The Most Beautiful Book in the World (4 page)

He was laughing so hard that she stopped talking.

In the hours that followed, she had the impression she was walking on a tightrope above a void: a single misstep and she would plunge into an abyss of ennui. Several times she sensed the density of that ennui—it was drawing her, begging her to jump, to immerse herself in it; she felt a dizziness, the temptation to jump. So she clung to Antoine's optimism, and he was inexhaustible, with his smile on his face, describing the world to her just as he experienced it. She held tight to his radiant faith.

At the end of the afternoon, back at the villa, they made love for a long time, and he tried so hard to give her pleasure that she repressed her irritation, closed her eyes on all those overwhelming details, and fought to keep up the pretense.

By nightfall she was exhausted. And he did not even suspect the scale of the struggle she had been waging all day long.

Outside, the wind was trying to snap the pines like masts.

In the evening, in the candlelight, beneath the painted beams of a ceiling that was several centuries old, as they were drinking a heady wine, the very name of which had caused him to salivate, he asked, “At the risk of becoming the unhappiest man on earth, I would like your answer to my question: will you consent to be the love of my life?”

She was at the end of her tether.

“You, unhappy? You're incapable of being unhappy. You take everything in your stride.”

“I assure you, if you say no, I'll be in a very bad way. I've placed all my hope in you. You alone have the power to make me happy or unhappy.”

Basically, it was banal, what he was going on about, the usual blather of a marriage proposal. But coming from him, with his two meters of positive energy and his ninety kilos of flesh always eager for pleasure, it was flattering.

She wondered if happiness might not be contagious. Did she love Antoine? No. He made her feel good about herself, and he amused her. He also annoyed her, with his unshakeable optimism. She suspected that in her heart of hearts she could not stand him, he was so different from her. Does one marry one's closest enemy? Surely not. At the same time, what did someone like her need—someone who woke up every day in a bad mood, who thought that everything was ugly, imperfect, useless? Her opposite. And Antoine, indisputably, was her opposite. While she right not love him, it was patently clear that she needed him. Or someone like him. Did she know anyone else? Yes. Surely. Just now she couldn't think of who it was but she could wait a while still, it would be better to wait. How long? Would others be as patient as he was? And would she have the patience to wait longer, too? Wait for what, anyway? She didn't give a damn about men, hadn't planned on getting married, she had no intentions of producing or raising any offspring. Moreover, the weather didn't seem about to improve from one day to the next, and it would be even more difficult to find a way to escape her ennui.

For all these reasons, she quickly answered, “Yes.”

 

Back in Paris, they announced their engagement and their upcoming wedding. Hélène's closest friends, full of admiration, exclaimed, “How you've changed!”

In the beginning, Hélène did not reply; and then, just to find out how far they would go, she hinted, to encourage them, “Oh yes? Do you think so? Really?”

They would fall in the trap and expand on their comment: “Yes, we would never have believed that a man could have a calming effect on you. Before, no one found favor in your eyes, nothing was good enough for you. Even you yourself. You were merciless. We were convinced that no man, woman, dog, cat, or goldfish would ever manage to keep your interest more than a few minutes.”

“Antoine has managed.”

“What's his secret?”

“I won't tell you.”

“Maybe that's what love is! Just goes to show, one should never despair.”

She did not contradict them.

In actual fact, she alone knew that she hadn't changed. She just wasn't saying anything, that's all. To her, life continued to seem ugly, idiotic, imperfect, disappointing, frustrating, unsatisfying; but her judgments no longer passed her lips.

What had Antoine brought her? A muzzle. She showed her teeth less often; she withheld her thoughts.

She knew that she was still incapable of seeing things in a positive light, and she continued to unearth every unforgivable blemish that prevented her from appreciating a human face or restaurant or apartment or performance. Like before, her imagination went on reshaping faces, fixing make-up, adjusting the position of tablecloths, napkins, cutlery, knocking down one wall and putting up another, tossing furniture into the dump, pulling down curtains, replacing the romantic female lead on stage, cutting out the second act, axing the climax of the film; whenever she met any new people, she could, to the same degree as before, detect their stupidity or weaknesses—but she no longer gave voice to her disappointment.

A year after her marriage, which she described as “the most beautiful day of my life,” she gave birth to a child whom, when handed to her, she found ugly and flabby. Antoine, however, dubbed the infant “Maxime” and “my love”; she tried very hard to imitate him; and from that moment on, the insufferable little lump of pissing, shitting, and wailing flesh that had ripped her guts open became for several years the object of all her attention. A little Bérénice followed, and right from the start she hated her indecent tuft of hair, yet she continued to behave as a model mother.

Hélène had such difficulty in her own company that she decided to bury her own judgment and, whatever the circumstances, retain only Antoine's view of things. She lived on the surface, his surface, and she kept prisoner inside her a woman who continued to scorn, criticize, vituperate, who pounded on the door of her cell and shouted in vain through the peephole. To ensure herself of the comedy of happiness, she had transformed herself into a prison warder.

Antoine continued to gaze at her with love overflowing; “love of my life,” he murmured, stroking her rump or planting kisses on her neck.

“Love of
his
life? Basically, that doesn't amount to much,” said the prisoner.

“Well, it's something,” replied the warden.

There she was. It wasn't happiness, but the appearance of happiness. Happiness by proxy, happiness by influence.

“An illusion,” said the prisoner.

“Shut up,” replied the warden.

So it was with a scream that Hélène greeted the news that Antoine had just collapsed along the path.

If she ran so quickly through the garden, it was in order to deny what they were trying to tell her. No, Antoine was not dead. No, Antoine could not have collapsed in the sun. No, Antoine, although he had a weak heart, could not just stop living like that. Aneurysmal rupture? Ridiculous . . . How could anything possibly get the better of a colossus like him? Forty-five years old is no sort of age to go dying. Stupid idiots! Bunch of liars!

And yet, when she threw herself to the ground, she quickly noticed that it was no longer Antoine lying there near the fountain but a corpse. Someone else. A mannequin in flesh and blood. One that looked like Antoine. She could no longer feel the energy he gave off, the electric charge she needed so badly for her sustenance. This was some pale, cold double.

Huddled up, she wept, incapable of saying a word, holding between her fingers those hands, already icy, that had given her so much. The doctor and the medics had to separate the spouses by force.

“We understand, Madame, we understand. Believe us, we do understand.”

No. They didn't understand a thing. How could she—who would never have felt like a wife or mother if Antoine had not been there—how could she become a widow? A widow without him? If he disappeared, how would she know how to behave?

At the funeral, she respected none of the proprieties and astounded the crowd of mourners with the violence of her sorrow. Above the grave, before they lowered the body into the earth, she lay on the coffin and clung to it as if to hold it back.

Only upon her parents' insistence, then that of her children—who were fifteen and sixteen—did she consent to letting go.

The box was lowered into the earth.

Hélène walled herself up in silence.

 

The people around her referred to this state as “her depression.” In fact, it was something far worse.

She now had to keep watch over two recluses. Neither one had the right to speak. Behind the wall of silence her desire to keep from thinking was well protected. No more thinking the way she did before Antoine. No more thinking the way she did during Antoine. Each of the two Hélènes had done her stint, and she did not have the strength to invent a third one.

She spoke little, restricted herself to the rituals of hello-thank-you-good night, kept herself clean, wore the same clothes over and over, and waited for nighttime as if for a deliverance, although at that particular time, as sleep evaded her, she was content to sit and work on her crochet in front of the television, paying no attention to either the image or the sound, solely preoccupied with the succession of stitches. Since Antoine had sheltered her from need—money invested, income, houses—it was enough for her to pretend to listen to the family accountant once a month. Her children, once they had finally given up hoping that they might be able to cure or help their mother, followed in the footsteps of their father, and devoted themselves to their brilliant studies.

A few years went by.

Hélène, in appearance, was aging well. She looked after her body—weight, skin, muscles, suppleness—the way one polishes a collection of porcelain figurines in a shop window. When she caught sight of herself in the mirror, she noticed a museum piece, the dignified, sorrowful, well-preserved mother who is occasionally taken out for a family reunion or wedding or baptism, those noisy, chattering, even inquisitorial ceremonies, which she found very trying. As for her silence, she had never faltered in her vigilance. She did not think anything, nor did she say anything. Ever.

One day, in spite of herself, an idea came to her.

What about traveling? Antoine used to adore traveling. Or rather, there was only one thing outside of work that he desired, and that was to travel. Since he had not had the time to fulfill his dream, I could do it in his place . . .

She refused to see what was motivating her: not for a second did she suspect this might be a return to life, or an act of love. If she had thought for an instant that by packing her suitcases she was trying to recover Antoine's kindly gaze upon the world, she would not have allowed herself to continue.

After a brief farewell to Maxime and Bérénice, she began her journey. For Hélène, traveling meant going around the globe from one grand hotel to another. Thus, she stayed in luxurious suites in India, in Russia, in America, and in the Middle East. Every time, she slept and knit in front of a lit screen gabbling in a different language. Every time, she forced herself to sign up for a few excursions, for Antoine would have reproached her had she not done so, but her eyes did not open wide at the sight of what was before her: she would check whether the postcards displayed in the hotel lobby corresponded to their three-dimensional reality, nothing more . . . In her seven pale blue morocco-bound cases she carried around her inability to live. Only when leaving one place for another, passing through airports, dealing with the complications of transfers, did she feel a furtive excitement: it was then that she got the impression that something was about to happen . . . As soon as she reached her destination she was once again in the world of taxis, porters, doormen, elevator boys, and chambermaids, and everything was back to normal.

While she may not have acquired an inner life, she did have an outer life. Moving about, departures, arriving in new places, discovering new currencies, the need to talk, choosing dinners in restaurants—there was always a lot going on around her. Deep inside, everything remained apathetic; her tribulations had ended up killing off the two recluses; no one was thinking in her consciousness, neither the sullen woman nor Antoine's spouse; and it was almost easier this way, this sort of total death.

These were her circumstances when she arrived in Cape Town.

She could not help but be impressed: was it the name, Cape Town, like a promise that one has reached the ends of the earth? Was it because, as a law student, she had been interested in South Africa's particular tragedy, and had signed petitions calling for equality between blacks and whites? Was it because Antoine had once expressed a desire to buy an estate here where they could retire in their old age? She could not unravel it. In any event, when she found herself on the hotel terrace overlooking the ocean, she noticed that her heart was beating fast.

“A Bloody Mary, please.”

This, too, surprised her: she never ordered Bloody Marys! And she couldn't even recall ever liking them.

She stared at the intense gray sky and saw that the clouds, so black with their freight, were about to burst. A storm was threatening.

Not far from there stood a man who was also observing the splendor of the elements.

Hélène felt a tingling in the fleshy part of her cheeks. What was happening? Blood was rushing to her face; a violent throbbing was coursing through the veins in her neck; her heart was beating faster. She had trouble breathing. Was this the onset of a heart attack?

Why not? You have to die someday. Go on, your time has come. It might as well be here. Amidst this sublime landscape. It was meant to end here. This is why, as she was climbing the steps, she had a premonition that something important was about to happen.

For a few seconds Hélène opened her palms, calmed her breath, and prepared to pass away. She closed her eyes, threw her head back, and thought that she was ready: she consented to her death.

Nothing happened.

Not only did she not lose consciousness but, when she opened her eyes again, she was obliged to acknowledge that she felt better. What? You cannot order your body to die? You cannot expire just like that, as easily as you switch off the light?