Consequences (15 page)

Certainly it was all scary. Such upheavals were scary. He got dressed in white and went out to teach class, already thinking about buying one of those small inflatable pillows shaped like a buoy, in anticipation of the suffering to come.

At noon, as he was putting away his stuff, thrilled at having unsettled half the class with the claim that literature isn't intended to describe reality—the other half were too greedy for fame to utter a sensible opinion about the issue. Annie began heading straight for him in her short skirt. If there was one thing about Annie Eggbaum, it was her persistence.

“Dynamite, Annie? I used the word
dynamite
? Frankly, that would surprise me. It's not in my vocabulary. Okay, then. It isn't important. Don't sit on my desk, Annie, be nice. You're obsessed, aren't you?”

“You kissed me.”

“That's possible. Certainly is. People often do that. Look. Spring is here. People are making out from morning to night. In my day they called it messing around. I don't know what they say today. Really doesn't matter. We messed around a little. Of course. Is there a problem?”

He stared at her for a second while continuing to arrange the files inside his briefcase. Under normal circumstances, she would have been next, after Barbara; there was no doubt about it. She wasn't beautiful, but her cheekiness was a real turn-on.

“Just the opposite, everything's great,” was her answer.

“Then good. You like the class?”

“I wouldn't know. I wasn't listening.”

He smiled at her and started to walk out.

“I wasn't listening because I was fascinated by you, Marc. I was fascinated by you.”

“Marc? You just called me by my first name?”

“Is there some other way I should call you?”

He sped up his walking. She followed. He stopped, touched her arm. “Listen, Annie. I'm going to speak frankly. This has nothing to do with you. Everything's fine concerning you. If that's what's torturing you, don't worry. No, it's your father. The problem's coming from him. You see, he makes me very uneasy. His methods make me very uneasy.”

“Fine, I'll take care of that.”

“Listen, Annie, I'd like to tell you I find that reassuring. I'm sorry, but I don't.”

She seemed to be having trouble accepting someone not being attracted enough to her, and her lip was trembling. But would she be able to understand that another woman could capture his attention completely, dry up any other source of desire until further notice? Just as he was beginning to fear she'd make a scene, using the pretext that he wasn't making enough of an effort, as he was automatically checking things out over her shoulder, he caught sight of the detective at the other end of the hallway.

He quickly forced himself to look more relaxed.

“Let me get my calendar,” he said, “and I'll tell you when I'm available. How's Wednesday? I'll figure out some way to get us a classroom. Okay?” For a fraction of a second his eyes had met those of the detective.

“You mean you agree to give me lessons?” she said, eyeing him suspiciously. “Is that really it?”

“Yes, seems so to me, wouldn't you say?” he answered,
pasting a big smile on his face. “Step away a little, would you? There.”

If there had to be a real discussion between the two of them, a sound explanation, it wasn't going to take place here or now. Better to avoid making a spectacle in front of authority figures, giving an officer of the law a bad impression.

He scratched his head. “Does two hundred euros seem too expensive?”

“A month?”

“No, for the whole private class.”

He got rid of her by mentioning Marianne, whom he supposedly had to get back to. Which he would, in fact, end up doing, figuring that meeting in the day would take some of the sting out of the confrontation that would take place that evening and was bound to be a trial. As he saw it, they wouldn't be in bed before dawn, and fairly in their cups by then.

Marianne's offices overlooked the campus. He greeted her with a friendly wave of the hand. Hey there. She froze. Apparently, then, there'd hardly been any progress since morning, except that she wasn't covering her mouth anymore. He gestured for her to pick up her cell phone. He turned his on. “Want to go out and have coffee with me? I'd enjoy it.”

She opened her mouth, but he heard only her breathing, incredibly near, amplified as it was by the device.

“Everything's okay,” he went on. “Everything's fine. Pull yourself together. Then how about an ice cream. Want me to take you for ice cream in this beautiful weather? Wadda ya say? Would you stop staring at me with that long face? I'd appreciate it, you know. Don't forget I'm your brother.”

“No. No ice cream. Thanks.”

“You're right. It's fattening. We can go lie in the grass. Calm down. Everything's fine.”

“Everything's fine? You dare say that to me? Go fuck yourself.”

She hung up. Without moving her eyes off him, she folded her cell phone closed and stuck it in her pocket. Normally, she didn't use such coarse language. It was an excellent gauge of her mood. She called back. “Go fuck yourself,” she repeated, and hung up. Such repetition indicated a level that was close to white-hot. Obviously, she was referring to vows he'd made, promises, etc., but could she honestly blame him for not having kept them; could she ever doubt his sincerity?

She turned the slats of the shutters to shut out the sight of him, but he'd already left and was heading for the parking lot, figuring that their talk had been fruitful. First words had been exchanged. What they said wasn't so important. That was minor.

He found Myriam at home in the middle of the afternoon. They got undressed and, later, as they were smoking a cigarette, he told her something about what he and Marianne had been through; he opened up a little. She listened, caressing his face. The afternoon was ending. “And that's made my sister and me very close.”

“I can imagine. I really can understand.”

“Well, yes, but sometimes it can get to feel like a burden, I admit. But I haven't forgetten that she's the one who saved my life. Didn't I tell you about that? It so happens that one day I fell into a crevice, somewhere in this forest. I wouldn't be here to tell you about it if Marianne hadn't grabbed my hand and helped me get back up. That shows how close we are.”

With time, he'd become expert at making smoke rings. He could send them to the ceiling when he wanted to or make them float in place like scraggly, quivering donuts with currents of air circling through them. For a brief moment, his mind wandered as he devoted himself to this. He thought ahead to the discussion he was going to have with his sister. He had a holy terror of talking about such things, bringing them up, trying to pull them out of the dense darkness around them; but he honestly knew almost nothing about such things. Still, he knew he couldn't avoid them.

Looking at Myriam, he finally came to the conclusion that he'd always had an inordinate penchant for milky-skinned redheads. He put out his cigarette and lowered his eyes. His sister wasn't about to stop clapping a hand over her mouth—maybe biting her fingers even—if he kept overwhelming her, furnishing her with deeply bitter and resentful subjects, like the ones he'd been piling on recently. So there was little chance of her receiving the news of his new, more and more profound relationship with Myriam in an even-tempered and benevolent way.

Would it drive her closer to Richard Olso, the man he hated more than anybody in the world, the man who got infatuated surprisingly regularly with lousy books and lousy authors, contributing to the spread of literature that was dull, depthless, uninspired, and never surprising?

T
he first session he gave
Annie Eggbaum—at a high price, after she insisted that he come to her place—took place at the edge of her swimming pool in late afternoon, with the sun sparkling silently on the faraway summits of the Alps and the weather still very mild. Summer seemed to have come in a flash.

Annie was wearing a bathing suit. A simple bikini. She'd prepared some cocktails with fruit. Served in large glasses. Embellished with thick novelty straws. She had placed three hundred euros on the table.

“It's really three hundred euros? For one hour? In cash?” she'd asked with an ingenuous expression. He'd nodded and taken the money, calmly slipped it into his wallet. The cheapest bodyguard cost ten times as much; the most minor soccer player earned enough to buy half this city; the lowest-paid banker had enough economic muscle to throw entire families into the street. Three hundred euros didn't mean much in comparison to certain sums put into certain hands in every city, country, continent. Three hundred euros were about as important as one tear in the eye of a crocodile on one Lacoste shirt, a microscopic speck of dust at the outermost corners of the world.

“Why did you sign up for my course, Annie?” She didn't answer. He himself didn't attach much importance to the explanations she'd be able to furnish. He was holding his glass in one hand and his cigarette in the other, staring at the swimming pool and thinking what ideal weather it was for a dip.

“Go for it. Indulge yourself. I'll find you a bathing suit.”

The trap was so transparent that he snickered. Had he expected anything else, deep down? This girl was completely out of her mind. So out of her mind, in fact, that you avoided putting her on the defensive without good reason. However, he turned down the offer to go swimming and suggested they take another look at the work she'd recently handed in. It was pretty bad.

“See that window?” She was pointing to a French window on the third floor, opening onto a flowered balcony. “That's my room.”

He let out a quiet sigh. Too many other thoughts were going through his mind as she extended a hand to him, her chest thrust forward. It wasn't Annie Eggbaum he wanted to be with at that moment.

He ignored her invitation. “Tell me, Annie,” he said, pulling some pages from his briefcase, “didn't anybody ever tell you the semicolon was dead?”

Without giving her time to react, he placed his hand on his heart and asked her to do the same. “Feel that? Does it tell you anything? Listen, Annie, I think we're going to have to talk about rhythm. I think you're going to have to open your ears.”

He was trying to keep his distance. And yet, when you were dealing with a truly determined woman, you rarely won any early hands. So he'd chosen not to sit down and stayed on the
other side of the table when he had to come nearer to see what she'd written and the corrections he'd made in the margins.

Unlike his friend Barbara, she wasn't gifted, so he was able to keep her in check during the first half hour while confronting her with her weaknesses, with the efforts she'd need to give a sentence good rhythm, good impetus, etc., without seeming like a body builder doing a workout, if at all possible.

The day was ending. No sound came from the house. It was a large one in the modern style, with big picture windows. Suddenly, he heard a splash. He looked up as he was reminding his student of the suppleness and severity of a snake, to give her a little more precise idea of the minimum expected of anybody who expected to get published, how that person should, at least, keep the image of a snake in mind—its fluidity and hardness.

She reappeared. “Come on in!” she called out to him, dripping wet.

He preferred taking his place on a chaise longue.

“We're the only ones at the house,” she explained, shooting up level with his chaise longue, like a mermaid.

He'd almost figured so. Not long ago, he would have easily given in to this girl's desires. The matter would have been settled. But things had changed. Mountains had crumbled, peaks had settled into valleys.

“You think you can use reason to deal with this kind of thing?” she reprimanded in a flat voice. “You think I don't know everything you'd like to say to me? All this bullshit.”

“What bullshit? I haven't said a word. Stop with the groundless accusations, if you don't mind. Annie: everybody knows that this kind of thing can happen. It'll pass. Look at me. I'm
fifty-three. You deserve better than that. I knew a girl your age who thought she was in love with Jankélévitch. She didn't miss a single class but didn't listen to a friggin' word he said.”

She slapped the surface of the water, splashing it in his direction without reaching him. He lit a cigarette, imagining the sadness of a life without tobacco. Below them the lights of the city shone, but around them it was silent, barely disturbed by the chirping of insects and the cries of birds flying across the sky at dusk.

He took a few puffs. “Has it ever occurred to you I might have someone?” he asked. “It never entered your mind?”

“I'm not jealous. Are you talking about that woman?”

“I don't know. Who, for example?”

“Not too young.”

“Exactly.”

She found him some Ralph Lauren swimming trunks, on hand for unprepared visitors, and he congratulated himself for having yielded, because the beginnings of another migraine disappeared almost immediately—water treated with active oxygen obviously wasn't in the reach of every pocket, but oh how pleasant it was, oh how enthusiastically you'd like to recommend such a system, oh how soft it made your skin.

“She's closer to my generation. You see what I mean. I can develop certain feelings for her that I can't have for you, Annie. You ought to understand. After a certain time, the mental plays a much more important role. Maybe I'm at a turning point in my life, you know. I know that doesn't make it very cool for you, I'm perfectly aware of it, but imagine yourself at a crossroads, put yourself in my place for a second.” Both of them were resting on their elbows at the edge of the pool; their bodies floated
underwater, just below the surface. Hair damp and expressions unchanging, they studied each other for a moment among the soft lapping of water and the hooting coming from the woods. Then she drew her leg back like a spring and pretended to push him away or kick him as punishment, but she did it very gently, with hardly any force. Pulling a long, sullen face. She tried the kick again. Without really reaching him. It looked like she wanted to have a kind of wrestling bout with him, or at least some rough horseplay.