Mia was feeling the same erosion, and protected herself in the same way. Used to sending everyone packing, she was making an unprecedented effort to silence all the things she wanted to throw in Philippe’s face.
“(Why are you so hostile the minute I get back after working ten hours in the blazing sun?) And how was your day?”
“Same as yesterday, nothing special.”
“Why don’t you go for a tour of the island? You might find some locals to communicate with. (And you could go into raptures about how rich their culture is, the ancestral rites that they’ve managed to preserve amidst all this Western decadence—of which, in your opinion, I am an icon.)”
“I’m afraid, my dear, that the locals, as you call them, might all be trilingual and very well-informed as to the exchange rates. (Which would fit better with your vision of the world: a playing field, inhabited by individuals of every race, all born to serve you.)”
“Try at least not to go back to Paris as white as when you got here. I’ve completely burned up my sun capital but you should take advantage of it.”
“(‘Sun capital’ rhymes with ‘dumb commercial.’) I’m glad to know I’m in charge of so much capital, my dear.”
After the customary pleasantries, they dressed for dinner at the hotel restaurant, where they were the center of attention when they came in. Mia signed autographs, responded to greetings, and above all got a dose of her companion’s irritation with each consecutive interruption. Then there was a call from her agency, who had to make the most of the time slot between work and sleep to keep her up to date on her pending assignments. Philippe listened to every word, stunned by how unyielding she was the moment the subject was money.
“What festival? Haven’t a clue. For less than €150,000 I won’t move an eyelash.”
For such an amount, how could she be so hardened, when she didn’t even know what a euro note looked like, when she never paid a single bill or fee or restaurant check, and let her assistant to take care of the tip? Mia went around the world without a penny in her pocket, and all she had to do was point at whatever she wanted to have it served up on the spot and on a platter. Her astronomical earnings piled up and the debit column never varied. How could a young woman gauge so precisely what her appearances were worth when she didn’t even know what money was worth? Philippe, with his renowned, scathing pen, was forever struggling with the spiny issue of fees and royalties, and he accepted the basic rate without daring to negotiate. More often than not, people waited for him to complain before they paid him, and sometimes they were surprised when he did complain.
“If it’s cocktail and dinner, it’ll be €25,000 extra, nonnegociable.”
On the way back to the villa, he indulged in a cruel calculation: in order to earn the equivalent of what his girlfriend was paid to show her pretty face at some run-of-the-mill opening, Philippe would have had to write five hundred pages of something like Metaphysics of the Unthought, and it would take him several years of his life.
As soon as they were back in the villa, Mia immersed herself in the New Yorker that had arrived that very morning. Philippe was surprised by her sudden interest in a magazine which he knew to be intellectually rigorous, rather than one of those rags where she might come across a defamatory article requiring an immediate lawsuit. Perhaps he was being a bit too rigid, always wanting to file her in the bottom drawer without giving her a chance to surprise him. Perhaps she had begun to question choices she herself found frivolous. Ever since that famous picture taken on the terrace at the Crillon where she was holding his arm, Mia’s image in the media and in her entourage had been changing. Not a single interview or gossip column did not mention her relationship with the thinker-writer-philosopher. Nowadays, she was questioned more often about her reading habits than her measurements, invited to cultural events, and asked to model for designers who qualified as postmodern. The height of recognition: a few of her colleagues were actually jealous, unable as they were to shake off the usual athletes or rock stars. To see Mia concentrated like that on the pages of a magazine that had virtually no illustrations might suggest that her new status as a beautiful girl who also has something in her head meant she really had attained a certain awareness, and that it was not just some sort of perfectly conceived marketing strategy.
“In your opinion, Philippe, if men were a handicap, which would it be? Deaf, blind, or mute?”
He looked at her questioningly.
“I can’t decide between deaf and mute.”
“What are you reading exactly?”
“The New Yorker. My subscription follows me wherever I go. I don’t understand a thing in the articles but there’s the test by Matthew Sharp.”
“The what?”
“The guy’s a genius. He designs these tests you take blind. You never know what you’re being tested on, so that keeps you from trying to skew your answers.”
Philippe didn’t get it.
“So, spontaneously, do you associate ‘cliff’ with a) vertigo, b) rappelling, c) murder? You have to wait until the following week to find out the results of the test and what you were being tested on. It could be something like ‘Are you a new reactionary?’ or even ‘Client or prostitute?’”
Philippe was silent.
“Don’t tell me Philippe Saint-Jean has never heard of Matthew Sharp’s tests!”
“I have.”
“So try it: if men were a handicap?”
“How are you supposed to react to such a terrible question? (You frightened me, honey, for a moment there I thought you were interested in something besides a citrus-fruit diet.)”
“You don’t want to answer because: a) you’re a man, b) you think the question is ridiculous, c) you haven’t a clue.”
“The question in and of itself obliges whoever answers to flounder in generalities. In addition to which, I don’t believe in characteristics being specific to one gender or another, it’s nothing but a cesspool of clichés that serve to fuel ordinary misogyny and foster hostility in couples. But if I had to play along, I would say that men are accused above all of being mute, because men do not know how, or do not want, to express their feelings. Either because they’re repressing them, or because they’re afraid of seeming less virile. But it is also common knowledge that men are deaf to women’s grievances. Either because they’re too self-absorbed, or in order to avoid assuming responsibilities. Which leads to another cliché: God, what cowards men are. But let’s not forget blindness for all that. Men don’t see a thing, it’s a well-known fact. A woman will immediately spot the trace of another woman on her husband. A man, never. A woman knows at first glance whether a guy is depressed or in love, whether another woman is pregnant or jealous; a man, no. She’ll often say, ‘You never notice a thing . . . ’ So, to sum up, if men were a handicap, they’d be all three at once. Fortunately, women are there to restore the balance. Women listen to others, sometimes to a point of complacency. Women observe, sometimes to the verge of indiscretion. Women express themselves, sometimes to the limit of chattering. Have you had your fill of received ideas or do you want some more?”
Disappointed by Maud’s betrayal, Yves Lehaleur was annoyed with himself for having believed they were ever close, just as he was annoyed with her for causing him to suspect the other girls as well. But in all likelihood, he was being naïve to imagine that trust was included in the price of a trick, and vain even to have assumed he’d created a special bond with any of the girls. Tormented by a sleepless night, of the kind he had not known since he broke up with Pauline, at 5:05 in the morning he was trying one last time to fall asleep when the doorbell rang.
What he saw through the spyhole caused him to recoil, a nightmarish vision. In the semi-darkness of the landing he saw a mask of swollen skin, disheveled hair, bloodshot eyes, a shivering body.
“ . . . Agnieszka?”
Her only answer was to rush int
o his arms and burst into tears. He led her over to the sofa, where she collapsed, her hand in the small of her back to stave off the pain. Through the torn stocking on her right leg bluish bruises appeared; the belt had been ripped from her dress, and drops of blood fell from her nose onto her cashmere cardigan.
“ . . . I’ll call an ambulance.”
“Co?”
“Hospital . . . ” he said, in English.
“No! No hospital! No doctor! Przyz.eknij mi, z.e nie sprowadzisz lekarza! Oni robia˛ zeznania na policji!”
“You can’t stay like this.”
“Boli mnie! Masz jakie´s ´srodki przeciwbólowe? Painkillers?”
“It hurts?” Yves was not sure he understood the word in English.
“Byle co, co tam masz . . . daj nawet wódke˛ jak nie masz nic innego . . . ”
Yves thought he heard the word vodka without being sure, then in his medicine cabinet he found a handful of capsules that she swallowed all in one go. With his fingertips, he lightly touched the injuries on her face, her back, her thighs. Others would probably surface.
“You need to have X-rays.”
“Próbował mnie zgwałci´c i jako, z.e nie dawał rady, to pobił mnie po twarzy.”
Yves picked up the phone and dialed the number of the doctor on call, but Agnieszka found the strength to tug the phone from his hands: Nie lekarza, mówie˛ ci, nikogo! Be˛dzie dobrze, odpoczne˛ troche˛ a jutro zmywam sie˛. When it was obvious he would not get his way, Yves tried to administer first aid himself, and before acting the nurse he was the one who needed a big swallow of vodka. While he was wiping her injuries with disinfectant, he listened as she murmured the story of her attack, as if to chase it from her memory. Facet o dobrych manierach, starannie ubrany . . . Wyja˛ł z walizeczki jakie´s przybory . . . Since he did not understand, Yves had to imagine a scene straight from a secret drawer in his unconscious, where some perverse script was still lying around and which basically was something of a collective fantasy. He imagined a sadistic monster avenging his own failings on the pretty blonde whore. It was not enough to subjugate a body with money, he had to kick her and make her bow down. Nie przyełam pienie˛dzy na robienie jego ´swi´nstw . . . Insulting her, mistreating her had not calmed him down, either; he had to distort her fine features with his fist, abolish her smile forever, break her lovely figure, mark her with fear. Ugryzłam go w re˛ke˛ az. do krwi. He had wanted to get his own back, on all women, all at once, from the very first one on.
She looked at him, begging him for a spot on the bed. Yves put his arms around her and kept watch over her, with a hand on her brow, until she fell asleep. Agnieszka’s ravaged face was the true face of prostitution, the one he had preferred never to see head on, whenever he brought home a woman who was selling herself: the makeup hiding the wounds. He had tried in vain to keep his door closed against the sordid side of things, but it lay crouching in the dark, fully determined to sneak in, and tonight it had. Once the sun rose, Agnieszka would recover from her ordeal, ready to head back to the front like a good little soldier. Once again, Yves was astonished by the endurance of these girls, their ability to overcome the most barbarian reality.
Until that time, it was not the disquieting Agnieszka he would hold in his arms but a lost, abused little girl, and that image would no doubt prevent him from ever seeing her again.
Had Denis ever truly loved before?
The simple fact of having to scrounge in his memories gave him the answer.
When he was a little boy, there had been that curious feeling he discovered when a little pigtailed thing came up to him; only the day before he’d been tormenting her. His lifelong enemy had triumphed, and made a gallant knight of her defeated opponent. That was love.
No, that wasn’t love, since love was Béatrice Rosati, in middle school. Her and no one else. How do you prove it? You hold her hand in public, you want the wider world to know. All weekend long, life keeps them apart. Sunday afternoon is torture, Monday morning a deliverance. That was love.
In fact, he would fall in love for good in the bed of that beautiful stranger whose name he had forgotten, at the campsite in Royan, the summer of his final exams. All in one night, an intense, Biblical bonding, that was love.
Or was it? No, love would come a few years later, when he moved in with Véro. Ikea, joint accounts, talk of marriage. Sharing, future, that was love.
Three years later, free again. Denis had decided to favor women over love. If love really did exist, if it was as powerful as everyone claimed, let it prevail.
Now that he was well past forty, love finally had prevailed, so violently, so late, that Denis found himself foundering, engulfed by passion. He decreed that everything was sublime; he swooned over the most trivial things; he celebrated his partner relentlessly. And in spite of Marie-Jeanne’s wish to remain among the rank and file of ordinary humans, to him she was a fairy, an angel, a goddess. When from time to time he managed enough distance to accept the part played by the divine in every love story, his own still remained exceptional, and he had the proof: a stranger had knocked on his door to save him from misfortune. How many people could say as much?
“Denis, I have something to tell you.”
“You can tell me everything.”
“I’m going to be leaving soon.”
For several days now, the storm had been brewing, and that evening Philippe could do nothing to stop the deluge. In the realm of domestic spats, he still had everything to learn, as his former companion had always spared him in that respect. Juliette had a talent for never falling into the trap of moodiness, for never doubting what really mattered, just because of some gaffe or misplaced word, nor did she try to assert herself no matter the cost or the situation. She accepted that she was fallible, and preferred to learn a lesson rather than content herself with being right. Philippe translated all these virtues into one word: Juliette was an adult. For him, this was the supreme homage: he knew so few real adults, even among his eminent colleagues. Young Mia had a good heart, in many lovely ways, but was she not still tilting at windmills? How many more revolutions did she have to fight? Philippe would not wait.
“Tell me the truth. Do you think I am: a) superficial, b) a spoiled brat, c) a complete idiot?”
“None of the above. Let us say that the god glamour is your only religion.”
“You see me as a fashion victim, because you think you can give me more than all those guys who are only interested in my looks. And do you think I don’t realize because all I care about is my looks?”
“At the moment you are doing what is called secondary rationalization.”
“(You love playing professor.) What is that?”
“It’s when you reformulate an event, or an irrefutable fact, to make it acceptable in your eyes or in someone else’s eyes. (You are the Monsieur Jourdain of secondary rationalization, you do it all the time without even realizing.)”
“In sum: I’m an empty shell, and that means I’m incapable of saying what I think.”
“You are completely entitled to say what you think, but from time to time, try to think things through before you think.”
Mia could not possibly win at this game. She had to strike a blow now, so hard it hurt, below the waist if need be.
“To claim that I’m interested in nothing but appearances, that’s a bit rich coming from Monsieur Philippe Grosjean.”
For a moment he acted surprised. But he was not a good actor.
“That’s your name, isn’t it?”
He looked at her, speechless.
“Don’t waste your time, I found out when we were going through customs and you asked me to get your passport out from the bottom of your bag. Philippe Grosjean aka Philippe Saint-Jean, plain for all to see.”
He did not know what to say.
“Grosjean doesn’t sound much like a philosopher, now, does it
? Grosjean doesn’t sell as well as Saint-Jean? Doesn’t get your little sociology students fantasizing over their professor as they write their dissertations about you?”
From the day the administration had allowed him to change his name, his secret had been kept for seventeen years. Grosjean aka Saint-Jean. His parents had absolved him, although not without a certain bitterness. But how could anyone have taken him seriously—a dissertation on collective memory by an author with a name like Philippe Grosjean? Ever since, he had had to live with the remorse of having forsaken his real name, of having rid himself of a name with provincial echoes, and of having adopted pseudo-aristocratic airs, all as if he were ashamed of his humble origins. What wouldn’t he have done, now, to put that youthful error right?
Unable to justify himself, he left the room without looking at Mia and sought refuge under the mysterious canopy, the use of which he might have just discovered: a space where he could be left the hell alone.
As a rule, Philippe knew how to stave off reminiscences of his former life, but this evening he’d been driven to the brink by a birdbrain who reproached him for having betrayed his own self, and he could not help but remember the little Grosjean he once was, in a public school in the outskirts of Paris; how he questioned everything. Nothing back then set him apart from any of the other boys, other than the unvoiced intuition that throughout his life it would be as hard for him to obey orders as it would be to give them. And that, already, his spiritual imaginings would provide a far better refuge than any tree house could.