Delicacy (21 page)

“Tonight? He invited you to dinner?”

At that moment she didn’t know whether she should laugh or be furious. Charles didn’t have the right to have dinner with a member of her team without even informing her. She
understood immediately that it had nothing to do with work. Up to now, Markus hadn’t really been trying to dissect the reason for his boss’s sudden interest. After all, it was plausible: he was doing a good job on 114.

“And did he say why he wanted to have dinner with you?”

“Um … yes … he wanted to congratulate me …”

“That doesn’t seem weird to you? Do you think he has dinner with every employee he wants to congratulate?”

“You know, I found him so weird that nothing he does seems weird.”

“That’s for sure. You’re right.”

Natalie adored Markus’s way of taking things. It could pass for naïveté, but it wasn’t. There was something sweet about it in a childlike sense, a capacity for accepting situations, even the wackiest ones. He went up to her and kissed her. It was their fourth kiss, the most natural. At the beginning of a relationship, you can analyze almost every kiss. Everything stands out perfectly in a memory that advances slowly into the confusion of repetition. Natalie decided not to say a word about Charles and his grotesque motives. Markus would discover for himself what was hiding behind this dinner.

Eighty-seven

Markus had gone quickly to his place to change because his get-together with his boss wasn’t until nine o’clock. As was his habit, he wavered among several sports jackets. And opted for the most professional-looking one. The most serious, not to say the grimmest. He looked like an undertaker on vacation. Just when he needed to take the suburban train again there was a problem. Already, the passengers were beginning to get excited. They lacked information. Was it a fire? A suicide attempt? No one really knew. The panic reached Markus’s car, and his first thought was that he was going to keep his boss waiting. Which was the case. Charles had been sitting there for more than ten minutes, drinking a glass of red wine. He was feeling annoyed, even very annoyed, because no one had ever kept him waiting like this. And certainly not an employee of whose very existence he’d been unaware that same morning. However, at the heart of the annoyance another feeling was born. The same feeling he’d experienced that morning, but this time it was coming back with more force. It had to do with a certain fascination. That guy was really capable of anything. Who would dare arrive late to a meeting like this? Who had the ability to fly in the face of
authority like this? There was nothing else to say about it. This man deserved Natalie. It was undeniable. It was mathematical. It was chemical.

Sometimes, when you’re late, you tell yourself that it won’t help anything to run. You tell yourself that thirty-five minutes has exactly the same import as thirty. So you might as well add a little waiting to the other person’s share of waiting, and avoid arriving in a sweat. This is what Markus decided. He didn’t want to seem out of breath and red-faced. He knew it: as soon as he ran just a little, he looked like a newborn baby. So he left the subway terrified at the idea of being so late (and not having been able to apologize because he didn’t have his boss’s cell phone number), yet still walking. And that’s how he appeared at his dinner, nearly an hour late, acting calm, very calm. The black sports jacket accentuated the spectral effect that bordered on the funereal. A little like a film noir in which the hero comes forth in silence from the shadows. Charles had almost finished a bottle of wine while waiting. It had made him romantic, nostalgic. He didn’t even listen to Markus’s excuses about the suburban train line. His arrival was grace incarnate.

And the evening would find its bearings on the triumph of that first impression.

Eighty-eight

Miss Teschmacher and Lex Luthor Discussing Superman
in the Movie
Superman (
1978
)

MISS TESCHMACHER:
Lex, what’s the story on this guy? Do you think it’s the genuine article?

LEX LUTHOR:
If he is, he’s not from this world.

MISS TESCHMACHER:
Why?

LEX LUTHOR:
Because, if any human being were going to perpetrate such a fantastic hoax, it would have been me!

Eighty-nine

During the entire dinner, Markus was astounded by Charles’s behavior. The latter babbled, blabbed, bumbled. He was incapable of finishing a sentence. Flew into sudden bursts of laughter, but never at the moment when Markus was trying to be funny. He was like somebody with jet lag in relation to the present moment. After a while, Markus dared to ask, “Are you all right?”

“All right? Me? You know, since yesterday, constantly. Especially right now.”

The incoherence of that answer confirmed Markus’s suspicions. Charles hadn’t gone completely insane. He was quite aware, during rare flashes of lucidity, that he was losing his marbles. But he couldn’t get hold of himself. He was suffering from some kind of short circuit. The Swede sitting opposite him had turned his life, his system upside down. He was struggling to return to reality. As for Markus, although his past was far from eventful, he was close to thinking that this dinner was the most ghastly one of his life. And when it came to ghastly, he was well versed. However, he couldn’t refrain from beginning to feel compassion, the desire to help this man who was going to the dogs.

“Can I do something for you?”

“Yes, definitely, Markus … I’m going to think about it, that’s nice. Now, it’s true, you are nice … it shows … in your way of looking at me … you’re not judging … I understand everything … I understand everything, now …”

“You understand what?”

“But I understand for Natalie. The more I see you, the more I understand everything I’m not.”

Markus put down his glass. He’d started to suspect that all of this could have something to do with Natalie. Contrary to all expectations, his first feeling was one of relief. It was the first time that someone had talked to him about her. At that precise moment, Natalie was disengaged from fantasy. She entered into the real part of his life.

Charles went on. “I love her. Did you know that I love her?”

“I definitely think you’ve had too much to drink.”

“So? Being drunk won’t change anything. I’m still lucid, very much so. Lucid about everything I’m not. Looking at you, I realize the point to which I’ve wasted my life … the point to which my life hasn’t stopped being trivial, and a permanent compromise … it will seem crazy to you, but I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told a soul: I wanted to be an artist … yes, I know, same old song … but really, when I was little, I adored painting little boats … it was pure bliss … I have a whole collection of miniature gondolas … I put hours into painting them … into being so precise with every detail … how I would have loved to keep painting … to live my life in that kind of frenzied calm … and instead of that, I’m stuffing myself with Krisprolls throughout the day … and those days go
on forever … they’re about as different from one another as the Chinese are … and my sex life … my wife … all that stuff … I don’t even want to talk about it … I realize all of it now … I see you, and I realize …”

Suddenly Charles interrupted his monologue. Markus was uncomfortable. It’s never easy when a person you don’t know starts confiding in you, and even less easy when it happens to be your boss. All he had left was humor to try to lighten up the atmosphere.

“You saw all that by looking at me? That’s really the effect I have on you? In such a short time …”

“And on top of that, you have a great sense of humor. You’re a genius, really. There was Marx, there was Einstein, and now there’s you.”

Markus couldn’t find a rejoinder to that rather excessive remark. Luckily, the waiter appeared.

“Have you decided?”

“Yes, I’ll have the beef,” said Charles. “Very rare.”

“The fish for me.”

“Very good, gentlemen,” said the waiter as he left.

He was barely six feet away when Charles called him back. “Actually, I’ll have the same as the gentleman. The fish for me, too.”

“Very good, got it,” said the waiter, leaving again.

After a silence, Charles admitted, “I decided to do everything like you.”

“Do everything like me?”

“Yes, kind of like with a mentor.”

“You know, there’s not a lot to do to be like me.”

“I don’t agree. For example, your sports jacket. I think it would be a good idea if I had the same one. I ought to wear the same clothes as you. You have a unique style. Everything is thought out; it shows that you leave nothing to chance. And the same for women. Right, and the same for that, right?”

“Uh, yes, I don’t know. I can lend it to you if you want.”

“There you go! That’s so you: niceness personified. I say that I like your sports jacket, and in a second you offer to lend it to me. That is so wonderful. I realize I haven’t lent out my sports jackets enough. All my life I’ve been a tremendously selfish person when it comes to sports jackets.”

Markus realized that anything he’d say was bound to be inspired. The man opposite him was looking through a filter of admiration, if not of veneration. Continuing his inquiry, Charles asked, “Tell me more about you.”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t often think about who I am.”

“There you go! That’s it! My problem is that I think too much. I’m always wondering what others think. I ought to be more stoic.”

“For that you’d have to be born in Sweden.”

“Ha! Very funny! You need to teach me to be funny like that. What a sense of repartee! Here’s to you! Can I pour you some more?”

“No, I think I’ve had enough.”

“And what a sense of control! Okay, that one I think I won’t do like you. I’m allowing myself one infraction.”

The waiter arrived with the two fish and wished them bon appétit. They began to eat. Suddenly, Charles raised his head from his plate.

“What an idiot I am. All of this is ridiculous.”

“What?”

“I hate fish.”

“Oh …”

“But, it’s worse than that.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes, I’m allergic to fish.”

“… “

“It’s all been said now. I’ll never be able to be like you. I can never be with Natalie. All that because of fish.”

Ninety