The Suitors (10 page)

Which by no means meant that in our family sex was allowed, authorized, or approved of. The sexual education my sister and I received from our mother was summed up in a few principles: we were to begin our lives as women only after a visit to the doctor, and only if (she always said
if
, not
when
) we were in love—the sine qua non, she said, for making love, thus making the gift of oneself out of what otherwise would be simply an easy lay.

In that department, though, Marie and I have always been different. Marie is romantic and dreams of meeting her soul mate, but that doesn’t stop her from collecting lovers. She has never found it compromising to sleep
with whomever she pleases. It gives her pleasure, especially when she comes across a hardy and enthusiastic partner with self-assured moves but no real emotional involvement. In short, nothing to write home about. Sometimes she even has to think twice about her scruples when she turns down men who seem to attach great importance to sex. But she’s too sought after to yield to her admirers just to be considerate, so to rein herself in she has come up with some inhibitions and apprehensions: unseemly, occasionally embarrassing noises made by interlocking bodies, and self-consciousness about her nakedness, or about the folds and bulges created during the choreography of love’s embrace. And these barriers keep her from giving in to just anyone, without preventing her from letting herself go whenever she feels like it. Particularly with her pals in the security details for summit meetings, guys for whom my sister, who’s crazy about officers and uniforms, feels a guilty fondness.

I’m the opposite of Marie. Men never leave me indifferent. Arousing desire or disgust, their skin, their bodies wield a power over me that proves sometimes inconvenient. I’m incapable, for example, of dancing cheek to cheek with a man who doesn’t appeal to me. And I make sure I never touch or brush against a man, even
by accident—in the back of a car, say—for fear of shuddering with desire if he attracts me or with aversion if he doesn’t. In my life, sex has always intruded in an unexpected and uncontrollable way. Falling in love is an invitation to chaos and commotion: I feel immediately on fire, overwhelmed by a painful desire for the man who fills my thoughts. Sleepless, I lie moaning, writhing with longing, capable of climaxing or becoming prostrate with frustration at the memory of a word, a gesture. So it goes without saying that I set great store by physical love. Without any “technique,” I abandon myself to my partner and lose all sense of time. For me, sex is like an elixir that cures me of everything, of both worry and pain. It’s like a prodigious journey that sweeps me up from head to toe, a journey on which I cannot embark unless I love the man to distraction, even if only for a few hours.

Like the narrator’s aunts in
Remembrance of Things Past
, who thank Swann so obliquely for the case of Asti wine, I tried to be tactful by not looking Jean-Michel Destret straight in the face, so that he wouldn’t feel too ill at ease upon arriving at a strange house. I did sneak a peek at him while he was getting out of his car and noticed that he’d sat next to his driver instead of in the backseat.

Marcel, who was in charge of the luggage, welcomed the chauffeur and led him off to his room, while Marie and I escorted Jean-Michel into the loggia, where the other guests were chatting over their tea.

“Jean-Michel Destret, delighted,” he said to my mother, bending crisply to kiss her hand before adding, “Allow me to thank you for your invitation, Madame Ettinguer. I’m very happy to be here.”

Marie and I looked at each other, stunned by the disastrous impression he had just made. Managing to cram so many gaffes into one greeting was in fact a kind of triumph. Beginning with “Delighted,”
¹
totally
provincial, at least when trotted out for an introduction—an absurd rule, perhaps, but an unbreakable one, which none of us would have dreamed of contesting since it was completely without rhyme or reason. One might say “Delighted to be here,” “What a delightful ambience,” or “You are delightful,” but certainly
not
“delighted.” Like the verb “to eat,” unthinkable when used intransitively (“What are we eating?” or “I’ve eaten well”), whereas “I’m eating some chocolate” was perfectly fine. Or the word “flute” when used to offer champagne, brimming with inelegance in the expression, “You’ll have a
little flute?”—a massive no-no, unlike “A glass of champagne?” or “Some champagne?” which went down as smooth as silk.

As for his “Madame Ettinguer,” it was a double faux pas. For although his use of “Madame” was timely and even welcome, the addition of our family name was jarring because, according to French etiquette, it implied that my mother was his social inferior. And he had fallen into the usual trap with our name, which is written Ettinguer, but pronounced
Ettingre
, something only those in the know would know, as they know that La Trémoille is pronounced
La Trémouille
, that one says
Breuil
for Broglie,
Crouy
for
le prince
Cröy, and
Beauvau-Cran
instead of Beauvau-Craon. (Just as one should pronounce English names the English way in France, saying
Charlie
instead of Sharlie, and
Johnny
, not Zhonny.)

In conclusion, Jean-Michel had been too solemn and earnest, revealing his ignorance of the fact that elegance is created like a cake, with a mixture of varied and complementary ingredients. He had just kissed the hand of the mistress of the house and should therefore have balanced that homage with a hint of humor, the way the stodginess of a tea biscuit is lightened with whipped cream. Another point: his allusion to my mother’s “invitation” was too formal, just as his “allow me” was
almost emphatic. As for “I’m very happy to be here,” it was a pat expression and fell flat: any sincerity in the words lost all importance, since his compliment was too obvious to sit well. He would have been better off with a gracious exclamation along the lines of, “A true pleasure!” or a seemingly spontaneous—and more difficult—casual remark like, “Such a lovely surprise: it’s a marvel, this house!” All in all, he seemed unaware that he had already said too much. His clump of compliments betrayed an eagerness to please that stamped him from the get-go as a clod.

I looked at him. There was nothing special about him. No aura, no presence. He was commonplace. His eyes, his features—nothing handsome about him. Nothing ugly, either. And it was hard to tell his age, because with his helmet of hair, you would have said a choirboy or a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse. But, well, it was too soon to conclude that he had no powers of seduction, for he might turn out to be a paragon of wit, intelligence, and charm once he had stepped out of the social spotlight. And yet, the first thing that struck me about him was how carefully he was following the line of behavior he seemed to have chosen, which was to vamp my mother, and so assiduously that he had not yet even looked at my sister or me, so much closer to his own age.

Logically speaking, my mother should have cold-shouldered a nobody like him. So I was dumbfounded to hear her reply with a most unaccustomed friendliness. Now Marie and I exchanged even more astonished glances as our mother gazed benevolently at him, maternal as you please. He seemed to have charmed her, making her forget her displeasure over his tagalong chauffeur. She appeared to find him irresistible! And then I understood her delight: my mother couldn’t stand that her daughters or their guests might upstage her so she was relieved to find him a clod! The only thing that would truly have upset her? If Jean-Michel Destret
hadn’t
been a jerk and had instead outshone my father and her friends with his superiority and success.

Marie took the plunge: “Did you have a pleasant trip?”

My mother, however, swooped in to commandeer our guest, launching into some background about the house, as if he really had marveled at its beauty only a moment before.

“It may interest you to know that L’Agapanthe was not actually named after the agapanthus, a handsome African plant commonly called lily of the Nile, but from a contraction of three first names: those of Agathe, my mother-in-law; Patrick, my father-in-law; and Thérèse,
their first daughter, who died at an early age before the birth of Edmond, my husband.”

“I hope we’re not going to explore the entire family genealogy before showing our guest to his room,” I ventured, gently sarcastic.

“Oh, but this is interesting,” Jean-Michel Destret assured me before turning back to my mother. “So it was your parents-in-law who built the house?”

“No, some people from Boston,” continued my mother, with the ghost of a triumphant smile. “They called in American architects. And as you will see, the house is an exceptionally comfortable one for the thirties, very American, with its walk-in closets and pocket windows, and bedrooms all with their own bathrooms. Moreover, it was the Americans who launched the Cap d’Antibes—the Murphys, for example, the models for Fitzgerald’s
Tender Is the Night
. But it was an English couple, the Normans, who discovered the bay in 1902, when they were combing the coast from Naples to Marseilles to find a place to build their house, the Château de la Garoupe, which now belongs to Boris Berezovsky.”

I tried again. “Well, now Jean-Michel knows everything he needs to about the bay, so that’s taken care of, and I can …”

Wasted irony. Ignoring me completely, Jean-Michel picked up the challenge: “As was only fitting—unless I am mistaken—because Antibes did not blossom as a seaside resort until the end of the nineteenth century with the arrival of the English and the Russian aristos. The latter, poor things, had their wings clipped with the revolution, though, which certainly turned off the faucet-gushing grand dukes …”

Was it his “unless I am mistaken” that pricked up my ears? Or his “faucet-gushing grand dukes,” which sounded suspiciously prefabricated? I was suddenly convinced that he’d learned that little speech by heart and was gumming things up with his fake spontaneous remarks, like that “poor things.”

I looked at my sister, who was clearly as dismayed as I by Jean-Michel’s performance, but I didn’t know if he had irritated her as well with his choice of words. His “as was only fitting” was a snobbish convention, while “did not blossom” was as precious as it was pretentious. But what I simply could not bear was the use of diminutives, those relaxed little words that ring so false. People who say “teens,” “nabes,” and, in this case, “aristos” strike me straightaway as suspect. People’s vocabularies and ways of expressing themselves
often attract or repel me more than their behavior or physical appearance, doubtless because their words reveal, better than any confessions, what they are trying to show or to hide. And I didn’t have a problem with the fact that Jean-Michel was ignoring my sister and me, or that he had crammed for his visit, the way he surely prepared for everything. What bothered me was that he was incapable of taking any critical distance, unable to employ the humor that would have allowed him a breathing space, by admitting, for example, that he had done his homework before coming. Instead of which, he forged ahead.

“As you were saying, the Riviera only became really Americanized in the twenties, when Fitzgerald stayed at the Hôtel Belles Rives, which wasn’t actually called that at the time. Did you know that the Hôtel du Cap was already constantly fully booked? That water skiing was invented at Juan-les-Pins, and that La Garoupe was awash in bathing huts?”

Internet, travel guide, or chamber of commerce brochure? I wondered, gazing heavenward for the benefit of my sister, I was
that
ticked off by his patter. Entranced by his erudition, my mother had stopped pretending to be impressed and had sincerely succumbed to his charm.

Resignation gave way to fascination as Marie and I watched Jean-Michel and our mother together, spreading their tail feathers for each other like peacocks. We didn’t want to miss a second. After all, we had the entire weekend to have a go at the fellow. And if it amused them—Jean-Michel reciting his homework, hoping to shine, and our mother poaching our Honored Guest—then so much the better. Making faces, my sister and I would look over at each other occasionally, on the verge of hysterical laughter, while teatime became the cocktail hour before we’d even noticed. Guests in Bermuda shorts, sarongs, or dressing gowns, fussing around teapots of beaten silver, slices of pound cake, cherries, and pistachio macarons, had discreetly slipped away in relays to go change. Suddenly we found ourselves surrounded by women in cocktail frocks and men in bright jackets ordering pink champagne, mojitos, or cosmopolitans while nibbling on fresh almonds, black Nice olives, and peanuts. It was Marcel who roused us from our torpor by offering us champagne.

“Heavens, whatever time is it? Marie, take Jean-Michel up to his room so that the poor man has a few moments to settle in before dinner!” exclaimed my mother, leaping up, while Marcel came over to let me know that the new head butler was asking to see me.

“Does Madame wish me to serve
à l’assiette
?” he asked me pointedly when I entered the butler’s pantry.

Marcel and I exchanged pained looks; Gérard was way off the mark.
Le service à l’assiette
was the least of our preferences for serving at table, far behind the already debatable
service à la Beaumont
(named after Jean Beaumont, who laid claim to its invention), in which the attendant presents the serving platter between two guests, who must serve themselves at the same time. The rule on this point is very simple, however: this service is all the less elegant for being the most practical method and requiring the fewest servants. The most refined and, moreover, the most convenient service for the guest therefore requires the attendant to present the platter on the guest’s left, unlike
le service à l’assiette
, in which serving and clearing are done on the guest’s right.

“Gérard—it is Gérard, is it not? Perhaps it would be best for Marcel to explain to you our way of doing things …”