“You wanted to make love, right?”
“Not this way,” she said, rolling into a ball.
“Not this way?” he said. “It’s the way I want it to be, Laurène. Exactly how I want it.”
When Robert arrived at Fonteyne two days later, he found the house calm and well organized. As soon as he got there, Pauline latched onto him. She was a bit bored, while Louis-Marie was busy with the tasks that Jules was giving him. Dominique had interviewed several nurses before hiring one, a middle-aged woman that she’d seen in town a few times. A small room that no one ever used, contiguous to the library, was set up for the nurse. Aurélien’s bed was brought up to the library.
Jules oversaw the various preparations without intervening. When a wheelchair and other essentials for Aurélien were shipped to the house, Jules was present and looked even more discouraged. He wasn’t speaking to Alexandre anymore, waiting for a departure that wasn’t coming.
In the hospital, Aurélien refused to try to communicate with anyone, even with gestures. But when Robert mentioned the option of rehab in a specialized institution, he received a negative reaction right away. It was a first step. Aurélien was still completely lucid, which made his condition even more difficult to bear. Every day, Jules spent at least one hour at his bedside, alone. Both looked at each other, certain that they knew what the other felt and thought, no matter what. Louis-Marie and Robert never interrupted those moments.
But it was with Robert that Aurélien first tried to speak. He wanted to say something and Robert tried to question him, but he only managed to irritate Aurélien.
“Is it about Fonteyne? The family? You want the notary to come over?”
Robert felt horrible treating his father like a child or like some handicapped old man, which—alas!—is what he’d become. Part of him was evaluating, professionally, Aurélien Laverzac’s condition, his chances of survival still uncertain, without hope of full recovery. But on the other hand, Robert was looking at his father, a man he’d always respected enormously, and whose humiliation stung like a burn.
“Is it about one of us?” Robert asked.
And all of a sudden, Robert understood. He sighed and whispered, “It’s about Jules, of course. …”
Aurélien shut his eyes, satisfied, and Robert felt relieved.
“You’d like to talk about his adoption, is that it?” he said. “With him? With me? But you’re in no condition to tell a story. … Is there anyone who knows the truth about it?”
Robert was treading on thin ice—he knew that—but there was no time to waste.
“I’m going to try to help you, Dad. … No, you wouldn’t be able to write. …”
Aurélien had lifted his left hand, which Robert set back on the blanket.
“I assure you. …”
Moved, he thought of another way.
“Let’s try this,” he said. “I’m going to go through your address book and read the names out loud, okay? And you let me know if I get to the right name. …”
Robert was thinking as he spoke. If Aurélien had decided to shed light on this, he must think that he was nearing the end. The topic had remained taboo for thirty years, and now he felt the need to tell his adopted son the truth before it was too late. Robert thought that his father might die overnight, without being able to tell Jules the secret of his birth. Though uncomfortable, he felt the urge to press the issue.
“There must be some record of this somewhere. … City hall? Some church? The Margaux police department?”
Aurélien blinked many times and his hand fidgeted, and Robert had a flash.
“You were very good friends with the police chief, Officer Delgas back then. …”
His father’s grimace, which was no doubt a smile, indicated to Robert that he had hit the nail.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll tell Jules to go see Delgas.”
Aurélien relaxed and shut his eyes. After a moment, Robert got up and silently walked out of the room. He felt as though he’d been given an overpowering responsibility. He left the hospital and arrived back at Fonteyne quite late, completely unsure as to what to do next.
Pauline was the first one he ran into.
“So, how is he?” she asked.
“Not better,” he snapped back. “As though you really cared.”
Insulted, Pauline grabbed him by the arm.
“Hey, not you too! Everybody is being so grim around here.”
She smiled and added, “You’re handsome tonight. I always was attracted to you. And you’re aging so well. …”
He looked at her, horrified.
“How can you say things like that, Pauline?”
“Why not? Because Aurélien is in the hospital? Because Louis-Marie is around here somewhere? Chill, Bob. …”
Robert was exhausted, but still he wanted her.
“Pauline,” he whispered, “I wish you didn’t exist.”
“You’d die of boredom!” she said, cheerfully.
He asked himself sincerely whether he hated her.
He left Pauline alone in the entrance hall and went looking for Jules. He found him in the library, sitting at his favorite spot, the ladder’s rung.
“Dad is going to be here tomorrow or the day after,” Robert said. “Are you happy?”
Jules produced an uncharacteristically bitter smile.
“Happy?” he asked. “I’m happy he’s alive, yes. Even in his condition. …”
Robert let his gaze wander across the bookshelves, over the leather spines.
Then he turned to Jules and said, “I had a sort of … not conversation, but exchange with him, just now at the hospital. … He’s afraid he might die, and he’s right. …”
Jules gave his brother an incredulous look. “He’s right?”
“Yes. Listen to me, little bro …”
Robert’s voice was filled with affection.
“I know what he means to you,” he continued. “Much more than to any of us, no doubt. … And so you have to wrap your brain around that, Jules. He’s probably not going to live much longer. He’s at the mercy of too many different things, and his body is worn-out. It’s no use expecting any improvement. As a physician, I hope he goes quickly. …”
Jules, unable to speak, seemed to be drowning in his brother’s words.
“You know him just as well as I do,” Robert continued. “Better than I do, as a matter of fact. … Take him down from his pedestal for one second, and you’ll agree with me that he’s always been authoritarian, demanding, tyrannical … He never showed anyone any pity, including himself. Do you think that such a man can live his life in a wheelchair, being pushed around for little rides on the front lawn? Not being able to speak, drooling … You think he could put up with that?”
Jules, his eyes glued to the floor, shook his head.
“I love and respect him, but he’s always been too demanding. How could he ever accept this humiliation? He can’t even eat by himself! And he’s suffering from incontinence. …”
Jules shivered as he listened to his brother.
“The Aurélien Laverzac we knew just a few days ago, with his lovers, his fits of anger, his great meals, is never going to exist again. All that is a thing of the past. But there’s one thing, one last thing that he still cares about deeply. …”
“Stop that,” Jules urged Robert.
“No. This is really important to him. It’s weighing on him a lot. When the time comes, I’ll tell you who to go see. …”
Robert saw the tears in Jules’s eyes and he was moved.
“Jesus,” he said. “It’s good to see you cry. I always thought you didn’t know how to. …”
He went over to Jules and grabbed him by the shoulders in a clumsy way. Jules’s despair was so real and deep that Robert hugged him.
“Don’t feel alone,” he said. “We’re here for you. As for Fonteyne, you’ve been running things for a long time, right? Everything is going to be okay.”
Jules wiped his
nose with his sleeve and Robert smiled. He let go of his brother and quietly left the library. Now by himself, Jules calmed down little by little. Having cried made him feel a bit better. He thought about what Robert said. No, running Fonteyne didn’t scare him, though he felt as if it was a great weight on his shoulders at the moment. On the other hand, he shivered at the thought of learning who his real parents were, even though he’d always been dying to know.
“Aurélien …” he whispered.
He’d loved him so much these past thirty years, devotedly and passionately, that the very idea of his death was unbearable.
He made himself look at the bed, the wheelchair, the bedpan, the blankets, and the bathrobe Fernande had brought up from his room. All of a sudden he missed his childhood in a painful, atrocious way. He’d always needed his father more than he would’ve liked. For many years, he would’ve been lost without Aurélien’s grip on him. He’d always been extremely proud to be his son. Aurélien had been right to force him to bow to his authority at times, as it made him into a man. When Jules balked at the idea of doing his military service in order to remain at Fonteyne, Aurélien had harshly set him straight. He’d adopted the same approach when it came to Jules’s education and then, later, the administration of the estate. Aurélien pushed him to work hard and never lie. He instilled his set of values in him, a high respect for the name Laverzac, enormous ambition when it came to their wine, and an inflexible will to succeed. Jules could stand on his own two feet, Fonteyne had nothing to fear.
The young man left his ladder, at peace with himself. He then thought about Laurène and told himself he’d like to have kids of his own.
Despite Fernande’s protests, they’d all decided not to have dinner in the dining room. They’d come, one by one, to take refuge in the kitchen. Then they’d asked for potato omelets, there, right away. They were like kids, and Fernande had to give in. She improvised a dinner, adding to the omelet some mesclun, as well as foie gras.
Since Robert had warned his brothers that it’d be best to leave Jules alone when he came out of the library, no one said anything to him. Laurène and Pauline made him sit between them.
Without Aurélien, without Frédérique, they felt comfortable together and began to chat freely. Even Alexandre, distant and morose and sitting at the far end of the table, began to relax and participate in the conversation, though he made sure that he never spoke directly to Jules.
“Fernande,” Pauline said. “Did the Laverzac boys eat in the kitchen when they were little?”
That made everyone burst out laughing.
“Of course,” Fernande said, now serious. “Except on Sundays, and on holidays and birthdays. …”
Louis-Marie, amused by those childhood memories, added, “There was Fernande and Clothilde with us, plus a nanny to take care of the little ones. They were never around for very long, though.”
“That’s because Dad kept flirting with them,” Robert said.
“Flirting with them?” Louis-Marie scoffed. “He was trying to get them to sleep with him!”
Jules was chuckling along with his brothers.
Fernande was breaking eggs in a salad bowl. “Girls,” she said with a little laugh, “he did like them. …”
“The worst wasn’t the nannies coming and going,” Robert said. “It was getting home from school with our report cards. …”
Once more the brothers burst out laughing.
“Were you happy,” Pauline asked, “with such a father?”
“Happy enough,” Louis-Marie said. “He wasn’t particularly affectionate, but he was there for us. When it came to important things, he knew how to cut us some slack. And he was always in our corner. I still remember that dentist who wouldn’t anesthetize Jules. Aurélien made quite a scene before we left the office!”
“So,” Pauline said with a crooked smile, “he wanted to be the only one making your lives miserable?”
That made Fernande chuckle.
“He scared the daylights out of us,” Dominique said. “Each time he came over to visit Daddy, we didn’t dare say a word, Laurène and me. Back then, I never would’ve been able to imagine that one day I’d be at the head of his house. …”
Alexandre shot his wife an irritated look but said nothing.
“You guys were like heroes,” Laurène added, “for daring to stand up to him, if only once in a while. …”
Fernande sighed and said, “Still, having to raise four boys by yourself, that’s pretty hard, you know. … And every day you came up with stupid things to bug him about. Especially you, Jules. …”
Those comments were followed by a brief moment of silence, broken by Robert.
“When he said ‘my sons,’ he was really proud. He came to Paris, after I graduated from med school, and he took me to the Tour d’argent, no less. He was proud of me, and of himself.”
Getting more and more nostalgic, they were looking at each other, trying to come up with memories to share.
Without addressing anyone in particular, Alexandre suddenly said, “I remember this kid that Jules liked a lot. A complete failure in school, and from this terrible family to boot! When Dad learned about it …”
“What did he do?” Pauline interrupted, driven by her usual curiosity.
“He pulled Jules out of the school and put him in another!”
“What a monster,” Pauline muttered.
“No, he wasn’t,” Jules said, in a quiet voice. “You’re wrong. He couldn’t stand impressionable people, and friendships between boys exasperated him. He saw it as an excuse for laziness and daydreaming.”
“And for him,” Alexandre said, “daydreaming equaled a loss of money!”
Jules glared at him.
“Me?” Pauline said, “I would’ve run away if I’d been stuck in a family like that.”
“Run away?” Louis-Marie said. “So you’d have the cops on your trail? You’ve got to be kidding.”
Jules turned to Pauline with a grave look.
“You can’t understand,” he said. “Médoc is an impenetrable and incomprehensible world if you weren’t born into it. Having the name Laverzac justified a lot of things that you would consider abusive. What’s certain is that we owe Aurélien for everything we have today, and for who we are. …”
As he said those last words, he stared at Alexandre, who lowered his eyes.
“What’s also certain,” Pauline said to Jules, “is that he made you in his own image.”
Louis-Marie agreed, saying that Jules and Aurélien were exactly alike, with the same qualities and flaws. “And besides that, they had a taste for the same things and the same people.”
“Especially the same women,” Robert blurted out, carelessly. “As soon as you were old enough to care about women, you started to go after the same ones he did. Between the two of you, this region must be filled with …”
He stopped himself, horrified by what he’d been about to say.
Jules smiled and ended the sentence himself, “… filled with bastards?”
A heavy silence followed. But Jules leaned over and tapped his brother’s shoulder.
“Everything’s fine, Doctor,” he said.
There was real affection in Jules’s eyes, and Robert felt closer to his brother than he ever had.
They spent nearly half the night chatting, bringing up memories, trying to bring back the image of a father who’d had such an impact on them and who, everybody knew, they were going to miss.
Aurélien’s arrival at Fonteyne was painful. The nurse, who’d gotten there early that morning, seemed lost in the castle and wasn’t sure who she should take directions from. Aurélien was in a bad way. He looked at no one as he was settled into his bed, making it clear that he wanted to be alone. Laurène kept answering the phone, everyone calling to politely ask how Aurélien was doing.
Jules, shooed away from the library like everybody else, fled to the vineyards, where there were always a thousand things to do. He waited until t
he end of the afternoon to visit his father. He sat silently at his bedside and remained silent for a while.
Then he said, “You’ve lost some weight. … Everything is going fine around here. Lucas is being efficient. …We’re going to push back the wedding date, of course, to give you time to get better. …”
Aurélien got agitated, and Jules shut his mouth, discouraged. It was so hard for him to talk to his father like this. What he wanted was to hear Aurélien say to him, “Listen, cowboy, I’m the one making decisions around here!” But that would never happen again. And all of Jules’s acts of kindness would be perceived as pity. He was sentenced, just like his father, to immobility and silence.
Lifting his head, the young man’s gaze met his father’s. He saw there, he knew it without a doubt, the immense love Aurélien felt for him. But he didn’t realize that Aurélien was suffocating within himself.
All that I’d like to convey to him right now, the tired old man thought. And there’s nothing I can do about my condition. …
He wanted to remain alive, a while longer at least. Though he knew he wouldn’t be able to control when he’d die. And so he scrutinized Jules as though to engrave him in his mind.
Fonteyne is going to be fine with him at the helm. He’s become stronger than anyone else. Stronger than me, even before I wound up glued to this bed. But he’s still not convinced of that himself. He’s going to have to learn that he can do without anyone else. … He loved it when I was there because he could fool around, knowing I’d pick up the slack if need be. … Not anymore. …
Jules was still holding his father’s calm gaze.
I protected him against himself. Soon he’s going to discover who he is and where he came from. I don’t know if he’s going to be able to forgive me. I made him unyielding by being so tough on him. … He’s also going to understand why I pushed him so hard. I wouldn’t have been able to stand him had he been like his mother. I would’ve preferred to make him unhappy. But he never was unhappy. I had such a huge mission to accomplish with him. I couldn’t accept him lying to me because his mother had lied so many times! I had to fight against his heredity nonstop and it was no easy task. …
A Bordeaux Dynasty: A Novel Page 33