William Boyd
Destiny of Nathalie X
For Susan
Author’s Note
Four of these stories have been published in Granta: “The Destiny of Nathalie X,” “Cork,” “Transfigured Night” and “Alpes-Maritimes.” “Alpes-Maritimes” also made it into a second Penguin edition of my first volume of short stories—On the Yankee Station (1981) — but has never been collected between hard covers and I wanted to include it here, albeit in a slightly altered form. “Loose Continuity” was published in The New Yorker, “The Dream Lover” in London Magazine, “Hôtel des Voyageurs” in the Daily Telegraph and “N Is for N” appeared in Hockney’s Alphabet (Faber and Faber, 1993).
WB
London, 1997
The Destiny of Nathalie X
Man’s Voice(over)
IONCE HEARD a theory about this town, this place where we work and wrangle, where we swindle and swive. It was told to me by this writer I knew. He said: “It’s only a dance, but then again, it’s the only dance.” I’m not so sure he’s right, but anyway, he’s dead now …
Fade In
ONCE UPON a time — actually, not so very long ago at all, come to think of it — in east-central West Africa, on one enervating May morning, Aurélien No sat on the stoop of his father’s house staring aimlessly at the road that led to Murkina Leto, state capital of the People’s Republic of Kiq. The sun’s force seemed to press upon the dusty brown landscape with redundant intensity, Aurélien thought idly, there was no moisture left out there to evaporate and it seemed … He searched for a word for a second or two: it seemed “stupid” that all that calorific energy should go to waste.
He called for his little brother Marius to fetch him another beer but no reply came from inside the house. He scratched his cheek; he thought he could taste metal in his mouth — that new filling. He shifted his weight on his cane chair and wondered vaguely why cane made that curious squeaking sound. Then his eye was caught by the sight of a small blue van that was making its way up the middle of the road with what seemed like undue celerity, tooting its horn at the occasional roadside pedestrian and browsing cow not so much to scare them out of the way as to announce the importance of this errand it was on.
To Aurélien’s mild astonishment the blue van turned abruptly into his father’s driveway and stopped equally abruptly before the front door. As the laterite dust thrown up by the tires slowly dispersed, the postman emerged from the auburn cloud like a messenger from the gods carrying before him a stiff envelope blazoned with an important-looking crest.
MARIUS NO. For sure, I remember that day when he won the prize. Personally, I was glad of the distraction. He had been emmerding me all morning. “Get this,” “Get that,” “Fetch me a beer.” I just knew it had gone quiet for ten minutes. When I came out onto the stoop he was sitting there, looking even more vacant than normal, just staring at this paper in his hands. “Hey, Coco,” I said to him. “Military service, mmm? Poor salaud. Wait till those bastard sergeants give you one up the cul.” He said nothing, so I took the paper from his hands and read it. It was the hundred thousand francs that had shocked him, struck him dumb.
When Le Destin de Nathalie X (metteur en scène Aurélien No) won the Prix d’Or at the concours général in Paris of l’Ecole Supérieure des Etudes Cinématographiques (ESEC), the Kiq minister of culture (Aurélien’s brother-in-law) laid on a reception for two hundred guests at the ministry. After a long speech the minister called Aurélien onto the podium to shake his hand. Aurélien had gathered his small tight dreadlocks into a loose sheaf on the top of his head, and the photographs from that special evening show him startled and blinking in a silvery wash of the flashbulbs, some natural flinch causing the fronds of his dreadlock sheaf to toss simultaneously in one direction as if blown by a stiff breeze.
The minister asked him what he planned to do with the prize money.
“Good question,” Aurélien said, and thought for ten seconds or so before replying. “It’s a condition of the prize that I put the money toward another film.”
“Here in Kiq?” the minister said, smiling knowingly.
“Of course.”
DELPHINE DRELLE. “It’s impossible,” I said when he called me. “Completely out of the question. Are you mad? What kind of film could you make in Kiq?” He came to my apartment in Paris, he said he wanted me to be in his new film. I say I don’t want to be an actress. Well, as soon as I started explaining Aurélien saw I was making sense. That’s what I like about Aurélien, by the way, he is responsive to the powers of reason. Absolutely not, I said to Aurélien, never in my life. He said he had an idea, but only I could do it. I said, look what happened the last time, do you think I’m crazy? I’ve only been out of the clinic one month. He just smiled at me. He said, what do you think if we go to Hollywood?
Aurélien No turned out of the rental park at LAX and wondered which direction to take. Delphine Drelle sat beside him studying her face intently in the mirror of her compact and moaning about the dehydrating effect of international air travel. In the back seat of the car sat Bertrand Holbish, a photographer, and ex-boyfriend of Delphine, squashed in the cramped space left by the two large scratched and dented silver aluminum boxes that held the camera and the sound equipment.
Aurélien turned left, drove four hundred meters and turned left again. He saw a sign directing him to the freeway and followed it until he reached a hotel. DOLLARWIZE INN, he saw it was called as he pulled carefully into the forecourt. The hotel was a six-story rectangle. The orange plastic cladding on the balconies had been bleached salmon pink by the sun.
“Here we are,” Aurélien said. “This is perfect.”
“Where’s Hollywood?” Bertrand Holbish asked.
“Can’t be far away,” Aurélien said.
BERTRAND HOLBISH. Immediately, when he asked me, I said to Aurélien that I didn’t know much about sound. He said you switch it on, you point the volume. No, you check the volume and you point the, ah, what’s the word?… What? Ah yes, “boom.” I said: You pay my ticket? You buy me drugs? He said of course, only don’t touch Delphine. [Laughs, coughs] That’s Aurélien for you, one crazy guy.
DELPHINE DRELLE. Did I tell you that he is a very attractive man, Aurélien? Yes? He’s a real African, you know, strong face, strong African face … and his lips, they’re like they’re carved. He’s tall, slim. He has this hair, it’s like that tennis player, Noah, like little braids hanging down over his forehead. Sometimes he puts beads on the end of them. I don’t like it so much. I want him to shave his head. Completely. He speaks real good English, Aurélien. I never knew this about him. I asked him once how he pronounced his name and he said something like “Ngoh.” He says it is a common name in Kiq. But everybody pronounces it differently. He doesn’t mind.
When Aurélien went out the next day to scout for locations, he discovered that the area they were staying in was called Westchester. He drove through the featureless streets — unusually wide, he thought, for such an inactive neighborhood — the air charged and thunderous with landing jetliners, until he found a small cluster of shops beneath a revolving sign declaiming BROGAN’S MINI-MALL. There was a deli, a pharmacy, a novelty store, a Korean grocery and a pizzeria-cum-coffee-shop that had most of the features he was looking for: half a dozen tables on the sidewalk, a predominantly male staff, a license to sell alcoholic beverages. He went inside, ordered a cappuccino and asked how long they stayed open in the evenings. Late, came the answer. For the first time since he had suggested coming to Los Angeles Aurélien sensed a small tremor of excitement. Perhaps it would be possible after all. He looked at the expressionless tawny faces of the men behind the counter and the cheerful youths serving food and drink. He felt sure these gentlemen would allow him to film in their establishment — for a modest fee, of course.