The Suitors (17 page)

“But that’s all they did, the whole time! Like those endless train picnics in earlier days, with
pâté de campagne
and orange peels flying everywhere.”

Polyséna talked some more about her book on portraits, and about the game of matching up “twins” from among the subjects in great portraits and the celebrities of today. Which led Odon to bring up Proust.

From there the conversation drifted onto art and the “repudiation of realism” offered by René Huyghe, the way that painting, which once strove to “transcribe physical or psychic reality,” has “purified” itself ever since Mondrian, throwing off the weight of “everything that is not strictly within its nature” to eliminate all traces of tradition and the past, and to embrace “a new enlightenment.”

“Ain’t No Sunshine” by Bill Withers; “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor; “Strong Enough” by Cher; the Beatles’ “From Me to You”—the orchestra at the Russians’ party was playing one golden oldie after another, making me just itch to jump up and dance, so when dinner was over I suggested going down to the beach for a musical midnight swim. Marie had been so excruciatingly bored, sitting between Henri Démazure and Jean-Michel (who was still refusing to lighten up), that she leaped at the opportunity.

“Oh, absolutely! I’m going to go change.”

“Good idea,” chimed the Braissants in unison.

Which forced Jean-Michel, who had no desire to be grilled on his knowledge of art history, to go with the flow.

Down at the beach, the moon glowed russet red, throwing a veil of mist over a gleaming jet-black sea. It was beautiful, but spooky, and pausing at the water’s edge, in fact, all I could think of was sea monsters, giant octopuses bristling with tentacles, and marauding sharks. My brave smile quickly began to fade.

“Don’t worry, shivering is part of the exercise!” exclaimed my sister. “I’ll go in with you.”

We were standing in our bathrobes at the foot of the ladder, while near the grotto, a little farther up, our guests were chatting with a conspiratorial air that left no doubt they were slamming us, or running down our parents, the house, or the way we lived. We couldn’t have cared less: “Black and White Eyes” by Syd Matters had put us in a deliciously nostalgic and sentimental mood.

“Can you tell me what the fuck we’re doing with jerks like them,” I asked Marie, “when we could be with perfectly wonderful guys?”

“Have you been drinking, or is it James Blunt?”

And she was right: “One of the Brightest Stars,” which the orchestra was now playing, was having a romantic effect. As were the shouts and laughter coming from the neighbors’ place, despite the fact that the seriously unhip Russians and mafiosi were taking time out from dancing to grope one another like Odon’s amorous fellow train passengers.

Mungo Jerry’s “In the Summertime,” then “Soul Bossa Nova” by Quincy Jones—the quarter-hour of languorous music seemed to have come to an end. And our companions suddenly realized that it would be polite to join us. So, in a hearty voice intended to gloss over the nasty things they’d just been saying about us, Bernard cried, “Wait for us, girls!”

But Marie and I were already swimming toward the festivities, spreading our fingers slightly in the water to create streams of starry reflections.

“Great,” I thought, “now he’s trying to be the life of the party!”

And my worst fears were realized: diving showily from the board to attract the attention of the group watching us from the Russians’ dock, Bernard quickly caught up with us in a fast crawl.

“A little passé their little soirée!” he announced loudly.

“In any case, their orchestra is incredible,” I replied, but he was shouting to the people on the dock.

“Having fun?”

“Leave them alone!” Marie told him. “Anyway, they don’t speak French.”

At this, he yelled in English, “Are you having a good time?”

“Yes,” answered a man in a calm voice that contrasted strongly with Bernard’s blustering.

“Would you please stop?” I begged Bernard, horribly mortified, and I started nervously side-stroking in little circles.

But Bernard, who’d been joined by Laetitia and Jean-Michel, was all keyed up, as if he’d found a way to act out in revenge for a weekend during which he’d felt confined to playing a bit part.

“You should come visit us! We have a better beach, better food, and better company!”

“Have you gone crazy?” I hissed at him. I was furious.

“Totally insane!” agreed Marie, who swam over to Bernard and told him firmly in a low voice, “Didn’t it ever occur to you that we might want to avoid our Mafia neighbors?”

“Why don’t you come over here?” asked the mystery voice.

“We weren’t invited, that’s why. But have a wonderful evening, sir!” replied Marie, hoping thereby to put an end to the scene and prompt everyone to begin swimming back to our beach.

But Bernard, spurred on by the giggling of Jean-Michel and Laetitia at his side, simply upped the ante.

“You should listen to me! You seem like an adventurous guy, and you’d be a fool to miss out on meeting my girlfriends here, who happen to be the best-looking women I ever met!”

“Wait a minute here, hold on!” Marie said with a laugh. “That’s like putting a price tag on us!”

“She’s right, you’ve got some nerve!” I huffed and turned to Laetitia, but she didn’t think Bernard’s joke was funny anymore.

“Oh, shit!” she cried. “He’s taking his clothes off!”

“What?” I craned to see where she was looking and saw our mystery man on the Russians’ beach doing a striptease to Jimmy Cliff’s “Many Rivers to Cross.”

“Oh, God.” I sighed, and we all raced back to our beach.

The figure dressed in black slowly grew lighter. First the white shirt appeared from under the dinner jacket, then the bare skin. Laetitia, Marie, and I watched with sinking hearts, while Bernard acted nonchalant to hide his surprise and perhaps even his dismay at thus having
the spotlight stolen from him by a stranger whom he’d never imagined might take him up on his invitation.

“Wait a minute,” he asked suddenly. “Do we at least have something to offer him to drink, now that I’ve boasted about our wonderful hospitality?”

“Not to mention the beauty of your female company!” added Laetitia, frankly worried about disappointing our unknown guest in that department.

“Well, thanks!” I said haughtily, to ease the tension, and headed for the shower in the grotto to rinse off the salt.

Marie had joined me there, and as we toweled off walking back toward the others, we looked over at the stranger who was about to dive into the water.

“Do you think he’ll be handsome?” she asked.

“That
would
surprise me, but it doesn’t that you’re fantasizing already!”

“Why? You’re not?”

“Well, sure, actually I am. You’re right! I hope he’s divine.”

“Aha,” Bernard said acidly, eyeing his studiously indifferent wife. “So that’s how it is!”

Riveted, Marie and I followed the progress of the stranger swimming toward us to the strains of a Nino
Ferrer hit single,
La maison près de la fontaine
, while we sang along at the top of our lungs.

Jean-Michel, however, standing silently by, seemed suddenly to have realized from our excitement that we’d never shown that kind of feminine interest in him. And he had realized as well that although he hadn’t wanted to arouse such interest, he now felt disappointed and irritated at being left out.

The mystery man emerged from the waves to the accompaniment of Nancy Sinatra’s “Bang Bang,” climbed the steps to where Marie and I were standing, bowed smartly from the waist to kiss our hands, and introduced himself.

“Rajiv Kapour, how do you do?”

Marie quickly handed him a towel, and then we took a closer look at him. Young, about thirty, he was amazingly relaxed and graceful for someone standing in sopping wet underpants in front of perfect strangers. Self-possessed, I thought. And I found his serenity immediately seductive. As were his black eyes with their long, silky lashes.

Bernard, who had unearthed some vodka in the freezer of the bar in the little cave, handed around the drinks while we pulled up some beach chairs.

When we were all settled, Marie did the honors. “I’m afraid my friend Bernard has enticed you here under false pretenses, but we’re very happy to meet you.”

What was it about her behavior that gave me a jolt? Something lordly, imperious, something both irreproachable and robotic, something I felt so strongly that it seemed to exclude me and deny our affectionate intimacy. Then I realized what it was: she was playing mistress of the manor, putting herself forward as the spokesperson for us all, a queen surrounded by her favorites. My resentment at that dominant, arrogant note in her voice was something I hadn’t felt since childhood, and it stabbed me to the heart. Everything in her attitude was reclaiming her rights as the elder sister, the pretty girl who condescendingly dominates her younger and in every way less favored sister.

With a sudden pang of dreadful sadness, I felt alone and troubled by a sense of not loving Marie at that moment, of feeling neither tenderness nor admiration for her. Was I jealous of my sister? Did I want to attract this young man’s attention away from her? Judging from the glances he’d been giving me since his arrival I thought that was already a fait accompli. Because he was actually studying me intently while simply replying cordially to Marie.

Faced with this situation—which I couldn’t explain, since I thought Marie much the lovelier of us two—I reflected that I had never yet witnessed the beginning of any of her love affairs, and had never placed myself in competition with her, because not only would I have felt condemned at the outset to failure but I could never have handled a triumph, either. I probably had some confused intuition that Marie, more fragile than I was, would have taken defeat very hard, since she was used to winning contests of beauty and seductiveness, whereas I was used to walking away.

Meanwhile, lost in her performance as a perfect hostess, Marie did not pay attention to the fact that Rajiv and I were engaged in conversation. I quickly found out that Rajiv was an economist close to Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize winner whose ideas on human development I was familiar with, and that he was a microcredit specialist. Finally somebody interesting! I said to myself, not quite realizing that the Indian man had done more to me than simply capture my attention. Because, in spite of my sadness over Marie there was a definite current of desire flowing between us, invisible perhaps, but palpable, and I felt it sweep over me in unwelcome waves whenever he looked at me. The ache deep in my belly was so violent that I would really have flinched if I hadn’t spent my life
learning how to keep even my strongest feelings hidden behind a diplomatically impassive facade.

As “Tears and Rain” by James Blunt, Otis Redding’s “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay,” and Lenny Kravitz’s “Stand by My Woman” were played, we learned that Rajiv was from Bombay and was a friend of Tatiana’s, the daughter of the owners next door, who had studied with him at the London School of Economics.

“I’m starting to feel cold,” remarked Jean-Michel.

“Me, too,” admitted Laetitia.

“Well then, I’d better be going,” Rajiv observed, giving me a long, lingering look that seemed to suggest he was trying to figure out a way of maneuvering himself into being alone with me.

Since all five of us saw him off, to the accompaniment of Janis Joplin’s “Cry Baby,” there wasn’t much he could do, however, except declare that he’d be delighted to return our hospitality one day if any of us ever happened to be in London.

The party next door found its second wind as we trooped back to the house; I even found myself humming along to David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes” as I was going to bed. But what really preoccupied me before I fell asleep, aside from my fresh anxiety over what I now saw as the considerable risk involved in Marie’s and my plan
to seduce a possible future husband, were the spasms of desire I was still feeling for Rajiv. And as I dropped off I wondered if I would ever see him again, or if he would join the list of what I called my “might haves,” as in, “It might have worked between us,” those men who had courted me or whom I had desired, with whom I would have liked to have an adventure if things had turned out otherwise—if they had dared, if they hadn’t been married and faithful, if I had given in when it might have been possible, if only …

The next day saw the departure before lunch of Jean-Michel and the Braissants, who left for Aix in Jean-Michel’s car (the usefulness of which I now finally grasped) to attend some festival or other they needed to get to before the end of the day. Another highlight was my realization of the effect I was having on men ever since Rajiv had set my sensuality on fire. I must have had bedroom eyes, because I proved indecently popular with men at luncheon that day—a development I instinctively took care to conceal from my mother and Marie. Our male guests seemed to grow shy, blush, or
make sheep’s eyes at me upon approaching, when they weren’t simply proposing a quickie in the bathroom, like the ruddy-complexioned fellow with hairy nostrils and ears, a curator from some provincial museum, who seriously thought he might carry that off by murmuring to me that I made the other women present look like goats.