To ensure he might never again suffer so nightmarish a feeling, he forbade henceforth any change, be it even in the tiniest detail, to the city. It could of course grow, and maintaining it would always be a sacred duty, but what already was would forever so remain, enjoying inalienable rights and total precedence over what was yet to come, over all the unformed and inchoate future.
The king's character and project seemed to capture the imaginations of his subjects and their children, as for many years, almost unto the present day, his will was done. Today, few dare venture into the city's distant heart where, on days of high wind, the last buildings from the Founder's era finish breaking apart, waves subsiding in a sea of rubble. Abandoned, too, are the plans to preserve the knotted and dangerous maze of medieval alleys. We have our people's long allegiance to the folly of a single man to thank for this our dwelling place: the sole existing urban order aimed at totality, a concentric and cumulative keep, time and the city turning ideally round a memory like a wheel around an axle.
Lozere, December 1990
Another Story
or anyone who feels deeply about property, there's nothing like owning an island. Nothing comes closer to pure possession; nothing else goes quite so far in confirming the illusion of sovereign, absolute selfhood. When a man has almost everything, buying an island is the next step.
That's what Erwin Laurencais did. To sniff out where the rich get their riches, you have to be one of them, or else few things seem so vague and nebulous as money. You see it all around, bathing those who have it in its light and warmth, filling and transfiguring them… And yet the average man, who manages food, clothes, shelter, warmth, and transport without undue worry or exertion, will sometimes want a slightly clearer idea of the gulf between himself and the truly wealthy. A pointless, even spiteful, curiosity. Just as well, then, that money isn't my subject. The Laurencais fortune plays but an incidental part in this tale. Erwin Laurencais was so rich he'd bought himself no tiny islet, but a good-sized island.
I went there at his invitation-by air, to my acute dismay. You'll find no creature more earthbound than I. I'm so naturally averse to flying I usually give up on any trip that can't be made by road, rail, or sea-but the area around the island happened to be so dangerous the only way in was by plane or helicopter. For Laurencais, and for his legend, I made an exception. The money that pours into his hands drives him to undertake a certain number of secretly necessary things almost no one else on earth could see to completion. A hunch about these things is essential to understanding the great eccentric billionaires… For a billionaire (I believe the word falls short), Laurencais was unique in this respect: he wasn't satisfied with owning the most expensive things or mingling with the most famous people. He loved surrounding himself with what was least known as well, objects and people alike. I found his invitation flattering. I am a writer-a French writer, to boot-two qualities worth less than nothing these days. I was astounded that a Laurencais (despite the sound of his surname, a Venezuelan) wished to make my acquaintance.
Laurencais' island is beautiful, in its way-thanks to him. It was once a picturesque rock, an actual desert isle: pretty mountains, but no shelter, no beach, no fresh water, and as a result, stunted vegetation. Laurencais' money changed everything. Planes brought in soil for gardens and meadows now irrigated by processed seawater. For private use, Laurencais built a desalination plant that would've been enough for the average emirate.
On the island's most stunning side, where Laurencais had chosen to build his palace, a steep and sudden drop lay between the coast and the line of reefs barring the seaward approach. The tycoon could have flattened the coast with dynamite and brought in all the sand he wanted, but nothing in the world would have kept the ocean from licking the shore clean. Never mind, then-Laurencais had a second shoreline, set back from the first, designed, dug, and shaped to his liking. Beside an artificial lagoon, a landscaped beach secured the master of the house and his guests all the charms the site supposedly refused them. The sand was so fine each grain seemed handpicked. Nearby, the birds that sang above their heads were, like the trees where they dwelled, chosen from a catalogue. So were the people… but I'll get back to that.
I mentioned a palace; don't go picturing alabaster columns, marble staircases, and golden roofs. In Laurencais' jaded gaze, luxury-the spirit of luxury-had left materials behind to seek refuge in form. He wasn't completely indifferent to materials, of course: for the most part his palace was made of solid mahogany and pristinely white, freshly cast concrete. Yet with this bias in mind, the architect Benito Guardicci (yes, a relative of the famous artisan glassmaker) was able to work wonders. The residence he created for Laurencais was beautiful without being reminiscent of any other. Its beauty was for those who lived there. As the days went by, you became aware of the balance, the harmony emanating from the rectangular structures amid the rocks and the greenery. At first, they seemed scattered haphazardly about the lagoon, itself irregularly shaped. You had to stay there a while to realize that Guardicci had conceived it all with a rich man in mind, for Laurencais and his select guests, in accordance with the truth of the setting: a world without neighbors, prying eyes, or unwanted onlookers.
I didn't quite know why I'd been invited. For my talent, they'd said, my works. I wanted to believe it. Nevertheless, everyone else in my batch enjoyed actual international fame, except me. I won't name names. A golden voice, a sex symbol, a director, a guitar hero; two champions, one in boxing and the other in tennis; a Nobel laureate in medicine; a painter only slightly less well-known than Leonardo or Vermeer; a physicist, all torso, whom the media that year claimed was Einstein reincarnated-there were ten of us all told. Needless to say, none of these people traveled without an entourage: lovers, mistresses, confidants, nannies, secretaries, trainers, doctors, and fortunetellers… With diplomacy and a firm smile, Laurencais' butler had managed to spread the crowd of underlings out in the estate's many annexes. I was the only one who'd come alone. Which meant that I was scared stiff at first among egos all bloated to varying degrees. Most knew nothing about me and mistook me for a bartender. I cleared this up three or four times before everything got sorted out. Since Laurencais vouched for me, granting me a status like their own, be it in ever so narrow and obscure a field as French literature, the celebrities all followed suit. They lowered their guard and showed themselves for what they really were: creatures superspecialized in their chosen fields and by the same token off-true, even crippled, at once pitiful and admirable, so many products of a limited shelf life. Take the guitarist. He was from a working-class background. A hard worker, he honed riffs on his lucky Telecaster eight hours a day while smoking joints his roadie-dealer rolled. He allowed himself a line in the evening the way people had a drink after the daily grind. We became friendly, and he didn't forget to offer me a sniff from his little box. I held up my glass of scotch. He shook his head in sorrow.
"That stuff's poison!"
I also liked the porn star, an oversensitive young woman, plaintive beneath her statuesque exterior. But she had a sense of humor about herself, her line of work, and her smutty fame.
"God;" she'd moan, "I grew up wearing little white socks and blue dresses and crying at Bambi, had my first kiss at nineteen, and now I'm the biggest slut on the planet. What's wrong with me? Few! A rash! Get my doctor quick, he's around here somewhere. Tell him I'm dying!"
I didn't hit it off with everyone. The golden voice really annoyed me, and no primate deserved to be compared to the boxing champ. I found the Moldo-Wallachian director, whom I believed and still believe to be a great artist, standoffish and incapable of camaraderie. At any rate, an unusual apparition soon made me forget my disappointment. We'd been there for two days when a young woman literally sprang from the lagoon. I happened to be watching Laurencais when she joined us. I thought I spied great relief in the eyes of our host. He introduced the newcomer to us as Ligeia. She greeted us with brusque timidity, surprising for such a beauty. For t
hough I'd called the actress statuesque, Ligeia gave the word an altogether different, more impressive meaning. The actress-call her Cindy, or Christie-embodied an admittedly stunning but eminently consumable, even comestible kind of femininity. On first sight, everything about her woke in men a predatory instinct strongly tinged with almost cannibalistic overtones. But when you met her in the flesh, this initial impulse soon faded away because of the irony she employed at her own expense, and others' when needed. In real life, Cindy/Christie was only sexy for the first three minutes, before becoming endearing and sisterly.
Ligela was another matter. A fierce presence, an aura of sexuality heady as an odor that persisted after she walked away. For I never saw her stay in any one place for long: she was always passing through. In the same way, I never heard her start a conversation of her own initiative. She answered, with a single precise sentence requiring no clarification or additions, then fell silent, as though she'd discharged a tiresome duty. I had to admit it wasn't very pleasant. Her charm lay elsewhere. What we mean today by the word "charm" in no way describes what she exuded. You'd have to restore to the word the powerful associations it possessed in antiquity: a purely physical appeal so violent it was frightening. By day she lived in the water and wore only a G-string. By night, she donned a tunic, very simple and very short. The muscles of her arms, legs, and belly were free of the softness and tenderness of Cindy/Christie's. She looked like one of Arno Brecker's valkyries. Even while admiring her you thought to detect something not alienating but alien, something animal and disconcerting that confounded compliment. Who was she? Where had she been born? Who'd raised her? I tried to imagine her at the age of ten. It was one of my favorite games: picturing how the adults fate put on my path had looked as children. With Ligeia, no image came to mind; I found it impossible to conjure her up in any normal professional environment. She gave me the impression of being able to exist only the way I saw her-that is, more than half-naked in or near the water. Laurencais had left us in the dark as to their exact relationship. There was no evidence that she was his mistress. Two or three unassuming and very young things filled that role, behind the scenes. Was Ligeia his daughter, then? She didn't look like him at all. His niece? His ward? I wound up asking her. She was slow to answer.
"Erwin? He… He fished me out of the sea!" she said at last, unsmiling. With that, she left me standing there and dove into the blue lagoon where she spent most of her time.
I never go anywhere without a good pair of binoculars. Thanks to them, I feel like I'm flipping through a picture book rather than observing reality. The general outline of things looks different. Planes of vision remain distinct instead of blending into one another. A clearly decipherable world emerges, with the false and beautiful lucidity of childlike perception. I liked to follow Ligeia with my binoculars from my room. To say she swam like a dream was an understatement. But I wasn't simply struck by the excellence of her front crawl. In the water, her face conveyed a tranquility totally lacking on land. Another woman revealed herself, resurfaced, far from the world of men…
One morning, as I was spying on her movements from my room, an incident occurred. Having swum the lagoon from one end to the other, along the craggy and impassable original shore, I saw her plunge a few dozen yards from the edge. She often went skin diving. I expected to see her come back up at any moment, but time went by and I began getting impatient. I soon panicked, dropping the binoculars and picking them up again, straining my eyes to spot the figure that would convince me my fears were ungrounded. Without success. Had I just seen someone drown? Perhaps there was still time to do something? A feeling of responsibility oppressed me. I spotted Laurencais talking to a gardener in the path beneath my balcony. I called out to them, and tried to communicate the fear that gripped me. Faced with their incomprehension, I jumped down onto the path to reach them more quickly and explain myself.
"What? Someone drowned?"
"Maybe. Over there. Ligeia-"
"Ligeia? Impossible! Where did you say?"
"Over there!"
Laurencais turned to look where I was pointing. A vague worry left his face. "Have no fear, my friend. If you saw her disappear over there, she's completely safe!"
"But-"
The Venezuelan clapped me kindly on the shoulder. "Don't worry! She went for a rest in the grotto. It's an artificial lagoon, as I'm sure you re aware…
He dismissed the gardener with a look.
"When they were digging the lagoon," he said, "I had them make an underwater grotto… We all have a fantasy like that, about one thing or another. Now that mine has been satisfied, I hardly ever go there. Besides, Ligeia's sort of made it her own private spot. She spends a lot of time there."
A submarine grotto, with lighting, decorations, and a sound system, no doubt. I'd forgotten I was dealing with a billionaire.
Laurencais took a cell phone from his pocket. "Let's check, just to be sure."
He dialed and waited, shooting me a sideways glance. "You can visit if you'd like. There's a stairway, too, of course! Now, what can she be doing-ah! Hold, eres tu? Como estas? Muy Bien! Figa to que el senor…"
The conversation was brief.
"She had a good laugh when I told her you'd seen her drown," he said, putting the phone away.
"She's quite an individual… individual!" I said. "What does she do in life?"
"What does she do in life? Since you're a writer, I assume you've already pondered the strangeness of that expression, right?"
"Indeed I have."
"Indeed, it reveals the full extent of its strangeness when applied to a creature like her. What does Ligeia do in life? What do lions do in life? Or wild geese?" He laughed with relish. "Ligeia swims in the lagoon, she haunts the underwater grotto, and when she comes back to the surface she snorts and falls asleep in the sun. Vila!"
"But how did she come into your life?"
"It was I who came into hers, to her misfortune, I fear." He fell silent. He'd intrigued me, of course.
"What do you mean by that?"
"No more for today I must confess something. I didn't ask you here for the same reasons as the others" He gestured offhandedly toward the buildings where the demigods were lazing about. "I collect stars. For me, these people are objects I line up on a shelf in my head. Handsome items, of course! Mostly. But you're something else. I have a story I can't keep to myself. I can't imagine dying without having told it to someone. And you're one of the people I plan to tell. However, it isn t time yet.
"If you've read my work," I said, "you must know I'm not much interested in true stories."
"Precisely. Precisely!"
"I'm leaving soon. You'll have to make up your mind."
"The main thing is knowing what you'll make of this story"
"Probably another story, if it sets the little wheels in my mind spinning.
"There you have it! Another story! And I'll also tell two or three of your professional brethren, who will do the same, I'm sure. Thus Ligeia's true story will give birth to three or four fictional ones. People will read this one, or that, in New York, or Mexico, or Paris, without knowing they're reading a variation on a true story. Anyway, no story is entirely true, or entirely false. I want Ligeia's story to make its way around the world. I want it to escape the dangerously close circle of those who know it. When the time comes, you'll help me!"
To keep my curiosity at bay in the days that followed, I settled for Cindy/Christie. She had to have a story, too. I undertook to make her tell it. But the life of Cindy/Christie, as told by hers truly, was but a humongous, incoherent, and wildly proliferating lie. She'd gone through every conceivable kind of upbringing, every kind of misfortune, and every excuse, but also every rebellion, every ambition, and every kind of courage. She was Juliette, the victim of universal lust; she was Justine, priding herself on challenging the status quo by displaying her own infectious lubricity. Then she turned sweet and amusing when you stopped analyzing her soul to concentrate on he
r boo-boos and ailments.
Laurencais knew life and in lordly fashion assessed the loss of earnings a week of inactivity implied for the sacred monsters he hosted. A practical lord: the lavish gifts he gave his guests at their farewell party could easily be converted into cash. We could choose to keep them, or exchange them for dollars, yen, or Swiss francs, in which case they'd be used for the next lucky visitors. How many guests with their checks in their pockets had pretended to gush over a Sevres vase or contemporary sculpture they'd leave behind without regret?
When it was my turn, I played the game as sanctimoniously as anyone else. I found myself faced with a check, or selections from The Odyssey. Flustered at first, I clapped like a child when, beneath a sorrylooking binding, all sooty and crumbling, I recognized an authentic incunabulum, all the more precious because ancient authors, along with their great contemporaries, were the least well served during the first century of printing. I set out to look for Laurencais and thank him. He was nowhere to be seen, which surprised me, since the party was in full swing and he should've been the life of it.
It was barely noticeable from the glass-walled rooms overlooking the lagoon, but the weather was dreadful at sea. A raging, rain-laden wind swept the terraces and even the sheltered paths set back in the bowers. Rounding a corner in a hallway, I ran into one of Laurencais' young assistants, and asked after the master of the house. She bade me follow her down a narrow spiral staircase of white concrete. I recalled Laurencais' invitation to visit the grotto, which I hadn't given further thought to taking him up on… Come to think of it, hadn't he told me he was hardly ever down there? Why tonight then, while a bevy of celebrities cracked open the champagne without him?
A Life on Paper: Stories Page 20