The Suitors (33 page)

Although my mother did try to avoid the journalist, he seemed to win her over by promising to mention the word “agapanthus” on the evening news that very day.

“Especially since there are still as many suck-ups where he comes from,” Marie whispered back.

That’s what my sister and I called sycophants. Their sort had never had a problem, when we were children, with pushing us aside to get close to people whom they considered important. Nothing surprising about that,
since we were of no use to them. Still, we did find it strange that they were also less than considerate with the partners and collaborators of those whom they besieged, so Marie and I felt it our duty to keep those neglected guests company in the far corners of the living room where they invariably wound up.

Shouldn’t the flatterers have been buttering
them
up as well? Unless they thought that powerful people never spoke to those close to them and that their employees would never be promoted to more important positions.

In the end we realized that they didn’t give a hoot about making a bad impression, as long as they got what they wanted: to be seen in the company of people in the limelight, be able to get their phone numbers or extort a favor from them, or greet them familiarly if they ever crossed paths again. These toadies knew that their status as sycophants was in fact their trump card, since they advertised the importance of those they flattered, like a motorcycle escort in an official procession. Even better, their experience added to their luster, for they had entrapped a flicker of the brilliance of all those for whom they had served as foils and whose prestige enhanced their own. That was why I’d never seen anyone resist them, not even people who still resented them from leaner times, now too happy at seeing their own
success applauded at last to bother making an issue of their flatterers’ former rude manners and tactics.

When I told Alvin what I’d been thinking, he said I was cruel. I was “judgmental,” he told me. And in his mouth, this was not a compliment. As a good American respectful of the current conformist norms, he was confusing the critical spirit, which is the essence of judgment, with sheer criticism, so he felt that expressing the slightest negative opinion was arrogant and inappropriate. It seemed to me, however, that this was precisely what
he
was busy doing with me, and had been doing ever since he arrived, oscillating as he had between blame and reserve. Which I found quite a bit more cowardly, disagreeable, and stuck-up than simply expressing an opinion.

Alvin’s silent disapproval, in any case, gave free rein to conjecture, and it lodged in my mind like a thorn. I felt it at the table with Marie, Nicolas, and Vanessa when I had a laughing fit over Vanessa’s little joke: she’d been recycling the answers from their Trivial Pursuit game of the previous evening to answer her neighbor, who’d asked her “what good book she was reading at the moment.”

“A biography of Eric the Red.”

“Who’s he?”

“The man who discovered Greenland.”

“Must be fascinating. Who’s the publisher?”

“A private company, Editions Saint-Rémy in Reims.”

Then I caught the shocked look on Alvin’s face when Astrid asked Frédéric, “What does Perla de Cambray really
do
in life, anyway?”

And Frédéric replied, “Dumb things! Gobs of ’em! What do you expect her to do, when she sounds like the sister of that candy,
bêtises de Cambray
? ‘Would you like some
sillies of Cambray
’?”

So even though Alvin had said nothing unpleasant about L’Agapanthe, I was suddenly certain that he hated this place cluttered with people and furniture and paintings, where everyone dressed to the nines to eat indigestible posh meals during which they all chattered like jackdaws.

Probably to avoid admitting that the whole business had been a sheer waste, I forced myself to talk to him anyway, even though I was deathly bored when he discussed the percentage of soy proteins in his stuffed tomatoes and felt deeply guilty when he pointed out that when I ate meat, I was eating the dead body of an animal raised in captivity. In fact I was listening to him so assiduously that I began to see the familiar faces of our house through his eyes and abruptly saw
them in their ugly, frightening light: dry lips clinging to teeth like the grimacing muzzles of wild animals; lips slick with saliva, drawn back over obscene gums; or even more repulsive, lips at the corners of which clung whitish crusts … No doubt about it: Alvin was a killjoy, whose presence changed L’Agapanthe—a place that had for me the lightness and sophistication of a racetrack scene by Dufy and the gaiety of a Matisse collage—into a stark nude by Lucian Freud or a scream by Munch. Horrible!

Then I recalled the revulsion I’d felt as a child at the sight of certain perspiring guests as they left the luncheon table, their cheeks aflame from the rosé wine, while I was dreaming of running down to dive into the water and splash about instead of taking a nap, as Nanny insisted I do for the sake of my digestion. Was it a way of taking revenge on that past obligation, or the need to draw a line under my pitiful amorous projects? Barely had the last bite been swallowed when I vanished to plunge headfirst into the sea, where a few swift strokes were all I needed to conclude that this whole thing with Alvin was impossible. I didn’t even need to consult Marie on this: he was disqualified.

My thoughts were interrupted when two good-sized hunting dogs, white, short haired, and strong enough
to seem dangerous, appeared abruptly at the foot of the diving board, where I’d left my clothes. They’d come from the Russians’ property next door and ran on up toward our garden. Paralyzed by surprise, I was at first relieved to have been in the water and not on the beach, but then I realized that they might attack the guests still lingering in the loggia. It was a good thing Marie, Nicolas, and Vanessa had gone to visit the Villa Ephrussi, I thought, as I rushed up to the house, where I arrived dripping and out of breath.

There I found Gay, gray with fear, kneeling near Alvin, who had his ear to Popsicle’s heaving little chest and soon delivered his verdict: “He’s more frightened than hurt.”

This incident created such a rapid swirl of emotions that I wasn’t sure at first what had struck me the most, the shocking invasion by the dogs, Gay’s anguish over her Maltese bichon, or the relief that led her inadvertently to allow me a glimpse of the number tattooed at Auschwitz on the inside of her left forearm. Then, alerted by her earlier cries, a constant stream of friends, guests, and servants appeared in the loggia, and just as a lithograph may require successive printings of different colors, reality left its mark on my mind only after I had explained what had happened to the new arrivals,
one after the other. And even then … Because it was only after interpreting their reactions to my news that I perceived the danger we had run.

“Okay, so, everything’s fine,” announced Georgina. “All’s well that ends well. Everyone’s okay. Fine! Now I can go back to my nap.”

“And I must get back to my duties,” said the new butler, who left without further ado.

On the off chance that those two announcements hadn’t tipped me off, Astrid put her foot in it nicely.

“You mean to say that those mastiffs are still roaming around, and they could attack us at any moment? Well, you do as you like, but me, I’m going to go shut myself up in my room!”

“Now there’s some good old-fashioned common sense!” remarked Jean-Claude, by way of apology for his wife’s bluntness.

“Yes, women and children first!” exclaimed Frédéric, to relieve the tension.

Visibly pleased that something exciting was happening at last, Charles tried to persuade Laszlo to join him in the search party he intended organizing, while Odon and my mother drew themselves up heroically, putting on a good face, instead of taking refuge inside as they
would have liked to. As for me, I was deeply shaken, having suddenly understood how fragile our charmed existence at L’Agapanthe really was.

Our fight-or-flight dilemma did not last long, however, for my father now returned from the Russians’ place, where he’d gone as soon as he’d heard about the dogs.

“They’re Argentinean mastiffs. They trotted quietly on home after terrorizing all of Cap d’Antibes!”

“Did you see the owner?” asked my mother.

“No, and the caretaker doesn’t even know his name. He deals only with an intermediary, whom he’d already phoned, and who agreed that the dogs could be shut up until a fence can be installed around the property.”

Everyone was relieved. Indeed, the tea service was soon replaced by a few glasses of cognac to settle our nerves, which meant that we were a couple of sheets to the wind when Marie, Nicolas, and Vanessa returned from Cap Ferrat—especially Gay, who tried to describe how Alvin had saved Popsicle’s life, driving off the Argentinean mastiffs by hitting them with cushions.

“Cushions?” marveled Marie.

“Yes,” insisted Gay, producing a ripped-up cushion as prime evidence before praising Alvin’s courage, and
our guest was the hero of the hour until we all gathered to watch the evening news.

“Well, you know what Noël Coward said: ‘Television is for appearing on, not looking at!’ ” exclaimed Frédéric, as we took our places in the library to see if the announcer on the evening news would follow through by using the word “agapanthus” as he’d promised to do at lunch.

“Yes, but since Coward was a model of distinction only for English grocers’ wives in the 1950s, who cares?” shot back Gay, just when the opening credits appeared for the newscast.

“I bet you five to one he’ll stick ‘agapanthe’ in the beginning to get it out of the way!” said Charles.

“Well, I’d be surprised if he managed to find a spot for it in the social policy or foreign slots,” drawled Laszlo.

“Oh, you,” Gay said teasingly to Laszlo, “I think you weren’t too pleased with the impression he made on Flokie!”

Had we ever all watched television together? I wondered, enjoying the silly informality of a moment that nobody would have imagined possible among such a serious and accomplished crowd, having decided already to ignore Alvin who was scandalized that a so-called journalist would play games like this with his broadcast.

“Our bees—are they the victims of disease or poison? That is the question preoccupying certain scientists, who are studying a phenomenon that is troubling apiculturists and numerous ecologists, economists, and other experts because of the economical and ecological importance of the bee as a pollinating agent. Indeed, if there were no more bees to buzz around our agapanthus …”

“Hooray!” we shouted.

After which my mother, gauging the extent of Gay’s inebriation, sent Marie to the kitchen to say that we would be happy to sit down early to dinner.

ORIGINAL MENU

Coquilles Saint-Jacques
with Onions on a Bed of Mâche
Veal Cutlets Pojarski
Salad and Cheeses
Chocolate Profiteroles

REVISED MENU