The Suitors (27 page)

“My dear Flokie, may I ask you to excuse me. I promised Cheryla to be her escort for the rest of the evening, so I will discreetly slip away,” he announced, then turned on his heels and left without even looking at my sister, who was visibly dumbfounded.

“Shall I be ‘mother’ and pour the tea?” asked Odon, sensing a tension in the air that he didn’t fully grasp and pleased to be acquitting himself so easily of the playful duty he knew he must perform in this house, which demanded from its guests a lightness of being often at odds with the seriousness associated with their professional success.

In short, busy with their herbal tea ceremony, my parents and their guests picked up the conversation as if nothing had happened, never noticing my sister’s
distress. “Let’s go for a walk!” I said brightly, leading her off to the library, where she instantly dissolved in tears.

“My poor lamb!” I murmured, taking her in my arms.

“But the way he behaved—what can it mean?” she gasped between sobs.

“But what do
you
mean? You didn’t have an argument, some sort of fight? He hasn’t said anything to give you a clue why he’s acting like this?”

“No, nothing! He made love to me the whole afternoon with all sorts of sweet talk and promises.… It was only at cocktails that he began to seem distant. Then at the table, that was the giveaway, when he turned really weird. But to go from that to … to … It’s insane!”

“Nothing happened? No phone calls, no nothing?”

“Well, yes, Cheryla called him just before dinner, and he went off to talk to her. But what are you telling me? That he dropped me for her? All it took was one phone call to stand me up like that?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“But that’s not possible! If you knew what things he said to me … he was so touching … Oh, he was just
using
me!”

“No, I’m certain he wasn’t lying to you, I bet he believed everything he said when he was with you. That’s even why you believed him, because he was sincere.”

“But then …”

“He’s a seducer, and like all seducers, he’s always sincere in sequence. He says different things to different people at different moments.”

“But
why
?”

“Because he loves only the
conquest
. And once he’s seduced a woman, he needs to move on to the next one.”

“But that’s vile!”

“Yes, but it has nothing to do with you! So, since that’s the way things stand, you’re a whole lot better off without him, because it’s his vocation to make women unhappy.”

“Even those more beautiful and glamorous than I am?”

“Yes, even those, since that’s just simply how he functions. And I’m telling you, he’ll do the same thing to Cheryla.”

“You think so?” Marie murmured hopefully.

“I’m sure of it. So, that consoles you, the idea that she’ll go through the same hell as you?”

“Oh, well, yes! Listen, can I sleep in your room tonight? I don’t want to be in mine in case he might try to visit me, because I wouldn’t be able to resist him. And I don’t want to be there in case he
doesn’t
try, either, because that would make me just as miserable. You understand?”

Everyone had gone to bed by the time we left the library, so after taking off our shoes so the heels wouldn’t
clatter across the travertine hall floor, we turned out all the lights, one after the other.

It had been a long while since Marie and I had shared a bedroom, and I couldn’t help enjoying, in spite of her sorrow, how we talked in the dark the way we had as children. And now we were doing it again, except that it was our inventory of all possible ways to get even with Béno that kept us awake until the wee hours of that night.

But we never got the chance to test our findings the next day, because Béno cut and ran at breakfast.

“My dear Flokie, I’ve come to thank you and to take my leave because Cheryla has very kindly offered to drop me off in London this morning. And so, unfortunately, I cannot stay for breakfast. Please believe me, I’m truly sorry, but you know how it is, hitchhiking by plane …”

Then, without even a semblance of bidding good-bye to Marie in particular, he merely said, “Laure, Marie, thanks for this weekend, and I hope we’ll see one another one of these days … in London or Paris, who knows?”

His behavior was so monstrous that Marie simply froze, appalled into numbness. But I knew it wouldn’t last, that her unhappiness of the day before would flood through her afresh, so I tried to get her off on her own.

“Hey, come on, let’s take our usual swim in the bay—we haven’t done that yet this year!”

“And if you’re lucky, girls,” piped up our father, “you’ll bump into the whale calf that’s wandering lost along the coast. I just read about it in
Nice-Matin
.”

“Wait—I’d be scared stiff to wind up nose to nose with a whale!” exclaimed Marie. “Why are you trying to drag me into a major sporting exploit
right at this moment
?”

“Ah … because it’s one of our rituals, like doing the fridge or swimming at midnight,” I stammered, before whispering, “At least we’d be off on our own, and it would help clear your mind, which would be no small thing, given the circumstances. Plus I’ve got some serious developments to tell you about …”

“Oh, well, why didn’t you say so in the first place! See you later, everyone! We’re off for a swim!” she caroled in a jolly voice I didn’t trust at all.

And I was right, because that burst of euphoric indifference sank into a wave of sadness that swept over her just as we began our swim. In an effort to distract her,
I pointed out some flying fish in front of us and started babbling off the top of my head.

“You remember the Polish exhibitionist who used to swim over from the Hôtel du Cap to enjoy being admired half naked in the loggia among the guests? It’s been years since I’ve seen her. I wonder whatever happened to her—we’ll have to ask Mummy and Papa …”

Then I just kept quiet and let her cry. Anguish and sorrow, I know them. And although I’m no genius at it, all day long I calibrate my silence to give free rein to my patients’ emotions, or stanch the pain of some torment with a word—attentions much easier to manage in my office than swimming in the sea with my dear sister! So I had to keep reminding myself that Marie needed to feel her grief in order to rise above it. And as I swam, I saw again, as I did every year, how the bay that seemed quite modest from our beach was so vast that we would need a good hour and a half to swim along its shore.

Judging my moment, I asked Marie, “Don’t you find it hard to swim and cry at the same time?”

“Yes, it’s exhausting, and I’m fed up!” she confessed ruefully, and we both slowed down. Luckily, the water was calm, as it often was in the morning, and since we were both strong swimmers, we adjusted to a more
leisurely stroke so we could talk without running out of breath.

“So, are you ready for my update? You’ll see, it’s some heavy stuff.”

“Fine, I’m ready for a change of pace.”

I began at the beginning: the mix-ups over the visit of the real estate agent, my distress at the possible sale of the house, then my panic at the idea that she and Béno might become the owners of a jet-set L’Agapanthe, and finally, our mother’s addiction to cocaine.

“Oh, that I already knew—”

“You’re not serious!”

“Yes, really; I caught her one day sticking it up her nose. I never told you?”

“Are you kidding? Of course not—I would never have forgotten that!”

“That’s strange, I could have sworn I told you. I must have thought about it so many times that I wound up thinking that I had.”

“Never mind, but tell me what happened.”

“Well that’s just it, nothing, that’s what was so bewildering about the whole thing. All she said to me was, ‘So? It’s simply the best way to stay thin,’ and then she shrugged: ‘What do you want me to say?’ ”

“I don’t believe it!”

“It’s the truth! And then she started talking about something else as if it were no big deal. So if you’re worried about her possible inner suffering, I think you’re on the wrong track, because she takes that stuff as if it were cod liver oil.”

“But what about Papa, who I thought was so clueless when he told me she was as solid as a rock?”

“But he’s right! She’s a bulldozer!”

“So you’re not going to do anything?”

“No! I mean, what would you want to do? Just forget about it!”

“But it’s not good for her; she’s having nosebleeds!”

“And so what? When that starts bothering her, she’ll go to a doctor and she’ll stop. Just drop it, really!”

“I can’t get my head around this … I’m speechless!”

I must have looked so flabbergasted that she stopped swimming to laugh.

“Ah! I’m so happy to be with you!” she crowed. “You know, I never feel good like this except with you.”

“Me, too.”

MENU

Tomato and Mozzarella Salad
Miniquiches, Minipizzas
Eggplant Caviar
Grilled Shrimp and Sardines
Polenta
Spinach Salad
Figs à la Crème

Famished, Marie and I headed for the buffet table, and when our mother cautioned us as usual in a low voice to “wait until the guests have been served,” Marie and I chimed in spontaneously to complete her sentence: “… I’m afraid there won’t be enough!”

“Too bad,” I added, “because we’re dying of hunger!”

Then we laughed like crazy. I was actually shaking and wondered if it was with relief to see my sister happy again or with joy at renewing our old complicity. I brushed away tears while our mother placed Marie in charge of one table and assigned me to my father’s, where he was so openly glad to see me arrive that it probably meant boredom was in sight. I soon understood why, sitting next to a Swiss banker who began to inform
me all about Belgium and the fractious relationship between the Flemish and the Walloons.

“I’ve often wondered why no one takes an interest in the Swiss as a model for democracy. We are nevertheless quite good at concocting a federation out of people who have nothing in common …”

I pretended to be vaguely interested and turned to my father in the hope that something better was in the works.

“Can anyone explain to me,” he asked, “this mania people now have for always walking around with a bottle of water? This is quite a recent development, you know. It’s as if, out in the fresh air, they had the limited autonomy of fish …”

It was the kind of reflection that amused me. But my father’s originality seemed lost on our tablemates; pearls before swine, I thought, while the woman next to him attempted to reorient the conversation toward more familiar terrain.

“Who is your favorite painter?”

“What do you mean by that?” he replied. “It depends. Of which century and country do you wish to speak?”

I almost smiled with pride. The woman, who wore a tank top barely covering huge veined breasts that spread out over her big belly like a pair of goatskin-covered
gourds, was definitely not in my father’s league and seemed unable to discern the degree of knowledge implied in such a response. How, therefore, could she have understood that even beyond his culture and education, my father was above all civilized? Nor could she ever appreciate the refined modesty with which he refused to show off anything at all, save incidentally, as when he might say, “Yes, that’s pretty, isn’t it; that vase belonged to Marie Antoinette. It was one of a pair, but the other is at the Petit Trianon …”

In short, there was no joy to be had from the gang of nitwits on our hands, and indeed I wondered who had saddled us with them. Opting to limit the damage, I decided to please my father: “Oh, Papa, I saw a documentary the other evening about bears …”

“Ah! I adore bears! You know, they don’t lose any muscle mass or proteins during the winter, because their fat reserves recycle wastes into energy. Discovering the secrets of their hibernation could therefore have phenomenal applications, such as speeding up the healing of wounds for athletes, or prolonging the viability of organs for transplants, by putting them into a state of clinical hibernation. Just imagine!”