The Suitors (11 page)

“It’s just that that’s how I served at the Khashoggis’. Adnan Khashoggi,
²
I don’t know if you know him?”

Shamelessly tossing out the name of a former employer like that was just not done! Gérard was decidedly lacking in judgment, citing an arms merchant as a reference on questions of taste! Given the circumstances, however, I couldn’t pick and choose. After ascertaining that he had been shown his room and introduced to the staff, I left him to muddle through and hoped for the best.

Marie and I met for a moment in my room.

“Are you sure we should go through with this?” I asked.

“Listen, we said we would, and we will.”

“Yes, but how?”

“
Surely
you don’t expect me to explain to you …”

“What—that seduction isn’t rocket science, that it’s a question of
feeling
, right? But I’m too nervous for that to work, so help me out.”

“Well, we start by dolling up. You swan out in décolleté, while I convey the idea of smoldering passion beneath my icy exterior. That way, there’ll be something for everyone. And then we’ll see!”

“Fine, but we stick together, right?”

“Obviously!” replied Marie. “Would you be a dear and keep an eye on Mummy’s seating arrangements while I go dress, because she’s quite capable of putting
Jean-Michel right next to her, with Gay on the other side. I’ll come relieve you as soon as I’m ready.”

I knocked at my mother’s door: “Would you like any help with the seating arrangements?”

It would be a seated dinner, with assigned places, at two candlelit tables on a terrace used as a summer dining room. Such seating arrangements, along with responsibility for the menus and dealing with the staff, comprised my mother’s essential concerns as the mistress of the house. She usually sat in her bathroom and made her seating charts while doing her makeup, quickly sketching two circles on a notepad—one for my father’s table, the other for hers—before writing the date, the guest list, and rotating everyone in such a way that they would sit between different people every evening.

“Do you want me to put Jean-Michel next to you?” she managed to ask through lips clamped around hairpins, which she was slipping into the low, tight chignon she preferred for evening dress.

“Yes, if you like.”

“Then I’ll take the other one, what’s his face, Braissant; I haven’t said a word to him yet. And he looks like a tough one, too. In any case, I’m going to stick his wife with your father. What’s he like, the new head butler?”

“Not great, you’ll see. But better than nothing.”

“Bring me my dress, will you …”

“Which one?” I shouted from her dressing room, standing before an entire closet of evening gowns.

“Right under your nose!” she replied testily. “I’m sure Pauline has laid it out for me already.”

“If only,” I muttered. “What do you want: yellow chiffon, gold lamé, or duchess satin?”

“No,” moaned my mother: “It’s black, lace, an Oscar!”

“Got it!” I cried, bearing my trophy triumphantly into the bathroom, where Marie had just made her entrance.

“Wow, you look stunning!” I whispered to her, admiring her palazzo pants and red bustier.

“Am I too late for the seating rodeo?” she exclaimed, winking at me in thanks.

“No, you’re just in time. And I’ll leave you with Mummy, because I really must go change.”

Daylight was still lingering. Glimpsed through the pines, the moon seemed a touch early, suspended in the sky by an overzealous stagehand. The night-blooming jasmine, however, had followed her cue by perfuming the salty sea breeze, breasted from time to time by a flight of seagulls, whose cries drowned out the shrill
sound of crickets. I went down to the terrace, where I found Odon Viel and the Braissants.

“Odon, how are you? I see you’ve met Bernard and Laetitia,” I said, receiving the distinct impression that I had just plunged into a chilly mountain stream.

Admittedly, Bernard Braissant and our nattily attired astrophysicist had nothing in common. And yes, our cocktail ritual did sometimes smack uneasily of the waiting room. Like patients sitting around in a doctor’s office, our guests examined one another discreetly and with more or less goodwill, sitting in a circle around a table bearing olives and peanuts instead of tired magazines. They stared shamelessly, however, at every new arrival emerging from beneath the arches of the loggia, who approached with a composed spontaneity with one eye on the uneven stones of the terrace, to avoid catching a heel, while the other eye braved the glare of the audience’s gaze.

This Jean-Michel learned to his cost when he realized what a stir he had created by appearing in salmon slacks and a matching shirt, an outfit in which he seemed much less at home than in his CEO suit. Was he already regretting this summer outfit for a bourgeois conqueror, so ill suited for his nerdy physique? The childish pastel color made him look like a chubby baby, anything but sexy, and frankly I wasn’t at all sure I felt
up to making a pass at him. Without giving me a moment to consider him from that angle, however, he reprised his role as the model guest.

The first thing he did when my mother appeared was hand her a gift. As a precaution, she went into ecstasies over the wrapping, in case she couldn’t compliment him on his present, so she was pleasantly surprised to unwrap a framed photo of General de Gaulle on the beach at L’Agapanthe during the winter of 1946, when he had come here to consider his options before giving up power and retiring to Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises.

“Jean-Michel, you couldn’t have given me anything that would have pleased me more! I did know that the general had come to L’Agapanthe. But to have actually unearthed pictures of his stay … How did you find out, how did you manage?”

“You’re too kind, Madame, really, it’s nothing …”

“Oh, please, call me Flokie!”

Arm in arm with my sister, Frédéric had just arrived, and he murmured in my ear, “It’s unbelievable—he’s a total suck-up, your guy!”

Marie leaned close to my other ear, as I bit my lips to keep from laughing. “ Frédéric is right, and our boy’s beginning to piss me off with this eager-beaver crap. What about you?”

“And how!”

“Mind you, so much the better, because the Queen of the Night is waltzing off with him right before our eyes,” she added, while our supposed suitor warmed to his task.

“I looked into a few things when I learned that you’d been kind enough to invite me here. And I found out that the bay had been recommended to the general by unusually choice word of mouth, because it was through Churchill, alerted to the charms of the place by the Duchess of Windsor, that Eisenhower came here in 1944 and 1945, after having requisitioned the house, which was American property. He then urged de Gaulle to come here for a quiet stay in 1946, when the house was requisitioned by the French government.”

“You’re a darling!” gushed my mother, suddenly eager to thank him once and for all.

Had she had enough of billing and cooing with him? Or was she changing the subject to avoid embarrassing the Braissants, in case they’d brought her only chocolates? Because she had no doubt whatsoever that Bernard and Laetitia would now offer her something. Was it not customary for a guest’s visit, like a citation framed by quotation marks, to begin with a gift and conclude with a thank-you note? The Braissants, however, just
kept sipping their champagne. The idea of bringing a hostess gift had clearly never crossed their minds. Nonplussed, my mother took another tack.

“Can anyone tell me why the Bellini at the Hôtel du Cap, made with peach purée, is not as good as the one at Cipriani’s in Venice, where they use peach extract?”

Coming out of the blue, her question seemed enchantingly frivolous to me but shocking to Bernard and Laetitia, for I caught a pained look exchanged between them. What right had they to judge my mother? That was
my
prerogative, and I couldn’t bear it when others did so in my place, especially pretentious people who confused prejudices with convictions, disdain with clear-sightedness.

Just then Gay sailed in, spectacular in a femme-fatale lamé sheath and holding a yellow plastic toy that Popsicle was trying to snatch away by leaping in every direction, but my mother serenely pursued her train of thought.

“Anyway, the hotel bar no longer even has splits of champagne. Impossible to fix your own cocktail anymore! It’s so much less jolly …”

“No!” Frédéric exclaimed indignantly, torn between solidarity and sarcasm.

“Oh, yes, and just imagine, now they serve sushi in the restaurant near the swimming pool. This mania
for raw food—wherever will it strike next? Sushi in the Midi! It’s ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous,” agreed Laszlo Schwartz, sitting down on the low wall overlooking the lawn.

My mother’s face brightened.

“Laszlo! But you haven’t yet met my daughters’ friends. Here are Laetitia and Bernard Braissant, and Jean-Michel Destret. Laszlo Schwartz.”

Jean-Michel almost fainted when he heard Laszlo’s name. At sixty-two, the German painter was indeed a star of the contemporary art scene, whose exhibitions at the Grand Palais and the Guggenheim in Bilbao had been highlights of the season. And one of his paintings had sold for two and a half million euros a month earlier. Even the Braissants looked impressed. Laetitia, who hadn’t bothered to open her mouth until that moment, crinkled her eyes and cranked up a smile in an obvious effort to charm.

“I read in the papers that you live in Le Gard …” cooed Jean-Michel.

“Yes, I have my studio in Barjac, not far, in fact, from Kiefer’s La Ribaute, but I’ve been thinking about going abroad.”

Practically gurgling with delight, nodding at everything he said, Laetitia seemed almost ready to dissolve,
so keen was her absorption in his presence. In any case, she had definitely ditched her leftist intellectual’s contempt for my oh-so-bourgeois mother, whom she now treated obsequiously, having understood her bond with the famous artist. Bernard, evidently on the same wavelength as his wife, now tried to establish direct and gratifying contact with the great man.

“Did you know that Jean-Michel is a passionate collector of your work?”

“Oh, really? I’m flattered,” replied Laszlo.

And yet, I would have sworn that he found them irritating, these newcomers whose sanctimonious admiration appealed to his weaknesses, pushing him to conform to their image of him. Because he already knew that he would play the great man to please them, the way people mimic sadness at the funeral of a relative whose death leaves them indifferent, and he felt pained at this impending imposture.

“And what do you do?” he asked Jean-Michel, to change the subject.

Marie and I had been flitting about, chatting, but now we fell silent, suddenly attentive to a conversation that might prove instructive regarding our “blind date.”

“I’m the director of a company that deals in arms and audiovisual equipment.”

“Good Lord! And I gather that you’re a prime example of the French self-made man?”

“Yes, well, that’s what the press says. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough of us. It’s becoming harder and harder to make it on your own. Passing exams isn’t enough anymore to guarantee entrance into the corridors of power—you must have several generations of success under your belt. Consider the fact that the CAC 40, which lists the top forty companies on the Paris Bourse, is the European index that comprises the greatest number of family firms. As in India.”

Not too bad, I thought, reevaluating his rising stock value, as if he’d been undervalued but was suddenly showing potential. What he’d said was articulate, perceptive, fair, reflecting no class resentment.

“There’s nothing hereditary about good business sense, though. You know the Bamileke proverb: The father was a fortress, the son, a buttress, and the grandson, a butthole!”

“I’m not familiar with the Bamileke, but they’re forgetting that a solid network of contacts makes up for many things.”

“I saw your girlfriend!” Bernard broke in, flashing a naughty smile.

To general astonishment. Because his nonsensical
interruption couldn’t have come at a more awkward time, right in the middle of the discussion. Still, now we were curious: Whom did he mean? And what connection could that person possibly have with what they were talking about?

“Who’s that?” replied Jean-Michel, clearly annoyed.

At this point, in spite of Jean-Michel’s less than captivating manner, I’d have bet that Marie was on his side and feeling as annoyed as he was at Bernard.

“Françoise.”

“Françoise
who
?”

“Françoise Hardy.”

“The singer? Who’s married to Jacques Dutronc? But I hardly know her! I only met her that one time, and she was with you!”

It took us all a moment to recover from Bernard’s incredible gall. Name-droppers usually try to take part in a discussion and show a little finesse, leading the conversation in a convenient direction before they make their move, thus posing as people with important connections and clout. Bernard had simply skipped all that.

He really had some nerve, and my indignation made Jean-Michel more sympathetic in contrast. I was almost looking forward to sitting next to him at dinner.