“Well, that’s it. There’s nothing else.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing!”
“That’s not like you, Marcelle.”
“I don’t have to be like me anymore.” She threw a dirty look into the street and then, turning back to Mademoiselle Beauvert, asked in a curt tone, just to be polite, “How about you? How’s life in New York?”
“Boston, Marcelle.”
“Oh, that’s right. Is it going well?”
“John and I are . . . very happy.”
Marcelle refrained from saying, “Damn,” again, and merely sighed.
At that moment, a fight broke out in the branches. Three parakeets were chasing after an African gray parrot.
Mademoiselle Beauvert watched them with growing anxiety. “I’m going to tell you the truth, Marcelle.”
“The truth about what, Mademoiselle?”
“Have you seen Copernicus?”
“Excuse me?”
“When I was leaving for Boston, there was a . . . a false maneuver at the airport. Copernicus’s cage opened on the tarmac. My parrot has disappeared.”
“So he’s not living with you in the States?”
“No. It’s for the best really, because, unlike me, John doesn’t like animals very much. Well, never mind that.”
“I do understand, you know. Mind you, when it comes to dogs . . . Well, at least they obey. I’ve had two that—”
“I know, Marcelle, I know. Copernicus probably wanted to come back to where he’d grown up and always lived. Place d’Arezzo.”
“Yes, that makes sense.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Mademoiselle Beauvert exclaimed, a powerful sense of hope surging within her.
“But I can’t say I’ve seen him.”
“Oh!”
Since, thanks to her lie, Mademoiselle Beauvert could now examine the trees with impunity, she went out onto the square and cried at the top of her voice, “Copernicus? Copernicus! Copernicus, are you there?”
Marcelle let her shout for five minutes, then went up to her with a sympathetic expression on her face. “I feel sorry for you. Mademoiselle Beauvert. Your Copernicus isn’t here. I would have seen him. And, frankly, I doubt he’ll have survived at the airport. It’s a well-known fact that birds get sucked up by the plane engines. Whoops, and in they go! Do forgive me, but your Copernicus has probably ended up like a slice of pâté.”
“You’ve never liked him!” Mademoiselle Beauvert was so angry, she couldn’t restrain her words. She was hurt by the casual way Marcelle had evoked Copernicus’s possible demise. She looked at her and congratulated herself on having put up with her for so many years: not only was she a mediocre cleaner, but her conversation was depressing. “What about your son?” she asked in a honeyed voice, certain that the mention of him would hurt Marcelle.
“We’ve had a falling-out.”
“Why?”
“It all went horribly wrong.”
“What did?”
“The thing with his fiancée. What a pain in the ass! A real little vixen!”
Mademoiselle Beauvert was delighted by what she was hearing. “What happened, my poor Marcelle?”
“He decided to introduce her to me on ‘neutral territory,’ as he called it. A strange expression, to start with. As if we were at war! Anyway, we met in the tearoom of a big hotel. Right from the start, I didn’t like the face the stupid girl made when she saw me, Mademoiselle. What did she expect? That I’d look like my son? I’m a woman, so it’s different anyway, and on top of everything else, I’d gotten all dressed up. I was wearing a hat.”
“A hat?”
“Yes.”
“You, Marcelle?”
“Oh, I’d taken on board what you’d told me . . . that we were from different worlds, the Peperdicks and me. So I bought myself this hat from Inno. With a veil.”
“A veil?”
“Yes, it’s very fashionable.”
“A black veil?”
“Oh, no, a white one. I’m not in mourning.”
“And what happened?”
“Because I thought the girl was a bit shy, I made her comfortable by talking instead of her. It’s only natural, with age and experience you have more things to say. It was a friendly conversation. I was very pleased. In the evening, my son called me and insulted me. He said I had no business saying what I’d said.”
“Like what, for instance?”
“Everything. He called it ‘despicable.’ I remember the word because I’d never heard it before. ‘Despicable.’ I’ve looked it up in a dictionary since. But I understood what he meant from his tone, anyway.”
“Be specific, Marcelle. What did he accuse you of?”
“The girl had hay fever, so we talked about health. My son couldn’t stand the fact that I told her about my prolapse. But a prolapse is painful. Then I told her about my treatment for constipation. You know perfectly well, Mademoiselle Beauvert, that I’ve always had these problems. It’s because of my left colon.”
“Your left colon?”
“Yes, my left colon is too long. That’s the way it is! It’s too long, so it gets blocked.”
“Thank goodness it’s not your right one!”
“Anyway, now my son’s gotten on his high horse and doesn’t want to see me again. Too bad! I’ll punish him, I won’t go to his wedding!”
“And what about your two hundred and forty-two euros?”
“My two hundred and forty-two euros?”
“For your night table.”
“He gave them back to me.”
For over five minutes, Marcelle wept, her nose in a handkerchief that was too small. Mademoiselle Beauvert took her over to a bench, sat down with her, and gave her comforting pats on the shoulder, all the while searching the branches. Alas, even though she twisted her neck in every direction, Copernicus was nowhere to be seen.
After a decent interval, she kissed Marcelle, promised she would come back on her next “trip to the continent,” then walked away with a light, coquettish step.
Half a mile farther on, dripping with sweat because of the heat and her frayed nerves, she got on a bus that would take her back to Madou.
As soon as she was in her neighborhood, she slowed down and her mood darkened. A kind of emollient liquid spread through her. Twice, she stopped and leaned in a doorway, felling so weak she was afraid she would faint.
As she paused outside the Abuzer sandwich shop, a man came running up to her. “Mademoiselle Beauvert!”
She stared wide-eyed at the dark-skinned man smiling at her from ear to ear.
“Mademoiselle Beauvert, it’s such a pleasure to see you.”
She looked around for someone to help but could only see other, equally hairy men, and muttered anxiously, “Who are you?”
“Don’t you recognize me? I used to live in the same building as you.”
“As me?”
“On Place d’Arezzo.”
“You?”
“Yes. I was staying with Madame Marcelle.”
“Oh, yes!”
She suddenly recognized the man the concierge had always referred to as “my Afghan.”
Nervously, he said something in an unfamiliar language to a woman and three small children who were on the other side of the street. “Let me introduce my wife and children. They were finally able to join me here.” He added with a radiant, conspiratorial smile, “A family reunion!”
With forced politeness, Mademoiselle Beauvert shook hands with each of them. Intimidated, the Afghan’s wife and children greeted her as obsequiously as if she were the Queen of England, which made her resolve to continue the conversation. “So how are you, my dear . . . ” She couldn’t remember his name. “Have you found a job?”
“Yes, I’ve found a
position as an interpreter.”
“That’s wonderful. I didn’t know you spoke French.”
“French, English, Arabic, and Pashtun.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Mademoiselle Beauvert nodded, wondering why Marcelle had claimed the contrary.
Since his family didn’t understand French, the man was able to ask the question that had led him to approach Mademoiselle Beauvert. “And how is Marcelle?”
“Marcelle? What can I say? She’s getting ready for her son’s wedding. He’s marrying one the richest heiresses in the country, you know.”
“I’m very happy for her. Marcelle is a generous woman. She offered me hospitality. Of course, she has her faults, she tries to ignore the passing of time, she refuses to believe that a lady her age should give up on certain things. Apart from that, she’s very kind. Thanks to her, I had a roof over my head, food, and time to look for a job. An angel. Marcelle is an angel.”
“You haven’t seen her again?”
He blushed, embarrassed. “No, Madame. I can’t. Because of what I’ve just told you, because of the things she imagines . . . She never accepted, even for a minute, the fact that I was married, that I love my wife, that I was faithful to her and waiting for her to come here.” He turned scarlet, embarrassed to be talking about this. “But she’s a kind woman, very kind. I owe her my life, and my family’s life.”
Since his face betrayed his emotion, he tried to avoid his family’s inquisitive looks, quickly blurted out a goodbye, and set off again down the street in a flurry of waving.
Mademoiselle Beauvert thought about Marcelle and him for a few minutes. Which of them was twisting the truth? Marcelle? The Afghan? Or both? She would never know. Perhaps neither of them knew themselves, given the extent to which people tell each other the truth as they wish it to be, as opposed to how it is.
She dismissed these concerns and carried on walking. None of this would give her back her parrot. She had destroyed her one love affair through her own stupidity. The only living creature that had loved her, in a pure, surprising, disinterested way, had fled into a hostile world. And all because of her! She sighed and stopped to catch her breath once again, then continued shuffling along, holding on to the walls.
She felt swallowed up when she reached No. 5 Rue Bakmir. The prospect of shutting herself in her dark, damp single room made her shudder. Brushing her hand over the letterboxes, she noticed that she had a stack of mail: knowing it contained bad news, she ignored it.
She went into the courtyard, got out her key, shoulders stooped, neck aching, and inserted it in the old keyhole that had been forced so many times.
“Sergio!”
She gave a start.
From out of the sky behind her, a shrill voice repeated enthusiastically, “Sergio! Sergio! Sergio!”
“Copernicus!”
Before she could turn around, the parrot landed on her shoulder. “Hello, Madame.”
He rubbed her cheek; tears in her eyes, Mademoiselle Beauvert let herself be made a fuss of. Then she asked him to sit on her fingers—which he did with a little waddle, as voluble as a jazz musician—and opened the door to her apartment.
“Come in, darling. We’re going to have a nice evening.”
They looked into each other’s eyes. She thought she saw a flame in the bird’s black pupils, a flame that made her blush, warmed her, and disturbed her. She smiled. He cocked his head.
In return, she gave him a kiss. When her lips brushed his beak, he quivered. Then she gently held him to her chest, thinking about what the bird seller had told her: a large macaw like Copernicus could live for fifty years.
She closed the door behind them. They would grow old together. And, with a bit of luck, she would go at the same time as him . . .
9
A woman with a parrot is a common motif in painting.”
Wim was commenting on a huge acrylic canvas by a New York painter to a number of potential buyers who had flocked to his loft. The painting showed a beautiful naked girl surrounded by a flock of parrots; even though it was ten feet by six and a half, the painting simulated a rough sketch, a drawing with thick lines that had then been filled in using primary colors.
“A naked, lascivious woman holding a parrot, don’t you recall? The bird in its multicolored plumage always looks at the white flesh with desire.”
The visitors expressed astonishment.
“Remember the Tiepolo,” he went on, “where a lovely young girl places the bird on her bare chest. There’s Delacroix, with his odalisque caressing a green and red parrot. Courbet, of course, looking forward to The Origin of the World with his Woman with a Parrot in 1866. In the same year, Manet, in an allusion to Courbet, shows his mistress with a parrot, but this time, the lover remains chaste, dressed in a robe, which is quite humorous, because the parrot symbolizes eroticism and the exotic. Since then, the theme has been treated many times: Renoir, Vallotton, Frida Kahlo. Here, Bob John, a young artist from Manhattan, a rising star, has given his own twist to this inspiring scene.”
“I understand exotic,” a female customer in a silk suit cut in. “But why erotic?”
“The parrot seems to be saying something, like the lover. It comes out with recognizable words, but what is it actually trying to say? The sound appears to matter more than the meaning. What language are parrots talking beneath the French, English, Spanish words they use? What’s their intention? What are they implying? The answer that painters give is: desire.”
“I’d never thought of that.”
“A parrot, like a man, presents a semblance of civilization. On the surface, the bird composes sentences; in reality, it wants to consummate. Beneath the babble, its natural wildness is expressed, becoming almost threatening, whatever the sophisticated forms it takes.”
“Funny you should be telling us this so close to this square with its parrots,” the woman in the suit exclaimed. “Recent events seem to have proved you right about their erotic magnetism.”
“I beg your pardon?” Wim asked.
“Zachary Bidermann,” she said wickedly. “He does live here, doesn’t he? He must have fallen under the spell of the parrots!”
“A good spell or an evil spell?” her husband asked.
“Both. Sex is a razor’s edge.”
“As long as it’s not blunt!”
Everybody laughed at the husband’s quip. He was a big, smug, ruddy-faced man, who thought of himself as a great joker. Wim, who hated the kind of live wire who only listened to what you said in order to twist it his way, turned away irritably and threw Meg a look of distress, a look she understood.
“Wim!” she cried out. “Phone call for you from Dubai!”
“I’ll be right there.”
Being redolent of fortunes in petrodollars, the word “Dubai” made an impression on the customers; Wim merely had to add an elegant “Excuse me,” and they looked at him admiringly and let him go.
He got to his office and wearily pushed open the door. “Thank you, Meg. There are days when I really can’t stand my profession.”
“Why?”
“They’re only here because of the Bidermann scandal, because of the address, so that they can look at Place d’Arezzo from my windows. They won’t buy anything. There’s no point making an effort.”
“Would you like me to take over?”
“That’d be very kind of you. But don’t overdo it, Meg: they’re not going to dig into their pockets.”
Resolutely, Meg strode back to the group. She didn’t have Wim’s eloquence, but she was precise and well-informed and could talk intelligently about works of art.
Remaining in his office, Wim relaxed and skimmed through an auction catalogue in order to distract himself. Since the night of the Bidermann reception, he had grown uncertain as to what direction his life was taking.
After that pleasant
night they had spent together, he and Meg had greeted the day with surprise. Or rather, Wim had been surprised to wake up beside his assistant, who lay rolled up in the sheets, naked, her head sunk into the pillow, fast asleep. Because of his hangover, it had taken him a while to remember the previous evening. When he had finally put the situation into specific words—I had sex with my assistant—he had panicked. What on earth got into me? Not only is she not my kind of woman, but I’ll never find a better assistant.
During the night, alcohol had clearly excused everything, but how was he to think about what had happened now that the intoxication had worn off? Drunkenness and the removal of inhibitions had probably been good reasons to make love, but sobriety reminded him of good reasons not to have made it. How could I have had sex with that Flemish pudding? I’m not attracted to her. Worse still, I don’t even think of her as a woman. If I can sleep with that, I’m done for. There are limits. Below a certain level, it’s really not for me.
Wim had gotten up, taken a shower, shaved, brushed his hair, then had concluded, once his image had been restored, that he would never refer to that episode again, but would speak and act as if nothing had happened. He didn’t yet know to what extent Meg was going to help him with this denial . . .
Meg had slept so soundly that she didn’t open her eyes until quite some time later. When she sat up in a deserted bedroom she didn’t recognize, she felt a pang of fear. From outside on Place d’Arezzo there was a clamor of loud voices. She went to the window and saw onlookers, police officers, photographers, reporters. Her instinctive reaction was to move back against the wall in order not to be seen. When she realized that they probably hadn’t come for her, she peered through the window again.
The movements of various groups were converging on the Bidermanns’ town house.
A throng of women was screaming, “Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!”
To their right, a group of railroad workers held up a banner proclaiming a strange message: You won’t fuck Belgium.
Scratching her head, she was lost for a few moments, searched for the TV set, sat down in front of it, and switched it on.
The Carousel of Desire Page 51