The Ingredients of Love (13 page)

I nodded with satisfaction as I read item 4 once more. It wasn't too bad an idea as a beginning. Whether it was really a stroke of genius only time would tell. Nevertheless there were still a couple of unanswered questions:

1. Was Aurélie Bredin really worth all this fuss and effort?
Absolutely!

2. Should she ever be told the truth?
Absolutely not!

3. What would happen if Sam Goldberg actually did come to Paris in the guise of Robert Miller to give an interview or a reading and A.B. got to know about it?

At this late hour I couldn't, with the best will in the world, think of an answer to this last question. I stood up, emptied the ashtray (five cigarettes), and switched off the light. I was dog tired, and for the moment the more urgent question was rather what would happen if Robert Miller
didn't
come to Paris.

*   *   *

On Friday morning Monsieur Monsignac was already waiting for me in my office. “Ah, my dear André, there you are at last,
bonjour, bonjour
!” he caroled to me, swaying energetically back and forth in his brown leather shoes. “I've put a manuscript by a very young and very pretty author on your desk—she's the daughter of the last winner of the Prix Goncourt, who's a very good friend of mine and so as an unusual exception I'd like to ask you to take a
very quick
look at it.”

I took off my scarf and nodded. In the whole time I'd been at Éditions Opale I couldn't remember a single occasion when Monsieur Monsignac hadn't wanted something dealt with quickly. I glanced at the Prix Goncourt winner's daughter's manuscript in its transparent folder. It bore the elegiac title
Confessions d'une Fille Triste
(Confessions of a Sad Girl). There were at most a hundred and fifty pages, and you'd probably only have to read five of them before being overcome with nausea at the habitual narcissistic navel-gazing that is so often passed off as meaningful literature these days.

“No problem, I'll let you know by lunchtime,” I said, hanging my coat in the narrow cupboard beside the door.

Monsignac drummed his fingers on the chest of his blue-and-white-striped shirt. He wasn't really small, but still a couple of heads shorter than I and considerably stouter. In spite of his stature he knew how to dress. He hated ties, wore handmade shoes and paisley scarves, and in spite of his corpulence gave the impression that he was extremely agile and mobile.

“Great, André,” he said. “You know, that's what I like about you—you're so totally unpretentious. You don't talk big, you don't ask unnecessary questions. You
make
things simple.” He looked at me out of his shining blue eyes and clapped me on the shoulder. “You'll go far.” Then he winked at me. “And if this thing here is garbage, just write a couple of encouraging sentences about the content. You know the kind of thing—there's a great deal of potential, we're looking forward to seeing what the writer produces next, and so on and so forth—and then gently reject it.”

I nodded and choked down a grin. And then, as he was almost over the threshold, Monsignac turned once more and uttered the sentence I'd been waiting for the whole time.

“And? Everything okay with Robert Miller?”

“I'm in contact with his agent, Adam Goldberg. He's totally reliable.” Old Monsieur Orban (the one who'd recently fallen out of the tree while picking cherries) had once given me a piece of advice. “If you're going to lie, keep as close to the truth as possible, son,” he'd said when I'd played hooky one glorious summer day and was about to tell my mother a load of hair-raising lies, “then there's a chance that people will believe you.”

“He says we'll get Miller to Paris,” I went on heartily, and my pulse sped up. “It's basically just a matter of the … eh … fine tuning. I think I'll have more definite details on Monday.”

“Fine … fine … fine.” Jean-Paul Monsignac left the room with a satisfied expression and I scrabbled in my pocket. And after I'd taken a small dose of nicotine (three cigarettes) I gradually began to feel calmer. I threw open my window to let in the clear, cold air.

The manuscript was Françoise Sagan for dummies. Apart from the fact that a young woman who doesn't really know what she wants (and whose father is a famous writer) travels to a Caribbean island and lets us share her sexual experiences with a black islander (who is stoned the whole time), there was no recognizable plot. Every second section described the heroine's emotional state, which was of interest to no one, not even the Caribbean lover. At the end the young woman travels off, life lies before her like a great question mark, and she doesn't know why she is so sad.

For my part, I didn't know either. If as a young man I'd had the opportunity to spend eight unbelievable weeks on a dream island and enjoy myself with a Caribbean beauty on white sandy beaches in all possible positions, I wouldn't have been melancholic—I'd more likely have been inebriated with joy. Perhaps I lacked the necessary depth.

I formulated a careful rejection and made a copy for Monsieur Monsignac. At midday Madame Petit brought the mail and asked me suspiciously if I'd been smoking.

I looked at her with an innocent expression and raised my hands.

“You
have
been smoking, Monsieur Chabanais,” she said, spying out the little ashtray behind the in-tray on my desk. “You've even been smoking in
my
office, I could smell it when I came in this morning.” She shook her head in disapproval. “Don't start smoking again, Monsieur Chabanais, it's so unhealthy, as you are well aware.”

Yes, yes, yes, I knew it all. Smoking was unhealthy. Eating was unhealthy. Drinking was unhealthy. Everything that was fun was in some way unhealthy or made you fat. Too much excitement was unhealthy. In essence the whole of life was a dangerous balancing act, and in the end you fell off a ladder while picking cherries or got run over by a car on the way to the baker like the concierge in the novel
The Elegance of the Hedgehog.

I nodded dumbly. What could I say? She was right. I waited until Madame Petit had bustled out of the room and then thoughtfully took another cigarette out of the pack, leaned back, and a few seconds later was watching the way the little white smoke rings that I blew out slowly dissolved.

After Madame Petit caught me out smoking in the office there were further disturbing occurrences that regrettably got in the way of my leading a healthy existence. The healthiest—and probably the least exciting of these—was probably Sunday lunch with Maman in Neuilly, although I wouldn't want to claim that plates full of
choucroute,
fatty pork and sausages (my mother's mother came from Alsace, and so
choucroute
is a must for her), are the best thing to nourish your body with. And the fact that the “surprise” Maman had announced on the telephone turned out to be her permanently invalid sister and a talkative but rather hard-of-hearing (and for that reason rather loud) favorite cousin (not
my
favorite, by the way) whom she'd invited over for the occasion did not make that particular meal—eaten though it was off Alsatian china—much of a delight for me. The
choucroute
lay in my stomach like a stone and the three old ladies, who insisted on addressing a grown man of thirty-eight and over six foot as
mon petit boubou
or
mon petit chou
(my little cabbage!), drove me to distraction. Apart from that, everything was much as usual, only at three times the volume.

I was asked if I'd got thinner (No!), if I wasn't going to get married soon (when the right woman appeared), if Maman could still hope for a grandchild she could stuff with
choucroute
(but of course, I was looking forward to it already), if everything was going well at work (of course, everything was going very well). At the same time I was repeatedly asked if I'd like just a little bit more, or to tell them what news I had.

“What news have you got, André? Do tell!”

Three pairs of eyes were fixed expectantly on me and I felt like the Sunday radio. This question was always very tiring. I could hardly tell them the real news about my life (or would anyone at this table have understood that I was in a state of high nervous tension because I'd adopted a second identity as an English author, and the whole thing was threatening to blow up in my face?) and so I muttered something about the latest leak in the water pipes in my old flat, and that was fine, as the old ladies' attention span was somewhat limited (although that may have been because the things I was telling them were not interesting enough). Either way, I was soon interrupted by the deaf cousin with a loud “Who's died?” (she did however say the same thing five times in the course of the afternoon—I guess it was whenever she lost the thread of the conversation), and they turned to more interesting topics: inflammation of the veins, visits to the doctor, house decoration, lazy gardeners and sluttish cleaners, Christmas concerts, funerals, quiz programs, and what had happened to neighbors I didn't know or figures from the far distant past, until it was finally time for the cheese and fruit.

By this time both I and the capacity of my stomach were so exhausted that I excused myself for a moment and went into the garden for a smoke (three cigarettes).

That night I tossed and turned in my bed even though I'd taken three indigestion tablets (needed because of the goat's cheese and camembert), and had terrifying nightmares about Adam's brother, the good-looking English bestselling author, who was lying on a couch in his high-tech dental practice with a half-naked Mademoiselle Bredin, groaning with passion as he embraced her, while I sat incapable of motion (and also groaning) in a dentist's chair as his assistant pulled all my teeth out.

When I woke up, bathed in sweat, I was so messed up that I would gladly have had another smoke.

But all this was an innocent pleasure compared with the excitements that Monday held in store for me.

Early that morning Adam called me in the office with the news that his brother had initially been rather reluctant, but had now grasped the delicate nature of the whole Miller affair and was ready, just this once, to play along. (“He took it like a man” was Adam's laid-back comment.)

Nevertheless, Sam's knowledge of French naturally had limits, he was anything but a book person, and his knowledge of vintage cars was also quite restricted.

“Hmm, I'm afraid we'll have to get him well up to speed beforehand,” Adam said. “For the reading you can prepare the relevant passages for him and he'll just have to practice them.” Regarding shaving off the beard he, Adam, would have to put in a bit of persuasive effort.

I tugged nervously at my roll-neck sweater, which was suddenly threatening to strangle me. Of course it would be an advantage if
Robert Miller
looked like the Robert Miller in the photo, but I feared that the
dentist
would still look like a dentist. The whole thing was so damn complicated.

“Yes, you're right,” said Adam. “I'll do what I can.” And then he said something that had me reaching straight for my cigarettes.

“By the way, Sam would like to come over the Monday after next—or rather, that's the only time he
can
come.”

I smoked as quickly as I could. “Are you crazy?” I shouted. “How's that supposed to work?”

The office door opened quietly, and Mademoiselle Mirabeau was standing on the threshold with an uncertain look and a transparent folder—waiting.

“Not now!”
I shouted in annoyance, and waved her away with my hand. “Good grief, don't look so sheepish—you can
see
I'm on the phone!” I hissed at her.

She stared at me in fright. Then her lower lip began to tremble and the door shut as quietly as it had been opened.

“He's not coming
this very moment,
” said Adam in a soothing tone, and I turned my attention back to the phone. “That Monday would be perfect—I could travel over with Sam on the Sunday and we could discuss the whole thing at leisure.”

“Perfect, perfect,” I snorted. “That's only two weeks away! Things like this need to be set up. How are we going to manage that?”

“It's now or never,” retorted Adam curtly. “You could at least be happy that it's happening at all.”

“I'm delirious with delight,” I said. “A good thing that it's not tomorrow!”

“What's the problem?
Le Figaro
is already on the starting blocks, as I understand it. And as far as the reading's concerned it's probably better if we keep it small. Or would you prefer a reading in Fnac?”

“No, of course not,” I replied. The lower we kept our heads, the better. The whole thing needed to be got over with as unspectacularly as possible. Two weeks on Monday! I started to feel hot. With trembling hands I took a cigarette from the pack. “God, do I feel bad,” I said.

“Why? Everything's hunky-dory,” Adam countered. “You probably haven't had a proper breakfast again.” I gnawed at my fist. “Toast, fried eggs, and bacon—that sets a man up for the day,” my English friend lectured me. “What you lot eat for breakfast—that's only for wimps! Cookies and croissants! No one could seriously live on that!”

“Let's not start getting down to specifics, okay?” I answered. “Otherwise I'll start talking about English cuisine.”

It wasn't the first time I'd argued with Adam about the advantages and disadvantages of our cuisine.

“No, please don't!” I could see Adam grinning. “Just tell me that everything's okay with that date before my brother changes his mind.”

I took a deep breath. “
Bon.
I'll speak to our PR department immediately. Please make sure that your brother at least knows the main outline of the book when he gets here.”