Diane accepted her invitation to sit down, the cup of tea, and the macarons, and they exchanged a few platitudes about the splendid weather. Then she pulled herself together and said, clearly, “Does the name Zouzou mean anything to you?”
Rose tensed, then smiled. “Yes. It was my father’s name. I mean his nickname. To those who knew him well. Basically just my mother and me.”
“It was my father’s nickname too. Also to those who knew him well. In other words, my mother and me.”
There was silence. Rose wanted to make sure that she understood—or rather, that it wasn’t a misunderstanding. “In my father’s case,” she said, “Zouzou was a rather odd diminutive of Samuel. Unusual, isn’t it?”
“Yes, unusual. The same for mine.”
There was silence again. Rose looked confused. “Who was your father?”
“Samuel van Eckart, just like yours.”
Rose lost her composure.
Diane took a photograph from her bag and held it out to her. “This is the only picture I have of him with Mom. He broke up with her soon afterwards. As for me, I saw him only two or three times because he didn’t acknowledge me. He’d occasionally send money or gifts, and sometimes did us the favor of a quick visit to ease his conscience. I wasn’t allowed to call him ‘Daddy’ under any circumstance.”
Rose grabbed the snapshot. “That’s definitely my father.”
“With my mother.”
“How can you prove—?”
“I can’t. My honesty is all I have. And my mother’s. In other words, some very fragile elements that your father held in contempt.”
Rose felt the emotion rising in Diane. She no longer knew what to think or how to react.
Diane continued, “Oh, and there’s also this . . . ”
She bared her right shoulder and indicated a mole at the top of her arm. “He had this. I do too. What about you?”
Rose turned pale. In reply, she slowly pulled down her blouse and showed the same mole in the same place.
Diane’s eyes filled with tears and she started breathing heavily. “So Mom wasn’t lying . . . Poor Mom . . . ” She curled up in her armchair and within a few seconds became again the little girl who had wept as she wondered about her identity.
Rose went over to her, hand outstretched, hesitant about comforting this stranger. She stood in front of her, overwhelmed with sadness at discovering another new lie, not by her husband this time but by the other important man in her life: her father.
Although sunk deep in her own pain, Diane raised her head and saw Rose standing there biting her lip and looking totally helpless.
“Why?” Rose asked. “Why now? Why not before?”
“Because I didn’t need you. But with all that you’re going through now, I thought perhaps you might need me.”
“You?”
“A sister.”
Rose stammered in amazement. Usually, she was the one in charge, the one who took care of others and fixed things. And now a stranger who claimed to be her younger sister wanted to help her . . .
Diane opened her arms and Rose, lost and weary, threw herself into them, letting the grief pour out of her, the grief of a woman who had been cheated, betrayed, humiliated, mocked—the woman she was and refused to be.
When she returned home that evening, Jean-Noël waved a black and gold card at her by way of greeting, his eyes glowing with desire. “My darling, I have an invitation to Tea for Ten, where they’re holding a swingers’ party. You know, the one that has a Turkish bath with steps where you can do anything you like.”
Diane looked at Jean-Noël and put a hand on his shoulder. “Listen, Jean-Noël, that’s very sweet of you, but I’m fed up with sucking endless cock. How about going to bed, just the two of us?”
2
A man’s downfall. What could be more fascinating?
François-Maxime hadn’t left the living room where the TV, permanently switched on, was endlessly broadcasting items about Zachary Bidermann. Both the main channels and the news channels were devoting their airtime to the incident on Place d’Arezzo. Endless news flashes, eyewitness reports, and discussions, trying to fill the void created by that explosion, to wipe out the feeling of stupefaction that had overwhelmed the citizens. The political eagle had been brought down in full flight: whereas the previous week Zachary Bidermann had been about to accede to supreme power, now he had been arrested, questioned by the police, kept in custody for twenty-four hours, and finally charged. In a few hours, a single thing having broken his rise, he had plunged to the bottom of the social ladder, farther than the bottom, because everyone was talking about him, his crime not benefiting from any anonymity. Excessive honor had been replaced with excessive indignity.
François-Maxime had been at the reception when the alleged rape had taken place and the victim had pointed out her attacker to the police. He was fascinated by the case. His interest didn’t derive solely from the fact that it involved his neighbor, but rather from a more basic closeness: François-Maxime projected his own downfall on Zachary Bidermann’s.
In a few seconds, he had lost his status, his happiness, his balance: Séverine’s suicide had made him a widower, responsible for four orphans. Beyond what had happened to him, the worst could still take place: the reality of his vices might be detected, his furtive encounters in male pickup areas, where his body wordlessly sought contact with identical bodies. How would his bank, financial circles, his children, his family react to a revelation like that?
For a moment, he envied Séverine for having left with her secrets intact: at least she wasn’t running any more risks. Death was still less painful than dishonor.
Much to his surprise, he discovered that he wasn’t the only one in the house to remain glued to the news; the cook, the cleaners, the handyman, all the staff seemed to be spending all their time in front of a screen, a radio, the Internet: Zachary Bidermann was the focus of everyone’s attention.
Why are they so interested? They don’t have anything to lose . . .
François-Maxime assumed there was an element of social revenge: the powerless feel pleasure at the fall of a powerful man.
That morning, waiting in his car for the children to come out so that he could drive them to school, he saw Marcelle, the concierge from the next building, come striding toward him.
“Did you see what happened to Monsieur Bidermann?”
“I was there.”
“What? You saw the rape?”
“No, I was at the reception, I saw the arrest.”
“Do you think he’s guilty?”
“I have no idea. There are lots of things that point to it.”
“Poor man! It’s a frame-up.”
“That’s also a valid theory.”
“I haven’t slept a wink all night, monsieur. I watched television so much, it made me feel dizzy.”
François-Maxime, having no desire to get on intimate terms with such a gossip, refrained from admitting that he was the same. “Why?” he asked in a less firm voice.
“Ruin, monsieur, ruin. What a fall! I told myself it could happen to me.”
He bit his lip, conscious that he mustn’t be sarcastic. She was right, anybody could fall, from a greater or lesser height . . . “Why, do you have something to hide?”
“I have nothing to hide!” Marcelle bellowed.
“Well, then?”
“Not everybody has something to hide, but everybody has something to lose.”
And with this, she turned to bawl out a man walking his dog who hadn’t taken the trouble to collect his animal’s excrement from the sidewalk. “That’s it, do just as you like! Do I take a leak outside your front door? Get out of here, you disgust me!”
As if François-Maxime had never existed, she kept on at the man even as he tried to apologize.
François-Max
ime’s son and daughters came hurtling down the front steps and into the car. In the old days, Séverine would have waved to them from the door; that was something they all remembered and had to make an effort to forget.
They were driving in silence when Gwendoline, the eldest, said, “Daddy, I’ve thought a lot about Mommy. I think I know what happened.”
François-Maxime threw an anxious glance at the rearview mirror, then encouraged her to continue.
“Mommy had an incurable disease, and she knew it.”
“Who told you that?”
“I guessed.”
“Tell me more, sweetheart.”
“She found out she wouldn’t get better, so she made the first move to avoid further pain. She was thinking about us before anything else.”
“About us?”
“She didn’t want us to suffer from watching her suffer.”
They all fell silent, thinking this over. The car stopped at a red light.
“I like what you said, Gwendoline,” François-Maxime said calmly. “It’s not only plausible, it’s very like her.”
“Yes,” Guillaume said, moved. The two younger girls muttered in agreement. The car moved forward again.
François-Maxime let the idea sink in. At least this theory had the advantage of being more comforting than others: Séverine hadn’t given up on life, it was life that had given up on her. Why deny it? Didn’t harmony matter more than truth?
He dropped the children at school, gave them big, solemn hugs, as if he wanted to imprint his affection on their bodies, then got back in the car.
Normally, he would go to the bank. Or rather, no: normally, he would go the wood before going to the bank . . .
Would he do so today? He scratched the back of his neck. When it came down to it, he didn’t feel like it. Not at all. He didn’t want to feel a horse between his thighs. And he didn’t want some young man’s embraces.
He shook his head. Wasn’t it precisely because he didn’t want it that he should do it? It might help him to recover . . .
Recover from what?
Disconcerted, he sat there for a moment, his hands on the wheel, wracking his brain to figure out what it was he wanted . . .
Nothing.
He set off, hoping that the car itself would direct him.
He drove for a while and parked on the edge of the wood. No way of getting to the stables from here. So he wouldn’t ride today. He had to continue on foot.
François-Maxime abandoned his car and, advancing beneath the trunks, came to the paths where individuals wandered up and down before disappearing, in couples or in groups, into the trees.
He stopped. All at once, this merry-go-round struck him as ridiculous. Worse still, it disgusted him. In this constant stream of men on their own, he no longer saw appetite or pleasure, only sexual misery, forced anonymity, small, fleeting orgasms, frustration, dissatisfaction. They were just unfortunate people who wanted to maintain their wretched condition, sick people drinking from a poisoned well, just enough to continue being sick, not enough to die of it. Nobody was happy here. Bodies tensed beneath supposed caresses whose aim was not to last, but rather to cease. They rushed to climax, a frantic race from foreplay to ejaculation. Sperm flowed, of course, but with a cry and a grimace, merely in order to rid themselves of desire, not to achieve an apotheosis. How ugly they seemed today, these solitary hunters, with their stooped shoulders and shifty eyes, their hands in their pockets, not looking at the eyes of the other walkers, only at their groins.
A young man approached, stopped, fixed his eyes on François-Maxime, and pouted at him.
François-Maxime spat.
The young man recoiled, incredulous.
“Faggot!” François-Maxime snarled through clenched teeth.
Then he turned on his heels and strode back to his car.
Over! It’s all over! I’ll never come back here again! It’s all too sordid.
His sudden temper had made him forget the thousand times he had left the undergrowth smiling, filled with a new energy, feeling happier, more virile, more seductive. If anyone had reminded him of that, he would have denied it.
He drove to the bank. Seeing the way the guards saluted him, the respect his employees showed him, the obsequious demeanor of the executives, he came back to life. A banker and a boss, yes, I’m still that.
Entering his office, he allowed himself time to converse with his secretary, who was nervous, torn between her usual behavior and the behavior expected of her in the circumstances. He spoke to her tenderly of his children, the plans he had for his next vacation with them.
At his request, his colleagues joined him and they settled down to the problems of the moment.
Around midday, as the meeting was drawing to an end, they couldn’t help bringing up the Bidermann scandal. They all enjoyed making comments, which were more revealing of themselves than of the case itself. Some spoke from the point of view of the broken marriage, others from that of the broken career, some suggested a conspiracy, one colleague remarked on the madness to which power leads, another sought to establish a link between libido and politics.
Varnier waited for the final remark before concluding, “What a mess!”
“Yes. What a mess!”
The ambiguity of that phrase summed it up for all of them, with nobody prepared to specify if the “mess” meant Bidermann’s shattered ambitions, the violence inflicted on a woman, or how impossible it was going to be for the nation to find a better leader.
Varnier tapped François-Maxime on the shoulder. “Since you’re here, why don’t you join me in interviewing the trader we’ve been sent from Paris? I’m seeing him in five minutes.”
“All right,” he replied, anxious to avoid solitude.
Once seated in the paneled room reserved for prestigious customers, François-Maxime and Varnier asked for the applicant to be sent in.
As soon as he entered, François-Maxime raised an eyebrow. The man, who was in his thirties, was clearly homosexual. The signs were unmistakable. His suit had neither the usual cut nor the usual sobriety, his tie had a huge, almost obscene knot, his pointed shoes screamed originality. François-Maxime hated him at first sight, all the more so as the trader made it obvious, from the way he looked at him, that he was attracted to him. This casualness was the last straw, and François-Maxime decided to keep quiet and watch.
Varnier conducted the interview. The young man responded brilliantly to the questions; nothing that was thrown at him seemed to faze him. He was so competent that he even taught his interviewer a thing or two. Admiringly, Varnier ended up abandoning the usual neutral attitude; he thanked him warmly and told him that they would be sure to call him very soon.
Turning to François-Maxime, he asked him if he had anything to add.
François-Maxime pointed to the ring on the young man’s finger. “What’s that?”
“My wedding ring,” the trader replied, unperturbed.
“Are you married?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any children?”
“That might be difficult,” the trader declared with a nonchalant smile. “My husband’s name is Charles.”
François-Maxime sank further into his chair.
Immediately, the young man looked straight at him. “Is that a problem?”
“I find your tone aggressive.”
“Reassure me and it won’t be. Is it a problem?”
“Of course it isn’t!” Varnier exclaimed.
The trader nodded, but indicated François-Maxime. “I was talking to Monsieur de Couvigny.”
Finding the applicant’s attitude really distasteful, François-Maxime got to his feet. “We are a family business, monsieur.”
“I have a family too, monsieur.”
“Not like ours.”
The
trader absorbed this, and stood up, dignified. He shook Varnier’s hand. “I’m pleased to have met you, but, since I’m sure I’ll have no difficulty finding a job, I must tell you—and I’m really sorry about this—that I prefer to be part of a company that takes me as I am. Forgive me if I’ve wasted your time.”
Then, without a word or a look at François-Maxime, he left the room.
“Good riddance!” François-Maxime cried when the door had closed.
Varnier shuddered. “Please, I never want to see that again.”
“What?”
“A performance like that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That kind of homophobia.”
“You think I’m homophobic? That guy’s no homo, he’s just a caricature.”
“Shut up, François-Maxime! I feel ashamed. He was the best candidate we’ve interviewed, it was really hard for me to persuade him to come to Brussels, and you just wipe your hands of him. Your excuse is that you’ve just suffered a terrible loss. For that reason, and that reason alone, I’ll forgive you.”
Varnier slammed the door.
François-Maxime sat there in the middle of the oak-paneled room. Varnier hadn’t got it wrong: he couldn’t stand homosexuals anymore, didn’t want to meet them, and wished he could wipe them out.
Seeing his children again at dinner cheered him. When he was with them, he no longer questioned himself; he could listen to them, talk to them, play his role as a father.
The meal continued on its untroubled way, lively and full of energy. His son and daughters amused themselves talking about their day, and exchanging information about the new James Bond they were planning to see on the big screen. Over dessert, François-Maxime promised to take them to the movies on Saturday night.
He accompanied each of them to his or her room, chatted at the foot of the bed, then, dismissing the domestics, went to the living room, where the television immediately started churning out news of the Bidermann affair.