“Is there something going on with you?”
“To say the least.”
And so Patricia told her daughter about her relationship with Hippolyte. Without going into details, she didn’t conceal the fact that they were lovers, nor that they couldn’t live without each other. Albane was so astonished, she forgot to be sarcastic; she was discovering a new woman behind the one she had condemned, a woman who was impish and alive, a woman of flesh and blood. Although Albane didn’t realize it, this transformation restored hope to her. If, past forty and in a state of physical neglect, even Patricia aroused love, then there was a future for her too, one that didn’t involve suicide.
In the end, Albane was pleased with her mother’s adventure. She didn’t criticize her choice of the municipal gardener; on the contrary, the fact that her mother had secured this handsome specimen all the women had their eyes on was a real feather in her cap. Carried away by her story and her daughter’s attention, Patricia grew ever more excited, making no attempt to conceal the passion that man had aroused in her. At first, Albane replaced Hippolyte with Quentin. Then, as Patricia talked about how mature he was, levelheaded yet ardent, experienced as well as enthusiastic, Albane had to admit to herself than her teenage love for another teenager was mission impossible: neither she nor Quentin could ever overcome their moods, their impatience, their tempers.
“Will you introduce me?”
“I’ll call him.” Patricia stood up and went to the door, but stopped. “Forgive me. I’ve been selfish again, telling you all this. There was something you wanted me to do first: speak to Quentin.”
Albane bit her lip, hesitated, then said, smiling, “Actually, no.”
Patricia took the smile for a sign of recovery. Had her daughter given up hope? And therefore given up suffering?
Two days later, Hippolyte rang the doorbell, ready for the introduction.
Once more, Patricia ordered Albane to come out of her room—she had already told her six times in the past hour—and went to let him in. As far as she was concerned, this meeting made their relationship official: since, at their age, you introduced your boyfriend to your children rather than your parents, she was hereby proving to Hippolyte that she was ready to commit.
As was his custom, he had brought her some splendid flowers: this time, white orchids with fuchsia hearts, bought from Xavière at great expense.
Patricia embraced him, alarmed as soon as she heard her daughter’s steps behind her. Albane appeared in a miniskirt, high heels, and an almost transparent blouse that revealed her young, slim, perfect torso. As she drew closer, it became noticeable that she was wearing heavy makeup: eyes highlighted with kohl, crimson lipstick. Here and there, she had applied glitter to her golden skin, drawing attention to her cheeks, neck, breasts, and thighs.
Patricia had never seen her daughter like this, transformed into a vamp.
“Good evening,” Albane murmured, making up for her daring outfit with an embarrassed demeanor.
Surprised, Hippolyte smiled and kissed her warmly on the cheek. She giggled as he hugged her.
Patricia decided not to make any criticisms: it was important for this encounter to be a success.
They went to the living room and sat down. Patricia and Hippolyte, so used to being alone in the apartment, felt as if they were parading their affection in public; their informality, their expressions, their gestures suddenly seemed suspect, planned. In front of this teenager, they were performing their intimacy rather than living it. Albane, however, didn’t seem to notice their unease; chatty, taking part in the conversation, helping her mother more than expected during the aperitif and then during the meal, she was trying to hog the attention. Before long, Patricia and Hippolyte decided to keep quiet and listen to her wit and eloquence.
Uneasily, Patricia was discovering Albane’s sex appeal, noticing for the first time how long her legs were, how pretty her figure, and especially how bold she was in her attempts to charm Hippolyte.
Restrain yourself, Patricia, she thought. Your daughter tried to kill herself a few days ago, and now look how happy she is in front of your lover. She may be dressed like a whore and behaving appallingly, but you’ve only got yourself to blame for that. Just put up with it this evening, you can set her right in the weeks to come.
As for Hippolyte, the more the evening wore on, the more petrified he was. There was no doubt that Albane was flirting with him. He had to feign naïveté to reject her advances.
After dessert, Albane took advantage of her mother taking the dishes back to the kitchen to suddenly move her chair right up against his.
Pretending to notice the time, he exclaimed that he had promised Germain to relieve him of his nursemaid role before midnight.
“What a shame!” Albane purred. “Isis is so lucky. And what a mysterious name, Isis. Did you pick it?”
“Yes.”
“I’d have liked to be called Isis.”
“Albane’s a lovely name.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“And does it suit me?”
He didn’t know how she had done it, but her mouth was three inches from his. Albane was so carried away by her desire to seduce that she’d lost all control.
Hippolyte rushed to the cloakroom in the hall, thanked the two women for the evening, and during the final hug grabbed Albane by the shoulders to stop her from clinging to him.
“I’ll see you to the elevator,” Patricia said.
Tipsy, drunk on herself, Albane spun on the spot several times, picked at the strawberries on the table, then, realizing her mother hadn’t come back, went to the door to see what was happening on the landing.
Half in and half out of the elevator, Hippolyte and Patricia were talking in low voices.
“I can’t stay, Patricia, the situation’s getting unhealthy.”
“I’m so sorry. I never imagined she’d behave like that. You have to understand, the girl never had a father. She probably sees you as a surrogate father who—”
“No, Patricia. Not as a father. Sorry, but she didn’t look at me the way you look at a father. You’re deluding yourself.”
“I can’t believe she—”
“It doesn’t matter, Patricia. It’s just a childish whim, and it’s not going to come between us. We’ll see each other without her until she’s more mature. She’s just a little girl who thinks she’s acting like a woman because she’s climbed up on high heels, a kid convinced that applying foundation by the shovelful will hide her acne, a virgin who believes she’ll become an adult if she rubs herself against a man.”
“I’m devastated.”
“Watch out. She considers you her rival.”
“My God!”
“Put her in her place, Patricia. It’s the best thing you can do for her. Keep telling her she’s fifteen, that she’s spouting nonsense when she talks just for the sake of it, that she’ll never attract anyone if she acts that way.”
Albane didn’t listen to anything more. She ran to her room and looked around for something to break. Except that she cared about her things . . . Best to take it out on herself! She didn’t have sleeping pills, or any kind of medication. What could she take? Oh, yes, bleach! Her mother had made the mistake of saying, “Thank God you didn’t drink bleach.”
She rushed into the kitchen, grabbed the bottle, and opened it. The smell was revolting. No, she’d never be able to drink that. Too toxic.
What, then?
She heard the front door close and knew that Patricia would be coming in to give her grief. There was only one thing to do: run away.
She unbolted the back door which led to the spiral staircase and ran out, while upstairs her mother called for her in every room.
Once she was on the street, she strove to put a distance between herself and this neighborhood where everybody knew he
r.
She crossed Place d’Arezzo, where there was a constant to and fro of cars outside the Bidermann residence, scene of a large party, and turned onto Avenue Molière. In the chilly air, she felt as if she was walking through the night naked; the strip of material that acted as miniskirt and her thin, open blouse suddenly felt insubstantial.
When she got to the end of the Chaussée d’Alsemberg, on the edge of a less exclusive area, a car honked. She turned. As it drove past, four men inside, clearly in a good mood, indicated by their gestures that they thought she was a real stunner. Amused, she considered her outfit in a different light. She may have been shivering from the cold, but she was beautiful. These men were telling her that unequivocally. Hippolyte was an idiot!
A dark red station wagon slowed down and honked. A bunch of twenty-year-olds, beaming and tipsy, yelled obscenities at her and she was delighted. Normally, she would have been scared, but tonight, after Hippolyte’s contemptuous insults, any tribute to her looks was fine by her.
She moved toward a half-wooded park that led down to the neighborhood around the station. Forgetting the dangerous aura of the place, she went in and walked under the oak trees, treading on the damp grass.
At first, she didn’t see the shadowy figures, only the tree trunks. Then she noticed that the trees were moving and smiled, realizing that they were men. Another hundred yards, and she would reach the lighted boulevard where the streetcars ran.
Suddenly, three men loomed up.
“Hello, darling, aren’t you scared of you who might bump into?”
A hand grabbed her buttocks. Another, her thighs. Another, her breasts.
Albane screamed.
“Look at this bitch. Goes around practically naked, in a skirt up to her pussy and a blouse no bigger than a handkerchief, and now she acts all innocent.”
“Let go of me.”
A powerful hand was clamped over her mouth, stopping her from screaming.
14
The doctor brought the long, thin, sharp needle close to Wim’s skull. Within a second, Wim predicted that the syringe would pierce his forehead as easily as butter, reach his brain, and rummage around in its membranes. The horror of it! The poison would wreck his neurons, and he would lose his faculties, be reduced to living like a vegetable . . .
“Please don’t move,” the dermatologist said. “Trust me. I do this procedure several times a day and nobody has ever died.”
Too late to turn back! Wim closed his eyes, determined to confront this operation like a man. After all, lots of women went through it. Clenching his jaws, he felt the steel going into the crease between his eyebrows. The cold of it went through him. My God, when I think that this substance paralyses the muscles and I’m being injected with it. He felt wretched, life was humiliating him: not only had he been landed with a very average physique, but he had to fight to keep it average. The Botox wasn’t going to make him handsome, only prevent decay. Did he have to spend a fortune, endure this pain, just to keep a face he hated? The pain was getting worse, and he felt like weeping . . .
“Maybe if you breathed?”
Wim swallowed air and noticed that his discomfort came mainly from his having held his breath at the sight of the needle. He concentrated now on his breathing, making sure it was regular, and this distraction made him feel better.
“There you are,” the dermatologist concluded. “The blockage of your muscles should last at least six months. Now let’s see what I can boost.”
Wim decided to go with the flow: this torturer’s job consisted in preserving or arranging faces.
Ever since he was a teenager, Wim had been dismayed by his physical appearance. His childhood had been happy and carefree, but by the age of fifteen he was looking in the mirror and examining what was happening to him: things were growing in all directions and in no apparent order, with hairs appearing here and not there, developing in an arbitrary way he couldn’t control. Several times, he had sat down at his desk to draw, with anatomical examples for comparison, the body and face he desired, hoping that by defining them, concentrating on them, he would force nature to obey. All in vain! By the time he was seventeen, he had been forced to consider his face and figure as definitive; disappointed, he had concluded that he would never go very far with that: he would have to be clever, or else . . . So he had developed the intelligence and energy of the ill-favored, becoming lively, friendly, cultivated, funny, full of stories and anecdotes that he told in order to dazzle—giving the word its precise meaning: to stop the other person from seeing.
Ever since he had become involved in the modern art world, he had regretted the fact that he was average rather than ugly. The ugly can be remarkable, it attracts attention, disgust, enthusiasm, rejection, in other words, emotion. In art as in life, the ugly is the one challenger of the beautiful, David against Goliath, the antihero turned hero. On an impulse, Wim had thought of getting himself scarified: deep cuts, horrible scars, would have made his face unforgettable. But making some trials with tracing paper placed over his photograph, he had concluded that he would be more likely to look like an accident victim than someone who was fascinatingly ugly. Slashing the canvas of a Sunday painter didn’t turn it into a masterpiece.
The doctor was now pricking his face in order to firm up the flesh in various places.
“Don’t forget to apply arnica cream if you don’t want lots of bruises.”
“All right, doctor.”
Although Wim had no desire to see the result, the doctor handed him a mirror. “There, what do you think?”
Wim didn’t recognize himself. He had been replaced by his mother. The cosmetic procedure had made him look even more like that good, ordinary Flemish woman whom he had no desire to resemble.
He ventured a slight criticism. “It’s smooth and round, but maybe a little too . . . ”
“Young.”
“Feminine?”
The doctor took away the mirror and examined Wim thoroughly. After some thirty seconds of silence, he concluded, “Not at all!”
“It’s all right, then.”
Wim was lying, and knew the doctor was too, but he didn’t insist, aware that, without a strong dose of hypocrisy, there would be no social life.
Meg was waiting for him at the gallery, having already solved two thirds of the problems the business was encountering. Out of habit, he looked through her work then congratulated her.
“You’re a real pearl, Meg.”
Touched, she lowered her head, quivering with embarrassment. To regain her composure, she took a package from her handbag and extracted a tube, which she held out to Wim. “Here you are. I knew you had an appointment with Dr. Pelly, so I thought you might need arnica.”
He took the tube, disconcerted by so much thoughtfulness. “Thank you, Meg. You really are incredible. You’re the woman I ought to marry.” He got pensively to his feet and repeated as he left the room, “Yes, I often tell myself that. You’re the woman I ought to marry.”
Then, without turning, he disappeared to join some customers who were looking at paintings by Rothko.
Meg sat there on her chair, downcast. Those last words had crucified her: the reason he had uttered them so innocently was because he considered the idea far-fetched! There had to be nothing equivocal between them for him to risk saying it. Why was the thought of marrying her so grotesque? What did she have that discouraged love?
After wasting several hours with customers who couldn’t make up their minds, Wim strolled unhurriedly back to Place d’Arezzo. He was in no great hurry to see Petra von Tannenbaum, who was proving to be somewhat boring company outside public occasions. She spent her days looking after herself—her body by practicing gymnastics, her diet by eating seeds, her skin by using all kinds of treatments and creams, her clothes by bullying a theatrical costume designer—and if she had any time left over, she would cut out photog
raphs and articles from newspapers and stick them in exercise books like a lovestruck teenager; as her own biggest fan, she collected everything she could find about herself.
As for her conversation, it didn’t last beyond two or three meals together. Wim knew by now what she allowed people to know about her; for the rest, she experienced nothing and was interested in nothing. He was so talkative, so loquacious, that he sometimes had the impression of addressing only silence, because she really didn’t listen to him.
The only moments they shared were when they went out together in public. At a cocktail party, a first night, a reception, a private viewing, the two of them were so charismatic, they inevitably attracted attention and gossip, however rude or skeptical it might be. Like conspirators, they greedily savored the rumors they provoked.
Entering the loft, Wim saw a yellow envelope bearing his name on the marble work surface in the kitchen. Inside it was a cutting from a newspaper.
He unfolded the sheet of paper, and the headline was like a blow to his solar plexus: Premature ejaculation: should we try to remedy it?
Anxiously, he looked around. Who was playing this nasty trick on him? He turned the envelope over and over, remembered having seen it before, and realized that it had been reused. Someone had come into his apartment and laid a trap for him . . .
Meg? But how could she know? She never came into his private sphere; she was the perfect assistant because she always showed respect and discretion. A member of the domestic staff? The Filipino men employed in the kitchen and the Filipino women who did the housework didn’t understand French, and communicated only in English. Petra, then? Petra was unaware of that intimate fact about him, since he and she had never slept together; not only did she not like sex, she didn’t give a damn about other people.
Irritably, he looked at the sub-headlines that interspersed the article: 80% of men under eighteen suffer from premature ejaculation . . . Not a physical deformation . . . Medication is no help . . . Controlling the emotions . . . Persuading your husband he has a problem . . .