I didn’t say no. Granville, Villedoye, they’re about the same, and I’d have the sea.
“Don’t forget that the city is renowned for its treatments for lame people,” he had said with a smile.
Exactly. They helped all kinds of accident victims get back on their feet. Who could want more?
Once again my heart was up to its old tricks when Daddy told me, a few days ago, that Claudio had called. A ticket to the première of La Traviata was waiting for me at the Champs-Élysées Theater.
The bulldozer of memory crushed my heart. It was during the famous trip to New York, at “Mr. Pierre’s house,” as Claudio called the place. I saw again the horses’ nostrils flaring in the cold, the doorman trimmed with braid, a beautiful pineapple in the fruit basket, a room, a bed.
I had asked Claudio to forgive his father, and if he did, I would commit myself to coming to the première of La Traviata.
You say anything to give hope a chance, and that’s how you find yourself an idiot, with a piece of the moon in your arms and a promise to keep.
“Will you go?” Daddy asked.
I couldn’t answer. The little one was stumped.
Even fathers, even those who make the best bread in the area, are of no help to daughters who love so strongly that sometimes they prefer not to wake up in the morning—because they don’t want to have to think about it.
In love with Claudio since the first evening in Auxerre, I said to myself: it’s forever. But if “forever” would calm his rages, if “forever” would be content to be the sound of a church bell in a little village in my memory, a sorrow to nurse when listening to certain songs, that would be all right with me.
But for that, it would have to have been only my heart that suffered when I thought of him, of you; and not my body on which you left your mark, a fire that cannot be extinguished, an unfathomable emptiness, as they say of the depths of the sea.
In my mother’s favorite novels, the heroine never gave herself before marriage.
I’ll have to remember that.
41.
When I saw him, at the bottom of the steps that led to the store’s exit, the only thought that occurred to me was to save myself, to disappear.
It was too late; he saw me and rushed. I couldn’t believe it: he found out where I worked, he waited for me. How was this possible? No one knew, not even my parents.
“Laura!”
And when he took my arm, do you know what I did? I fell into his.
“David!”
Joy, pain, the “finallys” and the “I don’t want tos” mixed together and engulfed me. He squeezed me against him to prevent me from melting.
“Calm down, Laura. Calm down. Everything’s OK.”
That was a good one. I would have liked to have seen him calm down. You build up a protective wall, stone by stone, pain by pain, resignation by resignation; you believe you’re sheltered and you discover that it’s nothing more than tissue paper. Then you’re back at square one: the corridor of farewells at the Bel Air clinic.
He stepped away from me, looked at me from behind his bottle-bottom glasses: a wolf’s teeth in a friend’s smile.
“I must talk to you, Laura. Let’s not stay here.”
And you discover that, despite the earthquake, everything continues as before, “here”: the small crowd that hurries on; the merrymakers and the grousers; life.
We were on the Champs-Élysées. He took my arm and squeezed it. He must have suspected that I ran faster than he and that, if I wanted to…I didn’t have the strength to want anymore; I was too tired. Also, I didn’t want to go into one of those golden hotels where you didn’t have the right to dress badly or to show your feelings without offending the white-gloved maître d’.
We went to the back room of a bistro, on a small street where I had come to eat a grilled cheese sandwich with Denis during lunch hour. There weren’t too many people, as most preferred to congregate on the sidewalk terrace to breathe the traffic fumes. It would be a Coke for me, a coffee for David. No scotch this evening, Mr. Agent?
He continued to look at me with the air of a predator delighted to have caught his prey.
“Ah, Laura. You’ve given us some trouble.”
I laughed. It was nerves. They hadn’t given me any, he and his singer?
“How did you find me?”
“Hélène. She saw you coming out of the store. I doubted that you worked there.” He seemed embarrassed. “Someone else confirmed it.”
He had made his inquiries. If you want to disappear, here’s some advice: change your identity at the same time you change your job and your apartment.
He took my hands. What if I said that the feel of his signet ring on my fingers approached happiness?
“Why did you leave so quickly? And without explanation?”
Suffering gives you more strength to be nasty.
“Didn’t you tell me that Claudio wouldn’t need me anymore once he could see again?”
Touché. He let out a huge sigh.
“I was wrong, Laura.”
Here were our drinks. And his gesture of endlessly stirring his coffee. With his sorry look behind his thick glasses, he resembled a toad more than ever. But the frog in front of him had stopped fantasizing about becoming a prince. She was totally deflated.
“David, please, tell me…How is he? And how did you manage La Traviata, Alfredo…He must be so happy.”
“He’s not happy, Laura. You’re not there.”
I laughed again.
“What’s this bullshit all about? Stop.”
“It’s not bullshit.”
He hesitated, cleared his throat, looked away, then tossed his bomb.
“Claudio loves you, Laura.”
“No!” I shouted. Two women at a nearby table turned toward us. A domestic drama? Exactly. David didn’t have the right to say just anything to make me come back. No one was better placed than he to know that Claudio couldn’t love me.
He tried to take my hand. I hid it under the table.
“Yes, Laura. He loves you. I would have liked it if you had heard him speak about you the other day. He loves you…for what you are.”
For what I am? I wanted to block my ears. It was too hard, too crazy. I was nothing but “the little one.”
I finished my glass, David his cup. He was going to break out in laughter and tell me that it was a joke. He took off his glasses and wiped them. Without them, his face was defenseless. I wanted to hug him.
Happily for him, he quickly put them back on.
“Try to imagine what he feels now. You help him to recover his sight and you forbid him from seeing you.”
“That’s why he thinks he loves me.”
“So give him the opportunity to verify it: come back.”
This time I was filled with anger, an anger based on fear.
“Come back to do what? Help him to walk? Cut his meat for him? Pack his suitcase? He can do all that himself now. The ‘little sister’ handed in her apron. It’s finished, David.”
“I have been led to believe that you weren’t only the ‘little sister,’” he said.
My cheeks grew red. It was obviously a habit of Claudio’s to discuss his affairs with everyone.
“So? He has someone to console him.”
“If you’re talking about Hélène, you should know that they split up because of you. Did you watch television last Saturday?”
I lied. “I didn’t know he was on.”
“Too bad. He was talking to you.”
“To tell me what?”
“Come back. I’m unhappy. I can’t live without you.”
I put my face in my hands. He seemed in rather bad shape, your singer, Daddy said. And if it were true? If Claudio loved me?
When I raised my eyes, the waiter was there.
“A scotch,” David ordered. “Would you like one, Laura, or would you prefer to drink from mine?”
“I’d like one.”
The waiter
left. David continued:
“Have you met someone, Laura? Hélène maintains that she saw you…with someone.”
I said yes. It was good to change men.
“His name is Denis. We work in the same store. You didn’t find out about him while you were there?”
David blushed. His turn now. He cleared his throat again. Was he going to ask if we slept together? Because, for me, “making love” was over.
In any case, the answer would be no. Denis and I were still in states of shock. And my nights were taken with the old woman. Besides, I was not allowed to receive anyone in her precious apartment. And when I committed myself…
“Do you have plans with this young man?”
The expected question; and prettily constructed.
“Maybe. He’s leaving Paris soon and suggested I follow him.”
David’s face fell apart. The scotches arrived right on time. He took a sip of his, munched on a peanut.
“If you leave with your Denis, Claudio won’t get over it.”
“You don’t have to tell him.”
His hand grasped mine again. He begged.
“Laura, agree to meet with him. At least once, one time. To hear what he wants to say to you. You can decide afterward. You want him to be happy, right? He can’t be if he has never seen you.”
“But I don’t want to, David!” I shouted again.
“Why not?”
I didn’t answer. I wanted to run away. Let’s use the right words: to disappear, to die.
David’s look became hard.
“I know why,” he attacked. “You’re afraid that he’ll be disappointed. That’s why you left the clinic before they took his bandage off, without even thinking that he was going to panic, call for you, suffer. And that’s exactly what happened. For three days he had nothing but your name on his lips: Laura, Laura, Laura. And today, still. But you don’t care whether he gets to savor it for real or not. You don’t think of anyone but yourself.”
“Shit, David.”
I swallowed two sips of whisky, mine. Was it for me that I did everything so that he would accept this fucking transplant, knowing that if it succeeded, I would lose him? For me that I treated myself to New York, the cold, the fear, uprooting myself? And for me too, for my pleasure, that I worked as a salesperson and, at night, to distract myself, changed an old woman’s diapers? What more did he want? I hadn’t done enough?
Yes. Shit, David.
And it started, I cried: a real puddle. He handed me his handkerchief: memories, memories…The people at the neighboring tables left. We’re always like this, we two: the explosive couple that drives away everything around it.
So do you understand why, despite everything, I was happy that he was facing me? The alcohol wasn’t there for nothing.
“OK, Laura, I’m not insisting. But you can do at least one thing for him.”
Set fire to myself so that Claudio can finally forget me?
“You are going to come to the première of La Traviata the day after tomorrow. He says that you had promised him you would if he reconciled with his father. That’s done.”
I laughed.
“I don’t doubt it. He called my father to tell him that a ticket was waiting for me at the theater.”
One day I went to the theater, the next I fled kilometers away to resist the temptation, and every night I thought of nothing else.
“You’ll come?” David asked.
“On one condition.”
A smile lit my toad’s face. He lifted his glass, clinked it against mine.
“To her whom I’ve finally found. Conditions, ultimatums, why not blackmail?”
“Why not, really? On the condition that you promise me you won’t tell Claudio that you found me.”
His face darkened again.
“That’s going to be hard, very hard. But OK. Do you want to meet me again tomorrow so I can give you the ticket?”
“No, thank you. I prefer to go get it myself.” I managed to smile, because it was him. “And it’s pointless to send your spies out for me. I’ll come, I promise.”
He nodded his head. Mine began to spin seriously.
“You should know one thing, Laura: That night, he’ll be singing just for you.”
42.
When Claudio’s hands traced my face, when they took the measure of my body, closing themselves around my breasts—“so firm, high, round”—and, in his hands, under his lips, I felt like I was melting, split like a fruit for him…When he entered me, gentle and commanding, the river flowed at the same time the fire exploded…
I was beautiful. The most beautiful.
David was right: if I didn’t want him to see me, it was so that I could stay that way for him.
He loves you, Laura.
As one loves a dream, as one caresses an illusion and fastens oneself to a helpful hand, a guide.
You didn’t imagine that he was going to panic, call for you, suffer?
And me? Hadn’t maybe I suffered, when, after having been assured by Miller that Claudio would see again, I escaped from the clinic, deprived myself of seeing the new light of his eye? Hadn’t I panicked, cutting all communication and putting myself on the first plane for France, fleeing a call that I wasn’t sure I could resist? Didn’t all my being call for him again and again?
Without even a warning, David had added.
But if I had warned Claudio, weak and vulnerable as he was, wouldn’t he have suffered more?
Come back, Laura.
To allow him to cure himself of me? Deliver himself from his illusions? Be kept for some time out of gratitude? Why not out of pity?
Hadn’t I done enough in helping him regain his sight and realize his dream: to be Alfredo? Did I also have to sacrifice myself, clear out to make room for other conquests?
I sent her back to her room. She would have stayed all night, but no thank you, he had said about Hélène in Nice.
It wasn’t because of me that Claudio had split with her, but because Hélène wanted him too much. Like Corinne Massé.
How many times had he confided that he had never been attached to any woman, that music occupied all the space in his life. He had shown me the way to survive.
Go back? No, thank you, David.
He hadn’t even asked if I loved his tenor. Is that just normal for him?
It was twelve thirty, Friday, the day before the première of La Traviata, the hour of the grilled cheese sandwich with Denis.
“What’s the matter, Laura?” he asked, troubled. “Something happened to you, don’t tell me otherwise.”
I began by trying, “No, everything’s fine, I’m just tired. My old woman woke me several times last night.”
“It’s not your old woman, I don’t believe you,” he insisted. “Besides, your nose is growing.”
My nose; my father used that ploy and I always cracked.
I cracked, and not in half, as usual.
“The man I left because he couldn’t love me is Claudio Roman.”
He was nailed to his seat, staring at me wide-eyed. His face was hilarious.
“Wait,” he breathed. “You don’t mean the singer? The one who—”
“Yes. The same: Alfredo.”
As I narrated the beautiful and sad story of my life, he held my hand. For fear that I would fly off? I told him everything from the beginning, passing through the torrid night at the Pierre Hotel, ending with the ticket that awaited me at the Champs-Élysées Theater—so close, but which I hadn’t yet had the courage to get. It was stupid, but I was afraid of running into the star. As if Claudio had nothing better to do than be on the lookout for me.
The grilled cheese sandwich on my plate was cold. At least it wasn’t flooded. I had made a decision this morning: no more tears.
“And you still love him?”
“Always.”
Here we go, tears. He squeezed my hand a little harder.
“I understand,” he sighed. “It’s the same with me and
Marie-Claire. She’s too good for me. While I sell my records, she plays golf and bridge. How do you think that’s going to work? And yet I love her always, as you love Claudio.”
It was my turn to squeeze his hand. We commiserated.
“And you’re going to go to the première?”
“I promised.”
He thought for a moment, wondering how to help me. Denis was generous, that was why I loved him. Why I liked him very much.
“Do you want me to get the ticket for you? I’ll bring it to you right away. You just have to give me your identity card.”
I took it out of my bag. “I’ll wait for you here; I’m not moving. Let’s hope they give it to you.”
“Have you forgotten my irresistible charm?”
Denis was like me. He knew how to joke about things like that.
Before leaving, he gave me a peck on the cheek.
“Think of Granville. It’s still there.”
I thought of it while drinking my coffee. Denis and Granville, that was reason. Claudio and Alfredo, adventure. Even Alexandre Dumas had said that in The Lady of the Camellias.
That night, ticket in my pocket, I called my father.
“So you went to the première?”
“Not yet. It’s tomorrow.”
“And what is a première, exactly?”
“It’s the first time the public is there. For example, you could attend, buy a ticket. Before, no.”
“Really?”
Music, opera, wasn’t my father’s thing. He never talked about it. We spoke about other things: the shop; the weather; Agatha, who was bored; and Mom, who missed me.
It was a little like at the Bel Air clinic, during a certain night when I had needed to hear my father’s voice before a big trial. But at the Bel Air clinic, listening to Daddy, I could see Claudio searching for my hand, and I hadn’t known that I was happy.
Later I went to see my old woman. She also had trouble sleeping. I sat down on the edge of her bed and I asked her to tell me the stories behind the photos on her night table. For example, the story of the proud young man with the mustache with whom she had spent some sixty years: stories about forever.
Love Story Page 17