When she proposed marriage, he didn’t see it as a trap, but as another fantasy. He congratulated himself on marrying the least marriageable woman in world, freethinking, unfaithful, transgressive, a woman who would never obey him, who would be responsible only for her own pleasures, who would forbid him from making love in bed, on the kitchen table, or even on the piano, who would always lead him into unlikely situations that would set his heart beating with a mixture of passion and fear.
That evening, they went to La Truffe Blanche, one of the best restaurants in Brussels. The maître d’ did a double take when he saw them but then, as the professional he was, he bowed and took their coats. In a flash, he ordered the waiters to prepare the table at the far end, the one kept apart from the others in a kind of shell. He was determined to isolate this couple because the previous time he had received complaints from patrons about the outrageous obscenities they had heard the woman say. In two hours, she had managed to empty the restaurant. Since the husband, noticing what had happened, had left a very generous tip, the maître d’ wouldn’t think of turning them away this time but thought it wise to take precautions.
But Diane didn’t even mention sex over dinner. Instead she launched into a subject that fascinated her: the early Church fathers. As a matter of fact, she had decided to write a thesis about Origen. How had she discovered Origen? Why had she become interested in him? Jean-Noël wondered if it was the name, Origen, that had attracted her . . . There was origin and gene in the name Origen, which, poetically, made him into a fundamental character, the man from whom everything springs . . .
So Diane talked to him about this third-century theologian from Alexandria who castrated himself in order to devote himself to God, which Diane considered a mistake but also proof of true character.
“Mark said, ‘If thy hand offend thee, cut it off.’ What Origen does is castrate himself in order to escape temptation. Also, as a young man, he saw his father beheaded right in front of him. He’s not weak, or melancholy, or dull, no, he’s a violent man in a violent world. I’m interested in what he thinks. It doesn’t actually matter if he’s right or wrong.”
Here too, Jean-Noël found Diane fascinating. Who today, apart from a fossilized academic searching through dusty libraries for a career niche, would become so passionate about Origen, Ammonius Saccas, or Gregory Thaumaturgus? This woman—his wife—had a gift for avoiding the ordinary.
When they got back home, she grabbed her volume of Nietzsche, propped herself up with pillows, and resumed her reading, putting the yellow letter next to her.
Jean-Noël took it and read: Just a note to tell you I love you. Signed: You know who.
“What’s this?”
“I don’t know.” She continued reading but, twenty seconds later, added, “And I don’t care.”
Jean-Noël agreed, but slipped the message into his own book: he had just had an excellent idea.
Two days later, Diane discovered another yellow letter in her mail, and this time she was more interested. Meet me tonight, Thursday, at 11 PM, La Vistule, next to the high-voltage building, at the foot of the antenna. Be naked under your mink. Signed: You don’t know who.
She smiled and bit her lip. “Well, well, this is getting better and better.” Remembering that Jean-Noël was having dinner with colleagues that night, she was glad she could go to this intriguing rendezvous.
At ten-thirty, she set off in her little Italian car. Until the last minute, she had thought to disobey and put on black underwear or maybe just garters, but then she had decided that the writer of the letter must have his reasons to demand nudity, and that it was pointless to sacrifice lace that cost a fortune.
Guided by her GPS, she left Brussels, drove through a forest, then some sinister hamlets—just a few squat houses along the side of the road—and ventured up a steep path that led to a wire gate. A sign eaten away by rust, hanging lopsidedly by just one nail, said LA VISTULE.
Diane got out, felt the cold around her, pushed open the gate, which screeched, then got back in her Fiat and drove into this muddy terrain with its potholed paths. This must have once been an industrial area but all that was left now was crumbling vandalized buildings, probably inhabited by squatters. The authorities had cut off the electricity supply and the place was shrouded in irredeemable darkness. Diane drove in the direction of a shape that stood out against the flat sky, assuming it must be the antenna. As a matter of fact, as she drew nearer, her yellow headlights revealed beneath the metal structure a kind of concrete bunker covered in Danger of Death signs.
She switched off the ignition. She was trembling.
How could she be sure that it wouldn’t be just the anonymous letter writer who appeared, but also others who weren’t part of the scenario, people who lived outside the law amid the ruins?
She looked around at the grim landscape, the gutted tippers, the piles of rubble, the rolls of barbed wire. She immediately pictured the headlines: Woman Raped at La Vistule. Pictures flashed through her mind, images of herself lying dead in the mud, blood all over her face. She could guess the comments: What was she doing in that danger zone? Who forced her to go there? A murder that looks like suicide.
Should she get out of the car? No, better to turn and go back.
At that moment, headlights blinked in the darkness.
“It’s him.”
She did not know who “he” was, but his presence calmed her.
She did have an appointment, after all.
A man’s voice, distorted by a loudspeaker, came from the distance. “Get out of the car!”
Swallowing, she made up her mind to leave her shelter.
The headlights blinded her. All the same, she walked bravely toward them.
“Open your coat.”
She opened her fur coat wide, revealing her nakedness.
“Good. Now take the path on the right and keep moving straight ahead.”
She saw a clay path that led into darkness and slowly started along it, her high heels unsuited to this irregular terrain, especially when she couldn’t even see it.
Suddenly, she was able to see the obstacles more clearly, because a harsh light cast her shadow in front of her: the stranger’s car, a station wagon, was following her.
“Don’t turn!”
Anticipating her reaction, the voice commanded her to keep walking. The throbbing hood of the vehicle was coming closer and closer.
What if he suddenly speeds up? she wondered, nervously.
In response, the engine roared, and that reassured her. The fact that the driver had tried to scare her meant that it was a game he too was playing scrupulously, that she could be afraid in the same way as when you watch a horror movie and suspend disbelief.
She walked another fifty yards, until the voice ordered her to stop.
“Put your coat on the hood.”
As she did so, she shivered, because the April night was getting colder. The lights went out. Three men in ski masks appeared and they threw themselves upon her. She fought back a little, they overpowered her, and she stopped struggling and abandoned herself to them on the car body.
Twenty minutes later, as she was coming to her senses, a hand helped her back on her feet and put the mink coat over her shoulders.
The station wagon began to reverse, taking away two of the masked men.
The one who’d been left behind waited for the car to disappear, and for their eyes to get used to the dark, then removed his mask. “Will you give me a lift back?” Jean-Noël asked.
“You’ve earned it.”
When they got into her tiny Italian car, he sighed, contented. “I enjoyed that.”
“Me too,” Diane chuckled. She meant it. “Especially when I was walking in the dark and could have been run over.”
“I thought you’d like that kind of detail.”
She gave him a
grateful pat on the cheek, then started the car.
“Do you want to know who the two—”
“Oh, no!” Diane replied, offended. “You’re going to spoil my memories!”
They drove back quietly, listening to a Bruckner symphony in the background, Diane having decided that Bruckner was an orgiastic composer.
When they got to Place d’Arezzo, Jean-Noël came straight to the point. “Shall we go to Mille Chandelles on Saturday night?”
“An orgy? Won’t that be boring?”
Jean-Noël congratulated himself on living with the only woman capable of uttering such words as “An orgy? Won’t that be boring?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve spoken to the owner, Denis. He’s invited a French chef with three Michelin stars.”
“So?”
“So he has a proposition for you.”
On Saturday night, at Mille Chandelles, Diane enjoyed herself as she never had before.
They prepared her in the kitchen for three hours. The prestigious chef, accompanied by four apprentices, had wonderful fingers. She might have lost patience, but, instead, she put up no resistance and joked with them as they worked.
When midnight was about to strike, the four cooks lifted the huge serving dish the size of a stretcher, music from the court of Louis XIV started playing, the doors were opened, and they walked in, majestically, carrying on their shoulders a truly choice morsel: Diane, naked and stuffed with two hundred exquisite appetizers.
For Diane, being served as a royal dish by a three-star chef represented the apotheosis of her licentious life. Was it because of that pride, the pomp of the music, the applause of the guests, or the intoxication produced by the fragrances and flavors with which she was garnished? Whatever it was, she felt tears well up in her eyes.
She was placed on the table and offered to the guests.
If her eyes had not been filled with tears of emotion, she would have recognized the man busy picking shrimps from her toes as the famous Zachary Bidermann, who had come stag.
9
Hello, Albane.”
“ . . . ”
“Aren’t you in a good mood?”
“ . . . ”
“Are you angry?”
“ . . . ”
“Have . . . have I done something to upset you?”
“Guess!”
“What?”
“You’ve no idea?”
“No.”
“Your conscience is clear?”
“Yes.”
“In that case, we have nothing to say to each other. Besides, I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”
Her eyes half closed, Albane looked around as if about to leap on the first horse to cross the square.
Sitting beside her, Quentin sighed, which made him sink further into the bench, then stretch out his endless legs.
The silence grew denser, camouflaged by the shrill cacophony of parrots and parakeets.
“Albane?”
“ . . . ”
“Aren’t we speaking anymore?”
“No.”
“Aren’t we together anymore?”
“Absolutely not.”
“OK”
Quentin leaped to his feet and walked away, his satchel on his back.
An imploring cry tore through the tropical din. “Quentin! Don’t leave me!”
He stopped dead, and stood there hesitantly. He suddenly felt strong, equipped with the power to drive Albane to despair, and delighted with his own ascendancy over her. He turned, feeling like a magnanimous lord. “Yes?”
“Come here.”
“But I thought—”
“Please . . . Come . . . ”
Albane was tapping on the empty space next to her, beseeching him to sit back down.
She was so pretty this morning . . . Quentin thought girls were tiresome, yet fascinating: inventive and inexhaustible, they made a spectacle of everything. Whenever you were with them, every moment was an event. Even though Albane irritated him, he was never bored with her. First of all, she was always cute, whatever the circumstances, whether she was laughing, getting carried away, or crying—he loved to see her sobbing, it gave her a vulnerable air that he found very attractive—and second, she expected so much of him that she assured him of his own importance. She exalted his manhood with every outburst. At this moment, for instance, he saw himself as one of the Hollywood actors he admired. He could now play adult, manly roles, and that made him quiver with pleasure.
He went back and sat down next to her.
“Quentin, who was that letter for—the one you left on the bench?”
“For me.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’d gotten it that morning.”
“You’re joking!”
“No, why?”
Albane was shaken by a salutary laugh, a laugh that made her stomach contract and her legs move nervously, that took her breath away and threatened to suffocate her. When she felt that she was not just going to shed tears but also release mucus, she put her hand over her face, like a gag, and made an effort to calm down.
“Please tell me what’s going on before you die,” Quentin said jokingly.
He was staring at her with awe: he found her so entertaining, swinging as she did from one mood to another without anyone knowing why, elusive, inconsistent perhaps, but convinced that the center of the world was wherever she happened to be.
“I read the letter because I assumed it was for me,” she confessed. “Then when you took it back, I realized it wasn’t.”
It was Quentin’s turn to squirm. The sounds he emitted, halfway between a moo and a growl, were so ugly that the parrots and parakeets, alarmed, fell silent. When Quentin heard his wailing echo through the empty silence of the square, he also stopped, worried.
Albane, on the other hand, had very much enjoyed his hilarity, which was just like his tall frame, his outsized feet, his awkwardness: that of someone who had recently become a giant and was surprised by what was happening to him.
“Actually, I don’t know who sent me the note.”
“Another little girl in love with you.”
“Was it you?”
Albane shuddered. As a matter of fact, why hadn’t she taken the initiative and written a note like that? How could she have let some bitch beat her to it? Was she going to confess the truth? If so, she would disappoint Quentin. Above her, the parrots and parakeets resumed their commotion.
“Of course it was me.” She turned to him and smiled sweetly, head bowed, almost submissive.
Quentin expressed surprise. “Really?”
“I felt I needed to write to you.”
“You sly thing! You throw a jealous tantrum and ask me who the note is for, when it was you who sent it. Girls have such twisted minds . . . ”
“Girls? I’m not girls, I’m me.”
“All right, but I know what I’m talking about. You really do have a twisted mind.”
“Twisted? Is it wrong to say you love somebody?”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“A twisted mind. Thank you. I open up my heart to you, and you say I have a twisted mind. You and I don’t use words the same way.”
Quentin fell silent, afraid she was right: they couldn’t exchange more than three sentences before they started screaming at each other. Someone should have warned him that there was one vocabulary for girls and another for boys. Then he would have done some research, worked out two separate registers, and wouldn’t now be unleashing a storm whenever he used an inappropriate term.
Taking advantage of his silence, Albane checked the plausibility of her lie: Quentin wasn’t familiar with her handwriting, and the message contained only expressions she could have used.
“It’s neat, actually. We s
ee each other every day, and you still write to me. I like it.”
Albane lowered her eyes and assumed an air of modesty. Her lie was having such a positive effect that she was beginning to forget it was a lie. Yes, she must have written the note . . .
“It’s sometimes easier to tell the truth on paper. When we talk, we’re afraid, so we don’t always cut to the chase. Whereas when we have a pen in our hand, we’re calm and we get straight to the point.”
“I’m sure you’re right, Albane.”
“Besides, it’s a lot more romantic, isn’t it?”
He looked at her. She was leading him into a fabulous world, a world of delicate feelings, of those poets their teachers were always singing the praises of. Having seen women on television use the word “romantic,” he knew that it was one of the key elements of seduction.
He decided to rise to the occasion. Quick to have ideas and to put them into practice, he stood up. “Can you wait here for a few seconds, Albane?”
“But—”
“A few seconds . . . I’ll be back soon . . . I swear.”
Without waiting for her to agree, he scurried off and disappeared behind the trees. Once he was sure she could not see him, he rushed straight to the florist’s.
Xavière greeted him with a quizzical look that suggested his sudden arrival must be a mistake. Undaunted, he asked, “Is it possible to buy just one rose?”
“Yes, it’s possible.”
“Then I’d like one.”
“What color? I’d say red, given your state . . . ”
Quentin didn’t understand Xavière, much to her delight.
They went to the till, and she told him the price.
Just as he was paying, Orion appeared. “Ah, young Quentin! How you’ve grown, my boy! It’s incredible these days, with the amount they feed you, you all turn into giants. Shall I make up a bouquet for you?”
“You’ll have trouble doing it with a single rose,” Xavière grunted.
“I’ll dress it in some pretty foil.”