ANNA AND STAN
• •
IT 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.
LOUISE AND ALAIN
• •
THAT 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.”