The Other Story (19 page)

The waiter comes for their order. Malvina chooses sautéed vegetables served with Gallo Nero’s garden herbs and flowers and buffalo mozzarella; Nicolas has red mullet wrapped in zucchini blossoms, with black-rice cream and artichokes. Nicolas watches Novézan steadily drink rosé and wishes he could join him, so that they could drink together, wordlessly, with no explanation, just drink until they dropped. He notices the first stages of exhaustion settling upon him, no doubt last night’s overindulgences finally taking their toll. There is a telltale dryness in his throat, and his eyelids prickle as if lined with sand. Malvina is doing her best to understand what Miss Ming is miming with pudgy hands. Mr. Wong tries to help by bouncing up and down in his seat and uttering another series of incomprehensible sounds.

“They want to know, I think, if you’ve ever been to China,” whispers Malvina.

“Who cares?” Nicolas sighs. Malvina glares at him. Making an effort, he says that, yes, he has been to Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong. He tries to describe his book promotion there, but he soon realizes that Miss Ming and Mr. Wong, despite their enthusiastic smiles and continuous nods, do not understand him. So he slows down, as if he is talking to an obtuse five-year-old, and this appears to work. Their meal is brought to them and they eat in silence until Miss Ming, her double chin quivering with anticipation, starts miming with her hands once again.

“I can’t stand this,” mutters Nicolas to Malvina.

“Just be nice,” Malvina whispers.

They both concentrate on Miss Ming. She keeps pointing at Nicolas. They cannot make out what on earth she means. Mr. Wong huffs and puffs, sounding like a steam engine, offering to help in his own way, but this only makes matters worse. A piercing scream is heard. Everyone turns, to see the British woman stoically carry her yelping and kicking son away. Once the fuss is over, a now-pink Miss Ming resumes pointing at Nicolas and flapping her hands in the air like a plump, clucking hen.

The BlackBerry on the table flashes François’s number on its screen. François, his savior! Nicolas grabs it with relief. “Have to take this, sorry.” He scrambles to his feet, not looking at Malvina (he can already anticipate her whining: “You left me with those abysmally boring Chinese people to answer your phone…”), and rushes to the terrace. At last, François is calling him back. Good old François. He knew he could trust him. Always there when he needs him. François will never let him down. François will always be there, standing up for him. François is his only true friend. His one and only friend.

“Hey, dude!” he drawls, using the deep, exaggeratedly virile voice of their adolescence, expecting François to respond with “Hey, Khûbe!”

But there is an ominous silence on the other end of the line, like the blank moment after lightning, just before thunder strikes.

“Hullo?” says Nicolas. “You there?”

François’s voice comes over loud and clear. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Nicolas finds he can no longer speak.

François’s voice is cold as he goes on. “Calling me, last night, drunk, at one o’clock in the morning, leaving that pathetic message. You know I get up early to work, even on a Saturday. You know I have small children, a wife, whose names you never remember because all you’re interested in is being Nicolas Kolt. How nice to hear you’re writing your future best-seller on a paradisiacal island while the rest of us get on with our dreary, humdrum lives. I don’t understand the person you now are. And I don’t want to. Don’t call me again. Don’t bother.”

“Wait!” whimpers Nicolas, at last finding his voice. “Don’t hang up!”

“I haven’t finished yet,” says François icily. “I’ll hang up when I have. I read that article by Laurence Taillefer, like most of France did this morning. She is right. You are a flash in the pan. You have become a product. I saw this coming. Delphine is the only one, apart from me, who saw it coming, too. The truth is, you can’t even write a new book. You don’t have what it takes to be a writer. To be a writer, you need to suffer; you know that. You need to have that hidden wound inside you. You need to bleed. You don’t suffer. You don’t bleed. You used to. You bled when you failed the exam. You suffered when you found out who your father really was, when you realized how he might have died. You wrote that book with your tears and your blood. You now thrive on your worldwide success. It’s gone to your head. You’ve become blasé. You spend. You travel. You shine. You’re in glossy magazines. You’re the king of Twitter. The truth is, Nicolas, you’ll never write anything ever again.”

Silence. François is gone. Nicolas stares out to the azure beauty of the Mediterranean. How is it possible that what he is looking at appears calm, serene, when he is enduring inner hell? Boats sail, the sun shines, guests lunch and laugh, gulls soar. A perfect sight. It is not quite three o’clock. He is now convinced the rest of his day will be a series of disasters. What will be in store for him next? He dreads to think. He slowly walks back to the table, his legs unsteady. His hands are trembling and he nearly drops his phone. He sees that his lunch is awaiting him. He is no longer hungry.

“I at last understand what Miss Ming is trying to explain.” Malvina grins triumphantly, not noticing the expression on his face. “She wants to know what you do.”

Nicolas feels more deflated than ever. He thought Miss Ming knew who he was. His book sold very well in China. Sitting down, in a sort of stupor, he halfheartedly mimes writing, then a book, flapping imaginary pages with his hands. Miss Ming watches with great attention, black eyes twinkling. She is thrilled when she finally comprehends Nicolas is a writer. So is Mr. Wong. They clap and bow. They have never met a writer. How exciting! How thrilling! They ask for his name and the title of the book. Wearily, Nicolas writes both on the paper napkin. They decipher it slowly. They nod and smile. Malvina smiles, too.

Then Mr. Wong taps him on the shoulder encouragingly. He says loudly and with a wide smile, “Maybe one day you will become very famous! Good luck, sir!”

I
N AUGUST 1993, WHEN
Théodore Duhamel disappeared off the coast of Guéthary, and after the black Hobie 16 was found near Hendaye two days later, his family waited. They waited to hear confirmation of his death. They waited for his body to be washed up. All through the rest of that bleak summer, Emma and Nicolas waited. They did not go to the beach. They did not go out. They stayed in the small apartment, and they waited. Nicolas wondered how the news was to be announced to them. A phone call? A letter? A policeman at the door? He could not bring himself to ask his mother. She seemed lost.

The same friends who came the night of his father’s disappearance now came every day. They cooked meals for his mother and for him, they did the shopping, they cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom, and they made the beds. They hugged him, kissed him, called him “little fellow.” Roxane, Emma’s sister, arrived from Belgium with her husband. They stayed in a hotel around the corner. Nina, Lionel, and Elvire Duhamel came from the Riviera and stayed at the Hôtel du Palais. Nina kept saying, “Théo’s had an accident. He will be fine. He’s in a hospital somewhere, recovering. We’ll soon hear from him.” How can she be so sure? Nicolas asked himself, watching his energetic grandmother pace up and down the living room, cigarette in hand, while Emma sat hunched by the phone with a dazed expression. When the phone rang, Emma jumped. She reached for the receiver, trembling, her face a white mask. Nicolas remembered her low voice murmuring over and over again, “No, no news. I’ll call you. Bye. Thanks. Bye.…”

Every evening, Nicolas cried himself to sleep, clutching the Hamilton Khaki watch with all his might. Friends and family stayed late or all night. There were voices from the next room and the waft of cigarette smoke till dawn. Sometimes the door would creak open, and he’d feel his mother’s tender hand on his forehead; then she’d slip away. The regular beam of the lighthouse flickered over the walls. The lighthouse had always fascinated him, ever since he was a young child. Its strong light helped boats come ashore to safety, even in the worst weather, even in the most treacherous currents. He had seen those crosses at the Rocher de la Vierge, near the Grande Plage, where hapless boats had been pounded to smithereens against the rocks by powerful waves. Why couldn’t the lighthouse help his father come ashore? Was his father ever going to come back?

At the end of August, it was time to return to Paris. Emma had classes to start at the Collège Sévigné, and Nicolas had to go back to school. But Emma refused to leave Biarritz. Her husband’s body had not been found. This meant that perhaps he was not dead. There was still hope. She repeated this to the police. They were kind to her; they tried to explain that Théodore Duhamel had most certainly drowned, but she would not hear of it. The Collège Sévigné gave her two extra weeks to stay on in Biarritz. But Nicolas had to go back to Paris with his grandparents to begin his school year. He stayed with them in their apartment on boulevard Saint-Germain, where the traffic was so loud, it could be heard through double-glazed windows. One late night, Nicolas could not sleep and overheard a strange conversation. Nina’s voice was sharp.

“What are you talking about, Lionel?” she was saying. “Are you out of your mind? How dare you suggest such a thing?”

His grandfather sounded meek. “It was just a thought.”

“A very stupid thought,” she spat.

“I’m sorry, dearest. I know you hate it when I bring up Leningrad.”

“Shut up, Lionel. For God’s sake, shut up.”

Nicolas had crept back to his room. What had they been quarreling about? What about Leningrad? What had his grandfather meant?

When Emma came back to Paris in mid-September, Nicolas returned to the rue Rollin to be with his mother. She seemed frailer and paler than ever. The apartment, without his father, had turned into a desolate remembrance land. It continued to exude his personality. Cigar smoke lingered in the dining room. Whiffs of Eau Sauvage could be caught in his bathroom, in his bedroom. His closet was bursting with his clothes, and his other things—his trousers, shorts, jeans, his cashmere sweaters, his ties, his shoes, his golf clubs, ski anoraks, gloves, canes, shirts. A bureau drawer held his cuff links, his black Montblanc fountain pen. But not his Doxa Sub watch, which had been on his wrist the day he disappeared.

Emma and Nicolas found themselves still waiting, like they had all summer long. They both went about their lives, schools, meals, but the only thing that mattered was the wait. It was exhausting and unbearable. Emma had been to see Nicolas’s teachers to explain the situation. Everyone in class was nice to him. Other students stared at him and whispered behind his back, “His father drowned. But they still haven’t found the body.” The only person he felt he could trust was François. François’s parents, Odile and Michel, and their other children, Victor, Constance, and Emmanuelle, became the only source of comfort in his eleven-year-old life. Every afternoon, after school, he went to their place on the avenue Duquesne, and he felt like he was part of a normal family. For a couple of hours, the dreadful thought that his father might never come back was held at bay. Whenever he got home with the new au pair his mother had hired and she turned the key in the lock, for a split second, Nicolas felt the flutter of a wild hope that his father had come home at last. Théodore Duhamel was wounded, or even maimed, or had lost an eye, but there he was, triumphant, safe. But there was no cigar smoke, no laughter, no father. Only silence.

Just before Christmas 1993, a red-eyed Brisabois came to visit them. He spent an hour crying into Emma’s shoulder. How could such a wonderful man have disappeared? How could life be so cruel? Emma said nothing, patting his quivering round shoulders. Nicolas looked away, embarrassed. But the scene became even more embarrassing when Brisabois asked his mother for money, claiming that Théodore Duhamel owed him a rather large amount. Without a word, Emma got up to fetch her checkbook. This scene took place again the following year. Then, no one heard from Brisabois again.

Gradually, Nicolas learned to deal with other people’s questions. He learned to say that, yes, his father had drowned, and that, no, his body had not been found. He pronounced the words with detachment. This did not mean he did not care. The distance he put between the words and himself was the only way to protect himself. Four years later, in 1997, after Princess Diana was killed in a car accident in Paris at the end of August, Nicolas watched the funeral on TV as her two sons walked behind their mother’s coffin during the procession. Prince William was his age—fifteen. As the entire world sobbed for the dead princess, Nicolas felt the smoldering heat of resentment. Prince William knew his mother was dead. Perhaps he had seen her dead body. Prince William was perfectly aware his mother was in that coffin being carried through the streets of London, with white roses placed upon it, and a card where his brother, Harry, inconsolable, had written “Mummy” in a childish hand. William and Harry were going to be able to mourn her. Nicolas had not been able to mourn his father. Emma and he were still waiting for Théodore Duhamel to walk through the door at rue Rollin or for the phone to ring with news of a body found along the coast near Hendaye that could be his.

The years slipped by and the wait continued. The wait became their prison. Emma could not bring herself to empty her husband’s cupboards. For five or six years, Théodore Duhamel’s clothes remained in the apartment. From time to time, Nicolas would open the cupboard and look at them. They smelled of stale cigar smoke. And finally, they no longer smelled of anything except dust. What did his mother do with the clothes? He never knew and he did not ask. He was handed the Montblanc pen, which he cherished. But what he would have wanted above all was the orange Doxa Sub watch.

June 12 was his father’s birthday. Each year, Nicolas knew his mother would be thinking of him, too, and how old he would be if he were still alive. And his grandmother would, as well, until her death. Each year on August 7, the day his father was last seen, Nicolas awoke with a feeling of dread. He saw himself as a frightened little boy, standing on the balcony, staring out to sea. The questions loomed as large as they had that fateful day: What had happened to his father? Why was he never found?