François-Maxime de Couvigny stopped in his tracks.
“I told them it wasn’t nice to say that. I mean, it doesn’t sound nice, does it? I’d punch them if they called my father a fag.”
A wave of terror swept over François-Maxime. “Really?”
“Of course,” the boy went on, “I don’t really know what it means.”
François-Maxime threw his head back and burst into a loud, guttural laugh. He realized he was overreacting, but it didn’t matter: the sound of the bullet whistling past his head made him feel alive again.
Séverine popped her head around the door, surprised by such hilarity. “What’s going on?”
François-Maxime told her what their son had said. Embarrassed, Séverine also laughed. Trapped between his parents, Guillaume was torn between the pleasure of having entertained them and the feeling that he had made a mistake.
“What did I say that’s so funny?” he finally asked.
Suddenly required to explain a delicate point, his parents stopped laughing. Séverine made it clear to François-Maxime that the task of teaching their son fell to him, the father.
“Well, Guillaume, ‘fag’ is a naughty word for something naughty.”
“What?”
“A man who doesn’t live with a woman but a man is called a fag.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, a man like that sleeps in the same bed as another man, they eat together and go on holiday together.”
“So they’re friends?”
“More than friends. They do what a mommy and daddy do: they caress each other and kiss on the mouth.”
“Yuck!”
The child had jumped up in his chair with a grimace of disgust.
How satisfying it was for François-Maxime to register his son’s spontaneous revulsion! Such reassuring normality! He gave Séverine a proud look. She seemed more puzzled than delighted by her son’s reaction. He felt it wise to add an extra layer. “And a man like that, who doesn’t marry a woman and have a family, isn’t a good man. He’s useless. Useless to society and the human race, possibly even a parasite.”
The boy nodded gravely.
“So it really is better not to use that . . . that word,” François-Maxime concluded.
He couldn’t bring himself to utter the word again. Not only did it belong to a coarse register François-Maxime never resorted to, but even repeating it out loud would be a big risk, as if it were contagious, or might lead to a confession . . . He so much wanted to ignore that reality that he shunned the words that referred to it.
“So is Clément’s father a fag?” his son went on.
“Maybe not, Guillaume. It’s a common insult among rude boys. Think about it: when your sisters call each other silly fools, they’re not telling the truth.”
“All right.” The boy took a deep breath. “Anyway, I won’t be a fag.”
François-Maxime felt emotional as he looked at Guillaume. Clearly, he hadn’t passed on his own tendency to him, he’d given him clean genes. The curse would end there, and his son wouldn’t be forced to lead a secret life. For a moment, the forty-year-old man, devoured by conflicting impulses, felt envious of the seven-year-old child’s clear certainties. He abruptly put down the exercise book without being as demanding as he should have been. “Your letters are looking better, Guillaume. Keep up the good work.”
Smiling radiantly, he left the room and joined Séverine. She took him by the hand and went down the stairs with him.
“I’m grateful to you, but I wonder . . . ”
“Yes?”
Séverine blushed. She found it difficult to complete her sentence. “François-Maxime, aren’t you exaggerating when you tell him that . . . being that way . . . isn’t good?”
François-Maxime stiffened. “Excuse me?”
“He’ll meet people like that.”
“Precisely. So he’ll be able to decide who’s right and who’s wrong.”
The subject was closed, and François-Maxime went to see his daughters. Every evening, he was in the habit of talking to each of his children about the day that had just ended and the homework they had for the following day.
Séverine watched him walk away, erect, self-confident, and felt sad that, unlike him, she was unable to subscribe to certain “facts” without hesitation. Who’s right and who’s wrong! . . . Taking advantage of the fact that no one was watching her, she went into the living room, poured herself a glass of whiskey, and gulped it down.
For some days now she had been feeling very uneasy because of those damned letters, those identical pieces of paper François-Maxime and Xavière had received. Neither had hesitated. Both her husband and her lover had immediately assumed that it was she, Séverine, who had sent them. Xavière had expressed her certainty with a slap, and François-Maxime with an expensive handbag, in which he had put the original message—Just a note to tell you I love you. Signed: You know who—and added: Me too.
What tormented Séverine wasn’t the sender’s real identity, but that they should think she was responsible. If only they knew . . . Didn’t they realize just how incapable she was of such an initiative? Weren’t they aware of her absence of feeling, her chronic indifference? François-Maxime and Xavière must love her very much to attribute that thought to her! If Séverine had received that note, she wouldn’t have felt anything definite. Or not much. She didn’t think she was capable of any decisive gesture toward anyone, and was astonished that nobody had realized that about her. François-Maxime had become her husband because he had proposed: all she had done was accept. Xavière had initiated her into the pleasures of Sapphic love because it was she who had taken the initiative, and Séverine had allowed herself to be led. She felt no passion of her own accord, but merely provided an echo to the passions of others. She was quite happy to assume her role as a mother, doing her duty and meticulously delivering gestures of love. It wasn’t just passivity, it was an inner emptiness.
As usual, when confronted with the two letters, she had allowed them to believe that she had written them. What did it matter? What was important wasn’t truth—which, at least in her case, was too ugly to tell—but maintaining the illusion. After she had slapped her, Xavière had been so aroused she had pulled her onto the living room couch. After presenting her with her gift, François-Maxime had been in a more cheerful, more playful mood than usual. She herself might not be happy, but at least she made them happy.
She poured herself another glass of whiskey. This time, she filled it to the brim and downed it in one go. That was another extraordinary thing: nobody suspected that she was becoming an alcoholic. Of course, she did cover up her secret drinking by gargling with floral water in order to mask the smell of bourbon, but even so!
She went down to the servants’ hall. “What have you made for us, Grete?”
The cordon bleu chef gave the names of the dishes and listed the main ingredients. Here too, I’m incapable of doing my share. Séverine had never made the meals. The daughter of a wealthy family, she had never learned to cook since the task seemed to her to be beyond her abilities: to spend hours on something a mouth could swallow in a second was simply absurd. Although she admired cooks, it was not for their skill but for this cult of the useless, this dedication to a silly task, to preparing a feast that would immediately be swallowed up. They were the heroes of uselessness!
The family gathered in the vast dining room. True to tradition, there were hand-painted hunting scenes on the paneled walls. On the table stood a plethora of plates, glasses, and flatware, as if every day a banquet was being held. A maid moved discreetly behind the diners and served them.
François-Maxime led the conversation. It was important for the children to know that a meal wasn’t just feeding time, but a time to shine with the brilliance of one’s conversation and take an interest in other people’s activi
ties.
He grew angry when Guillaume failed to answer a question quickly enough on the pretext that he was chewing a piece of cod. “Please learn to speak even when your mouth’s full, Guillaume.”
“But—”
“Making the other person wait with the excuse that you’re chewing is nothing but monstrous rudeness. It’s the way pigs behave.”
“Daddy!”
“The physical must never take priority over the spiritual, my boy. You must get used to speaking with your mouth full without anybody noticing. Look.”
He lifted a slice of zucchini to his mouth with his fork and continued talking with ease, so that nobody was aware of the food on his palate. “I don’t have to swallow any more quickly. I have enough room in my oral cavity to hide the food and I take advantage of my jaws moving to grind it. In this way, I can take part in the conversation and at the same time do justice to the dish.”
The girls looked at their brother with haughty commiseration: they had been practicing these social gymnastics for years, and were thinking, Honestly, poor Guillaume, he has to be shown everything, forgetting that they had also had to accustom themselves to it.
After dinner, Mary, the young au pair, came to fetch the children.
François-Maxime and Séverine sat in the living room. He searched through the TV shows they had recorded for one that would entertain them. Meanwhile, Séverine’s eyes wandered over the walls: she couldn’t decide whether she liked the decor or hated it. The overall impression was one of opulence, luxury, and abundance, since the fabrics—from the walls to the curtains, by way of the couches and armchairs—bore various paisley patterns, while the light from the many lamps was reflected off animal sculptures and mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell boxes. Ten years earlier, an English female architect had concocted this decor for her. The result gave a feeling of comfort but she didn’t feel at ease in it. Ever since she had discovered Xavière’s cottage by the North Sea, so characteristic, so consistent, so pleasant, she had realized her own uselessness: her interior had been imposed from the outside by a British woman who was probably now dealing with an emir from Qatar. In other words, here too her behavior had been dictated to her.
What if she threw out all this chichi stuff in favor of a bare, Zen style? She liked the idea. She’d even written down the address of an excellent minimalist decorator. Stupid woman, you’re doing it again! Once again, she was thinking of another person organizing her world for her . . . So she gave up on the idea and hoped François-Maxime would choose his show quickly, so that she could go get a glass of whiskey.
“There’s a program on European politics! Is that all right by you, Séverine?”
“Perfect.”
They watched a political talk show recorded the day before. François-Maxime followed the debates with passion and clear bias, while Séverine, more reserved, paid polite attention, taking advantage of heated moments to go and secretly knock back more alcohol.
When the closing credits started, there was obviously nothing left to do but go upstairs to their bedroom. The prospect terrified Séverine, and she heard herself saying to François-Maxime, “Did I tell you my father’s secret?”
Taken aback, he stared at her. When he realized that she was eagerly awaiting an answer, he switched off the television and sat down opposite her.
“Your father’s secret?”
François-Maxime hadn’t known Séverine’s father. By the time they met as students at the Paris law faculty, he had already been dead a year.
Séverine put the decanter and two glasses on a tray and carried it over to the coffee table. This way, if he later noticed that she smelled of single malt, there would be a reason for it. Moreover, if he drank with her, it would go unnoticed.
Sensing that what she was about to confide was likely to be serious, he accepted the glass she held out to him.
“My father had a secret. When my eldest brother discovered it, it was the beginning of the end.”
“The end of what?”
“Of the family. In five years, everything changed. My father died, my mother got cancer, my brother went to India, where he caught a deadly ameba, and my sister married a black man—not that that was bad in itself, but it was the worst possible thing Ségolène could have inflicted on my parents as long as they were around. Didn’t you ever wonder why there was such carnage in my family?”
François-Maxime shook his head. When he had started courting Séverine, he had lived through these tragedies with her and, by the time they got engaged, had attended many funerals. In a way, he had encountered Séverine’s family just as it was disappearing. The result was that, two years into their marriage, Séverine was sharing with her only remaining sister what was left of the monumental family fortune. Then, when her sister relinquished her share, Séverine had gotten the lot.
“My father had always inspired admiration and terror,” she continued. “We thought he was the embodiment of perfection. Fair, cultivated, strict, hardworking, invariably successful: we were in awe of him. He didn’t show much affection and didn’t expect any. I wasn’t really aware of it, it was my analyst who pointed it out. Only one day my father fell off his pedestal.”
“He did?”
“It was summer. We were all staying at our house in Hossegor, by the ocean, except for him. He’d stayed in Paris. He never took vacations and preferred to work, which is why we always felt rather guilty and vaguely ashamed. One Thursday, my brother, who was twenty-two, went back to Paris because one of his best friends was getting engaged. He’d forgotten to let any of us, even Dad, know and only told us on the morning of his departure. Anyway, he arrived in Paris in the afternoon and, to avoid an endless chat with our concierge, who talked too much, he went up to the apartment by the back stairs. That’s when he saw my father.” She poured herself another whiskey before continuing. “Or rather, a horrible woman who looked like my father.”
“I don’t understand . . . ”
“At first, he didn’t understand either. Through the banisters, staircase, he first noticed a big, square, ungainly woman leaving our apartment. He was surprised. For a moment, he thought my father had hired a new cleaner. She clumped down the stairs on her pumps as she walked down. Then he made out the woman’s face and, even with the wig, even with the makeup, he recognized our father.”
“Your father was a transvestite?”
“At first, Pierre refused to believe what he had seen, so he rushed down the stairs and ran away, in a panic. An hour later, he took a terrible liberty: he rummaged through my father’s suite—my parents had separate bedrooms. There, he discovered a hidden panel inside the wardrobe, a false bottom containing dresses, skirts, extra-large blouses, size 10½ pumps, a makeup bag. He decided not to mention it and went to stay with a friend. But every day, he came back at the same time, waited in a café, and saw my father leave by the back door, dressed as a woman.”
“I guess he followed him?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Our father walked around as a woman. He went to have coffee as a woman. He browsed around department stores as a woman, looking at dresses, lingerie, and makeup, and buying himself trinkets. He spent a whole hour as a woman.”
“Did Pierre tell all of you?”
“That summer, Pierre didn’t say anything. But the following year, he started doing badly in his studies. He’d stay out all night without telling us. We were worried he might be taking drugs. One Sunday, at breakfast, at the head of the table, where he held court like a patriarch, my father gave him a dressing down. So my brother turned pale, stood up, went out, came back a few minutes later with my father’s female gear, and threw it on the table. Then he told us all what he’d seen.”
At this point, Séverine had to stop her hands shaking.
“All of a sudden, the accuser turned into the defendant. Since my father was white
as a sheet and couldn’t say a word, my mother stood up, looking very indignant, and told my brother to leave and never set foot in our house again. Pierre obeyed. For a few hours, we chose to believe that our brother was a liar, an inventor of stories, a monster. But my father withdrew into himself. Within a week, we realized he’d been fooling us for years. Three months later, my sister announced that she was going to live in Niger with her boyfriend Boubakar. My mother disowned her. Pierre, who I was seeing in secret, flew off to India. A year later, my father, who hadn’t said a dozen words since that fatal Sunday, crashed his car against a plane tree, an accident we interpreted as suicide, although we didn’t say it. The rest, you know. We heard my brother had died in Bombay. My mother discovered she had breast cancer. I think it was a relief to her. She allowed herself to be taken away by the tumor after four months. And finally, Ségolène, all the way over there in Niamey, disowned our family by rejecting her share of the inheritance.”
François-Maxime went to Séverine and put his arms around her, but she pulled free because she wanted to talk some more. He didn’t take offense.
“So you’re the one true survivor of the catastrophe,” he said, kneeling beside her.
“To all appearances, yes.”
“What do you mean?”
“Inside, I have my doubts.” She looked deep into his eyes. “I doubt that people are what they really are. I doubt that the people close to me are what they appear to be. I keep expecting a horrible revelation.”
François-Maxime instinctively drew back. What was she trying to say? Did she know he wasn’t what he gave the impression of being? Was her story a way of telling him that she was aware of his moral failings?
“Imagine, François-Maxime, if one day our children find out we aren’t what we claim to be.”
This time, François-Maxime recoiled even more. There was no doubt about it, she knew! “What . . . what are you trying to say?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you . . . have something specific to tell me?”
She stared at him for a long time, expressionless, weighed down by her own cowardice. She didn’t have the guts to admit her relationship with Xavière. “No,” she murmured contritely.