The Other Story (26 page)

The first time Nicolas read the screenplay, he was put off. It dawned on him that he had to read while envisioning the scenes and the acting in his head. Once he got over that first unsettling sensation, he understood what Toby Bramfield was doing, how he had made a movie out of his book. But the real shock came later, when Nicolas went to the set for the first time in Paris, during the rue Daguerre scenes, shot in a studio and in the street itself. He was warmly welcomed; everyone had read the novel and had loved it. He sat behind the director, awed by the intricacy of the electrical rigging, the lighting installations, the complexity of the sound engineering, the minute details of decor, costumes, makeup, the fact that each and every person on the set had his or her precise and important part to play in making the movie possible. When Nicolas saw Robin Wright emerge from the changing rooms, her hair dyed silver, exactly like Margaux Dansor’s, wearing blue tennis shoes, a blue shirt, and white jeans, his jaw dropped. Here was his heroine, his Margaux, the disco-loving piano teacher come to life. He was so moved, he could hardly speak, and only managed to shake her hand. Toby Bramfield let him play a cameo part in the Pôle de la nationalité scene, also shot in a studio. There had been over fifty extras, a mix of people who looked like all those he had crossed paths with that day in October 2006, during his long wait. He was placed next to Robin Wright as she sat staring at her father’s birth certificate, hypnotized by a name she had never seen, Lucca Zeccherio, instead of Luc Zech. He had been bowled over at how actors could take another person’s inner turmoil and transform it into their own. They were like sponges, sucking in emotions. When he said this to Robin Wright between two takes, she laughed. “If we actors are sponges, then what are you writers? Even bigger sponges. Don’t forget we are all here today because of you, Nicolas Kolt. Because of what you wrote.” He had treasured those words. He still did.

Nicolas saw the movie for the first time in 2010, just before it was released, in a private screening room in New York. Alice was with him, as well as his American publisher, Carla Marsh. Toby Bramfield was to join them at the end of the viewing. For the first few moments, Nicolas could not respond to the film, as if a door had been slammed in his face. Had he been foolish to trust Toby Bramfield? Then the movie began to spin its magic, and Nicolas forgot about his book. He saw only Toby’s vision of
The Envelope,
and he saw it was one he could relate to. He loved the score, composed by a young Austrian musician who had managed to create a haunting theme that perfectly evoked Margaux and her contrasts, with piano solos that wrung his heart. He laughed during the witty dialogues with Margaux’s teenage daughters, Rose and Angèle, played by two young excellent actresses. He gripped the edge of his seat during the ugly confrontations between Margaux and Sébastian, her younger brother. He was moved by the perfection of the performances of Robin Wright and the actor who played her husband, Arnaud. What he loved above all was watching Robin Wright dance to disco music, alone in her kitchen, then in the nightclub scene in Genova, with Silvio, her Italian ally. The film rang true; it flowed. There was nothing contrived or fake about it. Nicolas felt tears well up during the flashbacks to Lucca Zeccherio’s past, his charisma, his flamboyance, his tragic death, the body that was never found, carried away forever by an avalanche in the Swiss Alps. From the parts filmed at Camogli till the very end, when Margaux discovers her father’s secret and wonders how to tame it so it will not destroy her own life, Nicolas cried gently, embarrassed to be doing so while seated between Carla and Alice, until he realized they were weeping as well, blowing their noses, wiping away tears. When the lights came up, they hugged one another, red-eyed and wordless, and that was how Toby Bramfield discovered them when he walked in. He flung his bony hands skyward and shouted, “Hallelujah! They’re crying! They’re crying!” Later, after the movie was released, Nicolas saw an interview with Toby Bramfield on TV. He was saying, “The book and the movie have the same DNA; I like to think of them as sisters.” Nicolas also cherished that sentence. And he began to think about the intimate DNA of the book, of how he had fathered it. And how he had decided to put aside a pivotal scene about what he had experienced in October 2006, just after he had rummaged through the navy blue box in his mother’s desk. That scene, which happened in the geriatric hospital with Lionel Duhamel, had been a turning point not only in his life but also in his imagination. He now saw, with the distance offered to him with the passing of time, that the scene had been part of the writing process, that it had been at the core of the novel, and he knew now how much he owed that scene, however horrific it had been to endure. The shock of it had forced a dark new path into the recesses of his mind. A bright light was shining down that path, heading where, he did not know, but he knew he had to take that path, had to write about that path, but not about the light that had revealed the path to him. He would never talk about that scene to a journalist, to another writer, not even to anyone close to him. He was to keep it to himself. He felt that, like a photographer framing a picture, instinctively understanding what to include in that picture and what to keep out, he was aware, as a writer, of what he wanted to show in his book, and what was to be kept hidden forever.

Lionel Duhamel passed away in 2007, at seventy-seven years old. He did not witness his grandson triumphantly metamorphosing from Nicolas Duhamel to Nicolas Kolt. He had been hospitalized in 2004, when it became evident to his daughter, Elvire, that he could not longer reside in the boulevard Saint-Germain apartment, where he had been living alone since his wife Nina’s death in 2000. His mind was slipping. He left the gas on, could not remember his name, and could not find his way home. He became aggressive with his family, his neighbors, with the young nurses who came to care for him daily. The doctors diagnosed Alzheimer’s. He had not wanted to leave his apartment, but he had not been given a choice. The hospital was situated near the rue de Vaugirard, not very far from the rue Pernety. Nicolas had not been to visit his grandfather for a long while. This had become an ordeal. Most of the times, Lionel was medicated, sedated, and bland, and the visit went well. But the atmosphere of the hospital, its stench, the vision of the demented elderly patients who were confined there, was always unbearable.

On that October evening in 2006, which was to alter many aspects of his life, Nicolas bought a bunch of flowers near the metro station on the rue Raymond Losserand and walked to the hospital. It was growing dark and the air was heavy with a bitter humidity. It was rush hour and cars slowly drove along the streets, sending noxious fumes into the air. The hospital was glaringly lit up and overheated. Nicolas took off his coat as he came through the door. Lionel Duhamel lived on the last floor, the closed one, the one for the crazy old people. Most of the patients wore magnetic bracelets on their wrists. If they wandered beyond the entrance, a blaring alarm would go off. Nicolas always kept his eyes down when he entered the ward. He could not get used to what he was confronted with each time he came: the rows of wheelchairs, the wizened, wrinkled faces, the distorted smiles, the lolling of tired heads. Some patients sat there half-asleep, drool running from dry, cracked lips. Some stood up, resting on canes or walkers, staring into nothingness, twitching, scratching. Others shuffled by with zombielike gaits, nursing an arm, one shoulder higher than the other, one foot dragging behind, cackling, moaning, or singing. He sometimes heard screeches and howls from a far-off room and the calming, pacifying tones of a doctor or a nurse. The most terrifying patients were the ones who looked normal, sitting in front of a game of chess or solitaire, groomed and presentable, no stains on their clothes, no trembling hands, no sign of dementia. They spoke well; their speech was not slurred. They resembled any well-to-do grandparents, happy to be visited. They ogled him as he walked by, and he had learned not to look back at them, because if he did, their madness lashed out at him through their glittery eyes, blazing after him like a trail of fire. He had learned to keep away from them. Once, a respectable-looking granny had grabbed him by the crotch, silently and savagely, with a salacious smirk, flaunting a yellowed-tip tongue at him.

The nurses attended to them all with a patience he found heroic. They were insulted, ignored, jeered at, hit, all day long. How could they do this job? Looking after old people was not much fun, he imagined, but demented old people surely made it even worse. When Nicolas arrived that evening, the dinner had been served and was being cleared away. The air was stuffy and fetid, a lifeless mixture of dreary hospital food, probably cabbage, and the ammonia-tinted whiff of detergent, no fresh air, just the reek of old age and neglect, of forlorn old skins that had the aspect of dried-up parchments stitched with stringy white hair. The wheelchairs had been placed in front of the strident TV. Half of the patients in front of it were asleep. Why was dinner served so early in hospitals? Didn’t it make the night even longer, even more unbearable? Did these people know that when they left this place, it would be in a coffin?

Lionel Duhamel, wearing a bathrobe, was sitting in an armchair near his bed, staring down at his feet. He did not move when Nicolas entered. Nicolas had already seen him in this state. He sat down on the edge of the narrow bed and waited for the old man to acknowledge his presence. Lionel Duhamel had never liked mingling with the “old fools,” as he called them. He had his meals in his room, and he watched his own television. The room isn’t too bad, thought Nicolas. But it still seemed bare, despite his grandfather’s having lived here for the past couple of years. Pale lime walls, a pack of cards, a comb, and some magazines. And to think his grandfather had lived in a large apartment full of books, paintings, ornate furniture, a grand piano, majestic tapestries, exotic carpets. What had happened to all those things, wondered Nicolas as Lionel at last looked his way with watery oyster-colored eyes that blinked at him a few times.

“Théodore,” said Lionel Duhamel. “How nice to see you.”

Nicolas was used to this, as well. But the first time had been a shock.

“Hello,” he replied, smiling back. “Some flowers for you.”

Lionel Duhamel gazed at the flowers blankly as if he had no idea what they were. Nicolas unwrapped them, threw the paper in the wastebasket, and went to fetch a tall plastic vase he knew was in the bathroom, as this was not the first time he’d brought flowers. Elvire had suggested laying off chocolate, as the old man had a tendency to wolf them down in one go, and spend the next day suffering from diarrhea. Nicolas arranged the flowers and took them back to the room, where the old man was still sitting, motionless.

“They look nice, don’t they?” Nicolas asked.

“Yes, they do,” said Lionel Duhamel. “Thank you, Théodore. Very kind of you. How are you doing at school?”

“Very well,” said Nicolas.

“I’m glad to hear it. Your mother will be pleased. And what about that geography lesson?”

“I know it by heart.”

“Excellent. Well, I must be getting ready. The baron is coming for dinner.”

“Wonderful news,” said Nicolas. He found these conversations surrealistic, no matter how many times he’d had them.

“But it is so much work when the baron comes.” Lionel Duhamel sighed. “I have to polish all the silver and get the crystal glasses out, and the tablecloth with his crest on it. The baron wants salmon and crab. So much to be done.”

“Is that what he usually has?” asked Nicolas.

“No! Of course not! I already told you! Before the elevator got stuck! Remember?”

“Yes, of course,” said Nicolas. “I’m sorry, I forgot.”

The old man was agitated now, his eyebrows meeting in a vee over his nose. He started to complain in a high-pitched whine that grated on Nicolas’s ears.

“They came this morning, Théodore, again. No one saw them, only me. People are so stupid here. They steal things. As if I can’t see them. They have no idea. Goons! Complete idiots! Fools! They don’t know that the enemies spread a poisonous paste all over the windowpanes, so that if you touch it, you die. I tried to wash it off, and the stupid nurse got angry. Moronic fat cow!”

Nicolas thought of the birth certificate in his pocket. He looked across at the grumbling old man, observed his shiny bald head, his plump, flabby pink face. For twenty-four years, he had considered this man his grandfather. His blood, his flesh. “Papi,” as he called him. Weekends with Papi, going to the theater and the Louvre with Papi, visiting Montmartre with Papi, and Versailles, as well. Learning about the Sun King with Papi. Papi knew so much. He knew all the right dates and where all the important battles had been fought and who had won them, and if a king had been a Capet or a Bourbon. It turned out that Papi was not his grandfather. Papi was not his flesh, not his blood. Papi had raised a fatherless boy and had given him his name, Duhamel. Papi knew all about Fiodor Koltchine. He was the only person in the world who could tell Nicolas anything about Fiodor Koltchine.

Nicolas had not come unprepared. He reached for his wallet, took out the photo of Zinaïda and Fiodor dated 1961, the one from the navy blue box in his mother’s desk, and handed it to the old man. The doctors had never said not to talk about the past. They had never warned him or Elvire that it could be a bad idea. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. He was only hoping for an answer, hoping that somewhere in that tired, old, confused brain, a light might switch on, a spark might fly.

The minutes ticked by, and the old man said nothing, staring down at the photograph. A faint shout was heard from down the corridor, along with the metallic voices from the TV. The rubber wheels of a chair squealed past. A door slammed.

Nicolas wondered whether he should speak. The old man seemed stricken. The photograph in his fingers trembled.

“She never wanted you to know,” said Lionel Duhamel at last, very clearly. “She didn’t want anybody to know.”