“Come on up, Hermes,” she calls, taking off her bathing cap and smoothing back her white hair.
Nicolas tries to quiet his ragged breath and crawls up the reef, all the way up, to where she is sitting. He crouches next to her, and wishes he could stop his lips and hands from trembling.
“Did you enjoy that?” she asks after a while.
“I did,” he replies, still breathless. “But you’re quite a swimmer. It’s not easy keeping up with you.”
A slow, sensual laugh.
“I was born a swimmer. My mother always said I knew how to swim before I could walk or talk.”
They both look back at the Gallo Nero, an ocher spot on the gray cliff. Nicolas wonders how he is ever going to manage the swim back. He might as well make the most of the rest they are having now. But what if she suddenly wants to get going? He will have to stall her. Ask her questions. Prevent her from getting up and swimming away.
“Where did you learn how to swim?” he asks.
“Up north. Where I was born.”
“Isn’t the water very cold there?”
“It is. But you get used to it. What about you? Where did you learn to swim?”
If Dagmar Hunoldt knew anything about him, she would have known this. She would have known, as the entire world knew, that Nicolas Kolt spent his childhood summers in Biarritz, that he learned how to swim at the Port Vieux with his father. She would have known, like millions of readers, that his father drowned in the summer of 1993. She was obviously sticking to her little game. Pretending not to know him. Well, he could play that game, too. He could also pretend he had no idea who she was. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? He nearly laughs out loud with triumph.
“I learned to swim with my father,” he replies. “I was six or seven years old. South of France.”
“Are you French?” she asks, still gazing out to the Gallo Nero.
“Yes,” he says.
Of course she knows he is French. She knows he had to prove he was French in 2006, because his father was born in Russia and his mother in Belgium. That’s how he got the idea for the book. She knows that, crafty, cunning woman.
“And you live in Paris?” she goes on.
“Yes. What about you?”
A seagull circles above their heads and they look up to it as it flies near, then swoops away.
“Oh, here and there,” she says evasively. She lies back on a flat part of the reef, closes her eyes, and sunbathes. He wants to do the same, but there are no more flat bits for him to recline on. So he remains where he is, sitting next to her. He looks down at her massive body. Even from very close, there is nothing flabby about Dagmar Hunoldt. Her skin shines with sunblock, giving it a milky, translucent hue. He is curious about her love life. Is she with a man or a woman right now? When was the last time she made love? Who was the last person to glide between those parted, heavy thighs? What is she like in bed? What does she do best? His stomach rumbles loudly and he remembers he hasn’t had breakfast. His thoughts stray to Malvina, to the unpleasantness of the scene that will take place later on. How do you tell a woman you don’t love her and you don’t want her child? He can already see Malvina’s heart-shaped face crumpling up in agony.
“Is this your first time at the Gallo Nero?” asks Dagmar Hunoldt.
Thinking about Malvina is banished for the moment. He is thankful.
“Yes,” he replies. “And you?”
“I came here long ago, with a friend. It hasn’t changed. It has a timeless perfection to it. The ideal place for an epicurean like me.”
“I don’t think poor old Epicure would have enjoyed it at all.”
She sits up and turns around to glance at him, moving the straps of her bathing suit down across her shoulders. He looks at the pure white skin.
“Really? Why?” she asks.
“The Gallo Nero is far too luxurious for Epicure,” says Nicolas. “He was into frugality. He much rather preferred a cool glass of water to quench his thirst than a celestial Château d’Yquem.”
“You’re saying that we have deviated from the original meaning of what epicurism really is?”
“We have indeed,” replies Nicolas, fingering the raspy surface of the reef. “Nowadays, an epicurean is a fat guy with a cigar snoring in a hammock after a six-course meal washed down with gallons of wine.”
Another laugh. She goes on. “Well, I did mean what I said. I am a complete epicurean when I come here. In the noble sense of the word, not the fat guy in the hammock. I’m not referring to the food, however good, or the service, however remarkable. I mean that when I am here, I am away from the turbulences of the outside world, from the tragedy and chaos that rage on in our cities. When I am here, I treasure rare moments of precious serenity.”
Dagmar Hunoldt pauses and turns her gray-blue eyes to his. He stares back at her. How can he confide he feels precisely the same? It would be like sucking up to her, like groveling. Her words strike a chord deep within him. He longs to tell her. But perhaps that’s what she is striving for. Perhaps that is her way of seducing him. Of winning him over. Of making him leave Alice Dor for her. How can he make sure? He has no way of knowing. He can only sit here on that reef and listen. Her voice is gentle and dreamy. He feels he could listen to it for hours.
“When I swim here, when I am in the water, I feel a sort of communion with nature. Even if I swim fast, even if I push myself, I am at one with the sea. I love to swim; I swim every day, wherever I am, even in swimming pools that reek of chlorine and sweaty armpits. Here, swimming is like going back to my childhood. The pleasure I feel when I come out of the sea, when I sit down to rest, when all my limbs are crying out for mercy, is overwhelming. I bask in the sun, like I am doing now, and there is nothing more exquisite. If I were to describe it to you, Hermes, I would say this. The pleasure I feel at the Gallo Nero is a delicious, dreamy summer afternoon after wild, violent lovemaking.”
She gets up, and Nicolas knows she is about to take off. He reaches up to touch her hand.
“No, wait,” he says. Her fingers linger in his for just a moment. “I want to hear more. About you and Epicure.”
This is only a partial lie. Although he dreads the long swim back, he wants her to go on talking. He wants this moment on the reef with her to last longer, even if it is only for a few more minutes. Is he falling under her spell? Isn’t this what Dagmar Hunoldt does to writers? She acts like no other publisher. She is one of a kind. What was that sentence he read in a magazine? “Her entourage considers her utterly ruthless, extraordinarily intelligent, and totally perverse.”
He stands up next to her. The breeze blows at them, salty and cool. She looks almost beautiful in the pale morning light. Her clear-cut profile and its chiseled features have a regal purity. Being near Dagmar Hunoldt feels like being sucked into another planet’s orbit. A frightening and alluring pull. He is standing so close to her now that the white skin of her arm is grazing his chest. He does not feel the tickle of the familiar sexual thrill, but something else, a strange osmosis, an unexpected communion that unsettles him.
“Forget the fat guy in the hammock,” whispers Dagmar Hunoldt, and Nicolas leans in closer still to catch every word. “What does he know of Epicure? Nothing. He is like those rich Romans who vomited their meals in order to wolf down some more. What Epicure relished, and you know that, Hermes, was not the pleasure of eating, but the satisfying sensation of having eaten just enough.” She pauses. Then she puts her cap back on, and her goggles, and Nicolas follows her, mustering his strength. But she now swims at a slower pace, and Nicolas thankfully discovers he can keep up. He asks if he can borrow her goggles. She complies. He glides into the turquoise underwater world, admiring a fleet of round blue-striped fish, jagged rocks dappled with the sun and studded with black sea urchins. When they arrive at the beach area, the chairs and parasols have been installed. They are offered towels by a smiling waiter. Nicolas looks around for the bathrobe he left on the concrete slab before the swi
m. The waiter runs to get it. His BlackBerry and the room key are still in his pocket, along with the Moleskine and the Montblanc.
“Breakfast, Hermes?” asks Dagmar Hunoldt. Before he can reply, she tells the waiter that they’ll have it down here, not up at the buffet. “Do you prefer coffee? Tea?” she asks him briskly.
He says tea, wondering if she ever lets anyone make up his own mind about anything. She is used to giving orders, he can tell. Their table is installed in the blink of an eye and they sit down. The Swiss give them a little wave as they set off for their swim. The gay couple nod jovially. Another day at the Gallo Nero. His last day. Except that he is having breakfast with Dagmar Hunoldt, tête-à-tête. Nicolas begins to feel nervous again. What is he to do if she goes on pretending she has no idea who he is? What if he were to lean over, bang his hand flat on the table, making her jump, and say, Okay, Dagmar, enough with Epicure, Hermes, and Mercury Retrograde. You know perfectly well who I am. Cut the crap. Maybe she likes that kind of attitude from men, action à la hussarde, no small talk, no fussing around, even a spot of virile vulgarity. Maybe that is what she expects from him, to be ballsy, to cut to the quick, to be efficient, concrete, to the point. As their coffee and tea is brought to them, along with the morning papers, in French, Italian, German, and English, Nicolas feels his courage fizzling away like a deflated balloon. His anguish rises when he notes that the choice of newspapers includes the French one with the disastrous Taillefer interview. How awful if she starts to read that one under his nose. The photograph is large and very recognizable. He cringes as her fingers hover over the pile. She picks the Times. He exhales with relief.
Dagmar Hunoldt leafs through the newspaper nonchalantly. She reads a long article about the French politician and the hotel maid. She sips her coffee and munches a croissant. From time to time, she looks up at him and smiles, a clone of Glenn Close. Her white hair shines platinum in the rising sun. She has not even asked him what his name is. And she has not even told him hers. Such supremacy. Such arrogance. He both admires her and resents her for it. Making him feel like a little Mr. Nobody. Yet she smiles at little Mr. Nobody; she makes him feel he is her friend, that she enjoys his company, enjoys swimming with him, having breakfast with him, and that this is a privilege. How can she do that so masterfully, wonders Nicolas, ignoring his identity on one hand, and making him feel special, chosen, on the other? Has she read the Taillefer article? Probably. Everyone in publishing has read it. What is she like with her authors? he asks himself as she stirs her coffee. Does she act motherly? Is she authoritarian? Patient? Does she ever sleep with them? He is aware that she is not going to pronounce a single word during the entire meal. She is not going to speak to him. But every five minutes, she looks up at him and smiles. Her eyes twinkle. He feels the companionable bubble close around them, like yesterday morning, when they shared the Bellini after their swim. No need for words. Being together is somehow enough. Sharing an indefinable moment. Dagmar Hunoldt does that very well. She is a master at it.
The beach area is now full. Mr. Wong and Miss Ming bow and smile. The Spanish woman appears in a bright pink bikini. Her body is appetizing, delicately plump and tender. Mimi and Sherry, oozing with makeup and perfume, send air kisses.
Nicolas knows it is time for him to go back to the room with leaden footsteps, to confront Malvina.
“I have to go,” he murmurs.
Dagmar Hunoldt looks up from the newspaper.
“Thank you for spending your morning with me, Hermes,” she says, and there is a gentleness in her voice that warms him, even if he longs to say, My name is Nicolas Kolt; you know that.
She asks for a pen and some paper. He wonders why. He watches her scribbling. Her number? Her e-mail? His stomach churns again, making him wince. Oh! Here it is, then. Here is her offer. On a piece of paper. Not orally. But written. Written words, written numbers. He grasps the edge of the table to steady himself. He certainly has not seen that coming. The hand that has signed so many contracts. The hand that has changed the face of publishing. Dagmar Hunoldt is making him an offer. She is not doing it the usual way, because she is no ordinary person. And all these people down here with them, applying sun lotion, dipping toes into the water, listening to music, reading a book, are miles away from imagining that the most famous publisher and the most talked-about author of the moment are entering negotiations over breakfast, wearing bathrobes after a swim at a luxury resort on the Tuscan coast.
Dagmar Hunoldt hands the paper to Nicolas and smiles briefly. He knows this is a dismissal. He mutters good-bye and leaves. When he gets into the James Bond elevator, heart pumping hard, fingers shaking, he looks down at the paper.
No name. No e-mail. No number. No sum.
Only three sentences:
The smell of freshly cut grass after an exhausting hour mowing the lawn.
Opening the shutters to a golden morning after a wondrous night of sex and slumber.
To the storm of an orgasm, Epicure far preferred the quiet sweetness of its aftermath.
IN 2008, WHEN NICOLAS met Toby Bramfield, the African-American director who adapted The Envelope for the screen, they hit it off right away. Toby was perhaps eight years older than Nicolas, a tall, angular fellow with dreadlocks and a dash of Jimi Hendrix. He wanted to stay close to the book, he told Nicolas and Alice, over drinks at L’Hôtel on rue des Beaux-Arts (where Oscar Wilde had died in 1900, a fact that Nicolas found morbidly fascinating). He had already spoken about the role to Robin Wright’s agent, and he had high hopes she would say yes. This was right up her alley, he told Alice and Nicolas; this was just the kind of part she could not say no to. Nicolas listened, enthralled. In 2008, the book had only just started its worldwide career, and he had no idea, nor did Alice, just how far and fast that career would go. The fact that a director had bought the rights so swiftly after publication, that his novel was going to become a movie, had been a wonderful and unexpected surprise. Toby Bramfield was not a famous director, but neither Nicolas nor Alice minded. He had made a couple of good films with relatively well-known actors that had attracted moderate attention. All of them were adapted from novels. Toby Bramfield himself had no idea how Hurricane Margaux was also going to transform his own life, forever. He wrote the script himself, always keeping Nicolas in the loop, making sure Nicolas knew and approved of what he was doing. Nicolas felt thankful for this. He had heard of numerous painful cases where the author was shut out of the filming process, where the author was not part of the new adventure in any way. Often, the author ended up not liking the movie at all. Toby Bramfield seemed to thrive on Nicolas’s feedback, as if it drove him on, as if he gained energy from it.
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.