The Ingredients of Love (21 page)

I also felt that we could be very satisfied.

Adam was not totally convinced.
“Et voilà!”
he repeated, which sounded quite funny in his English accent. “Let's hope you're right, Andy. But I still wonder if it mightn't be better to put an end to this whole Mademoiselle Bredin thing. From what you've told me, she seems to be very highly strung. A rather strange girl. Can't you just keep your hands off her?”

“Non,”
I said.

“Okay,” said Adam.

And then we fell silent for a while.

“You must understand, Adam,” I said finally, “she's not just any woman, she's
the
woman! The one and only. And she's not strange at all—she's just got a lively imagination and believes in higher powers. Kismet.” I stirred three spoonfuls of sugar into my espresso and sipped the hot, sweet brew.

“Kismet,” repeated Adam, and sighed.

“Well, what's so odd about that? And anyway I'm going to kill Robert Miller off very soon. As soon as the meal in Le Temps des Cerises is over, good old Miller will make his final exit from the stage.”

“Does that mean you're not going to write anymore?” Adam sat up in alarm.

“Yes,” I said. “It does mean that. This double life is far too stressful for me. After all, I'm no James Bond!”

“Are you off your head?” Adam said excitedly. “Now, when the novel is actually starting to sell, you want to throw in the towel? How many have you sold so far? Fifty thousand? Just think logically for a moment. You write very well, and you'd be a dope not to profit from it. This has great potential. Foreign publishers are also beginning to wake up. On my desk there are initial inquiries from Germany, Holland, and Spain. Believe me, there's a lot more running in this book. And we'll pitch the second novel a bit higher straightaway. We'll make a best seller of it.”

“For God's sake,” I said. “You sound just like Monsignac.”

“Don't you want a best seller?” Adam asked in astonishment.

“Not under these circumstances,” I said. “I want some peace. You've just been telling me that all these lying games are so dangerous, and now you want to sail gaily on?”

Adam smiled genteelly. “I am a professional, of course,” he said, quite the English gentleman.

“You're a megalomaniac,” I said. “And how do you imagine this continuing in the future? Will the author be writing his novels somewhere at the end of the world? In New Zealand or at the North Pole? Or will we fly your brother in every time?”

“If all goes really well, we can tell the truth later.” Adam leaned back coolly. “When the time is ripe we'll make a great story of it. You need to understand how the business works, André: If you're successful, you're always right. So I think that Robert Miller should definitely carry on writing.”

“Over my dead body,” I said. “To my mind the only good author is a dead author.”

“Hi, fellows. Are you spikking about me by any chance?” said a voice behind me in mangled French.

Sam Goldberg had come in through the door unnoticed and had probably heard the last bit of our heated discussion. So: There stood my alter ego in a dark blue duffle coat and a tartan cap, carrying little plastic bags full of Eiffel Towers and pastel-colored boxes from the Confiserie Ladurée.

I looked at him curiously. He had short blond hair and blue eyes like his brother. Unfortunately he looked as good as he did in the photo. And although he must have been around forty, he had that boyish air that some men never lose no matter how old they get. The beard made no difference to that, especially when, as now, he put on that mischievous Brad Pitt smile.

“Hi, Sam, where have you been all this time?” Adam stood up and greeted his brother with a friendly clap on the shoulder. “We were beginning to think you'd run away.”

Sam grinned, and a row of gleaming white teeth came into view. He was clearly someone who would make a very trustworthy impression in his profession; I could only hope that he would be just as convincing as an author.

“Shopping,” he explained, and I noticed that his voice was very like his brother's. “I had to premise to bring something back for the family. Oh dear, and the line in that Ladurée shop was so long! I felt completely in a home.” He laughed. “So many Japanese personages who all wanted to buy cakes and these gaudy things.” He pointed to the boxes of macaroons. “Do they really taste that well?”

“This is André,” Adam introduced me, and Sam shook my hand. “Nice to see you,” he said, beaming at me. “I've horde so much abut you.” He had a powerful handshake.

“Only good, I hope,” I answered somewhat tensely. All the old clichés. “Thanks for coming to Paris, Sam. You're really helping us out of a mess.”

“Oh, yes!” He grinned and nodded. “Out of a moss,” he repeated. “Yes, yes. Adam has said me everything. You two have pulled off a great stunt, haven't you? I must say, I was very surprised to hear I'd wrote a book.” He winked at me. “Fortunately I have a good sense of humor.”

I nodded in relief. Adam had obviously done his work well. Even if his brother had been a bit unnerved when this unexpected project was first presented to him—at this moment he seemed very relaxed.

“So now we're something like … like—what do you call it?… Blood brooders?” he continued. “Well, I hope everything works out with our little pot.”

All three of us laughed. Then we sat down and my blood brother ordered a tea with milk and an apple tart and looked around at the Café des Éditeurs. “Lovely place,” he said appreciatively.

Over the next two hours, which we spent coaching Sam Goldberg in his new identity, it became clear that Adam's brother was a real sentimentalist whose basically positive character found expression in two words above all: “lovely” and “sexy.”

“Lovely” was used for the city of Paris, the light-up golden plastic Eiffel Towers for his children, the
tarte aux pommes
he was eating with his tea, cutting it into fine slices, and my book, of which he had admittedly only read the first chapter, although Adam had given him the content of the whole book
en détail
.

“Sexy” was used for the waitresses in des Éditeurs, the bookshelves on the wall, Adam's offer to show him the Moulin Rouge that evening, the old black Bakelite telephone at the reception desk in his hotel and—astonishingly—my ancient Rolex watch (it had been my father's and was made in a time when Rolex watches still had leather straps and were somewhat more restrained in design than they are today).

I noticed with some relief that Sam's French was better than I had expected. Because typically English people speak English and nothing else. However, the two Goldberg brothers had spent a lot of their summer holidays with an uncle in Canada and so they had learned some French. Because of his professional interests Adam spoke fluent French, whereas his brother mangled the language, although his vocabulary was quite large and he had no problems speaking in public. He was used to giving papers on prophylaxis and the treatment of periodontosis at dental conferences.

We talked through the interview with
Le Figaro,
which was to take place the next morning, and then the passages from the book that he was to read out in the bookstore the same evening. I explained how the reading would run and advised him urgently to practice his new signature as “Robert Miller” a few more times so that he would make no mistake when signing autographs.

“I must troy that straightaway,” he said, took a pen and a sheet of paper, and inscribed his new name in a round, looping hand.

“Robert Miller,” he said, looking contentedly at the signature. “That looks really sexy, don't you think?”

After the reading, which was to begin at eight o'clock and go on for no more than an hour and a half, there was to be a dinner for just a few people (“Relaxed and intimate,” Monsieur Monsignac had emphasized): the author, the bookseller (who had definitely read the book), Jean-Paul Monsignac (who only knew the beginning, middle, and end of the book), Michelle Auteuil (who had scanned through the book when it was in proof), Adam Goldberg (who knew the whole book), and my humble self. I must admit that I was a little apprehensive about this intimate, relaxed evening.

Readings in a bookstore all somehow run along the same track: a welcome from the bookseller, a welcome from the publisher (in this case, I was to do this job, as I was going to present the whole thing), the author says a few words about how glad he is to be there and so on and then reads a couple of extracts. Then applause; has anybody any questions for the author? Always the same questions: How did you come to write this book? In your book there's a little boy who grows up without a father, are you that boy? Did you always want to be a writer? Are you writing another book? What's it about? Is it set in Paris again? And sometimes, though more rarely, there are questions like: When do you write (morning, afternoon, evening, night)? Where do you write (looking out into the fields, only with a white wall in front of me, in a café, in a monastery)? And of course the clincher: Where do you get your ideas from?

But often people just aren't that interested, or are too shy to ask a question, and in such cases the bookseller, editor, or chairman then says something like: Then I have a question (to round the whole thing off). Or he says: If there are no more questions, then I would like to thank you all for coming; and of course many thanks to our author, who will now gladly sign your books. Renewed applause. Then the audience come forward to buy the book and have it autographed. And at the end they take a few photos.

A reading by an author is a pleasant and well-ordered event, as far as I'm concerned.

When it's a select dinner, on the other hand, there are rather more imponderables, especially if you have something to hide. My ability to foresee possibilities was not so great as to be capable of preempting all the possible and impossible subjects that might come up on such an occasion. I could see Monsieur Monsignac suddenly asking the supposedly Francophile Englishman, “Do you like snails?” and the latter pulling a face in disgust. I hoped they wouldn't talk about books too much, as Sam Goldberg was not very well up on the bestseller lists, and we could not exclude the possibility that he'd think Marc Levy was an actor or Anna Gavalda an opera singer.

Still, Sam Goldberg would be sandwiched between Adam and me like bodyguards. And as long as the dentist showed a little presence of mind the evening would no doubt run passably smoothly.

I advised Sam to retreat into his “insufficient knowledge of French” if awkward questions cropped up at the reading or the dinner. “Oh, sorry. I didn't quite understand: What exactly did you mean?” he should ask ingenuously, and then one of us would leap into the breach.

The important thing was that he should know the following points, which we went over again and again, by heart: He lived alone in his cottage. The location we'd decided on was picturesque Tunbridge Wells. (“Lovely place,” said Sam and: “What a pity I'm not allowed a family.”)

His dog, Rocky, was a Yorkshire terrier and not a golden retriever, as Sam initially wrongly claimed, and was being looked after by a neighbor.

To the question of whether his book had autobiographical elements, he should answer, “Well, you know, every book is autobiographical to a certain extent. Of course there are things in it that I've experienced myself, and some that I've heard about—or simply made up.”

He had often visited Paris earlier when he was working for the automobile firm, but at the moment he needed peace and countryside and loved his isolated cottage.

For him, the idea of journalists visiting his home was a nightmare. (This just as a precaution, in case he fell into the hands of Michelle Auteuil.)

He was not a party animal.

He loved French cuisine.

He had a second Paris novel in mind, but that would take quite a while and he would not give any (!) definite details about the content.

His hobby was old cars.

The danger of a writer getting involved in a conversation about old cars in France was relatively limited, but just in case I pressed an illustrated book about old-timers into Sam's hands as we parted.

“See you tomorrow evening, then,” I said as the three of us stood outside the café with Sam Goldberg swinging his carrier bags in anticipation of the evening's adventures.

The two brothers wanted to return to their hotel before painting Paris red that evening, and I just wanted to get home. “It would be good if you could get there half an hour early.” I breathed in deeply. “Don't want to risk things going wrong, do we?”

“It'll all be fine,” said Adam. “We'll be very punctual.”

“Yes, we'll pull it off okay,” said Sam.

And then our ways parted.

*   *   *

Major catastrophes are always preceded by omens, but quite often people fail to see them. When I was shaving in the bathroom the next morning, I heard a loud crash. I ran into the darkened hall in my bare feet and stepped on a shard of glass before I could see what had happened.

The heavy old mirror that hung beside the coat stand had fallen down, the dark root-wood frame had broken, and there were shards and splinters of glass all over the place. Cursing, I pulled the shard of glass out of my bleeding foot and hobbled into the kitchen to get a Band-Aid.

“A bomb wouldn't move it,” my friend Michel had said as he put up the mirror I'd bought at the Marché aux Puces, the flea market by the Porte de Clignancourt, a few weeks before, first bringing it into town on the subway and then carrying it up to my apartment.

Superstitious people say that a mirror that falls off a wall and breaks brings bad luck. But I'm not superstitious, thank God, and so I contented myself with sweeping up the fragments to the accompaniment of a litany of curses and then set off for the office.