On this first Saturday of the summer vacation Adam and Anita are entertaining their friends, a ritual that goes back quite a few years now. People they met in Paris, in the humanities department, at the school of architecture, in an editorial office, in a café, these are people now approaching their forties, still with young children and elderly parents, and secret lives, that’s for sure. From one year to the next they notch up little changes (a few pounds overweight, a child born, a love affair falling apart, the death of a parent), but when they arrive at Anita and Adam’s house, when their cars start bouncing over the first pinecones, when the house itself comes into view, gleaming like a flagship at the end of the avenue, when they see Anita, Adam, and Laura on the doorstep, they feel both happy and envious.
They know what will fascinate them yet again: Adam’s triptych in the living room, painted at the time of Laura’s birth. Within a great frame of dark wood there are sketches of three scenes. The first in pearly gray, the second in midnight blue, the third in emerald green. The first shows a soldier in helmet and boots sitting in a trench, his gas mask around his neck, his head bowed over a letter held on his knee; the second shows a man running, seen from behind, his head turned to look over his shoulder, as if he were checking to see if he is being followed, his long coat flung open as he moves; the third sketch is of a man in ripe old age, smiling, his two hands lightly resting on a walking stick. Above him, giving him its shade, there is a spreading tree. Behind him, a forest.
Each picture is deceptively simple and nobody knows how this is contrived, whether it is the clear, bold lines or the color, but they seem alive and vibrant. At each dinner, every summer, new details come to light. In the first sketch there is a faint touch of pink about the letter, and, when this is finally noticed, it is not just a color, but also a perfume, a flower, a love letter, a promise. In the second sketch the man has bare feet and that, too, is not noticeable at first glance. There is movement in the drawing, the coat opening out like a pair of wings, the face both resolute and uneasy, looking straight at you and suddenly, this vulnerability of the bare feet. Beside the third man there is a wooden cube, a child’s toy, and if you get closer to it you can make out the image of a dark-brown pinecone.
The friends already know what will make them jealous: the house. Not that it is particularly beautiful, but it has a heart, it is young as well as being old and wise, a little rickety, furnished haphazardly, a treasure here, a piece of junk there. The passing years have seen it settling into its site, it both imposes and pampers.
The friends know exactly what they will encounter this evening: books, pictures, sketches, timber, both cool and warm, fine worn carpets, beautiful photographs in painted wooden frames, a child’s drawings, cushions decorated with little mirrors, flowers everywhere, dozens of jam jars filled with little dark stones, seashells, sand, and translucent pebbles in pastel shades picked up on the beach, perfumed candles, music, a fine table, fine glasses in which they will swirl a good wine beneath a multitude of soft lights, a good meal.
Oh, all this could be irritating at times. All these books, these pictures, the garden, the couple themselves, the wine “from a little vineyard not far from here,” the parmigiana di melanzane with eggplants from the garden, the basmati rice, the mangoes, sweet as honey, bought heaven knows where, a “typical” dessert from Mauritius, a touch of theater about the whole thing. But there is never any vanity about these evenings, Anita and Adam are warmly welcoming, they are happy to see them, they make great efforts for everything to please them, they ask countless questions about Paris, about the other cities, about what is going on out there, about an exhibition, a play, a film, about what they are all doing in their lives, in their daily lives. Maybe Anita will surprise them by asking:
“Describe one of your days to me.”
“Oh, you know, it’s not very interesting.”
“No, no. Tell me in detail. What time do you get up? What do you have for breakfast? …”
And because Anita asks this without irony, with real interest, they will tell it. The toast, the salted butter, the coffee knocked back, the child who is currently in floods of tears every morning, the relief when it can be left at the nursery school, the line they take on the metro, the names of colleagues, a piece of juicy gossip … They are amazed at everything they find themselves telling, or, at least, to be recalling details they were not aware of noticing at the time.
Naturally the children will end up bringing out a few mattresses into the garden, beneath canvas sheets slung between the trees, naturally they will be wide-eyed with glee at staying up late and playing outside, naturally they will do some dancing. Naturally their friends will talk about themselves as they once were, about what they are now, their present lives, naturally they will use the phrase “in the old days” and will toy with the notion of doing what Anita and Adam have done, moving to the country. On the word country, they will wax eloquent, making sweeping gestures to embrace the house, the garden, the arbor, the forest, Anita, Adam. Naturally they will say all that, but later on …
Without making any comment they will be noticing Adam’s hands, stained like a painter’s, rough and broad like a workman’s. The women will dwell for a moment on Anita’s clothes and shoes—out-of-date colors, unfashionable styles, jackets made of rough wool, worn-down heels, all things bought at markets, like their cheese, their joss sticks, their Afghan pakol caps. They will reflect on the two cars parked in the lane, country vehicles, dirty, noisy, battered. They will end up admiring, but not envying, liking but not being tempted.
Finally the moment will come, well past midnight, when they feel the need to get up and go. They will pick up their children in their arms and lay them down head to tail on the backseat, no thanks, they won’t stay, their hotel or their rented house is not far away, they will exchange kisses amid loud laughter, in the end someone will sound his horn. Of course they will be a little sad, but as they leave behind the lane strewn with pinecones, with their headlights picking out the trunks of the trees and the ferns, all of this (the countryside, the deep silence, the forest, everything handmade) will suddenly seem intolerable. It will strike them that Anita and Adam are living lives in the past, outmoded, that make no sense, and then they will begin to drive a little too fast, back toward their beds, their rented rooms, and start thinking about their apartments in the city, the noise of the metal shutters on the stores, the supermarket shelves, the famous actress glimpsed on the metro, and that possibility of being alone amid a noisy crowd.
This year there are some ten adults, with just the same quantity of children, shouts of greeting, hugs, and exclamations of delight as in previous years. Like well-brought-up guests and good friends, they comment on small changes: Anita has a new hairstyle and has gone back into pretty outfits, Adam has grown a fine beard, the kitchen garden has been enlarged, the child’s cabin in the garden has been repainted. On the way, before they got there they saw bulldozers, what’s going on? It’s a housing development, says Adam, and they all adopt a horrified air, what a scandal that people should want to live here!
Adam enjoys these evenings less and less. Having now lost his father, despite his sadness, he has a greater sense of freedom. He is no longer the little boy whose shyness must be excused, he is no longer the clumsy youth whom people coerce into playing rugby or tennis, he is no longer the boy who likes painting. That morning he had asked Anita: “Do you enjoy seeing them again?”
“Yes, of course. What about you?”
“I don’t know. Do you think they’re friends, real friends?!”
Anita had thought about Julie, Barbara, Nicolas. Those evenings so long ago, sitting on the floor, the arguments at corner cafés, the love affairs, the tears, and all that energy expended, wasted, for what, if the truth be told? Just because they were young, because they thought they were irresistible?
“We’ve all changed, Adam.”
“Okay. But it gets on my nerves.”
When they arrive and th
e women gather in the kitchen, the men in the garden, Anita feels she should make some effort to retrieve the thread of this friendship, and draw it right out into the open, at the center of things, and she talks nonstop. She keeps asking questions and suddenly she realizes that, for their part, Julie, Barbara, Anne, and the others are replying offhandedly, as if Anita were being indiscreet. She leans over the sink to wash the salad (young shoots of beetroot, spinach, and watercress) and falls silent. An unpleasant feeling of déjà vu overcomes her, she knows exactly how the evening is going to go, who will talk more than the others, what topics will provoke heated debates. She will not mention her novel, Adam will say nothing about his painting. Not to them. What was it Adam had asked that morning? Are they real friends?
Then Anita sees Adèle at the bottom of the garden and it warms her heart. She thinks about the time they spent by the lake the previous day, a magical day, warm and bright. During the summer, when there is throbbing heat from the morning onward, when the cars form lines of gleaming metal all along the road that leads to the beach, when the smell of fritters, sandwiches, and crepes overlays those of salt and wind, Anita, Adam, and Laura go to the lake, barely two miles from their house. They could go on foot but in the summer they take their bicycles and a picnic and thread their way along sandy lanes and footpaths strewn with pine needles, past the delicate, lacy fronds of ferns. Again yesterday the lake was waiting for them, so bright and still. The gray jetty, the flat stones, already a little cracked by the heat. There, stretched out on the stones, as if they were the only women in the world, they had talked without fear. Adèle had continued telling her story, the story that so sets Anita’s heart beating. The little girl was playing in the shadow of the pine trees, Adam was swimming across the lake, and the noise of his strokes reached them, marking a rhythm to their conversation. That same evening, replete with Adèle’s words, Anita had reopened her notebook. She had the feeling of an urgent need to absorb this story and tell it in a new form.
Suddenly Barbara asks her a question.
“So how about you, Anita? What are you up to? Are you still writing articles about Basque pelota matches?”
For his part, Adam cannot help silently studying the men in his garden, with their fine shoes, their excessively tight jeans, their mauve or pink shirts, their mouthfuls of clichés about the grass, the fruits, the harsh winters here, the mentality of the local people, and then their questions about work, while Adam has no desire to talk about work, about plans, projects, inviting bids. Then he, too, catches sight of Adèle and thinks about their time beside the lake on the previous day. After their return he had shut himself away in his studio to begin the third painting in his new series. This woman fascinates him. In her presence his fingers tingle, his vision blurs, he rediscovers the impulse to paint as in the old days, before technique, before knowledge, before fashion. A while ago now he had laid a bare stretched canvas on the floor in the middle of his studio. He had poured black paint onto it until this formed an irregular circle on the picture. Then he spent a long time looking at this black circle that shone like a mirror and thinking about Adèle. The following day he had meticulously chosen a red, had mixed it with a little white, a little black, a hint of pink. Then he went into a corner and began pouring the paint as if he wanted to make a line of color across the canvas passing over the frame. Except that he slowed down, speeded up, backtracked, stopped for a few seconds, his eyes shut, his eyes open. He had called this first painting Melody.
Drinks are served as they stand in the garden. Adam’s studio, which attracts curiosity (and teasing toward the end of the evening, what have you got hidden there? Come on, show us!) is still firmly closed, the curtains drawn. There is the beautiful lawn, the wooden chairs, the awnings stretched taut, the candles on the tables, the children in the playhouse, air that is both dense and fresh, something one can feel going deep into one’s lungs and acting there like an air freshener, they exchange news, they drink a toast, they stroll around a little, they light the first cigarettes. There is, after all, something gratifying about this start to the evening. A year has passed and they are all still there, no one has been forgotten, there has been no great disaster, no revolution, no great quarrels, no, they are still the same, or almost, at the start of this evening with all the children running in and out between their legs. They have the feeling that there is a special glamour about ordinary life, routine, traditions (getting married, having children, going on vacation, seeing friends, being in good health, little girls wearing smocked dresses and little boys wearing Bermuda shorts), and they feel grateful.
Julie is the first to notice Adèle. Going up to Anita, and in the brisk tone of voice she sometimes adopts, she remarks: “Anita, there’s a woman in your kitchen.”
Anita looks up and sees Adèle in the doorway.
They all turn to watch her approaching. Adèle walks slowly because Laura and the other children are dancing around her, as if she had promised them candies. They all notice her towering figure, her muscular, bare arms, effortlessly carrying a crate filled with bottles, her long solid legs in tight-fitting black jeans, her black boots. The gold of the setting sun pours down from the sky, filters through the leaves of the lilac trees, and spills onto Adèle’s shaven head. There is the bracelet that sinks into her flesh a little when she sets the crate down on the ground. There is her Madonna-like face, her discreet and simple smile, her eyes slightly lowered, the hand she presses to her heart when she straightens up, and then Laura throws herself into her arms. Now she smiles broadly at Anita and at Anita alone. There is something other than friendship between these two women, there is a country, pictures beyond words, gestures beyond dissection, the little memories of childhood, the little memories of a country left behind, when the bread was like that and bus tickets were this color, when that was what we used to say, when this was what we used to do, when these were the fruits we used to eat.
Adèle turns on her heel and walks away, with the brood of children in tow, without a word, without a glance at the others.
“My God! What style! Who is that girl?”
Anita feels shaky, as if she has stepped onto a fracture in a rock. On the one hand there is her daughter running off, happy and laughing with Adèle (was Laura ever as merry in her company?); on the other hand there are her husband and their friends who seem to be hypnotized by Adèle. For once in her life she would have liked to experience having that effect on people, men, women, and children all alike. Does it make you strong? Invincible? Vain? Happy? Brave?
She tries to think back to the days of her youth, when she had just arrived in Paris, when she spent hours walking along the quays, sat on the green benches in the parks and wrote, offered her face to the sun, stretched out on the grass, when she spent hours talking on café terraces, coffee, cigarettes, and ideas. Was she beautiful at the time? She turns and catches Adam’s eye. Something infinitely tender and mysterious passes between them. All their various lives seem to be in harmony at last, the newspaper and the novel; the architecture and the painting; being parents and being selfish; being full of vitality and on the brink of forty.
“Who’d like some punch? It’s a home brew.”
“Punch? That’s a bit 1980s, isn’t it?”
That New Year’s Eve party in a house in Montreuil, a green sofa, punch that was far too strong. Anita and Adam smile.
“So who’s that chick? Is she Laura’s nanny or is she a relative of yours, Anita? I hope she’s going to join us later.”
It is Alexandre who puts the question. He is wearing electric-blue velvet shoes with a straw hat on his head. He is a lawyer. Adam sighs and images of a younger Alexandre appear before his eyes. An Alexandre hopelessly in love with some girl, but who, even in the midst of the exquisite agonies of a passion not wholly reciprocated, cut a droll figure. In those days his fickle heart used to amuse them, the way he would seduce, abandon, weep, deceive, return.
Adam opens his mouth but it is Anita who replies.
“So, because she’s not white she must either be the nanny or a relative of mine? On a point of clarification, my learned friend, don’t you think that remark is based on a somewhat racist presumption?”
There is an instant of stupefied silence (Anita? Was it Anita who said that?) until Adam gives a great guffaw and the others burst out laughing as well. But that moment was enough for everyone to grasp that things have changed in that house on the edge of the forest and it is not just a change of hairstyle, or a beard being allowed to grow, or a garden being enlarged.
Today
ANITA HAS PLACED THE FILE ON THE KITCHEN TABLE and eyes it as if it were a dangerous animal temporarily asleep. She has only a little time, Laura has dozed off but that won’t last. All those years in the attic have not altered either the blue of the file or the strength of the cotton strap that holds it together. Nor have they erased the title, written across it by her hand in black felt pen.
The Melody of Adèle.
She had, as she promised Adam, erased the text from her computer, but she had kept a printout of it in a cardboard box in the attic. What is to be done with this now? Throw it in the fire? Tear up every page one by one until her fingers bleed, turn it into confetti to blow away across the forest?
Things would have been so different if only she had listened to Adam. Right at the start, when she had written just a few pages, he had advised her to talk about it to Adèle. In Adam’s mouth the words had a disarming simplicity, Adèle, I should like to write your story. But Anita had never found the right moment and the words remained stuck in her throat like a lump of hard bread. The months went by, she wrote, she asked questions, she listened, she made notes, she checked and wrote some more. Then Adam started painting and the two of them turned into thieves, imposters, traitors, liars.
Anita would so like to hate this ill-omened object, to be able to spit on it, hurl it against the wall, but oh, the absolute tenderness she brings to merely touching the thing is heartrending. She runs her hand gently over the blue of the file, she undoes the strap. Just a page, she tells herself, just one. After that, promise, she will throw it away.
Waiting for Tomorrow Page 9