The Suitors - By Cecile David-Weill Page 0,68
One just like the tiny space concealed behind the fake books in the library where a man hid during the Second World War when some Italian officers decided to set up their headquarters in the house—a disaster narrowly avoided by a stroke of genius from the caretaker at the time, who took advantage of the pocket windows, an American innovation as yet unknown in Europe, by sliding them back into the walls, thus persuading the Italians (in mid-December) that the unfinished house had no windows yet.
Simply emerging into the daylight on the path along the lawn persuades me that I have just been through a great adventure and triumphed over hostile underground terrain. And now I’m ready to spy on my parents’ guests behind the sparse hedge that separates me from the lawn, the way a curtain walls off the wings from a stage.
A mosquito roused me from my torpor; impossible to fall back asleep. In any case, it was teatime. Leaving my room, I noticed my mother in the entrance hall, consulting with Roland, the chauffeur. Wishing neither to interrupt nor disturb her, I slowed my approach, intending to wait so that we could go down to the loggia together. She had her back to me, and half hidden by the open front door, Roland couldn’t see me either. I would not have tried to overhear them, though, if they hadn’t been whispering.
“My dear Roland, I find I’m running a little low …”
“Very good, Madam. Shall I proceed as usual?”
“Yes.”
At first their remarks seemed as harmless as they were incomprehensible, and I would have thought no more of the whole business if I hadn’t seen my mother quickly press some bills into the chauffeur’s hand. Something was wrong here. Her gesture was too practiced for someone who insisted that all tips should be handed to the servants in envelopes. I retreated and huddled in dismay behind a pillar while my mother rejoined her guests. Then, knowing that my father would be swimming with Georgina at that hour, I shut myself inside the master bedroom to review my evidence: the overfamiliar “My dear Roland,” the mysterious “running a little low,” the chauffeur’s “as usual,” not to mention the money …
What hidden vice could she have? It wasn’t sexual, obviously, since there was nothing louche between my mother and her chauffeur. Alcohol? There were rivers of it in the house, she wouldn’t need Roland to get her some. So I came face-to-face with the conclusion I’d already reached. Because although I’d been wrong to think of it that very morning to explain why Lou and Mathias had dashed into Juan-les-Pins, it fit too well with my mother’s nosebleed before lunch. No doubt about it: my mother was a drug addict.
This was so appalling, so hard to accept, that I tried to imagine her with a dealer in some shady neighborhood—which was silly, since Roland was her go-between. I was definitely mired in clichéd scenarios about the problem: drugs were no longer the privileged playthings of rock stars, flower children, or fashionable hipsters. Hadn’t my grandmother once told me that her women friends from before the war used to “arrange things” with hotel concierges? And I’d been floored when she’d made such remarks as, “No one would ever think of leaving for Saint-Moritz without her morphine!” And of course, there’d been Baudelaire, and later on Malraux and the others … Yes, but my mother! Of course, she did already take Temesta for her nerves, Rohypnol to help her sleep, as well as the sedative Mogadon. But to go from that to cocaine …
Why hadn’t I noticed? Naturally, since she didn’t work, no one expected her to be superefficient or even a paragon of lucidity, which made the state she was in all the more difficult to discern. But that was no excuse. The proof? I’d paid no attention to her increasingly frequent bouts of ill humor. How could I have been so uncaring! And yet, why should I have worried? Wealthy, still beautiful, loved by my father, my mother had an easy life. As if that were enough to give her a sense of fulfillment! Especially if she felt almost useless, good for nothing but making conversation and worrying about who sat where at meals, I thought, rummaging through her vanity table drawer … where I soon found a crystal snuffbox with a bit of caked white powder at the bottom.
I’m running a little low …
“Oh, God,” I moaned.
What should I do?