A Very Bold Leap Page 8

  At that, Charles burst into laughter, although it was forced, bitter laughter, painful to hear.

  The two men sat looking at each other.

  “In all my career I’ve never seen anything like this,” murmured the notary, pinching the end of his nose in puzzlement. “Charles,” he said gently, “you’re not absolutely obliged to tell me what this is about, because it has nothing at all to do with me. But I have the impression that something happened between you and this Conrad Saint-Amour.”

  “Lunch is served!” Amélie trilled happily from the kitchen.

  Charles was gripping the arms of his chair, staring at the tips of his shoes and fighting against the tic that was threatening to stretch his mouth half open. Finally he raised his head. His eyes were filled with a cold fury, and he began to mutter in a flat, toneless voice.

  “He raped me one afternoon when I was nine years old. As for his money, let it rot with him in the graveyard.”

  And he stood up and left the house without another word, much to the dismay of the notary and the astonishment of his wife, who had come out of the kitchen into the hallway and watched him go out the door.

  The string of annoyances continued. Charles received a phone call from lean-Philippe L’Archevêque, and the next morning he found himself in the editor’s office. It was ten-thirty in the morning and an irresistible odour of coffee was rising from a lilac-coloured porcelain cup set on the desk in front of the literary editor.

  When Charles had once again asked Fernand Fafard for the morning off, the latter had agreed with a slight nod, but for an instant his expression had changed gears and he’d rolled his eyes. Now, Charles would have liked to have been able to see L’Archevêque’s eyes, but they were lost behind the glinting lenses of his wire-framed glasses. The editor’s chin was square, his luxurious blond curls were firmly in place, the knot of his tie was impeccable, his shirt was quietly sumptuous, and he stared at Charles for a moment with an enigmatic smile that the young man found more and more disquieting the longer it lasted.

  “Do not labour under the impression, my dear friend,” he said at last (and although he spoke like a Parisian of the old school, Charles had in fact just learned that he’d been born in Joliette, a small, industrial town not far from Montreal), “that I invite everyone into my office who does us the honour of submitting his manuscript to our firm. If I did I’d be working eight days a week to see them all! Besides, ninety-five per cent of the masterpieces they send us aren’t worth the paper they’re badly typed on.”

  “I see,” said Charles. The editor’s words might have been taken as encouraging, but they served only to increase his nervousness.

  “I finally read yours,” L’Archevêque went on, slowly stirring his coffee with a spoon. “I read it right to the very last page.”

  He stopped and smiled at Charles again, the light still glinting from his glasses. If Charles had been less intimidated, he would have got up and closed the curtains.

  “And, after giving the matter a great deal of thought, and having discussed it with my colleagues here at the firm, I came to the conclusion that the best thing we can do for you is to not publish your text.” I see.

  “To be frank, it would be doing you a disservice.”

  “Well, in that case, thank you very much.”

  lean-Philippe L’Archevêque ignored the impertinent smile that accompanied Charles’s remark and continued as though the young man had not spoken, drawling on in the self-satisfied, pedantic tone he had perfected years before and that by now had become as much a part of him as his most intimate emotions.

  “There is a certain talent here — that is, of course, undeniable — but it is as yet a nascent talent. You have written the kind of novel, my dear fellow, that is best kept carefully hidden away in a drawer somewhere. It is a — how shall I put it? — a preparatory novel. Its sole purpose ought to be to help you in writing the next one. Do you follow me? In that sense it is irreplaceable, but only in that sense. You no doubt possess a certain amount of learning, you have a certain facility in the manipulation of words and the expression of emotions, but you have not yet found that unique way of writing that is essential for the true writer.”

  The shimmering light suddenly disappeared from the man’s left lens, and Charles caught sight of a brown eye, oily and slightly dilated, that overflowed with the sweet drunkenness that comes with power.

  “I know, I know,” L’Archevêque went on, “you will hardly find my words pleasing, but you will thank me one day for having delivered them. If there is ever…”

  “Right,” Charles interrupted. “Nothing to be done?”

  “I fear not.”

  “Not even a rewrite?”

  “Not even a rewrite. No matter how hard one tries, one cannot change a sow’s ear into a silk purse…. Obviously, I could be wrong,” he added, seeing the scowl that had come over Charles’s face. “We all are, sometimes, are we not? But I would be the most astounded man on earth if this novel achieved even a modicum of success. No. It would earn you nothing but a bad reputation — or worse, no reputation at all.”

  Charles rose and reached his hand out for his manuscript. “Thank you for having given me so much of your time,” he said. “I’ll take it to another publisher. He may think differently about it.”

  “One never knows, does one?” said the editor with a sympathetic smile. “Good luck, then.”

  He stood, intending to conduct his interlocutor to the lobby, then thought better of it, judging that a nobody like Charles was not worth the twenty-two steps it would take to get him there and back. He settled for shaking Charles’s hand over his desk. His jacket fell open and the subtly spiced fragrance of his eau-de-toilette blended with the aroma of coffee, which was beginning to fade.

  Céline avoided Charles for four days. He called her several times, but she had been out, or busy, or sleeping, or taking a shower; she would call him back as soon as she could, but she hadn’t called him back. Lucie could see that the two had quarrelled and wanted to know what had caused it, but her solicitude earned her a rebuff such as she had never had from her daughter before. Finally, worried sick, Charles came to the house. Fortune smiled on him: just as he was coming in, Céline was on her way out, and she couldn’t ignore him. They spoke in muted tones in the vestibule for a while, and then Charles persuaded her to go with him to his apartment, where he launched into a long explanation interrupted from time to time by tears, accusations, and impassioned pleas. Céline took the line that she was nothing more to him than a temporary fling, that his true love was for that former drug-head of an actress, the one who had bowled him over in the middle of the restaurant by favouring him with a few words. She bet they had met the next day, and that they had probably slept together; and even if they hadn’t, they might as well have, because what counted most in human relationships was not what actually happened, but how people felt about each other. And Charles’s feelings for the actress had been all too apparent. So she might as well give him his freedom now, if indeed there had ever been anything between them in the first place, because she was not the kind of person who would ever allow herself to take a back seat to anyone.

  Charles defended himself passionately, denying he had ever felt the slightest attraction to Brigitte Loiseau, that even the sight of her brought back too many bad memories; and for a moment or two he honestly believed what he was saying. Yes, at her request, he had met her for coffee the next morning, but it had been a painful encounter, for reasons he surely didn’t need to spell out. She had thanked him for saving her life, asked him how he was getting on, and then offered him tickets for her next performance. If that was what Céline meant by a lovers’; tryst, then so was taking a bunch of torn shirts to a seamstress!

  Charles’s words and the passion with which he spoke them gradually succeeded in calming Céline. She heaved a deep sigh, smiled weakly, took his hands in hers, and looked him straight in the eye.

  “I love you too much, Charles. It
scares me…. I’ve loved you ever since I was a little girl! I’ve never loved anyone like I love you. What would I do if you left me?”

  You’d do what everyone else does, Charles answered wordlessly — you’d console yourself with someone else.

  He smiled and stroked her cheek. “I’m not going to leave you, Céline,” he said aloud. “It’s as simple as that.”

  But the truth was that the intensity of their attachment disturbed him, too. It even slightly annoyed him. Are people predestined to love one person and one person only for their entire lives? And wasn’t there something in her attachment to him of the adoration a dog has for its master? It was touching, but also pathetic and slightly ridiculous. Despite his profound attraction to Céline, he didn’t feel that he was chained to her. In fact, he felt he was in love with two women — it was just that one of them had about as much need of his love as she had of an empty Pepsi bottle. Despite the pain and suffering her indifference caused him, however, he accepted the situation. Because you can love only when love is freely returned.

  Some day he would try to explain all this to Céline, but for the moment the confession she had just made to him so flattered his ego and revived his love for her that he was filled with a delicious transport of joy, which was quickly transmitted to Céline. They began their reconciliation with a passion that sent them to the old carpet and didn’t end for three hours. For the first time in her life, Céline experienced multiple orgasms. Afterwards, she slept for a long time, blissfully, her hand resting on Charles’s chest, while he stared at the wall so hard that he might have been trying to see what was happening on the other side of it.

  Charles had begun work on his second novel, but the writing wasn’t going as well as he would have liked. Although he had little hope of its success, he had mailed the manuscript of The Dark Night to two other publishers. Discouragement was sapping his energy; each time he sat down at his typewriter, his head became a desert, in which only dry, uninteresting ideas would sprout, like cactuses, covered with sharp needles that made them impossible to handle. “I’m not cut out for this kind of work,” he told himself repeatedly. “No wonder nothing is working.”

  That wasn’t Steve Lachapelle’s view. For Steve, who couldn’t write a six-page essay without jumping subjects three times and who manufactured errors in spelling and punctuation as a queen bee manufactured eggs, the very sight of Charles’s manuscript filled him with respectful awe. Neither was it Blonblon’s or Céline’s analysis of the situation; despite a few early draggy bits and two or three questionable scenes, they had thoroughly enjoyed reading The Dark Night, and believed that it foretold other, even better books to come. Finally, it wasn’t Lucie’s opinion, either. She saw in Charles evidence of a great destiny, and almost succeeded in convincing her husband to see it as well.

  None of this enthusiasm was enough to draw Charles out of his funk. The verdict handed down by Jean-Philippe L’Archevêque, which now appeared to be confirmed by the silence of the other two publishers, seemed to have pulled the rug out from under him. For the first time in his life, his future was beginning to worry him. Did this mean his youth was over? Did he have to pay attention to the passing of time from now on? Although he had developed some competence as a hardware-store employee, the thought of doing that for a living was about as appealing as a sewer cover. His dream of a career as a man of letters was coming apart at the seams. What could he turn his hand to next? Go back to school? To study what? Life had become so complicated! Things would be so much simpler if he had suffered the same fate as his little sister…

  Then one night, after having wrung three whole pages out of his unwilling typewriter and tossed them directly into the wastepaper basket, he leapt from his chair with determination: the next day he would telephone the silent publishers and demand a reaction from them, a verdict, anything; and, in the meantime, he would go down to L’Express “to make some contacts.”

  He wasn’t fooled by the pretext he had come up with, of course. He knew full well that he was returning to the popular and expensive restaurant more in the hopes of running into Brigitte Loiseau than on the off chance of meeting a publisher or a journalist or a writer willing to lend him a helping hand. To salve his conscience, he asked Céline to go with him. But she had to study for an exam the next day and couldn’t leave the house; careful not to show the slightest misgiving, she told him to enjoy himself on his own.

  He took the subway. But as he arrived at the Berri-de Montigny station, the futility of his project hit him with such force that he stopped at the platform, once again so overcome with discouragement that he almost turned around and went home.

  Then his eye fell on a young man who was sleeping in the subway station, stretched out across a row of seats. The man was wearing clean clothes of good quality. His arm was thrown across his eyes, and on his exposed wrist Charles could see an expensive silver bracelet. He also wore a moustache, black and full, which gave to his half-opened mouth, his white teeth, his pink, fleshy lips, a primitive look that was faintly attractive. Why was he sleeping in a subway station? Alcohol? Drugs? Extreme disgust for life? Was this the beginning of a long descent that would eventually lead him to the city’s alleys, and finally to the morgue?

  Charles almost shook the man’s shoulder to awaken him, but stopped himself: there was nothing he could do for him. He would probably ask Charles for money so he could buy more drugs. But it wasn’t money the man needed.

  The sight of the young man acted as a tonic on Charles. No, he would not become one of those who let themselves slip through life’s cracks! His novel would be published — there could be no more doubt about it — and readers would go crazy over it.

  Now he couldn’t wait to get to L’Express, where others like him would be gathered. Brigitte Loiseau might even be there and able to help him.

  Hadn’t she wanted to find some way to express her gratitude? With the celebrity she enjoyed, it would be a snap.

  It was Monday night and the restaurant was almost empty. It was filled instead with a sleepy torpor, as though the weekend had exhausted its clientele and emptied their wallets, forcing them to make the wise decision to stay home and watch television. Charles was on his second Americano and flipping through Le Monde Diplomatique (on his previous visit he had seen two customers reading it with such intense gravity that he thought it would be a good idea to buy a copy himself). An hour had gone by, Brigitte Loiseau still hadn’t shown up, and he was wondering whether he should bother ordering a third coffee when he heard a familiar “Ahem! Ahem!” and looked up. Bernard Délicieux had just sat down at the next table and greeted him with a huge smile. This time he was wearing a raspberry-red tie that clashed brilliantly with his pale blue shirt, and from his whole person there emanated a sense of sophistication and cunning that both attracted and repulsed Charles at the same time.

  “So,” said Suet-Ball, “how goes the writing?”

  Charles made a gesture that indicated it wasn’t going all that well.

  “Ah!” Délicieux sighed. “It’s not an easy job, is it? I may be just a journalist, but I know a few things. There are days, believe me, when even pounding out a short piece on nothing at all makes me sweat bullets. People who aren’t writers have no idea what we have to go through, no idea whatsoever! Will you have a cognac? Oh, come on, be a good boy and say yes, I beg of you. I so enjoyed our little chat the other night…”

  He signalled to a waiter, and before he knew it, Charles had joined him, amused and a bit intimidated, and a Courvoisier Grande Réserve Spéciale was placed in front of him. Maybe this was the time to start establishing one of those “contacts,” he told himself, that seemed to be so essential to one’s career.

  “So tell me what’s not going so well with your work … Sometimes just talking about it can help you get past a bout of writer’s block.”

  Charles found the question too intimate, almost improper, but when he looked into the journalist’s glistening, warm gaze, his mistrust v
anished without trace.

  “It’s just that I feel discouraged.”

  “Discouraged about what?”

  “No one wants to publish my first novel. But despite that I’ve begun writing a second one, which is, well… you know… It’s a bit like calling up a girl you’ve already sent packing.”

  “I see, I see,” said Délicieux, nodding his head gravely. “Sounds fairly normal to me. But this first novel of yours, you’ve shown it around your circle, I take it?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “And their reactions?”

  “Ohhh … fairly positive. But they’re friends, or family, you know what I mean? I can’t really rely on their judgment.”

  “Well, what if I read it!” offered the journalist, flashing a brilliant smile. “I barely know you. I don’t owe you anything. And I promise you I’ll be … merciless!”

  Charles was silent for a moment, not knowing what to make of this stranger’s sudden interest. “No,” he said, “you’re much too busy. But thanks all the same. Anyway, it’s more than two hundred pages long!”

  “But that’s nothing, not a thing! I adore reading, and I read very quickly. And I have a lot more free time than you’d think.”

  “I’d be afraid of boring you,” Charles continued, shaking his head with a thin smile, torn between suspicion and temptation. “And it would take a great deal of your time, especially since you’d have to give it a careful reading.”

  “Pfa! A piece of cake! If that’s all that’s holding you back… Bring me your manuscript tomorrow and I’ll go through it in two days — two days to the minute!… at least, according to my own watch,” he added quickly, rubbing his ear in an odd way.

  Charles finally gave in. Bernard Délicieux was beside himself. He ordered more cognacs, then began telling Charles about the picturesque life he’d been living for the past several years in the world of “artistic journalism.” Charles noted with satisfaction that not once did the name Brigitte Loiseau appear on his lips. It would seem that the service the man was offering him was not part of some hidden agenda: maybe the journalist was simply trying to be friendly. Such things happen in life without our really knowing why. And it wasn’t the first time in his life that he had attracted this kind of sympathy. In any case, he was a child no longer and he couldn’t be drawn into anything against his will.