The Most Beautiful Book in the World (12 page)

The bus ceased its throbbing: they had arrived. The Green Snail Theatre Troupe would have two whole hours on their own before they were due to meet at the theater.

Fabio left his luggage in his tiny room, and headed for the inn.

As he wound his way up the hill, he thought of how ridiculous his hope was. Why was he imagining he might ever see her again? If she had been staying at that hotel back then, it was because she did not live here; she had given him no reason to think he might find her there today.

“I'm not really on my way to a rendezvous,” he thought bitterly. “Any more than I'm conducting an investigation. I'm on a pilgrimage. I'm walking amongst my memories, memories of a time when I was young and handsome and famous, a time when a princess could desire me.”

When he arrived at the inn, he was even more impressed than in the past, because at present he had a better understanding of the value of things: it would require a substantial income to stay in a place like this.

He hesitated before going through the door.

They'll kick me out. You can tell from the first glance that I don't have the means to pay for even a cocktail at the bar.

To find the necessary courage, he reminded himself that he was an actor, and that he had his looks: he decided to play the part, and went through the door.

At the reception, he avoided the younger employees and went over to the concierge, who must have been in his sixties, and who not only was more likely to have been working there fifteen years earlier, but might also have a concierge's sharp memory.

“Excuse me, I am Fabio Fabbri, I'm an actor, and I stayed here fifteen years ago. Were you here at the time?”

“Yes, sir. I was an elevator boy at the time. What can I do for you?”

“Well, there was a young woman staying here then, very beautiful, nobility. Do you remember her by any chance?”

“Many people of royal blood stay here, sir.”

“She went by the name Donatella, although I doubt that . . . The personnel addressed her as ‘Princess.'”

The man with the golden keys began to ruffle through his memories.

“Let's see, let's see, Princess Donatella, Princess Donatella . . . No, I'm sorry, sir, I don't recall.”

“But you must remember her. In addition to the fact that she was very young and very beautiful, she was also rather eccentric. For example, she went around barefoot.”

The detail seemed to ignite something in the man, and he delved into another niche of his memory before suddenly exclaiming, “Now I remember! It was Rosa!”

“Rosa?”

“Rosa Lombardi!”

“Rosa Lombardi. As I conjectured, Donatella was merely a name she had borrowed for the evening. Do you have any news of her? Does she still stay here on occasion? I must confess she is the sort of woman one does not easily forget.”

The man sighed, and leaned on the counter as if speaking, now, to an acquaintance.

“Of course I remember her. Rosa . . . She worked here as a waitress. She was the daughter of the dishwasher in the kitchen, Pepino Lombardi. She was so young, poor child, when she was diagnosed with leukemia, you know, that blood disease . . . We all loved her so dearly. She made us feel so sorry for her that we tried in whatever ways we could to fulfill her desires until she went to die at the hospital. Poor thing, how old was she, eighteen maybe? From her earliest childhood she had gone around the village without her shoes. For a laugh we used to call her the barefoot princess . . .”

 

 

 

 

 

C
alm down, Odette, calm down.She felt so lively, impatient, and enthusiastic that it was as if she were taking flight, leaving the streets of Brussels behind, rising above the rows of facades, flying above the roofs to join the pigeons in the sky. Anyone who saw her light figure tearing down the Mont des Arts would surmise that this woman, with a feather in her curls, was singularly bird-like . . .

She was about to see him! For real . . . she would go up to him . . . even touch him, perhaps, if he shook her hand . . .

Calm down, Odette, calm down.

Although she was over forty, her heart was running away with her as if she were a teenage girl. Whenever a pedestrian crossing obliged her to wait on the pavement, she could feel a tingling in her thighs, and her ankles threatened to spring her forward; she would have liked to leap over the cars.

When she arrived at the bookstore, there was already a long line, as befitted a great day; she was told she would have to wait forty-five minutes before she could see him.

She grabbed the new book from the pyramid the booksellers had made with multiple copies—as fine as any Christmas tree—and began to read along with the other women who were waiting. They may all have been Balthazar Basan's readers, but not one of them could possibly be as assiduous, exact, and passionate as Odette.

“Well, you see, I've read all his books, absolutely everything, and loved every one,” she said, as if apologizing for her erudition.

She felt very proud on discovering that she knew the author and his works better than anyone. Because her background was modest, because she worked as a shop assistant by day and a feather-maker by night, because she knew herself to be of mediocre intelligence, because she commuted by bus from Charleroi, an old mining town, she was nothing less than delighted to discover that among all these fine bourgeois ladies from Brussels she held a superior rank in the Balthazar Balsan fan club department.

In the middle of the store, enthroned upon a platform, illuminated by spotlights (nothing new to him, he was so used to the spotlights on television), Balthazar Balsan applied himself diligently and good-naturedly to the book signing. After twelve novels—all of them triumphs—he no longer knew whether he liked these signing sessions or not; on the one hand, he found it boring, such a repetitive and monotonous undertaking; on the other hand he enjoyed meeting his readers. These days, however, weariness prevailed over any appetite for conversation; he carried on more out of habit than desire, for he was at a difficult stage in his career where he no longer really needed to help with the sales of his books, but nevertheless feared that they might dwindle without him. And that the quality might suffer, as well . . . Could it be that with his latest opus he had just written the “one book too many,” the one that was nothing special, the one that was not as vital as the others had been? For the time being he refused to allow doubt to contaminate him, for it was something he experienced with each new publication.

Among all the unfamiliar faces there was one that caught his attention, as she stood taller than all the others: a beautiful dark-skinned woman dressed in lustrous bronze raw silk, off to one side and striding back and forth on her own. Although she was absorbed by a telephone conversation, from time to time she looked over at the writer with a sparkling gaze.

“Who is that?” he asked the marketing director.

“Your publicist for Belgium. Would you like me to introduce you?”

“Please.”

He was delighted to interrupt the signing for a few seconds, to take the hand that Florence held out to him.

“I'll be looking after you for a few days,” she murmured, unsettled.

“I do hope so,” he confirmed, with emphatic warmth.

The young woman's fingers responded favorably to the pressure of his palm, and a flicker of acknowledgment lit her eyes. Balthazar knew he had won: he would not be spending the night alone in his hotel.

Revived, already hungry for some sexual amusement, he turned toward the next reader with the smile of an ogre and asked in a vibrant voice, “Well, Madame, what can I do for you?”

Odette was so surprised by the virile energy with which he addressed her that she instantaneously lost all composure.

“Mmm . . . Mmm . . . Mmm . . .”

She could not utter a single word.

Balthazar Balsan looked at her without looking at her, friendly in a professional sort of way.

“Do you have a book with you?”

Odette didn't move, although she was clutching a copy of
Silence of the Plain
against her chest.

“Would you like me to sign the latest book?”

With a colossal effort, she managed to make a sign of acquiescence.

He reached out to take the book; misjudging, Odette stepped backwards, onto the toes of the lady behind her, understood her error, and suddenly thrust the book forward with a grand gesture that nearly swiped the author in the head.

“To whom shall I sign it?”

Silence.

“Is it for you?”

Odette nodded.

“What's your name?”

Odette just stood there.

“Your first name?”

Odette, deciding to risk her all, opened her mouth and murmured, swallowing furiously, “—dette!”

“Pardon?”

“—dette!”

“Dette?”

Increasingly unhappy, choking, on the verge of fainting, she tried one last time to articulate.

“—dette!”

 

A few hours later, sitting on a bench, as the light faded to gray and darkness rose from the ground to the sky, Odette could not bring herself to undertake her return journey to Charleroi. Disconcerted, she reread and reread the title page where her favorite author had inscribed, “For Dette.”

There it was. She had botched her sole encounter with the writer of her dreams, and her children were going to make fun of her . . . And they would be right. Was there another woman on earth her age who was incapable of pronouncing her own name?

But as soon as she was on the bus, she forgot all about the incident and began to levitate. For from the very first sentence, Balthazar Balsan's new book drenched her in light and carried her away into his world, blotting out all her troubles, her shame, her neighbors' conversations, the sound of machines, and the dreary, industrial landscape of Charleroi. Thanks to Balthazar Balsan, she had her head in the clouds.

Once she was at home, she moved about on tiptoe not to wake anyone—above all she did not want to be interrogated about her defeat—and she went to bed, propped up against her pillows, gazing at the panorama on the opposite wall which represented two shadow puppet lovers against a marine sunset. She could not tear herself away from the pages, and did not switch off her bedside lamp until she had finished the entire book.

 

As for Balthazar Balsan, he had a far more carnal night. The lovely Florence offered herself to him without ado, and in the presence of this black Venus with her perfect body he endeavored to be a good lover; so much ardor required a certain effort, and revealed painfully that he had also accumulated a certain fatigue on a sexual level; he was beginning to notice the price to be paid for certain things, and wondered whether, in spite of himself, he had not turned a corner where age was concerned.

At midnight, Florence wanted to switch on the television to watch a popular literary program, devoted that evening to Balthazar Balsan's new book. Balthazar would never have accepted had it not given him a chance to enjoy a restorative truce.

On the screen there appeared the face of the dreaded literary critic Olaf Pims, and some inexplicable instinct warned Balthazar Balsan that he was about to be attacked.

From behind his red eyeglasses—the glasses of the matador about to play with the bull, before going for the kill—the man looked bored, even downright disgusted.

“I have been asked to report on Balthazar Balsan's latest novel. So be it. If only we could be sure that it will also be his last, then that would be good news for us all! For I am absolutely aghast. From a literary point of view, this book is a disaster. Everything is cause for consternation—the story, the characters, the style . . . How can one be so consistently and unrelentingly bad from one book to the next: it is nothing short of an exploit close to genius. If it were possible to die of boredom, I would have died last night.”

In his hotel room, naked with a towel around his waist, Balthazar Balsan watched open-mouthed the live broadcast of his own demolition. Next to him on the bed, Florence was embarrassed, and wriggled like a maggot trying to get back to the surface.

Olaf Pims tranquilly pursued his massacre.

“It pains me all the more to have to say this, because I have encountered Balthazar Balsan in a social context, and he is a likeable sort—kind, well-groomed, with the somewhat ridiculous physique of a high-school gym teacher, but in all respects he is the sort of individual one can associate with; in short, the kind of man with whom a woman can have a pleasant divorce.”

With a little smile, Olaf Pims turned towards the camera and spoke as if he were suddenly addressing Balthazar Balsan himself.

“When one is so gifted at clichés, Monsieur Balsan, one does not call this a novel, but a dictionary, yes, a dictionary of platitudes, a dictionary of hollow statements. In the meantime, here is what your book deserves: the garbage can, and as quickly as possible.”

Olaf Pims tore up the copy of the book he had been holding and tossed it scornfully behind him. Balthazar felt his gesture like an uppercut.

On the set, shocked by such a violent reaction, the presenter asked, “Well, then, how do you explain his success?”

“Simple-minded people are entitled to their heroes, too. I do not doubt that concierges, supermarket checkers, hairdressers, and the like who collect dolls at the county fair or photos of sunsets have found in Balthazar Balsan their ideal author.”

Florence switched off the television and turned to Balthazar. If she had been a more experienced publicist, she would have dished up the usual objections for situations like this: the man is bitter, and cannot stand to see that your books are in fashion; he reads them and assumes you're soliciting readers; consequently, he sees anything that is simply natural as demagogy, finds commercial interest beneath technical virtuosity, and brands your desire to offer something interesting to readers as marketing; moreover, he defeats his own argument by treating your audience as an unworthy subhuman species, and his scorn for society is downright staggering. However, because she was young, Florence remained malleable; her intelligence was mediocre, and she mistook nastiness for critical savvy; for her, consequently, the die was cast.

It was no doubt because he felt the young women's scornful, pitying gaze on his person that Balthazar, that night, entered a stage of depression. He had always had his share of bad-tempered remarks, but as for eyes full of pity, never. He began to feel like an old, ridiculous has-been.

 

In the meantime, Odette had reread
Silence of the Plain
three times, and considered it to be one of Balthazar Balsan's best books to date. She eventually related her botched encounter with the writer to her son Rudy, a hairdresser. Careful not to laugh, he understood that his mother was unhappy.

“What did you expect? What did you want to say to him?”

“That not only are his books good, they are good for me. The best anti-depressants on earth. They should be covered by health plans.”

“Well, since you didn't manage to tell him in person, all you have to do is write him a letter.”

“You don't think that would be a little weird, me writing to a writer?”

“Why would it be weird?”

“A woman who's so bad at writing, writing to a man who's so good at writing?”

“Well, bald hairdressers exist, don't they?!”

Persuaded by Rudy's reasoning, she sat down in the living room-dining room, put away her feather projects, and wrote her letter.

 

Dear Monsieur Balsan,

I never write, because even if I can spell, I'm no poet. And I'd need to be a really good poet to tell you how important you are to me. In fact, I owe you my life. Without you I would have done myself in twenty times. You see how badly I write? One time would be enough!

I have only ever loved one man, my husband Antoine. He is still as handsome, slim, and young as ever. It's incredible, never to change like that. Well, fact is he's been dead for ten years, so that helps. I haven't wanted to replace him. That's my way of going on loving him.

So I brought up my two children, Sue Helen and Rudy, on my own.

Rudy's turned out all right, I think: he's a hairdresser and he earns his living, he's a cheerful boy and kind, too; he tends to change his friends a bit too often but hey, he's only nineteen, he's having fun.

Sue Helen is another story. She's the gloomy sort. She was born with her hair standing on end. Even at night in her dreams she complains. She's going out with a real jerk, a sort of ape who spends all day fiddling with mopeds but never brings home a dime. For the last two years he's been living with us. And on top of it, he's got this problem: his feet stink.

To be honest, my life, before I started reading you, well, I thought it was pretty ugly, ugly like a Sunday afternoon in Charleroi when the sky is low, ugly like a washing machine that quits on you just when you need it, ugly like an empty bed. At night, on a regular basis, I felt like swallowing a bunch of sleeping tablets to get it over with. Then one day I read your book. It was as if someone had drawn the curtains and let in the light. In your books you show how in every life, no matter how miserable, there are reasons to be happy, to laugh, to love. You show that little people like me actually deserve a lot of credit because everything costs them so much more than other people. Thanks to your books, I learned how to respect myself. Even to like myself a bit. I've become the Odette Toulemonde people know today: a woman who opens her shutters every morning with pleasure and closes them again every evening with pleasure.