“Kostas. And the woman is Camille,” says Yves.
“Kostas, that’s right. Camille has a husband and children, she’s happy. The more he watches her life, the more he realizes how alone he is. It’s her happiness he falls in love with. But he doesn’t really love her.”
“I don’t know. I think he does.”
“No, wanting someone isn’t the same as loving them, Mr. Janvier. He doesn’t measure the consequences of what he does to this woman’s life, to her children. He’s not interested in that, his intentions are egotistical. It’s a portrait of a bastard.”
“Why a bastard?”
“Kostas would have every right if he knew for sure what he really wanted. But he doesn’t, he has his doubts, is torn, and he knows that. Being sure of what you actually want, that’s the bare minimum you’d expect of yourself if you’re about to break up a marriage, making a woman — and her children — suffer. Wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes. Perhaps. Kostas is a bastard in spite of himself.”
Stan opens and closes his fist, his knuckles go white.
“A bastard in spite of himself is still a bastard. There is something fragile about Camille, a dissatisfaction with things. But she has a good life. Perhaps too good. Camille carries a deep-seated melancholy in her, and her husband helps her carry it, very tenderly. When Kostas turns up, she hopes she can actually live, at last. Kostas can tell she is vulnerable, he also suspects she loves him because he embodies unpredictability, a sense of adventure she always longed for, but he exploits her dreams to draw her in. It’s a woman thing, like Emma Bovary meeting her Rodolphe. Very traditional, in fact. But you’re too understanding with Kostas. You adopt his point of view. There are several novels that need writing there, Camille’s, her husband’s, the children’s. Those are the ones you should have written.”
“They’re tragic novels. I …”
“Well, maybe Madame Bovary can’t be written more than once, after all.”
There is a note of sadness in Stan’s voice, but no longer any anger. He is still rubbing his fist against his palm, but talking seems to have soothed him. The bookstore is gradually emptying and the manager signals discreetly to Yves.
“Do you have children, Mr. Janvier?” Stan goes on.
“A daughter. Her name is Julie.”
Stan shakes his head.
“Anna and I have two, you know. I read every page of Follow On, imagining a Kostas following Anna, meeting her, seducing her. It made me really sad to think a man that immature, who did so little to deserve her trust, could come and destroy my Anna’s life, hurt our family, for nothing, just because he never really gauged what he wanted.”
“I understand what you’re saying.”
“I know you understand what I’m saying. There’s a bit of Camille in every woman, and a bit of Kostas in every man.”
Stan stops talking for a moment. Yves flicks his pen back and forth between his fingers. He does not want to argue; he is moved by Stan, more than he expected. Anna’s respect and affection for Stan hatched a peculiar empathy in him some time ago. Yves now knows that the love two men feel for the same woman weaves secret connections, even forbidding that lover’s privilege, jealousy.
“I’m sure I wouldn’t write the same book now.”
“Do you think? Yet they say people always write the same book.”
“It’s not true. Books are like the days of your life. They come one after another and you learn from each of them.”
“Well … that’s a good thing, then. That’s a good thing.”
“Kostas doesn’t want to make anyone unhappy.”
Stan gives a furious shrug and stands up. Yves stands too.
“That’s not possible, Mr. Janvier. People like Kostas aren’t happy and they can’t make anyone happy.”
All at once Yves feels cold, puts on his coat. Stan gives a slight bow and steps away.
“I’m very glad I’ve had a chance to meet you, Mr. Janvier. To talk about Kostas and Camille with you. I hope I haven’t bored you.”
Yves shakes his head. Stan walks off without offering a handshake. Before he leaves the bookstore, he opens the book, leafs through it. He comes back, looking determined, fists balled. From the look in his eye, Yves can suddenly tell they are going to fight. He prepares for it. Deep down, he prefers this to their restrained discussion in which they both affected detachment. But Stan simply shows him the dedication.
“Excuse me. You wrote ‘To Stanislas and Anna.’ ”
“Yes?”
“My name’s Ladislas, not Stanislas. Could you write ‘To Ladislas and Anna’?”
Yves is dumbstruck. He apologizes, takes another copy, and corrects his mistake. Ladislas walks away, satisfied. The manager smiles at the writer, slightly dismayed: “I’m so sorry, Yves. I should have warned you. Ladislas is a regular. He’s — how shall I put this? — a bit different. One time, when Delcourt was doing a signing, he came and explained his own book to him for nearly an hour. You can just imagine how Delcourt … And he’s also got that nervous tic with his fists, you always feel he’s about to smash your face in.”
“I didn’t notice,” says Yves.
YVES AND ANNA
• •
ANNA WILL BE FORTY TOMORROW. For the first time in years, she has not planned a party. She could not imagine celebrating her birthday without Yves, and, in her indecision, she waited until it was too late to send out invitations.
She is walking along the street, in a hurry. She is meeting Yves and he has promised her a present. Not long after they met, he gave her a ring, a silver one, which swivels and opens like an oyster to reveal its secret, a yellow diamond nestled in golden mother-of-pearl. But this piece of jewelry has stayed in the bottom of a drawer, under a silk scarf.
Of course Yves is already at the café, he is reading the paper, in no rush. Anna hates being waited for impatiently, she hates being a prisoner to someone else’s attachment. She wants something that does not exist: a lover who adores her, but is utterly indifferent.
She has hardly sat down opposite him before he hands her a small package wrapped in red crepe paper. She opens it, it contains five books, all identical. They are small, ivory-colored, about sixty pages long.
She looks up again. Almost frightened.
“Don’t worry,” says Yves. “Only ten copies were made. You have half the edition there.”
“Thank you,” says Anna. “Can I read it now?”
“I hope you will,” Yves replies. “It’s not very long.”
Where do our memories file themselves away? Broca proved that the left hemisphere controls speech, Penfield maintains that the temporal lobes house memory. So an arrangement of neurons, a chemistry within the brain stocks the images, sounds, and smells that I call memories of you. Why is it my hands themselves hold the memory of your skin?
I want forty memories of you, Anna. For the reason you can guess. Forty is a lot, think of Ali Baba’s thieves. And forty is too few: it means resigning myself to never retracing a gesture you make, one so specific to you, so intimate; not describing the sight of a street with your silhouette outlined against it; not referring to something you said even though it touched me; it means abandoning certain characteristics on the grounds that I have already put them in writing, somewhere else.
Describing too precisely is pointless, and I am conscious of the risk I run, which is platitude. And yet I run it, for memory itself runs a greater risk and that is forgetting, given that forgetting is merely the natural fate of all memory. But what I know above all else is that each of these memories is here, set down in words in order to accomplish the impossible: never to lose you.