A man’s downfall. What could be more fascinating?
François-Maxime hadn’t left the living room where the TV, permanently switched on, was endlessly broadcasting items about Zachary Bidermann. Both the main channels and the news channels were devoting their airtime to the incident on Place d’Arezzo. Endless news flashes, eyewitness reports, and discussions, trying to fill the void created by that explosion, to wipe out the feeling of stupefaction that had overwhelmed the citizens. The political eagle had been brought down in full flight: whereas the previous week Zachary Bidermann had been about to accede to supreme power, now he had been arrested, questioned by the police, kept in custody for twenty-four hours, and finally charged. In a few hours, a single thing having broken his rise, he had plunged to the bottom of the social ladder, farther than the bottom, because everyone was talking about him, his crime not benefiting from any anonymity. Excessive honor had been replaced with excessive indignity.
François-Maxime had been at the reception when the alleged rape had taken place and the victim had pointed out her attacker to the police. He was fascinated by the case. His interest didn’t derive solely from the fact that it involved his neighbor, but rather from a more basic closeness: François-Maxime projected his own downfall on Zachary Bidermann’s.
In a few seconds, he had lost his status, his happiness, his balance: Séverine’s suicide had made him a widower, responsible for four orphans. Beyond what had happened to him, the worst could still take place: the reality of his vices might be detected, his furtive encounters in male pickup areas, where his body wordlessly sought contact with identical bodies. How would his bank, financial circles, his children, his family react to a revelation like that?
For a moment, he envied Séverine for having left with her secrets intact: at least she wasn’t running any more risks. Death was still less painful than dishonor.
Much to his surprise, he discovered that he wasn’t the only one in the house to remain glued to the news; the cook, the cleaners, the handyman, all the staff seemed to be spending all their time in front of a screen, a radio, the Internet: Zachary Bidermann was the focus of everyone’s attention.
Why are they so interested? They don’t have anything to lose . . .
François-Maxime assumed there was an element of social revenge: the powerless feel pleasure at the fall of a powerful man.
That morning, waiting in his car for the children to come out so that he could drive them to school, he saw Marcelle, the concierge from the next building, come striding toward him.
“Did you see what happened to Monsieur Bidermann?”
“I was there.”
“What? You saw the rape?”
“No, I was at the reception, I saw the arrest.”
“Do you think he’s guilty?”
“I have no idea. There are lots of things that point to it.”
“Poor man! It’s a frame-up.”
“That’s also a valid theory.”
“I haven’t slept a wink all night, monsieur. I watched television so much, it made me feel dizzy.”
François-Maxime, having no desire to get on intimate terms with such a gossip, refrained from admitting that he was the same. “Why?” he asked in a less firm voice.
“Ruin, monsieur, ruin. What a fall! I told myself it could happen to me.”
He bit his lip, conscious that he mustn’t be sarcastic. She was right, anybody could fall, from a greater or lesser height . . . “Why, do you have something to hide?”
“I have nothing to hide!” Marcelle bellowed.
“Well, then?”
“Not everybody has something to hide, but everybody has something to lose.”
And with this, she turned to bawl out a man walking his dog who hadn’t taken the trouble to collect his animal’s excrement from the sidewalk. “That’s it, do just as you like! Do I take a leak outside your front door? Get out of here, you disgust me!”
As if François-Maxime had never existed, she kept on at the man even as he tried to apologize.
François-Maxime’s son and daughters came hurtling down the front steps and into the car. In the old days, Séverine would have waved to them from the door; that was something they all remembered and had to make an effort to forget.
They were driving in silence when Gwendoline, the eldest, said, “Daddy, I’ve thought a lot about Mommy. I think I know what happened.”
François-Maxime threw an anxious glance at the rearview mirror, then encouraged her to continue.
“Mommy had an incurable disease, and she knew it.”
“Who told you that?”
“I guessed.”
“Tell me more, sweetheart.”
“She found out she wouldn’t get better, so she made the first move to avoid further pain. She was thinking about us before anything else.”
“About us?”
“She didn’t want us to suffer from watching her suffer.”
They all fell silent, thinking this over. The car stopped at a red light.
“I like what you said, Gwendoline,” François-Maxime said calmly. “It’s not only plausible, it’s very like her.”
“Yes,” Guillaume said, moved. The two younger girls muttered in agreement. The car moved forward again.
François-Maxime let the idea sink in. At least this theory had the advantage of being more comforting than others: Séverine hadn’t given up on life, it was life that had given up on her. Why deny it? Didn’t harmony matter more than truth?
He dropped the children at school, gave them big, solemn hugs, as if he wanted to imprint his affection on their bodies, then got back in the car.
Normally, he would go to the bank. Or rather, no: normally, he would go the wood before going to the bank . . .
Would he do so today? He scratched the back of his neck. When it came down to it, he didn’t feel like it. Not at all. He didn’t want to feel a horse between his thighs. And he didn’t want some young man’s embraces.
He shook his head. Wasn’t it precisely because he didn’t want it that he should do it? It might help him to recover . . .
Recover from what?
Disconcerted, he sat there for a moment, his hands on the wheel, wracking his brain to figure out what it was he wanted . . .
Nothing.
He set off, hoping that the car itself would direct him.
He drove for a while and parked on the edge of the wood. No way of getting to the stables from here. So he wouldn’t ride today. He had to continue on foot.
François-Maxime abandoned his car and, advancing beneath the trunks, came to the paths where individuals wandered up and down before disappearing, in couples or in groups, into the trees.
He stopped. All at once, this merry-go-round struck him as ridiculous. Worse still, it disgusted him. In this constant stream of men on their own, he no longer saw appetite or pleasure, only sexual misery, forced anonymity, small, fleeting orgasms, frustration, dissatisfaction. They were just unfortunate people who wanted to maintain their wretched condition, sick people drinking from a poisoned well, just enough to continue being sick, not enough to die of it. Nobody was happy here. Bodies tensed beneath supposed caresses whose aim was not to last, but rather to cease. They rushed to climax, a frantic race from foreplay to ejaculation. Sperm flowed, of course, but with a cry and a grimace, merely in order to rid themselves of desire, not to achieve an apotheosis. How ugly they seemed today, these solitary hunters, with their stooped shoulders and shifty eyes, their hands in their pockets, not looking at the eyes of the other walkers, only at their groins.
A young man approached, stopped, fixed his eyes on François-Maxime, and pouted at him.
François-Maxime spat.
The young man recoiled, incredulous.
“Faggot!” François-Maxime snarled through clenched teeth.
Then he turned on his heels and strode back to his car.
Over! It’s all over! I’ll never come back here again! It’s all too sordid.
His sudden temper had made him forget the thousand times he had left the undergrowth smiling, filled with a new energy, feeling happier, more virile, more seductive. If anyone had reminded him of that, he would have denied it.
He drove to the bank. Seeing the way the guards saluted him, the respect his employees showed him, the obsequious demeanor of the executives, he came back to life. A banker and a boss, yes, I’m still that.
Entering his office, he allowed himself time to converse with his secretary, who was nervous, torn between her usual behavior and the behavior expected of her in the circumstances. He spoke to her tenderly of his children, the plans he had for his next vacation with them.
At his request, his colleagues joined him and they settled down to the problems of the moment.
Around midday, as the meeting was drawing to an end, they couldn’t help bringing up the Bidermann scandal. They all enjoyed making comments, which were more revealing of themselves than of the case itself. Some spoke from the point of view of the broken marriage, others from that of the broken career, some suggested a conspiracy, one colleague remarked on the madness to which power leads, another sought to establish a link between libido and politics.
Varnier waited for the final remark before concluding, “What a mess!”
“Yes. What a mess!”
The ambiguity of that phrase summed it up for all of them, with nobody prepared to specify if the “mess” meant Bidermann’s shattered ambitions, the violence inflicted on a woman, or how impossible it was going to be for the nation to find a better leader.
Varnier tapped François-Maxime on the shoulder. “Since you’re here, why don’t you join me in interviewing the trader we’ve been sent from Paris? I’m seeing him in five minutes.”
“All right,” he replied, anxious to avoid solitude.
Once seated in the paneled room reserved for prestigious customers, François-Maxime and Varnier asked for the applicant to be sent in.
As soon as he entered, François-Maxime raised an eyebrow. The man, who was in his thirties, was clearly homosexual. The signs were unmistakable. His suit had neither the usual cut nor the usual sobriety, his tie had a huge, almost obscene knot, his pointed shoes screamed originality. François-Maxime hated him at first sight, all the more so as the trader made it obvious, from the way he looked at him, that he was attracted to him. This casualness was the last straw, and François-Maxime decided to keep quiet and watch.
Varnier conducted the interview. The young man responded brilliantly to the questions; nothing that was thrown at him seemed to faze him. He was so competent that he even taught his interviewer a thing or two. Admiringly, Varnier ended up abandoning the usual neutral attitude; he thanked him warmly and told him that they would be sure to call him very soon.
Turning to François-Maxime, he asked him if he had anything to add.
François-Maxime pointed to the ring on the young man’s finger. “What’s that?”
“My wedding ring,” the trader replied, unperturbed.
“Are you married?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any children?”
“That might be difficult,” the trader declared with a nonchalant smile. “My husband’s name is Charles.”
François-Maxime sank further into his chair.
Immediately, the young man looked straight at him. “Is that a problem?”
“I find your tone aggressive.”
“Reassure me and it won’t be. Is it a problem?”
“Of course it isn’t!” Varnier exclaimed.
The trader nodded, but indicated François-Maxime. “I was talking to Monsieur de Couvigny.”
Finding the applicant’s attitude really distasteful, François-Maxime got to his feet. “We are a family business, monsieur.”
“I have a family too, monsieur.”
“Not like ours.”
The trader absorbed this, and stood up, dignified. He shook Varnier’s hand. “I’m pleased to have met you, but, since I’m sure I’ll have no difficulty finding a job, I must tell you—and I’m really sorry about this—that I prefer to be part of a company that takes me as I am. Forgive me if I’ve wasted your time.”
Then, without a word or a look at François-Maxime, he left the room.
“Good riddance!” François-Maxime cried when the door had closed.
Varnier shuddered. “Please, I never want to see that again.”
“What?”
“A performance like that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That kind of homophobia.”
“You think I’m homophobic? That guy’s no homo, he’s just a caricature.”
“Shut up, François-Maxime! I feel ashamed. He was the best candidate we’ve interviewed, it was really hard for me to persuade him to come to Brussels, and you just wipe your hands of him. Your excuse is that you’ve just suffered a terrible loss. For that reason, and that reason alone, I’ll forgive you.”
Varnier slammed the door.
François-Maxime sat there in the middle of the oak-paneled room. Varnier hadn’t got it wrong: he couldn’t stand homosexuals anymore, didn’t want to meet them, and wished he could wipe them out.
Seeing his children again at dinner cheered him. When he was with them, he no longer questioned himself; he could listen to them, talk to them, play his role as a father.
The meal continued on its untroubled way, lively and full of energy. His son and daughters amused themselves talking about their day, and exchanging information about the new James Bond they were planning to see on the big screen. Over dessert, François-Maxime promised to take them to the movies on Saturday night.
He accompanied each of them to his or her room, chatted at the foot of the bed, then, dismissing the domestics, went to the living room, where the television immediately started churning out news of the Bidermann affair.
Attention had now shifted to the victim, Petra von Tannenbaum, described as a “contemporary artist” who “performed” in the most fashionable galleries—clearly, a zealous press attaché had distributed the information. She was depicted as a well-balanced, self-confident woman who had transformed her body into a work of art, or rather into the instrument of works of art: the performances that she gave.
Intrigued, François-Maxime examined the few images of her that kept passing on a loop. The woman’s evident sophistication attracted him. Not sexually, but in another way . . . It struck him that she was right, that artifice constituted an aim, or rather, a refuge. Strange thoughts sprang up in him. For an hour, he had the feeling he was forgetting his grief and his troubles, fascinated as he was by Petra von Tannenbaum.
When the endless replaying of the identical clips and comments started to wear him down, he went to his bedroom.
The room was filled with Séverine’s things.
Mechanically, François-Maxime sat down on her seat by the dressing table, where every evening she would sit and methodically take off her jewelry and loosen her hair.
He looked at himself in the mirror, grabbed the brush, and used it. This gesture filled him with an exquisite calm. Enchanted, he sat down and opened the drawers containing her makeup.
Touched by the smell of lily of the valley that reminded him of Séverine, he applied foundation cream to his cheeks. Strange . . . he and she had almost identical complexions. Carried away by his experiment, he put on powder, mascara, and eyebrow pencil, finally choosing a lipstick for himself.
Looking at the result in the mirror, he thought he looked ridiculous. Above all, he found himself neither handsome nor beautiful: he was no longer a man, but wasn’t a woman. Nevertheless, he took a genuine pleasure in gazing at himself, as if he were escaping a danger, a threat . . .
Standing up, he opened the wardrobe and chose from among Séverine’s dresses the one that suited him. Completing the transformation, he put on stockings and high-heeled shoes—here, the choice was limited to those she had bought in the United States, getting the size wrong.
He looked at himself in the stand-up mirror. What did he look like? A woman? No. A transvestite. He shrugged. Well, why not?
Taking a few steps around the room, he evaluated his body sheathed in a dress on high heels: neither the balance nor the sensations was anything like what he was familiar with.
He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. Thirty minutes after midnight . . .
Carrying his shoes in his hand, he descended the stairs, taking care not to make any noise, walked out through the front door, put his shoes back on, and set off into the night.
For a hundred yards, he didn’t meet any of his neighbors. When he saw a friend of Séverine’s coming out of a house, he ran under a tree; once the danger was past, he hailed a passing taxi and told the driver to take him to the Flemish quarter in the lower town, where the chances of meeting people he knew were minimal.
The following nights, he continued his quest for transformation. After midnight, he would do his hair, call a driver, and plunge into the Flemish-speaking quarters. His nocturnal wanderings had no aim other than to take him away from himself. He never let a man approach, let alone hit on him; nor did he allow any woman to start up a conversation. He didn’t want sex, he had no desire to shine, he just wanted to be. To be different. To leave the character of François-Maxime de Couvigny magnificently ensconced on Place d’Arezzo, to abandon the weeping widower, the devoted father, the efficient banker, and be content with an imprecise identity, to exist because he was walking on high heels, to feel the lace on his thighs or the thin straps on his collarbone. He offered to the air a face protected by cream that was even, beige, smooth, perfect, thick, and gave him a sense of perfection.
Frequenting the all-night stores, the french-fry stalls, the bars, talking briefly with the traders, he discovered the people of the night, who were different and open to difference. Now it no longer seemed to him that Brussels comprised two cities, the French-speaking and the Flemish-speaking, but four, since on top of these two the day city and the night city were superimposed. Overwhelmed with joy, he discovered a Chinese supermarket open until two in the morning, where he could hang out as an ordinary customer, examining the underwear, the cosmetics, the hygienic articles.
Before each escape, the time he spent in front of the mirror became a time of passionate involvement. He had become an expert at makeup, and loved to use it, like a Japanese Noh actor, adding, at the last moment, imperfections that produced an illusion of naturalness: blush on the cheeks, shading on the temples, marks on the bridge of the nose. Painting someone else on his face gave him a feeling of serenity.
One Friday night, at one in the morning, he was walking up a cobbled street. At the end of the street, a group of revelers was coming out of a bar. He slowed down to avoid them, then continued on his way, his progress made difficult by the uneven ground.
As he passed the bar, another man came running out after the others, crying, “Hey, wait for me!”
François-Maxime found himself face-to-face with the trader he had interviewed not long before.
The young man stopped in astonishment, thought for a moment, hesitated. The light from the street lamp was falling directly on them and its orange glow accentuated every feature, every contour of their faces, almost clinically. The man recognized the banker who had mistreated him.
“It . . . It . . . It isn’t true!”
A snigger hovered over his lips, invaded his eyes, his face, his body . . . The trader was screaming with laughter.
François-Maxime stood there frozen, unable to react.
The trader was holding his stomach, bent double, trying to control his breathing, savouring his discovery.
François-Maxime tore himself away and started running. Alas, running on high-heeled shoes wasn’t something he was in the habit of doing, and he twisted his ankles several times, which merely increased the hilarity of the man watching him from a distance. At last, he turned several corners and disappeared from his sight, escaping his mockery.
He hailed a taxi and returned home. Even though humiliated, he felt a curious relief: he knew that this excursion had been the last one; he would no longer resort to cross-dressing; he had exhausted its pleasures as well as the need for it. Chilling but effective, the trader’s infernal sneering had cured him.
When the taxi dropped him on Place d’Arezzo, he had the impression that a shadowy figure was moving on the roof of his house. He thought he was dreaming, but then again glimpsed the figure between the chimney pots. At that moment, a man appeared, walking his dog, and François-Maxime hurriedly rushed into the house rather than take the risk of being identified. He ran up to his room, took off his clothes, hastily removed his makeup with a hot towel, put on a man’s robe, armed himself with a golf club, and went up to the attic. There was no doubt about it, someone was trying to break in through the roof.
When he opened the skylight, the cold air hit him in the face. He couldn’t see anything abnormal. Either he had been the victim of a mirage, or the man had fled.
Pensively, he went back downstairs, visited every room to make sure no intruder was hiding there, half-opened the doors to all the children’s rooms, then, reassured, went back to his own.
The days resumed their normal form, and so did the nights. In the evening, François-Maxime would devote himself to his children, then go to bed, forcing himself to read a novel until sleep overcame him.
One morning, a letter from Niger made his heart beat faster. Niamey? Wasn’t that the town where Séverine’s sister had moved twenty years earlier, when their family had broken up? Through the diplomatic service, he had attempted to inform her of the death.
The letter was indeed from Ségolène. He read it immediately:
Dear François-Maxime,
I hope you don’t mind me saying “dear.” I want to thank you for contacting me and for taking care of my sister’s children, who have nobody but you now.
I’ll be brief. If I went into details, this letter would become a novel.
I loved my sister Séverine. I’ve just been crying for a long time after learning of her tragic death. Although I hadn’t seen her for many years, it wasn’t because of her, but rather because of the context with which she was associated, in other words, my parents. I won’t go on about the sense of guilt that exists side by side with the grief because 1) it’s obvious 2) I feel no remorse.
I fled my family a long time ago. Why? I wanted to save my life. Clearly I did the right thing, because my sister has just lost hers. Our family is cursed. The reason I’m writing to you is that I want it to cease.
I have no memory of being taught to speak when we were children, whereas I remember perfectly well being taught to keep silent. We weren’t supposed to express our feelings or ask others to explain theirs, we weren’t supposed to ask indiscreet questions, let alone give answers to them. In short, I grew up with my parents, my brother, and my sister, like a cow in a cowshed.
Our family wasn’t comprised of love but of silences. Learning of Séverine’s tragic end, I thought I should tell you that.
Be vigilant, François-Maxime, because what happened in the past has just happened again, and may yet happen in the future.
Our grandmother on our father’s side threw herself out of a window. I only discovered that recently, I don’t know if my sister knew it. Did she consciously copy her? Or had she stored deep in her mind a memory transmitted through some channel other than words?
Yes, our grandmother threw herself off a building, just like Séverine. She was unhappy. She was a pretty woman, and she preferred women to men. Her husband discovered it, and threatened to have her institutionalized. She preferred to kill herself.
Our father loved his mother, who died when he was seven. How do I know he loved her? When he died, we found lots of photographs of her in his room; he even kept one in his wallet. It seems my father felt terrible about her death and never got over it.
Did Séverine tell you? Our family split apart when our elder brother Pierre discovered that our father was a transvestite. Oh, he didn’t sell his body, no, he dressed up in women’s clothes and paraded through the streets. At the time, this news destroyed us, put an end to whatever harmony we had. Because it revealed a monster beneath the outward shell of a father we feared and worshipped. Because it demonstrated that nobody knew anybody in our household. Because it said loud and clear that everybody was lying. I left France with Boubakar, my boyfriend then, my husband now.
Although I don’t regret getting away, I regret that I didn’t try to understand. Why did our father dress as a woman? I’ve been putting together the threads and I realize my father was trying to find his mother again, to rejoin her through her clothes, her hairstyles, her accessories, her femininity; my father still loved his dead mother; if he couldn’t bring her back to life, at least he could get closer to her. It was pathetic, ridiculous, tender, beautiful, desperate. And we didn’t understand it. Did he understand it himself? You can’t cure yourself of yourself.
After our father died, then our mother and our brother, I refused the inheritance. I advised Séverine to do the same. If she had followed my advice, we would have been close sisters, and she probably wouldn’t be dead now . . . She agreed to shoulder the burden. I remain convinced that she didn’t just inherit the family money but also the family fate. In getting those millions, she also got the problems, the silences, our curse.
Traumas repeat themselves, François-Maxime, especially when we’re unaware of them. We inherit what we don’t know. Silence kills.
That day, François-Maxime merely pretended to do his work; in reality he couldn’t stop thinking about Séverine, or about his children.
At midnight, he was still thinking about them, sitting on the balcony, looking out over Place d’Arezzo, where the parrots and parakeets, quiet at last, were sleeping.
Suddenly, a hurried takeoff broke the peace. In a cacophony of feathers and screeching, the birds perched on the highest branches flew up in a panic, scared by something opposite them.
Trying to see what was going on, François-Maxime leaned forward and looked up at the top of his house.
Once again, a shadowy figure was visible between the chimney pots.
This time, François-Maxime rushed up to the top floor and came out onto the roof less than a minute after the commotion.
Beneath the gray moon, Guillaume watched in astonishment as his father emerged from the skylight. In his fright, he almost slipped and had to hold on to a TV antenna.
“Daddy?”
“Guillaume, sweetheart, what are you doing here?”
The boy was surprised to hear “sweetheart” instead of being bawled out. Seeing his son on the edge of the void, François-Maxime immediately realized what was going on: the child was trying to get to know his mother better, to resemble his mother, maybe even to see his mother again. He was flirting with oblivion, caressing suicide.
He ran to the boy and hugged him in his arms. “Come, Guillaume. You have to talk to me.”
“Aren’t you with the lady?”
“What lady?”
“The one who’s taken Mommy’s place. The one who comes to see you at night.”
François-Maxime smiled, painfully. “Come, sweetheart. I have to talk to you too. Nobody’s perfect.”
And, with his child in his arms, François-Maxime climbed back down the stepladder to the cluttered attic, vowing that he would never again hide from his son the complexity of human beings, not Severine’s, and not his own, even if it meant losing his pride or the ideal image of himself that he had fabricated.