What the Light Touches

17 THE LIE OF VALLDEMOSSA

17

T HE L IE OF V ALLDEMOSSA

Barbara and Roger resigned themselves to the isolation of the day and waited for night to come. They had created their own moment. One of them was there to listen to the story, the other to tell it. With both of them forced to stay inside, the hours waiting for confession passed slowly.

“If we had a television ...”

“Do we need one?”

“Maybe it’d keep us a bit more occupied during the day,” said Roger, who walked around the house wearing a Scottish rugby team jersey he’d found in his brother’s wardrobe.

“If we had a television, we’d be hysterical,” Barbara started. “The countdown to normality would never end. All day, specialists would be telling us theories to efficiently get rid of the snow. Each cleverer than the last. But in practice, not a single one of them would work, because nothing like this has happened in Paris. That’s for sure; everyone would have lessons to teach. Everyone would know it all. And, all the while, they’d be instilling fear in us. They’d update us to the minute on the number of deaths due to the snow. They’d put a counter on the screen. People would begin to die of hunger because they’ve run out of food in their pantry. They’d tell us how many roofs have caved in per minute, how many homeless people have frozen to death ... Every hour, they’d update us on the number of heart attacks they weren’t able to assist because there was no way for ambulances to get to the victim’s household. And every other hour, they’d repeat that the economy was plummeting. How great would that be, huh? Do you really need the constant catastrophic reporting? Would all that help the snow melt sooner? Are you interested in knowing that the GDP is plummeting further and further each day we’re caged in at home?”

“You don’t have a television, but it’s almost like you do.”

“So, we can’t do anything? Then, let’s have some peace and quiet. My grandmother said it yesterday when I called her: Be patient. ”

“Lucky you,” he said snidely, provoking her.

Barbara took a moment to react.

“What do you mean by ‘lucky you’?”

“You have a job, and you can do it, because you’re used to working from home.”

“Look, I think a couple of days in the house from time to time without having to see anyone is good for you. If it were me, I’d make it a tradition. It wouldn’t be so bad.”

“Don’t count on me. If this lasts a couple more days, I’ll jump out the window. Why are you looking at me like that? You don’t think I can? It’s only five floors.”

At lunchtime, Roger warmed up some fish vol-au-vent he’d found in the back of the freezer. He preferred not to look at the expiration date. Two per person, and that was that. In the afternoon, while the sun began to set, Barbara—on her second day in a row wearing that long, blue onesie—played music in the living room. Ella Fitzgerald’s luminous voice singing “Summertime” in the midst of so much snow sounded more like a wish than an authentic contradiction. Barbara, carefree, hummed some songs Roger didn’t know. Music and the Narbona family never went hand-in-hand. This proved even more so for jazz because of its unpredictability. All of a sudden, midsong, Fitzgerald’s liveliness went silent. The lights and music went out. They were left in the dark; the fuses in the house had probably gone out. The oven clock was dark, as well as the microwave’s, and the fridge let out a sharp cry of surrender. The light disappeared like it was the end of the world, without warning.

“Shit.”

Barbara turned on her cell phone’s flashlight and went into the utility closet near the door. She waited for the circuit breaker to restart. But from what she could tell, the dials seemed to be in the right place. Nothing was out of order.

“Everything looks good here.” She opened the door of the house to look out on the floor. The stairwell had also gone dark. “It looks like it’s not just our apartment. The whole building is in the same boat.”

Careful not to trip, Roger approached the window and looked out onto the street.

“There’s no light outside either.” He put his forehead against the glass. “I’d say the building across from us is the same. You can’t see anything. Not a single light anywhere. From what I can see, at least three streets are in the dark.”

“Are rue Chappe and Tardieu in the dark? As if things weren’t bad already. A mass blackout.” She let herself fall back onto the couch. “That’s just what we needed. We can only hope it doesn’t take too long to go back on.”

“Weren’t you the one talking about patience and calmness?”

Barbara threw a pillow at him.

After a while, the apartment telephone rang. It was a confused Jasper. He asked if the lights had gone out for her too. Barbara offered to go down to the second floor in case he needed anything. It wasn’t necessary at the moment. She insisted he not hesitate to call should he need anything. The man was just worried about what would happen to the food in the freezer if the blackout lasted long.

“I’m sure it’ll be short, Jasper. We’ll be back up and running in no time.”

Barbara could not have made a living as a prophet. The whole street was still in the dark three hours later. Based on what they said on the radio—thank goodness Mamie had still kept things in the apartment that ran on batteries—it seemed like the blackout had left the neighborhoods of Montmartre, la Villette, and a part of the ninth arrondissement in the l’Opèra zone without electricity.

The worst thing was that without electricity, there wasn’t any heating.

They handled it well for the first hour. Then, they began to feel the effect of the two degrees the external thermometer read. Barbara walked through the apartment with a blanket around her like a cape. Roger, stone-like, said he was fine, until a shiver ran up his spine. “It’s colder on the higher floors,” Barbara lamented. In the end, she had to admit Mamie was right when it came to a phrase she’d heard her repeat plenty of times. Her grandmother had complained on more than one occasion about another reality, which was that the windows of old attic apartments don’t close the way they should. So they had no choice but to accept the cold that froze them down to the bone, and cross their fingers that the electricity would come back again and they wouldn’t have to sleep in cold sheets. Her grandmother didn’t have a phrase about sleeping in damp, cold sheets, but she’d had a lot of experience doing it during wartime.

“If my father were here,” Roger couldn’t help saying, “I’m sure he’d bet the house on when the electricity would come back on.”

“Is today the national day of dark humor?”

“You know what?” Roger said, wrapped in a blanket at the end of the sofa. “We look like two old people awaiting death, sitting here in the dark. Waiting for death to come collect us. The bus that won’t come no matter how long we wait.”

“You’re a crackpot when you want to be. Have you ever been married?”

“What’s that about? Are you seriously asking? Never ... I’m too young to bury myself alive. I haven’t run out of time. You’re right about one thing, though.” He wondered whether he should continue. “I’ve gotten to the age where I realize I’m better off dressed than naked.”

“Oh wow.” It was the last thing Barbara expected to hear come from Roger’s mouth. “It wasn’t like that until recently?”

“No. The other day, I was looking at myself and thinking ...”

“Look, honey, don’t be such a show-off. You’re acting French.”

“Well, on my mother’s side, yes, there’s something to that.”

“How old did you say you were?”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“Thirty-three. And it’s true. Until recently, I looked at myself, and—”

“Hold the phone, man. Don’t be an idiot. Because if you’re better off dressed at thirty-three, I should be wearing a giant coat that covers me to my feet so no one sees me.”

“Come on. You look really good, Barbara.”

They were silent. One for having said it, the other for having heard it. But they couldn’t see each other in the dark. They could only make out an outline of discomfort.

“You know no one’s said anything like that to me since long before my divorce?”

He thought about adding “I didn’t mean to offend you” or “You really look good ... for your age, I mean,” but he held himself back. This wasn’t the time to say either inappropriate remark. He tried to change the subject. It was called “thinking on your feet.”

“Based on what you said the other day, it was a bad divorce, huh?”

“No. The divorce was fine. The marriage was what was cursed. Do you want me to tell you about it?”

“Barbara, I ... The night has become gloomy. You said so yourself. We don’t have anything else to do.”

“It was good for me to tell you about my parents’ accident.”

“Whatever you need.” With an argument like that, Roger had no way to escape.

“One second.” Barbara had an idea.

She lit two candlesticks and put them on her desk. At least, in the flickering light, they’d become something more than two presences in the shadows. She curled up on the sofa with her legs underneath her, like a cat rolled into a ball. She wrapped herself in a second blanket and decided to tell the story where love and heartbreak were like two communicating vessels.

“I said my marriage was damned. If we were to think about it, maybe they all are, right? Mine was, for sure. The problem is I didn’t realize it until it was too damn late. The most frustrating thing is ... It all was, really. But when you row out, hoping to take the boat to port willingly and selflessly, and then you realize that he jumped ship, knowing that, when he wanted to, he’d rock it until he flipped it over. That will kill you with rage.

“When I met Maurice, I was running away from an absurd relationship. Alfred, who I had dated for two years, moved to Rome for work. He restored works of art, and if there’s any city where there are Madonnas, saints, and sculptures ready for repair, it’s that one. I figured he’d be there a couple of years. We saw each other less and less, our letters spread out over time, and slowly we realized the relationship wasn’t going anywhere. I was the one who suggested letting it go, and honestly, he didn’t put up much of a fight. I left happy. I had already met Maurice at some mutual friends’ party. We agreed to meet for coffee near the amphitheater, and he seemed like a very neat guy, one who shaved every day and tied his tie in a thick knot, the English style, the way I liked it at the time. He looked like a new style of socialist secretary, far from the old way of doing politics. He looked like a secretary, but he was actually a peddler. And like all salesmen, he had a silver tongue, he was nice, and he knew how to win someone over with his words. He didn’t pawn off an insurance plan on me, but after chatting for hours on hours, walking around the Camargue, he sold himself. And I bought him. Completely. Without even thinking twice.

“When she met him, my mother asked, ‘You mean to tell me Maurice is the one?’ Those maternal doubts, expressed in a contempt that could have been hidden, made me think he might be my soulmate. Mamie Margaux, who met him on the first Christmas he stopped by to say hello, winked at me midsnack to show her approval. I didn’t need my grandmother’s approval, but knowing he had it confirmed to me that I’d gotten it right this time. Because Maurice was macho, strong, brave, and robust. And a little bit of a show-off too. For example, my grandmother had always doubted that Alfred liked women. And now I can say she was right.

“I got married to Maurice—damn the date—the next spring. I don’t like talking about it, but however things may be now, I felt like I was floating that whole day. I let myself be guided, and it was like I was on a soft cotton cloud. It was a sunny Friday, not a hint of wind. The day I’d dreamed of. We celebrated at a restaurant Maurice knew through personal connections near the mouth of the Rh?ne. Everyone said the location was idyllic, the food delicious, and the service impeccable. Waste of a party, waste of a dress, and waste of money that everyone spent. I’ll just say, in a fit of rage, I burned the picture albums.

“At that time, everything was sunshine and roses.

“On my birthday, March 10, 1998, the first one since our wedding, he took me on a road trip. We left Arles and went up some paths near vineyards, and when it seemed like there were only about twenty minutes of light left, he stopped the motor. He told me not to move. He got out of the car—we had a Volvo with a big rear back then—and he went to the trunk. He came back with a bottle of champagne and two glasses. The champagne was cold, and surprised, I asked him how he’d done it. He told me there was a little fridge in the trunk, and I thought it was strange I’d never seen it. He’d borrowed it for the occasion, he said. And, caught up in the emotion of the moment, I forgot this detail that was probably the least of my worries. At that moment of toasting, amid the rows of grapevines, with an orange sky that exists only in Provence at the end of winter, Maurice was enchanting. He looked me in the eyes, kissed me on the neck, and whispered something I’ve never forgotten.

“‘Think about something that made you happy today, think about something that’s made you laugh in the last year, and think about a magnificent place you’ve seen in your lifetime.’

“I thought it was a splendid gift. The questions merited a bit of thought. I knew the response to the first question. That game, brought up like it was improvised, had made me happy on my birthday. It was original, personalized, and had me thinking. The whole situation, the champagne, the sunset, he in his most seductive pose ... Sometimes the best gifts can’t be unwrapped.

“What had been something that made me laugh in the last year? Him. It was him again. So many times. I could choose any of them. I went on about a night we’d gone bowling. And he, pretending to be a pro, had slid halfway down the lane. He couldn’t stop rolling. His fingers had gotten stuck in the three holes, and when he went to throw the ball, he couldn’t let go and followed with it, skating into the lane. The heavily waxed parquet flooring had done the rest of the job. When he got up off the floor, everyone who was at the alley, of which there were many, applauded him. And he got up like he was part of a show. He even waved like a gymnast at the end of an exercise, and I laughed so hard. I just couldn’t stop.

“The magnificent place? I hadn’t traveled much, and the Hébrards weren’t the type to go to exotic locations. I chose Sainte-Maxime. The first summer I was alone with my grandmother in a hotel. The Centrum. One room for both of us. I was still a girl. One night, acting naughty, we ate ice cream for dinner on the beach. There was a stand that looked out on the sea. We stayed there for a while under the shade of the awning, sitting with our feet in the sand. It got dark, and we didn’t need anything else. Mamie’s voice, company before an impossible blue, salt on our skin, the absence of fear. If you asked me now what kind of ice cream it was, I couldn’t remember. But I could tell you any flavor, and they’d all be true. That’s the thing about half-remembered memories—we can put them together the way we want. And exaggerate them. Literature is full of stories like that.

“At that time, as a newlywed, I started my job at Giresse and Trésor. I worked out of the small office on the outskirts of Arles. I hadn’t started selling international rights for writers yet. That came a little later, but it did let me earn money without the anxiety of looking at my bank account two times a week. Maurice and I split the rent for our apartment in half. We both agreed, and we did it the best way we could. If we split the painting, if we split the living expenses, then we could split the payment. That was my reasoning. He was the first one to insinuate that he could do it all on his own, but he must have seen my rage, and when it came to these matters, he never put up a fight or ever brought it up again. I liked that his family had money but didn’t make a big deal of it. He was never ostentatious, however things may be.

“Maurice had an insurance brokerage. His father had started the business, and he’d taken it over. He had an office right in the center of the city. On the ground floor. They had about twenty employees on payroll, but he was the best one. He had a talent for selling you an insurance plan you didn’t need: he insured your new car against all risks, he drew up contracts for your house, he sold you life insurance in case you died, or he made you sign up for funerary insurance so your benefactors didn’t have to pay a cent when it came to burying you, incinerating you, or arranging the coffin, the prayer cards, the funeral vehicle, and the Bible verse. But Maurice and his father didn’t make money with all that, which would have meant charging pinches of commission here and there; rather, the primary moneymaker, the rib-eye, was the business insurance. They went around selling policies to all the big and midsize companies in the area. There was a time when they covered around ninety percent of the big factories in the whole Provence region up to Marseilles. One thing was they never lacked money. I spotted it right away, but his dirty business was the full extent of the fine print. He always told me I was a person of letters, but he was even more so. Because when there’s a fire, you have to read and reread the contract until you find the clause that can perhaps excuse you from compensating someone. ‘That doesn’t count. That’s not covered.’ I heard him say those two sentences most over the phone in our near seven years of marriage. Seven years of comedy. Our failure was clearly not covered by a policy either. It was stated but not signed. Go fuck yourself. Insurance for divorce doesn’t exist. That’s an insurance that is truly needed, but they don’t do it. You see that only in the über-rich of Hollywood, who sign prenups just in case. As if love can be stamped onto a contract, right?

“I ignored my first suspicions of Maurice. Don’t ask me why. I already had them on our honeymoon. Don’t laugh, Roger, I see you ...”

“I won’t say anything ...”

“We went to Mallorca for a week for our honeymoon. Seven nights in three different hotels. First Palma, then a hotel where all the stars hung over Cap de Formentor, and then to finish, a small hotel in Valldemossa, which is the one I liked the most. We had a suite that, if you looked out on the terrace, faced the fields of Chopin’s house. Everything was well placed, in order, perfect. We arrived after lunch. Once there, once we were settled in and I had changed into something more comfortable to relax in the room, he said, ‘I’m going out to stretch my legs.’ It’s true, he did ask me to accompany him. But now, after all these years and having rewritten the story a thousand and one times in my mind, I’m convinced he said it because he knew I would be too lazy to change. In short, he left for a walk. A long walk. He took so long I started to worry. More than worry; it’s more accurate to say I become anxious. But I stopped myself from calling him. We hadn’t strayed more than four feet apart since the wedding, and I didn’t want him to think that, the first time we separated, even if it was for a little while, I was already trying to control him. I wouldn’t have liked it if he had done that. And so, I waited. For a long time. After an hour and a half of me memorizing every molding on the ceiling of the room, I couldn’t hold back anymore. I called him. I did it from the room telephone. It rang. Doesn’t mean anything, I thought. Someone’s called him about some work matter, and he’s had to help. Fifteen minutes later—or maybe ten minutes hadn’t even passed—I called again. I didn’t want to call him from my cell phone, and I tried doing it again from the phone on my nightstand. Nothing. It kept ringing. I showered to rid myself of the bad mood that had set in, and I thought he’d come back when he wanted to. Right as I turned off the water, he entered through the door.

“‘My love?’ he shouted.

“‘I’m over here.’

“I had showered with the sliding door open so the mirror didn’t steam and—who am I kidding—so I could hear him if he returned while I showered. I waited for him to come say hi and give me a kiss. But he sat on the armchair next to the bed and turned on the TV. Wearing my damp bathrobe, I went over to sit on his lap.

“‘I’ve been a little worried,’ I said docilely.

“‘About me? Oh, you’re all wet, darling.’

“‘You took a while.’ I plopped a kiss on him. ‘How far did you go?’

“‘Not far. A walk around town, you know ... It’s beautiful, the whole thing. The whole place has all these colors and vegetation similar to the ones at home, don’t you think?’

“Maurice said that. Maurice, who never again made another comment on the landscape. Never. In seven years.

“‘I thought, where must my husband be ...’ I unbuttoned his shirt and ran two fingers along his chest. ‘I thought, I hope he hasn’t been kidnapped now that I’ve found the love of my life ...’

“‘That would be some bad luck, yes.’

“‘I also thought, I hope work hasn’t called him and is bothering him in the middle of his honeymoon.’

“‘Me? No, no. What do you mean? I haven’t spoken to anyone.’

“I pulled on a hair on his chest like I was playing. He was undaunted.

“‘Oh, sorry!’ I apologized innocently.

“‘Someone did call me.’ His reaction was delayed. ‘A number from Spain, but I didn’t want to answer. It must have been a wrong number.’

“‘Of course.’

“Ten seconds later, which passed by slowly, like a Spanish procession, he returned the kiss and said, ‘If you were so worried, you should have called me, woman.’

“He had the gall to say, ‘If you were so worried, you should have called me, woman’!

“When we returned from Mallorca, all my friends wanted to see pictures from the wedding and asked me to explain the trip in full detail. The one I trusted the most was Mireille. More than trust, it was a real friendship. She was a former classmate who had gone through every year of school with me. Her parents were like my parents, and everyone said we looked alike. We weren’t twins, but there was something to it. In the way we wore our hair down to our shoulders, in the way we laughed with our eyes, or how, both of us being the expressive types, we tended to speak with our hands. Sometimes doesn’t it happen that best friends begin to resemble each other without pretending? It’s true that after so many hours spent together as children and on several family vacations over the weekends, Mireille and I had become copies of each other. I knew that if I wanted to rid myself of my suspicions, I could do it only with Mireille. Only with her and no one else. In a moment of intimacy with Mireille, I hinted at it. She didn’t let me finish.

“‘Impossible,’ she said. ‘Get it out of your head.’ And she said it so forcefully, I listened. ‘You’ll start off on the wrong foot if you begin with jealousy. You’ve never been jealous,’ she continued. And she was right. I even felt guilty. ‘Forget about this episode, for the love of God.’ I listened. I didn’t think about it again until, years later, the clues became evident. That had been the first lie. The lie of Valldemossa. There’s always one that’s the first. And then, it’s hard to stop them.”

“It must be addictive too,” Roger said.

“In his case, I’m sure. The whole relationship was a lie. From beginning to end.”

Roger waited to hear the inventory of lies up to the divorce. But it didn’t happen. Barbara got up from the couch, carrying the blanket on her shoulders, and let out a yawn that dominated her.

“The breakup is for tomorrow, my friend.”

“Come on. It’s not even late yet.”

“Do you understand how the king from One Thousand and One Nights felt now?”

“Hoodwinked?”

“Curious. You know what the book says? ‘The arrival of dawn surprised Scheherazade, and then she went silent.’”

“Come on ...”

Roger’s protests were in vain.

“You did it to me too. And I waited.”

“But Barbara, if you leave the story of your divorce on a cliff-hanger, you’ll have nightmares. And in this cold. And as dark as tonight will be.”

“‘The arrival of dawn surprised Scheherazade, and then she went silent.’”