The Most Beautiful Book in the World (2 page)

Back then Wanda wasn't called Wanda but Magali. A stupid name that she hated. No doubt because no one had ever said it with love in their voice. She had already started using other names. What was it in those days? Wendy? Yes, Wendy, like the heroine in
Peter Pan
. Already on her way toward Wanda . . .

She rejected her name as much as she rejected her family. Both seemed to be a terrible error. At a very young age she already felt that there must have been a mix-up with her identity, they must have made a mistake in the maternity ward: she knew that she was destined for wealth and success, yet here she was, relegated to a rabbit warren on the edge of the highway, with a woman who was poor, slovenly, indifferent, and a junkie. Anger founded on a sense of injustice formed the basis of her character. Everything she experienced from that point on would be a matter for vengeance, a righting of wrongs; she felt she was owed something for such a bungled start in life.

Wanda had already figured out that she would make it on her own. She had no clear picture of what her future might be, but she knew she couldn't count on any diplomas, that her chances had been compromised by such a chaotic education—all the more so that no sooner was she placed in a home for delinquents, subsequent to her shoplifting episodes, than she found herself dealing with teachers whose primary concern was not the subject they were supposed to teach but rather the imposition of their authority—teaching specialists whose mission was to provide not so much an education but an upbringing. So Wanda concluded that it was through men that she would make her way in life. They found her attractive. That much was patently obvious. And she liked the fact that they found her attractive.

Whenever she could, she snuck out of the institution and went to the beach on her bicycle. Open, curious, eager to connect with people, she had managed to establish the notion that she lived not far from there, with her mother. And since she was pretty, people believed her, and they treated her as a local girl.

She wanted to sleep with a man the way other girls her age wanted to pass a difficult exam: for her, this was the diploma that would put an end to her painful adolescence and allow her to get a start in real life. The only hitch was that she wanted to share the experience with a man, a real one, not a boy her age; already ambitious, she doubted whether a snot-nosed fifteen-year-old could have a lot to teach her.

Every bit as scrupulous and serious in this regard as she would prove to be later in life, Wanda studied the market of available males. In those days, in a territory of five square kilometers, there was one man who stood out: Cesario.

Women had confided in her, and everyone agreed, that he was an accomplished lover. Not only did Cesario—tanned, athletic, slim—have an irreproachable build—all the more visible for the fact that he lived on the beach in his swimming trunks—he also adored women, and was very good at making love to them.

“He does it all, sweetie, everything, as if you were a queen! He'll kiss you all over, he'll lick you all over, and nibble your ears and your buns and even your toes, he'll make you moan with pleasure, he spends hours, he . . . Look, Wendy, in terms of men who are that crazy about women, there's no two ways around it, there's no one else. No one but him. Okay, the only drawback is that he doesn't get attached. He's a bachelor in his soul. Not one of us has managed to hold on to him. To be honest, it's better that way, we can have a go and then, from time to time, have another go. Even when we're married . . . Ah, Cesario . . .”

Wanda would study Cesario as if she were trying to choose a university.

She liked him. Not just because the other women praised his qualities. She really did like him. His skin, smooth and velvety, like melted caramel . . . His green-gold eyes, the whites as pure as mother-of-pearl . . . The blond hair on his body, golden in the sun, as if his body were radiating a luminous aura . . . His torso, slim and rugged . . . And that butt of his, above all, firm, round, fleshy, insolent. Looking at Cesario from behind, Wanda understood for the first time that she was as attracted to a man's butt as a man was to a woman's breasts: a gut attraction, burning inside. When Cesario walked by, his lower body so close to her, it was all she could do not to reach out and touch him, fondle him, stroke him.

Unfortunately, Cesario did not pay much attention to her.

Wanda went with him to his boat, joked around with him, offered him a drink, an ice cream cone, a game of . . . He always took a few seconds to reply, politely, with a hint of irritation.

“That's real sweet of you, Wendy, but I don't need you.”

Wanda was furious: he right not need her, but she needed him! The more he resisted her, the more he stimulated her desire: it was going to be him and no one else. She wanted to inaugurate her life as a woman with the best-looking man, no matter how poor; there would be time enough, later, to sleep with ugly rich men.

One night she wrote him a long love letter, full of hope and devotion, and on rereading it, she was filled with such tenderness that she was certain, this time around, of victory. How could he resist such an onslaught of love?

When she came to him, once he had received the message, he was wearing a stern expression and he asked her, coldly, to go with him out onto the dock. They sat facing the sea, their feet dangling near the water.

“Wendy, you're adorable, writing what you did to me. I'm very honored. You seem like a good person to me, very passionate . . .”

“Don't you like me? You think I'm ugly, don't you!”

He burst out laughing.

“Look at this little tigress, ready to pounce! No, you're very beautiful. Too beautiful, even. That's just the problem. I'm not a bastard.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You're fifteen years old. You could never tell, that's true, but I know that you're only fifteen. You have to wait—”

“And if I don't want to wait?”

“If you don't want to wait, you can do what you want with whoever you want. But my advice is that you should wait. You mustn't make love just like that, nor with just anybody.”

“Well, that's why I chose you!”

Astonished by the young girl's ardor, Cesario looked at her in a new light.

“I'm really shaken up by all this, Wendy, and you can be sure that I'd say yes if you were of age, I swear. It would be yes right away. You wouldn't even have to ask, in fact, I'd be running after you. But as long as you're underage . . .”

Wanda burst into tears, her body shaking with sorrow. Cesario tried timidly to console her, taking care to push her away gently the moment she tried to take advantage of the situation and throw herself at him.

A few days later, Wanda came back to the beach, fortified by their conversation earlier that week: he was attracted to her, and she would have him!

Playing the adolescent who is resigned to her fate, she stopped titillating him or harassing him, and focused rather on taking a psychological angle of attack.

At thirty-eight years of age, Cesario was considered to be what they call, in Provence, a layabout: a good-looking sort who lives off nothing—just the fish he happens to catch—and who wants nothing more than to make the most of the sun, the water, and women, without sparing a thought for the future. But people were mistaken, at least in part, for Cesario did have a passion: he painted. In his wooden hut between the beach and the road, there were dozens of boards—he didn't have the means to buy proper canvases—and tubes of paint, and old brushes. Although no one else thought of him as a painter, in his own eyes he was one. If he failed to marry or start a family, and was happy to have a string of girlfriends, it was not because he was an idler—although that is what everyone believed—but because he wanted to sacrifice himself, devote himself entirely to his vocation as an artist.

Unfortunately, a quick glance was enough to realize that the end result did not justify the effort invested: Cesario produced one lousy painting after another, for he had no imagination, no sense of color, no draftsman's talents. Despite the hours he spent at work, there was no chance he'd ever get better, because his passion was accompanied by a total absence of judgment; he took his qualities for flaws and his flaws for qualities. He raised his clumsiness to the level of a style; and he destroyed the spontaneous balance he could have given to his volumes, on the pretext that such a balance was “too classical.”

No one took Cesario's creations seriously: neither the gallery owners, nor collectors, nor the people on the beach, and his various mistresses even less. For him, their indifference was proof of his genius: he must follow his path until he eventually gained recognition—even posthumously.

Wanda had understood as much, and decided to put it to good use. Subsequently she would readily resort to this technique for seducing men, a method which, if properly implemented, is always a success: flattery. In Cesario's case, it wasn't his good looks that wanted complimenting—he didn't care about his looks because he already knew he was good-looking, and could use this to his advantage—you had to be interested in his art.

After devouring a few books she'd borrowed from the institution's library—art history, encyclopedia of painting, biographies of painters—Wanda went back to the beach, well-armed for her discussions. Very quickly, she confirmed his secret belief: he was an
artiste maudit
; just like van Gogh, he would encounter sarcasm on the part of his peers and find glory posthumously; in the meantime he must not doubt his genius for a moment. Wanda got into the habit of keeping him company while he dabbled, and she became an expert on the art of gushing rapturously when she saw his blots and splashes of color.

It moved Cesario to tears to have met Wanda. He could no longer do without her. She incarnated everything he had never dared hope to find: kindred spirit, confidant, impresario, muse. Every day he needed her that little bit more; every day he increasingly overlooked her extreme youth.

And then what was bound to happen did happen: he fell in love. Wanda realized before he did, and slipped into one of her most provocative outfits.

She could tell from his eyes that not touching her was painful to him. Out of a sense of integrity, because he was a decent fellow, he managed to restrain himself, although all of him, body and soul, desired nothing more than to kiss Wanda.

Thus, she could deliver the coup de grâce.

For three days she refrained from going to visit him—he would worry and miss her. On the fourth evening, late at night, she came running into his cabin, tears streaming down her face.

“It's horrible, Cesario! I'm so unhappy! I feel like killing myself.”

“What's wrong?”

“My mother has decided—just like that—that we have to move back to Paris. I won't be able to see you anymore.”

And everything happened as planned: Cesario took her in his arms to comfort her, she was not consoled, and neither was he; he offered her a drop of alcohol so that she'd feel better; after a few glasses, floods of tears, and an equal amount of rubbing against each other, he could no longer control himself, and they made love.

Wanda relished every instant of that night. The local girls were right: Cesario revered the female body. When he carried her into his bed she felt as if she were a goddess placed upon an altar to be worshipped until dawn.

Naturally she slipped away at daybreak and came back that evening, upset, once again pretending to be desperate. Every night for several weeks an utterly disorientated Cesario tried to console the adolescent girl he loved, first keeping her at a distance and then, after they had brushed against each other once too often, and he had kissed or dried the tears on her eyelashes or under her lips, a distraught Cesario would end up setting aside any moral principles and making love to the young girl with an energy equal to his passion.

Once she knew that she had gained an encyclopedic knowledge of what goes on between a man and a woman in bed—because he did eventually teach her what was pleasing to the man, as well—she vanished.

Back at the institution, she no longer wrote to him, and she perfected the art of sensual delight in the company of a handful of new lovers; then she learned, not without a certain contentment, that her mother had succumbed to an overdose.

A free woman, Wanda ran away to Paris, immersed herself in the city's nightlife and, using men as her support, began her social ascension.

 

“Shall we go back to the boat or rent some mattresses on the beach? Wanda . . . Wanda! Did you hear me? Shall we go back to the boat or would you prefer to hire some mattresses on the beach?”

Wanda opens her eyes, looks Lorenzo up and down—he seems disconcerted by her absence—and trumpets:

“Why don't we go see those paintings by the local artist?”

“Oh go on, they must be dreadful,” exclaims Guido Farinelli.

“Why not? It could be fun!” asserts Lorenzo at once, never missing an opportunity to prove his servility to Wanda.

The troupe of multimillionaires agrees that this might make for an amusing outing, and they follow Wanda, who has approached Cesario.

“Was it you who suggested we come and visit your studio?”

“Yes, Madame.”

“Well, could we have a visit just now?”

Old Cesario takes a few moments to react. So used to being rebuffed, he is surprised that anyone might actually speak to him courteously.

While the restaurateur is pulling on his arm to explain to him who the famous Wanda Winnipeg is, and what an honor she is bestowing upon him, Wanda takes her time to examine the ravages of time on someone who was once the most handsome man on the beach. His hair is thin and gray, and he has suffered over the years from too much sun: it has weathered his skin and transformed it into a loose, spotted, leathery hide, with grainy elbows and knees. His squat, thick shape, without a waist, bears no resemblance to the athlete's body he once had. Only his irises have preserved their unusual color of green oyster, although they no longer shine as they once did.