Enough About Love (7 page)

Romain the svelte turns toward the pudgy Jacques; his schoolboy joke makes the audience laugh. It works every time.

Romain will not reveal how, ten years earlier, he spent his first evening with Louise stammering and stuttering while his future wife—perfectly at ease and perfectly in control of her emotions—affectionately made fun of him, even then. The young academic did not win her, it was more she who chose him. For his natural decency, for the almost naive purity in the way he looked at her, and for his acute intelligence made all the more dazzling by his terrible gaucheness. But Louise
very quickly realized that this peculiar difficulty with words that initially seduced her would end up exasperating her. Turning Romain into an incomparable orator struck her as a worthy challenge. And he soon became one. But his newfound assurance did not draw solely on exercises in diction and the quality of his notes. It owed much more to the pride he felt in being the man whom Louise Blum allowed to walk beside her in the street.

“Now I would like to cut to the quick of the subject …” Romain goes on.

When, an hour and ten minutes later, with that appropriate runover on time, the speaker stops talking and invites his audience to contribute in a discussion, there is one man in the back row of the Linnaean Auditorium who has not taken a single note. When the question-and-answer session begins, the man does not ask any questions either, even though, like all psychoanalysts, he would have liked to hear the word “subconscious” pronounced at some point in this conference on the cognitive sciences.

Thomas Le Gall has not taken his eyes off Romain Vidal for a moment, though. This is the man who wakes every morning beside Louise Blum, the woman he is falling in love with, and whom he has just made love to for the first time. Romain Vidal is not his rival, because no one ever has a rival. Thomas had no urge to confront the image of “the husband.” He wanted to see the man that Louise Blum had loved and still loved, and also, perhaps, wanted to put his own feelings to the test. Thomas feels the beginnings of sympathy for this great tall boy whose secret shyness he can see, whose fluid logical train of thought he admires, and whose friendship he knows with regret he can never have.

I
T HAD BEEN SUCH A HOT SUMMER
. Anna and Stan spent it near Grignan, in the house they rented every year. The heat wave sent statistics through the roof. Twice as many forest fires, homicides, multiple pileups, and old people dying in hospices. The drought affected sixty regional
départements
. There was a ban on filling swimming pools, and those that were filled had to act as reservoirs for the fire department. On the radio and in bistros, all the talk was of global warming. When Karl and Lea sat down in the car, they squealed because the seats were so hot. Anna ran a damp sponge over the plastic surfaces to cool them, and the children begged to have the air conditioning on but kept the windows open.

They were bored. They devoted the morning to making a list of things they needed to buy, went into town to buy them, and had a coffee on the town square, then the temperature started to rise and they went back to the house. They ate lunch,
cleared the table, and did the dishes before the ants invaded. It was too hot to have a siesta. Karl and Lea squabbled constantly to fill the time.

There were wasps. Stan made a trap by cutting open an Evian bottle and putting very sugary wine into it. They soon came to die in there, dozens of them. Anna could not bear to see her children entertained by their endless paddling, the hours they took to die. Particularly Karl, who called her in a state of great excitement every time a new victim ventured into the fatal opening. She did not recognize her own son in this cruel delight. He was the one who, with morbid fascination, emptied out the insect juice at the bottom of the garden every morning.

There was also the pool. It was unfit for use before five o’clock in the afternoon, when the sun dived behind the old farmhouse. The children watched the line of shadow advance very slowly across the blazing hot paving stones, as if watching the progress of a column of ants.

“Mommy, mommy,” they cried every minute, “another stone in the shade!”

“Great!” Anna replied, from the sofa in the living room.

In the evening, when the children were in bed, Stan and Anna stayed out on the terrace to make the most of a coolness that never materialized. Stan rubbed the back of his wife’s neck, she ducked away from his touch. It was so hot, or she was reading, or she didn’t feel like it. One night, Stan took her. She consented despite how clammy their bodies were, and even reached orgasm; she fell asleep right away.

At the end of August they packed their bags and went home to Paris. On the trip back, because the children were hungry, Stan wanted to stop off, and they went to one of those highway
restaurants that straddle all six lanes. It was awful, awful and expensive. Anna grew tetchy, exasperated. She almost screamed that it was “disgusting, completely disgusting,” and Lea, like something from a film by Godard, asked, “What does disgusting mean?” Anna walked out of the restaurant, leaving the children with Stan, and went to the car. She opened the back door, sat down among the toys, hid her head in her hands, and, quietly, started to sob.

T
HAT SAME SUMMER
, it had not been quite so hot in Oslo. Romain had suggested Louise should go to Norway with him, while he attended an international colloquium: a wealthy foundation was bringing together the world’s top language geneticists for three days.

“The high society of genetics will be there,” Romain whispered to Louise.

He was so proud to be a part of it now.

They were put up at the Radisson Plaza, a luxury hotel close to the city center, where a welcome reception awaited them. The organizers had guessed that the colloquium would not be of much interest to partners: they handed out maps of Oslo, a history of the city, and a guide to its museums.

Romain introduced her to “John Vermont, Nobel Prize winner,” pretending to forget that she knew him. Then Daniel Reynolds, “Nobel winner of tomorrow,” and Janet Bilger and Tomomi Tsukuda, “Nobel winners of the day after tomorrow.”

“You’re the most beautiful,” Romain whispered to Louise.

She agreed.

As they were sitting down for dinner, Romain suggested to a delighted Vermont that he should sit beside her: the Nobel laureate was, as usual, smug and boring, and still had the same terrible bad breath. Louise left the table before dessert, claiming diplomatically to be tired from the trip. Romain took her hand for a moment, adding that he would join her later, and continued his conversation with Reynolds. She was not unhappy to get away. Romain was putting on his overzealous little boy act, and she loathed any dent in the respect she felt for him. The scene reminded her of one evening when they had argued after she watched, disappointed, as he tried like a bewitched child to get close to some obscure movie celebrity.

She changed and took the elevator all the way to the covered pool perched on the hotel roof. The bay windows looked down over Oslo’s lights. The only person in the pool was swimming laps freestyle along one side. He did not pause when Louise dived in. After a few breaststrokes, she felt a bit cold and, with the first shiver, climbed out, settled on a lounge chair, and started reading the guide to Oslo. The swimmer’s rhythm was slow and regular. At the end of the pool, he would exhale noisily and turn around underwater to start the next lap. Another ten minutes and he climbed up the ladder. He had shaved his head the way young balding men do, was probably past forty. His body was hairy, solid, not as muscular as his exercise led her to expect, and he was nearsighted too, because he groped for his glasses. He seemed surprised to see Louise, smiled at her and said a few words in Norwegian. She did not understand so he started again in English.

“Holidays?”

Louise smiled at his pronounced French accent. “Just for three days. And you?”

“I see … My English could do with some improvement. No, I work for Norsk Hydro.” Louise shook her head and he explained: “Oil, aluminum, magnesium. I’m in aluminum. My name’s Alain. Or Al. Like aluminum.”

“Louise. Like Louise. Louise Blum.”

She held out her hand. Alain was not French but Belgian, an engineer supervising the opening of a new manufacturing chain to the south of Oslo. He said a few words about what she should see: the natural history museum, its minerals collection, and the museum of Viking ships at Bygdøy. Then he apologized for leaving, he had to be up very early in the morning.

When Louise went to bed, Romain was still not back. Half a Noctimax helped her get to sleep.

The following morning, she declined the invitation to join the group of partners. She ventured into the city alone, with a few books in her bag, she explored the boutiques, bought herself a scarf. Following Alain’s advice, she went and admired the long ships, then the gemstones and agates, before having elk meat for lunch on the wharf. She strolled through Vigeland Park and cruised along Oslo’s fjord in a tourist boat. She returned to the hotel late in the evening, just in time for dinner, during which she was bored once again. She decided to go home to Paris. There was a flight in the morning, she would take it. Romain tried to dissuade her, but without really insisting. She was resolute: “Just say that Judith’s ill, or Maud, that I was worried. I’m going to pack, I might go for a swim. Take your time, darling.”

She went straight up to the pool. The Belgian engineer was doing his laps. Alain greeted her cheerfully and lay down on the lounge chair next to her. She told him about her day, the
long ships and the smoked elk. There was a restful serenity about Alain, they talked for a long time, like old friends. He told her about his life without painting too grim a picture of it nor dressing it up. Recently divorced, a son of nearly twenty, a job that took too much of his time, a sick father—cancer. The separation from his wife had been violent, painful, he had started drinking but stopped in time. Alain was straightforward, strong, he was like his crawl, powerful and regular. His frank gaze lingered on Louise’s legs, her stomach, her breasts. Louise did not dislike the fact that he liked her, even though she was not in the least attracted to him.

He was about to leave the pool, his face brightened: “Look, Louise, tomorrow morning I’m taking a couple of Norwegian friends to visit the factory in Holmestrand. Would you like to come with us and watch aluminum being melted in a furnace? It’s impressive, really it is. We’re leaving at nine-fifteen, it’s only an hour away, and you’ll be back by early afternoon, after lunch in the restaurant on the dam. It’s very pure aluminum, the kind they use for the Airbus.”

His enthusiasm was contagious. In the elevator, even though she did not find him attractive, she suddenly wanted this dumpy man to take her to his room, push her backward onto his bed, and undress her. She would have grasped his thick penis with her hand, her mouth, would probably have begged him to take her, crying out crude words as he drove deep into her. All things that were alien to her usual behavior, but miraculously authorized by the absence of love and the Norwegian night.

She went down to her floor, put herself to bed. She turned out the light and fondled herself in the dark to the point of pleasure. When Romain came in, she was asleep.

The following morning, she embarked on the Norwegian Air Oslo–Paris flight, an Airbus made of Alain’s aluminum. She had left a note for him at reception, apologizing for her hasty departure: Maud was not well. At the end of August, Alain left a message at her office, having found the address: he was in Paris, he wanted to see her again. He called her again twice in early September. She never got back in touch.

“S
O
, D
OCTOR, IS IT SERIOUS
?”

Simon’s voice bears the lighthearted imprint of a long-standing friendship. Anna’s younger brother hopes he comes across to Stan as hard, impassive, but the way he rubs his thumb against his index finger betrays anxiety. Stan is scrutinizing the two angiographies on the screen: a dull, dark patch in the middle of the left retina leaves no room for doubt. The surgeon does not answer, enlarges the image, traces the scar line. He would like to find something reassuring to say. But nothing looks more like a Fuch’s spot than another Fuch’s spot.

Shit, Stan thinks, shit, Simon, how fucking stupid of you, how fucking stupid, you’re always trying to be the best, the alpha male, always waiting till the last minute, you should have called me earlier, should have come immediately, this left retina’s had it now, kaput, and microsurgery might have been a bit of a long shot, but I could have tried something, could
have clawed back, I dunno, a couple of diopters for you, two diopters isn’t so bad, it’s better than blind, my poor brother, and what can I tell you about the right eye, because it’s not looking good, nope, not looking good at all, having that first localized hemorrhage on the left retina, and let’s have a closer look at the right retina, fuck, I can’t believe it, you’ve got slight vascular weakness on that one too, there, right next to the optic nerve, it’s a little bit too puffy, the bastard, you’ve got a one-in-four chance, let’s be generous here, let’s say one-in-eight that your other retina packs up in the next ten years, that gives us a one-in-three or -four chance you’ll be blind by the time you’re fifty, fuck, what do you want me to tell you, Simon, what do you want me to tell you, learn Braille, take up the piano again?

Stan sits down slowly on the corner of his desk, gives Anna’s brother a wide smile: “Right … Simon … No need to panic. Look at this discolored area on your left retina: that’s called a Fuch’s spot. It’s a pretty rare problem which occurs in the very nearsighted, like you or like me: I’m minus eight, you see, almost as bad. I’ll explain: in nearsighted people the eye is too large so it exerts constant mechanical pressure on the retina, if this gets to be too much then a blood vessel can burst. That’s what’s happened. Because it was a large blood vessel—a small artery, you can see it here—the hemorrhage has damaged the macula, that’s the part of the retina where the eye focuses.”