A Bordeaux Dynasty: A Novel (41 page)

He left Pauline alone in the entrance hall and went looking for Jules. He found him in the library, sitting at his favorite spot, the ladder’s rung.

“Dad is going to be here tomorrow or the day after,” Robert said. “Are you happy?”

Jules produced an uncharacteristically bitter smile.

“Happy?” he asked. “I’m happy he’s alive, yes. Even in his condition. …”

Robert let his gaze wander across the bookshelves, over the leather spines.

Then he turned to Jules and said, “I had a sort of … not conversation, but exchange with him, just now at the hospital. … He’s afraid he might die, and he’s right. …”

Jules gave his brother an incredulous look. “He’s right?”

“Yes. Listen to me, little bro …”

Robert’s voice was filled with affection.

“I know what he means to you,” he continued. “Much more than to any of us, no doubt. … And so you have to wrap your brain around that, Jules. He’s probably not going to live much longer. He’s at the mercy of too many different things, and his body is worn-out. It’s no use expecting any improvement. As a physician, I hope he goes quickly. …”

Jules, unable to speak, seemed to be drowning in his brother’s words.

“You know him just as well as I do,” Robert continued. “Better than I do, as a matter of fact. … Take him down from his pedestal for one second, and you’ll agree with me that he’s always been authoritarian, demanding, tyrannical … He never showed anyone any pity, including himself. Do you think that such a man can live his life in a wheelchair, being pushed around for little rides on the front lawn? Not being able to speak, drooling … You think he could put up with that?”

Jules, his eyes glued to the floor, shook his head.

“I love and respect him, but he’s always been too demanding. How could he ever accept this humiliation? He can’t even eat by himself! And he’s suffering from incontinence. …”

Jules shivered as he listened to his brother.

“The Aurélien Laverzac we knew just a few days ago, with his lovers, his fits of anger, his great meals, is never going to exist again. All that is a thing of the past. But there’s one thing, one last thing that he still cares about deeply. …”

“Stop that,” Jules urged Robert.

“No. This is really important to him. It’s weighing on him a lot. When the time comes, I’ll tell you who to go see. …”

Robert saw the tears in Jules’s eyes and he was moved.

“Jesus,” he said. “It’s good to see you cry. I always thought you didn’t know how to. …”

He went over to Jules and grabbed him by the shoulders in a clumsy way. Jules’s despair was so real and deep that Robert hugged him.

“Don’t feel alone,” he said. “We’re here for you. As for Fonteyne, you’ve been running things for a long time, right? Everything is going to be okay.”

Jules wiped his nose with his sleeve and Robert smiled. He let go of his brother and quietly left the library. Now by himself, Jules calmed down little by little. Having cried made him feel a bit better. He thought about what Robert said. No, running Fonteyne didn’t scare him, though he felt as if it was a great weight on his shoulders at the moment. On the other hand, he shivered at the thought of learning who his real parents were, even though he’d always been dying to know.

“Aurélien …” he whispered.

He’d loved him so much these past thirty years, devotedly and passionately, that the very idea of his death was unbearable.

He made himself look at the bed, the wheelchair, the bedpan, the blankets, and the bathrobe Fernande had brought up from his room. All of a sudden he missed his childhood in a painful, atrocious way. He’d always needed his father more than he would’ve liked. For many years, he would’ve been lost without Aurélien’s grip on him. He’d always been extremely proud to be his son. Aurélien had been right to force him to bow to his authority at times, as it made him into a man. When Jules balked at the idea of doing his military service in order to remain at Fonteyne, Aurélien had harshly set him straight. He’d adopted the same approach when it came to Jules’s education and then, later, the administration of the estate. Aurélien pushed him to work hard and never lie. He instilled his set of values in him, a high respect for the name Laverzac, enormous ambition when it came to their wine, and an inflexible will to succeed. Jules could stand on his own two feet, Fonteyne had nothing to fear.

The young man left his ladder, at peace with himself. He then thought about Laurène and told himself he’d like to have kids of his own.

Despite Fernande’s protests, they’d all decided not to have dinner in the dining room. They’d come, one by one, to take refuge in the kitchen. Then they’d asked for potato omelets, there, right away. They were like kids, and Fernande had to give in. She improvised a dinner, adding to the omelet some mesclun, as well as foie gras.

Since Robert had warned his brothers that it’d be best to leave Jules alone when he came out of the library, no one said anything to him. Laurène and Pauline made him sit between them.

Without Aurélien, without Frédérique, they felt comfortable together and began to chat freely. Even Alexandre, distant and morose and sitting at the far end of the table, began to relax and participate in the conversation, though he made sure that he never spoke directly to Jules.

“Fernande,” Pauline said. “Did the Laverzac boys eat in the kitchen when they were little?”

That made everyone burst out laughing.

“Of course,” Fernande said, now serious. “Except on Sundays, and on holidays and birthdays. …”

Louis-Marie, amused by those childhood memories, added, “There was Fernande and Clothilde with us, plus a nanny to take care of the little ones. They were never around for very long, though.”

“That’s because Dad kept flirting with them,” Robert said.

“Flirting with them?” Louis-Marie scoffed. “He was trying to get them to sleep with him!”

Jules was chuckling along with his brothers.

Fernande was breaking eggs in a salad bowl. “Girls,” she said with a little laugh, “he did like them. …”

“The worst wasn’t the nannies coming and going,” Robert said. “It was getting home from school with our report cards. …”

Once more the brothers burst out laughing.

“Were you happy,” Pauline asked, “with such a father?”

“Happy enough,” Louis-Marie said. “He wasn’t particularly affectionate, but he was there for us. When it came to important things, he knew how to cut us some slack. And he was always in our corner. I still remember that dentist who wouldn’t anesthetize Jules. Aurélien made quite a scene before we left the office!”

“So,” Pauline said with a crooked smile, “he wanted to be the only one making your lives miserable?”

That made Fernande chuckle.

“He scared the daylights out of us,” Dominique said. “Each time he came over to visit Daddy, we didn’t dare say a word, Laurène and me. Back then, I never would’ve been able to imagine that one day I’d be at the head of his house. …”

Alexandre shot his wife an irritated look but said nothing.

“You guys were like heroes,” Laurène added, “for daring to stand up to him, if only once in a while. …”

Fernande sighed and said, “Still, having to raise four boys by yourself, that’s pretty hard, you know. … And every day you came up with stupid things to bug him about. Especially you, Jules. …”

Those comments were followed by a brief moment of silence, broken by Robert.

“When he said ‘my sons,’ he was really proud. He came to Paris, after I graduated from med school, and he took me to the
Tour d’argent
, no less. He was proud of me, and of himself.”

Getting more and more nostalgic, they were looking at each other, trying to come up with memories to share.

Without addressing anyone in particular, Alexandre suddenly said, “I remember this kid that Jules liked a lot. A complete failure in school, and from this terrible family to boot! When Dad learned about it …”

“What did he do?” Pauline interrupted, driven by her usual curiosity.

“He pulled Jules out of the school and put him in another!”

“What a monster,” Pauline muttered.

“No, he wasn’t,” Jules said, in a quiet voice. “You’re wrong. He couldn’t stand impressionable people, and friendships between boys exasperated him. He saw it as an excuse for laziness and daydreaming.”

“And for him,” Alexandre said, “daydreaming equaled a loss of money!”

Jules glared at him.

“Me?” Pauline said, “I would’ve run away if I’d been stuck in a family like that.”

“Run away?” Louis-Marie said. “So you’d have the cops on your trail? You’ve got to be kidding.”

Jules turned to Pauline with a grave look.

“You can’t understand,” he said. “Médoc is an impenetrable and incomprehensible world if you weren’t born into it. Having the name
Laverzac
justified a lot of things that you would consider abusive. What’s certain is that we owe Aurélien for everything we have today, and for who we are. …”

As he said those last words, he stared at Alexandre, who lowered his eyes.

“What’s also certain,” Pauline said to Jules, “is that he made you in his own image.”

Louis-Marie agreed, saying that Jules and Aurélien were exactly alike, with the same qualities and flaws. “And besides that, they had a taste for the same things and the same people.”

“Especially the same women,” Robert blurted out, carelessly. “As soon as you were old enough to care about women, you started to go after the same ones he did. Between the two of you, this region must be filled with …”

He stopped himself, horrified by what he’d been about to say.

Jules smiled and ended the sentence himself, “… filled with bastards?”

A heavy silence followed. But Jules leaned over and tapped his brother’s shoulder.

“Everything’s fine, Doctor,” he said.

There was real affection in Jules’s eyes, and Robert felt closer to his brother than he ever had.

They spent nearly half the night chatting, bringing up memories, trying to bring back the image of a father who’d had such an impact on them and who, everybody knew, they were going to miss.

Aurélien’s arrival at Fonteyne was painful. The nurse, who’d gotten there early that morning, seemed lost in the castle and wasn’t sure who she should take directions from. Aurélien was in a bad way. He looked at no one as he was settled into his bed, making it clear that he wanted to be alone. Laurène kept answering the phone, everyone calling to politely ask how Aurélien was doing.

Jules, shooed away from the library like everybody else, fled to the vineyards, where there were always a thousand things to do. He waited until the end of the afternoon to visit his father. He sat silently at his bedside and remained silent for a while.

Then he said, “You’ve lost some weight. … Everything is going fine around here. Lucas is being efficient. …We’re going to push back the wedding date, of course, to give you time to get better. …”

Aurélien got agitated, and Jules shut his mouth, discouraged. It was so hard for him to talk to his father like this. What he wanted was to hear Aurélien say to him, “Listen, cowboy, I’m the one making decisions around here!” But that would never happen again. And all of Jules’s acts of kindness would be perceived as pity. He was sentenced, just like his father, to immobility and silence.

Lifting his head, the young man’s gaze met his father’s. He saw there, he knew it without a doubt, the immense love Aurélien felt for him. But he didn’t realize that Aurélien was suffocating within himself.

All that I’d like to convey to him right now,
the tired old man thought.
And there’s nothing I can do about my condition. …

He wanted to remain alive, a while longer at least. Though he knew he wouldn’t be able to control when he’d die. And so he scrutinized Jules as though to engrave him in his mind.

Fonteyne is going to be fine with him at the helm. He’s become stronger than anyone else. Stronger than me, even before I wound up glued to this bed. But he’s still not convinced of that himself. He’s going to have to learn that he can do without anyone else. … He loved it when I was there because he could fool around, knowing I’d pick up the slack if need be. … Not anymore. …

Jules was still holding his father’s calm gaze.

I protected him against himself. Soon he’s going to discover who he is and where he came from. I don’t know if he’s going to be able to forgive me. I made him unyielding by being so tough on him. … He’s also going to understand why I pushed him so hard. I wouldn’t have been able to stand him had he been like his mother. I would’ve preferred to make him unhappy. But he never was unhappy. I had such a huge mission to accomplish with him. I couldn’t accept him lying to me because his mother had lied so many times! I had to fight against his heredity nonstop and it was no easy task. …

Exhausted, Aurélien shut his eyes a moment. Then he opened them again, to see Jules, who seemed to wait, peaceful.

And those eyes of his! God, he’s as beautiful as his mother was. … At first, it was nothing but a good deed, a way to atone for what I’d done. … Later, his curiosity, the way he followed me around everywhere … He was my audience, my pupil. … And today he’s my memory. He was always intent on proving that he could be as good as I was. I was his yardstick of sorts. And then he surpassed me, and now he’s so much better than I ever was. I’d rather not see what’s going to happen next. How much more time before I start hating him? Oh, Jules … you’re watching me. You feel sorry for me. Poor Jules, you’ll find life gloomy when I’m no longer around and you’re stuck with the others by yourself. I’m leaving Fonteyne to you. You have the tools, you have the means to be all that you can be. Fonteyne will exist through you and only you, and that’s why I gave it to you. … Yes, this must be the right time. Now is the time to let go of your hand, just before it crushes me. …

Aurélien, overwhelmed by sadness he thought was silly, wanted to cry. But he was worn out, and he slowly fell asleep. Jules got up quietly, without attempting to imagine his father’s thoughts. He took another glance at him before stepping out of the room.