The Confidant. Helene Gremillon

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СКАЧАТЬ exam to art school the world would have been a better place. The young girl painting caught Madame M.’s eye, and that is why she invited her to come in for a few minutes, the time it took for a cup of tea. Otherwise they would never have met; they would have remained mutual strangers kept apart by everything since birth.

      Some people said, ‘Madame M. is bored all on her own’; others added, ‘and she is still so young’. The entire village tried to find an explanation for this unnatural friendship between a bourgeoise from a high-ranking family and their little Annie. After they had rejected the excuse – too humiliating – that ‘rich people like the poor when they are nice-looking’, they finally opted for the commonsense explanation that ‘rich people like artists’, and I think they were right.

      Everyone got used to them spending time together, and were even rather proud of them. Everyone, that is, except me. I took a dim view of their friendship. Annie, who was anti-social by nature, seemed to have found in that young woman the type of person one meets only once in a lifetime: the one who can replace everyone else. Once she had got into the habit of stopping off for tea with Madame M., Annie gave up all her other habits, including me. She cut herself off from my life, or rather, she cut me out of her life, without the slightest compunction, and without giving me any explanation as to her sudden detachment. She did not ignore me, what she did was worse: she still greeted me with that horrible little wave that was proof she had seen me, but never again with the other wave that was an invitation to join her. Love is a mysterious principle, falling out of love more mysterious still, and one can know why one loves but never, truly, why one has ceased to love.

      Things could have stopped there, I could certainly have swallowed my gnawing irritation, my jealous resentment, but the arrival of Monsieur and Madame M. in L’Escalier was about to turn into an irreversible tragedy.

      So did I remember them?

      ‘Annie, you might as well have asked me if I remembered that we had lost the war.’

      Visibly feverish, she did not stop stirring the spoon in her cup. ‘Don’t compare things that cannot be compared.’ Annie slowly hitched her cardigan onto her shoulders. I could not take my eyes off her; her eyes were riveted elsewhere. I sensed that it was not only our ‘first times’ that she had to tell me about. She had simply reminded me of those times in order to earn the right to tell me what really mattered, the way one forces oneself to inquire politely about one’s interlocutor before launching into a monologue where one speaks only of oneself.

      ‘I have something to confess, Louis. I have to tell you what really happened with Monsieur and Madame M. You are the only person I can tell.’

      That letter stopped there; I was going to have to wait to find out what happened next.

      It was precisely the suspense that got me thinking and made me reread it from another point of view, that of my profession as an editor this time. There was something literary about it, and now that I had noticed it, the same was true about the earlier letters. What an idiot I was not to have realised sooner! My mother’s death must have really made me lose my grip. Those letters were meant for me, all right: it was simply an author sending me his manuscript through the letters. I received too many manuscripts to read all of them, they piled up on my desk, and authors were aware of this, particularly the unpublished ones. That was why these letters didn’t really follow a traditional format; they were instalments of a book that I’d be receiving week after week. A crazy idea, but not stupid. The proof: I was reading them.

      I started observing my authors closely, trying to trap them by insinuating this or that, hoping one of them would betray himself; they must have thought I was going mad. I would study their handwriting, searching for that capital ‘R’ in the middle of all the lowercase letters. I would take a close sniff, ever on the lookout for that woody perfume that came from the letters. I entertained every possibility. Could it be So-and-so? That would be just like him to write a thing about his childhood. It was becoming increasingly common to write about oneself, so if that was it, I would give it to him, straight to his face: that I was expecting a novel from him, a real one. I would aim for his glasses: it would be great if they fell off, I’ve always wondered what he’d look like without his glasses.

      I was convinced the sender of the letters would show up at my desk one day. A stranger would ask to see me, and bring me the rest of his manuscript, apologising for having duped me, but hey, for fifty years he’d never duped a soul and for fifty years no one had paid him the slightest attention, so he’d decided to change tack.

      And what if it were the little Mélanie? ‘Have any of your interns ever become one of your authors?’ If she thought I didn’t notice what she was driving at with all her questions…But no, it was impossible, she was too young, these letters were the work of someone older, you could tell, and besides she was too pretty to write like that.

      It was Mélanie, in fact, who roused me from my thoughts, one hand on the microphone of the receiver to keep Nicolas, on the other end of the line, from hearing her:

      ‘Your friend insists on speaking to you.’

      ‘Tell him I’m in a meeting.’

      ‘I did, but he’s already called five times this morning, he said he knows you’re not in a meeting.’

      ‘If he doesn’t want me to be in a meeting, then tell him I don’t want to talk to him. People won’t let go if you lie to them, but they will if you tell them the truth.’

      And if I told him the whole truth, I’ll bet you anything the guy would let go in no time; he’d probably run for his life.

      At any rate I could not go on like that, it was too risky. I decided to go home early, especially as I was sure of finding something in my letter box. It was Tuesday, and I’d noticed the letters always arrived on a Tuesday; my correspondent had the idiosyncrasies of a serial killer.

      In those days I still found the letters entertaining, almost friendly – a touch of mystery, in a world that was completely devoid of it, was hardly unpleasant. And besides, I wanted to find out what happened, what was this terrible tragedy involving Monsieur and Madame M.?

      Not for one second could I imagine what was coming. The unthinkable does exist: I’m proof of it.

      I went to their house nearly every day. I would paint while Madame M. read to me out loud. It was pleasant; she played all the characters. I enjoyed her company. I didn’t even feel obliged to speak, something that had never happened to me with anyone. She was so generous with me.

      She had put an entire room at my disposal. ‘The room without walls.’ That was what she called it because the walls disappeared behind a huge mirror and some heavy red drapes. It was too beautiful to be converted into a studio, but she would not have it any other way. ‘My dear Annie, since I have already told you how much pleasure it gives me…’ And it was the same with all the rest. I asked for nothing, she gave me whatever I needed. When I had finished a canvas, a new one would appear as if by magic. She thought of everything. She even asked a friend of hers to give me lessons: Alberto, a marvellous painter and sculptor. He came from Paris, every Thursday. She was so kind.

      I had certainly noticed that she wasn’t happy, but I had not managed to find out why. As far as I could tell she had all the best things life has to offer.

      In the beginning I thought she must be ill. It was Sophie, their maid, who put this idea into my head. One morning I had not dared go into L’Escalier, there was a car parked in the drive and I thought this might be ‘her new infatuation’. My papa was forever telling me I must not have any illusions, that Madame M. СКАЧАТЬ