“I’m … Nicolas’s wife. I’m looking for Laure,” she said softly, batting her eyelashes.
“I’m Laure, and welcome, Vanessa!” I replied.
“Nicolas would like to see you. He’s upstairs.”
“Ah? Fine, I’ll go see what he wants. I’ll leave you to introduce yourself.”
I went up the stairs four at a time to the main entrance hall, where I found two men I had no time to acknowledge and Nicolas, who, far from greeting me with his customary effusiveness, cut right to the chase.
“Here’s the situation: your suitor (don’t worry, he can’t speak a single word of French) doesn’t go anywhere without his yoga teacher. But what I’ve just learned is that he wants to have him stay in a room next to his.”
“Which is, naturally, out of the question.”
Nicolas seemed so worried that I added, “But we can find him a hotel room nearby.”
“We could always try …”
“I mean, with advance notice, that would have been another story, but as it is, he’s got some nerve!”
“Yes but, put yourself in his place! He was so astonished to be invited that I told him you weren’t people who stood on ceremony, that you’d really welcome him. So now, to have to explain that the house rules are so strict …”
“Oh, I see …”
“Well, listen, I did my best to get him here and it worked! That’s why I’m telling you, I’m not going to be the one to break the news. You’ll have to deal with it, however you want.”
“Which one is he?” I asked, glancing at the other two men just long enough to make me hope my guest was the tall one, rather handsome in a smoldering way, and not the one with the pasty complexion and a ponytail.
“The tall one,” replied Nicolas to my great relief, before introducing me in English: “Laure, here are Alvin and Barry, also known as Anagan. Alvin, Anagan, let me introduce you to Laure, who is our hostess, and the dear friend I have told you about.”
I gave them a big smile before describing to Alvin the situation with the house, unfortunately (and most unusually!) completely full, and the charming little hotel that would certainly have room for Anagan, whom I placed in the capable hands of Roland, the chauffeur. But although I blithely ignored my suitor’s extreme irritation, I had by no means dealt completely with the problem of his guru, I gathered, when Nicolas informed me that Anagan was not only Alvin’s yoga teacher and spiritual guide, but also his cook.
“His cook!?”
“Yes, didn’t I mention that? Your suitor is a vegetarian or vegan, whatever, because I don’t really see the difference.”
“This gets better and better,” I groused, escorting the American to his room, and when Nicolas seemed about ready to start in again, I spoke up first: “Yes, I know: I asked for it, I got it, but still …”
The second we entered the Yellow Room, Alvin interrupted me to ask if he was allowed to move the head of his bed to point north, because otherwise he would be unable to sleep, and seeing my amazement, he added that this was one of the golden rules of feng shui.
“Of course,” I replied.
“I have the feeling we’re going to have some fun,” Nicolas told me as we watched Alvin drag his bed around.
“We can only hope.” I sighed, leaving Alvin in his care until dinnertime.
I still had to ask my mother to put up the guru and speak to the chef so that he would allow him into the kitchen.
“It seems your guest is rather eccentric, so we can certainly allow him the same leeway we give Charles, with the excuse that he’s an English lord!” she said before busying herself with finding a room for the yogi and asking Roland to get him settled there.
In short, she was so pleasant about the whole business that I was at first disconcerted. Then I realized that she was critical only of people with whom she was familiar, and Alvin’s lifestyle was so different from her own that she had no point of comparison from which to judge him. And I couldn’t help noting, watching her adopt this benevolent and open ethnological approach to him, that she seemed content to be relieved of her role as the supreme arbiter of gracious living by this case of force majeure.
“In your opinion, this yogi, do we invite him to sit with us?” she asked.
“I think not, since he’ll be in the kitchen!”
“How silly of me, of course. Anyway, luckily for your vegetarian, this evening there is a soufflé.”
The sea was still glittering like sparkling amethysts when Alvin arrived for cocktails, wearing a shalwar kameez ensemble, a collarless Indian shirt of tunic length worn over loose pajamalike pants gathered at the ankle—a sartorial choice that seemed like a manifesto it was up to me to interpret. Stalling for time, I wondered whether the subtle exoticism of this beige and off-white palette was intended to evoke the Eastern subcontinent … or perhaps Western beatniks, or hippies? I didn’t want to succumb too quickly, as a psychologist, to the reflex already prompting me to examine Alvin’s possible relationship with his parents. One of the pitfalls of my profession!
Still, I couldn’t help thinking that his choice of clothing betrayed a desire to step outside the family circle.
Then I brought myself to heel: Alvin was not one of my patients but a suitor, so I would do better to consider him strictly from that angle. And noticing once more that he was handsome in a dark, Jeremy Irons sort of way, I imagined him dressed differently to see if I liked him: tall, graceful, aristocratic, he would no doubt be stunning in a dark suit. When Alvin spoke to my mother, however, my retouched vision of him went up in smoke.
“L’Agapanthe faces the northwest, does it not? Did you know that with an earth element between the building and the sea, whose energy circulates toward the house—while firmly anchored by the Lérins Islands near Cannes—L’Agapanthe has the ideal site of ‘the earth dragon’s lair,’ like Hong Kong, where the energy entering the bay is safeguarded by Victoria Peak?”
Convoluted as it was, Alvin’s compliment struck me less than did his gestures, because he punctuated his delivery by holding out his right hand, palm up, and systematically ticking off his points by bending each finger back in succession with his left index finger, as if seeking to give structure to his little speech. Well, I thought, so much for trying to set himself apart from the average American with his clothes and his yoga and meditation! Alvin still exhibited American behavior patterns, like that mania for counting anything and everything on his fingers. Next he’d be raising his arms and twitching two sets of fingers to sketch imaginary quotation marks, those clichéd precautions demanded by political correctness whenever a controversial subject crops up.
The truth was that I was particularly annoyed by all the American gestures that have spread throughout the world via that country’s many TV series. As disastrous as their fast food, American behavior has insinuated itself into the smallest corners of our rituals, changing even the way we pass around the holy-water sprinkler at funerals! I’d observed that instead of crowding around the coffin the way we used to do, we all now stood a few yards away with the patient docility of model citizens, a routine we felt obliged to adopt when waiting everywhere from now on, from the post office to customs clearance to restaurant lines, stepping one by one over imaginary boundaries on the ground. And at funerals, as it happens, this is truly inconvenient, since the single person up at the coffin has to go back to the other mourners to hand over the aspergillum to someone else, making everyone wait that much longer.
But, given the flippancy with which I’d recruited my suitor, I reflected, I might have had worse luck, because he did seem intent on being courteous to my mother.
“Laure tells me that you live in New York?”
“Yes, for part of the year, since I also live in California.”
My mother hesitated to go on, for her familiarity with the genteel neighborhoods of Manhattan risked proving useless in conversation with this bohemian, and she refused to make a fool of herself trying to find out if they knew anyone in
common, under the pretext of knowing lots of people there. Still, she did venture to ask, “And where in New York do you live?”
“Fifth Avenue, at 998.”
“No!” exclaimed my mother, who couldn’t believe it.
Because she knew all the prestigious buildings on the Upper East Side by heart and by name, considering only those built before the Second World War, such as 720, 740, and 778 Park Avenue, or 810, 820, 830, 834, and 960 on Fifth, to mention a few. Not forgetting 998, which occupied an entire block and still had apartments with columned ballrooms and extensive servants’ quarters. All those buildings were co-ops run by powerful owners’ committees, which made buying an apartment there more difficult than joining the Jockey Club.
But Alvin went on to tell her about his mansion in Rhinebeck, on the Hudson, a gigantic main house with an annex containing an indoor tennis court and a white marble swimming pool.
“Was that the house of the So-and-so family?” asked my mother.
“Yes, it’s where they used to organize ‘white weekends’ in the 1910s.”
“What are those?” I asked, to join the conversation.
“Cocaine weekends,” replied my mother with disarming casualness.
With a pang, I realized that my mother’s cocaine dependence had completely slipped my mind since the previous weekend, when Marie had convinced me that her addiction bothered my mother even less than if she’d suddenly developed a sweet tooth. And there she was, indeed, as lovely and serene as always.
“Do you know the Lachmans?” she asked, encouraged by the tokens of upper-echelon tribalism Alvin had just given her.
“No, I can’t say that I do …”
“Oh, you must, that’s the l in Revlon: there was Charles Revson and Charlie Lachman …”
I thought I saw Alvin wince in distaste at the bowl of shelled peanuts into which we were all happily plunging our hands for a nibble, which suggested that hygiene was clearly one of his pet peeves, but before I could ponder his reaction any further, Nicolas and Vanessa made their entrance onto the terrace.
Since Nicolas had come often to L’Agapanthe when we were together, Vanessa had been informed of our house rituals regarding dressing for dinner, and she had gone all out. What’s more, this was a woman who, living in Manhattan, habitually dressed to the nines for a little dinner in a corner bistro.
She was wearing a very short baby-doll dress in red organza and bronze shoes like a web of laces that added another six inches to her already endless legs. And the combination of her slyly “innocent” dress and her bewildering shoes startled our gathering into an eloquent silence. Unless we were, quite simply, stunned by her beauty. Because beauty is a strange thing, exciting stupor and fascination more often than desire. And Vanessa seemed used to seeing her beauty freeze timid men and neurotic women—when it didn’t provoke such bedazzlement that those around her just stared, deaf and dumb.
I imagined how frustrated she must feel by thinking of my son, who was often both pleased and angry that I loved him too much to love him properly whenever I found myself distracted while listening to him, overcome by the joy of seeing him, there in front of me, so healthy and so handsome.
Vanessa must have had real personality to want so much to cut through the screen of blinding beauty that obscured her, I thought, as I watched her make an effort to get us to talk to her and return to our conversations, but the poor thing could not keep us from gazing at her. Even worse, Odon started talking about beauty itself.
“Do you agree with Allison Lurie’s idea that beauty, far from provoking desire, more commonly inspires love?”
That was too much for Vanessa, who blushed and began to stammer, but Nicolas came to her rescue.
“I agree wholeheartedly, my dear Odon, because I’m head over heels in love with my wife. Now, has Alvin told you that he’s the champion of air rights?”
“Madame, dinner is served!” bellowed the head butler.
“Air rights? What are they? You must tell us all about them over dinner,” said my mother, rising to lead the way.
MENU
Soufflé Mornay
Sole Murat
Salad and Cheeses
Mille-feuille with Raspberries
Dinner began in general confusion. Alvin thought we were crazy when he saw our reaction to the tables in the dining room, which the new head butler had decorated with his disastrous floral arrangements. He had also seen fit to set out plastic bottles of mineral water in order to avoid having to serve us from our silver carafes! Although our American guest definitely disapproved of the plastic bottles, which offended him more from the ecological than the aesthetic point of view, he found the vases of cacti and weathered wood very New Age, in a Sedona, Arizona, sort of way, and he rather liked them. What he really didn’t understand, however, was why our animated conversation took place mostly after the butlers had left the room, like those secret confabs in children’s camps and boarding schools after lights-out, when the volume of noise varies according to the proximity of adult supervision.
As for my mother, she made an effort not to take offense over Alvin’s worries about the menu, because although he had obviously decided to eat what was put in front of him without making a fuss, he was finally compelled to ask, “Are the eggs organic?”
Finding his question absurd, since—organic or not—the chef always bought the best products at the market, my mother bluffed without blinking an eye: “Absolutely.”
She almost lost patience, however, when Alvin asked her if he might have an egg-white omelet instead of the delicate marvel of eggs, butter, béchamel, and Gruyère on abase of impeccably soft-boiled eggs soon to be placed before us and which never failed to elicit cries of admiration from the most hard to please of our guests, such was the skill required to bring a soufflé Mornay to perfection. Then, rallying to her initial open-mindedness toward this new guest, my mother rose to the occasion: “Why not!”
“So, these air rights?” asked Laszlo brightly, to lighten the atmosphere.
Alvin explained that after making his fortune in toys, he had moved onto real estate and dealt a great deal in the rights to use and develop the empty space over buildings in New York.
“I don’t understand. Who would be interested in them?”
“Well, developers intending to put up buildings taller than the limit anticipated by the local zoning map. Because all a developer needs to do is buy the air rights over adjacent buildings and turn their space into extra stories for the building he wishes to construct.”
“You mean that the lower the neighboring buildings are, if they’re small houses, for example, then the more air they have to sell, and the higher the developer can build?”
“Exactly.”
“Unbelievable … and how much does the open airspace cost?” asked Laszlo.
“Between 213 and 430 dollars a square foot, let’s say 50 to 60 percent of the sale price of a plot.”
Frédéric was electrified. “But that’s a gold mine, your angle! Because I figure that, if they have the choice among several adjacent properties whose airspace they can buy, the developers must set all the neighbors against one another and force them to accept an offer that is nonnegotiable.”
“Yes,” continued Alvin, “unless on the contrary the potential seller finds himself in a solid position as the key to the developer’s entire project, which requires that he purchase not only his air rights but those of all his neighbors.”
“Ah! Because that can go on ad infinitum?”
“No, only within the framework of one city block.”
“Fascinating …”
“Oh, wonderful, filet of sole Murat, I love that!” exclaimed Jean-Claude, taking a generous helping of fish, potatoes, and artichokes from the proffered serving dish.
“Do you eat like this every day?” asked Alvin, in the mixture of surprise and indignation adopted by an American citizen who sees someone throwing something on the ground or cutting in line.
“Yes, why?” replied my mother, honestly surprised.
“But it’s such a rich diet, I don’t see how you can stand it …”
Alvin then delivered a minutely detailed rundown of the calorie counts in our dinner, followed by a dietetic sermon on one’s ideal weight, a screed that entailed deep discussion of proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, vegetarian diets, omega-3 benefits, oils from fish, argan, and borage, flaxseed oil supplements, and iron pills—or better yet, iron in liquid form, to avoid constipation—and that brought us to the salad and cheese course.
My mother leaned toward Jean-Claude to tell him just what she thought of this nonsensical chemical babbling. “Rich! Rich! In the first place, we eat chicken, fish, or pasta, not proteins or hydrates of carbon, whatever that means!”
My mother was about to explode, while the rest of us were succumbing to boredom like a congregation benumbed by a Sunday sermon. And since it was easier and more courteous to change the subject instead of trying to shut him up …
“Alvin, I fear you are talking to a brick wall. Why don’t you talk to us about your interest in yoga?” I asked.
Alas, we realized that we were in for another dose of pontification when he announced that “diet and yoga are linked, because digestion requires a level of energy incompatible with …”
So we were treated to a course on Jivamukti yoga while Marcel served us the mille-feuille with raspberries.
“Five thousand years ago, India gave birth to yoga, which means ‘union’ in Sanskrit. Its goal is to attain an understanding of the interdependence of all forms of life …”
Too beaten down even to consider reacting, we simply relaunched him now and then so we could eat our dessert in peace.
“Yes, but what about Jivamukti?”
“It was created in 1984 in the United States. And it shifted the practice of yoga in America from an esoteric ritual observed by a few initiates to a discipline followed by sixteen million Americans.”
The Suitors Page 20