Drinks are served as they stand in the garden. Adam’s studio, which attracts curiosity (and teasing toward the end of the evening, what have you got hidden there? Come on, show us!) is still firmly closed, the curtains drawn. There is the beautiful lawn, the wooden chairs, the awnings stretched taut, the candles on the tables, the children in the playhouse, air that is both dense and fresh, something one can feel going deep into one’s lungs and acting there like an air freshener, they exchange news, they drink a toast, they stroll around a little, they light the first cigarettes. There is, after all, something gratifying about this start to the evening. A year has passed and they are all still there, no one has been forgotten, there has been no great disaster, no revolution, no great quarrels, no, they are still the same, or almost, at the start of this evening with all the children running in and out between their legs. They have the feeling that there is a special glamour about ordinary life, routine, traditions (getting married, having children, going on vacation, seeing friends, being in good health, little girls wearing smocked dresses and little boys wearing Bermuda shorts), and they feel grateful.
Julie is the first to notice Adèle. Going up to Anita, and in the brisk tone of voice she sometimes adopts, she remarks: “Anita, there’s a woman in your kitchen.”
Anita looks up and sees Adèle in the doorway.
They all turn to watch her approaching. Adèle walks slowly because Laura and the other children are dancing around her, as if she had promised them candies. They all notice her towering figure, her muscular, bare arms, effortlessly carrying a crate filled with bottles, her long solid legs in tight-fitting black jeans, her black boots. The gold of the setting sun pours down from the sky, filters through the leaves of the lilac trees, and spills onto Adèle’s shaven head. There is the bracelet that sinks into her flesh a little when she sets the crate down on the ground. There is her Madonna-like face, her discreet and simple smile, her eyes slightly lowered, the hand she presses to her heart when she straightens up, and then Laura throws herself into her arms. Now she smiles broadly at Anita and at Anita alone. There is something other than friendship between these two women, there is a country, pictures beyond words, gestures beyond dissection, the little memories of childhood, the little memories of a country left behind, when the bread was like that and bus tickets were this color, when that was what we used to say, when this was what we used to do, when these were the fruits we used to eat.
Adèle turns on her heel and walks away, with the brood of children in tow, without a word, without a glance at the others.
“My God! What style! Who is that girl?”
Anita feels shaky, as if she has stepped onto a fracture in a rock. On the one hand there is her daughter running off, happy and laughing with Adèle (was Laura ever as merry in her company?); on the other hand there are her husband and their friends who seem to be hypnotized by Adèle. For once in her life she would have liked to experience having that effect on people, men, women, and children all alike. Does it make you strong? Invincible? Vain? Happy? Brave?
She tries to think back to the days of her youth, when she had just arrived in Paris, when she spent hours walking along the quays, sat on the green benches in the parks and wrote, offered her face to the sun, stretched out on the grass, when she spent hours talking on café terraces, coffee, cigarettes, and ideas. Was she beautiful at the time? She turns and catches Adam’s eye. Something infinitely tender and mysterious passes between them. All their various lives seem to be in harmony at last, the newspaper and the novel; the architecture and the painting; being parents and being selfish; being full of vitality and on the brink of forty.
“Who’d like some punch? It’s a home brew.”
“Punch? That’s a bit 1980s, isn’t it?”
That New Year’s Eve party in a house in Montreuil, a green sofa, punch that was far too strong. Anita and Adam smile.
“So who’s that chick? Is she Laura’s nanny or is she a relative of yours, Anita? I hope she’s going to join us later.”
It is Alexandre who puts the question. He is wearing electric-blue velvet shoes with a straw hat on his head. He is a lawyer. Adam sighs and images of a younger Alexandre appear before his eyes. An Alexandre hopelessly in love with some girl, but who, even in the midst of the exquisite agonies of a passion not wholly reciprocated, cut a droll figure. In those days his fickle heart used to amuse them, the way he would seduce, abandon, weep, deceive, return.
Adam opens his mouth but it is Anita who replies.
“So, because she’s not white she must either be the nanny or a relative of mine? On a point of clarification, my learned friend, don’t you think that remark is based on a somewhat racist presumption?”
There is an instant of stupefied silence (Anita? Was it Anita who said that?) until Adam gives a great guffaw and the others burst out laughing as well. But that moment was enough for everyone to grasp that things have changed in that house on the edge of the forest and it is not just a change of
