Sixteen

When a tentative knock came at the door and Mademoiselle Mirabeau came in, I was sitting as I had done for almost all of the last few days, bent over my desk with my head in my hands.

Since my inglorious retreat from Aurélie Bredin’s apartment I was dumbfounded. I had staggered back home, I’d stood in front of the bathroom mirror and berated myself as the total idiot who had messed everything up. I’d drunk too much in the evenings and hardly slept at night. I’d repeatedly tried to call Aurélie, but her home telephone was permanently switched to the answering machine and at the restaurant the phone was picked up by another woman who informed me robotically that Mademoiselle Bredin had no desire to speak to me.

On one occasion a man picked up (I think it was that boorish chef) and bellowed down the phone that if I didn’t stop harassing Mademoiselle Aurélie he would personally come round to the publishing house and would take great pleasure in punching me in the face.

I’d sent an e-mail to Aurélie three times, and then I got a brief answer saying that I could save myself the trouble of sending any further e-mails, as she’d delete them unread.

In those last days before Christmas I was as desperate as a man could be. It looked as if I’d irrevocably lost Aurélie: I didn’t even have her photo, and the last glance she had given me had been so full of contempt that I felt shivers down my spine every time I thought about it.

“Monsieur Chabanais?”

I raised my head wearily and looked toward Mademoiselle Mirabeau.

“I’m going to get a sandwich—shall I bring something for you?” she asked.

“No, I’m not hungry,” I said.

Florence Mirabeau approached carefully. “Monsieur Chabanais?”

“Yes, what is it?”

She looked at me with her little mimosa face.

“You look terrible, Monsieur Chabanais,” she said, hastily adding: “Please forgive me for saying that. Go on, eat a sandwich … just to please me.”

I sighed heavily. “All right, all right,” I said.

“Chicken, ham, or tuna?”

“Whatever. Just bring me anything you like.”

Half an hour later she came in with a tuna baguette and a freshly pressed jus d’orange and silently put them both down on my desk.

“Are you coming to the Christmas party this evening?” she asked.

It was Friday, next Tuesday would be Christmas Eve, and Éditions Opale was going to be shut from next week until the New Year. In recent years it had become the custom for all of us in the publishing house to go to the Brasserie Lipp on the evening of our last day at work to celebrate the ending of the year in an appropriate fashion. It was always a very jolly occasion with lots of food, laughter, and chatter. I didn’t feel up to so much merriment.

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I’m not coming.”

“Oh,” she said. “Is it because of your mother? She broke her leg, didn’t she?”

“No, no,” I answered. Why should I lie? I’d lied so much in the past few weeks that I’d lost all desire to do so anymore.

Maman had already been at home in Neuilly for five days, was able to hobble through the house quite nimbly on her crutches planning le réveillon, our Christmas feast.

“Her broken leg is getting better,” I said.

“But … what is it then?” Mademoiselle Mirabeau wanted to know.

I looked at her. “I’ve made an enormous mistake,” I said, and laid my hand on my chest. “And now … what can I say … I believe my heart is broken.” I attempted to smile, but I don’t think it really sounded like my best joke ever.

“Oh,” said Mademoiselle Mirabeau. I felt the warm wave of her sympathy spreading through the room. And then she said something that kept on going round in my head long after she’d shut the door quietly behind her.

“When you realize you’ve made a mistake, you should put it right as quickly as possible.”

*   *   *

It wasn’t very often that the publisher himself appeared in the offices of his workers, but if he did, you could be sure that it was something really important. An hour after Florence Mirabeau had been with me, Jean-Paul Monsignac pulled open my office door and fell into the chair in front of my desk with a crash.

He looked at me piercingly with his blue eyes. Then he said: “What does this mean, André … I’ve just heard that you’re not coming to the Christmas party this evening?”

I squirmed uncomfortably in my chair. “Er … no,” I said.

“May one know why?” Monsignac regarded the Christmas party at Lipp’s as sacrosanct, and he expected to see all the members of his little flock there.

“Well, I … I simply don’t feel up to it, to be honest,” I said.

“My dear André, I’m not stupid. I mean, anyone with eyes in his head can see that you can’t be feeling too good. You don’t come to the editorial meeting, cry off without giving any reason at eleven o’clock, then turn up here the next day looking like death and hardly ever emerge from your lair anymore. What’s wrong? This is not the André I know.” Monsignac eyed me thoughtfully.

I shrugged my shoulders and said nothing. What could I have said anyway? If I were to come clean with Monsignac, that would be my next problem.

“You can talk to me about anything, André, I hope you know that.”

I smiled tensely. “That’s very nice of you, Monsieur Monsignac, but I’m afraid that you are precisely the one person I can’t talk to about it.”

He leaned back in astonishment, crossed one leg over the other, and gripped his ankle in its dark blue sock with both hands.

“Now you’ve made me curious. Why can’t you talk to me about it? What nonsense!”

I looked out of the window, where the spire of the Church of Saint-Germain thrust into a rose-colored sky.

“Because then I’d probably be out of a job,” I said gloomily.

Monsignac burst out laughing. “But my dear André, what have you done that’s so bad? Have you been stealing the silverware? Groped one of the female staff? Embezzled money?” he rocked back and forth in his chair.

And then I thought of what Mademoiselle Mirabeau had said and decided to make a clean breast of it.

“It’s about Robert Miller. I haven’t been totally honest with you about the matter, Monsieur Monsignac.”

He leaned forward with interest. “Really?” he asked. “What about Miller? Are there problems with that Englishman? Out with it!”

I swallowed. It wasn’t easy to tell the truth.

“The reading was magnificent. Mon Dieu, I laughed till I cried,” Monsignac continued. “What’s up with the fellow? He said he was going to give us his new novel very soon.”

I groaned softly and put my hands in front of my face.

“What’s wrong?” asked Monsignac with alarm. “Now, André, don’t get melodramatic, just tell me what’s happened. Surely Miller will go on writing for us, or were there problems between you two? Have you by any chance fallen out?”

I shook my head almost imperceptibly.

“Has someone poached him?”

I took a deep breath and looked Monsignac in the eye.

“Promise me that you won’t fly off the handle and that you won’t shout?”

“Yes, yes … now tell me!”

“There will be no next novel by Robert Miller,” I said, and paused briefly, “for the simple reason that in reality there is no Robert Miller.”

Monsignac looked at me, astounded. “Now you’re really losing the plot, André. What’s up, have you got a fever? Have you lost your memory? Robert Miller was in Paris, don’t you remember?”

I nodded. “That’s just the point. The man at the reading was not Robert Miller. He was a dentist who pretended to be Miller to do us a favor.”

“Us?”

“Well, yes, Adam Goldberg and me. The dentist is his brother. His name is Sam Goldberg and he doesn’t live alone in a cottage with his dog, but with his wife and children in Devonshire. He has as much to do with books as I do with gold inlays. The whole thing was a setup, do you see? So that the whole story wouldn’t come out.”

“But…” Monsignac’s blue eyes fluttered in alarm. “Who did write the book then?”

“I did,” I said.

And then Jean-Paul Monsignac did start shouting anyway.

The bad thing about Monsieur Monsignac is that he becomes a force of nature when he gets worked up. “That’s monstrous! You’ve deceived me, André. I trusted you and would have put my hand in the fire to guarantee your honesty. You’ve hoodwinked me—that will have consequences. You’re fired!” he yelled, and jumped from his chair angrily.

The good thing about Monsieur Monsignac is that he calms down as quickly as he gets angry and that he has a great sense of humor.

“Unbelievable,” he said after ten minutes in which I imagined myself as an unemployed editor with the whole industry pointing the finger at me. “Unbelievable, what a coup you two brought off there. Leading all the press around by the nose. Takes a lot of nerve to get away with something like that.” He shook his head and suddenly began to laugh. “I must admit that I was a bit surprised when Miller said at the reading that the hero of his new novel was a dentist. Why didn’t you tell me from the very beginning that you were behind it, André? My goodness, I had no idea that you could write so well. You really do write well,” he repeated, and ran his hands through his graying hair.

“It was simply a sort of spontaneous idea. You wanted a Stephen Clarke, do you remember? And at that time there wasn’t an Englishman writing amusingly about Paris. And we weren’t intending to fleece you or do the company any harm. You know that the advance for that novel was an extremely modest one—and we made that back long ago.”

Monsignac nodded.

“None of us could have suspected that the book would take off so well that anyone would be interested in the author,” I continued.

“Bon,” said Monsignac, who had been walking up and down in my office the whole time, and sat down. “That’s sorted that out. And now we will talk as man to man.” He folded his arms over his chest and looked sternly at me. “I withdraw your dismissal, André. And your punishment is to come with us to the Brasserie Lipp this evening, understood?”

I nodded with relief.

“And now I want you to explain to me what this whole intrigue has to do with your broken heart. Because Mademoiselle Mirabeau is really worried. And for my part I have the feeling that we’re getting toward the heart of the matter.”

He leaned back comfortably in his chair, lit a cigarillo, and waited.

The story turned out to be a long one. Outside, the first streetlights were coming on when I finally finished speaking. “I’ve no idea what to do, Monsieur Monsignac,” I concluded unhappily. “I’ve finally found the woman I’ve always been searching for, and now she hates me! And even if I could prove to her that there really is no author called Miller, I don’t think it would be of any use. She’s so incredibly angry with me … her feelings have been so hurt … she won’t forgive me for it … never…”

“Pah-pah-pah!” Monsieur Monsignac interrupted me. “What do you think you’re saying, André? The way the story’s gone so far, nothing is yet lost. Believe a man who has a little more experience of life than you do.” He tipped the ash off his cigarillo and jiggled his foot. “You know, André, three phrases have always helped me get through difficult times: Je ne vois pas la raison, Je ne regrette rien, and not least, Je m’en fous!” He smiled. “But I’m afraid that in your case neither Voltaire nor Edith Piaf will be of any use, let alone slang words. In your case, my dear friend, only one thing will help: the truth. And nothing but the whole truth.” He stood up and came over to my desk. “Follow my advice and write this whole story up just as it happened—from the first moment that you looked through the window of that restaurant to our conversation here. And then send the manuscript to your Aurélie, pointing out that her favorite author has written a new book and that it is very important to him that she should be the first person to read it.”

He patted me on the shoulder. “It’s an incredible story, André. It’s just great! Get writing—start tomorrow morning, or better still tonight! Write for your life, my friend. Write yourself into the heart of the woman you already seduced with your first novel.”

He went over to the door and turned round once more. “And no matter how things end up”—he winked at me—“we’ll make a Robert Miller of it!”