The Suitors

The shortcut



August 3, 1990


I’m thirteen. Instead of the grown-ups’ usual route to the beach, I prefer the one that leads me from the heart of the house to the path running past the lawn down to the sea. I am as proud of this shortcut as if it were my own creation. It begins, like the universe of a fairy tale, in a ground-floor junk room next to the guest powder room, where the elevator, behind a forgotten folding screen, gives off a strange and delightful scent of forest undergrowth. The basement, I’ve been told, was laid out by some Russians before the Great War and was meant to house a casino. A wide corridor leads down with a series of landings to the foundations of the house, giving onto areas planned as game rooms along the way. Papered with bamboo matting and feebly lit by jaunty little sconces, the corridor aspires to the rakish atmosphere of a nightclub from the Roaring Twenties, but the game rooms, frozen in midcompletion by the Russian Revolution and the First World War, now seem like dungeons with their rough stone walls, gravel floors, and those iron doors with their little barred windows.

Is it the cool air of the corridor, the semi-obscurity, the insouciant casino atmosphere of going on a spree? I breathe deeply, inhaling the ambience of adult pleasures, dreaming of leaving boredom behind. But the shadows of the cells now storing a jumble of lawn mowers and old armchairs soon encroach on the subdued light in the corridor. Suddenly, I think I hear rats. I freak out … so I avoid looking too closely around me as I move through this underground passage that both scares and excites me. And I settle for regretting the peace I might enjoy if only I had the courage to stay there, because this basement would make an ideal hiding place. One just like the tiny space concealed behind the fake books in the library where a man hid during the Second World War when some Italian officers decided to set up their headquarters in the house—a disaster narrowly avoided by a stroke of genius from the caretaker at the time, who took advantage of the pocket windows, an American innovation as yet unknown in Europe, by sliding them back into the walls, thus persuading the Italians (in mid-December) that the unfinished house had no windows yet.

Simply emerging into the daylight on the path along the lawn persuades me that I have just been through a great adventure and triumphed over hostile underground terrain. And now I’m ready to spy on my parents’ guests behind the sparse hedge that separates me from the lawn, the way a curtain walls off the wings from a stage.





A mosquito roused me from my torpor; impossible to fall back asleep. In any case, it was teatime. Leaving my room, I noticed my mother in the entrance hall, consulting with Roland, the chauffeur. Wishing neither to interrupt nor disturb her, I slowed my approach, intending to wait so that we could go down to the loggia together. She had her back to me, and half hidden by the open front door, Roland couldn’t see me either. I would not have tried to overhear them, though, if they hadn’t been whispering.

“My dear Roland, I find I’m running a little low …”

“Very good, Madam. Shall I proceed as usual?”

“Yes.”

At first their remarks seemed as harmless as they were incomprehensible, and I would have thought no more of the whole business if I hadn’t seen my mother quickly press some bills into the chauffeur’s hand. Something was wrong here. Her gesture was too practiced for someone who insisted that all tips should be handed to the servants in envelopes. I retreated and huddled in dismay behind a pillar while my mother rejoined her guests. Then, knowing that my father would be swimming with Georgina at that hour, I shut myself inside the master bedroom to review my evidence: the overfamiliar “My dear Roland,” the mysterious “running a little low,” the chauffeur’s “as usual,” not to mention the money …

What hidden vice could she have? It wasn’t sexual, obviously, since there was nothing louche between my mother and her chauffeur. Alcohol? There were rivers of it in the house, she wouldn’t need Roland to get her some. So I came face-to-face with the conclusion I’d already reached. Because although I’d been wrong to think of it that very morning to explain why Lou and Mathias had dashed into Juan-les-Pins, it fit too well with my mother’s nosebleed before lunch. No doubt about it: my mother was a drug addict.

This was so appalling, so hard to accept, that I tried to imagine her with a dealer in some shady neighborhood—which was silly, since Roland was her go-between. I was definitely mired in clichéd scenarios about the problem: drugs were no longer the privileged playthings of rock stars, flower children, or fashionable hipsters. Hadn’t my grandmother once told me that her women friends from before the war used to “arrange things” with hotel concierges? And I’d been floored when she’d made such remarks as, “No one would ever think of leaving for Saint-Moritz without her morphine!” And of course, there’d been Baudelaire, and later on Malraux and the others … Yes, but my mother! Of course, she did already take Temesta for her nerves, Rohypnol to help her sleep, as well as the sedative Mogadon. But to go from that to cocaine …

Why hadn’t I noticed? Naturally, since she didn’t work, no one expected her to be superefficient or even a paragon of lucidity, which made the state she was in all the more difficult to discern. But that was no excuse. The proof? I’d paid no attention to her increasingly frequent bouts of ill humor. How could I have been so uncaring! And yet, why should I have worried? Wealthy, still beautiful, loved by my father, my mother had an easy life. As if that were enough to give her a sense of fulfillment! Especially if she felt almost useless, good for nothing but making conversation and worrying about who sat where at meals, I thought, rummaging through her vanity table drawer … where I soon found a crystal snuffbox with a bit of caked white powder at the bottom.

I’m running a little low …

“Oh, God,” I moaned.

What should I do? I had no idea, none, and was too devastated to think. I couldn’t help recalling a misadventure I’d had a few years earlier, however: eager young psychoanalyst that I was, I’d confronted the cleaning lady I’d recently hired about her alcoholism, which I had diagnosed from the falling level of my liquor bottles. I’d been soft-spoken, supportive. And she’d been so touched that to my surprise she had given up drinking. So I was rather pleased with the help I’d given her—until she decompensated into schizophrenia, which until then had been anesthetized by alcohol. And that had taught me once and for all about the limits of therapeutic discourse.

My mother must have found a form of equilibrium between tranquilizers and cocaine. And aside from the fright she’d had over her nosebleed, there was no indication that she wanted to stop. Why not simply give her the name of a psychiatrist? Because I did not see myself having a word with her about the situation. All the more so in that she was probably less than eager to talk things over with me or any other member of the family. And then I wondered: was her addiction an open secret, a problem I was the last to discover? For in spite of my illusions of shrewdness in psychological matters, I was doubtless, like all children, in a particularly poor position to see my parents with clarity and understanding. Did my father know what was going on? I had to sound him out as soon as possible.





Saturday, 7:00 p.m.



I found my mother having tea in the loggia with Laszlo, Gay, Frédéric, and the Démazures. In good spirits? Overexcited? I tried to look at her in a normal way in spite of my suspicions, which I sensed would be difficult to shrug off.

“But … where is Odon?” I exclaimed, with a gaiety intended to mask my concern. “If he were here, the Little Band would be at full strength!”

“Not back from Vallauris yet. Listen, I’ve entrusted Charles with a mission. He was at such loose ends … and as it would never occur to him to open a book, I had to keep him occupied.”

“You know your mother,” added Laszlo. “A heart of gold. She had the bright idea of asking Charles to do her the favor of organizing the wine cellar. So don’t be surprised if you see him emerge in triumph from the lower depths, because he surfaces from time to time to give us bulletins on his progress.”

“He’s phenomenal!” confirmed Frédéric. “Speaking of which, after the wine cellar, you ought to sic him on the library so he can arrange all the books in alphabetical order.”

I suddenly felt completely alone. Which was only natural, since I hadn’t talked to Marie all weekend, and given that nothing was likely to change on that front until Béno’s departure, I decided to go down to the beach in hopes of running into my father.

“Oh! Just the person I wanted to speak to,” he said, coming out of the water. “Georgina went on up already. You didn’t see her? She’s not well, and I’m worried about her, she seemed both wild and depressed. In fact, she scared me a little.”

“Yes, because you didn’t know what to do, but maybe she is just sad and that proves she’s alive.”

“You want to know something? It’s lucky your mother isn’t that way!”

“You think so? I’m not sure about that …”

“No, believe me, beneath that fragile exterior, she’s a rock! In fact, I’ve always preferred women like Flokie to those who seem like tough gals when they’re really spun glass, like Georgina. Because me, I need someone solid to lean on.”





MENU



Asparagus Vinaigrette

Poularde Mancini

Salad and Cheeses

Apple Soufflé





Entering the summer dining room, I saw that my mother had seated everyone very nicely: she had kept Odon and Laszlo to help her with Charles (whom she hadn’t brought herself to seat on her right), while sending Frédéric and me to liven things up at my father’s table, where we’d been placed the previous evening.

Slipping a knife under his plate to tilt it and so pool the vinaigrette from the asparagus, Frédéric began teasing Béno.

“You’re a financier, a collector, a jet-setter, a man of property, and who knows what all else. And I heartily approve, as I myself am a night owl, a playwright, and a pillar of this house. But some would say that you’re spreading yourself too thin. Don’t you ever, as I do, worry that you’re doing everything the wrong way?”

“Oh, you’re right, I probably do everything wrong. What do I do well? Let’s see … Oh, yes: I sleep well!”

Yes, Béno certainly had the gift of charm. But he was still driven to vamp his audience, because he now undertook to explain to us his family’s crazy lexicon based on favorite anecdotes, such as the “Your Uncle Syndrome.”

“It all started with the fact that my great-uncle was as puffed up as a marshmallow with his own importance. He was a bureaucrat of the utmost obscurity, yet he thought himself so closely engaged with momentous events that he felt he was on an almost equal footing with the great men of his day. Convinced of this herself, his wife used to tell us, for example, in accents of deep concern, that ‘your uncle is angry with de Gaulle’ whenever the president (whom my uncle had never met) had taken a decision that displeased him. As if de Gaulle always took my uncle’s opinions into account when he decided on a course of action, and chose to ignore his opinion only to exasperate him. Ever since, whenever someone takes himself for God’s gift to creation and puts on airs, we say he’s your uncle.”

“Well,” observed Henri Démazure, “then it seems certain French writers suffer from the same syndrome, because I know some people who write biographies of great men simply to compare themselves with them.”

“Just whom did you have in mind?” inquired Gay.

But my father, fearing a tedious detour into Left Bank gossip, made a preemptive strike: “Have you got any more like that, other family expressions?”

“Oh, yes, for example, the little wild strawberries.”

“The what?”

“It’s a term we invented for people who imagine that there’s nothing like a dollop of criticism to properly season a compliment. For example, saying ‘Your dress is ravishing,’ then adding, to be more convincing, ‘I can’t say the same for your coat.’ It seems idiotic, but you wouldn’t believe how many people do that.”

“But what does that have to do with wild strawberries?”

“Nothing. The name comes solely from the time a guest at my grandparents’ house in the country, wishing to be gracious about the strawberries served for desert—a luxury at the time—along with some wild strawberries picked by the children, had exclaimed, ‘These strawberries are delicious! Not like the little wild strawberries, which are awful!’ ”

“Wonderful!” my father said, laughing. “Sorry, dear,” he told me, “but after all, it is a more poetic way of describing people than the psychologizing jargon of today!”

“Yes, I see what you mean,” observed Gay. “It’s the triumph of Proust’s maladroit Aunt Léonie over Flaubert’s cataloging obsessives, Bouvard and Pécuchet! ”

“Precisely!”

Seeing a chance to take over the conversation with a nod to me, Henri Démazure began to defend my profession.

“Psychiatrists are fascinating, though! I’m reading a book now by one of them, Patrick Lemoine, in praise of … boredom! In fact it’s called Being Bored, How Wonderful, published in 2007 by Éditions Colin …”

“Oh, really!” said Gay, scratching her dog’s ears under the table.

“Anyway, Lemoine talks about two sorts: pathological boredom, a symptom of psychiatric illness, and the normal kind, which he considers indispensible for the construction of the self.”

After a swallow of Gruaud Larose, Henri pressed on: “He claims that when children are bored, they develop their imaginations and become more independent in a natural way, and that without boredom, their healthy individuality and creativity would be compromised. But these days, parents are growing less and less tolerant of boredom in their children’s lives. Just consider how they drag them from the soccer field to the swimming pool or a tutoring session …”

That was when I noticed that Marie had hardly touched her poularde Mancini, even though it was her favorite dish. Had love taken away her appetite? And my father was growing impatient because Henri, carried away by his thoughts, hadn’t realized that the butler was waiting stoically to his left, presenting him with a dish as hot as it was heavy.

“… and he says it’s rooted in the proscription against masturbation.”

“Fancy that!” exclaimed my father, whose relief at seeing Henri serve himself at last probably sounded like sincere interest in the conversation. Henri, in any case, was warming to his theme.

“Aristotle affirms that melancholy is the affliction of the superior man. And to be melancholy, in those days, meant being inactive, meditative, sad, humble, and therefore of superior intelligence, since hyperactive people were rarely geniuses.”

Failing to pickup my father’s desperate glances around the table in a mute appeal for help, Henri charged ahead.

“Moreover, when you take a look at history, boredom has always been on the winning side, from tedious old Louis XI, called the Prudent, who triumphed over the warrior Charles the Bold, to the Catholic faith, which had a troubled relationship to boredom and idleness, so conducive to impure thoughts and actions—although this didn’t prevent the church from inventing the convent, a whole universe of boredom!”

Gay was probably thinking up a way to stop Henri in midflight as she sat delicately cutting her mimolette and Gouda with cumin into tiny cubes, as she did every evening, before popping them in her mouth …

“Of course, everything changed when the Anglo-Saxon—and therefore Protestant—model took over the world, and the notion of leisure (etymologically, that means licit, in other words, permitted) replaced that of vacation (derived from the concept of vacancy) …”

… because with a definite wink at my father, she abruptly broke in: “Speaking of vacations, my dear Henri, have you any plans for the rest of the summer?”

Turning back to Marie, I saw that she seemed strained, so closely was she watching Béno in hopes of catching a glimmer of interest in his eyes, but like everyone else, he was probably more captivated by the soufflé, and the way the piping-hot apples, like lava from a volcano, overflowed from the core of ice cream perfumed with flecks of vanilla that crunched between our teeth.

“I adore desserts that combine hot and cold things, don’t you?” asked Marie.

“Yes, absolutely,” agreed Frédéric. “Let’s see, what others are there? Ah! There’s the Norwegian omelet, crêpes royale …”

Then I understood that something clearly wasn’t right. Because Béno, who should have smiled at Marie when she spoke up, had kept his nose in his dessert, as if avoiding meeting her eyes. I didn’t have time to get any further with this, however, because we were all leaving the table.

I was going over to Marie to make her tell me what was going on when Béno stepped in front of our mother.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m afraid so.”

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

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

“But then …”

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

“But why?”

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

“But that’s vile!”

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

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

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

“You think so?” Marie murmured hopefully.

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

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

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

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





Sunday, 9:30 a.m.



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, that I already knew—”

“You’re not serious!”

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

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

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

“Never mind, but tell me what happened.”

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

“I don’t believe it!”

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

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

“But he’s right! She’s a bulldozer!”

“So you’re not going to do anything?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Me, too.”





Luncheon, Sunday, July 23





MENU



Tomato and Mozzarella Salad

Miniquiches, Minipizzas

Eggplant Caviar

Grilled Shrimp and Sardines

Polenta

Spinach Salad

Figs à la Crème





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who is your favorite painter?”

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

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

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

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

“We’ll talk later?” asked Marie before she left for the airport.

“Of course, but will you be all right?”

“Yes, don’t worry. You know, what you said is true: I had a close call with Béno, he’s the sort to be avoided at all costs, even if it’s rather flattering to have slept with him. But I’ve thought things over and what really puzzles me is what we can possibly think we’re doing with our flop of a plan to find a husband. Anyway, in that department I feel I’ve done my bit. Share and share alike! So it’s your turn next weekend, don’t you agree?”