Invisible Love (14 page)

Her sister nodded admiringly then added, “What about the rest?”

“He's very gentle, very steady, very considerate.”

Obviously, he was nothing like the previous one. She was living with a gentleman now, who didn't swear, didn't spit, didn't belch, didn't fart, who spoke four languages but never used a vulgar word, and who asked her politely if they could make love. Had she ever seen him undressed? Not at all. She found this behavior “restful” and better suited to her age. All the same, she sometimes thought nostalgically of the crazy things the other one used to say, his unbridled sexuality, the many pleasures, including the most disreputable, into which he had initiated her . . .

“Do you love him?” her elder sister insisted.

“Of course!” she said, outraged. “What do you take me for?”

“So why doesn't he marry you?”

Irritated that her sister kept on asking her the very question she was constantly asking herself, she replied in a tone of assumed impassivity, “It's perfectly simple. When you work for the foreign service, it's best to stay single. If you burden yourself with a wife, you aren't considered flexible, and no longer get offered the best positions.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes!”

“In Austria, though, we . . . ”

“He's Danish.”

“Of course . . . ”

What she wouldn't admit, even though she had guessed, was that a diplomat only married if his wife's position added luster to his career. She didn't come from a respected family, she didn't bear a noble name, she was nothing but the widow of an obscure scribbler of music who'd always been one step ahead of the bailiffs . . .

“Who was it who told me that Danes were very good lovers?” her elder sister murmured languidly, rubbing her silky lips with her index finger.

Yes, who?
she thought.

 

*

 

Now even the most malicious of scandalmongers were forced to admit that her life was a success.

The sun bounced off her diamond ring in a flash of light that was like a flash of laughter. He had married her! It had taken twelve years but he had married her!

In the distance, the ducks strutted on the lake between the weeping willows, as if they owned the grounds.

She had remained on the terrace to savor her happiness—she would join the guests later.

Baroness! Who would ever have though that she would become a baroness? At the age of forty-seven! After years of hardship, she had hit the jackpot. Everything had been against her: her age, a previous marriage, two sons, precarious health, a terrible financial situation, and the unfair reputation of being a scatterbrain incapable of running a household. And now the servants all bowed down to her! What's more, their wedding had been celebrated with a sumptuous ceremony in the cathedral in Pressburg, even though he was a Protestant and she a Catholic. She knew, of course, how pleased her sister had been for her, what she loved most was to think about her enemies, those vixens who thought she was finished . . . Oh, the anger of those stuck-up bitches when they learned of her marriage!

And her
Von
! She didn't just have a wedding ring, she also had a
Von
. Of course, her Dane made fun of her when she had herself called baroness and put a
Von
in front of their surname, constantly telling her that although he had recently been knighted by the state, it was merely an honorary distinction, and did not mean that the family had been ennobled.

“Nonsense! They knighted you, which means I'm a lady, and nobody will prevent me from adding the
Von
you lacked before.”

Sometimes she would have liked to meet new people, just to show off her success. An audience . . . That was what was lacking here. Copenhagen was a pretty town, with its cute red houses, and she liked it a lot, but it wasn't Vienna! Calm, smiling men lived in slow motion here, occupied in guzzling beer or curdled milk.

Don't complain
, she told herself,
and please don't bite the hand that feeds you.
 

It wasn't boredom that she felt, more a kind of soft languor she couldn't shrug off. Was it because she had stopped dosing herself with coffee, the last bad habit that remained from her previous life? With that Bohemian pipsqueak she'd been married to, anything could happen at any time, for better or worse, but something always happened. Here the days were all the same, pleasant but identical. Walking, reading, tarot cards. It wasn't exciting, it was frankly dull, but if that was the price to pay for wealth, nobility, security . . .

She sighed and joined the guests, who were chatting in the drawing room.

“An outstanding composer, a truly outstanding composer!” her husband was saying in the middle of a group of men.

Again? It's becoming unbearable. Not only does he force me to talk about him when we wake up in the morning, but he's still holding forth about him in the afternoon. We're a threesome. Wherever I go, I have two husbands with me: the first, who's always being talked about by the
second, and the second, who's always talking about the first.

He kept waving his hands and insisting, “It's about time Copenhagen discovered him. His works should be played here.”

Poor man! He's trying to persuade people to buy my scores. It's kind of him, and when it works it brings in a few pennies. I suppose he works himself into the ground like this for me rather than for himself, but he doesn't need to, not now that he's been promoted and is earning four times as much as he used to.

“When we hear his music,” he continued before his captive audience, “we realize that the man was a kind of angel.”

What's he talking about? I've never met anyone coarser or more vulgar. An angel? An angel who never thought about anything but fornicating!

“Yes,” he was saying, “it's clear he was inspired by God. Maybe he had an ear that directly seized what the Creator whispered to him.”

What an idiot! My first husband used the same seven notes to depict Jesus Christ, a sinner, a young girl in love, or an adulterous wife. It was nothing but technique. Musicians' tricks.

“I had the misfortune to scribble terrible poetry in my youth before I gave it up, and I can recognize genius, believe me. Ladies and gentlemen, that man was a sublime composer.”

You dummy! Stop talking about him, you're making a fool of yourself. He may have been a decent enough composer, but my God, how he fucked!

And, with a hiccup that everyone took to be a sign of the emotion caused by talk of her dead husband, she went back out onto the terrace.

 

*

 

Sitting back on the leather chair, with her legs apart, she had been brooding for half an hour in front of this desk, her temples on fire, trying to avoid facing the facts, even though the evidence was right here before her eyes.

No doubt about it. Her second husband was writing the life story of her first husband.

A biography . . . That explained his unremitting activity over the past few years, that was why he cluttered their house with piles of newspapers, magazines, and programs, that was why he corresponded with those who had known the composer, even with her dragon of a sister-in-law, although she had expressly forbidden him to do so. Perhaps that was why he was so fond of talking with her about the past. What a betrayal! While she had believed he had simply been affectionately curious about his beloved's youth, he had actually been using her to gather information for his book.

Her first husband . . . always her first husband . . . He took up more space dead than he had when he was alive.

Overcome, she looked at the handwritten pages, determined to destroy them immediately.
What perversion is this? Why's he spending his time reconstructing my life with another man?
She picked up a page at random.

“His marriage was a happy one. His wife was a gentle, sensitive woman who loved and understood him. She admired him for the great artist that he was and was able to adapt to his character, which allowed her to gain his trust to such an extent that he loved her and told her everything, even his smallest faults. She rewarded him with her tenderness and her constant care and attention. She admits it even today: how could she not forgive him and be his entirely when he was such a good man?”

In spite of her bad mood, she smiled. What an innocent! He was telling the story just as she had told it to him. He had swallowed her lies. During their conversations, unshackled by the truth, she had depicted her conduct as it might have been rather than as it had been, enjoying giving herself a better role. For years now, she had been describing herself as her current husband would have liked her to act toward the previous one. More than anything else, she had done it to please the one who was alive, to justify and even inspire his love. She had been revisiting her first marriage through her husband's eyes in order to satisfy him.

Going through the following paragraphs, she received confirmation that he was drawing a wonderful portrait of her.

At least that'll make up for the treachery of my horrible sister-in-law!

With this exclamation, she found herself accepting this unusual project. To be honest, this biography served her purpose . . . Strangely—thanks to her Dane's campaigning—the dead man was being increasingly talked about, his works were being played, some composers claimed to be followers of his, even if only her sons' teachers! How bizarre fashion could be . . . Not that they should have any illusions: it wouldn't last. His music was old-fashioned, people were interested in something more modern. You couldn't change them. In spite of this brief revival, it would all soon be forgotten.

Anyway, if by some miracle people did take an interest in her, at least this biography didn't repeat the nonsense her in-laws had spouted about her.

A shadowy figure came up behind her.

“Are you looking through my things?”

She stood up and kissed him. “My dear, what you're planning is wonderful.”

“Oh, yes?” he asked, dubiously.

“You know, he would have been proud of you.”

Instead of replying, he turned red, his neck swelled with pleasure, and his eyes misted over.

He would have been proud of you
. Looking at him, she realized that these words had plunged him into a more emotional state than the day he had been knighted. Or the day of their wedding.

 

*

 

“Yes, Mother, I assure you . . . ”

“No, impossible, it's too ridiculous!”

“I swear to you. He asked me to talk to my aunt about it.”

“Your aunt? Do you still see that bitch?”

“Mother, everyone knows she loves me . . . ”

“All she sees in you is her brother's son, she forgets you're also mine. She's always hated me.”

“Mother . . . ”

“Never mind! That's not the question. You're saying that . . . ”

“Yes, Stepfather told me he wanted to be buried with you in Father's vault . . . ”

“What a nightmare!”

Exasperated, livid with anger, hair disheveled, she went straight to the library, which her husband used as an office, determined to break the polite silence with which she had accepted his eccentricities until now. Her second husband was so wild about the first, she had often had the feeling she was in a
ménage à trois
, but this was going too far . . . In a vault, the dead man would no longer be just a memory but would become a body again. All three of them, she and her two husbands, were going to find themselves lying for all eternity in the same room.

When she entered the library, he lay gasping for breath on the Persian carpet.

“Oh . . . my dear . . . you're just in time . . . ”

He had had another dizzy spell—they had been occurring with increasing frequency for some time now. No wonder he was obsessed with death and tombs.

As she approached him, his face lit up. Poor man! How he loved her . . . His dull eyes shone with joy at the sight of his wife.

She immediately stopped nursing her anger and thought only of helping him, supporting his head, fanning him, cooling him down, letting him get his breath back.

This business of the tomb didn't really matter. She would talk about it later, when the moment was right.

She sat him down on the couch, surrounded by cushions. He was calmer now, and the color was coming back into his face.

“You scared me,” she scolded him tenderly.

“There's life in the old dog yet.”

I hope he's right! I don't want to be a widow again.

They held hands for a long time, gazing out at the coppery light of dusk. Then he turned to her, and with a solemn look on his face, said, “There's something I wanted to suggest, something that means a lot to me.”

Oh no! He's going to bore my head off with that shared mausoleum and, given the state he's in, I won't be able to refuse him.

“Yes, my dear?” she replied in a steady voice.

“Use his name.”

“I'm sorry?”

“Start using your former husband's name again.”

Tears welled in her eyes. She felt as if she was going to choke. “What? Are you rejecting me?”

“No, my darling, I care for you more than ever. I'd simply like it if in society, as a mark of both his genius and my love, you called yourself Constanza Von Nissen, the widow Mozart.”

Y
ou know, Auntie, you don't have to lose every game . . . ”

Gathering his aces and jacks, the boy in the cherry-red T-shirt gave his aunt a gentle look. She quivered with an indignation that was half-feigned, half-genuine.

“I'm not doing it on purpose. Either I'm bad, or you're really good.”

Jonas smiled, unconvinced, and started to shuffle the cards again.