Invisible Love (7 page)

When you saw them at a bend in the path, their appearance was striking: two country gentlemen moving toward you, rustic but elegant, one on two legs, the other on four, similar in size and bearing, both proud and solidly built, treading the soil with confidence, powerful, well-balanced. Whenever another walker appeared, they glared at him, but their looks turned benevolent as soon as the distance was reduced. When you tried to find the differences between the man and his dog, you found only more symmetries: while one dressed in velvet or tweed and the other made do with a thick but short-haired coat, they both wore gloves, the first for real, the second because nature had given him fawn-colored mittens; Samuel Heymann had black eyebrows in a pale face, while Argos's eyes were underlined with beige marks against his black fur, this contrast being highly expressive in both cases; and these proud creatures both sported identically strong chests, the master covering his with a scarf, the quadruped displaying an amber patch on his.

At first, we were nodding acquaintances, but far from friends. Since I loved going on long walks with my three dogs, I often ran into them on those Saturdays and Sundays when I took refuge in the country.

Samuel Heymann was content at first with a mere nod of the head, just for custom's sake, although his dog was friendlier toward my dogs. After five or six of these encounters, given that I insisted on exchanging a few words, he agreed to a little cautious conversation, the kind one stranger engages in with another, without venturing anything that might denote familiarity. When he became warmer, thanks to Argos being so delighted with my Labradors, I thought I had won. But when I greeted him in the village without my dogs, he didn't even remember me: his way of perceiving the world starting with the animal rather than the human, it was my animals he remembered and liked being with, while I was just an indistinct face floating above the three leashes. This was confirmed one day when I hurt myself doing some odd job or other and the owner of the café took me straight to the elderly doctor's. When Samuel Heymann bent over me and asked me where it hurt, I had the impression that he was addressing the pain rather than me, that I had dissolved into the case I represented, that he was dealing with my problem out of moral necessity rather than out of sympathy. His regulation philanthropy, meticulous and inflexible, reeked of duty, not spontaneity; it was an expression of the will, and that made it intimidating.

Nevertheless, as the months passed, in spite of a few failures, he did finally begin to recognize me independently of my dogs. Then, when he found out that I was a writer, he opened his door to me.

Our relationship began on a footing of great respect. He liked my books, I loved his modesty.

I invited him to my house, he received me in his. A bottle of whiskey served as a pretext ever since we had discovered a mutual passion for this drink. Sitting by the fire, we would talk about the proportion of malt that gave the precious liquid taste, the process of drying in a peat fire, the essence of the wood the cask was made from; Samuel went so far as to prefer distilleries located by the sea, claiming that as whiskey aged it became imbued with the smells of seaweed, iodine, and salt. Our liking for whiskey had paradoxically developed our taste for water, for, in order to preserve the strongest specimens, single casks of 55 or 60 degrees, we would have two glasses in our hands—one of whiskey, one of water—which led our taste buds to seek out the best springs.

Whenever I entered the room where Samuel Heymann sat in the company of his dog, I always had the feeling I was disturbing them. There they were, man and beast, motionless, beautiful, noble, shrouded in silence, united by the white light filtering in through the curtains. Whatever the hour when I surprised them, they would both have identical expressions, whether pensive, playful or weary . . . As soon as I crossed the threshold, my entrance disturbed their pose and forced the tableau to come to life. The dog would lift his head in surprise, tilt his bald cranium to the left, push his ears forward, then look me up and down with his hazel eyes: “What an indiscreet person! I hope you have a good reason.” Less brusquely, his master would suppress a sigh, smile, and stammer a courtesy that barely concealed an exasperated “What? Again?” Joined in a constant communion, spending all their days and nights together, they never seemed to tire of one another, enjoying every moment they shared, as if for them there was nothing more perfect in this world than to breathe side by side. Anyone who suddenly appeared was breaking in on something rich and strong and full.

Outside books and whiskey, our conversations quickly languished. Apart from the fact that Samuel had no patience with general topics, he never told me anything personal, any anecdote about his childhood, his youth, or his love life. He was eighty years old, and yet it was if he had been born yesterday. If I ever delivered myself of a confession, he would receive my confidence but would not give me any revelation in return. True, mention of his daughter sometimes altered this mask, because he loved her, loved her success—she ran a law practice in Namur—and made no secret of the fact. But there too, sincere as he was, he made do with conventional phrases. I came to the conclusion that he had never been passionate about anything, and that I was seeing the full extent of his private life when I contemplated the couple he formed with his dog.

Last summer, a series of lecture tours abroad kept me out of the country for several months. On the eve of my departure, he wished, with a touch of mockery, “A happy journey to the writer who is more interested in talking than in writing.” As for me, I promised to bring him back a few valuable books and some rare bottles to occupy our winter.

 

*

 

I returned to some devastating news.

A week earlier, the dog Argos had been run over by a truck.

And five days later, Samuel had taken his own life.

The village was in a state of shock. In a tearful voice, the grocer told me the news before I got home: the doctor's housekeeper had found him lying on the floor of his kitchen, pieces of brain and blood spattering the tiled walls. According to the police, he had taken his rifle and shot himself in the mouth.

“Magnificent . . . ” I thought.

We never react to a death the way we are expected to: instead of feeling sadness, I was weak with admiration.

My first impulse was to revere that spectacular, grandiose, logical comclusion: Samuel and his dog had been a couple to the end! That double death struck me as flagrantly romantic. There was no doubt that the death of one had called for the death of the other. And as was their wont, they had acted in concert, abandoning life almost simultaneously, both suffering a violent demise.

Then I recovered my self-control and reprimanded myself for my thoughts:
Don't be ridiculous. No one's ever killed himself because his dog was run over by a car. Samuel may have been planning suicide for ages, but put it off as long as he did in order to take care of his companion. Once the dog was gone, he carried out his plan . . . Or maybe, just after Argos's accident, Samuel learned that he was suffering from an incurable illness, and wanted to spare himself a long, drawn-out death . . . Yes, yes, it must be something like that . . . A series of coincidences!
He didn't kill himself for grief. No one's ever committed suicide because his dog was run over.

The more I denied that hypothesis, the more sensible and self-evident it seemed.

Irritably, my head heavy, I decided not to go straight home but headed instead for the Pétrelle, just to pay tribute to our friend Samuel by commemorating his memory with my fellow villagers.

Unfortunately, public rumor was even more inflamed than my imagination: at the bar, at the tables, along the broad sidewalk where, in spite of the cold, the regulars had come out to drink their beer, everyone thought that Dr. Heymann had taken his own life because of what had happened to his dog.

“If you'd seen him when he picked the animal up from the road, all in pieces like that . . . It was terrifying.”

“He must have been distraught.”

“No, he was filled with hatred! He kept screaming ‘No!' and spitting at the sky, with his eyes all bloodshot, then he turned to us as we approached him and I really thought he was going to kill us all! I mean we hadn't done anything, but the way he looked at us . . . If he'd had daggers instead of eyes, we'd have all been goners.”

“Where was this?”

“The Villers Road, after the Tronchons' farm.”

“And who did it?”

“Nobody knows. He drove straight off.”

“That dog was clever, though. It avoided cars and never ran away from its master.”

“Maryse, his housekeeper, told me they were both looking at mushrooms at the side of the ditch when a truck passed at top speed, missing the doctor by a hair's breadth but hitting Argos full on in the pelvis. The dog was torn to pieces. The truck driver must have seen them, but didn't swerve by an inch to avoid them. A real bastard!”

“There are some stupid people around!”

“Poor animal.”

“Poor animal and poor doctor.”

“But then to go and blow his brains out afterwards!”

“You can't argue with grief.”

“All the same!”

“Dammit, Heymann was a doctor—he'd seen people die before and never killed himself.”

“Well, maybe he loved his dog more than he loved people . . . ”

“I'm afraid you're right.”

“Stop! He'd already lost other dogs. Whenever one of them died, he didn't think twice, he'd just go out and buy a new one. In fact, people were shocked that he didn't wait longer.”

“Maybe this Argos was better than the others.”

“Or else the doctor was getting tired.”

“Hold on a minute! The other dogs all died normally, of old age. Not turned into mincemeat by a hit-and-run driver!”

“All the same, I think it's a bit weird to love dogs so much, and you'll never persuade me otherwise.”

“To love dogs so much or people so little?”

After these words, silence fell on the room. The percolator hissed. The television murmured the results of the horse races. A fly, suddenly desperate to attract attention, flattened itself against the wall. Everyone was asking themselves the question: Which is easier to love, a man or a dog? And which is better at returning our love?

It was a disquieting question.

Lost in thought, I walked mechanically back to my house. My Labradors were delighted to see me, leaped in the air, and wagged their tails so enthusastically that their bodies were thrown off balance. As I stroked them, it hit me for a fraction of a second that I didn't give them back as much as they gave me, and that Samuel Heymann, in his passion for Argos, had far surpassed me. That had been pure love, the love of his life . . .

I opened my most expensive bottle of whiskey, an old malt from the island of Islay, the one I had intended for Samuel. That evening, I drank for two.

 

*

 

The next day, his daughter Miranda came to see me.

I barely knew her, had only met her two or three times, but had liked her right from the start. She was lively, precise, independent, unaffected, almost abrupt, one of those modern women who charm you by their very refusal to use their charms. Addressing me as a man would have done, in a manner devoid of undertones, she had put me at my ease, so much at ease that subsequently, when I had noticed how fine her features were and how feminine her legs, I felt a surprise tinged with wonder.

Miranda stood there in the morning mist with her shock of red hair, smiled, asked if she was disturbing me, brandished some croissants she had just bought, and suggested a coffee. There was as much naturalness as authority in the way she took control.

As we went into the kitchen, I offered her my condolences, which she received with her head bowed, inscrutable. She sat down facing me.

“My father liked talking with you. Maybe he told you things . . . things he wouldn't have told me.”

“We talked mostly about books and whiskey. That was it, really—books and whiskey.”

“Sometimes, when people talk about some general subject, they connect it with a specific memory.”

I sat down and told her that, in spite of all my efforts, our conversations had never taken a personal turn.

“He was protecting himself,” I concluded.

“From what?” Miranda said with exasperation. “Or from whom? I'm his only daughter, I loved him, but I know nothing about him. He always behaved impeccably toward me, but he was always a stranger. That's my one reproach: he did everything for me except tell me who he was.” From her basket she took an unwieldy volume. “Look at this.”

It was a photograph album, each stiff page protected by silk paper. I leafed through it sadly. It began with the wedding of Samuel and Édith, a pretty redhead with a sweet mouth; at their feet, a Beauceron posed, as proud as if it were the couple's child. Then a baby appeared on the scene—it, too, watched over by the animal. These group photographs showed a smiling family of four, a trio formed by the married couple and the dog, to which the baby was added. When Miranda was five, Édith disappeared.

“What happened to your mother?”

“A brain tumor. She died very quickly.”

The photographs now were of a reconstituted family: the dog had taken the wife's place beside its master, and it was Miranda who stood in front of them.

“Do you notice anything?” she asked suddenly.

“Er . . . There are no photographs dating from your father's childhood or adolescence.”

“His parents died during the war. Like lots of Jews whose families were murdered, he didn't like to talk about them . . . I don't know anything at all about my grandparents, uncles or aunts. He was the only one who survived.”

“How?”

“During the war, he was hidden in a Catholic boarding school in Namur. By a priest. Father . . . André. Don't you notice anything else?”