Anita is sitting at the desk of a staff writer, who has gone to cover a story in Barcelona, a city in crisis for two weeks. She pictures tents pitched on the boulevards lined with palm trees, the demonstrations outside the ancient buildings, the beaches filled with people in search of different lives. Why have she and Adam never been to Barcelona, to stroll along these same shady boulevards, why have they never visited the Sagrada Família, why have they never basked on these beaches? After all, it is less than four hundred miles away. You could do it in half a day. She thinks about their friends who, over the course of a weekend, take in Prague, Florence, London, Istanbul, the way she goes and visits those godforsaken hamlets out there in the mountains and valleys. Anita pulls herself up, she ought not to say “godforsaken hamlets,” she ought not to fall into the trap of scorn for what is unknown and ignored by the guidebooks, she must not think like a metropolitan liberal, is there not as much merit in writing about the postal worker eating a few lumps of sugar to overcome her hunger as in talking about the demonstrators taking over Barcelona?
“Good morning, Anita.”
Christian Voubert stands there before her, his body as slim and lithe as ever.
“Oh, good morning, Christian. Did you read the portraits?”
“Yes, I’ve just done so. They’re excellent, Anita. It’s a terrific idea to present the subject from this angle. Three occupations that we generally see treated in a rather … how did you put it in your text …?”
“As figures from folklore.”
“Yes! That’s it: folklore! I need a short introductory text with some numbers to set it in the context of the rest of the region, something quite simple. Can you do that?”
“Sure. What page will you put it on?”
“What do you think about the back page? With a splash headline on the front?”
Normally Anita would rush to the telephone to call her husband (they’re giving me the back page!! a full page!!) But this is a very special day for Adam. He’s due to met David Schtourm, for heaven’s sake! He’s been talking about it for days, wondering which painting to take, as Schtourm only wanted to see one. A few days before, in bed, he had whispered to Anita: You do realize this could change our lives if it goes well? How could an article in a regional newspaper compete with the prospect of a change of life? What could equal that?
And she’s aware of it now, isn’t she? Anita senses something awakening within her, something that she doesn’t like, but that she takes on board without flinching. Something that resembles jealousy, dissatisfaction, provocation, and it is rather as if she were on the brink of committing an unavoidable larceny. She opens her address book, finds the number, and, as she is dialing it, recalls that office scattered with books, that copy of Ulysses always prominent on his desk. When he picks up on the first ring, as he always did, she smiles, amazed that he remembers her (he says, Well, I received the notices: the wedding, the birth, how old is she now, your daughter? What does he do, your husband? What are you doing yourself?) She tells him she has begun work on a novel and would welcome an opinion. He replies, very simply, Send me the opening pages, Anita.
Anita hangs up, takes deep breaths to calm her heart, stands up, looks out at the city. It was nothing, only a phone call.
It is 11:00 a.m. and the bulletins on the radio announce that it is the first day of winter at last. There is a shower of fine hail across the city. Cars skid, people slip on the ice.
Serge Clément, the director of conurbation planning services, is in bed. He is insisting that Léo must be fed. In one hand his wife holds a thermometer showing a temperature of 103 degrees Fahrenheit and with the other she calls for an ambulance. Léo, his rabbit, died when he was nine years old.
Imran is waiting in a pleasant room in D wing in the hospital. He wonders if this is the wing reserved for desperate cases, there is something falsely cheerful about the nurses, they are too well informed, they address him as “Monsieur” and his file was at the top of the pile when he arrived. The soda machine is free, they tell him. So this really must be the wing for people at death’s door. He pauses for a moment in front of the window on the machine, presses 53, and a black and red can comes down. It reminds him of that Christmas tree at Adam’s office and he finally decides that artifact is not so bad, after all.
At the hotel, in one of the suites with a terrace that gives a feeling of being poised above the sea, David Schtourm is lying on the bed, with Adam’s painting placed beside him. At the center of the white canvas there is a great black circle, the lower part of which has run and extended beyond the frame of the picture. The four corners of the picture are spotless. This first layer of black is smooth, gleaming, and dense. It gives the impression of a skin that one could lift right off the canvas. Drops of an extraordinary vermilion red spread across this black circle from left to right. When Schtourm placed the picture on the chair beside the door and backed away as far as the window on the other side of the room, this red was transformed into a ruby necklace displayed in a black jewel case. When he studied the picture close at hand he noticed that tiny pink-and-white bubbles were trapped within the red. Here and there they had risen to
