The Most Beautiful Book in the World (13 page)

Someone should have injected your books intravenously in me after Antoine died, it would have saved me a lot of time.

When one day, as late as possible I hope, you go to Paradise, God will come up to you and say, “There are a lot of people who want to thank you for the good you did on earth, Monsieur Balsan,” and among those millions of people there'll be me, Odette Toulemonde. Odette Toulemonde, please forgive her, was too impatient to wait for that moment.

 

Odette

 

No sooner had she finished than Rudy swept out of his room, where he'd been flirting with his new little boyfriend; they were in such a hurry to run out and tell Odette the news that they had barely taken the time to throw on a pair of boxers and a shirt. According to the Internet, Balthazar Balsan was going to give another signing very soon, in Namur, not far from there.

“So you'll be able to hand him your letter in person!”

 

Balthazar Balsan did not come on his own to the bookstore in Namur; his publisher had joined him from Paris to lend him moral support, and this fact merely depressed him further.

If my publisher is spending a few days with me, it means things are really bad, he figured.

Indeed, like wolves, critics travel in packs; Olaf Pims's attack had unleashed them. Those who up to now had withheld their grievances or indifference with regard to Balthazar Balsan now let it all out; those who had never even read him still voiced resentment against his success; and those who had no opinion spoke about him as well, because they had to join the fray.

Balthazar Balsan felt incapable of responding: this was not his playing field. He could not play offensively, he lacked aggression; he had become a novelist for no reason other than to extol life, in its beauty and complexity. If he were to become indignant, it should surely be for the sake of a worthy cause, not his own. His only reaction was to suffer and wait for it all to blow over—unlike his publisher, who would have liked to make the most of the fuss in the media.

In Namur the readers were not as numerous as in Brussels: in just a few days, it had become “dépassé” to like Balthazar Balsan. So the author was even more amiable with those who did venture up to him.

Unaware of all the fuss, since she did not read the papers or watch the cultural programs, Odette could not imagine that her writer was going through such dark hours. Dolled up, but not as chic as the first time, heartened by the glass of white wine that Rudy had forced her to imbibe in the café across the street, she came up to Balthazar Balsan all aquiver.

“Hello, do you recognize me?”

“Uh . . . yes . . . we met . . . let's see . . . last year . . . Help me on this . . .”

Not the least bit put out, Odette was actually glad that he'd forgotten her ridiculous performance on the previous Tuesday, so she released him from his scrambling effort to pretend to remember.

“No, I was joking. We've never met.”

“Ah, that's what I thought, otherwise I'd have remembered. To whom have I the honor?”

“Toulemonde. Odette Toulemonde.”

“Pardon?”

“Toulemonde, that's my name.”

When he heard her comical last name, Balthazar thought she must be joking.

“You're having me on?”

“Pardon?”

Realizing his gaffe, Balthazar corrected himself.

“Well, tell me, it's a rather original name . . .”

“Not in my family!”

Odette handed him a new volume to inscribe.

“Could you just write, ‘For Odette'?”

Balthazar, distracted, wanted to be certain he had heard correctly.

“Odette?”

“Yes, my parents really got me there!”

“What do you mean, Odette is a lovely name . . .”

“It's dreadful!”

“No.”

“Yes!”

“It's Proustian.”

“Prou—?”

“Proustian.
Remembrance of Things Past . . .
Odette de Crécy, the woman Swann is in love with . . .”

“The only creatures I know who are called Odette are poodles. Yes, poodles. And me. And with me, everyone forgets my name. Maybe to make them remember, I should put on a collar and get my hair curled?”

He examined her, not sure he'd heard correctly, then burst out laughing.

Leaning toward him, Odette handed him an envelope.

“Here, this is for you. When I talk to you, nothing but nonsense comes out of my mouth, so I wrote you a letter.”

Odette fled, in a rustling of feathers.

 

When he had settled into the rear seat of the car that was taking him back to Paris with his publisher, Balthazar had a passing urge to read Odette's message; but when he saw the kitsch paper, a weave of pink garlands and lilac branches held by cherubs with plump buttocks, he decided not to open it. There was no way round it, Olaf Pims was right: he wrote for hairdressers and supermarket checkers, and he simply had the audience he deserved. With a sigh, he slipped the letter inside his camel's hair coat.

A descent into hell awaited him in Paris. Not only did his wife—evasive, absorbed by her law practice—fail to show the least little sign of compassion for what he was going through, his ten-year-old son got into fights at the lycée with little squirts who were making fun of his father. There were few messages of sympathy, and never from the literary milieu—perhaps that was his fault, he did not frequent it. Shut away inside his huge apartment on the Île Saint-Louis, next to a telephone that did not ring—that was his fault, too, he never gave out his number—he took an objective look at his life and suspected that he had made a mess of it.

To be sure, he had a beautiful wife, but Isabelle was cold, curt, ambitious, rich through inheritance, far more used to moving in a world of predators than he was—and had they not agreed to allow extramarital affairs, a sure sign that it was social cement that held their couple together more than any ties of love? To be sure, he owned an apartment in the center of Paris which left many people feeling envious, but did he really like it? There was nothing on the walls, windows, shelves, or sofas that he himself had chosen: a decorator had done it all. In the living room there was a grand piano that no one played, a laughable symbol of social rank; his study had been designed with magazine publication in mind, because Balthazar actually preferred to write in cafés. He realized he was living in a décor. Worse than that—a décor that wasn't even of his own making.

And what had he done with his money? He'd used it to show that he had arrived, that he was established in a class he had not been born into . . . Nothing that he possessed truly enriched him, although everything he owned suggested wealth.

While he was vaguely aware of this inconsistency, it never made him ill, because Balthazar was saved by the faith he placed in his own work. And now even that was under attack . . . He began to have his doubts. Had he written even one worthy novel? Was jealousy the only motivation for such acid critiques? And what if those who condemned him were right?

Fragile, emotional, used to maintaining his equilibrium in creativity, he found that in real life he could not attain it. It was unbearable to him that his ongoing interior debate—is my actual talent up to the level I would like?—had become public. So public, in fact, that one evening, after a kindly soul had pointed out that Balthazar's wife was associating assiduously with Olaf Pims, he tried to commit suicide.

When the Filipino maid found him lying there lifeless, it was not too late. The emergency services managed to revive him and then, after a few days under observation, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital.

There, he shut himself away in a healing silence. And there, no doubt, he would eventually, after a few weeks, have responded to the valiant and caring psychiatrists who were trying to deliver him, had the untimely arrival of his wife not altered the course of his treatment.

When he heard the metallic slam of car doors closing, he hardly needed to look out the window to ascertain that it was indeed Isabelle who was parking her tank in the lot. In a split second he gathered his things, grabbed his coat, shoved open the door leading onto the external stairway, checked to see as he hurried down the stairs that he did indeed have a double of all the keys, rushed over to Isabelle's car, and switched on the ignition while she was taking the elevator.

He drove aimlessly for several kilometers, exhausted. Where should he go? It hardly mattered. Every time he pictured himself finding refuge with someone, the moment he knew he would have to provide an explanation, he gave up on the idea.

He stopped at a freeway rest area, and was stirring his sugary coffee with its savor of paper cup, when he noticed a thickness in the pocket of his camel's hair coat.

For lack of anything better to do, he opened the letter, and sighed: as if the bad taste of the paper were not enough, his fan had added to her missive a red felt heart embroidered with feathers. He began skimming through the letter; by the time he had finished it he was in tears.

 

When one day, as late as possible I hope, you go to Paradise, God will come up to you and say, “There are a lot of people who want to thank you for the good you did on earth, Monsieur Balsan,” and among those millions of people there'll be me, Odette Toulemonde. Odette Toulemonde, please forgive her, was too impatient to wait for that moment.

 

When he reckoned he had made the most of their comforting effect, he switched on the ignition and decided to seek out the author of those pages.

 

That evening Odette Toulemonde was preparing an
île flottante
, the favorite dessert of her ferocious daughter Sue Helen, a post-adolescent burdened with a dental retainer who went from one job interview to another without ever being hired. She was beating the egg whites into peaks, humming to herself, when someone rang at the door. Annoyed at being interrupted during such a delicate procedure, Odette hastily wiped her hands, did not bother to cover the simple nylon petticoat she was wearing and, certain that it must be a neighbor from the same floor, went to open the door.

She stood there with her mouth open, gaping at Balthazar Balsan, who was weak, exhausted, and unshaven, a travel bag in his hand. He was staring at her feverishly, brandishing an envelope.

“Are you the person who wrote this letter?”

Confused, Odette thought he was going to tell her off.

“Yes, but . . .”

“Ah, I found you,” he said, with a sigh of relief.

Odette stood there, speechless.

“I have only one question to ask you,” he continued, “and I'd like for you to answer.”

“Yes?”

“Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

She had not hesitated.

For him, this was a precious moment, an instant he could savor to the full. He did not think for a moment about how it might embarrass Odette.

Odette, distraught and rubbing her hands, did not dare broach the subject of her concern; but in the end she could not restrain herself.

“My egg whites . . .”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The problem is, I was beating my egg whites and you know, egg whites, if you wait too long, they . . .”

At a loss, she made a gesture to describe the deflating surrender of egg whites.

Balthazar Balsan was too upset to grasp what she meant.

“In fact, I have another question.”

“Yes?”

“May I ask you?”

“Yes.”

“Really, may I?”

“Yes.”

Looking down at the floor without meeting her gaze, like a guilty child, he asked, “Would it be possible to stay with you for a few days?”

“Sorry?”

“Just answer, yes or no?”

Odette, overwhelmed, thought for a few seconds then exclaimed, as natural as could be, “Yes. But hurry, please, my egg whites!”

She grabbed his travel bag and pulled Balthazar inside.

And that is how Balthazar Balsan, without anyone in Paris suspecting a thing, settled in Charleroi in the home of Odette Toulemonde, shop assistant by day and feather-maker by night.

“Feather-maker?” he asked, one evening.

“I sew feathers on dancer's costumes. You know, for variety shows, Folies-Bergères, Casino de Paris, that sort of thing . . . it helps to make ends meet, with what I make at the store.”

Balthazar was discovering a life as different from his own as could be imagined: a life with neither glory nor money, but where, still, there was happiness.

Odette had a talent: joy. In her deepest self, it was as if there were a non-stop jazz band playing lively tunes, pulsating melodies. No hardship seemed to get her down. When faced with a problem, she looked for the solution. Since humility and modesty were part of her personality, no matter what the circumstances she did not stop to think that she might deserve better, and consequently she rarely felt frustrated. Thus, when talking to Balthazar about the brick apartment block where she lived with other welfare tenants, she referred only to the small balconies painted in summery ice cream pastels and decorated with plastic flowers, or the hallways adorned with macramé and geraniums and drawings of sailors holding their pipes.

“When you're lucky enough to live here, you don't want to move. You only leave this place feet first in a pine box . . . It's a little paradise, this apartment block!”

She was well disposed toward all humankind, and was able to remain on good terms with people who considered themselves her exact opposite, because she did not judge them. Take her own hallway: she was friendly with an orange Flemish couple who were sunbed freaks and swingers; she fraternized with a brittle, peremptory town employee who knew everything about everything; she exchanged recipes with a young junkie who already had five children and was subject to fits of rage during which she would scratch the walls; and she bought meat and bread for a Monsieur Wilpute, an impotent, racist pensioner, on the pretext that “he may well spout a lot of nonsense,” but he was still a human being.