‘Do you row?’
He stammered that he had rowed a little but that he was very interested in it as a sport. The old man had gone on staring at him as though waiting for some revelation.
The final interview was conducted by a man and a woman barely older than he was. The woman, who was English, questioned him about his mathematics research. He was surprised to discover she completely understood his frame of reference and followed up with more technical and probing questions. The interview was becoming an exam.
After twenty minutes, she said: ‘Welcome to Kelmann. You’ll be working on my team. Together we’re going to do great things.’
And this was how he and Matt, having come back to Paris for the weekend, came to be celebrating his new job at the restaurant. Simon took a small sip of champagne, thinking that at these prices he needed to savour it. He felt happy he had lived up to his friend’s expectations but – and this was more surprising – he also felt a certain pride. He had been chosen. He took more pride in this than he had when he was accepted at the Polytechnique because, though the entrance exam had confirmed his aptitude for mathematics, it was not as though the Polytechnique had specifically chosen him. And in fact, in his years at university, it was obvious that most people thought of him as a likeable half-wit, just as they had back in school. And girls hadn’t paid him any more attention. But now a girl – and a pretty English girl at that – had chosen him. And it was his personality, he thought, that had made it possible for him to get through the interviews. He had been able to answer, to persuade, in a word, to seduce. He, Simon Judal. The spotty boy in glasses sitting in the front row near the blackboard. He was very much his aunt’s nephew, he thought, feeling pangs of guilt that he hadn’t been to see her for a long time. Now here he was, wearing an Armani suit, rich with the proceeds of a salary he was yet to earn, treating his best friend, the most fascinating man he knew, to a meal in a restaurant whose prices were obscene. The ballet of waiters traced a sinuous curve around him, eager to satisfy his every desire.
At the next table was a foreign couple. Simon was more or less sure the maître d’hôtel was speaking to them in Russian. A short man, with a woman somewhat taller than him who was now chatting pleasantly to the waiter.
In fact Elena, who made a point of speaking in French, was telling the maître d’hôtel that they loved Paris and that whenever their work brought them to France, they always made the most of it and spent a couple of days in the city, and always had dinner in this restaurant, which was their favourite thing of all. And the maître d’hôtel, overjoyed yet solemn, not knowing how to express his contentment, wandered off with a rictus he intended as a smile but looked like the ecstasy of suffering, like Saint Sebastian pierced by arrows of pleasure.
Elena had been invited to contribute to an international symposium at the Sorbonne under the evocative title ‘The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Balzacian character in European literature’. Though not on the level of Tomashevsky, Bakhtin and Russian literary critics of the past, Elena was nonetheless a good researcher, and most of all she had exceptional charisma, which meant she was much in demand at university seminars. Everyone knew she was extremely rich and that fact alone filled the researchers with awe and, bemused by her presence among them, they vied with each other to sit next to her. This Russian woman who was something of a mystery, since she was the wife of one of those men with obscure fortunes who had emerged from the ruins of the empire, was like something out of a novel. They imagined terrible crimes and reprisals, and those few who had been introduced to the poker-faced and perfectly polite Lev Kravchenko gave terrifying accounts of him. And so, switching effortlessly between Russian and French, the foreign language she spoke best, and between Italian and Spanish or English, the beautiful critic impressed her entourage. Indeed, during this conference at the Sorbonne, which focused entirely on the greatest chronicler of capitalism, the first writer to portray, in novels of overwhelming vision, the power exerted by money and society over an individual forced to adapt or die, Elena was probably the only person who understood Balzac’s works in her very core.
As the waiter presented the next course, stiff-backed, his elegant description of the food like some high-flown poem incomprehensible but pleasing to Lev’s ear, Elena contemplated the squat man sitting opposite her and thought about that eminently Balzacian notion: did Lev really have to adapt or die? Obviously, Russia exhibited all the characteristics of nascent capitalism at its most brutal, and Lev, in order to make a name for himself, had demonstrated both his strength and his intelligence. But at the same time, was he really obliged to adapt? He had pre-empted things, he had wanted to work with Chubais, Gaidar and Yeltsin, he had taken his share of Russia’s riches. Of course his pact with the Chechens, this alliance that seemed to her so dangerous and which she had repeatedly warned him against, might be considered Balzacian given Lev’s insistence that he had no choice, but surely he had willingly got caught up in the system years before? Wouldn’t they have done better to stay in their modest little corner, teaching, thinking, not participating in the carving-up of the empire? They would probably have been poor but they would have had no need to adapt. Possibly some small compromises at the university, she thought, but nothing major, not the fate of the largest country in the world.
She noticed a young man staring at her. She met his gaze and he looked away, flushed with embarrassment. He had an olive complexion, an indefinable fragility. A drawn-out adolescent, scrawny, too quickly grown. Opposite him was a man of the same age, his features cruder but pleasing. The other man, feeling himself observed, looked up and held her gaze. ‘A ladies’ man,’ she thought, ‘the sort of Casanova so common in France. The playboy and his stooge.’
‘She’s obviously Russian,’ thought Matt, ‘though she doesn’t look the part. Now the man on the other hand … he’s the epitome of the Russian businessman in all his glory. But she doesn’t look like a whore. Strange. A class act.’
This thought, one of the clichés he was fond of because he thought it true, was interrupted by a sudden commotion. A child had jumped down from his chair and run into the middle of the restaurant, where he stood, stock still. Then, just as suddenly – like in a farce – he dashed back to the table where his mother, a heavy-breasted woman, grabbed his arms and, speaking to him in English, clearly gave him a talking-to.
‘Give him a break,’ said the man sitting opposite her, ‘he’s just having a bit of fun. This has to be boring for him.’
The triumphant boy sniggered.
‘It just isn’t done,’ said Shoshana.
‘So what? He’s not bugging anyone,’ said Ruffle, shrugging, ‘it’s what kids do. I’m sure you were the same at his age.’
‘I was not.’
‘Well, I’m sure I was. He takes after his dad, that’s all.’
Matt jerked his chin towards the table.
‘Have you seen those rednecks?’ he said to Simon. ‘Incapable of bringing up their child properly.’
Simon, who understood nothing about such things, having not been ‘properly brought up’, especially since he barely moved a muscle after his parents died, did not reply. Matt, who had been very strictly brought up, felt personally insulted by this permissiveness.
‘And the guy’s clothes! Jeans hanging down round his arse. At his age! Trailer trash like that shouldn’t be allowed in a restaurant like this.’
Sila quickly stepped to one side. The boy had jumped down from his chair again and the waiter had almost walked into him. Lev watched the scene with a vague interest. The child looked the waiter up and down, then quickly dashed back to his seat. He could have upended the tray, thought Sila. What a nightmare. He imagined the plates strewn across the floor, the shame, the comments of Lemerre and the maître d’hôtel. He could even have lost his job. People had no business to bring a child into a restaurant if he couldn’t behave!
Ruffle, Shoshana and their son Christopher had been visiting Paris for three days. They h
ad done the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, Notre-Dame and Versailles, and though Shoshana had found the visits interesting, they were all tired. This tiredness manifested itself in her as a vague melancholy, in Christopher as hyperactivity and in Ruffle as a pent-up aggression. So, not wanting to start an argument, Shoshana said nothing to her son when he came back to the table. Instead, she thought about the gargoyles of Notre-Dame. She had been entranced by the soaring majesty of the cathedral but in the context of such grandeur and beauty she had found the gargoyles shocking, like a sort of lapse of taste; they had a medieval brutality and malevolence that firmly restored this timeless church to a precise and, to her, largely unfamiliar period of European history. The demonic at the heart of beauty.
She wanted to confide this thought to her husband but his attention was fixed on a young man who was glaring scornfully at Christopher. She herself felt hurt. Her eyes flickered around the restaurant, finding those of the little man with slanting eyes and olive skin; she fleetingly sought out those of the tall dark-haired woman sitting opposite him, also a mother probably, someone who could understand her, then looked back at her husband. He was crimson with rage and this worried her: though she suspected the stare was not sufficient provocation for Mark to get to his feet, but if the young man were to say something …
Christopher was crumbling up his bread on the table, which was now covered with little brown and white balls. She grabbed his hand and, with utter indifference, he carried on with what he was doing with the other. She let his hand drop. Immediately, as though she had released him, he leapt down from his chair and went back to his little game, getting in Sila’s way.
This time Sila was not surprised. He grabbed the child by the arm and told him to go back to his seat. But at that moment a large, bellowing face appeared before him and a moment later his head exploded with pain as his nose was smashed and everything crashed to the floor with a terrifying racket.
The maître d’hôtel rushed over to Sila. Staggering, he got to his feet, took a handkerchief and pressed it to his nose. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the man sit down again, filled with a barely contained fury that was not yet sated. He felt humiliated but completely devoid of anger, stunned by the inexplicable violence and numb with pain. Torrents of blood pulsed into the handkerchief.
Lev considered the scene without reacting. He was anxious for things to return to normal. For order to be restored and, with it, silence. Such displays of force always seemed to him somewhat ridiculous, especially in such a situation. The poor guy with the overdeveloped torso … He wondered whether it had been wise to come out without his bodyguards. Elena couldn’t bear to have them around, especially when they were abroad.
Ruffle, for his part, was still flushed with rage, filled with a combination of satisfaction and shame. He wanted to say something, to mutter something like ‘Jesus, the nerve of the guy!’ but Shoshana’s horrified expression pleaded with him to say nothing. So he remained silent, trying to shut himself off in his gorilla-like posture, though acutely aware that the other asshole over there, doubtless a French asshole, elegant and well dressed, probably a faggot with his boyfriend, was looking him up and down with an expression that dripped contempt, the same expression that had driven him mad with humiliation. He deserved respect, that much was clear, but it was the other asshole whose face he should have smashed in, with his faggoty aristocratic airs. As for the other faggot sitting opposite him, why doesn’t he just up and help the nigger instead of squirming in his seat thinking about whether he should do something? And what’s the Russian woman doing staring at her husband, waiting for God knows what? Staring at him like he’s got a duty to do something? The guy clearly didn’t give a fuck, besides, everyone knows the Russians hate blacks, they kill them in the streets of Moscow.
Meanwhile, Sila had stumbled back to the kitchens and the doors had closed behind him.
‘I told you that guy was an arsehole,’ said one waiter.
‘Don’t make a fuss,’ the maître d’hôtel interrupted. ‘Nothing happened. We carry on as normal.’
‘What? We’re not going to do anything? Have you seen the state Sila’s in?’
‘If Sila wants to make a complaint, he’s free to do so. In the meantime, nothing happened.’
A hotel employee got his car and drove Sila to casualty. On the way, Sila did not say a word.
At the restaurant, everything went on as normal. The waiters recommenced their ballet unmolested by the child, who sat in silence. Only Shoshana remained petrified. She did not eat, she no longer spoke, no longer thought. Overwhelmed, she stared at the gargoyle sitting opposite her, like a stone animal guzzling the food she had not touched. In the timeless structure of marriage, the yawning fracture of violence had just opened up.
10
The lights of the city infused the curtains with a soft glow. A thin, insistent beam breached the gap where the heavy drapes met. From the bed where Lev lay sleeping, Elena stared hypnotised at the life swelling beyond the window, the slow throb of a city that never really slept but whose energy was dispersed, separated by patches of latent darkness in areas which, at this hour, were peaceful villages of deserted streets, and focused on a few vivid, luminous spots. She could not get to sleep. She and Lev had walked together in silence, come back to this hotel suite where they always stayed when in Paris, though they could have stayed in a different hotel every time, something she would have preferred as it would give her a chance to experience other places. Other hotels, smaller, more anonymous, more charming than this grand hôtel, which, though elegant, was cold – a perfect example of the French monumental classical style aimed at foreigners. But she was convinced that Lev did not like France as much as he said he did, because he only truly loved Russia. In other countries, he knew the skyscrapers, a handful of monuments and museums and the grands hôtels. In China, in Brazil, in Venezuela, in the United States, in Saudi Arabia, throughout Europe, all over the world he knew the five-star hotels. And were it not for her, he would never experience anything else, especially since, with time, he had become increasingly indifferent to things.
She turned her head towards him. His tense face, his torso stripped of muscle. Wasn’t that a poem by Ronsard? Fleshless, stripped of sinew, muscle, pulp … Ronsard, at the end of his life. But Lev was anything but fleshless; on the contrary, his body had filled out. Yes, his body was round, with round feet, round calves, a round belly … a rotundity so different from his former wiry thinness …
This evening had been a terrible defeat. Why had Lev not done something? Why had she not intervened? Obscurely, without quite understanding why, she felt that this indifference in the face of a man being beaten presaged terrible things. She took it for granted that terrible things had happened in the long years while Lev had been making a name for himself, because she despised the oligarchs and could not entirely dissociate her husband from this milieu of lies and brutality, but it was this trivial incident that had revealed to her Lev’s inner corruption. A young waiter going about his job had been punched for no reason by a thug simply for trying to get his son to move out of the way, and not only had Lev done nothing, he had not even felt the need to do something. He didn’t care. It seemed clear to her that if a man had been killed in the street he would still not have got involved. He would merely have registered that same disdainful contempt. True, no one had done anything, because people are naturally cowards, they go about their business, they don’t want to stand up for other people, but no one else in the restaurant had shown the same utter indifference. She had been indignant, as had the young man, the man who looked like an overgrown teenager, as had many of the people in the restaurant. Only Lev had remained impassive. Lev the intellectual, Lev the professor, Lev the democrat. A man eager to get back to his dinner.
It was not fear, it wasn’t even the natural reluctance to get involved. Even she had to admit that Lev was afraid of nothing. He wasn’t rash, wasn’t foolhardy and he often gauged the dang
ers of a situation, but he wasn’t afraid. No, it was simpler than that: he didn’t give a damn.
In the light of this incident she found herself reassessing all her husband’s traits. The extreme politeness which, like his impeccable suits, she had always considered a form of elegance, she now saw as characteristic of his indifference, like a high wall set against others, against the world, a polite statement marking his retreat. I am not one of you. I am nothing but these indifferent words, a readymade mould to fit every situation. Even his sense of order, which mapped out his days, was an outward sign of a machine well-oiled and, deep down, inhuman because it did not connect to the rest of humankind.
Lev gave a deep breath and turned over. On his back, his birthmark. Elena stared at it. A dark stain. The coarse, slightly scabrous skin hypnotised her. This, perhaps, was his corruption. A dark blemish, small at first, then gradually getting larger like a single water lily constantly doubling in size until it fills the lake, suffocating all life in it. A throttling, a suffocation that, little by little, would destroy him, or at least destroy everything about him she had once loved. And if she was truly honest, perhaps the water lily was already there, already spreading out over the heart of this man, stifling his pity, his tenderness, his humanity. And in that case, what was she doing with him? What was she doing with this poisonous water lily?
Not far away, in a room at the Hotel Cane, above the restaurant where she had had dinner, another woman was also having trouble sleeping. In the shadows, she too was staring at her husband’s sleeping body, a body that was not round like Lev’s, but pumped and muscular – the upper body at least. She was not staring at a blemish, but at her very own gargoyle, the man she used to cheer from the sidelines of the football field, this infantile creature that, as a bubbly cheerleader, she could not help but love and even admire not realising that he was already a gargoyle in the making, a self-infatuated idiot plagued with frustrations, irredeemably infantile, slave to the pathetic demon of appearances, turning endlessly in circles in his thwarted illusions of power and greatness.
Sila's Fortune Page 10