A final fatal drawback came with a team of workers turning up one morning on his floor. A room was being redone. Through gritted teeth, Nicolas endured pounding, hammering, grating, drilling. The noise was horrendous, even with his earplugs. The workers gibbered away from dawn to dusk, portable radios turned on full blast, saluting him cheerily as he walked past, offering him sandwiches or a drink. He asked one of them how long the refurbishing was going to last and learned, to his dismay, that four rooms were being renovated, and then a scaffolding was to be installed, and the entire building restored, as well. The embellishments would take at least six months.
Nicolas gradually understood that no writing would go on in his monk’s cell. And after that, an even more bitter realization emerged. There would be no writing at all. There would be no book.
HOW PEACEFUL IT IS to be here, tucked away from the turmoil of the world, the worrying news of a global crisis, bloody bombings, the sexual scandal involving a New York hotel maid and a French politician.
Nicolas’s hand is itching for his BlackBerry, but he knows he cannot look at it with Malvina sitting next to him. Especially with a new BBM from Sabina. Sometimes he marvels at this woman he has seen only once, sending him such intimate messages. What is he sure of? Very little. In the beginning, when their messaging was still trivial, she mentioned she was married, that she had two daughters, not much older than he. She lived in Berlin, in Prenzlauer Berg, with her husband. Nicolas likes to think back to the short moment she stood in front of him when he signed the book for her. He can bring it all back: her trench coat, the way the belt was drawn tightly around her slender waist, her sleek ash-blond bob, and the way she looked at him. Younger women never had that expression. They were too coquettish—they tittered; they minced—or they were drunk and swaggered vulgarly like men. She stared down at him with a tiny smile, and those catlike eyes—translucent, like little pools of water—never blinked. When she handed him the piece of paper with the BBM PIN code on it, their fingers had touched, but that was the only time their skin made contact. To take his mind off the unread BBM and its enticement, Nicolas reaches for his father’s Hamilton Khaki, tucked away next to his phone in his bathrobe pocket. He looks at it quietly and feels a kind of peace flow through him. He thinks of his father going to buy the watch for his son’s tenth birthday. Did his father already know what he was going to purchase, or was he advised by a salesperson? He thinks of the Hamilton Khaki lying in his father’s palm, the blue eyes gleaming down at it, examining it, and then, later, the memory of the long fingers fixing the strap on to Nicolas’s wrist. He can still feel those fatherly fingers against his own skin.
One last boat roars in. At first, Nicolas thinks it has to do with a trick of the setting sun, some sharp gleam of the light on the sea, an odd reflection. That face on the boat. He puts the watch away, takes off his sunglasses, places his hand visorlike above his nose, has another look. His pulse quickens. The face comes steadily closer with the approaching boat. He puts his sunglasses back on, a little too fast, fingers fumbling, and looks again. His notebook and the Montblanc fall to the ground with a thump. The boat is near now, bobbing up and down as it begins its approach, weaving its way through the other Rivas lined up along the pier, the purr of its motor subsiding. He leans forward, gropes around under his deck chair for his cap, screws it tight to his head.
“What is it?” asks Malvina, intrigued. Nicolas does not answer.
Mesmerized, he watches the woman clumsily get out of the boat, helped by a hotel attendant in black. There are two people with her, but he barely notices them. She is the last to set foot on the concrete beach. Her bulky figure is swathed in a white djellaba. He makes out the telltale snow-white ponytail à la Karl Lagerfeld beneath the panama, the curve of the nose, the tight red stretch of the lips. He has never met her in real life, never seen her in the flesh, but he has seen enough television appearances and read enough articles to know it is unmistakably her. She lumbers up the stone steps toward the hotel elevator, holding on to the attendant’s arm. She moves slowly, and Nicolas sees what a big, sturdy woman she is, much larger than she appears to be in photographs, massive, even. Her skin is alabaster white, speckled with a swarm of freckles. There is no grace about her, yet he cannot help thinking she has a dramatic majesty, like a medieval queen assessing her kingdom. She never glances down. Her square chin is raised high, giving her a fierce arrogance heightened by the ironic set of her mouth. She disappears into the elevator.
Nicolas lies back on his chair. Malvina pinches his arm, startling him.
“Nicolas! Who is that woman?”
He takes a deep breath. “Dagmar Hunoldt.”
The name means nothing to Malvina. Her only solace lies in the fact that Dagmar is over sixty, overweight, and about as attractive as a beached whale. But she cannot understand why Nicolas has gone silent, scratching the top of his head, which he does when he is confused or upset.
Malvina waits for a while before she speaks again. She watches the other clients gather their things and go. Mr. Wong and Miss Ming are the last to leave, walking slowly up the steps. The sun has disappeared behind the hill.
“Who is she?” Malvina asks at last, unable to hold her curiosity back any longer.
Nicolas lets out a sigh. Malvina cannot tell whether it is a sigh of excitement or fear.
“Dagmar Hunoldt is the most powerful publisher in the world.”
Malvina waits, biting her thumbnail. Nicolas goes on, whispering, so that she has to lean forward to hear him.
“And she is here at the Gallo Nero. Out of the blue.”
Malvina asks, “Is that good news or bad?”
Again, Nicolas does not answer. His mind is racing. Did she know he was on the island? That Facebook picture! One of her lieutenants or scouts must have spotted it on his wall. Maybe she was not far off, perhaps on a friend’s boat, and she just dropped by for a couple of days. But maybe she came for him. Maybe she came just for him.
Nicolas recalls the first time he ever heard of Dagmar Hunoldt and tells Malvina about it. It was two years ago. He was having lunch with Alice Dor and her (now ex-) boyfriend, Gustave, at Orient Extrême, near the rue de Rennes, and he had noticed how Alice’s face had suddenly changed. She seemed to be no longer listening to what Gustave was saying. Nicolas turned his head to check where her gaze was lingering, near the entrance of the restaurant. A group of people was standing there, nobody he recognized. But then, what did he know about the publishing world at that point? It was a hazy, nebulous matter, a complex network of names, places, and logos that he could not decipher. It would take him a while to apprehend it.
“Oh!” exclaimed Alice.
Gustave looked across at Nicolas and shrugged.
“What?” Gustave asked finally as Alice kept staring. “Or who?”
“Dagmar.”
That was the first time Nicolas heard her first name. Dagmar. He had found it old-fashioned yet powerful, exotic. The name evoked Vikings, tall, buxom, flaxen-haired creatures, wearing winged headgear and iron brassieres. Was Dagmar a Scandinavian writer? A muse? A literary agent? A bookseller? Whoever she was, the startling slant in Alice’s eyes did not suggest a mellow relationship. The group of people walked by and Nicolas did not pick out anyone who looked vaguely like a Dagmar—or rather, what he wished a Dagmar would look like. Alice remained silent for a while, until Gustave nudged her and mouthed, So?
She waved her hands around, which is what she did when she was at a loss for words.
“Who is Dagmar?” insisted Gustave. (He was a banker, not familiar with the publishing crowd.) “From the look on your face, we gather she’s not your best buddy.”
Alice scowled. “She certainly is not.”
Nicolas and Gustave exchanged glances over their maki.
“The suspense is unbearable,” said Gustave.
Alice turned her face once more toward the group of people sitting at the back of the restaurant. She then said, leaning toward Gustave
and Nicolas, “Dagmar is the most feared, the most respected, the most famous of all publishers. She holds the publishing world in the palm of her hand.”
When Nicolas repeats this exact sentence to Malvina, she says, “Wow!” in an awed voice. Then, plucking at lint on her towel and lowering her voice all the more, even if they are now alone, she asks, “Is she here because of you?”
The vain part of Nicolas would like to say, Yes, yes, of course she is here for me, Malve. What are you thinking? She has already sent three people indirectly to try to lure me away from Alice Dor. Suzanne Cruz, pert, pretty agent from L.A. with a shrewd smile. Guillaume Bévernage, French publisher, known for his audacious alliances with Dagmar Hunoldt. And finally, Ebba Jakobson, powerful New York agent, also known for her close working relationship with Dagmar. Three lunches in the most exclusive restaurants of Paris, New York, and Santa Monica, and three polite nos to the juicy contracts, the unbelievably high advances. Nicolas now remembers reading about Dagmar Hunoldt recently in Newsweek magazine, and he recalls a couple of lines that had both amused and impressed him: “Hunoldt has the sharpest instinct about a book, about an author. Her entourage considers her utterly ruthless, extraordinarily intelligent, and totally perverse.”
The lucid part of Nicolas mutters, “I’m not sure. She could be here on holiday. There is no way to find out.”
“Does she publish Novézan?” asks Malvina.
Nicolas laughs curtly.
“No! Novézan’s not that big in the United States. I’m bigger than he is.”
“Does Novézan know who she is?”
Nicolas stares at Malvina, noting again, distractedly, how pale she is.
“Malve, Dagmar Hunoldt is like the Madonna of publishing.”
“Well, not physically.”
“Of course not physically,” snorts Nicolas, exasperated. “I mean that she has that power. She is that powerful. Get it?”
Malvina nods meekly. Nicolas feels a twinge of guilt and squeezes her hand. It is getting cooler. The staff members fold up chairs, towels, and tables and take down the parasols. It is time to go back upstairs and get ready for the evening.
As they go up in the James Bond elevator, Nicolas cannot stop thinking about Dagmar Hunoldt and her presence at the Gallo Nero. He forgets Sabina’s BBM, unread on his BlackBerry. He forgets to phone his mother, who has still not returned his calls. He forgets about contacting François. He has even stopped thinking about Delphine taking showers with other men. He marches into the room, accompanied by the silent and pale Malvina. He does not glance at the new array of flowers, fruits, the turned-back bed, the chocolates thoughtfully placed on the pillows with the weather forecast for tomorrow (sun, thirty-two degrees centigrade). He hardly looks at the card from Dr. Otto Gheza, the hotel director, propped up on the desk, asking them to attend a cocktail party tonight. Instead, he goes out on the terrace, looks out to the sea, and he thinks.
How will he say no? Can one say no to Dagmar Hunoldt?
An even worse thought comes and makes him cringe. How can he ever tell Dagmar Hunoldt, if she has indeed turned up at the Gallo Nero for him, that there is no book, that he has been lying to his publisher, to himself, to the world? Will he have to lie to her, as well?
JOURNALISTS WERE PERSISTENT IN trying to find out why Nicolas had decided to remain with Alice Dor despite his impressive success. It was public knowledge he was coveted by every single publisher and agent on the planet. So why did he stick with a small independent company? Nicolas indefatigably gave the same answer. Alice Dor changed his life when she said yes to The Envelope on that dark winter day in 2007. She read The Envelope because Delphine, her friend from the school where they took their little girls each morning, and with whom she shared a coffee from time to time, had urged her to read it. She had guessed Delphine was having an affair with a younger man, because she had seen him drop off Gaïa as she was dropping off Fleur, and she had put two and two together. Now she knew why Delphine had those stars in her eyes and that spring to her step. The young man, whose name was Nicolas, was rather charming, thought Alice, who preferred older men herself. He was tall and well built, she noticed one spring morning, glancing at the ripple of muscles under his black T-shirt. He had short, dark hair, with long sideburns and fog-colored eyes. And his mouth, of course, was terribly noticeable, full lips and a large white grin. Not only was he pleasant to look at; he was also friendly, as Alice soon discovered. Polite, gentle, well-behaved. And it was fair to say that when Delphine handed her the manuscript over coffee one morning, Alice felt a spark of curiosity.
She had fifteen manuscripts to read that week, all of them piling up on her desk. Alice brewed a cup of coffee, put on her glasses, and started The Envelope, determined to write a nice note to Delphine, and to the young man, about how promising it was for a first effort. The first thing that struck her was the tone. What did she know about Nicolas Duhamel? Only what she could see (the sideburns, the friendly grin, the muscles under the T-shirt) and what Delphine had told her: a khâgneux who gave philosophy lessons and who had lived with his mother (a teacher) until he met Delphine. Delphine had said only this: “Just read it, Alice. Please.” The tone of the book had nothing to do with a young man. It floored Alice to such an extent, she even wondered if Nicolas Duhamel was really the author. Here was Margaux Dansor talking. Margaux, salt-and-pepper hair, forty-eight years old. Not Nicolas Duhamel, twenty-five. The novel was filled with Margaux’s intimate feelings, her fears, her bravery, her fragility, her discoveries. Margaux, finding out that her long-dead father was not who she had been led to believe. Margaux, finding out the truth, scribbled on a sheet of paper in a white envelope, hidden away in an old family home in Camogli, a small Ligurian village. A truth that nearly destroyed her. A truth that ended up shaping her, giving her new wings. The other characters were credible, appealing, and complex. Arnaud Dansor, Margaux’s husband, trying to keep up with his wife’s quest, to understand it. Their daughters, teenagers Rose and Angèle, perturbed by the voyage of discovery their mother had embarked on. Sébastien Zech, Margaux’s brother, furious with what his sister was “digging up,” smearing their family name. Alice admired the powerful depiction of Margaux’s absent father, the compelling Luc Zech, alias Lucca Zeccherio.
What Alice liked best about the book was Margaux Dansor herself. Her sense of humor, her wit, her audacity. A piano teacher who taught Bach and Mozart but who listened to disco music on her iPod. In fact, her husband, Arnaud, called her “Silver Disco Queen,” to the embarrassment of their daughters. Margaux danced by herself, in her room, in her kitchen, to “Stayin’ Alive,” with the smooth moves of a female Travolta. There was a boundary between the serious piano teacher and the relentless, inquisitive woman hot on the trail of a perturbing family secret. Alice thrived on the amusing details that Nicolas Duhamel painted of his heroine: her fear of driving (a bad accident at the age of eighteen, which left a long crooked scar on her calf); her dire cooking (her husband, Arnaud, was the good cook); her infatuation with the color blue (which explained why Margaux compulsively bought anything that was that color, be it a hot-water bottle, a rolling pin, an ashtray, although she didn’t smoke); her inability to sit in a window seat in a train or a plane (a weak bladder was the real answer, which made Alice laugh); her hopeless command of mathematics (a true handicap when the euro made its appearance in 1999); and her prowess for imitating Céline Dion to perfection.
Three hours later, Alice finished the novel in tears. She was not expecting such a dramatic ending, the opposite of a sugarcoated Hollywood finale. Alice had to take off her glasses, wipe them, blow her nose, make another coffee, and breathe deeply. She was bewitched by the story, by Margaux. How had this young man pulled it off? Where had he planted his roots to shape such an unforgettable heroine?
Alice decided to call him. No need to wait. No need to call Delphine first. She checked her watch. Five o’clock in the afternoon, on a cold December day. His mobile number was written on the fro
nt page of the manuscript. And so Alice Dor made the phone call that was to change both their lives.
“Is that Nicolas Duhamel?… Hello! This is Alice Dor. Am I disturbing you?… No? Good. I’m going to publish your book.”
She was used to the sharp intake of breath she often heard on the other end of the line. She enjoyed calling authors to tell them she was going to publish their work, and she liked doing it with her usual abruptness.
But Nicolas Duhamel had remained strangely silent.
“Are you there?” she asked tentatively.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. Thank you.”
“Can you come and see me? We need to discuss a couple of things.”
And he had arrived that very evening at her office on the rue de Rennes, on the corner of the boulevard Raspail, and she still remembers the way he walked in, striding in, his hand outstretched, the warmth of it. He was taller and thinner than she remembered. There was an earnestness about him she immediately liked. Yes, she could see Margaux Dansor in there somewhere, behind that engaging smile, in the way he sat down, calmly, crossing his legs, leaning toward her with a well-bred expectancy she enjoyed.
“I liked your book,” she said quietly, with that deep, gruff voice he was just discovering. He soon learned that when Alice Dor said “liked,” she meant “loved.” She was the discreet type, never going for the superlative.
He sat there, dumbfounded, devouring her with those mist-colored eyes, perhaps taking her in properly for the first time. He remembered her, of course, as Delphine’s morning coffee friend, Fleur’s mother, a brisk brunette in her mid-thirties, who always seemed in a hurry. And now this woman wanted to publish his novel. He glanced around at her office, stacked perilously high with books, manuscripts, pens, papers, a computer, the customary paraphernalia of a publisher. There were photographs on Alice Dor’s cluttered desk of her daughter and of her most famous authors, cheek by jowl with invitations to book launches and award ceremonies, contracts, files, notes, cards, and delicate purple orchids rising regally out of the mess.