The Suitors

Saturday, 8:00 a.m.



I awoke with a start the next morning and waited until eight o’clock to call Félix. When I asked him if he’d slept well, I learned that his father, who had a hard time accepting that his son was afraid of the dark, had come into his room several times to turn out the light, which Félix had turned right back on. My ex found this fear ridiculous. And he probably thought his method of dealing with it was educational! The sadism of his behavior left me fuming, however, and I realized that it wouldn’t take much more for me to begin hating my former husband, a man from whom I had parted without the slightest resentment.

“Don’t worry,” I told my son. “In two days we’ll be together!”

As I hung up, I felt that I’d been reassuring myself as well as Félix. And I knew it was time for July to be over so that I could have him back—because the present state of affairs could not continue. Really, his father … But when I thought about seeing my son again, my anger melted away.

And only then did I think about what had happened at dinner the night before. Fascinated by Vanessa, my father had paid no attention to what I’d blurted out, and clearly I couldn’t expect him to speak frankly with me about the situation, so I had no time to lose if I wanted to highjack its outcome with a love affair. True, Alvin Fishbein wasn’t about to fall into my arms, given my less-than-charming attitude toward him so far, and yes, he’d struck me as something of a prig, but would I ever be satisfied with anyone? I was critical, narrow-minded, and on the defensive. No matter what goal I had in mind, it was time for me to change my attitude. I went down to the beach.

From the top of the steps leading to the sea, I could see Alvin and his guru sitting facing one another in the lotus position. There was something strange about witnessing this oriental ritual, so spiritual and austere, on a beach that was so French and so perfectly designed for pleasure, yet the stillness, the silent concentration of that solemn prayer commanded such respect that one instinctively kept one’s distance. And in any case, I could hardly see myself barging in on their communion like a thoughtless fool. Then I had a bright idea, one that made my pulse quicken: I could spy on Alvin and Anagan from the servants’ beach! It’s not every day that one may play the voyeur with a clear conscience under the pretext of not bothering someone, and besides, wasn’t it my duty to take a more serious interest in Alvin?

“We’ll perform a pranayama, the Nadi Shodhana,” said the yogi.

Hidden behind a bush, I saw Anagan lead a breathing exercise that involved closing first the right nostril with a thumb, then switching to the left nostril with the ring finger.

“Let’s move on to Sat Yam, or the purification of the heart. Imagine a light in the heart chakra,” the yogi said softly. “You will feel it grow with each intake of breath, and draw back toward the heart as the breath leaves. Now, for eighteen minutes, you will think of nothing. If a thought occurs to you, push it away and return to nothing.”

Unwilling to admit my disappointment with what I was witnessing, I reflected that meditation was by its very nature hardly a spectacular sight. I would have abandoned my spying on the spot had I not been such a voyeur!

Placing his hands over his eyes, the yogi concluded the séance, intoning, Om Namah Shivaya. Om shanti shanti shanti, namaste.”

“Namaste,” replied Alvin.

Since I couldn’t very well pop out of my thicket to say hello, pretending that I’d neither admired nor seen them, which would have been a lie in both cases, I retraced my steps to the loggia, where all the men in the house had found different excuses to be courting Vanessa. As soon as I showed up (were they hoping to head off any caustic comments I might make?), they bombarded me with questions, inquiring after the state of the bay at the bottom of the lawn as if it were a dear relative bedridden in a distant clinic: was it cold, turbid, sandy, infested with jellyfish?

As the butler brought me my breakfast, Gay looked up from her Financial Times. “Can someone explain to me what these subprimes are?”

“No. Listen to this article in the Nice-Matin instead,” interrupted Frédéric.

“In the what?” asked Astrid.

“The Nice-Morning, the Nice-Matin, you know. Here it is: ‘For a week now, a lost whale calf has been roving off the Côte d’Azur. The orphaned finback whale had suddenly appeared in the middle of the harbor at Antibes, but rescuers had not had time enough to put their floating stretcher in place before the calf headed onto Salis Beach. Sightings have been reported since then in the bay of Cannes, at Théoule, and even at Saint-Tropez, according to the coordinator of the rescue effort, who seemed exhausted by a search that has so far been in vain. A plane had been chartered to locate the baby finback, but the keen eyes of the pilot, an experienced leader of whale-watching excursions, failed to find his quarry. He did, however, spot a pod of adult finbacks just to the south of Cannes, and there is speculation that the calf might have joined them. That would be the calf’s only chance of survival, according to the pilot, who speculated that although there has never been a confirmed case of adoption among cetaceans, by copying their behavior, the calf could learn from the adults how to dive to hunt for food. Since the calf is almost old enough to be weaned, it might thus be saved, because its intestinal flora are sufficiently developed to cope with the change in diet.’ ”

Like a divine apparition, her lips still puffy with sleep, Vanessa passed briefly through on her way to the beach.

“Why don’t we try to catch sight of this whale calf?” suggested Laszlo, who set off with all the other men in tow.

When I got back to the beach with Laszlo, my father, Charles, and Jean-Claude, however, I saw that the yogi had gone off to the kitchen, Nicolas was swimming in the bay, and Vanessa and Alvin were deep in conversation.

Which didn’t prevent us from noticing that they were both superb physical specimens. Alvin was slender but finely muscled, and his sculpted ribs made him look like Mantegna’s Saint Sebastian, yet this body, disciplined like a dancer’s through effort and privations, still left me cold. The men, however, could not resist casually lowering their newspapers or books now and then to sneak glances at the golden, silky, svelte but nicely rounded figure of Vanessa. A student of yoga herself, she had engaged Alvin on the subject, and I went over to hear what they were discussing.

“Your yogi, has he achieved samadhi?” asked Vanessa.

“Yes.”

“What’s that?” I asked quickly, positioning myself near Alvin, the necessary first step toward any future relationship between us.

“That means he has achieved enlightenment.”

“And that means?”

“Practically speaking, that he can enter a state that may be studied by scientists: the yogi is awake, but he allows his brain to rest, producing the same brainwaves that occur in deep sleep.”

“And where does that get him?”

“He manages through meditation to enter into communion with the cosmos, to be at one with the universe. Because we are part of the universe, but the universe is within us,” explained Vanessa.

“It opens his third eye, which is called ajna, and that brings him clairvoyance,” added Alvin.

“Which is …?” I prompted, with the unpleasant feeling that the more I asked, the less I’d understand.

“It means he can know certain things in advance or learn things during meditation sessions, during flashes when he can instantly master the techniques of painting or photography, for example.”

“And is he a Sohami?” continued Vanessa.

“And what’s that?” I asked faintly.

“An honorary title for yogis.”

It was a foreign language they were speaking, Alvin and Vanessa, for I had the uncomfortable and humiliating impression that I did not understand them, as when I was a child who couldn’t make any sense of the adult world, unable to fathom their words or how they used them.

I was in hostile territory, reduced to interpreting the most diverse signals, smiles, frowns, postures, all in an effort to deduce if we were speaking almost in jest, or quite seriously, or condescendingly, or frankly—and this feeling of exclusion was so painful that I understood only too well how someone confronted with a sect and its enigmatic vocabulary might join the sect simply through a desire to penetrate its mystery and to rise in the ranks of an esoteric ideology conceived precisely as a come-on. Then Alvin and Vanessa—kindly, gently, exactly as if they had been members of a sect—tried to rescue me from my confusion.

“Your body is made of the five elements of the universe: earth, fire, water, air, space. In ayurvedic medicine, there are three doshas, or body types: vata, pitta, kapha. Each of us has all three, but to varying degrees, with one dominant …”

Alvin was attentive enough to take my pulse, which allowed me to confirm that I felt not the slightest thrill at his touch. And I was thoughtful enough to ask him a few more questions, in an effort to make my interest in his beloved yoga seem a little more than just cordial.

The truth was, however, that although I respected Alvin’s spiritual aspirations, his thirst for purity and the absolute, I was not impressed by his intelligence. Seeking reassurance and structure, he displayed a great need to impose rules for living on himself, and I felt that he was not free but imprisoned by restrictive protocols that I found frankly off-putting, as was the smug and self-satisfied way he preached about them, going on like a broken record.

I have always tried to be a decent person, with a code of ethics that drives me to improve and even perfect myself in every way, and I feel it is essential that everyone should have this same aspiration. At the same time, I feel equally strongly that religion, which I believe demands no creativity from its passive, obedient followers, appeals chiefly to imbeciles. In general as stultifying as television, religion can nevertheless provide matter for reflection, on an equal footing with philosophy and the other human sciences. Thanks to Jung, though, I still remained convinced that God—or fate—was nothing more than our unconscious.

What should I do? Where Alvin was concerned, I felt no attraction, physical or any other kind. Should I abandon the idea of seducing him and resign myself to seeing L’Agapanthe put up for sale? To tell the truth, since the very beginning of our plan I’d found it hard to imagine what lay in store for the house because I felt so anxious and uncomfortable thinking about that, although I hadn’t liked to admit it. And suddenly, I knew why: imagining the future of L’Agapanthe meant envisioning life without my parents, which meant envisioning their death. And I was not ready for that.

In any case, if I had to take stock of our campaign, the least I could say was that it had been inconclusive. Even worse, it seemed that Marie and I were unable to maintain our close sisterly bond if one of us took an amorous interest in some attractive man, because although we took pleasure in our unanimous rejection of an unsuitable suitor, like the unfortunate Jean-Michel Destret, any flicker of interest in a possible lover disrupted our complicity completely. Hadn’t Marie wounded my feelings, back when I’d met Rajiv, without even realizing that we’d both been attracted to each other? As for me, feeling desperately alone when she’d been bowled over by Béno, hadn’t I recovered my joie de vivre only when I could console her over her broken heart? Oh, we’d been quite a tight team, all right!

I went back up to the house only to run into my mother, who asked me to go see how our substitute chef was doing—without letting on that I was on a mission, of course.

I walked into the kitchen just before the bell was due to ring announcing the staff mealtime break.

“I’ve come to see if things are going well,” I told the cook, who had a swarthy complexion and startling blue-green eyes.

“They are, thank you.”

“And what’s the menu?” I asked, nodding to Anagan, whom I’d just noticed in an adjacent room.

The cook seemed so pleased with himself, as he handed me a handwritten sheet of paper, that I was careful to let nothing show on my face as I read it.

Scramble of Eggs on a Bed of Tomato Concassée

Symphony of Vegetables en Demi-Deuil

Farandole of Salads

Melon Soup

Salmon Carpaccio

Cheeses

Apricot, Mango, and Passion Fruit Sorbet



Good Lord! I thought, he’s certainly gussied things up. I could just see the face my mother would make at this grandiloquent menu.

“And what menu were you asked to prepare?” I asked sweetly, and was handed the house menu book open to that day’s page.

Scrambled Eggs with Truffles

Artichoke Salad

Beef Salad with Cornichons

Melon with Parma Ham and Figs

Cold Salmon with Green Sauce

Tomato and Green Bean Salad

Cheeses

Apricot, Mango, and Passion Fruit Sorbet



Nothing like, of course! I noticed, for example, that the cook had promoted the artichoke salad to a “symphony of vegetables en demi-deuil.”

“And what is that, exactly?” I asked him with feigned enthusiasm.

I then discovered that the cook had a thing for the same square vases that the new butler had used for his flower arrangements. Had they pooled their orders to buy them in bulk? Did I dare ask him about that? Chickening out, I studied the alternating layers of artichoke purée and tapenade that filled the vessels.

“So what do you think?” asked the cook.

“They remind me of Daniel Buren’s striped columns at the Palais Royal,” I replied, instead of remarking that the culinary use of the term en demi-deuil, “in partial mourning,” implied—as I understood it—the use of truffles, not black olives.

But luckily I did not run short of diplomatically thoughtful metaphors, for I next compared his scrambled eggs to the ice cores geologists punched out of Arctic glaciers, because the cook had presented his egg dish as a verrine—layered ingredients in a small glass, in this case about the size of a vodka glass—on a bed of coarsely chopped tomatoes, instead of in tartlets of puff pastry, the way our chef usually did. Then I reviewed the entire menu in its “reconceptualized” form. And the cook seemed so proud of having transformed the salmon into carpaccio, and the melon into soup, and of having presented the salads in fancy individual bowls of different sizes and shapes, that I congratulated him before leaving the kitchen.

In the name of what, after all, would I have criticized this young man’s efforts to put his personal touch on a menu that seemed too simple to him? But then I asked myself what made his menu seem so silly to me. Was it the emphasis on presentation (a successful effort, moreover) affected by this Adonis? Or his love of innovation, which betrayed a kind of contempt for, or ignorance of, the past and its traditions? Or was it that in cuisine as in couture, less is more? And just as it was vulgar to overplay elegance by being overdressed, or outfitted from head to toe in some ostentatious “total look,” thus betraying a desire to appear and a social angst synonymous with an absence of natural elegance, food should never be either pretentious or overelaborate. It should be simple in its presentation, as in its menu description, and look as if it has only just come out of the oven. It should be unostentatious, like my grandmother’s shaved sable.

I thought about Alvin’s clothing, all in earth tones, and about Vanessa’s simple, confident sense of style, that chic baby-doll dress she’d worn the previous evening without any jewelry, with her hair hanging loose, even tousled, and I decided that appearances notwithstanding, their wardrobes made compatible and even related statements. Because if Alvin’s clothing announced his ecological sympathies, his preference of the essential over the accessory, the East over the West, of being exotic, his garments succeeded all the better since they distinguished themselves from the ordinary garb of the average American who seeks comfort above all else in shorts or jeans.

In the same way, Vanessa’s elegance, to which we all aspire, showed a sense of refinement that was the visible sign of an art de vivre implying a constant choice of spiritual over material concerns, of art and culture over materialism, and discretion over crass display. Her elegance was also, however, a reflection of a desire to distinguish herself from the middle classes, who are constantly engaged in a restless search for style in a consumerist orgy of accessorized and designer-labeled fashion.

I saw confirmation of that demand for sobriety and detachment in my mother’s reaction when I reported the changes our young cook had wrought in the menu, most particularly with the variety of bowls and dishes he had used to “modernize” our meal, because she simply said, “It’s the fable of the Fox and the Stork,4 what you’re telling me. But what can we do about it?”





Luncheon, Saturday, July 29





MENU



Scramble of Eggs on a Bed of Tomato Concassée

Symphony of Vegetables en Demi-Deuil

Farandole of Salads

Melon Soup

Salmon Carpaccio

Cheeses

Apricot, Mango, and Passion Fruit Sorbet





ALVIN’S MENU



Kale with Gomashio

Gluten-free Sesame Noodles

Stuffed Tomatoes

Swiss Chard with Sliced Grilled Tofu

Romanesco Cabbage Pie

Miroir aux fraises





More than the menu had changed at L’Agapanthe, I thought glancing around at our luncheon guests, I spotted a current government minister and an anchor on the eight o’clock news among them.

“Now we’ve seen everything!” I murmured to Marie, who patted my arm in commiseration.

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.