The Most Beautiful Book in the World (8 page)

When she had scraped up her last savings, she realized that if she did not do something right away she would be officially poverty-stricken. Instinctively, she hurried over to her desk, hunted feverishly through the drawer in search of an old scrap of paper where she had jotted down the number, and called Cannes.

A cleaning woman answered, took note of her request, and vanished into the silence of a spacious residence. Then Aimée heard footsteps and recognized Georges's short, anxious breathing.

“Aimée?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what is going on? You know very well you can't call me at my wife's.”

In a few short sentences, without difficulty, she sketched out an apocalyptic picture of her situation. It would not have taken much for her to feel sorry for herself, but her new armor of cynicism prevented her from any effusions of self-pity, and hearing Georges's anxious breathing on the line filled her with a sort of rage.

“Georges, I beg you, help me,” she concluded.

“Just sell the Picasso.”

She thought she had misheard. What? He dared to . . .

“Yes, my sweet, all you need to do is sell your Picasso. That's why I offered it to you. To keep you sheltered from want, since I couldn't offer marriage to you. Go and sell the Picasso.”

She closed her mouth to keep from screaming. So, right to the end, he was going to take her for a fool!

“Go to Tanaev on the rue de Lisbonne, at number 21. That's where I bought it. Make sure they don't rip you off. Ask for Tanaev the father. Oh, oh, I have to hang up. My wife is coming. Good bye, my dear Aimée, I think about you all the time.”

He had already hung up. Evasive coward. Just what he'd always been.

What a slap in the face! Served her right. She shouldn't have called him in the first place.

Humiliated, Aimée stood beneath the picture and unleashed her fury.

“Never, do you hear me, never will I go to some art dealer just to be told that I'm stupid and Georges was a bastard—I already know that, thank you very much!”

Two days later, however, with the electricity company threatening to switch off the power, she got into a taxi and said, “Tanaev, at 21, rue de Lisbonne, please.”

Although at that address she saw nothing but a children's clothing store, she nevertheless got out of the taxi, with her painting in its wrapping tucked under her arm, and went over to the building.

“He must work upstairs or at the back.”

She read four times over the list of residents on either side of the entryway, then hunted for a concierge who could give her Tanaev's new address, but eventually realized that these buildings for rich people, unlike those of the poor, resorted to anonymous cleaning services.

Before giving up and heading back home, she entered the clothing store for good measure.

“Excuse me, I'm looking for Mr. Tanaev, the father, and I thought that . . .”

“Tanaev? He moved away ten years ago.”

“Ah, do you know where he moved to?”

“Move? People like him don't move, they vanish. Period.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Once they've got their pile, they have to go and hide it somewhere. God knows where he is now—Russia, Switzerland, Argentina, Bermuda . . .”

“It's just that . . . you see . . . he sold me this painting some years ago . . .”

“Oh, you poor woman!”

“Poor, why?”

The shopkeeper saw that Aimée had gone extremely pale, and he was sorry he had spoken so quickly.

“Listen, my dear lady, I'm no expert. Maybe your painting is absolutely superb, and it's surely worth a fortune. Here, let me give you something . . .”

He hunted for a card in a box where he had a lot of loose papers.

“Here. Go to see Marcel de Blaminth, rue de Flandres. Now
he's
an expert.”

When she went through the door at Marcel de Blaminth's, Aimée lost all hope. Heavy drapings of crimson velvet absorbed external noise or influence, and monumental canvases in tortured gilded frames made Aimée instantly, crushingly, aware that she was no longer in the known world.

An imperious secretary with a tight chignon gave her a suspicious look from behind her tortoiseshell glasses. Aimée mumbled her story, pointed at her painting, and the battleaxe led her to the inner office.

Marcel de Blaminth studied his visitor in detail before looking at the painting. Aimée had the impression she was being judged from head to toe, that he was evaluating the price and origin of every single item of clothing or jewelry she had on her. As for the canvas, he only gave it a cursory look.

“Where are the certificates?”

“I don't have any.”

“Deed of sale?”

“It was a gift.”

“Could you get it?”

“I don't think so. The . . . the person has vanished from my life.”

“I see. Perhaps we could get it from the dealer? Who was it?”

“Tanaev,” murmured Aimée, almost ashamed.

He raised an eyebrow and his eye beamed with sumptuous disdain.

“This does not augur well, Madame.”

“Couldn't you perhaps . . .”

“Have a look at the painting? You are right. That is what matters. Sometimes some very fine work ends up here after a very obscure or checkered past. It is the work that counts, nothing but the work.”

He changed his glasses and drew nearer to the Picasso. His analysis was thorough. He studied the canvas, felt the frame, measured it, observed details with a magnifying glass, stepped back, started all over.

Finally, he put his palms on the table.

“I won't ask you to pay for the consultation.”

“No?”

“No. It would be pointless to heap misfortune upon misfortune. It is a forgery.”

“A forgery?”

“A forgery.”

To save face, she burst out laughing, “That's what I've always told everyone.”

Back at home, Aimée hung her picture back on the wall above the parakeets' cage, and forced herself to be lucid, an ordeal which few human beings are ever called upon to undergo. She counted her shipwrecks: her inner life, her family life, her professional life. Looking at herself in the full-length mirror in her bedroom, she found that her figure, sculpted by exercise and a macrobiotic diet, was holding up well. For how much longer? In any case, however proud she might be of her body now, it would go no further than the mirror on her wardrobe: she did not want to give it to anyone.

She went into the bathroom with the firm intention of lazing in her tub, and the vague idea of committing suicide.

Why not? It may be the solution. What sort of future do I have left? No work, no money, no man, no children, and nothing to look forward to but old age and death. A fine program . . . the logical choice is to kill myself.

But logic alone was pointing to suicide; she didn't feel like dying. Her skin craved the warmth of the bath; her mouth watered at the thought of the melon and the thin slices of ham waiting on the kitchen table; her hand checked the irreproachable smooth curves of her thighs and strayed up to her hair, to linger in its silken vigor. She let the water run and tossed in an effervescent tablet that released a perfume of eucalyptus.

What could she do? Go on surviving?

The concierge rang at the door.

“Madame Favart, would it help you out to rent your guest room?”

“I don't have a guest room.”

“Yes you do, the little room which overlooks the stadium.”

“That's where I do my sewing and my ironing.”

“Well, if you put a bed back in there, you could rent it out to students. Since the university is right nearby, they're always coming and asking me if there are any rooms to rent around here . . . You could supplement your income, until you find a new job, which I'm sure won't be long, in any case.”

As she stepped into her bath, quite moved, Aimée felt obliged to thank God, in whom she did not believe, for having sent a solution to her problem.

 

For the next ten years, she rented her guest room to young women studying at the neighboring university. This additional income, added to the bare minimum she got from the state, was enough for her to get by while she waited for retirement. Given the fact that housing tenants had become her true profession, she would only select them after careful review, and could easily have composed the six commandments of the wise landlady:

1. Demand one month's rent in advance, and have all the exact contact information for the parents.

2. Up to the very last day, behave toward the tenant the way a hostess would behave toward a gatecrasher at her party.

3. Prefer older sisters to younger ones: they are invariably more docile.

4. Prefer petit-bourgeois girls to rich ones: they are generally cleaner and less insolent.

5. Never let them talk to you about their private life, for if you do they'll end up bringing boys over.

6. Prefer Asian girls to European ones: they are more polite, more discreet, might show some gratitude, and they even bring you presents.

Although Aimée never became attached to any of her tenants, she did appreciate not living alone. A few words exchanged each day were enough, and she loved to make these silly young geese aware that she had more experience than they did.

Life might have continued along like this for a long time if the doctor had not detected some suspicious growths: cancer had spread throughout Aimée's body. This news—which she intuited more than she received—made her feel as if a burden had been lifted: no more struggle to survive. Her only dilemma: did she still need to rent the room that winter?

It was October, and she had just taken on, for the second year in a row, a young Japanese girl, Kumiko, who was finishing her degree in chemistry.

She confided in the discreet student:

“Here's the thing, Kumiko: I have a very serious illness which will mean that I'll have to spend a lot of time in the hospital. I don't think I'll be able to go on lodging you.”

The young girl's sorrow was such a surprise that initially she misunderstood the cause, attributing the young foreigner's tears to the fear she must have of being left out in the street; but Aimée did eventually concede that Kumiko was truly sorry to see what was happening to her landlady.

“I help you. I come see you in hospital. I can cook good food. Take care of you. Maybe I go take room in dormitory, still I find time for you.”

Poor girl, thought Aimée, at her age I was just as kind and naïve. When she'll have been through as much as I have, she'll sing a different tune.

Both burdened and disarmed by the girl's displays of affection, Aimée did not have the heart to send Kumiko away, so she continued to rent the room to her.

It was not long before Aimée was admitted into the hospital on a permanent basis.

Kumiko came to visit her every evening. Her only visitor.

Aimée was not used to receiving so much care and attention; there were days when she appreciated Kumiko's smile, like a balm enabling her to believe that humanity was not so rotten after all; there were other days when, as soon as she saw the Japanese girl's kindly face, she rebelled against this intrusion into her dying days. Could she not be left to die in peace? Kumiko ascribed Aimée's moods to the progression of the disease; so, despite the rebuffs, despite the insults and bursts of anger, she forgave the bedridden woman and remained steadfast in her compassion.

One evening the Japanese girl committed an error that she was not aware of, and which altered Aimée's entire behavior. The doctor had confessed to his patient that the new treatment was disappointing. Translation? You haven't got much longer. Aimée did not bat an eyelash. She felt a sort of cowardly relief, of the kind an armistice might offer. No more need to fight. No more exhausting therapy on the horizon. The torture of hope—and its attendant disquiet—would finally be removed. All that was left was to die. So it was with a sort of serenity that Aimée informed Kumiko that the new therapy had failed. But the Japanese girl reacted with passion. Tears. Cries. Hugs. Screams. Calm. Tears again. When finally she was able to speak, Kumiko grabbed her cell phone and called three people in Japan; half an hour later she announced triumphantly to Aimée that if she were to go there, to Kumiko's island, she would be able to obtain a treatment that was not yet available in France.

Lifeless, exhausted after submitting to Kumiko's demonstration of affection, Aimée waited for the young woman to leave. How dare this youngster spoil her death! How dare she torment her further with talk of cures?

Aimée decided to seek revenge.

The next day, when Kumiko showed her face at the hospital, Aimée spread her arms and called her over.

“My little Kumiko, come and give me a hug.”

After a few sobs and just as many tender hugs, Aimée poured forth—her tone pathetic and punctuated with sighs—a long declaration of love, according to which Kumiko had become a daughter to her, in her eyes, yes, the daughter she had never had and that she had always dreamt of having, the daughter who was by her side in her final hours and who made her feel that she was not alone in the world.

“Oh my friend, my dear young friend, my great friend, my only friend . . .”

She so excelled at varying the motif that she ended up feeling moved herself, pretending less and expressing herself more.

“You are such a good girl, Kumiko, good in the way I was at your age, when I was twenty, when I believed in human honesty, in love, in friendship. You are as naïve as I was, my poor Kumiko, and no doubt some day you will be as disappointed as I have been. I feel sorry for you, my dear, you know. But what does it matter? Hold fast, stay as you are for as long as possible. There will be time enough for disappointment and betrayal.”

Suddenly she took hold of herself and remembered her plan. Revenge. So she continued, “To reward you, and enable you to believe in human goodness, I have a present for you.”