Rosalie had visited him twice more in hospital, each time waiting patiently until the energetic physical therapist who dealt with him every day (they never knew exactly when beforehand) had finished with her exercises.
She had brought a lavender-colored box of little cakes from Ladurée and told him that she was getting on well with the illustrations for the fairy-tale book and that having help in the store had turned out to be a godsend. She had also told him about René, who was obviously enjoying himself immensely in sunny California and was really inspired by the seminar and the mentality of the people there, all of whom were very sporty and health conscious.
Nevertheless Max had not failed to notice the searching looks Rosalie occasionally cast in his direction when she thought he wasn’t looking.
“Is something wrong? Or do I look that awful?” he asked finally, and she had shaken her head in embarrassment and laughed.
“No, no, what could there be? I’m just glad that you’re getting so much better.” He’d still felt that something wasn’t quite right. Rosalie seemed more pensive than usual, turned in upon herself. As if she was waiting for something.
Well, yes, perhaps she’s just missing her boyfriend, he said to himself. He himself was by now used to living alone and valued the advantages brought by not having to take other people into account. But recently he had noticed with increasing dismay that even he felt something was missing from his life.
As he lay in his hospital room he had had enough time to think things over. Just a couple of years ago, his peace had been most important to him; he quickly felt irritated or bored by other people and had always thought that he would never feel lonely, because there would always be interesting books for him to read.
But when the people who meant something to you were no longer there, books strangely began to lose their meaning, too. Deep inside, and in spite of all the arrogance he sometimes showed, Max regretted not having a family. And by that he didn’t mean his sister in Montpellier with her constant complaints. She had actually telephoned the hospital, because Madame Bonnier had gone over his head to let her know about the accident (“She is your sister after all, Monsieur”). As might have been expected it had not been a very pleasant conversation. Thérèse had first (for decency’s sake) asked how he was getting on, and then she’d had nothing better to do than to tell him that a neighbor of hers, some tottering old fogey whom he didn’t know from Adam, had just recently died as a consequence of a broken hip.
That was typical of his sister who, no matter what happened to you, could always come up with an even more horrific story. After the gruesome story about her neighbor she’d complained that he never came to Montpellier to visit her. And she used all the rest of the call to tell him in great detail about the terrible burst water pipe they’d had in the spring. “You can’t imagine what that ended up costing, and the stupid insurance refused to pay anything because they claimed the pipe was already in a very poor condition.”
Who knows, perhaps the family in Montpellier was already speculating about his will. But they were making a very big mistake.
Family wasn’t necessarily something positive, Max thought as he put the phone down grumpily after another quarter of an hour. And yet—he sometimes caught himself thinking that old age would certainly be easier to bear if there were someone with whom you could expect to share the future, in the certainty that it would continue and that something would always remain.
And yet again he thought what a great stroke of luck it had been that he’d given in to his publisher’s importuning.
Without The Blue Tiger he would certainly never have met Rosalie Laurent, who had for him taken on something of the role of a daughter. Never mind the fact that he would never have set foot in the little postcard store on the rue du Dragon if Montsignac had not been so insistent about it.
Good old Montsignac! At the important moments in his life, whether good or bad, he had always been there. And this time, too, he had visited him in hospital.
Without any warning, as was his custom, he’d suddenly appeared in the room one morning in a dazzling white shirt that, as always, was stretched rather precariously over his belly.
“Well, well, you keep on inventing new ways of avoiding answering the phone, eh?” he joked. Then he’d sat down beside him, waved Sister Yvonne out of the room with a lordly gesture, and as soon as she had left the room with squeaking soles and a mistrustful look, he’d calmly taken a bottle of pastis out of his bag. “Never do that again, Marchais, my old friend! How could you give me such a fright? All the hopes of our publishing house rest on you.” He poured the pastis into two water glasses and they toasted each other. “Santé!”
“I might have realized that you’ve only come because you want something from me,” Max had said mockingly, trying to conceal his emotion. “If you’ve got another idea up your sleeve, Montsignac, just forget it! I’m not going to write another line for you, I’d sooner fall off the ladder again.”
“Well, we’ll see about that. There’s a time for everything, that’s what I say. And anyway you’ve got to do your exercises with that … delectable nurse”—Montsignac pointed at the door and grinned—“so that we can get you back on your feet, n’est-ce pas?” His eyes shone with amusement.
“But a little Christmas story, illustrated by your friend Rosalie Laurent—you can write that between soup and pudding.”
“Not if they both taste as disgusting as the food in this hospital.”
“You’ve been spoiled, my dear Marchais—I wish my wife could cook as well as your Madame Bonnier. Stupidly, she much prefers reading.”
They’d laughed, and now he had actually been home for several days and was just spooning in the rich crème brûlée that Marie-Hélène had served him in the dining room. With a sigh of satisfaction, Max wiped his mouth with his damask napkin and limped, leaning on his crutches and taking very small, careful steps, into the library. It was a wonder that he could move about so well so soon after the operation. The word “progress” had taken on a new dimension. Even Professeur Pasquale had been surprised how well the “Ward 28 hip” was doing and had finally given in to Max’s constant pressure, allowing him to go through the necessary postoperation rehabilitation phase as an outpatient.
So now Max took a taxi every day to a physiotherapist’s practice near the hospital where he could do the necessary exercises. A bit laborious, perhaps, but still far better than being stuck in a rehabilitation clinic getting depressed. Professeur Pasquale had also advised him to remove anything in the house that might cause him to trip and to have handholds and a bath seat fitted in the bathroom—as well as to avoid ladders for a while.
Max put his crutches to one side, dropped into his desk chair with a groan, and looked out into the garden which was bathed in the midday sun. Then he picked up the phone and dialed Rosalie Laurent’s number.
She was in the store when he rang, and there were customers there, but there was no mistaking her delight at his call. It wasn’t a long conversation, but long enough to deal with what was most important: to invite Rosalie to Le Vésinet for coffee on Saturday.
“How lovely that you’re home again, Max. I’d love to come,” she had said. “Should I bring anything?”
“No need, Marie-Hélène will bake us a tarte tatin. Just bring yourself.”
Max put the phone down with a smile and sat at his desk for a while, lost in thought. At the end of the call Rosalie had said that there was something she wanted to discuss with him when she came to Le Vésinet. What could it be?
Max sat thinking for a while, and then noticed that he was gradually succumbing to a pleasant weariness. Since his time in hospital he’d gotten into the habit of taking a little afternoon nap. And fortunately no one would disturb him at it here in the peaceful silence of the old villa. He reached for his crutches and heaved himself laboriously out of his chair. Montsignac had probably won Rosalie over to the idea of the Christmas story, and she was now meant to persuade
him to do it. The old fox!
Shaking his head, he went over to the door. As he passed the old cabinet, glancing with pleasure at his favorite picture, a southern French seaside landscape, he suddenly saw something that brought him to a stop.
In the old black Remington, that he hadn’t used for decades and kept more out of nostalgia than anything else, there was a sheet of paper.
Startled, Max turned the little wheel at the side and pulled the paper out of the roller. What he saw made him feel strangely uneasy. The pale blue lines seemed to him like a message from the past. Could there be such a thing?
His heart beat faster and he felt like a time traveler hurtling through space at breakneck speed.
On the page in his hand were the first sentences of the story of the blue tiger. Written almost forty years before. On that old Remington.
Twenty-five
“Sometimes in life things happen that you just weren’t expecting,” he had told her when they spoke together on Skype as they did every Friday. His voice had sounded a little guilty, but also very definite, like the time-delayed pictures of his face, which had taken on a golden-brown coloring under the California sun. “I thought it was better to tell you right away,” he added ingenuously, smiling at her from the screen in his boyish way. “I hope we can still be friends.” Rosalie had indeed expected many things. But definitely not that René would end their relationship on Skype. Nothing like that had ever happened to her before—still, she should have seen it coming, and if she hadn’t been so bound up with the events and emotional upheavals of her own life she would certainly have noticed the signs earlier.
Almost three weeks had passed since she had taken her boyfriend to the airport in Paris. From the very beginning she’d gotten the impression that René was taking to his seminar in San Diego like a duck to water—whenever she spoke to him, this was the old-fashioned phrase that popped into her mind. In every telephone conversation his voice had brimmed over with enthusiasm. Zack Whiteman—a god. The participants in the seminar—outgoing, laid-back, all with the right spirit. The long, golden beaches—unbelievable. The climate—fantastic. Everything was perfect; she’d already understood that.
“The latest trend is roga,” René had told her. “The best thing you can do for your body.”
“Roga?” she repeated suspiciously, sitting in bed with her cup of coffee, hoping she’d never have to try a sport that was so demanding just to pronounce. “What on earth is that?”
“A combination of running and yoga,” he explained. “I’ll show you when I get back.”
She’d laughed and thought, No thank you! When he’d then told her about the blond long-distance runner who accompanied him on his “fasted training” first thing in the morning before sharing a papaya with lime juice, she’d put it down to “sporting enthusiasm” and thought no further of it.
In subsequent calls the name Anabel Miller had cropped up again a couple of times, and then the long-distance runner suddenly disappeared from their conversations. But not, as it turned out, from the life of her roga-practicing boyfriend.
For a couple of days she heard no more, and when they then spoke again and René materialized on her computer screen looking visibly sheepish, Rosalie could see that he had something on his mind. His permanent enthusiasm had given way to embarrassment, and the gaze of his brown eyes into the camera was rather anxious.
“Can we talk?” he had asked.
“Of course. We’re talking already, aren’t we?” she’d said, unaware of what was going on.
“Alors … well … I don’t really know how to tell you this … humph!” He scratched the back of his head. “It’s not so simple. You’re … such a wonderful woman, Rosalie … even if you definitely eat too many croissants.” He gave an embarrassed grin. “But what does that matter, you can afford it, you’ve got a good metabolism.…”
“Eh … so?” Disconcerted, Rosalie bent forward, trying to find some sense in her boyfriend’s babbling.
“Well … I mean, it has nothing to do with you, there’s no way I want to put you down, you’re too important to me … and even if we sort of … well … how should I put it, aren’t such a good match in terms of our interests,” he hemmed and hawed, “it was always very good with you.…”
And then finally the penny dropped.
“The long-distance runner,” she said and he nodded in relief because it was all out in the open at last.
And then he said those words about the things that sometimes happen in life even when you’re not expecting them.
* * *
STRANGELY, IT HADN’T HURT at all. Well, not much. Of course she’d felt a little strange as the years she’d spent with René rolled past her inner eye like a film. There were many things she would not have wanted to miss, not even that solitary early-morning run through the Jardin du Luxembourg and certainly not that first night on the roof of her little apartment.
Rosalie smiled as she thought of it. She hadn’t been totally destroyed or outraged at René’s confession that he’d fallen head over heels in love with a sporty blonde called Anabel Miller, who ate papayas for breakfast and with whom he could now practice roga—or anything else—to his heart’s content.
René’s honesty was disarming, as usual, and she couldn’t be angry with him. Surprised at how quickly he’d fallen in love, yes of course. But when she got dressed after their conversation and stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom putting on a touch of lipstick, she realized to her surprise that she was even a little relieved. That could have been because some things that she hadn’t been expecting had occurred in her own life.
The previous Tuesday Robert had, to her surprise, turned up at the store to find out “how things were.” It was the first time they’d seen each other after their dubious adventure in Le Vésinet and their unfortunate parting outside the hotel. When she saw the tall, lanky figure with his mop of blond hair appear at the door of the store at midday, something approaching a shock of joy ran through her limbs.
“Am I intruding?” Robert had asked, flashing her a hopeful smile that was difficult to resist.
“No … no, of course not. I just have to…,” she had stammered, self-consciously removing a lock of hair from her face, “deal with this lady’s purchases.” Her cheeks red, she’d turned to her customer. “So … what do we have here? Three sheets of gift wrap, five cards, a rose stamp…”
“Oh, do you know what? I think I’ll also take one of those pretty paperweights that you have in the window,” said the customer, a red-haired woman in an elegant yellow shirtwaist dress—obviously an Italian—clumping over to the window on her breathtakingly high heels. “That one there … with the writing.” She pointed into the window.
“Yes, of course, with pleasure.” Rosalie followed the customer, pushing past Robert who was leaning on the store doorpost. “Which paperweight would you like—Paris or l’Amour?”
“Hm…” The Italian woman thought for a moment. “Molto bene—they’re both very pretty.…” She pursed her lips indecisively as Rosalie took both the oval glass paperweights out of the display and held them out to the customer.
“Why don’t you take both?” they suddenly heard from the direction of the door, and both women turned round in surprise. Robert Sherman stood there smiling, his arms folded over his water-blue polo shirt. “Excuse me for intervening—but Paris and love—they suit each other perfectly, don’t you think?”
Flattered, the Italian woman smiled back, and it was not difficult to see that she found the “intervention” of this good-looking foreigner pleasing. Her gaze lost itself for a moment in his eyes and then slid down over the suntanned arms with the little blond hairs that emerged from the polo shirt, the bright, slightly too loose-fitting duck pants, and the brown suede moccasins.
She seemed to really like what she saw.
“Sì, signor, that’s a good idea,” she purred. “After all, Paris is the city of love, isn’t it?” She laughed, tilted her head b
ack a little, and fluttered her thick black eyelashes. She obviously interpreted Robert’s remark as an invitation to flirt. She nodded curtly to Rosalie. “Wrap them both for me, please!” Then she directed her undivided attention back to Robert. “You’re not from here, are you? No, let me guess!” Another throaty laugh. “You’re … an American!”
Robert raised his eyebrows and nodded with amusement, while Rosalie stood beside the till in silence, wrapping the paperweights in tissue paper and following the banter with furrowed brow. What was all this idiotic billing and cooing about? Luna Luna wasn’t a dating café.
“An American in Paris—how romantic,” cried the Italian woman with delight. Then she lowered her voice.
“So we’re both foreigners in this beautiful city.” She held her slim hand out to him, and it wouldn’t have surprised Rosalie if he’d kissed it. “Gabriella Spinelli. From Milano.”
Robert took her hand with a grin. “Robert Sherman, New York.”
Gabriella Spinelli took a step backward. “No!” she breathed, opening her already outsize eyes even wider. “You aren’t by any chance from the law firm Sherman and Sons? My uncle, Angelo Salvatore, who lives in New York, was represented in a very complicated case years ago by a Paul Sherman. A lot of money depended on it. The best lawyer he ever had—Uncle Angelo still says so. He was more than satisfied.” She straightened the sunglasses in her hair.
Robert nodded in surprise. “That was my father.”
“Well what do you know! Madre mia! My goodness, is it possible!” Gabriella laughed ecstatically and all at once Rosalie felt a violent urge to wring the scrawny neck of this red-haired lady from Milan, whose uncle—Angelo Soprano? no … Salvatore—was obviously the godfather of the New York Mafia.
“It’s-a small-a world-a,” she said with her appalling Italian accent. “Do you believe in coincidence, Mr. Sherman?” She tilted her head coquettishly, and Robert couldn’t help shaking his head with a smile.
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