“Oh, not long, two, maybe three hours. Some hairstyles take a lot longer, though. For my Sissi it took over four hours.”
“Over four hours? And what does she do all that time? Does she behave?”
“Of course not, she doesn’t behave! She does like we do, she laughs, she eats, she listens to us tell our stories. We tell a lot of stories . . . lots more than you guys do.”
“And what about you, Carine? What do you do for Christmas?”
“I put on four pounds. And you, Camille, what d’you do for Christmas?”
“I lose four pounds. Just joking.”
“You going to be with your family?”
“Yes,” she lied.
“Okay, this is all very well, but,” said Super Josy, tapping on the face of her . . . etc., etc.
On the desk she read, What is your name?
Maybe it was just a coincidence, but the photo of his wife and kids had vanished. Hmm, how predictable, this guy. She threw out the sheet of paper and ran the vacuum cleaner.
The atmosphere was lighter in the apartment too. Franck no longer slept there and was in and out like an arrow when he came for his nap in the afternoon. He hadn’t even taken the new stereo out of the box.
Philibert never made the slightest reference to what had happened in his absence the evening he was at the Invalides. He was the sort who couldn’t stand the slightest change. His equilibrium hung on a thread and Camille was just beginning to realize the magnitude of what he had done, coming to get her that night . . . How he must have had to force himself. She also thought about what Franck had said about Philibert’s medication.
Philibert informed Camille that he was going on vacation and would be absent until mid-January.
“Are you going to your château?”
“Yes.”
“Are you glad to be going?”
“Well, I suppose I shall be glad to see my sisters.”
“What are their names?”
“Anne, Marie, Catherine, Isabelle, Aliénor and Blanche.”
“And your brother?”
“Louis.”
“Only names of kings and queens.”
“Indeed.”
“And what happened to your name?”
“Oh, my name . . . I’m the ugly duckling.”
“Don’t say that, Philibert. You know, I don’t understand much about your aristocracy business and I’ve never had much time for your names beginning with ‘de.’ To tell you the truth, I even think it’s a little bit ridiculous when you get down to it, a bit . . . old-fashioned, but one thing is for sure: you, Philibert, are a prince. A real prince.”
“Oh”—he blushed—“a modest gentleman, a little provincial country squire at best . . .”
“A fine little gentleman, that’s for sure. Hey, don’t you think we could cut the formality and start saying tu to each other next year?”
“Ah! My little suffragette is back! Always another Revolution! I’d find it really hard to say tu to you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t. I would like to be able to speak to you the way I’d speak to a friend and say, Philibert, thanks for all you—tu—have done for me, because you may not know it, but in a way you’ve saved my life . . .”
He didn’t answer. He was staring at the floor, once again.
36
CAMILLE got up early to see Philibert off at the station. He was such a bundle of nerves that she had to take his train ticket out of his hand to get it stamped for him. They went for a cup of hot chocolate but he didn’t touch it. As the departure time drew near, she saw his face grow tense. His tics returned, and the man sitting opposite her was once again the sad sack from the supermarket. A tall young man who was needy and gauche and who had to keep his hands in his pockets to keep from scratching his own face when he adjusted his glasses.
She put a hand on his arm:
“You okay?”
“Oh, yes, fine, you’ve got an eye on the time, right? Right?”
“Shh,” she scolded gently. “Everything’s going to be fine. Everything is fine.”
He tried to agree.
“Is it that stressful to be going to see your family?”
“N-no,” he said, while nodding yes with his head.
“Think about your little sisters.”
He smiled.
“Which one is your favorite?”
“The—the youngest.”
“Blanche?”
“Yes.”
“Is she pretty?”
“She’s—she’s more than pretty. She—she’s really gentle with me.”
Farewell kisses were out of the question, but Philibert grabbed her by the shoulder when they were on the platform:
“You—you’ll take good care of yourself, won’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to be with your f-family?”
“No.”
“No?” He made a face.
“I don’t have any little sisters to make the rest easier to bear . . .”
“I see.”
From the window, he lectured her:
“Above all, d-don’t let our little Escoffier in-intimidate you, all right?”
“I won’t,” she reassured him.
He added something which she did not hear because of the loudspeakers. To be on the safe side she nodded yes, yes, and the train pulled away.
She decided to walk back, but took a wrong turn without realizing it. Instead of heading left down the boulevard Montparnasse as far as the École Militaire, she went straight and ended up on the rue de Rennes. It was because of the boutiques, the Christmas garlands, the atmosphere.
She was like an insect, drawn to the light and the warm blood of the crowds.
Camille wanted to be one of them, to be like them—busy, excited, in a hurry. She wanted to go into shops and buy silly things so she could spoil the people she loved. She began to walk more slowly: who, in fact, did she love? Come on, come on, she scolded, lifting the collar of her jacket, don’t start, please, there were Mathilde and Pierre and Philibert and her comrades of the mop. Surely here in this jewelry store she could find a trinket for Mamadou, who was so careful about her looks. And for the first time in a very long time, Camille did the same thing everyone else was doing at the same time everyone else was doing it: she was walking along, trying to figure out how much her bonus would be. For the first time in a very long time she stopped thinking about tomorrow. And that wasn’t just an expression. She really stopped thinking about tomorrow, about the very next day.
For the first time in a long time the very next day seemed . . . conceivable. Yes, that was exactly it: conceivable. She had a place where she liked to live. A strange, idiosyncratic place, like the people living there. She closed her fist around the keys in her pocket and looked back on the last few weeks. She had met an extraterrestrial. An odd but generous individual, who stood a thousand leagues above the horde and yet did not act the least bit conceited. Then there was that other strange bird. Well, with him it was a bit more complicated. She didn’t see what you could get out of him other than stories about bikers and sauté pans, but at least he’d been moved by her sketchbook, well, moved was a bit strong perhaps, let’s just say affected. He was a bit more complicated but probably simpler too: the operating instructions seemed to be fairly basic . . .
Yes, she had come quite a way, she thought, shuffling along behind the strolling shoppers.
This time last year she had been in such a pitiful state that she couldn’t say her own name to the fellow from the emergency rescue who’d picked her up, and the year before that she’d been working so hard she didn’t even realize it was Christmas; her “benefactor” had been careful not to remind her for fear she might not keep up the pace. So what: she could say it now, no? She could say those few words which would have singed her lips not so very long ago: she was fine, she felt fine, and life was beautiful. There, she’d said it. C’mon, stop blushing, you fool. Don’t look back. No one heard you mutter
ing your inane gibberish, rest assured.
She was hungry. She went into a bakery and bought a few chouquettes . Perfect little choux pastry things, light and sweet. She stood licking her fingertips for a long time before she dared go back into a store to look for some small presents for everyone. Perfume for Mathilde, jewelry for the girls, a pair of gloves for Philibert and some cigars for Pierre. How conventional could you get? These were the easiest Christmas presents on earth and they were perfect presents.
Camille finished her shopping near the Place Saint-Sulpice and walked into a bookstore. Here too, it was her first visit in a long time. For so long she hadn’t dared go into places like this. It was hard to explain, but it hurt too much, it—No, she couldn’t bring herself to say it. Such a weight of sadness, such cowardice, the risks she had no longer wanted to take. Going into bookstores, cinemas, exhibitions, or even just glancing in the windows of art galleries: that had meant pointing to her own mediocrity, her spinelessness, it had meant reminding herself that one day she had thrown in the towel, in despair, and that she couldn’t remember what it was like, before . . .
To go into the places which existed by the grace of the sensibility of a few individuals was to be reminded of how futile her own life was . . .
She preferred the aisles of the local Franprix.
Who might understand? Not a soul.
It was a private struggle. The most invisible of all. The most persistent too. And how many nights of office cleaning, toilet scrubbing and solitude would she have to inflict upon herself to get through it?
She avoided the art section, she knew it all too well, she’d spent a lot of time here back when she was trying to complete her studies at the École des Beaux-Arts, then, later, for less noble purposes. Anyway, she had no intention of going there now. It was too soon. Or too late, to be precise. It was like the business of the salutary little kick. Wasn’t she at a time in her life when she should no longer count on the help of the great masters?
Ever since Camille had been old enough to hold a pencil, people had been telling her that she was gifted. Very gifted. Too gifted. Very promising, much too clever, or too spoiled. Often they were sincere; at other times their words were more ambivalent. Their compliments didn’t get her anywhere, and today, now that she was good for nothing except frenetically filling up sketchbooks, she told herself she’d gladly exchange her two barrelfuls of dexterity for a teaspoon of artlessness. Or for a blank slate, why not. Poof! and nothing left upstairs. No more technique, no more references, no more know-how, nothing. Begin all over again, from scratch.
A pen, you see, you hold it between your thumb and your index finger. No, wait, you hold it however you want. After that, it’s not hard, you don’t even think about it. Your hands don’t exist anymore. The important thing happens elsewhere. No, this won’t do, it’s still too pretty. You’re not being asked to come up with something pretty, you know. No one gives a damn about pretty. There are children’s drawings and glossy magazines for that. So put on your mittens, little genius, little empty shell, yes, go on, put them on, I tell you, and maybe at last you’ll see, you’ll draw an almost perfect failed circle.
She wandered among the books. She felt lost. There were so many and she’d lost track of what was current for so long that all the covers with their bright red publicity strips made her dizzy. She looked at the jackets, read the blurbs, checked to see how old the authors were and made a face whenever she saw that they were born after her. Not a very smart way to choose a book . . . She went over to the paperbacks. The cheap paper and small type were less intimidating. The jacket of this one, a picture of a kid with a helmet and an old typewriter, was weird, but she liked the way it began:
If I could tell you only one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my head. As formative events go, nothing else comes close; my careening, zigzag existence, my wounded brain and faith in God, my collisions with joy and affliction, all of it has come, in one way or another, out of that moment on a summer morning when the left rear tire of a United States postal jeep ground my tiny head into the hot gravel of the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation.
Not bad. On top of that, the book was square and fat and dense. There was dialogue, and bits of letters copied out and fun subtitles. She went on leafing through it and roughly a third of the way into the book came upon this passage:
“Gloria,” Barry said in his phony, doctorly way. “This is your son Edgar. He’s waited a long time to see you.”
My mother looked everywhere in the room but at me. “Got any more?” she said to Barry in a light, airy voice that made my insides clench and hold.
Barry sighed, yanked open the fridge and pulled out a can of beer. “This is the last one. We’ll have to get more later.” He set it on the table in front of my mother and gave her chair a gentle shake. “Gloria, it’s your boy. Here he is.”
And gave her chair a gentle shake . . . perhaps that’s what’s meant by technique?
When she stumbled on this passage, near the end, she closed the book. Now she knew.
There’s nothing to it, really. I go out with my notepad and people spill their guts to me. I show up on their doorsteps and they offer their life stories, their small triumphs, their secret angers and regrets. I usually put away my notepad, which is just for show anyway, and listen patiently until they’ve said all they have to say. After that is the easy part. I go home, sit down in front of my Hermes Jubilee, and do what I’ve been doing every day for the past twenty years: I type up all the gritty details.
A head run over in childhood, a mother who was out to lunch, and a little notebook deep in his pocket . . .
What an imagination.
A little farther along Camille came upon Sempé’s latest collection. She undid her scarf and jammed it together with her coat between her legs so it would be easier to indulge her admiration. She turned the pages slowly and—the same thing happened every time—her cheeks flushed pink. There was nothing she loved so much as this world of great dreamers, the precision of his artwork, the expressions on his characters’ faces, the glass porches of suburban bungalows, the old ladies’ umbrellas and the infinite poetry of everyday situations. How did he do it? Where did he find it all? There they were: the candles, incense burners and large baroque altar of Camille’s favorite sanctimonious little character. This time, the lady was sitting at the back of the church, holding a cell phone and turning slightly to one side as she said, “Hello, Marthe? It’s Suzanne. I’m at Sainte-Eulalie-de-la-Rédemption, you want me to put in an order for you?”
Delicious.
A gentleman in the bookstore turned around to stare when he heard Camille laughing out loud, a few pages later. It was nothing special, though, just a fat lady talking to a pastry chef who was hard at work. He was wearing a pleated chef’s toque and a vaguely world-weary expression, and he had an exquisite little potbelly. The lady was saying, “After all this time, I’ve remade my life, but you know, Robert, I’ve never forgotten you.” And she was wearing a hat in the shape of a cake, a sort of chocolate confection with cream, identical to the one the pastry chef had just finished . . .
It didn’t take much, just two or three strokes of ink; and yet you could see that the character was fluttering her eyelashes with a certain nostalgic languor, with the cruel nonchalance of women who know they are still desirable . . . Little Ava Gardners of the Parisian suburb, little femmes fatales with the latest Clairol rinse . . .
Six tiny pen strokes to convey all that: How did Sempé do it?
Camille put the treasure back in its place, musing that the world could be divided into two kinds of people: those who understood Sempé’s drawings, and those who didn’t. However naive and Manichean it might appear, her theory seemed to her to be spot-on. She knew a woman, for example, who, whenever she leafed through a Paris-Match and came upon one of Sempé’s vignettes, could not help complaining, “I really don’t see what’s so funny. One day someone wil
l have to tell me where I’m supposed to laugh.” It so happened that that person was her own mother. How unlucky could you get?
As she made her way toward the cash registers, Camille lifted her eyes and encountered Vuillard’s gaze. This was not just a manner of speaking: he was looking right at her. Tenderly.
Self-Portrait with Cane and Boater. She knew the painting but had never seen such a large reproduction of it. The cover of an enormous catalog. So there must be an exhibition on at the moment? But where?
“At the Grand Palais,” confirmed one of the salesmen.
“Ah?”
It was a strange coincidence. She had been thinking incessantly about him over the last few weeks. Her room with its heavy drapes, the shawl over the chaise longue, the embroidered cushions, the overlapping carpets and the warm light of the lamps: more than once the thought had occurred to her that it was like being inside one of Vuillard’s paintings. Like being in the bowels of something, a cocoon, timeless, reassuring, stifling, even a bit oppressive.
She leafed through the display copy and was seized by another bout of acute admirationitis. It was so, so beautiful. This woman, as seen from behind, opening a door. Her pink corsage, her long black sheath dress and the perfect curve of her hips. How did he manage to capture that movement? An elegant woman, as seen from behind: the slight sway of her hips.
With nothing but a little bit of black paint.
How was such a miracle possible?
The purer the elements, the purer the work. In painting, there are two methods of expression, form and color; and the purer the colors, the purer the beauty of the work.
Excerpts from the artist’s journal were interspersed throughout the text.