my neighbor, a very nice old man, very alone, and sometimes a little clumsy, whom I never refused to see. He must have heard me come in. I would open the door, but without cheer.

  Claudio stood in front of me.

  A little bit behind him, his driver signaled to me, indicating that he couldn’t stop his boss from coming up. This man, in his fifties, professional and well trained, must have been asking himself what kind of deathtrap he had entered. Not counting the six-story walk up.

  I found the strength to stammer, “You can go, Jean-Pierre. I’ll take Mr. Roman back to his house.”

  He didn’t object and went down certainly a lot faster than he had come up.

  Not a word from Claudio.

  My door closed, I helped him off with his coat and hung it on a rack that already held most of my clothes. I was dizzy. I didn’t know if it was from happiness.

  His face forward, his nostrils flaring, my visitor waited for me to guide him, as when we arrived at an unknown place when traveling. I offered him my shoulder and he grasped it. We moved several steps.

  “I only have one room, and it’s about a third the size of your living room,” I said, “including the kitchenette and the shower room. The dormer windows look out onto the street. In fact, the studio was creat
ed by connecting two maids’ rooms.”

  We took a few more steps.

  “There’s my work table: a plank on trellises.” Underneath, a mess. According to my mother, I was a rather messy girl. Books, papers that I was always waiting until tomorrow to file, CDs, and the equipment to listen to them. I now listened to a lot of classical music, especially singing. I made great progress in that field.

  Claudio’s face was a little more relaxed, but still no word. His hand traveled over the table and toppled a pile of CDs. I laughed. He smiled. If he could see, he would discover a photo of himself in the middle of my mess. A very handsome portrait, taken in the countryside, I would never know where.

  The sun played with the shadow on his face. He was wearing his dark glasses. No one would guess that he was blind. Not even me, who sometimes imagined that he was looking at me.

  There was nothing surprising about a publicist having a photo of the person she was responsible for at her home. But I stole it for my personal use and put it in my “Normandy corner,” at the center of the family. Claudio went well there. Didn’t he like it when I talked about my family? We relaxed him: bread and music.

  “And that, that’s for you.” I put that morning’s purchase in his hand. “It’s a bird house. The roof is red, the walls are yellow, and the interior is white. I’m going to put a block of lard inside and hang it from a low branch on your pine tree, over the grass. I know who’s going to feast on it.”

  His fingers traveled over the house, slid inside. He put the door of the house to his nose and inhaled the scent of the painted wood. Then he put the house on the table. Always silence. As long as I spoke, I was alive. My hope was so heavy it asked only to escape and shatter.

  Under the table, there were two stools that I used for parties. Apart from that, I had only the sofa that was also my bed. I slept easily there: the advantage of being small. And during the day: three big pillows and it was a couch.

  Arnaud and Marguerite—Alfredo and Violetta for the opera—were tearing each other apart on the page that I left open when Claudio rang. I closed the book and put it on the table. We had come to the end of the tour, unless I wanted to describe my pots, and I only had two of those.