“Not in the least, your father’s not bothering me …”
“Are you working on a novel at the moment, Mr. Janvier?”
“Yves. Please, Mr. Stein, call me Yves … Yes, I’ve started on something, about a relationship … Well, when I put it like that, it sounds terribly banal …”
“No it doesn’t. Do you have a title yet?”
“I’d like to call it The Together Theory, together as in ‘being together,’ not ‘get it together.’ Or maybe Abkhazian Dominoes, I’m not sure yet.”
“Abkhazian?”
“From Abkhazia. It’s a small state to the north of the Black Sea.”
“They’re both good titles. A bit intellectual, though, wouldn’t you say? My daughter’s right, I’m teasing you.”
“Um … Yes, what I wanted was—”
“Okay, I’m ready.”
Anna emerges from the bedroom, sheathed in a red satin dress with oriental patterns on it. Yves thinks she looks dazzling. She has bare feet, and is holding a pair of sandals in each hand.
“Mom, do you think these ones, the Cretan look, or these which are more Roman?”
Yves can see no difference at all. The mother can, though. She opts for the Cretan pair.
“We’re off, mom. Maureen’s just called. She can’t find anywhere to park and she’s waiting outside. Bye, daddy. Kids, are you going to give me a kiss?”
Lea and Karl hurtle out of their room and almost suffocate her with hugs, Lea acting abandoned, laughing as she pretends to snivel. Anna tears herself away from them gently in the hallway. She goes into the elevator and Yves follows her. He has one last look at the little red Ferrari. The door closes.
There are four inches separating Yves and Anna. She wears a fresh perfume, all woods and ivy, she says nothing, smiles, lowers her eyes. To resist the urge to take her in his arms, Yves concentrates on their surroundings: elevator branded ART, tinted mirror, coarse black carpeting on the walls. A copper plaque: MAX: 3 PEOPLE, 240 KG. A control panel with six black buttons, GROUND, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, one red button, STOP, one green button, 24 HR. CALL. A cutout area covered with wire netting, a loudspeaker, and a microphone. IN THE EVENT OF AN INCIDENT, PLEASE REFER TO TL1034.
But there is no incident, and the trip down takes fifteen seconds. Yves succeeds in trying nothing. All through the evening he will not have another opportunity, however slight, to kiss Anna. She and her cousin Maureen will go home early.
In the morning, when Stan comes home from night duty, she will tell him about Christiane’s party, at length, more than usual. About Jean, Maureen’s new boyfriend, “charming, but maybe a bit smug,” about Christiane’s illness, “stabilized,” about the famous and very talented filmmaker who was there, “of course you remember, Stan, Thirty Years Without Seeing the Sea, he directed that, we saw it together.”
“Thirty Years Without Seeing the Sea,” Stan says. “Yes.”
About Yves, Anna says nothing.
3. Pascal published a challenge, offering prizes for solutions to two complex mathematical problems involving Cavalieri’s calculus of indivisibles, problems he himself had already solved. He sent the challenge out to Wren, Laloubère, Leibniz, Huygens, Wallis, Fermat, and several other mathematicians.
ROMAIN AND LOUISE
• •
Paris, October 3, midnight.
Romain, it’s late, you’re still working at the lab and I’m writing this letter on the computer while I wait for you, which is
I’ve met a man, Romain
We’ve been together ten years, Romain. I have so much affection for you. Over the years, you’ve become my best friend, almost a brother. But, of course, you can’t be a brother. That
Louise closes the document without saving it, switches off the computer. She will never find the words to describe the abandon Thomas has brought about in her; it is crucial that she does not find them. She would like to venture an image — a window thrown open by a squall, sugar melting in coffee — but this is about bodies, nudity, desire, a stark, self-evident need, and she had no say in the matter. Yes, that’s it, she thinks. I didn’t have any say in it. Louise smiles to think how Thomas would interpret her choice of expression.
She is in love, she craves sugar, eats a dried apricot, another. All at once she is really tired. She will not wait any longer for Romain, and goes to bed. She is not guilty because, she keeps telling herself, thrilled, she had no say in it. She falls asleep immediately.
THOMAS AND LOUISE
• •
IT IS LATE. The Thursday evening patient has left. Thomas looks at his Le Monde, rereads the date bitterly. Tomorrow it will be twenty-six years since Piette died. The photo Thomas always keeps on his desk shows her smiling, lying on a bed with pages of notes scattered around her. She is four months pregnant. She will lose the baby in a few weeks’ time, and commit suicide a year later. On the back of the snapshot, Thomas has written out a canzone from La vita nuova, the blue ink is gradually fading:
Sì che volendo far come coloro
So that I desire to be like one
Che per vergogna celan lor mancanza
,
Who, to conceal his poverty through shame
,
Di fuor mostro allegranza
,
Shows joy outwardly
,
E dentro da lo core struggo e ploro
.
And within my heart am
troubled and weep
.
There are some works so luminous that they fill us with shame for the meager life to which we are resigned, that they implore us to lead another, wiser, fuller life; works so powerful that they give us strength, and force us to new undertakings. A book can play this role. For Thomas, it is La vita nuova, in which Dante weeps for his Beatrice. A friend gave it to him shortly after Piette’s death. But Thomas does not believe that his Piette waits for him in a future life, he doubts that anywhere in the infinite plurality of Lewis’s worlds there is a peaceful universe where a happy Piette gave birth to their little boy.