The Suitors - By Cecile David-Weill Page 0,88
the answers from their Trivial Pursuit game of the previous evening to answer her neighbor, who’d asked her “what good book she was reading at the moment.”
“A biography of Eric the Red.”
“Who’s he?”
“The man who discovered Greenland.”
“Must be fascinating. Who’s the publisher?”
“A private company, Editions Saint-Rémy in Reims.”
Then I caught the shocked look on Alvin’s face when Astrid asked Frédéric, “What does Perla de Cambray really do in life, anyway?”
And Frédéric replied, “Dumb things! Gobs of ’em! What do you expect her to do, when she sounds like the sister of that candy, bêtises de Cambray? ‘Would you like some sillies of Cambray’?”
So even though Alvin had said nothing unpleasant about L’Agapanthe, I was suddenly certain that he hated this place cluttered with people and furniture and paintings, where everyone dressed to the nines to eat indigestible posh meals during which they all chattered like jackdaws.
Probably to avoid admitting that the whole business had been a sheer waste, I forced myself to talk to him anyway, even though I was deathly bored when he discussed the percentage of soy proteins in his stuffed tomatoes and felt deeply guilty when he pointed out that when I ate meat, I was eating the dead body of an animal raised in captivity. In fact I was listening to him so assiduously that I began to see the familiar faces of our house through his eyes and abruptly saw them in their ugly, frightening light: dry lips clinging to teeth like the grimacing muzzles of wild animals; lips slick with saliva, drawn back over obscene gums; or even more repulsive, lips at the corners of which clung whitish crusts … No doubt about it: Alvin was a killjoy, whose presence changed L’Agapanthe—a place that had for me the lightness and sophistication of a racetrack scene by Dufy and the gaiety of a Matisse collage—into a stark nude by Lucian Freud or a scream by Munch. Horrible!
Then I recalled the revulsion I’d felt as a child at the sight of certain perspiring guests as they left the luncheon table, their cheeks aflame from the rosé wine, while I was dreaming of running down to dive into the water and splash about instead of taking a nap, as Nanny insisted I do for the sake of my digestion. Was it a way of taking revenge on that past obligation, or the need to draw a line under my pitiful amorous projects? Barely had the last bite been swallowed when I vanished to plunge headfirst into the sea, where a few swift strokes were all I needed to conclude that this whole thing with Alvin was impossible. I didn’t even need to consult Marie on this: he was disqualified.
My thoughts were interrupted when two good-sized hunting dogs, white, short haired, and strong enough to seem dangerous, appeared abruptly at the foot of the diving board, where I’d left my clothes. They’d come from the Russians’ property next door and ran on up toward our garden. Paralyzed by surprise, I was at first relieved to have been in the water and not on the beach, but then I realized that they might attack the guests still lingering in the loggia. It was a good thing Marie, Nicolas, and Vanessa had gone to visit the Villa Ephrussi, I thought, as I rushed up to the house, where I arrived dripping and out of breath.
There I found Gay, gray with fear, kneeling near Alvin, who had his ear to Popsicle’s heaving little chest and soon delivered his verdict: “He’s more frightened than hurt.”
This incident created such a rapid swirl of emotions that I wasn’t sure at first what had struck me the most, the shocking invasion by the dogs, Gay’s anguish over her Maltese bichon, or the relief that led her inadvertently to allow me a glimpse of the number tattooed at Auschwitz on the inside of her left forearm. Then, alerted by her earlier cries, a constant stream of friends, guests, and servants appeared in the loggia, and just as a lithograph may require successive printings of different colors, reality left its mark on my mind only after I had explained what had happened to the new arrivals, one after the other. And even then … Because it was only after interpreting their reactions to my news that I perceived the danger we had run.
“Okay, so, everything’s fine,” announced Georgina. “All’s well that ends well. Everyone’s okay. Fine! Now I can go back to my nap.”
“And I must get