A loud buzzer goes off and he takes some time to understand someone is ringing with insistence at the door. His vision is blurred, his mouth pasty. What time is it? Where is he? He had the strangest dream. His father and he were standing in the rain at the foot of Victor Noir’s tomb. His father’s voice, unbelievably clear, was still ringing in his ears. His father looked exactly as he had the last time Nicolas had seen him, the day of his disappearance. He could feel his father’s hand on his shoulder, the weight of it.
Nicolas gets up with difficulty to open the door. A man is standing there, holding a briefcase.
“Yes?” says Nicolas, puzzled.
“Dottore Scaretti,” says the man.
“Of course, come in.”
The doctor silently examines Malvina, taking her blood pressure, listening to her heart, looking into her throat, her ears, prodding her stomach with sure, careful fingers. He does not speak any English or French. Nicolas is able to explain to the doctor that Malvina has not been well since she arrived, that she vomited several times. Perhaps food poisoning? Or some sort of intestinal flu? The doctor says nothing. When he has finished his examination, he goes into the bathroom to wash his hands. He comes back, sits on the edge of the bed, and writes on a sheet of paper. He hands Nicolas his bill. Then he fishes in his briefcase and gives Nicolas a box. It is a pregnancy test. Nicolas stares at it, then back at the doctor. He points to the box, then to Malvina. The doctor says a couple of sentences in Italian, but he speaks too fast. Nicolas asks him to slow down. The doctor says “Incinta” several times and cups his hands in front of his stomach. His gesture is unequivocal.
The doctor leaves. Malvina gets up and takes the box from Nicolas. She is very silent. She locks herself in the bathroom. Nicolas waits, his head in his hands. He does not want to think. He lets his mind go blank. His eyes rove over the room, the cream walls, the large unmade bed, the uneaten fruit. Then, for some reason, he thinks of his dream: he and his father, in the rain, in front of Victor Noir’s tomb.
Malvina comes out of the bathroom, and her smile is magnificent. In her hand, a plastic object with a blue cross on it.
“Oh Nicolas,” she says breathlessly. “Oh, my love. I’m going to have your baby.”
Sunday,
July 17, 2011
Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas
IT WAS WIDELY KNOWN that Nicolas Kolt collected vintage watches. This was no recent hobby. It was the first detail Nicolas noticed about people, after the color and shape of their eyes. In the rue du Laos duplex, a small safe was fitted into the back of a closet, where he kept his precious watches. There was one watch he never talked about. One particular watch he did not own, one watch that haunted him and that he thought about nearly every day: his father’s orange-faced Doxa Sub. Capitaine Cousteau’s watch. Robert Redford wore it in Three Days of the Condor. The Doxa Sub was famous for its robustness. It could still function even in the deepest parts of the ocean, where the pressure was at its highest. Théodore Duhamel had never removed his. He’d kept it on even to sleep. When Nicolas was a little boy nestling in his father’s arms, he could hear two things: the beat of his father’s heart and the tick of his watch. If his father had drowned—the theory his entourage seemed to agree upon—then Théodore Duhamel had slid down to an aquatic void wearing that watch. Had it gone on ticking even after his father had died, lungs full of salt water? Was the watch still there today, a rusty relic embedded in sand or encrusted on a reef, while his father’s body had disintegrated, nibbled away by sea creatures? Nicolas shared those morbid thoughts with no one. He’d harbored them since August 7, 1993. In the first year of his khâgne, when he read Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the first lines of Ariel’s Song were painfully evocative.
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade …
During one of his watch quests, he came across an identical model. It happened in 1999, before Hurricane Margaux. The watch was on display in a place on rue de Béarn he liked to visit, if only to window-shop. It looked so uncannily like his father’s that he felt compelled to go in and have a closer look. The watch was taken out of the vitrine and placed on a felt tray. He stared at it, dumbstruck, for minutes before he dared take it into his hands and fasten it. The same familiar orange face, the same tick, the same clasp. Should he buy it? It was expensive, but he could get his grandparents, mother, and aunts to participate. If he succeeded in passing his baccalaureat next year, which seemed likely, this would be an ideal present, as well as serve as his eighteenth-birthday gift. He pondered it for a while. Perhaps it would prove disconcerting and morally uncomfortable to be confronted with the orange face each time he glanced at his wrist. Perhaps it would make him think of his father all the more. He slipped it off and carefully put it back on the tray. He left the shop, fighting the overwhelming emptiness he always felt when he dwelled upon his father and his disappearance.
Those “waiting” years, between 1993 and 2003—until Théodore Duhamel was officially declared dead—when Nicolas aged from eleven to twenty-one, were difficult ones for the boy he was and the young man he became. He grew up in the perpetual shadow of his father, and yet his father was no longer there. When he met family friends, there was always an awkward pause and the inevitable exclamation: “Oh! He looks like his father, more and more.…” He was aware he had inherited his father’s height, his long arms and legs, the shape of his face, his mouth, his nose. Only his mist-colored eyes were Emma’s, not his father’s blue ones.
His mother had kept the press clippings from the summer of 1993, when Sud-Ouest, the local newspaper, published a couple of articles about Théodore Duhamel’s disappearance. She stored them in a navy blue cardboard box in her desk, and Nicolas knew exactly where that box was. The articles had become yellow and faded, and he wondered why she had decided not to throw the clippings out. Who was she keeping all this for? He asked her. “One day,” she replied, “you will want to know more about your father. This may happen when you become a father yourself, or even before. So I’ve kept everything. His letters, his photos, his bits and pieces. You can look at this whenever you want.”
But Nicolas never did. For more than ten years, he shied away from the box, as if just glancing at it could hurt him and bring up the dull ache, the empty pain. In September 2001, when Aurélie, his girlfriend of the moment, had raised the first questions and doubts concerning the causes of his father’s death, he had been tempted to rummage around in the box. But he did not feel ready.
Nicolas was drawn back to the box five years later, when he discovered his father’s real name was Fiodor Koltchine. At that time, he no longer lived on rue Rollin with his mother, but on rue Pernety with Delphine, where he’d been since 2004. Emma and he had both been relieved that at the age of twenty-two, he was leaving the family nest. When he had packed up all his belongings, his mother waving at the front door, it had been with a mixture of elation and nostalgia. He had, with his mother’s approval, kept his keys to the apartment on the rue Rollin. Whenever he came back to his childhood home, he prudently rang the doorbell, aware that his mother had a life of her own, and not willing to be confronted with it in a manner that might prove to be unpleasant for anyone. His mother was discreet about her lovers. She sometimes named them, but her son rarely saw them. After a while, he forgot to ask. He later became entangled in the giddying ascension of his fame, and his mother’s love life did not interest him enough for him to inquire about it.
In October 2006, that same rainy week after the conversation with his mother about his father’s real name, he returned to the rue Rollin at lunchtime and rang the bell. He needed to look through the navy blue box. His mother was not there. No doubt she was with her students at the Collège Sévigné. He let himself in and took off his wet shoes in the entrance. The box was in its usual place in Emma’s desk. He took it into the kitchen, made himself s
ome tea, and sat down. He was still inwardly reeling from the shock of seeing the name Fiodor Koltchine on the birth certificate and trying to work out the pieces of the puzzle of his father’s life. He was not sure why he was doing this, or what for, but he did know that he had to go through the box, that he would not rest or feel at ease until he had found some answers.
Earlier on, he had shared a coffee with Lara on avenue du Maine, near the magazine where she worked, and he had shown her the birth certificate. She had been stupefied. She had fired off questions. Why had his mother kept this from him? Emma could have told him in 1993, when her husband disappeared. Nicolas answered that his mother thought he was too young at eleven to know. Then she had waited until he found out by himself, which was what had happened. His father had never wanted to talk about it with her. Why was the whole matter such a secret? insisted Lara. Who was trying to hide what? From whom? “There is an element of shame, of guilt here,” Lara went on, flushed with excitement as the rain continued to patter on the windowpanes of the café. “This is a typical family secret,” she whispered, “that everyone tries to hush up for years, and that comes swinging back like a boomerang.” Nicolas had placed a cautious palm on her arm. What was she talking about? Wasn’t she getting carried away? This was just the banal story of a young girl getting pregnant and quickly marrying another man to give her fatherless child a name. Lara stared at him over her croissant. “Fatherless?” she had hissed. “No child is ever fatherless, Nicolas. Except the Virgin Mary’s, of course. But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about who slept with your fifteen-year-old grandmother in Leningrad, in 1960. It wasn’t a cozy time for teenagers. You couldn’t waltz down to the nearest bar and pick up a boyfriend.” Nicolas was taken aback. He had never thought of that. He had conveniently forgotten about the Cold War and communism. Later, at rue Rollin, he opened the navy blue box with apprehension. There was nothing in there that his mother had not told him about, he reminded himself. But he soon understood that what he feared the most was the intensity of his feelings. He was afraid of the power of the emotions that would take over once he delved into his father’s past. For thirteen years, he had learned to bury everything that concerned his father, to steer away from it, to try to keep the emptiness and longing for him at bay. He had learned to live without his father. As he looked down at the box, he measured now how much he missed Théodore Duhamel. Fiodor Koltchine. He had missed his father for most of his existence. His father, the beautiful stranger.
His mother had filed all the elements in the box. They were labeled “Articles,” “Photos,” “Important Papers,” “Letters,” “Notes.” He started with the articles, the yellowed Sud-Ouest ones.
Parisian entrepreneur Théodore Duhamel, age 33, set out two days ago from the Port des Pêcheurs, Biarritz, to Guéthary on his catamaran, a Hobie 16. He arrived in Guéthary at approximately 10:00 A.M. on August 7, and spent an hour with friends of his, the Australian surf champion Murphy Nash, who resides in Guéthary, and his wife. Théodore Duhamel sailed back to Biarritz but did not come home. His wife, Emma Duhamel, and his son, Nicolas, age 11, have been waiting anxiously for him since. The police and gendarmes have searched the coast from Anglet to Hendaye, with no results.
There was no photograph accompanying this article, but the following one was illustrated with a grainy black-and-white picture of his father, taken in Paris at a dinner party. He was wearing a suit and tie and holding a champagne flute.
CATAMARAN FOUND ON HENDAYE BEACH
The black Hobie 16 belonging to the Parisian entrepreneur Théodore Duhamel (33), missing since August 7, was found yesterday, partially wrecked, on the beach of Hendaye. It was formally identified by Emma Duhamel (34), his wife. The gendarmerie has stated that a body has not yet been found. Théodore Duhamel, according to other boat proprietors, was an experienced sailor and surfer, well accustomed to the area’s danger zones. The weather conditions were good and the current on August 7 was not powerful. The Parisian entrepreneur and his family came to Biarritz every summer and rented an apartment overlooking the Côte des Basques. They were popular with the locals, especially the surfing community. According to their surfer friends, the Duhamel couple, parents to 11-year-old Nicolas, had a happy marriage. His wife stated that there was no reason for her husband to take his own life.
Nicolas read the obituary notice in Le Figaro, published in the “Carnet du Jour” of August 7, 2003.
Ten years ago, on August 7, 1993, Théodore Duhamel disappeared at sea, off the coast of Guéthary. His name will be added today to the family grave in Division 92 of Père-Lachaise Cemetery.
Mr. and Mme. Lionel Duhamel, his parents
Mme. Théodore Duhamel, his wife
Nicolas Duhamel, his son
Mme. Elvire Duhamel, his sister
Nicolas turned to the notes and letters. The sight of his father’s slanted black scrawl was like a slap in the face. Nicolas had not seen it for years and there it was, as if his father had written those sentences moments ago with his Montblanc. Nicolas marveled at the intimate power of handwriting, how personal it was, how enduring. How was it that the handwriting was still there on the paper in front of him, while his father had disappeared without a trace?
He discovered incomprehensible lists of names, places, dates. Entire paragraphs that had been crossed out and rewritten. Nicolas pored over them, hoping for one detail, one clue. But nothing came. His mother had tied a red ribbon around a dozen letters that had her maiden name and an address in the sixth arrondissement on them. He guessed they were the first love letters from his father to her. He did not want to read them. He felt as if he were lifting a curtain on their past intimacy. In the next pile were bills, sums, and invoices. Some of them involved surprisingly large amounts. The tax documents also displayed figures that startled Nicolas. He had no idea his father had earned so much money. He also discovered his father had often paid his income tax too late. He read several long-winded letters to the officials at the tax department, in which his father explained in great detail the complicated reasons why he had not been able to pay what he owed on time. The letters were flawlessly written, with perfect grammar and spelling, which had not been his father’s forte. Nicolas understood his mother had probably written them as her husband dictated.
He went on to the photo file. The first one he pulled out was of his parents, dated on the back 1980, taken by a certain Maxime Villanova. A large black-and-white glossy portrait of them, standing up against a white background, no doubt shot at the Paris Match studios, where his father had worked when he met Emma. Nicolas had never seen the photo before. Théodore Duhamel, at twenty years old, younger than Nicolas was now, and Emma were magnificent. They wore black leather pants, boots, and black shirts opened to their navels. They had the same long, tousled hair, and pale, perfect faces. They looked like rock stars, an eighties version of Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe.
The following photograph was from a series Nicolas had often seen. He and his father posing in front of the Jaguar, his father smoking his cigar, a proprietary hand on his little boy’s shoulder. Then came another unknown one. Nicolas was five or six. They had attended a summer wedding at Arcangues, and they had arrived late. Nicolas smiled as he remembered all those faces turning back to look at them as they walked into the church, his father holding himself tall, like a crowned king, wearing a salmon pink jacket and trousers, with no shirt. His naked tanned chest drew gasps from the other guests, especially the women. Nicolas was dressed in a white-and-blue sailor suit. Emma was not in the photograph. Perhaps she was the one who took it. There were more photographs, which he glanced over, conscious of the quick beat of his heart: the ill-fated Hobie 16 in front of the Hôtel du Palais, on the Grande Plage in Biarritz; Emma and her sister, Roxane, at a fancy dress party; his aunt Elvire the day of her wedding with Pablo, in Sevilla; Nicolas as a baby in a pram at the Jardin des Plantes.
And then there was an old black-and-white one of a plump, dark-hair
ed young girl cradling a toddler in her arms. He had no idea who it could be. The girl did not look like anyone he knew. Nicolas turned it around. He recognized his grandfather’s handwriting. “Théodore. Paris, 1961.” The round-faced teenager was Zinaïda Koltchine with her illegitimate child. She was gazing down at the baby with evident pride, but also, thought Nicolas, with an expression of curiosity mingled with wariness. She was very different from what she would later become—a slim, sophisticated bourgeoise. How could she have transformed herself to such an extent? wondered Nicolas. She could only have gone that far because she desperately wanted to. It seemed that when she left the USSR forever in 1961 to become Nina Duhamel in Paris, she also left her former life behind her. Nicolas put the photograph in his wallet.
Looking through the “Important Papers” file, Nicolas stumbled upon a copy of Zinaïda’s birth certificate. Nicolas read that her parents, his great-grandparents, were named Natacha Levkin (born Petrograd, 1925) and Vladimir Koltchine (born Petrograd, 1921). He wondered about them. Were they still alive? Did they know who the father of the baby was? How had Zinaïda met Lionel Duhamel, a wealthy young businessman fifteen years her senior? What had Lionel known about his teenage wife’s past?
Nicolas took the birth certificate and put it in his pocket. As he sat there in his mother’s kitchen, he remembered, for the first time in thirteen years, the conversation he’d overheard in his grandparent’s apartment on the boulevard Saint-Germain just after his father disappeared. Lionel’s apologetic tone: “I know you hate it when I bring up Leningrad.” Had Théodore Duhamel ever questioned his mother, and what had she told him? There were no answers. But those queries became the starting point, unbeknownst to him, of the novel that Nicolas was going to write. They were the foundations he was slowly laying down, without even realizing it, of Margaux Dansor’s story.