“He shocked me with that message, too,” she said.
“He demanded that I get him a pistol.”
“He asked me for that too. Don’t worry. You weren’t the only one. He always had a sense of drama. I know him well. I’ve known him for thirty years or so. My God, how time flies. Noémie’s death rattled him. I can understand that. It came so unexpectedly. The doctors themselves weren’t completely certain. She always just had this temperature, and you see? In less than a month. I don’t know how much you know, but they’d lived apart for twenty years. May she rest in peace. But she had a bad temper. And no understanding for him. Why should he only sleep with one woman his entire life? He’s not a rabbi, after all! She couldn’t stand me, either. It was no secret: I had been his lover. Back when I left the convent. Twenty years ago. Twenty-five. Since then we’ve been friends. The best of friends. I don’t understand what in hell this voice on the answering machine means. Sorry, but someone’s at the door.”
After a brief pause:
“My son. He’s learning Spanish. Blood is thicker than water. I won’t hold his hand through it. Just so you don’t do drugs, I tell him. Jurij Golec is like a child. He’s incapable of paying his telephone bill. Lord only knows how many times they’ve cut his phone off. Then Ursula swoops in to set things right. It’s the same with the power, and with the rent. With everything. And do you think Noémie ever lifted a finger? Never. He needs a mother. Or a sister. ‘How are you doing, Jurij?’ I ask him. ‘Everything’s fine,’ he’ll reply. ‘Just fine.’ ‘But I can tell that something’s not right,’ I say. ‘The inability of the human being to adapt to existence,’ he says. ‘That’s all it is.’ And now he has this inheritance on his shoulders. It is a torment for him. How is that going? I have no idea. Apparently the will hasn’t even been read yet. So that’s why he hasn’t budged from the apartment. I told him he should give the key to that little Japanese woman. There’s a Japanese woman living next door. A student. I wonder if he’s slept with her. Of course Noémie couldn’t stand her. At any rate he should get out of that apartment as soon as possible. And stop being so dramatic. What’s with the pistol? Between you and me, it is possible that she left him nothing. Not so much as a cent. She was certainly capable of doing that to him. He’ll have told you about it. So, fine, it’s her money. She earned it herself, and it’s hers to dispose of as she wishes. Jewish folklore or African sculpture — it makes no difference to me. Just let things get settled already. At any event, people should give him some peace and quiet now. You were right to tell him that: a year from now everything will be all right. As if I hadn’t been through crises myself. Show me a normal human being who hasn’t experienced a crisis. When Angel Asturias abandoned me, don’t you think I had a crisis then? Oh, I had one, and how! I drank, I took pills, the works. Excuse me, the doorbell again. It’s a madhouse here. I-am-com-ing! Call me again in the next day or two. I’m snowed under with work. Translating Cortázar right now. Don’t know if it’ll amount to anything. Whenever you want. One minute! I’m coming! You can also call late at night. Till one. Or two. Or even later. I’m coming! Mierda!”
On Sunday I was invited to Madame d’Orsetti’s. Since her divorce from a Parisian gallery owner, she lived by herself in her large apartment close to the Parc Monceau, and she threw dinner parties for a group of intimate friends. She was wrapped up in astrology, all kinds of collecting, and fashion, which, according to Baudelaire, is included among the arts. She devoured horror novels and put away large quantities of sleeping pills and white wine. She was a good friend of Queneau and Perec, and she knew de Chirico, René Char, and Dado. As her guest, one drank tequila, whisky, vodka, and white wine originating in her own vineyards. She spoke of herself in the third person: “D’Orsetti went jogging at six o’clock in the morning in the Parc Monceau; d’Orsetti has a fever of thirty-eight degrees Celsius; d’Orsetti is going to London tomorrow; d’Orsetti is inviting Armani to dinner.”
I was surprised to see that she had designated a place at the head of the table for me, since the widow of Prince S., who had been a literary critic and translator, was also invited to this dinner, along with the famous fashion designer Armani. Considering this an instance of her deliberate lack of conventionality (“d’Orsetti hates conventions”), I sat down at the place to which they ushered me; I didn’t want to stand out as someone who paid too much attention to formalities.
The conversation was about people I didn’t know, or themes that didn’t interest me: fashion, feminism, pederasty, conceptualism, comic strips. But the main topic of the evening was an opera that I hadn’t seen, and more particularly a young vocalist who had debuted in this production. Madame d’Orsetti thought her appearance plebeian, her voice common, and her interviews stupid; on the other hand Armani, who managed to win over a majority of those present, asserted that a new star had been born and would soon be shining on the operatic firmament of Europe: a new Maria Callas.
Even those people who had a completely negative view of Madame d’Orsetti, claiming she was a lesbian and an alcoholic, admitted, however, that she had great culinary talents and gastronomical imagination. As appetizers on this particular evening she served us caviar, tuna with black butter, and carrots in cream, and for the main course, “carp-in-the-sand” and lamb with rhubarb and walnuts; following that there were cheese and ice cream (pistachio and pineapple) with a sauce of crème de cassis. Along with this they brought us a 1967 white, “d’Orsetti,”—on its yellow label stood the maxim “In vino veritas”—as well as a Bordeaux for those who didn’t wish to align themselves with the tastes of the lady of the house.
After the dinner, Mme d’Orsetti, enveloped in a purple shawl, sat on the floor and rocked, barely perceptibly, to the rhythm of music from the gramophone (Rameau, Brahms, Vivaldi). At some point she put her glass down on the rug and nodded at me to follow her. When we reached the bedroom, she indicated that I was to take a seat on a bed with a violet baldachin; she passed me a glass and filled it to the rim. While pouring the vodka, she had said:
“Your friend Jurij Golec has committed suicide. I wanted you to dine in peace first. Now I shall leave you alone. If you feel the need to talk with someone, d’Orsetti is at your disposal.”
The burial was set for Tuesday, at four p.m., but the ceremony started almost an hour late. Apparently people here are used to it, because when I showed up, right at the appointed time, there was nobody at the cemetery yet. I thought that Jurij Golec’s friends would be gathered at the graveside or in front of the chapel; but then Luba Jurgenson, an acquaintance of mine, showed up and we waited together in front of the cemetery gate. Toward five o’clock a crowd began to gather. We wondered if they had really come for the funeral of Jurij Golec. They must have been asking themselves the same thing when they saw us standing there, shivering in the cold wind. Finally Luba, an émigré writer and one of Jurij Golec’s protégées, recognized a mutual acquaintance; she went over to a woman in black and embraced her. “Jurij’s sister,” she remarked to me. “She’s just now come from America.” Dolores-Dola and Nataša showed up in the company of a young man wearing a cowboy hat and striped pants; it was yet another Russian émigré, a painter, according to Luba. Finally there were about thirty of us: Emil Cioran, Adolf Rudnicki, Ana Novak, a literary scholar and former camp inmate; representatives of the Gallimard publishing house, the cultural attaché of the Israeli embassy, a delegate from the Jewish community, as well as various friends and admirers.