Love Story
Page 19
The audience gave them a standing ovation for long minutes while, when the house lights came back on, he thought he would die when he saw the empty seat next to his father.
Hélène left very quickly, covered with camellias, without coming to greet him in his dressing room.
A supper had been planned, right near the theater, for Claudio’s father and the two doctors, Leblond and Miller. Miller had made a special trip from New York to applaud his famous patient.
The three men waited for him at the restaurant. When he made his entrance, accompanied by David, they rose, as did all the other diners, who applauded him.
He stopped in his tracks.
In this same restaurant, several weeks earlier, he had admitted to his father that he was in love. Among the waves of rooftops, he had looked for Laura’s rooftop without knowing that she was no longer there. And it wasn’t by chance that, this night, he had wished that the party would go on for a while. Fool that he was, Claudio had imagined that Laura would be there. He wouldn’t even have had to introduce her; everyone knew her.
He shook hands and took a seat.
Champagne was already in the glasses. Miller lifted his.
“To our glorious and illustrious friend!”
Mechanically Claudio drank a sip. Leblond looked at him worriedly.
“And now, I must admit something,” Miller continued. “Tonight, I fell swiftly in love. Can one say it like that? Swiftly in love?”
“And who was the lucky one?” Jean Roman asked with an edgy smile.
“Violetta, of course. Hélène Reigner…What beauty, what a voice. Who wouldn’t dream of saving her?”
He had spoken loudly, and at the nearby tables, there were muffled laughs. Pain gripped Claudio. No one had heard his call to the one who was missing. His voice had failed to express his own suffering. They only saw the game, the fire.
“What does Alfredo think of that?” Miller asked, turning toward Claudio.
Suddenly it was too much: too much solitude, too much darkness. He rose.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I must go back home.”
David was already standing. The others watched, incredulous. Jean Roman then rose.
“I’m coming with you.”
“Thank you, it’s all right.”
He managed to smile while shaking the doctors’ hands.
“Tomorrow, if you’re still here…”
He walked toward the exit, accompanied by David, his friends’ gazes following them.
“My Claudio,” David begged.
The singer stopped at the elevator. “Stay with them,” he ordered. “I’m borrowing Jean-Pierre.” And as his agent panicked, he added, “Don’t worry, I’ll survive.”
The elevator doors closed on him.
David walked slowly back to the table.
“Did I say something wrong?” asked Miller.
“Not at all. He’s just tired,” the agent reassured him, with some difficulty.
Dr. Leblond frowned. “During the intermission, we saw that young girl, Laura,” he said to David May. “We exchanged a few words but, at the exit, she disappeared. Do you know where I can find her? I must speak with her.”
“You saw her? She came?” cried David.
And he turned to hide his tears.
46.
“Good night, sir,” said Jean-Pierre.
Claudio waited until the car disappeared, then he pushed the gate open and crossed the lighted garden. In passing, he glanced at the tree that had held the birdhouse. In his waking dreams as an adolescent, when he had identified himself with Alfredo, he had saved Violetta. Now, waking or not, a dream was a dream, and Laura had flown away for good.
His cell phone rang. During the drive, he had switched it off. He didn’t want to speak with anyone, not to any potential admirers, not to his mother who, ill, had decided not to come. Not even to faithful David, who wouldn’t forget to call to be sure that he had returned safely.
He walked slowly up the stairs. To survive…How would he do that without her? He closed the door behind him.
Suddenly his whole body began to tremble and he had to press himself against the wall so he wouldn’t fall.
“Her.”
The fragrance came from the living room. His head began to buzz. Was he dreaming again? He closed his eyes, took a long breath, and, his heart tortured by hope, went into the dark room, his hands held out in front of him.
The fragrance intensified.
“Laura?” he called.
“I’m here,” she said.
He came toward me, his eyes closed, as if he hadn’t regained his sight, as if we had never been apart.
I came forward and put my shoulder under his hand. He grasped it.
“Laura?”
Without letting me go, without opening his eyes, he raised his other hand toward my hair, caressed it, taking its measure.
“Mid-length, chestnut…” he murmured.
His hand descended and grazed my nose, my lips, and stopped on my closed eyelids.
“Green?” he asked with a sob.
Then he opened his arms and imprisoned me in them. I found the lost warmth again; I found myself again. Not in an opera, not in the words of a song: the little one, here, with her giant.
And at the same time that I was filled with a painful happiness, I wanted to laugh, to laugh as one cries, like a call for help, as one accepts the terrifying wagers of life.
It was only in Verdi, Mozart, Schubert, and the others where everything was so easy. When one of the lovers disappears, the other can calmly cry for him, make a garland of flowers for her hair, love him as never before. But for us, for you and me, my love, the story has just begun, at the risk of seeing the camellias fade and the tears run dry.
“Laura, Laura…” He didn’t stop repeating my name. I did the same with his. I didn’t know if he heard: my mouth was next to his heart.
She was really here. She came back, and happiness set fire to body and soul. He held her with all his strength for fear that she would escape him again. He would have been happy to stay like that for the rest of his life.
She disengaged herself first. He was afraid; he opened his eyes. It was then that she lit the big lamp that plunged them into light.
Then she stayed there, standing in the center of the living room, at the core of his life, at the heart of his heart, defying him with a wild air, the air of a bird trapped by a hunter, too tired to take flight, resigned to die.
It was really her.
A plucky and proud small woman without makeup, without jewels, without hardness, a good little woman with honey chestnut hair, a burning gaze, full of pain and joy at the same time, worried and tender, eyes with all the colors of the rainbow when tears burst from them.
The most beautiful of the beautiful. The one he loved.
So the prince opened his arms to the princess finally found again. He picked her up—the advantage of a small model—and he took her up to his kingdom.
On the steps of the palace,
On the steps of the palace,
There’s a beautiful girl…
He placed her on the center of the bed; he took off her velvet bolero, her special skirt, her silk blouse, and everything else. Taking his time to discover, savor, without missing anything, without saving anything, and, as long as he would look at her like that, she would be beautiful.
After he was undressed, he held her, caressed her, tasted her, the two of them overflowing—a river to nourish the entire kingdom.
And we will be happy,
And we will be happy,
Until the end of the world…
Thus ended the refrain to which, in our childhood, Agatha and I dreamed, dancing like queens.
As for the end of the world, we’ll see.
They lived a beautiful and moving story, full of song. A story of elation and foolishness, tempests and gentle winds, with the feeling of being the first ones to live like that.
Very simply, a love story.
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br /> About the Author
Photo © John Foley/Opal/Editions
Robert Laffont, 2009
Janine Boissard is a French novelist. From age thirteen she knew she would be an author, and her first novel was published when she was twenty. She has since published more than forty novels in French, also writing under her married name, Janine Oriano. Love Story, originally published in France in 2003, is her fifth novel to reach English-reading audiences.
About the Translator
Photo © Astrid di Crollalanza
Marilyn Achiron was a staff writer at Newsweek and later reported from Africa and the Middle East for The Boston Globe and Businessweek. She has also written for Interview, Mademoiselle, and People. She holds a BA from Yale University and an MFA in creative writing and literature from Bennington College. She currently lives in France, where she writes, edits, and translates fiction and nonfiction.