Consent: In moral philosophy: an act of free thought
in which a person fully commits to accepting
or accomplishing something.
In law: authorization for marriage given by
the parents or guardian of a minor.
—Trésor de la langue française
ONE EVENING MY MOTHER DRAGGED ME ALONG TO A DINNER party to which some well-known literary figures had also been invited. Initially I refused to go point-blank. The company of her friends had become as excruciating to me as that of my classmates, from whom I was increasingly turning away. At the age of thirteen I was becoming a recluse. She insisted, grew angry, used emotional blackmail: I had to stop moping around on my own with my books, and anyway, what had her friends done to me, why didn’t I want to see them anymore? Eventually I gave in.
He sat at the table at a forty-five-degree angle, a conspicuously striking presence. He was handsome, of indeterminate age; his head, scrupulously maintained, was entirely bald, which made him look a little like a Buddhist monk. His eyes followed my every movement, and when I finally dared to turn toward him, he threw me a smile, which I confused for a paternal smile, because it was the smile of a man, and I no longer had a father. With his brilliant comebacks and effortlessly well-chosen quotations, this man, who I soon realized was a writer, knew how to charm his audience, and clearly had an instinctive mastery of the strictly codified rules of Parisian social interaction. Every time he opened his mouth, his fellow guests hooted with laughter, but it was on me that his eyes—amused, mesmerizing—lingered. No man had ever looked at me like that before.
I caught his Slavic-sounding name in passing, which immediately aroused my curiosity. It was just a simple coincidence, but I owe my own surname, and a quarter of my blood, to the Bohemia of Kafka, whose Metamorphosis I had just read, enthralled; moreover, at this precise point in my adolescence, I considered Dostoyevsky’s novels to be the absolute apex of literary achievement. A Russian surname, the lean physique of a Buddhist monk, preternaturally blue eyes—that was all it took to seize my attention.
Normally, during dinners like this, I would disappear off to another room, where I would let myself be lulled by the murmur of conversation, half listening, apparently distracted, but in reality acutely attentive. This particular evening, I had brought a book to read, and after the main course I took refuge in the small sitting room off the dining room where cheese was now being served (the interminable succession of courses, at no less interminable intervals). I was trying to read my book, but the words grew blurred, it was impossible to concentrate, and I suddenly sensed, from where he was sitting all the way at the other end of the room, G.’s eyes caressing my cheek. His voice, with its slight lilt, neither masculine nor feminine, insinuated itself inside me like a spell, an enchantment. Every inflection, every word, seemed addressed to me alone. Was I the only person to notice?
His presence was electric.
It was time to go. The moment—that I was afraid I’d only dreamed, the confusing feeling of being desired for the first time—was almost over. In a few minutes we’d say goodbye and I would never hear his name again. And then, as I was putting on my coat, I saw my mother flirting with the charming G., who was openly flirting back. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Of course! How could I ever have imagined that this man could be interested in me, a teenage girl who was as unattractive as a toad?
G. and my mother exchanged a few more words. She laughed, flattered by his attentions, and then turned to me.
“Are you coming, darling? We’re going to drop Michel first and then G. He lives quite near us. Then we’ll be home.”
G. sat next to me in the back seat of the car. Something magnetic passed between us. He had his arm against mine, his eyes on me, and the predatory smile of a large golden wildcat. All conversation was redundant.
The book I had taken along with me that evening, the one I’d been reading in the small sitting room, was Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet, which was to become, thanks to a play on words of which I was for a long time completely oblivious, the title of the human comedy in which I was to play the principal role: l’ingénue grandit—“the innocent grows up.”