Lovers (9781609459192) (3 page)

T
hey are equals, that is what Balthazar tells his mother, loud and clear. He and Sébastien. One is not the shadow of the other.

He is a sorcerer, Anne de Créon tells herself, this Sébastien is a sorcerer. An exceptional purveyor of narcotics, expectorant syrups, powders to banish ulcers and tumors. Young Faure successfully treats every one of her colds, every one of her fevers. Since he arrived, she has had no aches and pains, she has stopped being obsessed with her own body, she has been in rude health. Now Anne de Créon's one fear is that her son's life will end in flames. But she tries to put her mind at rest: Our young sorcerer will surely come up with a remedy that confers immortality. She clings to the hope that neither time nor man will have any hold over Balthazar, or her, or them, the Créons. There are evenings when Sébastien nods off beside her, in the salon, his thigh against hers. While he dozes, she has the impression that she is moving in pure water, floating in an indestructible, shimmering, reassuringly tangible universe. Sébastien has become part of her life.

H
e cannot stand her. Often during the week, very early in the morning, she sends for him. He has to cross the grounds, climb some steps, must shut himself up in a room with drawn curtains. She is not fully dressed when she receives him. She does not think of him as a man. But he is her present and her future. How much progress has he made with the potion that will guarantee them immortality? He laughs, then says, excitedly: This drug perhaps, and hands her a flask. She drinks the concoction, she knows he is deceiving her, she sends him back to his stills. After leaving her he walks along a corridor, climbs a staircase, knocks at a door.

H
e has reached Balthazar's apartments. He slips a note under the door. One line, no more than that, the name of a place.

 

The Vauclair Meadow.

Or the Vulcain Grove.

Or the Marcy Clearing.

Or the road to Les Guerdes.

The meeting is arranged. Balthazar has not missed a single one.

T
hey stroll beneath the branches, beside a hedge, they cross an area of grazing land.
Sébastien neglects his studies and his inventions.

When their walk is over, there is the chalet, there is the room, there is the bed.

It is now a week since they threw their chastity to the winds.

One day, at the sight of a certain stake, Sébastien will begin to recite, in a low voice, that same sweet litany: The Vauclair Meadow, the Vulcain Grove, the Marcy Clearing, the road to Les Guerdes. An inaudible prayer over the inferno.

 

 

 

 

T
hey are lovers. That is all they want to be. They are at the beginning of their story. Love and passion indistinguishable one from the other.

Yes, he neglects his test tubes and his cauldron.

To paint. He wants to be a painter. But how to depict what dazzles you? So paint a bestiary, paint skies.

Paint the night, the wind, the rain, the stars. And paint the day—blue and gold sometimes.

He asks Balthazar for brushes and pigments.

 

 

 

 

G
ently but firmly, Balthazar makes his handsome lover see reason.
He must not desert his laboratory.

Sébastien promises.

He refrains from judging his lover's refusal. For that would mean entering a dangerous area: What does their love consist of? Can one be disappointed and still love?

To paint the night—black with a few streaks of silver.

To grind colors, and then paint.

He decides against repeating his request. And now, whether through weakness or timidity, an obsession takes hold.

To say, “I love you,” and feel as if you are dangling over an abyss.

H
e is yielding, he will yield, he has thought it over.
You will be a painter. Like my father.
An austere, reserved man, a hermit, a good man, what more is there to say about him, what more to add, how strange not to be able to describe him more fully.

You will be a painter.

To surrender, to yield to the other's desire, to avoid creating a rift between them, and to think of his father: such a thing has never happened to him before.

Y
ou gossip. You curse. And then you kill. That is the cruel logic.
What is the exact definition of an abyss, of tragedy, of hell? Anne de Créon writes in her diary.

Since Balthazar refuses to go to Versailles and scotch the rumors, she will go herself.

One morning in November 1751, Anne de Créon climbs into her coach. She will precede her son to Court. She will keep her eyes and ears open, she will judge for herself how much hate there is for her child.

Farewell, make sure you join me soon.

For the first time, the thought of Versailles fills her with panic. Its gardens, its stables, its salons, its bedrooms—a trap, a nightmare, darkness.

S
he has gone, but she lurks, something of her remains. He has never thought so much about her. Absent, she is suddenly real.

Be suspicious of everyone, give up Sébastien, come to Versailles, be my son again, she said to him, shortly before leaving. He fulminates against her voice still echoing around him, endlessly prattling unseen, working hard to turn him away from his love, giving him absurd advice, a fount of common sense and good behavior. He becomes irritable, he is like a caged animal. What to do? He suddenly realizes how much danger he is in. It is possible that he will drag Sébastien down with him, inevitably, he realizes that now. Is he irresponsible? Perhaps. But how to resist certain visions, they will be together, they will experience the flames together.

T
he wall clock in the dark red salon sounds the hours.
One hour ties itself to the one that precedes it, and another hooks on to the one that follows it, all with a genuinely glacial indifference.

Yes, it chills the blood.

And so time passes, time spent brooding on grim thoughts.

How many hours does one have to be alive before one can speak of a life?

It is now two years since Balthazar de Créon last set foot on the smallest step of the slightest staircase in Versailles. He is no longer the same as he was then. He is still a prince, but a prince in whom love has been sealed.

Is it really necessary to go all the way to Paris, to Versailles? In her missives, which are filled with information about Versailles and the King, Anne de Créon maintains that it is, with even more energy and pertinence than when she was queen on her lands.

Cut through this heap of nonsense they are saying about you! React! Beg an audience with the King! Do what needs to be done. Am I to believe what they say about you? Think of me, think of your name, think of your dead, do not despise them, do not abandon them.

He writes to her to say that he will go to Versailles. In a week, he and Sébastien will be on the roads. Is she satisfied now?

T
he coach with its high wheels, its well oiled axles, its restored gilt, is like a large insect. It is weighed down with chests and trunks. In a casket are three miniatures wrapped in velvet. These works show promise.

Skulls, a statue, a hat on a bench; corn, a horse, someone—a peasant or a vagabond; a basin, a flight of cranes, an avenue, a tree like no known species. To Sébastien's taste, they ought to be made darker, transforming noon to twilight.

Don't spare the horses, coachman!

The roads are in such a pitiful state, they are constantly thrown against one another.

Balthazar keeps trying to caress his lover, Sébastien's only thoughts are for palette, brushes and paint pots.

Let us never part, Balthazar says, during a halt.

L
et us never part.
We shall never part.
As in a song that must have already been written.

A song that means nothing.

Nothing. A word of which Sébastien is fond.

Nothing. A word Balthazar rarely utters. The time has not yet come. But it will come, like the rest. And what will the rest be? And the rest of what?

Nothing. Not really, Sébastien tells himself. There is Balt­hazar. And there is love.

 

They stop in Roanne, at the Valences mansion, where some distant cousins of the Créons live. There are Créon cousins everywhere in the kingdom of France. Those in Roanne are no more like the Créons than a goose is like a swan. They sleep there one night, one night only. Versailles awaits.

What awaits? Sébastien finds it difficult to imagine his future in the capital.

A nocturnal world, says Balthazar. And darker than this mansion and its paved courtyard, its box trees, its lantern.

Créon's cousins have not expressed any reservation about the obligation to dine with Bathazar's protégé. But once the evening is over, they will gather in alcoves and fume.

At dawn, they set off once more.

They halt here, they halt there: but slowly and surely they are getting closer to Paris.

At the inn of the Green Capon in Melun, Sébastien only has eyes for a kitchen boy with nice buttocks. He will not sleep with him, he will not take the plunge. He loves Balthazar, oh yes, it is love, but his fidelity hangs by a thread. One love, but so many bodies, so many invitations, so many opportunities. Distractions from love. Deep down, he feels alone, and the strange thing is that this solitude does not weigh on him too much. It is acceptable.

Let us never part, Balthazar keeps repeating.

 

 

 

T
he tavern is flea-ridden.
They are lovers, and the vermin are attracted to their bodies. It is a sign of the times.

They have just finished making love, and now Sébastien confesses to Balthazar that he has committed a sacrilege. From the casket, he extracts one of Louis de Créon's miniatures. He has made a corner of it black, soot black. Night appears in broad daylight, through the branches.

Why?

It proves difficult for Balthazar to forgive. Why soil this idyllic landscape? Why darken it? Why? Unless he was trying to emphasize the tormented side of his father's inspiration. And why lose his temper for so little? So little? Sébastien's small sacrilege reveals the kind of man Louis de Créon was, a morose, secretive man, at the mercy of visions. My feelings for him, Balthazar tells himself, my feelings for him, but how to continue, how to describe what I feel for him?

They mistrusted one another, sometimes forgot that they were father and son. And yet, he was his father, a name means something all the same. He has never felt so close to him, which is not much use now.

He will forgive Sébastien his crime, for that is what it was.

My father, the hermit of Créon, he says to Sébastien. And then he kisses his eyes, his mouth, his neck. My beautiful love.

C
oach, inn, clearing, everywhere they offer themselves, they take and give, without a word, they tune their bodies to one another, after they come they move apart and lie side by side, magnificent lovers, or commonplace lovers, according to preference, and then they start all over again, offering themselves, taking and giving, until the end of time.

H
ills, plains, mountains, woods, fields, a knoll covered with thickets, herds, farms, then more and more dwellings, a hamlet, a village, dogs, many dogs, in packs or alone, open country right up to the gates of the capital, people, streets, and mud, even more mud than on the roads.

Sébastien leans out the window of the coach.

Will he paint what he sees?

Then he throws himself back on the cushions.

I shall be his patron, Balthazar thinks, I shall confine him to my mansion, he will be mine, just as he was at Créon.

H
e familiarizes himself with the city, sometimes in Balthazar's company, sometimes alone.
Balthazar has not kept the vow he made to keep him prisoner. How could he contemplate such madness? How could he dare deprive this boy of his freedom?

They lunch at the mansion, they dine in taverns. They appreciate silence, but are not averse to getting drunk on noise.

One evening, in one of these places on the edge of the capital, a smoky place stinking of leathery meat that has hung too long and sweat and cheap wine, Balthazar notices at a table near theirs a beautiful young man, lording it over an ill-dressed assembly. This young man ogles Sébastien, and Sébastien returns his glances. Jealousy strikes and wounds worse than a blade, but never, or hardly ever, kills, that is why it is a sister to hate. There is feasting, raised voices, a short distance from them. The beautiful boy is different than the one in the Green Capon, different and the same, but he will be lucky enough to get Sébastien.

I'll be back, I love you.

Betrayal?

Is it?

He loves me, Balthazar de Créon tells himself, it really is love, but he can indulge himself elsewhere, accumulate adventures. All men are alike, except he and Sébastien.

Go, make love, roll about where you want, but don't abandon me.

H
e slipped away with the debauched young man, they went upstairs, took their time, I suppose, and as for me, I left.

And the capital was suddenly alien to me, and the Créon mansion, and my mother watching out for my return, and I waited for Sébastien to return to me, and for everything to be comforting and familiar once again. I was not alone: his absence and our love were with me.

I am Balthazar, Prince de Créon, and this evening I feel a stranger to myself, I feel I know myself less well than I know Sébastien. Is this what it means to experience absolute love, a love from which there is no turning back?