Pétronille

by Amélie Nothomb

  “Let me take you out afterwards. We’ll find some Roederer.”

  “If it’s only Veuve or Dom, I won’t turn my nose up at it.”

  “Laurent-Perrier, Moët, Taittinger, Krug, Philipponnat,” I recited, at the speed of a straight flush.

  “Fine,” she said soberly.

  While she was finishing up, I read what she had written on the flyleaf: “To Amélie Nothomb, patron of the arts.” And then her signature.

  She said goodbye to the bookseller and then we were out on a street in the twentieth arrondissement.

  “If I’ve understood you correctly, my patronage consists in plying the artists I admire with alcohol?” I asked.

  “Exactly. Well, you could even go so far as to invite them to dinner.”

  I took her to the Café Beaubourg, where I was a regular. I apprised Pétronille of the fact that the establishment did have toilets.

  “You can be so old hat!” she said.

  We spent a very pleasant evening. Pétronille filled me in about the last four years. She had been earning her living as a supervisor in a private lycée while she worked on her novel. A big kid in the final year had called her a “pleb”; she answered back that he was a “toff.” The poor little boy went whining to his parents, who demanded that the subordinate apologize to the dear angel. Pétronille countered that “toff” was no more of an insult than “pleb,” and that was a fact, so there was no reason to be offended. The headmistress dismissed Pétronille.

  “One week later I found a publisher for Honey Vinegar,” she concluded.

  “Excellent timing.”

  “It’s going well. Don’t hesitate to invite me to some of your fancy parties, I’m not very well known in the circles you frequent.”

  “I think you might be getting the wrong idea about the kind of life I lead.”

  “Go on, you’re young and famous, you must get invited everywhere.”

  “Young? I’m thirty-four.”

  “Well, then you’re old and famous.”

  It was true that I received invitations to everything, but I always declined them. It occurred to me then that perhaps these society events would not be so boring in the company of Pétronille.

  “I have an invitation to an afternoon of champagne tasting at the Ritz at the end of the month.”

  “You’re on.”

  I smiled. My initial scheme had been to make her my drinking companion. And it seemed to be falling into place, effortlessly.

  On the appointed day Pétronille was waiting for me outside the Ritz. As usual she was wearing jeans and a leather jacket, and Doc Martens. As for me, I was dressed like a turn of the century Templar.

  “I look like a hooligan compared to you,” she said.

  “You’re fine.”

  The salons of the Ritz were infested with society matrons who inspected my friend from head to toe with open disgust. Such a lack of refinement unsettled me, and I cringed.

  “Do you want us to leave?” she asked.

  “Out of the question.”

  We had come for the champagne, after all. There were several tables, with different brands. We started with a Perrier-Jouët. A wine steward recited a promising little spiel. In such instances I love being the converted to whom one preaches.

  Champagne almost tastes better at these society gatherings. The more hostile the context, the more the drink acts as an oasis, something you cannot get from tippling at home.

  The first flute was delightful.

  “Not bad stuff,” said Pétronille to the wine steward.

  The man gave her a kindly smile. All the wine stewards I have met are exquisite creatures, without exception. I don’t know if it is the profession that makes them that way or if it is their choice of métier that presupposes it. That day, at the Ritz, the wine stewards were the only ones worth the time of day.

  As we moved around the room, I was immediately harpooned by ladies who gushed that they had seen me on television. That was all they had to say, but it took forever. I interrupted:

  “Allow me to introduce Pétronille Fanto, a talented young novelist.”

  Every time, these creatures in their headbands were petrified. Their expression veered from ecstatic where I was concerned to disdainful with regard to the guttersnipe I was hoping to introduce. Suddenly they had a mission of the utmost importance elsewhere. Pétronille, forthright, would hold out her hand, and many of them had the effrontery not to shake it.

  “Do I smell like dog food?” she asked, with disgusted disbelief, which I shared.

  “I do apologize,” I said. “I didn’t expect such bold-faced rudeness.”

  “It’s not your fault. Really, I’m glad to be here. You have to see it to believe it.”

  “The champagne won’t snub you, that’s for sure. Let’s go try the Jean-Josselin.”

  It turned out to be excellent. To the best of my knowledge it is the only champagne that tastes of yeast: a marvel.

  As we had to be sure to avoid ladies with headbands and concentrate on the tasting, we ended up dead drunk. In company, I become joyful and expansive. As I could hardly share my agreeable disposition with the other guests at the gathering, I was ever so jolly with the wine stewards, and with Pétronille I turned confiding.

  She was in an advanced state of inebriation, and quickly proved openly rebellious. She hardly listened to what I said, replying rather with sharp observations about the other guests. Our conversation took this sort of turn:

  “I think one of the goals in life is to be plastered, at night, in a beautiful city.”

  “Where on earth did they find this bunch of shrews, anyway?”

  “There are things to nibble on over at the buffet but I don’t recommend them. My sister Juliette says, and she’s right, that while wine improves food, the opposite is never true. The despicable race of connoisseurs scream with rage at the thought. And yet I have always found it to be true: take one bite and drinking loses its magical edge.”

  “If she goes on staring at me I am going to plant my foot in her ugly face.”

  “I have nothing against food, but I think you should only begin to dine when you can no longer take another sip. Which significantly delays the time you sit down to eat.”

  “But is she even worth me lifting my foot off the floor, I kinda doubt it.”

  “Sometimes I’ve delayed dinner so long that I couldn’t eat. When that happens, it is sheer ecstasy simply to collapse from drunkenness onto a voluptuous sofa. You have to learn to plot carefully and well ahead of time the location for your collapse. The Ritz is not ideal. Henceforth I will make sure I only accept places that are conducive to divine subsidence.”

  “I’m going to ask her if she wants my picture.”

  Mechanically, I followed Pétronille, continuing to pour out my thoughts. I had no idea she was actually going to ask this woman if she wanted her photograph.

  “I beg your pardon?” said the woman, practically choking.

  “Just give me your address and I’ll send it to you. I know just how you must feel: a picture of an authentic pleb, you can’t get much more exotic than that.”

  Terrified, the woman gave me an imploring look, as if begging for help. I merely performed my socially appointed role: “Dear Madam, allow me to introduce Pétronille Fanto, a young novelist whom I admire. Her debut novel, Honey Vinegar, is bursting with talent.”

  “How very interesting! I shall buy it,” said the lady, trembling.

  “Great idea, my photo is on the back cover. That way you can stare at me to your heart’s content.”

  What a sublime conclusion. I grabbed Pétronille by the arm. I could tell that if I didn’t restrain her, she would vent her spite unremittingly.

  We tried yet another champagne. At this point, I would be lying if I claimed to remember what it was. But it was deli
cious and graciously served. Pétronille no longer pretended to be tasting: instead of taking a sip with a contemplative air to appreciate the bouquet, she now gulped down the entire contents of the flute in one go and then held it out to the wine steward and said, “Tide’s out!”

  The gentleman filled it up for her again with a charming smile. Intuitively, I did not trust his good manners. If things went on like this, Pétronille would ask to drink straight out of the bottle, and the man would hand it to her as if it were the most natural thing on earth.

  “It’s getting a bit stuffy in here,” I said in a hushed voice. “I think it’s time to go.”

  Grave mistake. Pétronille exclaimed, very loudly, “You think it’s stuffy in here? I don’t. It’s just warming up, don’t you think?”

  Everyone turned to look at us. My cheeks on fire, I tried to coax my friend over to the door. An endeavor that was harder than I anticipated. She went all heavy and floppy, and I couldn’t simply lead her by the hand. In the end I had to shove her forward as if she were a piece of furniture.

  “But I haven’t tried all the champagnes!” she protested.

  Outside the Ritz, the fresh air took a slight edge off our inebriation. I sighed with relief, and Pétronille vociferated: “I was having a good time in there!”

  “As for me, when I’m drunk I love to walk around the posh neighborhoods in Paris.”

  “You call this posh?” she roared, scornfully considering the Place Vendôme.

  “So show me the part of Paris you love,” I answered.

  She liked the idea. She took me by the arm and led me toward the Tuileries, then the Louvre (she pointed to it and confessed, “Now it really is not bad, after all.”) We crossed the Pont du Carrousel (“As rivers go, the Seine is the very best,” she declared) and went the length of the quais at a brisk clip. We went past the Place Saint-Michel and ended up outside a bookshop worthy of a novel by Dickens: the sign read “Shakespeare and Company.”

  “Here we are,” she said.

  I had never heard of this fairy-tale place. Enchanted, I gazed at both the outside and the inside: through the window you could see books that looked as if they must be full of magic spells, and booklovers whom no one disturbed in their reading, and a young blond bookseller, her skin like porcelain, so pretty and gracious that just to look at her you knew you had to be dreaming.

  “Shakespeare really is your patron saint,” I concluded.

  “Find me a better one.”

  “That would be impossible. But what you love about Paris is not all that Parisian.”

  “That’s open to debate. Even in Stratford-upon-Avon you won’t find anything like this bookstore. But having said that, if it’s ultra-Parisian you want, then follow me.”

  We went deeper into the narrow streets of the fifth arrondissement. She made her way, as surefooted as a Sherpa. I eventually realized where she was taking me.

  “The Arènes de Lutèce!” I exclaimed.

  “I love this place. It’s so anachronistic. In Rome a site like this would seem so ordinary that no one would notice. But in Paris, where all the Antiquity is underground, it’s a real treat to have a relic of the era when we were Lutetians.”

  “Speak for yourself. I’m from Belgic Gaul. The only country in the world whose name—in French anyway—comes from an adjective turned into a noun.”

  We gazed respectfully at the arena. A silence of catacombs reigned.

  “I feel very Gallo-Roman,” declared Pétronille.

  “Tonight, or in general?”

  “You are so not normal,” she answered with a laugh.

  I didn’t understand, so I disregarded her remark.

  “Actually, Pétronille is the feminine for Petronius,” I continued. “As in Petronius Arbiter—you are a little arbiter of elegance.”

  “Why little?”

  You were not supposed to joke about the fact she was only five foot three.

  A prestigious women’s magazine offered me a commission to go to London and interview Vivienne Westwood.

  I hadn’t been accepting commissions for quite some time. But in this case I yielded to temptation for two reasons: first of all, in order to step on English soil at last—however strange it might seem, even by 2001 I had never been there—and the second, obviously, to meet the extraordinary Vivienne Westwood, an icon as chic as she is punk. It didn’t help matters that my contact at the magazine was an exquisite woman who described the mission to me in the following terms:

  “Madame Westwood was brimming with enthusiasm when I said your name. She described your style as being deliciously continental. I think she’d be thrilled to treat you to a garment from her new collection.”

  I capitulated. The journalist graciously expressed her delight. A room would be booked at a luxury hotel. A car would come and fetch me, etc. As she spoke, I began to see the film she was describing. And I wanted everything in that film, avidly.

  It made sense. The Nothomb family is of distant English extraction. They left Northumberland in the eleventh century and crossed the Channel, just to be contrary to William the Conqueror. If I had waited this long to visit the island of my forebears, it was because I needed this nod from fate: the grunge-queen of crinolines, holding out her hand, “brimming with enthusiasm” (besotted, I said the journalist’s words to myself over and over).

  So, in December 2001, I boarded the Eurostar for the very first time. When the train went down into the famous tunnel, my heart began to pound. Over my head was this significant body of water my ancestors had seen fit to cross in the other direction one millennium earlier. In the event of a loss of watertightness, the Eurostar would be transformed into a underwater missile, to streak through the fish all the way to the famous cliffs. I found my fantasy so beautiful that I was beginning to wish it would come true, when the train burst into a desolate winter landscape.

  I let out a cry. I gazed, stunned, at this unfamiliar countryside. Before we crossed the Channel, the empty fields had been dreary too, but now, I felt the nature of their dreariness was different. This was English sadness. The streets, the signs, the few dwellings I could see—everything was different.

  Later, I saw on my left an immense redbrick industrial ruin that took my breath away. I never found out what it was.

  When the train pulled into Waterloo Station, I almost wept for joy. As I stepped out onto British soil at last, I felt like the queen of the ball. I was sure the earth trembled as it recognized the footstep of its distant progeny. A taxi drove me to the hotel, as promised, and it met my every expectation: I had a room as vast as a cricket field; the size of the bed provided ample sparring room for a billionaire couple negotiating a divorce.

  I like to travel light and consequently I was already wearing the appropriate clothing: since this was how Vivienne Westwood had described me, I had put on the most continental of my lace redingotes and my Belgian Diabolo hat. I made my complexion snowy white, my eyes charcoal black, and my lips carmine red. Outside the lobby, a car was waiting for me.

  When I arrived at the legendary boutique, I was not made to use the front entrance, but rather a porte cochère around the back, which led directly to the workshop. Enchanted, I craned my neck to attend to the miracle of creation, but not a minute later I was ushered into a tiny storage room furnished with two benches and smelling of rubber tires.

  “Miss Westwood shall arrive soon,” said the man in black who had taken me there.

  There were no windows in the room, and as I waited I began to feel anxious. After ten minutes or so the man in black opened the door and said, “Miss Westwood.”

  Into the room came a lady with long carrot-purée-colored hair. She held out a limp hand, neither looking at me nor speaking, then she collapsed on a bench, without inviting me to sit down. I nevertheless sat on the other bench and told her how delighted I was to meet her.

  I
got the impression that my words had fallen into a black hole.

  Vivienne Westwood had just turned sixty. In 2001 no one thought of this as old anymore. I would gladly have made an exception in her case. It was all about her tight-lipped expression, the surly slant to her mouth, and above all her resemblance to the ghost of the aging Queen Elizabeth I: the same faded ginger coloring, the same coldness, the same conviction that one was dealing with someone ageless. She was wearing a straight skirt in a golden tweed and a sort of bodice over the skirt, in the same hue. Such eccentricity in no way attenuated her bourgeois demeanor. It was hard to believe that there could ever have been any connection between a punk aesthetic and this tubby biddy.

  I had met many unpleasant people in my life, but none of them compared to this massive wall of scorn. At first I thought she didn’t understand my English because of my accent; as I expressed this concern, she murmured, “I’ve managed to understand worse than you.”

  Discountenanced, I went ahead with the questions I had planned. It is infinitely more difficult to ask questions than to answer. At her age, Vivienne Westwood must have been well aware of this fact. However, every time I had the audacity to interrogate her, she gave a little sigh, or even stifled a yawn. Then she would come out with a generous answer, which went to show that she was not displeased with my question.

  The commissioning journalist had told me that, on hearing my name, “Miss Westwood brimmed with enthusiasm.” How well she hid it! This must be what they meant by “stiff upper lip.”

  “May I visit the workshop?” I asked.

  What had I said? Vivienne Westwood looked at me with indignant wrath. She did not deign to answer, and I was grateful to her for that, for no doubt she would have raked me over the coals.

  So unsettled that I no longer knew what to say, I asked, on the off-chance, “Miss Westwood, have you ever wanted to write?”

  A pinnacle of scorn, she spluttered, “Write?! Please, don’t be vulgar. There is nothing more vulgar than writing. Nowadays the most insignificant football player writes. No, I do not write. I leave that to others.”