He has not made up his mind about what his attitude should be. Surely she is aware he will put up a fight. He will not capitulate, at least not immediately. He wants to be seduced. He expects the usual song and dance, yet he hopes Dagmar Hunoldt will indulge in her best party piece just for him. He yearns for a dazzling literary courtship. As he stares covertly at the thick wrist, he is aware of being yet another asset, yet another gamble, yet another ploy. He knows she has done this many a time, turning writers into instruments, shaping them to her needs. He thinks fleetingly of Les Liaisons dangereuses. Will she play Merteuil to his Valmont? He has heard rumors about the inimitable parties in her apartment on Gramercy Park (although apparently last year, she moved to the Upper East Side), where she invited her authors, expertly mingling them with models, artists, heirs, geeks, opera singers, polo players, actors, or good-looking nobodies she met on the subway. He recalled other rumors about business meetings in her legendary white office on the top floor of the Flatiron Building, where she was photographed for Vogue and where, overlooking the breathtaking view on Broadway and Fifth, she would swoop in for the kill.
Their empty glasses are collected. Dagmar Hunoldt leans back in her chair, dabbing sunblock on her chiseled face, neck, and décolletage. From close-up, her white skin is flawless, almost wrinkle-free. Has she had a little nip and tuck? She does not talk to him, but he does not feel rejected. They are joined in a bubble of companionable silence. He prays that Malvina will not come down now and ruin this moment. Hopefully, Malvina, if she does appear, will remain her usual silent self.
Dagmar Hunoldt throws a couple of words to the horizon, to the boats, to the sea. Not to him.
“Mercury Retrograde.”
Nicolas strains his ears. Did she say: Mercury Retrograde? (The hashtag #WTF, short for “What the fuck?” flashes in front of his eyes, but he is not on Twitter. This is real life, not Twitter.) If he says anything, whatever he says will sound stupid. So he says nothing. But perhaps nothing sounds just as stupid?
“Mercury Retrograde,” repeats Dagmar Hunoldt, dreamily, staring out to the sky and the water, not bothered by the fact that he has not uttered a sound. “We have nothing to fear till August, but one must be wary.”
Nicolas frantically pieces all this together in his mind. He feels like a dull-witted contestant on a TV show. The slow one who has not yet pressed the buzzer. How cruel she is to play with him thus, to inflict incomprehensible charades on him.
She turns to look at him. “Are you familiar with astrology?” she asks.
“No,” he says truthfully.
“Three times a year, for about three weeks, the planet Mercury turns backward, meaning it’s in retrograde. For those three weeks, everything comes to a standstill.”
Nicolas nods, not quite knowing what is expected of him. Astrology is not his subject. It is his friend Lara’s hobby. Lara would know exactly what Mercury Retrograde is all about. She was the kind of person who’d exclaim over lunch, “Oh no, he’s a Scorpio. I knew it. Well, that’s it, then. Forget it.” Nicolas was amused at how much of Lara’s life was regimented by Zodiac signs. He teased her mercilessly about it. “So, what do the stars have in store for you today?” he’d text. “Are you allowed to have a drink with an Aries at six?”
“What do you mean by standstill?” Nicolas asks carefully.
Dagmar Hunoldt spreads more sunblock on her nose.
“Well, that this is not the moment to clinch an important deal, to sign a contract, to buy a house, for example,” she says. “You see, for those three weeks, delays occur. Problems arise. Mercury is the planet of communications. Letters are delivered, but late. E-mails are lost. Messages are not listened to. This year, 2011, Mercury Retrograde starts on August the second. I have important decisions to make at that point.”
“I am more familiar with Hermes than Mercury,” admits Nicolas, his old khâgne reflexes kicking in. He wonders what she means by contracts. Editorial ones, surely. Is this the first of a coded message of some sort?
“He of the winged ankles and upright index?” Dagmar Hunoldt smiles.
“The very one. The messenger of the gods. His Roman equivalent is Mercury.”
“The thieving son of Zeus, I believe?”
“Precisely. His exact title is god of commerce, thieves, travelers, sports, and athletes. He also guided the souls of the dead down to the underworld.”
“You seem to know him well.”
Nicolas thinks of the tedious tutorials he gave to dissipated students who wanted more than anything to be as far away as possible from Latin, Greek, and philosophy. He remembers the long hours poring over books and exam copies, faced with bored teenagers pining for their smartphones or the quick puff of a cigarette.
“Hermes and I have crossed paths,” he says.
He expects her to ask how, to ask why, and he is already wondering how to make his answer sound more alluring, but instead, Dagmar Hunoldt brushes his arm with a careless finger and whispers, “What about another swim, Hermes?”
She is up on her feet, already fastening cap and goggles. Before he can think of a sagacious response to her invitation, she dives swiftly into the water, swimming away with a neat crawl stroke.
Nicolas stands there, arms akimbo. He senses Malvina’s sudden catlike presence at his side.
“What’s the matter?” she asks.
He watches the flowery cap bob up and down, growing smaller by the second.
“Is that Dagmar?” she murmurs.
He nods.
“What did she say?” asks Malvina.
Nicolas sighs and scratches the top of his head. “She is pretending not to know who I am.”
THERE WAS ONE QUESTION, it seemed to Nicolas, that journalists invariably asked whether they wrote for a prestigious magazine or an unknown blog, whether they had a TV program or a radio show, whatever their nationality. In the beginning, it amused him. At the present stage, it infuriated him. Had they not visited his Web site, where press clippings in different languages were posted for all to see? Had they not clicked on the FAQ section, where all the most obvious questions and answers were listed?
“How did you get the idea for this book?” There was no escaping this precise question. It was as inevitable as the passing of time, as the sun rising and setting each day. He had now mastered two answers: a long version and a short one, depending on the degree of connectivity he felt with the journalist. He more often found himself rattling out the short version with the assurance of a blasé actor reciting lines he knew backward. A long version, however, and a particularly long-winded one, had been proffered to a lucky journalist in Paris, although Nicolas had not planned it. It had just happened.
One afternoon, in the plush crimson bar of the Hôtel Lutetia, on boulevard Raspail, Nicolas was to be interviewed for a famous French radio station by a journalist named Bertrand Chalais. This was during the final upward climb of the book, the exhilarating months just after the Oscar, in 2010, where the entire world seemed to want to know who the young man behind The Envelope was. Nicolas was not yet weary of the attention, of the interviews. Bertrand Chalais had lean, bronzed features he instantly liked, young still, but with premature gray hair, like Nicolas’s heroine, Margaux. He wore a Lip T18 watch, a Churchill Gold. They sat on an accommodating divan in a quiet area, as Chalais was to tape him. While Nicolas waited for the journalist, who was ten minutes late, he had observed the steady comings and goings of those who counted in the Parisian literary world: publicists with their authors, outlining book releases and launches, and publishers wooing yet more writers. It was an incestuous medley of familiar faces, one that Nicolas had become accustomed to. He was able to pinpoint most of the people sitting in the vast room, and he also knew, with a throb of pride, that he had been identified, too, and that there were murmurs and surreptitious glances sent his way.
Bertrand Chalais had explained that the recording would last over an hour and that he would edit it for his popular fifteen-minute talk
show about books and writers. The rest was to be podcast for an exclusive online interview. Chalais installed the small, sophisticated taping device and the interview began. When the ineluctable question was asked, Nicolas launched into his well-oiled monologue about the Pôle de la nationalité française and his father’s real name. There was something about Chalais’s eyes, the way he looked back at Nicolas with chestnut-colored irises behind rimless glasses. The gaze that held his was good-hearted, benign, but also amused, slightly curious, as if the answer truly mattered to him and he really did want to know how Nicolas had gotten the idea to write The Envelope, as if he were not the umpteenth journalist to pop the question. Nicolas’s answer slowly began to differ from the standard one. He found himself describing what had happened at the Père-Lachaise Cemetery, in 2003, and in 2006, just after the passport-renewal incident. As he spoke, he realized that he had never told a journalist, let alone a friend, or even a member of his family, about those episodes, either.
On August 7, 2003, exactly ten years after Théodore Duhamel had disappeared without a trace somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Guéthary, an inscription was added to the Duhamel family tomb in Division 92 at Père-Lachaise by Théo’s widow, Emma. There had been a gathering to celebrate this small but important affair, and Nicolas remembered the new gold letters of his father’s name, THEODORE DUHAMEL, carved in the slab of granite, as well as the dates of his father’s short life span, 1960–1993. He had not often been to that cemetery, apart from his grandmother Nina Duhamel’s funeral in 2000, and a later visit to show Jim Morrison’s tomb to an American exchange student.
Just after the family get-together with his grandfather Lionel, his mother, and his aunt Elvire, Nicolas had decided to stay on at the cemetery. It was a hot summer afternoon, and the vast, hilly graveyard seemed to be full of tourists. In a couple of days, Nicolas was to leave for Italy with François, after the recent failure of his khâgne. That afternoon, he wanted more than anything to spend time alone and no longer talk about it, or his future, which his mother kept harping about. What was he going to do now? she kept asking. He was only twenty-one. He could still enroll in another course; he had time. The more she went on, the more Nicolas closed up like a clam. How he missed his father in those moments. Théodore Duhamel would have encouraged his son to choose another path, whatever that path might be, and even if it wasn’t a conservative one, he would have patted him on the back and taken him to lunch in a crowded brasserie where the staff knew him and revered him.
Nicolas was relieved to see the others walk away at last. For an hour, he ambled, stopping at the graves of Edith Piaf, Modigliani, Jean de La Fontaine, and Colette. Oscar Wilde’s tomb, covered with lipstick, amused him. He went back to the Duhamel family burial plot, which had one of those narrow, towering chapels built above it, like a Gothic phone booth. Nicolas sat inside, in the shade, resting his cheek on the cool stone. On the tomb next door, a couple of funereal wreaths were wilting in the heat. For our papa read one of the wreaths. To my beloved son read another. Nicolas stepped out of the chapel to decipher the name on the tombstone. FAMILLE TARANNE. There were quite a few of them buried under there. He turned back to look at the Duhamel grave. Quite a few there as well, going back to his great-great-grandfather Emile, whom he had, of course, never known. They were all there, except for his father.
There at his feet were the remains of his Duhamel ancestors, but not of the man who had sired him. Never had he felt so far away, so alienated from Théodore Duhamel than on that August day at Père-Lachaise. He missed his father, and with such intensity that he nearly cried, a strange sadness stirring deep within him. He wanted to pierce the mystery of his father’s death, even if it proved hard to hear. As a teenager, he had asked his mother once, “What if Papa is still alive? What if he was hit on the head by his sail and fell into the sea, and then was saved by a stranger? And what if he lost his memory and can’t remember who he is?” Emma Duhamel had murmured soothing words about the impossibility of such a story. His father had drowned. It had been a terrible accident, a tragedy. His body had not been found, but he was dead. How could she be so sure? Nicolas wondered. Was it more comfortable believing he was dead and gone?
Girlish whispers and laughs were heard from behind a burial vault. Curiosity got the better of him. Nicolas stood up, trod softly to the front of Division 92, and hid behind a mausoleum. Three young women were gathered around the life-size bronzed statue of a reclining man. They were pretty, with long flowery dresses and wavy hair. The statue was realistic, as if the man had just fallen moments ago, struck by a blow or a bullet, his coat flung back under him, his top hat knocked to the ground, marooned near his gloved hand. One of the young women was straddling the statue in a sexually suggestive manner while the others tittered and cheered her on. Nicolas watched, fascinated. The first was an energetic Amazon hungrily riding her prey. The second was gentle and smooth, swiveling her hips in an erotic figure eight, which made Nicolas catch his breath. The third cupped the statue’s head in her hands, lying full length on it, offering her ample bosom to the bronze lips. The entire episode lasted several minutes, and Nicolas relished it. They ran off, still laughing.
Nicolas went to look at the statue. The man’s uplifted face, his eyes half-closed, depicted death perfectly. No doubt a violent one. Victor Noir. Born in 1848 and killed in 1870. Not even twenty-two when he died. Practically Nicolas’s age. Every detail was perfectly rendered, the lapels of the opened coat, the waistcoat, the shoes. While the entire statue was a coppery green, the area around the groin had been touched so many times, it was of a different color—a polished, glistening brown. There was a definite protuberance in Victor Noir’s tight-fitting trousers, and the first button of his fly was undone. Nicolas leaned over and touched the copper bump, smiling as he did so. When he got home, he looked up Victor Noir on the Internet and learned he’d been a young journalist who was shot by a Bonaparte. But Victor Noir became even more famous because of the statue on his tomb; women came from all over the world to rub his pelvis, for good luck, fertility, or the chance of catching a husband that year.
“You had never heard of Victor Noir’s grave?” asked Chalais, smiling. Nicolas said no, he hadn’t, and that it had been a pleasurable and interesting discovery. It was not till 2006, three years later, he told Chalais, that he returned to the cemetery, a couple of days after he got his new passport. In his hand, he held his father’s birth certificate. The weather was foul, a wretched, rainy October morning. Nicolas sat in the narrow chapel, shivering, his feet wet. Fiodor Koltchine. He kept having to pronounce it out loud. Koltchine. What now? What could he do in order to try to understand who his father was, where his father had come from?
The previous time Nicolas had been to Père-Lachaise, he told Chalais, he had wondered about how his father had died. But on that October day, it was his father’s birth that obsessed him. He sat there, forlorn, and felt the immense longing for his father come over him again. The fact that there was no burial place and no body made it worse. He thought of Delphine’s warm arms, of the comfort she would give him that night on the rue Pernety. He thought of his new passport, of the certificate proving he was now officially French. But who was Fiodor Koltchine? Who was his father’s father? What had his father known about all this? What had his father’s mother, Zinaïda Koltchine, told him?
When Nicolas left, he passed in front of Victor Noir’s tomb. The place was empty that day. The bad weather had put off hopeful ladies coming to stroke his private parts. Nicolas could feel the wetness creep under his collar, seep through his coat. He stood there, his father’s birth certificate sodden in his hand, gazing down at the statue. He felt completely alone. The sadness had gone, and in its place, another sensation was taking over. Rascar Capac’s haze seemed to diffuse itself slowly in front of his vision, interlacing delicate blue filaments with the curtain of rain falling on the copper statue. Nicolas felt the urge to write, as he had in the plane fourteen years ago, and the
yearning was powerful, enticing, and so unexpected that he no longer cared about the cold. Nicolas leaned over and touched the wet bump with feverish fingers. Then, in a daze, he took the long metro ride home. The first thing he did, he told Chalais, was to fetch the Hamilton Khaki watch. He always kept it by his bed. He then sat in the kitchen with a notebook and his father’s Montblanc. He made some tea. He stared down at the watch, sometimes pressing its smooth glassy surface to his lips. Then, when he felt ready, he cracked the Moleskine open, placing it flat on the rickety kitchen table.
Chalais knew he was onto raw material. The interview had gone on for well over an hour, but he suspected the young man had more to tell. They ordered white wine. While they drank, Chalais entertained Nicolas with the piquant account of a recent skiing holiday with his wife and children. Nicolas listened, grinning. Another journalist was sitting not far off from them, a sparrowlike woman with long black hair. Nicolas had crossed paths with her several times at book fairs and literary prizes ceremonies. Laurence Taillefer. She was notorious for her causticity. Her portraits of writers in a weekend newspaper were both feared and respected. Nicolas wondered whom she was waiting for. She was reading her notes and biting the end of a pencil.
The bar was now full, a bevy of waiters attending to tables, and a pianist was playing “Georgia on My Mind.” It was hard to believe that the lofty Art Deco hall, where the sophisticated literary circle of Paris drank champagne, had witnessed the horrors of World War II. During the occupation, Nicolas knew, the Lutetia had been requisitioned by the Nazis. When Paris was liberated in August 1944, the hotel was used as a meeting point for concentration camp survivors to find family members.