The Other Story (3 page)

The trip to Italy had been their way of patching up, of getting their friendship back on track after the strain of the khâgne and Nicolas’s failure. François earned a salary as a proud normalien, while Nicolas went on struggling halfheartedly, still living at his mother’s place, barely making ends meet by giving philosophy lessons to reluctant students. François remained the one who had succeeded, the one for whom it all seemed easy. But that changed when Hurricane Margaux blew along five years later. Except for François and Lara, the only ones from the past who have remained part of his life, Nicolas’s new friends are from the publishing world—writers, journalists, editors, publicists, booksellers. He sees them at literary events, on TV or radio shows, at cocktail parties, book launches, nightclubs. He has their e-mail addresses, their mobile-phone numbers; he is their friend on Facebook, their follower on Twitter. He hugs them, slaps them on the back, ruffles their hair, but very few of them are truly close. He gets drunk or high with them, occasionally has sex with one or two of the women, but what do they know about him, apart from what they may glean in the papers, or on Twitter? They know nothing. And he knows nothing about them, in return. He is fleetingly aware of the emptiness of his life, of the cruel fact that the entire world has learned his name but that he is, in truth, alone.

Every time Nicolas thinks of François, like at this very moment, as his eyes roam over the splendid sea, the guests basking in the sun, the servers bringing drinks and fruits, he is confronted with his own inadequacies as a friend. Did he not let François down? Did he not stop calling, meaning to call, always leaving it until the next day, and then simply forgetting to do it in the end? Yet François had been the brother he’d never had, the one he went to judo classes and tennis lessons with, the one he could confide in when girls became an obsession, the one who gave him support when his father died. François had a long, serious, bespectacled face, even as a kid, and adults trusted him. This had proved useful when they were children, indulging in devilish pranks. The “cheese incident,” for example. Nicolas had been punished by their principal, the odious Monsieur Roqueton, for not handing his homework in yet again. During a lunch break, on a stifling summer day, François innocently found his way into Monsieur Roqueton’s office, armed with a stinking Camembert. He deftly unscrewed the mouthpiece of the man’s old-fashioned telephone and squashed bits of cheese into it before replacing the top. A few days later, the stench became unbearable. One could not use the telephone without retching. Nicolas grins, and nearly laughs out loud, remembering. They were never caught. It had been a triumph.

There is another memory Nicolas is fond of. Granville, Normandy, summer of 1999. Nicolas and François were seventeen. François’s parents owned a half-timbered white-and-brown house, with a sloping garden giving on to the beach. Every summer, Nicolas went to spend two weeks in August with the Morin family. He felt like he was one of them. François had two younger sisters, Constance and Emmanuelle, and an older brother, Victor. His parents, Michel and Odile, gave a summer party each year while Nicolas was there. About a hundred people came. The girls wore their prettiest summer frocks. Odile went to the hairdresser. Michel showed off his tan in his favorite white jeans and a denim shirt opened to his navel. Victor, Nicolas, and François wore clean T-shirts and shorts. It poured one summer, and the party was held inside, an amusing squash. But that summer, the summer that Nicolas and François would never forget, Odile invited a new couple in town, Gérard and Véronique, who came with a Parisian friend of theirs, Nathalie. The women were in their early thirties; the husband was older. Véronique was plump and blond. Nathalie was tall, slender, and dark-haired, with the longest legs Nicolas had ever seen. They were wearing the same tight dress, but in different colors: black for Véronique and white for Nathalie. Gérard mingled with the older crowd, but Véronique and Nathalie took their drinks and crossed the garden, going out to the beach, daintily kicking off their high-heeled sandals. The sun was setting, staining the sea red. There was no one on the beach. The two young women waved, gesturing for Nicolas and François to join them. For a while, the four of them sat on the sand and chatted. When their glasses were empty, Nicolas rushed back to the house and smuggled a bottle of champagne under his T-shirt. The sun disappeared and the darkness drew inviting shadows around them. Nathalie, the long-legged brunette, puffed away on a cigarette, held delicately between two slim golden fingers. From where they were sitting, they could hear the music and laughter of the nearby party. Nathalie wanted to know if they had any girlfriends. This embarrassed François, who was less successful than Nicolas with girls. Véronique, the blonde, then asked, in a low, intimate voice, what they had already done with a girl sexually. Nicolas noticed how close the two women were, how Nathalie’s tanned thigh brushed against his naked calf every time she moved. In the soft blue light, Véronique’s cleavage was a deep, milky cleft. He told them, frankly, that all his girlfriends had been from the lycée, girls of his age. He had had sex with six of them so far, at parties, in a drunken stupor, in the bathroom or in someone’s bed. Only one of them had been a pleasant surprise, willing to try everything with the fierce energy of a Stakhanovite. Once the novelty wore off, Nicolas found her exhausting. The two women on the beach with them that night were in another league. They exuded a mysterious, languorous sensuality. “Does your girlfriend kiss you like this?” murmured Véronique, and before François could respond, she glued her lips to his, while Nathalie’s silken arm found its way around Nicolas’s neck. Then she kissed him in a way that Nicolas had never been kissed before in his life. Could they be seen from the house? he wondered fleetingly, stroking the soft skin under her dress, enraptured. Suddenly, Véronique was in his arms, and Nathalie moved to kiss François. Nicolas gave in to the new mouth on his. He could not resist touching her breasts, and when she pulled his lips down to their fullness, he thought he was going to pass out from ecstasy. What would have happened, he often wondered, if Véronique’s husband had not started to call her name from the garden? Had he seen them? They all got up quickly, brushing the sand off their clothes. The women patted their hair, giggling. Nicolas felt dizzy and nearly stumbled. François’s face was white, his lips swollen and red. He seemed about to faint. The women nonchalantly picked up their glasses and their shoes and strolled back to the house arm in arm, shouting out gaily to Gérard that they were coming. François and Nicolas waited a while before joining the party. When they turned up, nervous and blushing, Gérard, Véronique, and Nathalie had already left. Nicolas never saw them again. But he knew he would never forget that night. For years, he had only to whisper “Granville” to François with a knowing smile, and the memories of that evening would flood back, intact.

Nicolas gets up now for his first swim. He will text François later. He glances down at Malvina, curled up under her parasol like a little animal, fast asleep. Her face still seems pale. He dives into the sea, and when he comes up for air, he finds himself gasping with a mixture of pleasure and joy, the pleasure of the velvety caress on his skin, the joy of coming back to the exact sensation he had missed since Camogli. The water here is deep immediately. It is absolutely transparent. Nicolas can stare all the way down to the seabed, paved with pale oval stones, and watch silvery fish flit past. He flings his arms and legs out like a starfish and floats on the surface. Underwater, his ears make out the tranquil putter of a nearby boat.

Three days. Three blissful days. Three days just for him. This beautiful, quiet haven. The blue of it. No one knows where he is. He did not even Tweet it, refrained from posting it on his Facebook wall. Should he be needed, his BlackBerry is there to do its job. “Have a good rest, signor,” the beach attendant had said, beaming as she spread out a towel for Nicolas on the deck chair. Three days to pretend to be writing the book. Three days of laziness.

Malvina opens one eye as he is drying himself.

“You should have a swim,” he says.

She shrugs. “I don’t feel too good.”

“Maybe something you ate?”

“Maybe.”

She nestles back into her deck chair.

It is getting on toward noon. The sun pounds down. The frizzy brunette and the hairy guy arrive. He is still on the phone (is he ever off it?), and she totters on her glittery platform shoes. Once they have decided where to sit, once they have been handed the thick black-and-white towels stamped with the letters GN, she stands up. Slowly and tantalizingly, she takes off the top of her bathing suit, like Rita Hayworth removing that glove. Her breasts are round and pert, with dark pink nipples. Not fake bosoms, but glorious real ones that wobble ever so slightly and that Nicolas can imagine frantically cramming into his mouth. She starts to anoint them with sun oil, and Nicolas can hardly believe she is doing this, right here, right now, with such deliberate, slow movements. All the men are staring. The staff members seem transfixed, sweating under their black shirts. The Belgian goes pinker, the Swiss adjusts his dark glasses, and the French ogles to such an extent that his wife gives him a dig in the ribs. Only the boyfriend seems impervious to the scene. Nicolas neatly takes his eyes off her just before Malvina notices.

Nicolas has learned to be clever where Malvina is concerned. Her intensity harbors a powerful strain of silent jealousy. She picks up the remotest sign of what she imagines is danger—an overadmiring fan, a too-friendly reader, or simply a pretty girl. When Malvina left London two months ago, giving up her studies and all her friends there, to come to live with him in Paris on the rue du Laos, Nicolas discovered her unhealthy obsession with his past, with his relationship with Delphine. He found it impossible to make Malvina understand that Delphine and he have been friends for the past two years, since their breakup, and that he needs this special bond with his ex. Malvina cannot fathom how he can be “friends” with Delphine. She is convinced Nicolas and Delphine are still lovers. And any reasonably attractive woman is a threat to her relationship with Nicolas.

As a result, his BlackBerry never rings or even vibrates. He is too careful for that. He gave up his beloved iPhone when he started dating Malvina in 2010. The iPhone 3GS, he told a friendly male journalist in Oslo, is an unfortunate device if you are being spied upon by a jealous partner. Picture messages show right up on the screen, along with the name of the person sending them, as well as missed calls. A nightmare. “Switch to a BlackBerry if you have secrets to keep,” he had said, chuckling. Malvina had not seen the Norwegian article with that exact caption and a picture of him brandishing his BlackBerry over a shot of Løiten Linie Akevitt. A small miracle, considering she spent hours keeping track of him online, checking every comment he posted on Facebook and Twitter, and, worse still, every comment posted by a female in response. He had 150,000 followers on Twitter and over 250,000 on his Facebook fan page, so Malvina was certainly busy.

His BlackBerry is protected by a code he changes constantly. The only sign of an incoming text or e-mail is the little red signal that blinks. The screen remains black. Nothing shows up on it. He knows how to look at the phone swiftly when Malvina is occupied with another matter. It is a risky daily battle. He knows how to smuggle the BlackBerry into the bathroom, tucked into his sleeve like a stash of drugs. In the privacy of the toilet, he knows how to hastily peruse his e-mails, his text messages, check his Facebook page, scroll through his Twitter feed. This morning, as Malvina visits the ladies’ room (that will leave him four to five minutes), he sees there are new e-mails on his private account—one from Alice Dor, his French publisher; one from Dita Dallard, his publicist; one from Bertrand Chalais, a French journalist he is friendly with; another from a writer friend, Patrick Treboc, whom he parties with. And on his other e-mail account, the one used for his Web site, there are about fifty new messages from readers around the world. He used to answer them all in the beginning, when the book was just out, not yet on the charts or translated into all those languages. When he first started to receive the e-mails, they were a gratifying surprise. But when the messages poured in as the book gained recognition in more countries, on more charts and lists, and when the movie came out, he found he was swamped. “Hire an assistant who will answer them for you,” suggested another writer friend, but Nicolas felt that wasn’t right. “Just read them and don’t reply,” said another. And that was what he ended up doing.

This morning, the most important element on Nicolas’s BlackBerry is the blue-spotted logo on the screen. A BBM. He knows it is from Sabina. He will not have time to answer right now, but he reads it fast (heart pumping) and erases it promptly. “I am wearing nothing, it is hot in my room, and I am thinking of you. Shall I tell you what I am doing right now, Nicolas?” He has to delete every single message from Sabina as soon as he reads it. There is no other way.

Last April. Berlin. A book signing at the Dussmann das Kultur Kaufhaus on Friedrichstrasse. She had stood in line patiently for a long while. She had handed him
Der Umschlag
(German edition, with the postcardlike sepia cover of Camogli in the fifties, a glimpse of sea, the village clustered by the cliff, the inky green cypress trees). He had said blandly, “Your name, please?” like he always did, and she had answered, “It’s not for me; it’s for my husband. His name is Hans.” There was something about her eyes. An ash blonde wearing a trench coat. Fifteen years older than he was, he guessed. Fine catlike features, small smile. Reminiscent of Charlotte Rampling in
The Night Porter.
He had signed the book. Just as she was turning away, she swiftly slipped a shred of paper into his hand. Then she was gone and the next reader was already flourishing his book. He hadn’t had the time to read the paper till twenty minutes later, when his German publisher, Ursula, managed to pluck him away from the winding line of readers for a short break. The only thing written on the paper was a series of numbers he immediately recognized—a BlackBerry PIN number, BBM, for instant messaging.