There is nothing in this notebook about The Good Novel at its beginnings, nothing about the initial conversations in January, 2004 in Méribel, nothing about the months of preparation in Paris, or the bookstore opening at the end of August, 2004, nothing about the assaults or attacks against the committee members. The entire notebook is written by someone called “I” and is addressed to someone as “you,” and it is clear from the numerous details that this “you” can only be Ivan. Every entry has a date, from July 2, 2004 until the long explanation on January 20, 2006.
A year and a half, seven pages: it is like reading an essential journal.
In the beginning, from July, 2004, to May, 2005, it is like a portrait, with a few light brushstrokes.
July 20, 2004.
You are looking. You are listening. You reply more often than you take the initiative to speak. I know no one who is less centered upon himself than you are.
November 4, 2004.
When you laugh, your eyes light up. Their blue becomes pale and shining.
These are just examples. There are four pages of this portrait.
At the end of 2004, the tone changes. The “I” goes on stage, becomes active. It joins the “you.”
December 25, 2004.
The forest at Marly. It has been snowing. Cold, sun. It is hard for me to resist taking you by the arm and walking close to you.
On February 19, 2005, Francesca writes down a dream—I already referred to it.
We are in a room where there are a great many people . . . I can’t look straight at you . . . With one foot, you step on my toes . . . You are standing next to me. You are pressing your body against mine and at the same time, you take hold of my wrist behind my back . . . Everyone saw what you did.
With the entry dated April 15, 2005, there is a change of direction. It’s no longer about waiting and observation. Something has happened. There has been a confession, and then an immediate retreat, withdrawal. (That, in any case, is how Ivan remembers it; he remembers clearly explaining that his heart was taken. He remembers the conversation almost word for word.)
April 15, 2005.
The moment had come to talk to you.
Everything has been said. You love someone else.
I say: that’s perfect. I wasn’t asking for anything. I am expecting nothing from you.
I must look like a child who is lying.
Nothing more. But on the next day, the sixteenth, she goes back over that moment. She is not pleased with herself. It’s not entirely her fault—Van would not let her speak—but she was ambiguous:
April 16, 2005.
I let my attraction overstep its bounds. And yet I had sworn I would say nothing. Why did I talk to you about it, when I had resolved not to make the least little gesture toward you, and I’m still resolved, and will remain so? What is done is done. But I said too much, and too little.
You must have thought I was stepping aside when I learned that you loved someone else. You were not mistaken. That’s not all, however. Some day I will have to tell you why, how and why I am not free. This is not easy for me. It’s so hard for me to think about it, to start with. And I must be sincere: I have little desire to dot my i’s.
Anyway, I said the most important thing. I am expecting nothing from you. I told you so.
But how did you understand? And did you really understand? I had just suggested the contrary.
But I’m giving myself too much importance. Why should you care about what’s deep in my heart? You have shown me your own, and the face that you see there. I’m glad you did. It is what you had to say. It simplifies everything, both for you and for me. How I am tied, or how I am free, matters little: you are not free.
After these lines on April 15 and 16, and right to the end, the notebook entries state the facts. It is a diary of self-effacement.
April 19, 2005.
For you, in any case, there is no more doubt. Things are simple. You have shown me a message from the young woman, that you don’t understand. I translated for you. Give me time, she is saying. Keep talking to me.
June 11, 2005.
Little Anis is working at The Good Novel. It’s impossible not to like her, that’s the problem. It would have been easier for me if she had annoyed me, or been unpleasant with me.
June 15, 2005.
Every day. Every day I see that radiant young woman.
June 18, 2005.
Orta. I used the pretext that I have work to do on the house. Alone, alone. I could sell the bookstore, never set foot in Paris. Without going that far, the easiest would be if I withdraw from The Good Novel. You could run it very well without me. But I don’t even have the strength to make that simple decision.
August 20, 2005.
Méribel, for the last time, no doubt. As my beloved old grandfather used to say, quoting a Jesuit friend of his who was dying: one must arrive naked.
The last page of the notebook is dated January 20, 2006. It is the longest of the texts. These words for an introduction: After our lunch at La Grille.
This time, it’s finished, I’ve lost you. Talking about Henri, you said, as if it were perfectly obvious: You love him, and I did not correct you.
I would not be so blind as to think everything has been said. I said so little, over my full plate where a tear fell with a little plop. But no doubt for you everything has been heard.
I do not want to lose you. But nor did I want to go on lying, or being insincere. You probably did not understand my reasons: I was so confused, once again. I am going to try, in writing, to be a bit clearer. Maybe some day you will read this page.
My grandfather had been dead for three months, and I had no close family left, when I met Henri. I could hardly stand. He held out his hand. I didn’t know where to go, and what he showed me was dazzling.
He wasn’t what he is now. He was an extremely intelligent senior executive, enterprising and creative. And then he was stricken with the two viruses of money and power, and he became cynical. But that dazzling love when we first met—that is something I remain faithful to. I no longer force myself: I am not free from it. It is not a principle, still less an effort of will.
In those days I conceived of our love as something written in eternity. I do not conceive of it as anything else today, the love we had then. What came later did not soil that period of our love. Time has had no hold on it, nor has death, since in a way, that love is truly dead.
And while that love may be, for me, a kind of steady beacon, it does not mean that I live with it serenely. I love you and I am tied by a love elsewhere, in the past, something both dead and alive, and wrenching.
That is why, even though I am so happy to see you, I could only let you know this in the vaguest of ways, the one time I opened myself to you, in an unfinished sentence, before telling you firmly that I expected nothing from you. That was so much simpler to say, that I was expecting nothing, and moreover it was true. I had nothing to offer you and I wanted nothing from you, or above all with you.
It so happened that at that time, you were in love with a young woman, and I immediately thought that she was expecting everything from you. The situation was simple, was it not?
But if I am to be sincere, I don’t want to hide from you the fact that every day, in your presence, I have experienced what people call somewhat excessively the sufferings of death and passion.
You must have wondered why I disappeared, sometimes, why from time to time I wouldn’t answer. Here is why: no matter how much one tries to expect nothing, to want nothing, it is not easy to see a young woman playing the role one would have liked to have in another life, and to see her happy and, what is even harder, to see her making someone else happy.
Everything is fine. There is nothing for me to find fault with, nothing at all. I hold no grudges, either with you or with her, of course, or even with myself. But what may happen, simply, is that the ordeal will get to be too much for me, and I may feel obliged to take my leave, out of weakness, or in a surge of energy, so that at last I can catch my breath.
Van and I spoke about those few pages for hours. I had difficulty believing they had been written by that great lady—I could still see her poise, her assurance, how boldly she stood up to each blow, her admirable eyes and her singular beauty.
She was contradictory but simple, explained Ivan. As a woman she was faithful to a first love, yet when she was in love, she did not know which way to turn when she saw that her rival was winning. Intrepid and weary, serene and suffering. Both the indomitable woman who faced up to things, with a smile on her face, and a broken woman who, in the end, collapsed.
Ivan and I began to use her expression, “to take her leave.” To talk about Francesca’s death we would say, She has taken her leave. The day she took her leave. Since Francesca took her leave.