The Suitors

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Marcel and Gérard were standing at benevolent attention on the covered terrace outside the winter dining room, like parents supervising a sandbox where their children are busy playing. On tablecloths of orange and fuchsia linen strewn with white orchids, silver candelabras and crystal glassware reflected the flickering candle flames onto charger plates by César, signed with golden grooves representing the sculptor’s fingerprints. The effect was so lovely! No one else took this much trouble anymore over the décor for a dinner party, I thought proudly.

My mother called over the guests seated at her table. “Odon, Polyséna, Frédéric, Henri, Marie and Bernard, you are with me.”

“Doesn’t this remind you of school, when the teacher gathers her students on the first day of classes?” quipped Frédéric, to ease the newcomers into our protocol.

“Odon, you’re on my right; Frédéric, Marie, and Polyséna—do please stop chatting, naughty, naughty! Bernard, sit on my left. And Henri, between Marie and Frédéric.”

Inheriting those who hadn’t been summoned, my father solemnly brandished the paper on which his table seating plan had been scribbled.

“Here we all are in the same boat, cast adrift by Flokie,” he announced facetiously.

For just as my mother fulfilled her duties as hostess with the utmost devotion, my father took equally seriously his role as the class clown.

“Let’s see,” he murmured, slipping on his glasses. “But I can’t see a thing with these! I must have left my reading glasses in the library. Laure, dear, would you do the honors?”

“I’ve got the thumb!” Gay crowed triumphantly, having turned over her César plate to check.

“Oho! Much better than getting the finger!” Frédéric called over gaily from the other table, and the two friends exchanged fond smiles.

Jean-Michel was on my right. Without any misplaced pretensions, I naturally assumed that he would strike up a conversation with me, if for no other reason than that he had clearly been trying to bone up on the appropriate social conventions. He would thank me for his invitation to L’Agapanthe as a lead-in to some friendly or simply polite chitchat. He did nothing of the kind, however, and merely smiled at Laetitia, seated on his right. When I recovered from my surprise, it dawned on me that he had been avoiding my sister and me ever since his arrival. Of course I had noticed how he’d been all over my mother, but that was quite probably his idea of the proper courtesy due the mistress of the house. And I had the impression that flattering his “elders” was right up his alley, but so what? That was hardly a dishonorable means to achieve social success, after all. But between that and imagining that he was really trying to avoid Marie and me … His stubborn silence was suggestive, though; still, I really couldn’t see myself having such an effect on a supposedly intelligent man, so I wondered: was he nervous at the prospect of speaking to me, or simply worried that he would commit some gaffe?

Jean-Michel seemed to be studying the napkins and bread and butter plates next to the chargers by César, which we were discussing as the butler replaced them with soup plates of marbled yellow-glazed faience from Apt. In matters of etiquette, I would have been glad to whisper advice to him, but everything in his manner indicated that he would take my kindness for condescension. Too bad! He could just wonder away. As he would surely do throughout the entire dinner.

Debating, for example, when to begin eating what was on his plate. And he would discover that unlike in the United States, where it is customary to wait for everyone to be served before picking up one’s fork, it is the mistress of the house or the most prominently seated woman at the table who gives the signal, even before all the gentlemen have been served. Sitting on my father’s right, Gay would thus be our “hostess.” The butler would then serve the men, and my father last, who might be left on short rations, moreover, for the platter sometimes offered only slim pickings by the time it reached him.

In the same way, Jean-Michel might well be perplexed by the semicircular salad plates, or the dessert plates that would presently appear with a silver-gilt fork and spoon, along with a finger bowl to be placed with its doily to the left of his dinner plate.

Too bad for him, I thought again, and then my generous nature recovered its aplomb and made me fiddle with my bread-and-butter plate, on my left, to show him innocently which was whose.

Laszlo, meanwhile, was grimacing as he bent down sideways and exclaimed, “Can someone enlighten me as to why mosquitoes always attack your ankles? And aren’t they unusually ferocious this year?”

“You’re telling me,” replied Jean-Michel, who started scratching in turn.

Ah, now I’ve got it, I thought, since Jean-Michel obviously had no difficulty smiling and talking with anybody but me. I then put him to one last test, handing him a small bottle of mosquito spray I’d taken from my little evening bag.

“Here, it’s my constant companion. What can I say? Mosquitoes adore me.”

Nothing. No reply. Aside from a feeble smile of thanks before using my spray.

Having no doubt observed my mounting irritation at Jean-Michel’s awkwardness or rudeness (and frankly, at this point I didn’t care which), Laszlo jumped in to rescue me from the lengthening silence. “But the worst time is at night!”

“That’s because like all insects, they don’t sleep,” observed my father, a fountain of information on all creatures great and small. “Sleep only becomes possible when the brain has reached a certain size. Butterflies, for example, do not sleep, whereas whales, orcas, and dolphins sleep with just one brain hemisphere at a time, which allows them to swim without ever stopping.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t like me?” I wondered. But after all, that wasn’t any reason not to speak to me! Just look at that stuck-up stick Laetitia, whose hitherto unsuspected passion for nature documentaries was making my father happy to chat with her. Oh, well, as if I gave a damn! Why should I let a moron like him bother me? I decided to ignore Jean-Michel and join the conversation Gay was whipping up about Marie Antoinette.

“I’m reading a most amusing book by Caroline Weber about Marie Antoinette called Queen of Fashion, in which she describes how the young queen used her opinions and prejudices about dress to demonstrate her influence on the court, which she systematically challenged in the realm of fashion.”

“Isn’t that what Louis XIV had already done?” I asked.

“True, and Marie Antoinette was in fact greatly inspired by him. But she democratized fashion. First with her overdressed and even over-the-top style with those coiffures, the utterly insane bustles, which had such a success that she made the hairdressers and couturiers of that era rich. Then she turned fashion completely around with the simplicity of her shepherdess period at the Petit Trianon, inventing the minimalist white muslin dress worn without a corset—which became all the rage, just like Coco Chanel’s famous little black dress did.”

“Have you read Antonia Fraser’s book?” Laszlo asked.

“No, but I did see the Coppola girl’s movie.”

“Oh, a disaster!” he replied.

“I thought it rather pretty, with all those candy colors,” I said.

“So did I,” Gay chimed in. “Everyone jumped on her. But the film wasn’t pretending to be historically accurate. And it was full of familiar faces.”

“Such as?” Laszlo prompted.

“Natasha Fraser, Antonia’s daughter; Hamish Bowles, a Vogue editor; the socialite Pierre Ceyleron …”

“I’m sure they’re all wonderful people, but they proved unable to save that insipid excuse for a movie. Besides,” Laszlo concluded, “I don’t think anything can top the biography by Stefan Zweig.”

Gérard began to serve the main course, sea bass grilled over fennel, and I still hadn’t exchanged a single word with Jean-Michel. Since my decision not to let that bother me, however, I had made some progress on this question. And I had understood, after trying to put myself in his place, that he was able to chat with Laszlo or my father because he felt all of them were on the same ladder of financial and professional success, albeit at different levels. He could not, however, carry off a casual conversation or exchange with me or my sister because he was lost and had no frame of reference in our house. Wasn’t that why he’d insisted on bringing along his car and driver? To carry with him a bit of his world and a token of his success, to help him confront “the upper crust” of which Marie and I, with our pedigrees, were the incarnation? Because with us he must have felt lacking in something essential, an ease and elegance of being that requires generations to breed true.

And he was doubtless right. Not everyone has enough brio to show, as Laszlo did, that one can be a little Hungarian Jew from the gutter—as he described himself—and dazzle the most snobbish and intolerant people. Jean-Michel’s manners, for one thing, distressed me in spite of myself: his way of saying bon appétit; his elbows on the table; his knife and fork laid obliquely on either side of his plate, like the idle oars of a drifting boat. I could tell myself all I wanted that this wouldn’t have irritated me had I found him attractive, but I wasn’t sure it was true. Because I was conditioned by my upbringing, even though I found such conventions absurd. (As a proper Englishwoman, for example, Nanny had set our table with glasses to the right of the plate, forks placed tines up, knives with the cutting edge facing right, and she had constantly reminded us, Hands under the table! Then my mother would visit us. Shifting the glasses to a position above the plate, turning the forks tines down, and the knives, cutting edge left, she would order us to keep our Hands on the table!)

In any case, given the simpleton sitting next to me, what did it matter? I was hardly likely to experience a soul-wrenching conflict between any personal attraction to him and the repulsion I felt for his disappointing behavior. And I had decided not to take offense at his silence, which was a small thing, after all, to one as experienced as I in making conversation and coping with the vicissitudes of formal dinners, where I had once actually seen a dinner companion fall asleep and another choke to death.

I learned the art of conversation at an early age. Mother would invite my sister and me to eat with her from time to time, for fun, as she said, although she actually had no idea what that word meant. The upshot is, now I feel capable of getting anyone at all to talk.

I have a few simple precepts. I talk about what interests the other person. And since people like to talk about themselves, I ask them questions, avoiding as much as possible anything concerning their professions. I would rather ask them if they are afraid of flying, if they’ve ever talked to a stranger on a train, if they think women should ever make the first move, or if they’re men, I ask if they’re attracted to women who are clinging and needy. Or I toss out something trivial: Do you like baths or showers? Tea or coffee? Monet or Manet? The sillier the question, the more interested I am in the answer. But no matter what people say, I make sure to seem fascinated by their observations and impressed by their wit, without seeking to impress them myself. Or discreetly, in a very low-key manner (just in case my audience has nothing to bring to the table), I announce, let’s say, that I have never been to Venice. Then I sit back and enjoy the ohs and ahs my admission invariably provokes. Or I put their kindness to the test by pretending to be shy. In short, I follow to the letter the old adage advising us to speak frivolously of serious things and seriously of frivolous ones—even if that doesn’t suit everybody, in particular the crashing bores who join a discussion only to show off their knowledge of history, politics, or philosophy, and who like nothing better than to trip you up over some mistake.

And conversation at our table was languishing, so I turned to Laszlo, who was serving himself seconds of the risotto and morels.

“I’m bored,” I whispered. “Tell me again about the time you mistook Ungaro, the couturier, for Trichet, the governor of the Banque de France.”

“But you know that story by heart!”

Instead, my father revealed his own worst blunder.

“Last December, I gave one of those end-of-the-year speeches I deliver at my company’s Christmas party, when I convey my best wishes for a happy holiday to the personnel, with respectful mention of the year’s deaths and retirements. So, after the jolly bits, and armed with a list of the deceased’s virtues (drawn up by my secretary), I assume a dignified expression and solemnly intone, ‘I would now like to invoke the memory of Monsieur Puchet, and to pay tribute to a man whom we all knew and appreciated, who died this year.’ I pause for breath, and out of the audience comes a voice, loud and clear: Oh no, I didn’t!”

Laetitia, Gay, and Jean-Michel crack up. Pleased with his success, my father forges ahead.

“Dreadfully embarrassed, I try to smooth over my blunder by saying cheerily, ‘This is excellent news indeed, and we all fondly hope you will remain with us for a good long time.’ ”

Laszlo leaned forward eagerly. “And then?”

“And then—just imagine!—the voice pipes up, very cordially: Oh no, I won’t. I’m looking forward to retiring at the end of this week!”

Our screams of laughter plunged my mother’s table into an envious and admiring silence. I, however, had achieved my goal: Jean-Michel, feeling more relaxed, found the courage to speak to me.

“And what is it you do in life?”

Too bad he picked that to start with, I thought.

“I’m a psychoanalyst.”

I knew that this confession would stop our budding relationship cold. And even though Jean-Michel wasn’t attractive enough for me to regret this, I was irritated to have hit another wall in my efforts to loosen him up. My profession provokes two reactions. People sometimes flee as if I were an X-ray machine intent on snooping around in their dark corners, like my dinner companion last week, a charming guy in advertising, who made me laugh and laugh and with whom I’d gone out on a balcony for a smoke. Upon learning my profession, he’d replied, “Never, ever, say that. Tell people instead that you’re in communications.” Then, without another word, he turned his back on me and stole away like a thief. The other thing men do is dredge up intimate details about their relationships with their sisters, mothers, or wives in an effort to extract as much information as possible from me without having to go into therapy.

As for Jean-Michel, he asked, “Are you going to analyze everything I say?”

“Only if you pay me.” I laughed.

“But could you?”

“Could I what?”

“Interpret what I say, what I do.”

“Let’s say that I’ll be making suppositions. If I’m dealing with someone extremely talkative, driven by distress, I’m not going to say to myself, this person’s mother must be dead, or this person has been raped. I would have to determine some contours. For example, instead of seeing gaiety in someone who laughs all the time, the way most people would think, I’ll see suffering, but I wouldn’t be able to describe its source. I’m not Madame Irma the Mind Reader. We don’t invent, we don’t guess, we need something to work with.”

But Jean-Michel, as I expected, turned away from me. I hadn’t expected what came next, though: he committed conversational hara-kiri with my father.

“Have you ever been tempted to sell your house?”

“Uh … no, why?”

“You might have been thinking about buying one somewhere else, I don’t know … in Saint-Tropez, for example.”

How could this apple-polishing arriviste have been so clumsy? Didn’t he understand anything about the very essence of a family house, and people’s attachment to their childhood home? Stunned by his misstep, I saw in my father’s face how it pained him to realize that his guest was clearly incapable of appreciating the subtle grace of L’Agapanthe, or the old-fashioned splendor of the Cap d’Antibes, so lacking in the glittering tinsel of cheap seduction. Jean-Michel was, quite simply, amazed that an important man like my father would be content here, since our guest considered the easy glamour of Saint-Tropez the very acme of perfection.

My father’s character was rather well reflected in his opinion of Saint-Tropez. He was amused by the kitschy lifestyle of its summer visitors, whom he would never have thought to call vulgar because he was so impressed by their energy. Just think about it! All those young people—popular actors and singers, reality TV stars, gallery owners, artists, fashionistas and jet-setters—dancing like crazy in wee-hours clubbing, fornicating their brains out, then dashing off in boats to drink and screw some more beneath the blazing blue sky. No need to worry about sunburn, stomachaches, doubts, inhibitions. What glorious good health!

But my father was impervious to the attraction of a place where the height of snobbery was to dress like the locals and buy firewood or vin rosé where the garage mechanic does because it’s cheaper and you have to look authentic, just plain folks, in the eyes of the native Tropezians, so you’ll fit in. Nothing annoyed him more, in fact, than people who went on endlessly about their passion for authenticity. Whatever were they trying to prove? That they were the salt of the earth? Close to the people, to nature? There was something fishy about it. About that whole business of proclaiming one’s conjugal love, fidelity, attachment to family values, whatever. Why should a man on vacation have to dress up in overalls, a straw hat, and espadrilles so he can look relaxed? Especially since these poets of authenticity were stuffed with prejudices, singularly intolerant, and often contemptuous of the common people, because how else would you qualify their condescending efforts to “talk country”: “Hey there, M’sieur Menant, still happy as a pig in a puddle?” And such people were especially dismissive of my father, whom they considered an uptight snob. Accused of being a freak, and called upon to justify himself, he was expected to explain why he’d never worn a pair of jeans in his life, always wore a jacket for dinner, and couldn’t imagine entering a capital city without a tie. Marie and I even used to tease him: “Aix, candy capital of the calisson! Papa, your tie!” Well, he found it extraordinary that those who preached authenticity to him reproached him for his own natural style!

The dinner was coming to an end. Jean-Michel and Laetitia ate their dessert with spoons without realizing that we considered this a faux pas. Then, barely had we left the table when Gérard, who had made one mistake after another throughout the meal, interrupted us to ask whether we wanted herbal tea, coffee, brandy, or a liqueur.

My father and Jean-Michel: what a difference between these two men, I thought! A stickler for formalities, my father had the humility never to question what “just isn’t done” because he knew that appearance and foundation are frequently in league with each other, and that these codes often support the most elementary rules of morality. But he also employed an exceptional freedom of thought and manner to apprehend or judge the world. Jean-Michel was just the opposite. Presenting a facade of easygoing self-possession, eager to appear young, cool, cutting-edge, he was a self-righteous conformist through and through: an altar boy in predistressed jeans. Hoping to be taken for a politically correct nouveau bourgeois instead of a nouveau riche, he was a dud not only socially but as a human being as well, because he had just wounded my father without even realizing it, so sure was he of himself, certain of knowing what’s good and what’s bad, and of his ability to do well thanks to this crude filter.

The evening ended without any surprises. My father excused himself to bid on his painting on the telephone.

“I got it!” he announced joyfully when he returned. Mother’s “little band” congratulated him on his triumph as if he had scaled Everest, while Frédéric pretended to protest: one shouldn’t pat a fellow on the back for tossing money out the window! Polyséna didn’t appreciate his humor: doesn’t he know that one needs a good eye and cultivated taste to appreciate a work of the quattrocento! But Papa, oblivious of the bickering, simply seemed thrilled with his acquisition. At moments like those, I loved him all the more.

“Shall we do the fridge tonight?” Marie whispered to me, under cover of the general chatter.

Like our midnight swim, this was one of the rituals we performed religiously at least once every summer, a way for us to revive the blessed intimacy of our childhood. We observed these rites with pleasure, just as we seized on the slightest opportunity to repeat to each other the gems once periodically produced by our kindest but least educated governess. “The sky is befuddled with stars,” she would say with a sigh. Something elegant was “of a great refinery.” Once she huffed—instead of “onus”—“The anus is on him!” and such slapstick delights formed the repertoire of our complicity, like the languages invented by certain real twins to communicate secretly through shared references, which we recited fervently, like incantations.

As for the fridge, it wasn’t hunger that drove us, of course, but the tantalizing prospect of snooping in the pantry and kitchen deserted by the staff. What would we find there? Instructions as mysterious as hieroglyphs jotted down on scraps of paper left by the pantry phone? Or would we come face-to-face with a headachy guest searching for aspirin? On the alert, our senses heightened by misbehavior, we felt wonderfully alive. Happy and relieved at being just the two of us, sans parents, sans staff, enjoying a well-being like that achieved by taking off a girdle, which might seem mystifying to anyone unfamiliar with the way we lived in thrall to codes and constraints.

Our behavior was in fact inevitably affected by the presence of servants, which demanded a formality that pervaded our lives. How could we slump and slop at a meal served by gentlemen wearing white jackets and ties? Impossible, even if our parents were away, and Marie and I were alone in the house! Just try to act super-casual in front of someone who is addressing you in the third person: “Would Madame Laure and Mademoiselle Marie prefer to dine in the loggia or out by the water lily pond?” Such an idea would never even have occurred to us, in part because the disapproving staff, silent witness to our transgressions, might have subtly betrayed us to our parents, but chiefly because it was more difficult for the servants to perform their duties “informally” instead of waiting on us at the table.

Which ruled out, for example, the incongruous idea of a picnic on the beach. “At what time?” would have been their first concern, in complete contradiction with the very principle of an impromptu supper. And never mind trying to fob them off with the likes of, “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of everything,” because they would have felt obliged to leave the picnic spot spick-and-span and wash our dirty dishes before going to bed. Not to mention that having to lug down to the beach all the items indispensable in their eyes to a proper meal—the silver salt cellars, water tumblers, wine and champagne glasses, finger bowls, and other impedimenta—would have taken them forever and proved much more exhausting than serving us at the table, even from heavy platters while bundled up in the most uncomfortable outfits in the world. Besides which, the caretaker would have had to wait until it was all over before turning on the outside alarm.

So Marie and I had taken to giving the staff the evening off on those occasions, pretending that we were dining out at a restaurant or in the home of some friends. We’d hide somewhere in the house until everyone went off duty, and as soon as they sat down to supper in their dining room, we’d sneak off somewhere to quietly eat the sandwiches or pizza we’d discreetly bought in town (since we couldn’t raid the kitchen), taking care afterward to dispose secretly of the wrappers that might have betrayed us the next day.

We censored our conversation as well, hesitating, for example, to discuss homosexuality in front of a butler with a preference for men, and avoiding any talk of money save through allusions, so as not to shock or wound employees whose income was in no way comparable to ours. When describing a millionaire, we’d simply say, “He has a lot of money,” and leave it at that. Whenever possible we minimized the attributes of wealth, so if someone said, “He had a lovely house” or “It’s a handsome picture,” you could be sure the item in question was a castle, a palace, or a priceless masterpiece.

In the same way, we found it unimaginable, living as we did under the constant observation of our staff, to squabble en famille, gobble our food, or get drunk. Asking for a second go-round of the cheese platter or another drop of wine was actually so awkward that we only rarely indulged such whims—even if it meant waiting, when the wine was exceptional, for the servants to head back to the kitchen so we could jump up and quickly serve ourselves on the sly from the bottle sitting on the dining room sideboard.

We’d been conditioned from childhood to temperance and the good manners de rigueur before servants, so their presence seemed nowhere near as oppressive to us as it did to novices. Still, after the butlers had served the liqueurs and wished us good night, there was a subtle relaxation in the atmosphere all around, as if we’d been aware of suddenly recovering a liberty all the more precious for being rare.

And so at midnight, we found ourselves at the head of the stairs leading to the kitchen and pantry, ready to “do the fridge.”

“That’s an invitation to rape, your little shorty pajama set,” I joked. “I hope we don’t run into anyone!”

“Look who’s talking—your peignoir’s totally transparent.”

That was enough to set off our first fit of giggles: a Pavlovian reflex, fueled by the delight we always took in this ritual expedition. Down in the kitchen area, feeling around in the shadows for the light switches, we experienced the same thrill of fear we’d felt when playing hide-and-seek in the dark and sparked our second giggling fit by trying to frighten each other.

“Don’t these huge deserted kitchen rooms sort of remind you of Kubrick’s The Shining?” I asked Marie.

“Oh, stop, you’re really making me nervous! And you’d better be careful you don’t lose a finger on the ham slicer.”

Once we’d found the light switches, located in the most improbable places (inside cupboards or behind glass doors), the ambiance changed completely, but we pretended to still be afraid just to prolong our pleasure.

“What was that noise?” I asked sharply. “Did you hear it?”

“No, I didn’t hear a thing, cut it out.”

“Look, there’s nothing but consommé in this fridge! I can’t believe it! The consommé consumption in this house must be e-nor-mous!”

“You mean you’ve really never noticed that almost every luncheon dish is swathed in aspic?”

“Ooo, you’re right: the ever-popular rabbit terrine, cold jellied chicken, what else …”

“Who cares? At the moment, if we want a decent snack, we’re going to have to do better than jellied consommé, veal stock, and some choux pastry!”

When we finally sat down at the pantry table with a cheese plate and some olives de Nice, I got straight to the point.

“He’s a total disaster, isn’t he, this Jean-Michel Destret.”

“That’s for sure,” Marie replied morosely, “since I don’t like him any more than you do.”

“Mind you,” I admitted, “the least we can say is that he doesn’t much care for us, either. He only has eyes for our dear mother.”

“Yup, it’s a complete flop! Even a fiasco—he seems scared stiff of you. I was watching him at the table. But I didn’t do too much better after dinner when I tried to thaw him out.”

“Yes, I caught your number as the modest and meritorious interpreter: ‘I get by rather well, although my linguistic repertoire is nothing out of the ordinary, since I grew up speaking French and English, then added Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian as backups …’ ”

“That’s it, dump all over me!”

“No, no, you were right to play the good little girl, seeing as my low-cut-and-liberated shrink persona flipped him right out!”

“Except that I flopped just like you did.”

“Right,” I agreed, “but now let’s think. What do we want? What are we looking for? How far are we willing to go? We really didn’t consider things properly when we became involved in this whole business.”

“What do you mean?”

“Listen, Jean-Michel Destret has done us a huge favor by taking a pass on us instead of making a pass at us. I mean, imagine, a clunker like that! We’re not really going to turn into high-class anything-goes whores just to bag a total sucker! We have to like the guy a little bit, right?”

“Yes, okay, but what is it you’re expecting from this guy? Give me just one or two vital qualities, no more, because the whole Prince Charming thing is really useless here.”

“Hold on. We are not going to sacrifice our romantic dreams in order to save the house!”

“Oh, enough already. But you’re right. So?”

“He has to be nice,” I began.

“Wait: that’s your prime requirement?”

“Precisely. Nice, and intelligent.”

“Even if he’s crummy looking? I couldn’t handle that.”

“Even if he’s crummy looking, absolutely. I’ve got nothing against ugly people. I even think they’re in at the moment—look at all those glamorous actresses with homely guys. Plus, remember, I already did my bit when I married a real looker. That was enough for me.”

“Well, okay, I’ve already had serious exposure to gorgeous lovers and I’m still eager for more, I can tell you!”

“That, we can talk about later. Oh, one last quality,” I added. “He has to be entertaining.”

“Entertaining? You mean funny?”

“No, more like lighthearted, open to imagination and gaiety.”

“It’s my turn, said Marie eagerly. “Me, I’d like him to be handsome, fantasmic, and prefer me above all other women.”

“Fantasmic? Meaning?”

“Seductive, charismatic.”

“In other words, that he’s a fabulous success, like a movie star or a business whiz, or that he’s magnetic in a sexy way?”

“Why not the best of both worlds?” Marie asked brightly.

“Ah, I see. Well, I have to tell you, we’re not there yet, not by a long shot. So now what do we do?”

“About what?”

“We’re not going to overexert ourselves, are we? Either we fall in love, at least a teensy bit, or it’s no go?”

“That works for me.”

My sister and I had obviously only skimmed the surface of the problem. The deeper truth was that I had been avoiding tackling the thorny subject of men ever since my divorce. I agreed with all my single friends who had looked around without finding anyone seriously desirable, and I had taken up their mantra: “Where are all the men?” As far as I was concerned, the answer was “Wyoming!”—and only half in jest, because on a trip there I’d seen lots of men who seemed completely well-adjusted, perfectly happy with their horses, their cowboy duds, and their outdoor life right where they were—so that was the end of that.

I used to say that I loved men but not unconditionally. I wanted them to be, in descending order of importance: nice, intelligent, ready to be happy, forgiving of themselves and others, generous, and wise. They had to have no fear of women, be virile, fond of making love but at the same time past the frolicking-with-bimbos stage. I’m demanding, I know. Especially since they had to be successful in their careers; otherwise they were bitter or limited in their outlook on life. They couldn’t be hungry for power and honors, however, because too many of such men feel empty inside, buffeted by anxiety, and seek to fill that void with the trappings of greatness. And they often bring home the habits of their workplace, namely, their bullying mistreatment of others. No matter how seductive and successful they appear, they are hollow promises, because they are immature, lacking in humanity, and care only for themselves.

It was also true that I had buried my romantic aspirations in the absolute love I devoted to my son. And I was so fulfilled by him, so involved in the care I took of him, so captivated by the act of nourishing him, watching over him, loving him, that my sexual desire had largely disappeared and I no longer wanted to find someone else. I had had a few affairs, of course, but had even let go of the idea of romantic love, which now seemed like an illusion, a preoccupation for those who had no children, no one close to them to cherish and love. In short, I was no longer available.





Saturday, 9:00 a.m.



The next morning, my son sounded sad on the telephone. He missed me, found time hanging heavily without me. How I longed to take him in my arms! But I could only murmur words I hoped would comfort him, and pause to listen, gauging their effect on his mood. When his unhappiness crashed over me like a wave, I would hold my breath and bite my lips to keep silent, waiting for the moment when I could regain the upper hand before he got too carried away with sobbing. Then I would speak confidently to him, with growing intensity, as if I were turning up the volume on a radio. I’d lighten my tone with a hint of playfulness before affecting a gruff severity intended to induce him eventually to laugh. Only then could I manage to breathe normally, wiping away the tears I’d held back until that moment. And we’d joke around a little, to my relief, before I hung up, completely drained.

Then my reflexes as hostess kicked in, and I took charge of the “sports program” for our guests, who seemed to need distractions, like children at a summer camp. I reserved a tennis court at the Hôtel du Cap to keep them occupied until eleven o’clock, when a boat would pick them up at our beach to take them waterskiing.

Relieved of the obligation to be seductive, Marie seemed more relaxed. And I reflected wryly that it hadn’t taken us long to disqualify Jean-Michel Destret. I couldn’t feel bad, though, about anything that allowed us to renew our bond as sisters, because our complicity was worth all the lovers in the world. Besides, we still had two weekends left in which to catch up.

Marie had invited Alain Gandouin for lunch. He was an accomplished technocrat, a graduate of some of the finest institutions of the Republic, and universally acknowledged to be brilliant. He had become the power behind the throne in France, an unofficial and redoubtable adviser to business moguls and the many politicians who valued his counsel. And this in spite of the abysmal failure of several business ventures he had run into the ground. His detractors had nicknamed him “Monkey Say, Monkey Don’t Do.” France is the only country in the world where a reverence for words confers so much authority on those who call themselves intellectuals—and express themselves with brio and erudition—that they are excused from everything else, including thinking straight, and allowed to intervene and say any old thing in public debates, which are dominated in the United States by pragmatic corporate chieftains and in Italy by art historians.

Marie was constantly running into Gandouin in the corridors of power, whereas my father, who did not think much of him, kept him at a distance through courteous formalities. Although I had never met him, I knew something about him thanks to one of my patients, who worked for him and considered him a nightmare, against whom he defended himself with the help of his sessions with me, during which we sometimes wound up laughing maniacally. We’d wept tears of hilarity, for example, over Alain Gandouin’s description of the ideal consultant.

“The secret lies in telling the client what he wants to hear,” he’d explained to my patient. “But to do that, you must know how to listen, watch, and talk, all at the same time, so as to observe the effect of your words on your interlocutor. For example, you begin, ‘My friend, your company is too small to survive in the face of the competition out there. You are thus at a strategic crossroads. You must make a choice. Either you face the music and decide, in spite of the years of effort and energy you’ve put into your firm, to sell …’ And now, while still emitting sounds that can pass for words, you study your client carefully, scrutinizing the slightest quiver of his body and face. And if you detect a tiny tightening of the jaw, a sign of protest, you segue immediately into ‘… and that’s the solution most of my colleagues would doubtless recommend to you.’ There you pause, to make your slowness seem solemn and thoughtful, before continuing: ‘The way I see it, such a solution takes the easy way out, and I do not advise you to embrace it. You have the mettle and ambitions of a major player: give yourself the opportunity to show what you can do in a bigger arena. And let me remind you that I already have in place, twenty-four/seven, research groups that ferret out the kind of acquisitions that will raise you to the level of the market leaders.’ If, however, your client welcomes your initial allusion to the sale of his firm with a hint of a smile, or reveals a furtive flicker of relief, your pitch should be: ‘And although most of my colleagues, taking the usual tack in such situations, would advise you not to sell, evoking the years of effort and energy you’ve devoted to this company, my personal opinion is that on the contrary, the solution is to sell. A courageous, I would even say ambitious choice …’ ”

So we’d thought it hardly surprising both that this high-flying power player was so popular and that at the same time, since he’d never had any business ideas or even any idea what business is, he nevertheless gave bad and sometimes even catastrophic advice. Besides, the stories about him were legion. A particular favorite, set in a company where everybody relished their anecdotes about his sliminess, was the tale of how he had somehow extorted obedience from a lackey forced to alert him every time the big boss went to the bathroom, so that Gandouin could pretend to run into him there by chance. And there was the time when he finally decided to unveil the results of weeks of five-hours-a-day private English lessons, and showed off with an American client.

“Yes, I understand you perfectly,” he’d said. “You want to focus on the business, you want to focus on the contract.”

A reasonable statement, except that his accent was so bad that what he’d really said was, “Yes, I understand you perfectly. You want to f*ck us on the business, you want to f*ck us on the contract,” and that had created a diplomatic incident of no small consequence.

But I couldn’t share all these delights with my sister, unfortunately; my profession was indeed a weird one, obliging me as it did to keep quiet outside my office about what went on inside it. Sometimes I even ran into patients out in the “real world” whom I scrupulously pretended not to recognize, leaving them free to react as they wished. At the same time, I met strangers about whom I sometimes knew every detail of their lives, character, or sexual proclivities, information revealed to me by their spouses, children, colleagues, employers, or competitors.