The Woman With the Bouquet (19 page)

“Did you do something with your hair?”

“Oh, hardly . . . what do you think? Is it better?”

“Yes, it’s better,” replied Maurice, not really sure what he thought.

“You might also have noticed that I lost ten pounds—but nobody notices that.”

“Actually, I was wondering . . .”

“Liar! And in any case, it’s ten pounds off my brain that I’ve lost, not ten pounds of fat. So those ten pounds, you won’t see them, you can just hear them!”

She gave a deep, full-throated laugh.

Although he didn’t laugh with her, Maurice nevertheless looked at her indulgently. Over time, his affection had been tempered with lucidity: he knew that his cousin was very different from him—not terribly cultured, too sociable, fond of gargantuan meals, dirty jokes, and fun-loving loudmouths, but he didn’t hold it against her; as she was the only person that he loved, he had decided to like her too, that is, to take her as she was. Even the pity he felt toward her unattractive physique—increasingly unattractive with each passing year—reinforced his tenderness. Basically, the compassion he showed Sylvie for her lack of physical charm was in lieu of the one he could have shown himself.

Leaving Lyon and its winding freeway overpasses behind, they drove in convoy for several hours. As they drew closer to the south, the heat seemed to change consistency: thick, paralyzing, and motionless in the region around Lyon, like a lead shield burning above mortal beings, it gradually became airier, with a pleasant breeze as they followed the Rhône River, then it became drier and somehow mineral when they reached the Ardèche.

In the middle of the afternoon, after making mistakes that added to Sylvie’s good mood, they managed to find the wild dusty road that took them to the villa.

Maurice immediately noticed that the qualities of the place might also be its defects: clinging to a rocky slope where only a few thirsty bushes survived, the house, of natural stone as ocher as the surrounding countryside, was situated miles from the nearest village, and several hundred yards from the nearest neighbor.

“Excellent,” he exclaimed, to win Sylvie’s approval, for she looked doubtful; “a perfect place to rest!”

She smiled and decided to share his opinion.

Once they had chosen their rooms and unpacked their belongings—books for Maurice—Sylvie made sure the television and radio were working, then offered to go and stock up on supplies in the nearest supermarket.

Maurice went with her because, knowing his cousin’s temperament, he was afraid she would buy too much and spend too much.

Pushing the shopping cart, he went along the aisles with Sylvie who wanted to buy everything, babbling, comparing products with the ones she found at home, and criticizing the selection. Once the most dangerous part had been taken care of—preventing Sylvie from emptying the entire cold meats department into her shopping cart—they headed for the checkout counter.

“Stay there, I’m going to get a book!” exclaimed Sylvie.

Maurice mastered his irritation because he wanted his vacation to be a successful one; mentally, however, he placed his unfortunate cousin before the firing squad. Buying a book in the supermarket! Had he ever, even once in his life, bought a book in a supermarket? A book was a sacred, precious object, one you first read about on the bibliographical list, and then you went on to find out more about it, and only then, if you really wanted to, did you write the reference on a piece of paper and go to order it from a bookseller worthy of the name. Under no circumstances should a book ever be selected from among the sausages, vegetables, and washing powders.

“What a sad time we live in . . .” he murmured through his lips.

Unabashedly, Sylvie pranced around among the piles and shelves of books as if they were appetizing. With a quick glance, Maurice confirmed that naturally the supermarket sold nothing but novels and, feeling like a martyr, he glued his eyes to the ceiling while he waited for Sylvie to finish sniffing this cover, or inhaling that volume, or feeling the weight of this one, or leafing through pages as if she were checking whether there was dirt in the salad.

Suddenly, she gave out a cry.

“Way cool! The latest Chris Black!”

Maurice had no idea who this Chris Black was, to be triggering a pre-orgasmic state in his cousin, and he did not deign to pay the slightest attention to the volume she threw onto the pile of shopping in the cart.

“You’ve never read any Chris Black? It’s true, you don’t read novels. Listen, it’s great. You can devour it in one sitting, you are, like, drooling on every page, you can’t put it down until you’ve finished it.”

Maurice noticed that Sylvie talked about the book as if it were something to eat.

“I suppose they’re right, the salespeople, to put the books in with the food,” he thought, “because for this type of consumers, it’s exactly the same thing.”

“Listen, Maurice, if you want to do me a favor someday, read some Chris Black.”

“Listen, Sylvie, just to please you, I can put up with you talking to me about this Chris Black, whom I don’t know from Adam, and that’s already a great deal. Just don’t count on me to read him.”

“It’s really stupid, you’ll die without knowing what you’ve missed.”

“I don’t think so. And if I do die, it won’t be because of that.”

“Oh, you must think I have bad taste . . . and yet, when I read Chris Black, I’m perfectly aware I’m not reading Marcel Proust, I’m not that stupid.”

“Why? Have you read Marcel Proust?”

“Now you’re being mean, Maurice. No, you know perfectly well I haven’t read Marcel Proust, unlike yourself.”

Like some Saint Blandina of culture, smarting with wounded dignity, Maurice smiled, as if he were finally being awarded a quality that had been only stingily conceded to him before. Basically, he found it delightful that, both his cousin and his students assumed he must have read Proust—something that he had never even attempted, because he was allergic to narrative literature. So much the better. He would not deny it. He had read so many other books . . . Unto those that have shall more be given, no?

“Maurice, I’m well aware that I’m not reading a great masterpiece but, on the other hand, I’m having a really good time.”

“You are free, you have the right to have fun however you want, it’s none of my business.”

“Trust me: if you’re bored, Chris Black is as great as Dan West.”

He could not suppress a chuckle.

“Chris Black, Dan West—even their names are simplistic, two syllables, almost onomatopoeias, easy to remember. Any idiot chewing gum in Texas could repeat them absolutely flawlessly. Do you think those are their real names or do they re-name them to apply the laws of marketing?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Chris Black or Dan West, that’s easier to read on an end display than Jules Michelet.”

Sylvie was about to reply when suddenly she gave a shout on seeing some friends. Wiggling her chubby fingers, she pounced on three women who were as imposing as she was.

Maurice felt piqued. Sylvie would abandon him for a good half an hour now, the minimum length of time for a short conversation by her standards.

From a distance, he gave a faint wave to Sylvie’s friends, just to emphasize that he wouldn’t be joining in their improvised meeting; he would simply have to grin and bear it while he waited. With his elbows on the edge of the shopping cart, he let his gaze wander over the products for sale. The cover of the book gave him pause. How vulgar! Black, red, gold, puffy letters, an exaggerated expressionistic design that sought to give the impression that the book contained terrible things, as if they had put a label on it to warn the reader, “Caution, poison!” or “Do not touch, high voltage, danger of death.” And the title—
The Chamber of Dark Secrets
—it would be hard to find anything more trivial, wouldn’t it? Gothic and contemporary, two forms of bad taste under one cover! Moreover, as if the title were not already enough, the publisher had added this blurb: “When you close this book, you won’t leave fear behind!” How ghastly . . . No need to open the book to know it was absolute shit.

Chris Black . . . He’d rather die than read a book by Chris Black! On top of it, it was corpulent, hefty—like Sylvie herself, actually; it was supposed to give you your money’s worth.

Making sure that Sylvie and her friends, absorbed by their conversation, weren’t looking at him, he discreetly turned the book over. How many pages were there in this door stop? Eight hundred pages! How awful! When I think they cut trees down for this, to print the unspeakable garbage of Mr. Chris Black . . . He must sell millions of volumes all over the world, the bastard . . . For each of his bestsellers they must destroy a three-hundred-year-old forest, slash, down it comes, the sap flows! This is why the planet is being trashed, why the earth’s lungs are disappearing, its reserves of oxygen, its ecosystems—so that fat women can read fat books that are worthless trash! It disgusts me . . .

Since the women were still chatting without paying him the slightest attention, he leaned closer to read the back cover.

If she had known where the adventure would take her, FBI agent Eva Simplon would never have lingered at Darkwell House. But she has just inherited it from a distant aunt, and needs to stay the time it takes to arrange the sale. Should she have refused such a poisoned gift? In store for her are some surprises as mysterious as they are hair-raising . . .

Who is meeting after midnight in an inaccessible room deep in the house, with no apparent entrance? Whose are these voices chanting in the night? And who are these strange buyers offering millions of dollars for an isolated old house?

And the 16th century manuscript her aunt told her about one day—what is so explosive about it to make so many people covet it?

Agent Eva Simplon has her work cut out for her, and the reader is in danger of losing sleep along with her.

Aw, isn’t that cute . . . so idiotic that you can already see the film—Maurice Plisson also hated the cinema—with shrieking violins, blue lightning, and a ditzy blonde running through the darkness . . . What was fascinating was not so much that there were imbeciles prepared to read this pap, but that there was someone unfortunate enough to write it. There are no stupid professions; however, one could aim for a less unworthy way of paying one’s rent. Moreover, it must take months to churn out eight hundred pages. There are two explanations possible: either this Chris Black is a swine infatuated with his own talent, or he’s a slave to a publisher who stands there with a pistol up against his forehead. “Eight hundred pages, buddy, and not a page less!” “Why eight hundred, sir?” “Because, you dummy, you shit-faced scribbler, the average American can only donate $20 of his monthly budget and thirty-five hours of his monthly time to reading, so you give me a book worth $20 and thirty-five hours of reading, okay? No need to go over, no more, no less. It’s good value for money, the law of the marketplace. Got it? And stop quoting Dostoyevsky to me, I hate communists.”

Leaning on his shopping cart, his shoulders shaking with sarcastic mirth, Maurice Plisson delighted in inventing the scene. Good old Chris Black, you had to feel sorry for him, in the end.

And then what he had been afraid of happened: Sylvie insisted on introducing him to her friends.

“Come here, Maurice, it’s through them that I found the rental. Grace, Audrey, and Sofia are staying not far from us, two miles away. We’ll have a chance to meet again.”

Maurice stammered a few words that must have seemed friendly enough, while wondering if Parliament shouldn’t draft a bill to outlaw giving the names of beautiful women—Grace, Audrey, Sofia—to fatties. Then there were promises of meeting for orange juice, or petanque games, or walks in the country, and they parted with emphatic assurances of meeting up again soon.

As they drove back to the Villa, with a deserted countryside flashing by the window, Maurice could not help but think about
The Chamber of Dark Secrets—
what a ridiculous title—because there was one detail that had captured his curiosity. Which 16th century manuscript could it be that the plot revolved around? It had to be a work that existed, American novelists lack imagination, according to his literary colleagues. A treatise on alchemy? A memoir of the Templars? A register with inadmissible family trees? A text by Aristotle that had been thought lost? In spite of himself, Maurice could not help but play with various hypotheses. After all, Chris Black, or whoever it was that hid behind the pseudonym, might be more than a pompous ass full of his own genius, he might be an honest researcher, an erudite, one of those brilliant academics the United States know how to produce, but who is underpaid . . . Why not someone like himself, Maurice Plisson? What if he were a decent man of letters who only accepted to write such vile porridge in order to pay his debts or feed his family? Perhaps not everything was bad in the book.

Maurice was annoyed with himself for showing such indulgence, and he decided to think about more serious subjects. And so it was almost in spite of himself that he stole the book while he was emptying the shopping from the trunk: using the pretext of a trip between the car and the pantry, within three seconds he had slipped it into a porcelain umbrella stand.

Sylvie was busy fixing up the kitchen, making the evening meal, and didn’t realize. To prevent her from thinking about it, Maurice even suggested watching television, specifying however that, as was his habit, he would go to bed early.

“If I stick her in front of the box, she won’t think about reading and she’ll be glued to her armchair until the last weather report.”

Everything went according to plan. Delighted to discover that her cousin would agree to pleasures as simple as an evening watching a movie, Sylvie declared that this would be a great vacation together, and they had been right not to go traveling this year, this would be a good change.

After half an hour of a movie he didn’t watch, Maurice yawned ostentatiously and said he was going up to bed.