The Most Beautiful Book in the World (14 page)

With her family, she was equally open-minded: her son Rudy's unbridled homosexuality was less troubling to her than Sue Helen's gloominess. Gently, despite the fact she was rebuffed from morning to night, she tried to help her daughter smile, to learn patience, to keep faith and, if possible, to dump her boyfriend Polo, that dumb gluttonous smelly parasite, whom Rudy referred to as “the lump.”

They took Balthazar into their crowded household, and no one asked him any bothersome questions; it was as if he were some cousin passing through, to whom hospitality was naturally owed. He could not help but compare this welcome with his own attitude—or his wife's—whenever friends asked to stay with them in Paris. “And what's the point of hotels, then!” Isabelle would exclaim each time, furious, before suggesting to the impolite beggars that they would be so cramped that everyone would feel uncomfortable.

Because no one questioned his presence, Balthazar did not wonder, either, what he was doing there, or even less why he stayed on. For as long as any explanation was spared him, he was able to recover his strength, and he did not even know himself to what degree this social and cultural change of scene was taking him back to his origins. Abandoned by his mother at birth, he had been raised by different foster families, all of modest means, kind people who for several years would take in an orphan along with their own children. As a very young boy he had sworn he would “escape through the top” by excelling in his studies: his true identity would be intellectual. With the help of scholarships, he learned Greek, Latin, English, German, and Spanish; he raided the public libraries in order to acquire some culture; he prepared, and passed, the entrance examinations to one of the best schools in France and added a few university degrees along the way. His academic prowess should have led him to a conformist sort of profession—university professor or attaché in a ministerial cabinet—had he not in the meanwhile discovered his talent for writing and decided to devote himself to it entirely. Oddly, in his books he did not describe the milieu to which he belonged since he had risen in society, but the one in which he had spent his earliest years: this no doubt explained the harmony of his work, his success with the common people, and the disdain of the intelligentsia. Becoming a member of the Toulemonde family took him back to simple pleasures, to considerations that were devoid of ambition, to the pure pleasure of living among warm-hearted people.

One day when talking with the neighbors, he found out that everyone in the building assumed he was Odette's lover.

When he insisted to Filip, the swinger neighbor who had set up a body-building gym in his garage, that he wasn't, Filip begged him not to take him for a fool.

“Odette hasn't had a man round her place in years. And you know, I totally understand you: there's no harm in having some fun! She's a good-looking gal, is Odette. If she said yes to me, I wouldn't say no.”

Disconcerted, sensing that it wouldn't be right to keep protesting to the contrary, Balthazar went back to the apartment with some new questions to mull over.

“Do I desire her without realizing it? I've never thought about it. She's not my type of woman . . . she's too . . . I don't know . . . well, no, not at all . . . And she's my age . . . if I were going to desire someone, she'd have to be younger, normally . . . At the same time, nothing is normal around here. And what am I doing here, after all?”

That evening the kids had gone to a pop concert and he found himself alone with Odette, and looked at her through different eyes.

In the subdued light of the street lamp, comely in her angora sweater, busy sewing a set of feathers onto a sequined fabric, she looked very cute. Something he had totally failed to notice until now.

Maybe Filip is right . . . why hadn't it occurred to me?

Sensing she was being observed, Odette raised her head and smiled at him. The awkwardness vanished.

To get closer to her, he put down his book and served the coffee.

“Do you have a dream, Odette?”

“Yes . . . to go to the sea.”

“The Mediterranean?”

“Why the Mediterranean? We have the sea here, too, maybe it's not as beautiful but it's more discreet, more reserved . . . the North Sea, that's what it is.”

He sat down next to her to take another cup of coffee, and he let his head slide onto her shoulder. She quivered. Encouraged, he let his fingers wander along her arm, her shoulder, her neck. She trembled. Finally, he brought his lips closer.

“No. Please.”

“Don't you like me?”

“Don't be silly . . . of course I do . . . but, no.”

“Antoine? Are you thinking of Antoine?”

Odette lowered her gaze, dried a tear, and declared, very sadly, as if she were betraying her late husband, “No. It isn't because of Antoine.”

Balthazar concluded that the path was clear, and he planted his lips on Odette's.

A resounding slap burned his cheek. Then, in utter contradiction, Odette's fingers rushed to his face to stroke him, to erase the slap.

“Oh, forgive me, forgive me.”

“I don't understand. Don't you want . . .”

“To hurt you? Oh no, forgive me.”

“Don't you want to sleep with me?”

A second slap was Odette's answer and then, horrified, she sprang from the sofa, fled from the living room, and ran to lock herself in her bedroom.

 

The following day, after a night spent in Filip's garage, Balthazar decided to leave, to avoid sinking any further into an absurd situation. Already headed down the freeway, he nevertheless made a detour by the hairdresser's salon where Rudy worked, in order to slip him a wad of bank notes.

“I have to go back to Paris. Your mother is tired, and she dreams of going to the sea. Take this money and rent a house there, won't you? But above all, don't tell her it was me. Just say you received some sort of bonus. Okay?”

Without waiting for Rudy's reply, Balthazar jumped in his car.

In Paris, the situation had improved during his absence, for people were already talking about other things. His publisher was confident that, with time, Balthazar would regain the faith of his readers and the media.

To avoid running into his wife, he went by the house very quickly, at a time when he knew she would be at work; he left her a note to reassure her about his present state—did she even care, anyway?—and he packed a suitcase before heading off to Savoie, where his son was at ski camp with his class.

I'll manage to find a room somewhere in the area, he thought.

The minute father and son were reunited, François no longer wanted his dad to leave. After several days of skiing together, Balthazar realized that, as an absent father, he had an enormous amount of catching up to do with his child, in terms of presence, and love.

Moreover, he couldn't help but notice that his son showed signs of the same chronic fragility and anxiety that Balthazar himself was plagued with. By acting like other people, François hoped they would accept him, but at the same time he suffered from not being his own self.

“Since Easter vacation will soon be here, how would you like to go to the sea? Just the two of us?”

In reply, the boy jumped in his arms, shrieking with joy.

 

On Easter Sunday, Odette found herself looking out at the North Sea for the first time. Intimidated, she sketched drawings in the sand. The vastness of the water, the sky, the beach, all seemed a luxury beyond her means; it was as if she were partaking of a splendor to which she had no right.

Suddenly, she felt a burning sensation on her neck, and found herself thinking intensely about Balthazar. When she turned around, there he stood, on the dike, holding his son by the hand.

They were overjoyed to see each other again, but cautiously gentle, fearful of hurting one another.

“I came to find you, Odette, because my son needs lessons. Are you still giving them?”

“What?”

“Lessons in happiness?”

Balthazar and his son moved in to the rented cabin as if their presence there was perfectly natural, and their vacation got off to a start.

When life had settled into a rhythm, Odette decided to explain to Balthazar why she had slapped him.

“I don't want to sleep with you, because I know I won't be living with you. You're just passing through my life. You came into it, and then you left again.”

“I've come back.”

“You'll leave again. I'm not a fool: there is no shared future in store for Balthazar Balsan, great Parisian writer, and Odette Toulemonde, shop assistant from Charleroi. It's too late. If we were twenty years younger, perhaps . . .”

“Age has nothing to do with—”

“It does. Age means that our lives are more behind us than ahead of us, that you've settled into one way of life and me into another. Paris-Charleroi, money-no money: the die is cast. Our paths may cross, but we can no longer meet each other.”

Balthazar wasn't really sure what he expected from Odette; but he needed her, that much he knew.

Where everything else was concerned, their affair was not really much of one. Perhaps she was right to keep him from heading into the banality of a love affair? But what if she were wrong . . . Was she not depriving herself of her body? Had she not been inflicting a sort of senseless widowhood on herself ever since Antoine died?

This became particularly apparent one evening when they started dancing in the fisherman's cabin. Giving her all to the samba, Odette moved in a sensual, gracious, mischievous way, revealing a saucy, insolent femininity that Balthazar would never even have suspected her of. In that brief moment, Balthazar took a few steps around her and sensed, as their shoulders touched and their hips grazed, that he could very easily end up in bed with her.

In the moonlight, she made an ingenuous confession:

“You know, Balthazar, I'm not in love with you.”

“Oh?”

“No. I'm not in love with you; I love you.”

He thought her declaration was the most beautiful one he had ever heard—more beautiful even than the ones he invented in his books.

In reply, he handed her the lizard-skin file that contained the new novel he had been writing since his arrival at the seaside.

“It will be called
Other People's Happiness
. I'm going to tell the story of several characters who are searching for happiness without finding it. If they fail, it's because they've been given or they've adopted ideas about happiness that don't suit them: money, power, a good marriage, mistresses with long legs, racing cars, huge duplex apartments in Paris, chalets in Megève and villas in Saint Tropez, nothing but clichés. They may be successful but they're not happy, because what they are experiencing is other people's happiness, happiness according to other people. I owe this book to you. Read the beginning.”

By the light of the lantern she read the first page. He had written, “To Dette.”

She felt so light that it was as if the crown of her head were touching the moon. Her heart was nearly breaking. Taking a breath, she lifted her hand to her heart and murmured, “Calm down, Odette, calm down.”

At midnight they kissed on the cheek, wishing each other sweet dreams, but Balthazar envisioned that by the end of the two days they had left at the seaside they would, logically, have become lovers.

An unpleasant surprise awaited him when he came back from his bike ride with François, Rudy, and Sue Helen. His wife and his publisher were waiting patiently in the living room.

When he saw Isabelle, he suspected she was up to no good, and he nearly lost his temper with her. Odette calmed him down.

“Don't be angry with her. I'm the one who arranged this meeting, on my own. Sit down and help yourself to a piece of cake. It's homemade. I'm going to get us something to drink.”

To Balthazar, the scene that followed was surreal. Trapped in a nightmare, Balthazar felt like he was watching Odette as Miss Marple at the close of an investigation: all the characters in the detective story were summoned, and over tea and crumpets Miss Marple explained the matter and drew her conclusions.

“Balthazar Balsan has brought me a great deal through his books. I never thought I would be able to repay him in any way until, through a combination of circumstances, he came to find refuge in my home some weeks ago. Soon he will have to go back to Paris, because at his age, and with his fame, you don't start your life over in Charleroi. But for the time being he doesn't dare, because he's ashamed, for one thing, but above all because he is afraid.”

She turned toward Isabelle who looked skeptical at her use of the word “afraid.”

“Afraid of you, Madame? Why should he be afraid of you? Because you don't admire him enough. You must be proud of your husband: he makes thousands of people happy. Maybe among all those readers there are little secretaries and insignificant employees like me—but that is precisely why! The fact that he can fascinate us, and move us, people like us who don't read a lot, who aren't cultured like yourself: well, that proves that he has more talent than all the others! Much more. Because you know, Madame, maybe that Olaf Pims writes magnificent books, too, but I would need a dictionary and more than one tube of aspirin just to figure out what on earth he's talking about. He's a snob who only writes for people who've read as many books as he has.”

She handed a cup of tea to the publisher, training an angry gaze upon him.

“As for you, Monsieur, you must do more to defend your author against those people in Paris who insult him and give him the blues. When you're fortunate enough to be in the company of a treasure like Balthazar Balsan, you look after him. Or else you ought to change your profession, Monsieur. Taste my lemon sponge, I made it especially for the occasion!”

Terrified, the publisher obeyed. Odette turned once again to Isabelle Balsan.