Marcel Proust opened his heavy-lidded eyes and gave her a look that was kindly, with a touch of irony, as if to say he knew why she was there. Violaine stared at the author of In Search of Lost Time – those dark circles under his eyes, that impeccably combed moustache, the jet-black hair. He was wearing his sealskin coat and sitting on a wooden chair, right beside her bed. His right hand rested on the ivory and silver handle of his cane, while his left smoothly stroked the gleaming pelt of the coat. Violaine turned her head on the pillow and saw that her room was filled with silent, almost immobile visitors. The man in the beige polo neck with wild hair and that strange goatee but no moustache could only be Georges Perec. A black cat perched on a table was enjoying his caresses, showing its appreciation by extending its muzzle towards him. They were looking at each other as if conversing by telepathy.
In cords and a faded denim shirt, Michel Houellebecq stood by the window, gazing into the distance. He was drawing very slowly on a cigarette, wreathed in a cloud of blue smoke. With his stringy hair, long at the back, and his thin lips, he looked like an old witch.
Violaine wanted to call out, ‘Michel!’ but no sound came from her lips.
She hadn’t noticed at first, but there was also a young woman sitting at the foot of her bed, staring at the wall and murmuring things that Violaine could not hear. The woman’s hair was loosely knotted, and with her long white dress and profile like a cameo brooch, she was easily recognisable as Virginia Woolf. Violaine closed her eyes then reopened them. They were all still there. She turned towards the other window and there against the light could be seen the tall figure of Patrick Modiano. He appeared to be in urgent conversation with a blonde girl in a black dress, whose face Violaine could not see. He was having to lean over so that he was on the girl’s level. The girl nodded.
‘Patrick …’ Violaine would have liked to say. But once again, not a word passed her lips. However, Modiano did turn slowly towards her and studied her anxiously. He smiled slightly and put a finger to his lips.
‘She opened her eyes … She’s coming round.’ It was a woman’s voice.
‘Go and get Professor Flavier. Everything’s fine, you are not alone,’ the voice went on. And Violaine wanted to reply that no, she was definitely not alone. Proust, Houellebecq, Perec, Woolf and Modiano were with her.
Two million French people dream of having their book published if the surveys that have appeared over the years are to be believed. Most of them never get round to actually writing the book. Their draft stays in their head all their lives – a dream that they like to entertain on holiday. Except that they always choose swimming in the pool, or checking the temperature of the barbecue over sitting at a table in the gloom of the house to reread the pages they wrote the day before by the light of their computer screen. They will often talk about the book they have in their head. At first their nearest and dearest are admiring, then, seeing the years pass with nothing produced, they exchange knowing glances every time the would-be author, looking resolute, mentions their upcoming book by saying, ‘I’m going to sit down and write it this summer.’ But nothing will be written that summer. Nor the next. And certainly not in winter. All those phantom books form a sort of enveloping cloud around literature like the ozone layer around the earth.
Those who will never write more than three pages and an outline are, on the whole, harmless. No readers’ room will ever be troubled by their manuscripts arriving in the post. Some other aspiring authors will decide to get down to it properly. Whether it takes them three months or five years of their life, they want to see and to hold in their hands that thick rectangle of white paper, spiral-bound, with, on the cover, a title and their name in Times New Roman size 25 and also the little words ‘A Novel’. Their manuscript. This copy, when it has finally been printed out, from the cover page to the very last sentence, will be the fruit of sleepless nights, of rising at dawn, of notes scribbled down in the metro or in airports, of ideas that came to them suddenly in the shower or in the middle of a business lunch like an attacking wasp. The only way to deal with them will have been to write them down as quickly as possible – either jotted down in a red Moleskine, or in Notes on their phone. These sudden ideas will have been crucial for the novel. Or not.
For those people who persevere all the way to ‘The End’ but know no one in the publishing world, the day will come when they have to send their manuscript out to editors. One morning or evening they will go to a photocopy shop, and ask for ten or twenty copies of their work with a transparent cover, a cardboard back (black or white) and plastic spiral binding (black or white). There are only two colours available. When they get home with their carrier bag as heavy as a little dead donkey, it will be time to slip their covering letter into each copy. Like a letter of recommendation – but from themselves!
Some letters – the kind Violaine prefers – are very simple. Others are unbearably pretentious, claiming for the work a place somewhere between James Joyce and Maurice G. Dantec, or Jim Harrison and Ernest Hemingway. Still others will imply that they know someone influential, without specifying whom – as if that constitutes a veiled threat. The hint of a power that can immediately be invoked in the event that the manuscript is turned down. Violaine kept the funniest, the most ridiculous and the most pathetic in a file in her office for the readers’ room archive. The file was labelled ‘Insects’ which might be taken to mean the file contained information on beetles. But if you knew Violaine, you knew that ‘insect’ – actually a very ordinary little word – was, when she said it, the ultimate insult.
Phrases such as ‘That other insect emailed me this morning …’ or directly to someone’s face, ‘Do you know who you’re talking to? Insect …’ peppered the speech, usually so refined and friendly, of the elegant forty-something whom everyone found so charming with her green eyes and reddish-brown, shoulder-length hair.
To be called ‘Insect’ by Violaine Lepage, editor and head of manuscript services, was to be consigned to the lowest form of humanity; it would have been preferable to be a stone. Even authors, journalists, editors, photographers, film producers and agents were not immune from being labelled ‘insects’. Once you became an insect, you would be an insect all your life, there was no antidote for that metamorphosis. No return to grace was possible. The status of insect was conferred on you in perpetuity. That was how Violaine operated. She had reigned over her manuscript domain for more than twenty years, having started as a reader before ascending through the hierarchy.
The would-be author was never an insect, nor really a man or a woman. They were not identified by face or age or job. All they were was a name – possibly not even their own – at the top of the first page of their manuscript. What did it matter whether you were called Damien Perron or Nathalie Lefort, Leila Alaoui or Marc Da Silva, whether you were born in 1996 or 1965, if you were a waiter in a brasserie or senior management at AXA, if your family had lived in the Auvergne for ten generations or you were a second-generation immigrant? What mattered was your text; the text you would dispatch one grey morning or one evening from your local post office, where you had been going for ever to send registered letters and formal correspondence, but which that day would take on a special significance. That day you would be more aware of the other people than usual; you would not want them looking over your shoulder and seeing the names of the publishing houses written on the thick brown envelopes along with the words ‘For the attention of the manuscript service’ like a declaration of helplessness, a sign that you don’t have enough influence to get your manuscript read by any other means. The scale will tell you how much postage is needed for the weight and destination of your parcel, all you have to do is press the button for ‘No. of parcels’. And the number you enter will be the number of publishers you are entrusting your innards to, your child, the companion of your nights, the torment of your early mornings. Your masterpiece.
Finally, there will be a huge pile which will need both hands to carry out of the post office, and then you will feed the envelopes one by one into the relevant postbox. Usually the destination will be Paris. With two or three exceptions, all the publishers who count have a Parisian address. The dull thud as they land at the bottom of the dark interior of the postbox will perhaps give you the disagreeable sensation that you have just thrown your novel in the bin. Who will care? Who will bother responding? So you will hastily shove the remaining copies into the letterbox as if getting rid of a corpse in the woods at the dead of night.
Once home, you will pour yourself a big glass of wine or whisky. You will feel like crying but you won’t, nor will you tell any of your nearest and dearest about your painful postal experience. You won’t speak of it, in the same way that you don’t tell anyone when you have done something bad for fear that you will be judged, or worse that you will judge yourself as you recount your misdeed.
‘Did you send your manuscript off?’ someone will ask you that evening.
‘Yes,’ will be all you say before changing the subject.
‘Violaine … Lepage.’
‘And what do you do?’
‘I’m an editor. Where did they go?’
‘Who?’
‘… Where am I?’
‘In hospital, in Paris. Everything’s going to be fine. Rest now, I’ll come back later.’
Violaine closed her eyes.
‘There’s no such thing as an undiscovered genius.’ Violaine often murmured that phrase like a mantra, as her green eyes scanned first the packages strewn over her desk each morning – the publisher received between ten and fifteen every day – and then the manuscripts piled up on the shelves waiting to be read. Behind each one, a life; behind each one, hope. Every day that a manuscript remains on the shelf is another day of anguish for its author who, every morning, expects to receive a letter in response, or an email or phone call. Their story has captivated the publisher; literature, so long deprived of the author’s great talent, will now be properly served.
Five hundred thousand rejections a year, across all publishing houses. What becomes of all those stories? All those fictional characters? The public will never know them, and soon they will be forgotten by the professional readers of publishers’ manuscript services. Nothingness awaits them, like those defunct satellites drifting in outer space which even the Deep Space Network no longer monitors. Most authors want their precious manuscript to be returned to them. They can supply a small fortune’s worth of stamps so that the publisher will send it back. Or they can go to the publishing house themselves and collect it. Few choose that option. They have dreamed of going to the publisher to be greeted with warm anticipation, to be offered a seat in a large armchair, to say yes, they would like a cup of coffee, to talk a bit about themselves and their book, and finally to produce a beautiful fountain pen and to sign their first contract which they believe – sometimes correctly – will mark the beginning of a new life. So, to go in and ask at reception for the return of their rejected manuscript which an intern would retrieve and hand over with an embarrassed smile and a ‘have a good day’ would be more than they could bear.
‘Madame, I am disappointed that you and your publishing house have not seen fit to take on a manuscript as good as mine. This speaks volumes about the state of our country and its literary culture. It is for that reason that I no longer read French novels and haven’t for a long time …’
‘You obviously enjoy turning down the manuscripts of good people and just publish people you know. Editors are scum. Enemies of the people!’
‘I have received my manuscript back from you in the post. I placed a hair on page 357 and I see that it is still there. You haven’t read my work. I know that publishers never read any submissions.’
Anonymous: ‘To the Manuscript Service: you can all go and fuck yourselves!’
‘I have decided to end my life. Only the publication of my book could persuade me that life is worth living.’
‘I am going to call my friend who is a politician and I think you will see that I’m not just anyone.’
‘All my friends and family tell me my book is amazing! You’re depriving the world of a wonderful story and your publishing house is missing out on a big success.’
Letters as colourful as those are rare. They form part of a file within the ‘Insects’ file labelled ‘Sometimes they write back!’
The point of a publisher’s manuscript service is to find new authors and to publish them. This mission is accomplished two or three times a year. And when it happens, it makes up for all those hours spent reading the prose of strangers, those thousands of opened envelopes, hundreds of reports written, thousands of form letters sent all over the country and sometimes across the world. ‘We are sorry to inform you that we will not be publishing your book because despite its many qualities it does not fit our lists.’ Yes, two or three times a year the readers’ room erupts. A murmured ‘I think we have something here’ is often the first sign.
That’s what happened six months ago with Camille Désencres’s Sugar Flowers. A text of 170 pages, bound with its transparent cover and cardboard back, sent for the kind attention of the manuscript service. Marie, the youngest of the readers, opened it after she had read the very simple covering letter: ‘Hello, my name is Camille Désencres, I hope you will like my book. Best wishes CD.’ At page 27 she uttered the words, ‘I think we have something here.’ Stéphane and Murielle looked up. An hour and a half later Marie had finished Sugar Flowers.
‘Well?’ asked Stéphane.
Marie smiled then uncapped her pen and drew a sun on the cover. ‘More like a heatwave, in fact,’ she said.
There were three symbols used in the manuscripts department.
Square: reject.
Crescent moon: not uninteresting, worth reworking – or the author could submit another text which would be considered favourably.
Sun: publish as soon as possible.
The normal procedure on discovering such a gem from the mass of manuscripts was for the reader to rise immediately from their desk, to leave one of the four reading cubicles and walk the ten metres to knock on Violaine’s door. But the day Sugar Flowers was discovered, Violaine was on a business trip to London.
‘Hello Violaine, it’s Marie. I think I have found a sun in the manuscripts. Could you let me know how we should proceed since you won’t be back for another four days?’
The message remained unanswered for several hours, but then a text arrived, ‘Wonderful, Marie. I trust your judgement, but since I won’t be able to read it straight away, get Béatrice to read it as soon as possible. Keep me posted.’
‘I’ll have it taken to Béatrice and let you know.’
Béatrice was the fourth member of the reading room. And, at seventy-five years old, the eldest. Violaine valued her experience and knowledge of contemporary literature. She too had come to the manuscript department via the post, but for once, the envelope had not contained a heavy stack of bound paper, just a simple letter, beautifully phrased and very moving. She explained that she read on average four books a week, and wrote a reader’s report for each one, just for fun. Should the publishing house need a manuscript reader, perhaps she could make herself useful. It would be a great pleasure for her since her days had been free for a very long time. She also said that she lived five minutes away from the publisher. Violaine had contacted her and said she would drop in after a lunch, adding ‘I’ll make a note of the code for your apartment block and the floor you’re on,’ only to be told there wasn’t one and she should just ring the bell.
There was only one bell with no name. When Violaine rang and announced herself, the heavy door opened onto what appeared to be the principal room of a house. There were Persian carpets, Louis XV armchairs and what looked like a Canaletto on the wall. It might have been a copy, but Violaine did not think so. ‘Come up, Madame Lepage, I’m on the first floor!’
Violaine was a little disconcerted by the abrupt change from the outside world to this luxurious interior. She crossed the room which led into another with a tiled floor. And beyond that there was a large sunny garden at the end of which you could make out a flower-covered arbour and a swing seat. Violaine had not known that such an incredible place could exist less than five minutes from the manuscript service. She went up a wide wooden staircase and found herself in an immense drawing room covered in cashmere hangings where the tables and dressers were decorated with fine glass or bronze ornaments. A woman with short white hair and dark glasses sat on a sofa, an incredibly well-toned young man in shorts and T-shirt, his hair tied in a ponytail, by her side. ‘Come over … I’m sorry I can’t get up, I have trouble walking. It’s so kind of you to take the trouble to come here,’ said Béatrice.
Violaine shook her hand, noticing the rings, one diamond, one ruby, each the size of a dice, then sat down on one of the armchairs.
Béatrice introduced the young man: ‘Marc – I couldn’t do without him,’ and Marc smiled politely.
As they drank a glass of orange juice and a cup of coffee,
Béatrice told Violaine which books she had read recently and others she had read previously. She remembered reading Michel Houellebecq’s Whatever when it had appeared in 1994 and how she had straight away concluded that he would go far. Marc passed Violaine some reports on novels that had just been published. Béatrice was obviously very good at analysing a text, highlighting the negative and positive aspects.
‘I would be very happy to send you over some manuscripts and then we will see if we can work together. And if it works out I will have to give you a salary.’
‘I couldn’t accept payment,’ said Béatrice.
‘Yes, you must,’ insisted Violaine.
‘But, you see … I own the whole of this street,’ murmured Béatrice.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Yes, there are still some old Parisian families who were able to keep their family’s inheritance intact across the generations. This street is not all that big.’
‘You mean all the buildings in the street belong to you?’
‘Yes, all the residents are my tenants. I have never worked, and that’s enabled me to read thousands of books.’
‘I’ll have to get you to sign a confidentiality agreement. It’s a very simple contract by which you would agree not to divulge the contents of the manuscripts,’ said Violaine, taking a copy out of her bag and proffering it to Béatrice. Marc immediately took it carefully and signed it himself, leaning on the low table.
‘I’m afraid it’s not for you to sign, Monsieur …’
‘Marc has power of attorney. Oh, you haven’t realised! That’s delightful and gives me great pleasure, Madame Lepage.’
‘Realised what?’
‘I’m blind.’
There was a long silence. ‘But … how do you manage to read?’
‘Marc, it’s Marc who reads to me. For a good ten years before Marc there was Patrick, and before Patrick, Fabrice … I have always preferred to have men read to me.’
Before she left, Béatrice asked Violaine if she would do her a favour. Marc had described Violaine from photographs on the internet, but Béatrice asked if she could touch her face. Violaine moved closer and closed her eyes, letting Béatrice’s warm, dry hands gently move across her cheeks, forehead and cheekbones. ‘You are very beautiful. And you are wearing Guerlain’s Eau de Cologne Impériale.’
‘I am!’ said Violaine, thinking how unique her job was, full of unexpected and mysterious encounters.
‘It’s your leg that’s the problem. Rehabilitation will take a long time and I have to warn you that it’s not certain you will ever have full use of it. You will probably have to walk with a stick for the rest of your life.’
‘It’s not my leg that’s the problem, it’s this!’ said Violaine, tapping the books page in Le Monde as it lay open on her bed, and nearly knocking out her drip in the process. Camille Désencres had made it onto the shortlist of the Prix Goncourt … but had disappeared! No one knew where the author was. ‘What are we going to do?’ she wailed, addressing Stéphane, Murielle and Marie who were standing by her bed. The three exchanged glances, unsure how to reply, and then turned to Violaine’s husband, Édouard, who sighed and said to his wife, ‘You’ve been in hospital for twenty-nine days, eighteen of them in a coma. You have to concentrate on getting better.’
‘Your husband is right,’ said the doctor, who was disconcerted by this patient who cared more about the selections for literary prizes than about the prospect of limping for the rest of her life.
Marie looked at Violaine fearfully. ‘I’ve emailed again.’
‘And?’
‘Nothing … Just like the other times, no answer.’
‘Perhaps he’s dead …’ offered Stéphane.
‘An author doesn’t die just before their first book is published, unless they’re Stieg Larsson,’ Violaine said crisply. The author of the Millennium Trilogy had died suddenly of a heart attack a few months before the publication of the first volume. He never even saw the cover of his first book.
‘Even if he – or she – because let’s not forget that Camille can be a man or a woman’s name – were dead, there would have been a grave, photos of family or holidays, an author biography, but we have none of those. We have nothing!’
‘And Bernard Pivot is starting to think we’re hiding something,’ said Stéphane. ‘He warned Pascal he didn’t want another author pretending to be someone else, like Émile Ajar.’
‘At least everyone knew who he was,’ remarked Murielle.
‘Right, well, I’ll leave you to your literary discussions,’ snapped the doctor. ‘As I said, you’ll be leaving tomorrow at midday. No more editorial boards until you’ve left. This is a hospital not an office.’ And he left.
‘Editorial boards are for magazines,’ said Violaine. ‘Insect …’
With Murielle and Stéphane to his left and Marie on his right, Édouard was pacing up and down the long corridor along with the members of the manuscript department. For a moment he felt like one of those big bosses or government ministers who walk about surrounded by their closest advisers, ready to hang on his every word or agree with his opinions. But Édouard was not talking, he was surreptitiously observing the staff. Stéphane was the most senior member of the department, already there when Édouard had met Violaine fourteen years earlier. Stéphane had hair back then, bright red. In a previous life he had been a secondary school maths teacher. After his divorce he had suffered a nervous breakdown which he referred to as ‘going through a bad patch’, and this had prompted him to rethink his whole life, starting with his interest in mathematics. Since adolescence he had escaped into books and this seemed to him the only activity that had made him happy throughout those years. He wrote a book on the subject – Literary Escape – which the publishing house had published. The book had been an unexpected success: Bernard Pivot had raved about it in his Journal du Dimanche column that winter, recommending that a copy should be put under the Christmas tree in every house. And it seemed as if everyone listened. The book was then placed gloriously on the list of books ‘recommended by the Department of Education’. It was bought by all the libraries in France, placed on the sixth-form curriculum, and the publishing house, not content with having sold over a million copies, continued to reprint it regularly. When asked if he planned to write another book, Stéphane replied that he had said all he wanted to. He had no more ideas for non-fiction, still less for a novel. So he was offered a position in the readers’ room, which had delighted him. Now he was fifty-three years old and part of his income still came from royalties for Literary Escape and its thirty-seven translations across the world.
Murielle had previously been a proofreader and the hunt for spelling mistakes and typographical errors had brought her as much joy as gathering mushrooms in September. She tracked them down with a pleasure that bordered on orgasmic and when she came upon a misused past participle or a disjunction between verb and subject, she trembled with happiness. Murielle had worked for large pharmaceutical and automobile companies; she proofread their brochures and financial reports, anything that constituted their communication with the outside world. She had become known to the publisher when she sent them a long letter about the errors she had spotted in two of their recently published books. She was immediately summoned by Charles, then in charge of the publishing house which had been in his family for four generations. ‘My father used to tap me on the head with a book when I made a mistake,’ he told her.
‘Your father should come back and give your authors several taps on the head with a book,’ was Murielle’s answer.
She was hired there and then. Over the years people noticed that Murielle’s comments on page proofs were always spot on: ‘This book is going to be a roaring success …’ ‘I have no idea who will read this book …’ One day Violaine asked her if she would like to join the readers’ room and Murielle’s face had lit up.
At twenty-four, Marie was the youngest member of the readers’ room. She was still at university and was doggedly writing her thesis on ‘The Written Word or the Inert Vectors of Narration’. Marie had decided to identify all the inanimate objects which have played an important part in works of fiction across the last millennium – such as the specimens in Yoko Ogawa’s Ring Finger, the madeleine in Proust or the little golden key in ‘Bluebeard’. She had classified them all by material: fabric, leather, glass, metal, wood … It was a mammoth task, which, if she came to publish, would run to more than two thousand pages. A literary Himalaya that would take perhaps fifteen more years of her life to complete. Blonde and slim, with pale eyes, Marie was very reserved but her friendly smile more than made up for her lack of vivaciousness. She had started in the readers’ room six months previously, having replaced a reader who had reluctantly decided to follow her husband to Beijing.
It was Violaine herself who had brought Marie into the publishing house. Violaine had not used the legendary phrase, ‘I think we have something here’; instead she said, ‘I’ve met someone,’ which had prompted Stéphane to say in horror, ‘You’re not leaving Édouard, are you?’
‘Of course I’m not leaving Édouard! I mean I’ve met someone who could perhaps replace Fleur in the manuscript department.’ Violaine omitted to say that she had met Marie at the only Alcoholics Anonymous meeting she had ever gone to. It was her shrink who had recommended she should attend. ‘But I’m not an alcoholic!’
‘You drink too much.’
‘How would you know, you don’t live with me.’
‘It’s you who tells me you drink too much, so you should go and experience a meeting for yourself. You like finding out about things, you’ll find it interesting. Even if you don’t find it useful and you don’t want to continue going, at least you will have taken positive action.’
‘You really are a pain, Pierre. Now I feel guilty and I’ll have to go.’
That conversation might seem incongruous between a psychoanalyst and their client, but not when the client is also the analyst’s editor. Not when that involves the client accompanying them to signings, taking them out to lunch or on holiday with their husband to their house in the Lubéron.
Stéphane, the longest-standing member of the manuscript service, was also the only one who had witnessed Violaine’s first meeting with Édouard.
They had met fourteen years earlier at the time of Violaine’s meteoric rise at the publishing house. Just after the sudden and unexpected death of Charles, her boss since she had joined the company. One morning Violaine had gone into the readers’ room and looked at the metal shelving. ‘Those shelves are truly hideous.’
‘They really are,’ agreed Stéphane.
‘And they’re so old,’ Violaine went on, ‘they must have been there since the days of Giscard d’Estaing. We should think about getting new shelves. I’d like you all to put forward some suggestions and I’ll set aside a budget.’
The idea of a collegiate decision had not been very successful since they all had a different opinion. The shelves should be made of wood – or glass; straight across – or divided into sections; all the same width – or why not stepped?
‘I know a librarian who has stepped bookshelves at home …’
When Pierre – still a reader at the time – suggested a bookcase in the shape of a tree, with each branch being a shelf, Violaine had to step in. As none of them could agree on which shelves would be best, they would have them made by an interior designer. Édouard Lavour was chosen, from the design firm Lavour and Sagier. He was the only one in Paris who was willing to turn out to fit an area of only thirty square metres. By return email Édouard declared that he would ‘be honoured to enter the famous publishing house which I often pass but which remains a mystery to me’. This had pleased Violaine and she fixed a time for him to come. Stéphane remembered Édouard’s arrival as clearly as if it had happened the previous week. He called their meeting ‘the staircase encounter’.
Édouard presented himself at reception. Violaine’s telephone rang. She emerged from her office calling, ‘The designer is here!’ The entire manuscript department rose to its feet as one and went to wait at the top of the staircase. Édouard, dark, with short hair, was probably about thirty-five. He gradually slowed down as he neared the top of the stairs; he could not take his eyes off Violaine and seemed mesmerised by the green eyes fixed on him. ‘Hello, I’m Violaine Lepage.’ She held out her hand and he took it in a daze; he seemed to be transfixed and whispered, ‘You’re not at all as I imagined.’
Violaine smiled. ‘Really? How did you imagine me?’
The designer could not seem to explain and finally just said, ‘Not like that.’ And in those three words, there was something momentous that Violaine did not pick up. Stéphane, watching their meeting, said to himself that something very special had just occurred, and that he had never seen such a moment accurately described in a novel, perhaps because it was impossible to express in writing. What’s more, he had never personally witnessed a man falling head over heels in love with a woman at first sight.
Édouard had spent the entire afternoon producing sketches to represent what he imagined would be the best way to organise the shelves and make use of the space in the readers’ room. He devoted himself to the task with the same passion as if he were redesigning the Library of Alexandria. Actually he was spinning the task out while he worked out how to approach Violaine. Stéphane recalled very clearly that there had been a moment when Violaine had come and leant against the door frame just as one of the readers, Solange, had asked the designer whether he was often called upon to build bookshelves in thirty-square-metre offices. Édouard had thought that here was the moment to declare himself, that if he did not, he would regret it his entire life, and that in fact he had no choice. He had looked up at Violaine, then said with what he hoped was his most winning smile, ‘When I’m asked by editors as beautiful as Violaine Lepage, yes.’ Silence had fallen over the readers’ room. Violaine looked at him, her expression unreadable. Édouard knew he had been right to speak out.
As Édouard was thinking about the readers’ room and his wife, she was thinking only about Camille Désencres. It was amazing to have been longlisted for the Goncourt prize, but at first Violaine had assumed it was a diversionary tactic – the judges had nominated Désencres just to spite an author or editor who believed their book should be on the list instead. Judges could be capricious – and dangerous. However, since then, Violaine had received more information about why Sugar Flowers was unexpectedly on that most sought-after list. Virginie Despentes had assured her that four of the judges, including her, had read the book and found it excellent. It was that simple. What’s more, it was good to have a first novel on the list, it made a change from the usual candidates.
‘The vampire must have new blood,’ thought Violaine on hearing this. That was an expression Charles had often used. From time to time the literary world needs virgin blood in order to regenerate itself. And then a young author will find themselves under the spotlight from their very first book. They then either survive the vampire’s bite or wither away for ever, like the two-thirds of authors of first novels who never go on to write a second. Either their next novel is turned down by their editor, or they suffer from writer’s block brought on by early success, or by the feeling that they have nothing more to say; there are many ways it can play out. The problem with Camille Désencres was that the vampire may have bitten fiercely, but the prey had vanished, leaving nothing in the spotlight. It was an unusual situation, and had the advantage of piquing the interest of journalists and creating a buzz, but could not last long.
The contact details listed on the cover page of the manuscript had consisted only of an email address: camilledesencres@gmail.com.
The manuscript service and I have read and greatly enjoyed Sugar Flowers. We are delighted to inform you that we would like to publish Sugar Flowers this coming September. Your novel is highly original both in structure and writing style, and the mystery is exceedingly well drawn. It is rare to find such quality of writing in a first novel.
We would be delighted to welcome you to our list. Please contact me as soon as possible either by replying to this email or by telephoning the manuscript service. We will need your phone number and address and would like to meet you as soon as possible.
Best wishes,
Violaine Lepage
--
Editorial Director
Head of Manuscript Services
You can’t imagine how shocked yet delighted I was to open your email this morning. I can hardly believe it! You really liked my book? I can barely finish this email, I am so overcome.
I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
CD
I quite understand your shock and emotion. It might please you to know that out of the three thousand manuscripts we receive each year, we only publish two or three.
But it is now over a week since I heard from you, and I need more details about you, if only to be able to draw up your contract.
Please respond as soon as possible. If you are hesitating because you have a counter-offer, I would urge you not to sign anything before speaking to us.
Violaine Lepage
--
Editorial Director
Head of Manuscript Services
I find your silence very worrying. Please respond. We are finalising our autumn schedule and are waiting to hear from you!
Violaine Lepage
--
Editorial Director
Head of Manuscript Services
I’m sorry for taking so long to get back to you. It’s not because I am in negotiation with another publisher, it’s just that I am away a good deal. Consequently I won’t be able to meet you for the next few weeks. Could you have the contract sent to the address below? It’s the hotel I stay in when in London. I will return the contract the day I receive it.
Best wishes,
CD
Strathmore Grange Hotel
41 Queen’s Gate Gardens
LONDON SW7 5NB
UK
We have sent the contract to your address in London and hope that it will arrive soon. I hope you won’t think it impolite of me to say that in all my years of publishing I have never come across an author who did not visit their publisher to sign the contract for their first novel.
You are very unusual! And could I ask you who you are? I have reread our emails and realise that I don’t even know if you are a man or a woman.
Who is Camille Désencres?
Violaine Lepage
--
Editorial Director
Head of Manuscript Services
We have received the signed contract, thank you for accepting our terms. We are still waiting to hear when we will be able to meet you. We will publish your novel in September and it would be good if you were available for press interviews and photo shoots.
Thank you.
Violaine Lepage
--
Editorial Director
Head of Manuscript Services
I am writing this time from my personal email. Perhaps you will reply to this address.
Camille, please be brave and reveal yourself. I don’t know who you are, but you know many things. Who on earth told you about sugar flowers? What else do you know? How are you linked to Normandy?
If your intention is to blackmail me, you are taking an enormous risk, either intentionally or unintentionally.
I am a dangerous woman, don’t attack me.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Violaine Lepage
I wish you no harm.
The book has a life of its own outside my control. And those who must die will die. All debts will be repaid.
CD
‘Has anyone warned you about Violaine on an aeroplane?’ Fleur asked Marie. ‘Violaine on an aeroplane,’ had sounded to Marie like those books, Martine at the Beach, Martine by the Sea, Martine in the Forest. But Fleur wasn’t joking. According to her, Marie, who was going to replace her in the readers’ room, would occasionally have to travel with Violaine to book fairs, literary events or to chaperone an author at an important book signing abroad. ‘She has a fear of flying.’
‘How bad is it?’
‘Very bad.’
Before every flight, whether long haul or merely a short hop to Nice, Violaine would read her horoscope and always draw the worst, most dramatic conclusions possible. She would think about all the recent highly publicised accidents which, of course, she had watched avidly on television or the internet, hypnotised like a small rodent before a snake’s eyes. The night before she wouldn’t sleep. Woken by the alarm early the next morning, she was seized by panic, which Édouard tried to calm by whatever means he could think of since she refused to take any tablets. The panic subsided during the taxi journey but then ramped up on arrival at the departure lounge. The duty-free shops, with their nauseating perfume odours and the takeaway cafés seemed to her like the work of the devil straight out of a nightmare. She would always want to turn tail, to run back to the taxi rank and be taken back home, but instead would disappear into the toilets and gulp down the thirty-five centilitres of Bowmore whisky that she had secreted in her flask out of sight of Édouard the evening before. Then she would chew gum and eventually calm down under the influence of the alcohol. Once on board, she would immediately turn off her air vent, the noise of which drilled into her brain. When she heard the announcements, ‘Doors on automatic, cross-check and report,’ and ‘Cabin crew, please take yours seats for take-off,’ she began to tremble imperceptibly and grabbed hold of the armrests, breathing as though she were hooked up to oxygen tanks three hundred metres beneath the sea. When the plane took off, images of Concorde on fire filled her head and she stared fixedly at the lit seat-belt sign, counting each second until it went off, indicating that everything was fine for the moment. She always chose to sit in an aisle seat at the back of the plane so that she could keep looking at the air hostess on the folding seat at the rear. If they looked calm, she was slightly reassured. They became the barometer of her anxiety, and the more they behaved as if everything was normal the less dangerous the flight seemed. As soon as there was any turbulence and the little picture of the fastened seat belt lit up again with a ping, Violaine tensed in her seat and began to pray to practically all the gods in creation that the plane would not pitch, then, with a final jolt, plunge like a stone as the passengers shrieked.
The worst thought was that she had meticulously planned her own death, by buying her tickets, setting her alarm, ordering a taxi and finally settling into her seat on the doomed plane when she should have trusted her instinct and turned back at the door of the airport and run home, or even better, refused to leave her home.
At the first sign of turbulence, her left hand grasped the forearm of her unfortunate travelling companion, her nails digging into the latter’s sleeve, sometimes even into her skin, a bit like a cat’s claws. For many months, Fleur’s arm had retained the bluish marks of a Paris–Frankfurt flight that had run into storms.
These flights left Violaine washed out. She was only able to breathe easily once the plane had landed and was taxiing benignly towards the gate. She had addressed her terror of flying with her shrink, Pierre. He had never accorded it much importance and merely suggested she took a sedative and a good book for the flight.
She was not to know that her worst fears were to be realised on Flight AF 67543.
When the captain announced that they were approaching Paris and about to start their descent, the local time was 6.45 a.m. and the temperature eleven degrees Celsius. Violaine had, of course, not slept a wink nor touched her tray of food. She was watching the peaceful faces of the slumbering passengers, most of them wearing sleep masks. She made sure she kept glancing back at the flip-up seat where the hostess was yawning – a good sign. Marie was fast asleep in the neighbouring seat, her old paperback copy of Carrie with turned-down corners and worn spine on her lap. She had carried it around since the age of thirteen when the flyleaf had been inscribed in fountain pen, ‘For Marie, all the best for you in this life. Your friend, Stephen King.’
They were on their way back from America. They had had an overnight stop in Bangor in the state of Maine to meet the master of horror in his mythical red and white house surrounded by black iron railings. Famously the gateway was surmounted by delicately wrought bats. Three weeks previously, Violaine had learned via her contacts that Stephen King had just finished a book on imagination. A wonderfully free text, a sort of essay of about a hundred and fifty pages on the cerebral workings of the creative imagination and the effect of this on readers. A brilliant text on the blurred distinction between fiction and reality. According to her sources, few people had read the new book and foreign rights had not yet been negotiated. Violaine had immediately thought, ‘I want that book,’ and then corrected herself, ‘I want us to publish it.’ And she had taken out her mobile and scrolled through the list of her contacts until she came to K. She smiled, reflecting that she was surely one of the only French editors to have the personal number of Stephen King.
For this still secret manuscript, Violaine had decided to bypass the usual route taken by literary agents, editors and heads of houses. In doing so she would obviously annoy Fabrice Galland, the director in charge of foreign rights and translations. When he learned that Violaine had negotiated directly with Stephen King, he would no doubt go straight to Pascal, the chairman of the company, and make a complaint. Violaine had decided not to worry about this and had gone ahead and sent a message to the American. A brief text exchange had followed:
- Hello Stephen, I have heard about your new book on imagination. I’m terrified of flying, but I’m coming to see you!
- Good evening Violaine, I love that idea. PS You can call me a bastard for that reply.
- Bastard!
She had gone into the readers’ room. ‘Marie, would you like to come to the States with me?’ Everyone exchanged smiles: now it was Marie’s turn for the experience – a sort of aerial initiation to which she had not yet earned the right.
‘Let me put it another way,’ said Violaine, ‘how would you like to come to Maine with me to see Stephen King?’
When Violaine looked out of the window, everything was normal. The memory she would retain of that moment would be as fleeting as a subliminal image: balls of light colliding with the left jet engine. About ten balls in a burst. The impact was deafening and the plane bucked, jolting the passengers awake as thick black smoke belched from the engine. The plane then tipped over to the right and a passenger shouted, ‘Fire!’ It all happened in a few seconds and the hostess at the back undid her seat belt and hurried up the aisle to the cockpit. Marie opened her eyes and saw Violaine open-mouthed as she stared out of the window. Then she in turn saw the engine wreathed in smoke. The right wing was hit by a second impact and the plane plunged into an air pocket that compressed their hearts like crumpled paper. Oxygen masks dropped down from above and dangled on their clear tubes like novelty toys from a joke box, as the cabin vibrated as if the plane was about to explode.
‘Birds have flown into our engines!’ cried the hostess. ‘Put on your oxygen masks!’ She repeated this in French, as Violaine began to tremble, incapable of raising her arm to take her mask. She felt as though the previous seconds had drained her body of blood, and she was now sure that she would never see Édouard or her apartment or the readers’ room ever again. Her worst nightmare had come true; she was going to die in a plane crash. And she would cause Marie to die as well. In a few minutes it would all be over. The businessman to her right across the aisle had his head in his hands, sobbing nervously. The plane swung about like a leaf in the wind and there was nothing but shouting.
‘We’re not going to die,’ murmured Marie.
‘We are!’
‘I can’t die, not right now,’ Marie assured her. ‘So you won’t die either.’
Violaine could no longer hear her; the pressure had blocked her ears and she felt she was experiencing the first symptoms of a heart attack. The last thing she was aware of in that moment was Marie’s perfume: the smell of jasmine floated in the air.
That’s what would she would retain from her time on earth. Marie’s perfume. The smell of jasmine.
‘Brace position!’ ordered the pilot, as the metallic thud of the wheels unfolding was felt beneath their seats. The seconds that followed were confusing for Violaine and Marie. They thought they were still in the air but actually the plane was a few metres off the ground. It was only from images on television that they learned what had happened after the event. The pilot, with only one working engine, had chosen to land by gliding down to the runway, attempting with the power that remained to reduce the impact of the landing as much as possible. The landing gear was crushed instantly and the plane went into a skid that the fuselage could not withstand: it split in two between the side doors and the floor gave way in the middle, taking ten aisle passengers with it, one of whom was Violaine. That evening, the images shown on a loop on French news and picked up by channels across the world depicted the plane broken into two sections on the runway at Roissy, surrounded by emergency vehicles, the tarmac covered in foam from the fire engines, and teams freeing the wounded with the help of electric saws. It was a miracle that no one died. Ten people were injured, five of them, including Violaine, seriously. Marie escaped unhurt. All the commentators and experts were united in their praise for the pilot’s handling of the incident and agreed that it had been a freak accident: first the left engine had literally swallowed a formation of fifteen wild geese, then a minute later the same had happened on the right.
Violaine had not seen a corridor of light, nor any angels. There had been no bliss or parade of departed loved ones. Nothing.
Wherever you are, rest assured that I heard about the plane, your injuries and your coma. I know all about accidents, hospitals and suffering. I am very sorry to have been in a way responsible for what happened to you. The least I can do is give you and your publishing house the French rights to my book on the power of the imagination. My agent will see to that.
Wake up … now!
Your friend,
Stephen King
While she was still in a coma, Violaine had had to be operated on twice, despite the risk, to avoid amputation of her leg. A scar, three centimetres wide, now meandered from the top of her thigh down to her heel. She also had several flesh wounds, as if meteorites had exploded, leaving star-shaped holes. A complicated system of fine brushed-steel tubes and bolts encased her calf and from above her knee to mid-thigh. When she first saw them she had been reminded of David Cronenberg’s film Crash in which Rosanna Arquette, at the height of her beauty, had to have steel braces on both legs, following a car accident – which had an expectedly erotic effect on men which she fully exploited.
When Violaine returned home, supported by Édouard and walking awkwardly with her crutch, she had sat down on the sofa and he sat in the armchair facing her. She closed her eyes, then opened them again on the familiar decor, before looking at her husband. ‘I thought I would never see this place again.’ And Édouard had concurred, saying, ‘I thought I would never see you again. But here we are.’ He went over to sit beside her and take her in his arms. Violaine rested her head on his shoulder. ‘What would I do without you?’ Édouard could find nothing to say in response, merely stroking her cheek then resting his on her hair. And they stayed like that for a long while in the afternoon light, without saying a word.
Taking a shower proved to be a complicated exercise. She had to lay her crutch along the wall of the Italian shower, make sure that the gel recommended by the doctor ran over her leg and rinse the stainless-steel brace with the showerhead, all without slipping. Édouard stayed beside her, ready to catch her if she lost her balance. Then the leg had to be dried with the hairdryer – it was impossible to get a towel between the steel rods. The scars had to be sprayed with antiseptic and finally she had to give herself an injection of powerful painkiller using a disposable syringe. ‘Just stick the needle into your calf and press the plunger.’ Easier said than done.
Violaine asked Édouard to leave her alone in the bathroom. He wandered into the sitting room and stood in front of ‘their’ wall. They had each appropriated a part of the wall to pin up photographs that were precious to them. Édouard’s were of interiors he had created; some of the pictures showed him in the background with members of his team and his partner, Marc Sagier. There were also framed interior decorating magazine covers celebrating his creations. Violaine’s photos were all of her. Violaine in dark glasses with Haruki Murakami; Violaine with John Irving, pointing to the author’s tattoo; Violaine with Philippe Sollers – she had stolen his cigarette holder; Violaine with Houellebecq, both smoking, their cigarettes held between third and fourth fingers; with Philip Roth – she had her arm round him on a bench in Central Park; with Modiano – they were both looking up at the sky; Violaine with Stephen King, he with his hand out, preventing her from speaking; finally, a curiosity, Violaine with the Rolling Stones – she was sticking her tongue out.
While Édouard was lost in memories in front of the wall of photos, Violaine was looking at herself in the full-length bathroom mirror. Naked, with her left leg in its contraption, she was regarding herself in horror. She moved closer to the mirror and saw circles under her eyes and wrinkles that had not been there a few weeks earlier. She also noticed her hair, now too long, was losing its red tint. She stepped back. ‘I’ve lost at least twelve kilos,’ she murmured before picking up a hairbrush and using it to measure the distance from the bottom of her breasts to her belly button. The distance was no longer the same and Violaine flung the brush against the wall. She turned to look at her hips in the mirror and the braced leg with the scar running down her flesh. And then she closed her eyes.
A heart-rending sound like the cry of a she-wolf rang out. Their neighbours had recently acquired a white Japanese dog that resembled a bear and sometimes, in the afternoon, it would start to howl for no apparent reason. Édouard was thinking it was painful to listen to, when he realised that the sound was not coming from below, it was there in the apartment. He ran to the bathroom. ‘Violaine?’ he shouted, opening the door without waiting for a reply.
Violaine was crouching in front of the mirror and her distressed cries were reaching a fever pitch.
‘I know it’s all too much to bear at the moment, darling. But I’m here. I’m here …’
‘Don’t look at me! Go away!’ she shouted, struggling as he tried to take her in his arms. ‘I don’t want anyone to see me! Get out!’
‘It’s all right,’ said Édouard. He tried to hold her as she pushed him away violently, then relaxed against him.
‘It’s your fault!’ she cried, hitting the floor with her hand.
‘Yes, it is my fault,’ agreed Édouard, ready to do anything to calm her.
‘You let me take off in that plane!’ she sobbed. ‘You shouldn’t have done that!’
‘No, no, I shouldn’t,’ he said, stroking her hair. ‘I’ll never let you go away again.’
‘Never again!’ echoed Violaine. ‘You must never let me go away, never …’ She was out of breath now. ‘You’re never to let me go away …’
The very next day, Violaine returned to work. As she entered her office, her heart lifted at once again seeing the waxed parquet, the red Garouste and Bonetti rug and her black leather swivel chair on wheels. The light was coming in through the large window framed by the yellow curtains chosen to create an illusion of sun – an antidote to the often grey Parisian sky. Her table was there with its jumble of manuscripts, Post-it notes, loose papers, reviews, printed emails with underlinings, pens and rubber-tipped pencils, and above it, pinned to the wall, assorted notes. There was method in her madness, she was fond of saying. And the fact was that she could always find, between a packet of sweets and a ball of paper, the very sheet of paper she needed with the terms of a contract to be negotiated, or the brilliant ideas jotted down during a lunch with an author.
There was a lingering smell in the air of coal, hot and dry, an odour like rancid hay. The instantly recognisable smell of cigarettes. Violaine was outraged. ‘Who’s been smoking in here?’ The assembled members of the readers’ room looked at each other in much the same way as they had at the hospital. Pascal, the chairman and managing director of publishing, who had helped Violaine up the stairs with her crutch, remained impassive, sporting the vague smile that he wore in all circumstances. Then he turned to her and, in an attempt at humour, said, ‘I agree, it’s absolutely shocking!’ But Violaine did not see the funny side, especially as smoking had been banned in offices and public spaces since 2008.
‘No one has been smoking in your office,’ Marie assured Violaine.
‘Yes, they have – it stinks of cigarettes.’
‘It’s the smell of your cigarettes, from before,’ said Stéphane. ‘We emptied the ashtrays and put your lighters here.’
‘And your last packet is on the table,’ added Marie.
‘Thank you,’ murmured Violaine. ‘Thank you …’ And she went towards her desk.
‘We’ll leave you to settle in,’ said Pascal, and everyone returned to their own work.
She closed the door and looked at the lighters: a Dunhill, two Duponts and a Cartier. All steel, or gold. She had a vague feeling of déjà-vu but it was only fleeting, like those names you have on the tip of your tongue but which elude you. She opened one to light it. The steel Dupont cap pinged as it flipped back. A little blue and yellow flame. She closed it with the characteristic click. A sound she had heard before, but nothing more. She picked up a packet of cigarettes – Benson & Hedges Gold 100s – breathed in the honey odour of the white sticks, put one in her mouth and chose the gold Dunhill. The tip of the cigarette glowed. Violaine took a puff, filling the room with a milky blue cloud. Immediately, the image of Michel Houellebecq, smoking by her hospital window, came to mind. It was so vivid that she turned to see whether Proust was sitting in the chair, or Perec was stroking a cat, or Virginia Woolf was talking to herself, or Modiano was murmuring in the ear of a mysterious young blonde woman. No, no one was there. The smell of tobacco which had passed from her throat to her nostrils was unpleasant and definitely ‘new’. She took a second drag and swallowed the smoke. She choked and bent over coughing so violently that Magali, the secretary, knocked on the door to make sure everything was all right. Her eyes red and streaming, Violaine opened the door and managed to ask for a glass of water.
Now the glass was empty and Violaine, in her chair, stared fixedly at her mobile. Eventually she picked it up and rang her psychiatrist, Dr Pierre Stein. When his assistant told her he was in a consultation, Violaine declined to leave a message, saying she would call back. She immediately rang his mobile and he picked up straight away. She could hear conversation in the background and the hiss of a coffee machine.
‘Pierre?’
‘Violaine.’
‘Am I disturbing you?’
‘No, I’m in the café.’
‘Pierre … apparently I smoke.’
‘Same here, apparently I smoke – a packet a day for the last forty years; tell me something I don’t know. Tell me about you. How are you?’
‘I am telling you about me, Pierre. I have no recollection of ever having smoked.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is anything else worrying you?’ He sounded suddenly sharp, almost disagreeable.
‘Yes …’
Now all she could hear were the sounds of the café in the background and then, ‘Come and see me this evening.’
‘Cigarettes, clothes, jewellery,’ wrote Violaine. After her meltdown in the bathroom, she had opened her wardrobe to get out her grey skirt and red and black top. She was very surprised to find an orange silk dress, and also a blue patterned one. She went through all the hangers one by one, recalling where she had bought the clothes. That purple dress with the belt had been bought with Édouard in Rome, those off-white trousers came from London, the pale-grey coat with the black collar from San Francisco and the beige strappy top from the swap shop in the twentieth arrondissement. Her wardrobe was like a visual record of all the trips and journeys she had made around the world.
Now the orange silk dress and the blue patterned one lay on the sofa, along with a good twenty others, limp on their hangers. Violaine stared at the heap. It looked as though twenty women had sat down on the sofa one by one, then suddenly evaporated, leaving their clothes behind. She had no memory of these twenty outfits. No memory of ever having worn them. No memory of any boutique in France or elsewhere she could have bought them. Although she was distressed and not a little panicked, there was also an amusing side to this: as if a mischievous devil or a Father Christmas had come and hung in her wardrobe clothes of exactly her size and taste. When she opened her jewellery box, it was just the same: some of the rings and necklaces were utterly familiar, but others she didn’t recognise. The same hand that had added mystery dresses to her wardrobe had put a handful of jewellery in her jewellery box. She had never seen the coral earrings before, or the gold and pearl ring, and certainly not the sapphire mounted in the silver ring.
‘Édouard?’
‘Would you like my help with getting dressed?’ he said, opening the door.
Violaine pulled the orange dress from the bottom of the pile and held it up in front of her. ‘Have you ever seen me wearing this dress?’
‘Dozens of times, why?’
‘Nothing.’
The incident happened a long time ago. But this winter afternoon, in the city, on the terrace of this café under this lunar-grey sky, I have made my decision: all debts will soon be repaid.
It is time to tell the world about the honest people who lived peaceably in that village in the French countryside and also a little, not too much, about those others, the others who stole their lives. I am the angel of death and I have returned just to tell the story. Listen to me.
That was the opening of Sugar Flowers.
Violaine,
I wish you no harm.
The book has a life of its own outside my control. And those who must die will die. All debts will be repaid.
CD
The latest email from the author was open on Violaine’s screen. She clicked to the sales figures tab to check Sugar Flowers’ position in the bestseller list. It had moved up from eighteenth place to fifteenth. They had already reprinted three times. Press coverage was continuing. But nothing could be done for radio or television without Camille Désencres. François Busnel had invited Camille onto La Grande Librairie but it had had to be explained that while the author was very flattered, they did not wish to appear on television at the moment. The line taken by the publishing house was as follows: the author was very private and did not want any exposure; no, it wasn’t someone working for the publisher using a pseudonym; yes, the author would shortly make themselves known. To the question: ‘Is it a man or a woman?’ the answer was always, ‘You’ll soon see.’
Violaine took out Béatrice’s reader’s report.
Sugar Flowers: On the death of her parents, a young woman learns that the people she thought were her parents were actually her grandparents. Her real mother had fled after her birth. She was the product of a gang rape. She sets out to find her mother and kill the four men who raped her one by one.
The reader does not know whether the narrator of the story is the young woman herself or a witness to the events, either man or woman. The book is like a long confession. The crimes, all committed with an old pistol dating back to the war, have a dreamlike quality, which might indicate that they are a fantasy. The book is not a thriller, even though it draws on the same structures. The prose style is almost hymn-like. I would almost say the entire novel is a plea to fate to correct past wrongs.
It is one of the most singular texts I have ever read. It is deeply moving and I can’t stop thinking about it. I am also giving it a sun and so I support Marie, who was the first reader. Talking of whom, I still haven’t met her; perhaps she could come and see me one day.
P.S. The title is very good. It refers to the sugar sculptures that artisan patissiers sometimes make.
‘Violaine?’ called Magali, knocking on the half-open door. ‘Reception says there’s a girl, looks a bit like a punk, who sent you a manuscript about fortune tellers after hearing you talk about fate on France Culture. She really wants to see you.’
‘Yes, I have it here,’ said Violaine, indicating a manuscript about a hundred pages long, on paper that looked more like parchment than the standard white paper, spiral-bound in black or white, which usually arrived in the manuscript department. This one was sewn with hemp, not bound. Violaine had received this curiosity just before her plane accident. The text was handwritten in Chinese ink, and followed the forgotten history of tarot cards and the once famous fortune tellers, whom no one has heard of nowadays. The author, Karine Visali, had drawn the tarot cards with pen and inks of various colours, and annotated the drawings with interpretations of the cards’ meanings. She must have spent months on this single copy – which was completely irrelevant to a manuscript department seeking new novels.
‘She’s probably come to collect her manuscript. I’ll take it down to her.’ Magali took the manuscript from the pile and left.
Violaine, who had said nothing, picked up her phone and called reception. ‘Violaine here. Magali is on her way down with a book of magic spells to give to the punk. Ask them all to come up to my office. Yes … all three: Magali, the spell book and the punk. Thank you.’
‘That represents death?’ asked Violaine, pointing to a card depicting a skeleton in a red habit.
‘Yes, but it’s death avoided. It’s your accident, I think.’
For ten minutes the cards had been laid out in a long line on the low table where Violaine took coffee with her authors. Some had been turned face up, but not all of them. ‘Punk’ had been an unfair description of Karine Visali. Certainly, her hair was shaved on the left side of her head and the rest fell in a curtain she had decorated with coloured beads, but she definitely did not have a Mohican, or safety pins, or a studded leather jacket. She was wearing faded denim dungarees, stone bangles and feathered earrings. Violaine, watching as Karine’s fingers with their bitten nails moved over the line of cards, counting as she went, decided she could not be more than thirty. Four, five … she turned over a card showing a man in eighteenth-century costume lying on a daybed holding a flaming candelabra.
‘The adviser; he is master of your dreams and secrets. He helps you. You have a confidant or … shrink?’
Violaine looked at her in silence. Then she merely murmured, ‘Go on.’
‘One, two, three,’ Karine continued, and turned over two more cards. On each of the cards you could see a meeting in a sort of reception room in a castle; one card showed only women, the other, only men. ‘Many people are talking about you. You are the focus of attention.’ She turned over a new card, revealing a man carrying a bundle of clothes over his shoulder. ‘The traveller.’ Karine then counted eight cards and put her finger on the one with the sphinx and the hourglass. ‘Someone made a very long journey to come and see you.’ She then turned over a card representing a dragon in front of a chest filled with gold pieces. ‘The secret,’ she murmured, ‘the traveller bears a secret. Choose one of the cards that are face down.’ Violaine touched one and Karine moved it gently away from the line of cards. ‘Now two more, please,’ and Violaine indicated two others which Karine also moved away.
She turned over the first one – the leper – and then the other two simultaneously – the prisoner, the queen.
‘This is very strange, there is a problem with identity,’ said Karine as she put her finger on the traveller card. ‘The traveller has no identity; everything revolves around the queen. You are the queen; there is a problem to do with the past and memory. Five, six, seven …’ She turned over a card showing a barking dog. ‘Vengeance. Eight, nine … Death, and three, the meeting of men. The traveller bears a secret that threatens the men, and this secret brings revenge, but it spares the queen. It’s as if some elements have been forgotten. Do you know someone who has a problem with their memory?’
Violaine stared at her again, before announcing, ‘We will publish your book. In our coffee-table books collection. We’ll reproduce your hand-drawn illustrations; it will be very beautiful. Please go on.’
‘You’re joking! You’re really going to publish my book?’ Karine’s eyes were shining with tears.
‘Take the cards without looking at them and cover all the cards in the line.’
Violaine laid a card on top of each one in the line of thirteen. Karine turned them over, placing them on top of the first cards, creating a second line, and Violaine saw that the king had appeared on top of the queen.
‘Have you a partner, or a husband?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s him.’
‘That happened by chance …’ said Violaine softly.
‘There is no chance in this game. Three, four, five, the alchemist, six, seven, the librarian. Nine … the queen. Do you have a problem with a book?’ Violaine closed her eyes and could not think of a reply.
‘Twelve, thirteen,’ continued Karine, stopping on a man in a suit, his arms crossed: the provost.
‘The provost?’
‘That’s an old name for a policeman or lawyer. Eight, nine … the road, eleven, twelve, the secret, thirteen, the queen. The provost is on the way, but the king and queen triumph. However, I don’t know what that is.’ Karine pointed to two cards: the meeting of men and death. ‘It’s as if some must die. As if that has been written.’
‘Thank you, Karine,’ whispered Violaine, ‘we’ll draw up your contract.’
Once the fortune teller had left, Violaine picked up the packet of cigarettes, looked at it and hurled it into the bin. She tidied the lighters away in a drawer and left her office to go into the readers’ room, leaning on her crutch.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Murielle.
‘Yes, are you?’ replied Violaine, smiling.
‘Only squares at the moment,’ sighed Stéphane, ‘not even a crescent moon in sight.’
‘And as for suns …’ added Marie, looking despairing.
‘You can’t complain, you found the last one!’ retorted Murielle.
And Violaine smiled again, watching them talk to each other without taking their eyes off their manuscripts. This really was where her life was, between these walls, in this room, where she had started out. She had fought so hard to attain all this. Her success had been a miracle, she thought as her eye fell on Édouard’s bookcases. Yes, her entire life was linked to this room.
‘Violaine?’ called Magali. ‘Reception rang, there’s someone from the police to see you.’
Pierre Stein’s waiting room, like his consulting room, reflected his personality: refined and vaguely unsettling. Stein had chosen red fabric for the walls, deep carpets, silk cushions and antique lamps positioned in the room to create a subdued light. Red was, according to him, a stimulating colour, and it was good if patients arrived on his couch fully awake. His consulting room was much larger than the waiting room and the light slightly dimmer. The walls were lined with subtly lit bookshelves which held rows of books or ornaments. He did have some recent titles, but most of his books dated back centuries and had informed his knowledge of ‘pre-psychoanalysis’: studies from the eighteenth century of hysteria or nymphomania, works from the nineteenth century on various psychiatric disturbances ranging from lycanthropy to Capgras delusion, in which patients believe that a close relative has been replaced by an impostor. The shelf of which he was most proud held about a hundred works on murder and the psychiatric study of crime. If his literary tastes could be considered worrying, his collection of ornaments was much more wholesome, consisting of folk art pottery. Earthenware jars, jugs and plates, all in the naïve style, filled the ornamental shelves. You could make out images of animals frolicking in bucolic settings; farmers, priests and even road menders featured. Stein found his collection reassuring, and criticised analysts who displayed African masks, or voodoo statues in their consulting rooms.
There were never any magazines in the waiting room. Only a few books. In Search of Lost Time, the Pléiade edition, lay nonchalantly on the low table, alongside Tolstoy and a collection of short stories by Maupassant. Violaine sat on the sofa, absently stroking one of the polished steel rods of her leg brace as she recalled her meeting with Detective Inspector Tanche.
Sophie Tanche had been medium height, slightly overweight, with short brown hair. Probably well into her thirties, Violaine decided. She had been wearing a black leather biker jacket, obviously pretty old. It was shiny in places and looked too small, as if Sophie had kept the garment for sentimental reasons even though it no longer really fitted her.
‘Detective Inspector Sophie Tanche, Rouen regional crime squad,’ had been how she introduced herself.
‘It’s cool here,’ she observed, looking about her.
‘Yes, it’s all right.’
‘They’re beautiful, those yellow curtains.’
‘They’re silk, from Lyon; my husband is an interior designer.’
‘Handy to have a husband who’s an interior designer,’ Sophie Tanche had said, and Violaine had felt that she was voicing out loud something deeply personal.
Violaine had offered coffee that Sophie declined, saying she drank far too much of it. She accepted sparkling water instead, so Violaine rose and limped over to the cupboard with the fridge containing bottles of water, soda and whisky.
‘Are you injured?’
Violaine turned to her and lifted her long skirt as far as her hip, revealing the contraption on her leg.
The inspector whistled. ‘Car accident?’
‘Plane. I was in the Roissy plane crash.’
‘Oh! The huge plane that split in two?’
The desire to pour a glass of Bowmore and down it in front of the police officer was strong, but she contented herself with sighing deeply. She poured two glasses of water. The policewoman gulped hers straight down. Violaine did not touch hers; she was watching Sophie. She tried to analyse her the way she did the first time she met an author. Modest and friendly or pretentious and unbearable? Would it be easy to get on with them in the months and perhaps years they would work together? Intelligent? Where were they from? What was their background? Did they sometimes lie? Were they shy or did they pretend to be? Were they trustworthy? Would they write another book?
Violaine’s first impression of Inspector Tanche led her to think the following: she was trying too hard to be pleasant, but was probably just shy; she was socially awkward; had fought hard to get where she was; was much more intelligent than she was willing to let on; she was deeply unhappy.
‘You have the most amazing green eyes; people must tell you that all the time.’
‘True.’
There was a silence in which they could hear the bubbles fizzing in the water.
‘Right,’ said the inspector, ‘we’ve talked about silk, the colour of your eyes, the plane crash; now I’m going to tell you why I’m here.’
She reached down into her satchel and took out a copy of Sugar Flowers. ‘You recognise this book of course?’
‘Yes, I published it.’
‘And I’ve read it. Do you smoke?’
‘No.’
‘Yet it smells of cigarettes in here.’
‘It’s fine for you to smoke, Inspector.’
‘Ah, thank you,’ and Sophie took out a packet of Marlboro Reds and a Bic lighter. When she spoke again, it was through a cloud of smoke.
‘In the book that you published, four murders are described. The first’ – she paused – ‘bears a striking similarity to a case I investigated last year.’
‘I can’t see any link between a novel and a police case,’ ventured Violaine.
‘Well, I can.’ Sophie opened Sugar Flowers to a page she had marked with a Post-it and read aloud:
‘As the first iridescent purple rays of the sun finally break through the fog, they will be there. At prayer, the bodies already stiff, like clay statues, they will both be there in the clearing. My first will be kneeling contemplating his sins. With a bullet straight to the forehead, his spirit will have returned to the devil – only he will have use of him for the centuries to come. My second will be looking at the sky without finding any hope of redemption. The Luger P08, whose bullets are stamped with the double ‘s’ of the Waffen SS, had proved to be the perfect instrument for this mission. The weapon of bastards to kill bastards, the weapon of scum to kill scum. The ignoble weapon was given to me to follow the path of light.’
‘Beautiful passage,’ commented Violaine.
‘Yes,’ agreed Sophie, as she reached into her bag again and took out a file from which she extracted a colour photo. ‘And here is a very beautiful illustration.’ She placed the photo on the low table in front of Violaine. The picture was of a dark-haired man of about fifty, in a tracksuit, kneeling amongst dead leaves, his head bent forward, a dark hole between his eyes. At his side, a blond man of the same age, also in sportswear, in the same position. But his head was thrown back, his eyes bulged, his mouth was wide open and he appeared to be looking at the sky in horror. There was a dark hole between his eyes.
‘The first is a man called Sébastien Balard. He owns a nightclub in Normandy near Rouen, called Thor. He inherited it from his father. The second is Damien Perchaude, the notary in a village called Bourqueville. They had known each other since school and went running together every Sunday morning. This time they did not make it back. That was a year ago. Interviews with their nearest and dearest, forensics, recreating their movements – I’ve moved heaven and earth to solve this.’
Violaine looked at the photo but her eye was drawn to Sophie’s hands. She was massaging her ring finger to discreetly remove a gold cabochon ring with green stones. She put it on the table by her glass; the ring had left a mark on her finger.
‘Sébastien Balard was dealing drugs at his nightclub, coke and ecstasy. Let’s just say he had dealings with some very dodgy people. The club had been closed down three times, but he always managed to get it opened again. His mate Perchaude had shares in the club. At the moment the theory is that this was a settling of scores between drug dealers. It’s the only lead we have. Are you listening to me, Madame Lepage?’
Violaine was hypnotised by the inspector’s ring and found it hard to look up. ‘Yes, I’m listening, Inspector. You said it’s the only lead you have.’
‘Yes,’ continued Sophie Tanche, ‘we don’t have much to go on. Some minor and not so minor criminals were arrested. All have been released. One of the Romanian drug barons who control several networks in Normandy was also arrested. But we found no threatening messages, no suspicious calls from his mobile. No DNA found at the crime scene. The investigation had stalled. And then your book appears … and throws a radically different light on the affair.’
As Violaine said nothing, the inspector simply continued. ‘In fact, there were four friends: Sébastien Balard, dead, Damien Perchaude, dead, and two others: Marc Fournier, one of the sons of the ex-mayor of Bourqueville, who became a taxi driver, and Pierre Lacaze, a head chef who left ten years ago to open a French restaurant in Los Angeles but who has just returned to France. Since August he has been in Paris at the restaurant Le Louis XIX.’ She drew on her cigarette and flicked the ash into a small dish. ‘If I follow the thread of the novel that you have published, two other men must still die: the taxi driver and the head chef.’
The inspector paused. ‘And there’s something else.’
‘What else, Inspector?’ Violaine’s eyes moved from the photo to the ring.
‘Balard and Perchaude were killed with a Luger P08 with bullets stamped with the double ‘s’ of the SS. But this detail was never disclosed in the press. I’m going to have to ask you to give me the contact details for your author, Camille Désencres.’
‘I’m happy to see you,’ declared Pierre Stein, taking Violaine in his arms. Pierre, with his grey-white hair and carefully maintained three-day beard, was looking more and more like Serge Gainsbourg. What had been just a passing impression a few years ago was now an uncanny likeness, especially in the darkness of his office. Violaine lay down on the couch covered in the statement red cashmere, and Pierre produced a bottle of champagne and two flutes.
‘From my cellar,’ he announced. ‘Let’s drink to your return to the land of the living. Champagne Salon 2007,’ and he popped the cork and filled the two glasses which they clinked before he sat back down in his chair.
They each sipped the precious bubbling liquid.
‘Very good,’ said Violaine.
‘It ought to be, since it’s a Salon 2007,’ remarked Pierre wryly, ‘at five hundred euros a bottle!’
‘Don’t be vulgar, Pierre, please. I’m only drinking the royalties I’ve paid you,’ retorted Violaine.
Pierre smiled and let a silence fall.
He drew his standing ashtray nearer to him and lit a cigarette. Smoke swirled around him like steam.
‘I didn’t know I smoked, and I don’t miss it at all.’
‘I’m serious. And there’s another thing, I don’t recognise a quarter of my clothes and jewellery.’
Pierre drank from his flute. ‘For example?’
‘An orange dress, very elegant. I don’t remember buying it but Édouard has seen me wear it several times.’
Pierre opened his computer. ‘Go on.’
‘The jewellery … I have no recollection of some of the rings and earrings. None at all. It’s as if they were put there by someone else. I’m frightened, Pierre. I’m frightened I have forgotten other things.’
‘Have you had a brain scan?’
‘All normal, apparently.’
‘The orange dress. Is it Bottega Veneta?’
‘Yes, how did you know?’ said Violaine, sitting up on the couch.
‘No memory of clothes or jewellery? Or cigarettes, even though you smoked more than a packet a day … That’s fascinating,’ he said with a smile.
‘What’s fascinating about it?’
‘The brain, Violaine, the labyrinth of the brain … is fascinating,’ he murmured, playing elegantly with the cigarette between his fingers. Then he set it down in a glass ashtray and the smoke rose in a straight line up towards the ceiling. He opened a drawer in his desk then went back to his chair beside the couch. ‘And do you remember these?’ he asked, putting into her hand a collection of gold and silver rings, most of them decorated with precious stones.
Violaine looked at them glittering in the palm of her hand. ‘What is this?’ She sounded a little afraid.
‘You don’t know what this is about?’
‘No, where did you get these rings?’
Pierre smiled again. ‘Fascinating,’ he repeated before rising and draining his champagne standing in the middle of the room.
‘Violaine, you are a kleptomaniac. You have been bringing me jewellery for years. I have a whole collection in my desk drawer. You steal all the time. You steal dresses as well, and you tell me about it in our sessions; you describe them in great detail. I have notes on all of them. Twice I have had to collect you from the police, when you stole from Cartier and from Dunhill. I have written dozens of letter so that you would not be charged. Your biggest fear is that Édouard might find out. And even so … you have no memory of all this.’
‘You’re lying!’ protested Violaine.
‘Absolutely not!’ replied Pierre Stein, stung. He went over and removed the drawer and placed it on Violaine’s knees. Inside were several dozen items of jewellery, ranging from costume jewellery to expensive designer pieces. ‘This is everything you’ve brought me. You would bring me something almost twice a month.’
Violaine fingered the jewellery and looked up at Pierre, shaking her head. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t remember. It’s all gone.’
‘That’s what’s so interesting!’ he cried, taking back the drawer. ‘You make the most fascinating study.’
‘But I didn’t steal all of these, did I?’
‘Yes, you did,’ he replied soberly. ‘Sex?’ he went on, abruptly changing the subject.
‘What do you mean, sex?’
‘Where are you sexually? Have you memories of that?’
‘Why are you asking that? I’m not going to tell you about my life with Édouard. What’s come over you? You think I’m in any state for sex at the moment? Look at me!’
‘I’m not talking about that. Forget it. We can talk about it next time.’ After another pause he said, ‘Sins.’
‘Sins? What do you mean?’
‘Your brain, Violaine, has forgotten your vices and sins. The jewellery, the clothes, smoking …’
Violaine did not know how to reply, and instinctively put her hand in her pocket where she discovered a ring set with a round stone. Inspector Tanche’s ring. She closed her eyes, taking deep breaths.
‘Pierre, a police inspector came to the office. She showed me a photo of two men killed by a bullet to the head, like in Sugar Flowers … Pierre, I know those two men.’