Linden pauses. Why is he telling his father this? Because he wants Paul to know; he wants Paul to know who Sacha is, and who he is, as well. He says it all out loud. There will be no more holding back. Linden plucks up his courage, clears his throat. The second part of the opera was as spellbinding as the first. The young soprano sang with passion as she drew near her inevitable demise. Lying on her deathbed, in a heartbreaking aria, she bade farewell to her dreams, “Addio del passato,” begging God to have mercy on her. Sacha’s favorite part. The subtle, haunting fusion of her voice and the orchestra affected Linden unexpectedly. All of a sudden, it was no longer the young soprano he saw onstage, but Candice, who had killed herself a year before, unable to face life. It was excruciating for Linden to behold; the music dug into his heart with such potency, he had to wipe his eyes. It was then that he noticed him, the tall, dark man, a few rows away, sitting and looking quietly at him. It took his breath away. It was impossible to drag his eyes from the stranger’s. It was Rachel who introduced them to each other moments later, in the crowd on the way out. It appeared she knew him well. Sacha was a keen opera lover. The ornament around his neck was a small silver drop. It would look silly on any other guy, but not on this one. “Linden Malegarde, meet Sacha Lord. I think you two might get along.” Another pause. This is harder than he thought. He starts stuttering again, which unnerves him. You can do it, says Sacha’s voice inside his head. Come on, Linden, do it. Do it for me. Do it for us. Talk to your father. Tell him. Tell him everything. Don’t be afraid. Linden tries to keep his voice light and breezy, but at times the emotion takes over and seeps through. Maybe Paul is wondering, What is so special about Sacha? Why Sacha? Why him and not some other guy? It’s simple, and it goes something like this: Sacha is the kind of person who makes others happy. It could be seen as a natural gift, he supposes. Sacha gives off special energy; it contaminates, in a good way. Perhaps it’s his enthusiasm, the fact Sacha likes to listen to people, that he’s interested in them. That’s how he began his start-up, because he wanted to give those with great ideas a chance. He likes getting people together; he likes creating, communicating, mapping out, imagining. Linden tries to explain what Sacha’s start-up is about, how it works. He’s worried a technical exposé might bore or tire his father. What would Mr. Treeman have to say about Silicon Valley? Linden tries not to think about his father’s responses. If he does that, he might as well stop. Sacha’s start-up analyzes the influence of digital technology on everyday life, hunts out new apps, experiments with them, funds them. Linden wonders if Paul knows what an app is. Paul doesn’t even have a smartphone, let alone a computer. He might as well try to explain. Apps cover a huge range of various sorts of actions. What Sacha does is hunt out any promising digital inventiveness; for example, a smart dude created an app that worked with recycled mobile phones to protect rain forests. How? The phones were rigged to branches, and if they ever picked up the sound of chain saws, the phones would automatically call the guards. There are many concepts out there, and some of them sound downright ludicrous, but Sacha listens to every single one of them. Each person who contacts Sparkden.com with a project has Sacha’s attention. Sacha always looks ahead. The past doesn’t interest him much; he’s fascinated by what the future holds, however dystopian that future may seem. The list of app possibilities in every domain is endless: tracking moods, sleep, dreams, improving posture, controlling budget, weight, monitoring health, projecting favorite videos and photos on walls from a phone, transforming surfaces into keyboards or musical instruments. Is his father following all this? He hopes so. Another point: Sacha is a great boss. He never patronizes or bullies. The twenty people working for him worship him. Oh, but he does have failings, like everyone else. Paul mustn’t think he’s perfect; he isn’t! He spends his life glued to his phone, which drives Linden crazy. He is at times impossibly impatient and stubborn. He flies off the handle, and then blames his conduct on his histrionic mother, Svetlana, who is a quarter Russian. He’s a hopeless driver; he becomes incensed in traffic jams and then daydreams at green lights, heedless of the hooting behind him. He’s a bit of a prankster, too, which can occasionally be annoying; he loves playing tricks, disguising his voice over the phone (which he is very good at). Sometimes Linden thinks Sacha should have been an actor.
Linden feels the path is not taking him the right way, where he wants it to go. He must leave this sunny, frivolous area, heading in a darker direction. That’s better, but it’s less easy. He’s afraid he’ll start faltering again. Linden says he guesses that maybe he isn’t the son Paul wanted to have. Perhaps Paul is disappointed. His father often said, when Linden was small, that he was the last of the Malegardes. The last male heir. The last one to bear that name. His father seemed to think it was important. Perhaps Paul is saddened that his son will never have a child with a woman. Perhaps Paul doesn’t want to hear all this chat about a man. About the man Linden loves. Silence. Linden still doesn’t dare look at his father. What might he read there? Repulsion? Resentment? Instead, he stares at the rain dribbling down the pane like teardrops, and it is again Sacha he sees: Sacha rooting for him, urging him on. He plants more power into his voice; it’s getting all thin and teary again. Linden felt different before he was ten years old. He hadn’t known how to express it. It was such a confusing sensation. At first, when the kids at school called him those names, he had felt shame; he had even wanted to die, to run away, but not anymore. No, not anymore. Isn’t he talking too fast? The words rush out, almost jumbled. Shouldn’t he slow down? He takes a deep breath, resumes. He knows Sacha is the person he wants to spend the rest of his life with, the person he wants to grow old with. He had never thought of getting married until Sacha. He had never even envisaged a family until Sacha. Now, a wedding and a family are part of their future, part of their plans. In 2013, the year he met Sacha, people took to the streets in France to demonstrate against gay marriage. Paul probably remembers that small children were dragged to these rallies, wearing pink and blue T-shirts that read ONE DAD, ONE MOM. While there were many walking the streets, the majority of citizens approved the law, which was passed, as Paul no doubt knows. Linden is not ashamed of what he is; he wants Paul to know this. He has many friends who still cannot admit to their families that they are gay. They lie, and they pretend, because they are afraid. They invent other lives, other loves. That is their choice, and he respects it, but he does not want to be trapped in duplicity. Perhaps, in the beginning, Linden should have talked to Paul. It wasn’t easy to open up to his father. Did Paul ever sense this? Linden had tried. At times, Paul seemed so wrapped up in his trees that he wondered if his father had ever wanted to see the real world. Or simply, are trees the real world to Paul? If that is the case, he can understand, because taking photos is like putting on armor, sliding a protective shield between reality and his own vision of it. Linden had chosen to come out to Candice because he sensed she would understand. She did. Years later, he spoke to Lauren, who did not react as well as her sister. It had wounded him. Today, Linden is not sure his father understands, or accepts what he is. All he knows is that he is at peace with himself. If his father cannot bear who he is, what he is, then Linden will learn to live with it. He will face it. With Sacha’s love, he can do this. The most important thing for him is not to lie to his father. He cannot pretend to be someone else. So now Paul knows. Paul knows everything there is to know about his son.
Linden is still facing the windowpane, his breath drawing bubbles of vapor on it. He turns around. From where he is standing, he can’t see his father’s eyes. Linden comes closer, bracing himself for what he will discern there. What if it is rejection or disgust? What will he do? Turn around and leave? The dread within him looms; he can’t help thinking back to the abhorrence in Hadrien’s father’s face, to the words he spat out: dirty, disgusting faggot. Shuddering, he reaches for his father’s hand. He sits down, looks straight at Paul. What he discovers takes his breath away. The blue eyes shine out to him, and he r
eads such love there that tears come; powerful and tranquil love, as if the weight of his father’s hand, encompassing and tremendous, were resting on his shoulder, as if his father’s arms were wrapped around him in one of those brief bear hugs he used to give him when he was a kid. Paul is trying to speak, but only garbled words come out, and Linden doesn’t care; he lets the tears run unchecked. His father loves him. The force of that love. That’s all he knows. That’s all he sees.
* * *
Linden lingers in front of Professor Magerant’s office, hoping to see him. His assistant tells him the professor is still in the operating room and won’t be back for a while. Nurses are looking after Paul again. While Linden waits outside, Dominique emerges from another room, her knitting in her hands. He tells her he’s alarmed by his father’s condition, and she nods. She noticed the degradation, as well. She’ll see Paul now. Does Linden mind? Linden says of course not; he’s going to spend most of the day here anyway. He settles into a chair and sends a message to Sacha. Dominique reappears after a few minutes. Her face seems flushed.
“Your father needs you to go get something for him.”
Flummoxed, Linden asks her what she means. She explains that there is something Paul wants Linden to fetch from the house in the Drôme. Linden stares at her. What is it? She says she doesn’t know. She wrote his words down on a piece of paper, which she hands him. Nonplussed, Linden reads: Tallest lime. Blocked-up hole where dead branch used to be, halfway up, left as you face the valley. Get Vandeleur to help. Again, he asks her what the object is. Dominique shakes her head. Paul wouldn’t say; he just said his son must reach down the hole and bring it back. Linden looks at her with wariness. Paul can’t talk, so how can she know all this? She replies calmly, saying he can talk; it’s difficult to understand him, but she knows how. That’s her job, interpreting people who have had strokes. She asks Linden who Vandeleur is. The gardener, he tells her. He’s been working there for years; he descends from a British army officer. He’s someone his father trusts. They wait till the nurses leave before entering the room. When they are alone with Paul, Dominique inquires about the object in the tree. Paul’s pale face seems to scrunch up even more, but a sound does come out of his mouth, and Linden has no idea what it is. Paul repeats it several times, but Linden still can’t make it out. Dominique nods. She says it is a box. A metal box in the tree. His father wants him to go get a box hidden in a tree, he asks, trying to keep the incredulity out of his voice; his father wants him to do this now? More unintelligible gurgles emanate from Paul. Dominique listens vigilantly. She translates: Yes, he wants Linden to bring it to him. As soon as he can. He says it’s very important. Linden says he doubts he’ll get a train; most of them have stopped running because of the flood. How will he get to Vénozan? It’s over six hundred kilometers away. Dominique suggests quietly that perhaps he could drive. Linden glances over at his father. In the ashen, misaligned face, the blue eyes glow with intensity. There is no way he can back down before them, even if he’s apprehensive about leaving his father in this state. He nods, tells Paul he’ll get the house keys from Lauren, rent a car, and be on his way. The parched lips bend into the semblance of a smile. Linden bends down to kiss his father’s cheek, wondering what this means, wondering what he will find.
To his surprise, Linden rents a car easily at the Montparnasse station. He is told that’s because the tourists are all gone—a disaster for business, for everything. Luckily, the tank is full, and that’s good news, because he is warned he will have a hard time finding gas in the city. It will also take him a while to leave Paris. He even gets an upgrade, a sleek black Mercedes for the same rate as a humble Peugeot. At the hotel, Lauren hands over the house keys to her son. She has no idea about the box in the tree; neither does Tilia. Mistral wants to go with him, and Linden rather likes the idea, as the trip will take him over six hours, but Tilia says firmly she needs her daughter by her side. It is almost noon. If there is no traffic, he can be at Vénozan by six. It will be dark then, and complicated to locate the tree, Tilia points out. Lauren says he should get a good night’s sleep once he’s there, then leave early tomorrow morning. That sounds good, he agrees. Lauren gives him Vandeleur’s number and the one for Nadine, the lady who looks after the house, in case of a problem. She’ll call Nadine while he’s on his way and ask her to put the heat on in his room, fresh sheets on his bed, and to leave dinner for him in the fridge. Linden grabs his phone, his Leica, some rolls of film, and a change of clothes. He waves good-bye to them as they watch him draw away. It feels odd to be at the wheel of a manual car again; it takes him a little while to master the sensation. The robust Mercedes is a pleasure to drive. He heads to porte d’Orléans as wispy rain draws feathery streaks on the windshield. The A6 highway traffic is dense, as predicted. Linden turns on the radio; a provocative female voice is saying how the flooding is having positive effects; Parisians are fascinated by the event, and many love affairs are beginning on the bridges. The voice goes on to mention that the Latin motto of the city of Paris is fluctuat nec mergitur, which means “tossed about by the waves but does not sink.” Isn’t that what they all need to remember? she quips. The facetiousness annoys Linden; he changes channels. A news flash announces the archbishop of Paris is praying in Sacré-Coeur Basilica for the flood victims during a special Mass: the archbishop’s morose tone exhorts listeners to care for one another, to leave their selfishness behind, in the name of the Lord. Linden cuts him off, as well. And then … Is it a coincidence? Hardly! An acoustic guitar twanging in an ethereal fashion fills the Mercedes: the unmistakable beginning of “Starman.” Linden turns the volume up and finds himself singing along, accompanying Bowie’s impish “low-oh-oh” and “radio-oh-oh” with gusto, belting out at the top of his voice that there’s a starman waiting in the sky, only to discover the driver in the next car staring at him unabashedly. He can’t help laughing, only a trifle self-conscious, and the car picks up speed now, at last, putting malodorous, damp Paris behind him. In the masses of articles published after Bowie’s death in 2016, he read that everyone had their own special Bowie. He wonders what the singer really represents for his father. A man who loves trees could have been soothed by the mellifluous accents of Charles Trenet or Charles Aznavour, or by Georges Brassens’s gruff southern accent, not far from his own, and yet it was an eccentric Englishman who fascinated him—a skinny, gawky guy with orange hair and chalk white skin who shaved off his eyebrows and wore makeup. It is precisely that, which Linden finds astonishing: his father’s veneration for an artist so dissimilar from himself.
Guilt comes over him unexpectedly. Was he right to drive off like this, without even speaking to Professor Magerant? And what the hell is in that box? Why is the box in the tree? How long has it been there? The usually busy highway grows more and more empty; he wonders why. Near Beaune, three hours away from Paris, he stops for a sandwich and a coffee in a deserted cafeteria. Afterward, he connects his phone to the car audio system so that he can play his own music and make and receive calls. Another 180 minutes before he reaches Vénozan. He daren’t try his home number. It’s too early in the morning in San Francisco; Sacha won’t be getting up for another hour. He’ll give it a go later. He calls Tilia, tells her to warn Magerant that he’s gone to get something for their father. She says she will, and that Mistral will be spending the day with her grandfather, which reassures him. As he draws nearer to Lyon, the traffic gets denser, and the rain vanishes, offering him his first glimpse of a blue sky in seven days, since he landed last Friday. It fills him with a sort of hope, spurs him on. After a sluggish passage through Lyon, the road becomes fluid again. Just two hours to go. The light is dwindling gradually, the sky glowing pink with the setting sun. Linden feels tired now; there’s an ache in his neck and back, but he wants to keep at it. When he leaves the highway at Montélimar, night has fallen. It is cold, though not as cold as in Paris. Mistral calls to say Paul is asleep and that Tilia spoke to the professor: Paul is going to be put on
new medicine. There is no need to operate for now, the doctor said. The road twists through the hills toward Grignan, Sévral, Nyons, and in spite of himself, Linden can’t help feeling joy in returning to the land of his childhood. He hasn’t been back for four long years. When he parks the car near the house, the cool night air enveloping him as he steps outside smells of moss, wood, and rich, moist soil. He breathes it in avidly, stretching his weary limbs. The full moon glows down upon him magnanimously. He unlocks the front door; it lets out a familiar groan and click when it is pushed open, and the heavy iron doorknob still draws the same cold imprint in his palm.
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