Enough About Love (17 page)

“No, wanting someone isn’t the same as loving them, Mr. Janvier. He doesn’t measure the consequences of what he does to this woman’s life, to her children. He’s not interested in that, his intentions are egotistical. It’s a portrait of a bastard.”

“Why a bastard?”

“Kostas would have every right if he knew for sure what he really wanted. But he doesn’t, he has his doubts, is torn, and he knows that. Being sure of what you actually want, that’s the bare minimum you’d expect of yourself if you’re about to break up a marriage, making a woman—and her children—suffer. Wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes. Perhaps. Kostas is a bastard in spite of himself.”

Stan opens and closes his fist, his knuckles go white.

“A bastard in spite of himself is still a bastard. There is something fragile about Camille, a dissatisfaction with things. But she has a good life. Perhaps too good. Camille carries a deep-seated melancholy in her, and her husband helps her carry it, very tenderly. When Kostas turns up, she hopes she can actually live, at last. Kostas can tell she is vulnerable, he also suspects she loves him because he embodies unpredictability, a sense of adventure she always longed for, but he exploits her dreams to draw her in. It’s a woman thing, like Emma Bovary meeting her Rodolphe. Very traditional, in fact. But you’re too understanding with Kostas. You adopt his point of view. There are several novels that need writing there, Camille’s, her husband’s, the children’s. Those are the ones you should have written.”

“They’re tragic novels. I …”

“Well, maybe
Madame Bovary
can’t be written more than once, after all.”

There is a note of sadness in Stan’s voice, but no longer any anger. He is still rubbing his fist against his palm, but talking seems to have soothed him. The bookstore is gradually emptying and the manager signals discreetly to Yves.

“Do you have children, Mr. Janvier?” Stan goes on.

“A daughter. Her name is Julie.”

Stan shakes his head.

“Anna and I have two, you know. I read every page of
Follow On
, imagining a Kostas following Anna, meeting her, seducing her. It made me really sad to think a man that immature, who did so little to deserve her trust, could come and destroy my Anna’s life, hurt our family, for nothing, just because he never really gauged what he wanted.”

“I understand what you’re saying.”

“I know you understand what I’m saying. There’s a bit of Camille in every woman, and a bit of Kostas in every man.”

Stan stops talking for a moment. Yves flicks his pen back and forth between his fingers. He does not want to argue; he is moved by Stan, more than he expected. Anna’s respect and affection for Stan hatched a peculiar empathy in him some time ago. Yves now knows that the love two men feel for the same woman weaves secret connections, even forbidding that lover’s privilege, jealousy.

“I’m sure I wouldn’t write the same book now.”

“Do you think? Yet they say people always write the same book.”

“It’s not true. Books are like the days of your life. They come one after another and you learn from each of them.”

“Well … that’s a good thing, then. That’s a good thing.”

“Kostas doesn’t want to make anyone unhappy.”

Stan gives a furious shrug and stands up. Yves stands too.

“That’s not possible, Mr. Janvier. People like Kostas aren’t happy and they can’t make anyone happy.”

All at once Yves feels cold, puts on his coat. Stan gives a slight bow and steps away.

“I’m very glad I’ve had a chance to meet you, Mr. Janvier. To talk about Kostas and Camille with you. I hope I haven’t bored you.”

Yves shakes his head. Stan walks off without offering a handshake. Before he leaves the bookstore, he opens the book, leafs through it. He comes back, looking determined, fists balled. From the look in his eye, Yves can suddenly tell they are going to fight. He prepares for it. Deep down, he prefers this to their restrained discussion in which they both affected detachment. But Stan simply shows him the dedication.

“Excuse me. You wrote ‘To Stanislas and Anna.’ ”

“Yes?”

“My name’s Ladislas, not Stanislas. Could you write ‘To Ladislas and Anna’?”

Yves is dumbstruck. He apologizes, takes another copy, and corrects his mistake. Ladislas walks away, satisfied. The manager smiles at the writer, slightly dismayed: “I’m so sorry, Yves. I should have warned you. Ladislas is a regular. He’s—how shall I put this?—a bit different. One time, when Delcourt was doing a signing, he came and explained his own book to him for nearly an hour. You can just imagine how Delcourt … And he’s also got that nervous tic with his fists, you always feel he’s about to smash your face in.”

“I didn’t notice,” says Yves.

A
NNA WILL BE FORTY TOMORROW
. For the first time in years, she has not planned a party. She could not imagine celebrating her birthday without Yves, and, in her indecision, she waited until it was too late to send out invitations.

She is walking along the street, in a hurry. She is meeting Yves and he has promised her a present. Not long after they met, he gave her a ring, a silver one, which swivels and opens like an oyster to reveal its secret, a yellow diamond nestled in golden mother-of-pearl. But this piece of jewelry has stayed in the bottom of a drawer, under a silk scarf.

Of course Yves is already at the café, he is reading the paper, in no rush. Anna hates being waited for impatiently, she hates being a prisoner to someone else’s attachment. She wants something that does not exist: a lover who adores her, but is utterly indifferent.

She has hardly sat down opposite him before he hands her a small package wrapped in red crepe paper. She opens it, it
contains five books, all identical. They are small, ivory-colored, about sixty pages long.

She looks up again. Almost frightened.

“Don’t worry,” says Yves. “Only ten copies were made. You have half the edition there.”

“Thank you,” says Anna. “Can I read it now?”

“I hope you will,” Yves replies. “It’s not very long.”

Where do our memories file themselves away? Broca proved that the left hemisphere controls speech, Penfield maintains that the temporal lobes house memory. So an arrangement of neurons, a chemistry within the brain stocks the images,
sounds, and smells that I call memories of you. Why is it my hands themselves hold the memory of your skin?

I want forty memories of you, Anna. For the reason you can guess. Forty is a lot, think of Ali Baba’s thieves. And forty is too few: it means resigning myself to never retracing a gesture you make, one so specific to you, so intimate; not describing the sight of a street with your silhouette outlined against it; not referring to something you said even though it touched me; it means abandoning certain characteristics on the grounds that I have already put them in writing, somewhere else.

Describing too precisely is pointless, and I am conscious of the risk I run, which is platitude. And yet I run it, for memory itself runs a greater risk and that is forgetting, given that forgetting is merely the natural fate of all memory. But what I know above all else is that each of these memories is here, set down in words in order to accomplish the impossible: never to lose you.

ONE

It’s a very vague recollection, a haze of a memory. You’re talking, standing in the middle of the huge foyer in an apartment on the Left Bank. I say “you,” but that’s absurd because I don’t yet know that you are you. The people who will play a part in our lives are always strangers the day before we meet them, and writing it has less to do with naïveté than wonderment.

You’re talking about incest and rape. Your eyes reveal a rare vivaciousness, your voice has a penetrating lilting quality, your diction is precise, confident, I detect an urgency in your quick-fire delivery that is not related to the subject but to the way you are. The clothes you’re wearing seem to float over you. Your hair skims your shoulders. I don’t look at you much, only
because I so desperately want to look at you. I don’t want my eagerness to betray my growing desire, I don’t want my too obvious attention to embarrass you. Even now, I regret those first minutes when I didn’t allow myself to grasp you more fully, see you more clearly.

TWO

You may remember this better than me. We’re having
tagliatelle al pesto ligure
for dinner in that Italian restaurant on the rue Mazarine, surrounded by people I know nothing about. We don’t know each other, I’m drawn to you, aroused by you. If you had not followed us there for dinner, I would have gone home.

We’re talking about the Holocaust, the camps, Belzec, and it’s more than I can take, I can’t hide the tears in my eyes; later you will tell me you found that moving. You suddenly say these words: “my husband, my children.” I think: obviously. A woman like you couldn’t not have ties. The distress I feel when you indicate that nothing is possible lays me bare, it tells me how lonely I’ve always been, without you. A self-evident fact comes to light: I’m no longer in any doubt that you are a woman for me.

You’re the one who will use the word “thunderbolt.” But later, in a profile published in the periodical
Quinzaine
, when the journalist asks me the ten key dates in my life, my last milestone will be: “September this year.
Struck by a thunderbolt.”

THREE

Let’s say this right away, there will be no chronology, no true logic, and definitely no hierarchy. The last memory described
will simply be the last. It will just be the face of a die showing when it has stopped rolling, because every die thrown eventually stops rolling. As far as this third memory is concerned, it isn’t in its rightful place, but who cares.

It’s an autumn evening, you drop by my apartment toward the end of the afternoon, and bring some pastries for the three of us, because my daughter is with me: an apple tart, a pear tart, and a custard tart. You have split the three pastries and you’re eating the filling, leaving the crust and bottom. I point out to my daughter that she mustn’t behave like that if she’s invited to someone’s house. You burst out laughing: you’ve just realized that you’ve “made yourself at home.”

You’re no longer visiting.

FOUR

We’re naked in bed, lying beneath the sheets. You’re listing things you like: going under bridges, looking down over open countryside, scouring your mind to find the exact word for something, feeling the men you love looking at you … You haven’t mentioned “buying clothes.” I remind you of this one; you’re amazed not to have thought of it. I wanted to remember everything: you also like to have a very soft light on when you sleep alone at night, old churches, being wanted and being taken, and quattrocento art. In no particular order.

FIVE

You’re asleep. You’re lying on your back with your knees together, legs bent and feet splayed. The whole arrangement forms a very stable pyramid that I can’t push over. There’s a
draft under the duvet and it’s not warming up. No one can sleep in that position. And yet you’re asleep, fast asleep, no chance of getting you to move an inch. The following morning you won’t believe me, obviously.

SIX

It’s a telephone conversation. We will have a thousand of them, and that’s not much of an exaggeration. This one is about the five hundredth.

The train is cutting across the Moran region, I’m drinking coffee in the restaurant car, watching the undulating fields scud past. I hear you say: “I was thinking, for our wedding I’ll wear a red dress.” I
will
wear, not I
would
, I can feel the difference. If you’re picturing your clothes then it’s really serious. For the next ten minutes we talk about the ceremony, the venue, the guests, the musicians, I know you’re joking, I also know that you’re enjoying the game, that it gives you a right to project us into the taboo that a union between us would represent.

From time to time, the train passes a village. I spot a church tower, there is probably also a register office, but almost certainly no synagogue.

SEVEN

One more round on the carousel at the Jardin des Plantes and your little girl climbs down from the wooden horse. Lea hasn’t succeeded in hooking the pink pompom, despite the best efforts of the woman in the booth: a redheaded child—in a better position and more competitive—managed to get it before
her every time. We sit at a table by the refreshment stand, two coffees, one hot chocolate. Lea has forgotten her scooter and you have to go and get it, so she and I are left facing each other, watching each other in silence, me rather cautiously looking down, she mischievously peering up.

It’s the first time we’ve met properly. I think she looks like you, despite her blond hair and blue eyes. You come back over, and we head toward the largest conservatory. All of a sudden, Lea sneaks in between the two of us. She takes your hand and then, by surprise, mine, and starts swinging between us. With that one gesture, your little girl is giving me permission to exist, and her tiny hand is offering me a position that it alone has any right to grant.