As he lies there on the bed with his eyes closed, all at once it comes to him. This painting is an extract, it begins somewhere else, it does not end here. This painting is an interpretation of the present in its infinite complexity; an individual and shared present, a present that is not static, a present filled with a thousand instants, coming and exploding on its surface. David Schtourm’s heart begins to beat very fast and he hears a clock striking. Eleven o’clock. Still four more hours to wait before meeting the creator of the painting that bears the title Melody.
The swans on the lake
ANITA IS WALKING AT RANDOM, turning this way and that, lingering in front of splendid shop windows. She goes into several stores, spends a long time trying on a beige woolen coat she does not buy. She spins the stands containing pretty postcards at the newsagents, spends quite a while in the bookstore on the square. She contemplates the piles of books displayed on the table in the middle of the store as one might contemplate a table spread for a feast. As she is leaving, a young man stops her. He has red hair, a complexion like fresh milk. Excuse me. Do you speak English? Anita laughs. She has once more become that young woman of eighteen from Mauritius, strolling through a French city, marveling at the sidewalks, at a cup of steaming coffee, at red flowers on a balcony, at all the books in all the store windows, taking her time, as if the intoxication of youth, the immensity of the future, and this present were all a single entity.
In a café Anita orders a cheese sandwich and eats it at the counter while watching the whole ballet of waiters in red aprons, people dawdling in the café before returning to the office, kissing, talking, passing by. In the mirror, across from the counter, she catches her face. It looks more solid than before, as if her jaws had grown harder. She has lost the fullness of her cheeks, the rounded cheekbones. Although she likes to consider that she is free of vanity (“beauty is an inner quality” and other such nonsense) she monitors every change and could make a detailed catalog of this body from head to toe, where it has slackened, been discolored, stretch marks, brown spots, a slight stoop, dryness, rolls of fat. In a few months’ time she will be thirty-nine. She pays the bill, slips down from the stool with unexpected grace. It is time to go home. Who knows? Perhaps this winter will be wonderful. She pictures the possibility of receiving a whole avalanche of good news. Those first few pages are excellent, send me the rest soon: it’s high time we gave you a proper contract; the paintings will be exhibited in Paris in February; go ahead, Anita, of course you can draw inspiration from my life to write your first novel; look, Laura, the swans are there!
After washing the kitchen floor, disinfecting and polishing the kitchen table, Adèle looks for a sheet of paper. There are plenty of notebooks and binders in this house but she would like to write her letter on a plain unattached sheet. She does not yet know what she would say in it, maybe just forgive me. She opens the door to the room she has never entered, where Anita sometimes shuts herself away for hours at a time. She sees the ream of paper between the computer and the printer. She moves forward swiftly with her eyes lowered, holding her breath, because she does not want to linger over the books, the bookcase, the photographs, she does not want to admire the forest through the big window, she does not want to inhale the scent of vanilla mixed with that of timber—she is no longer a part of this life, she has smashed it with her own hands, this life, but what’s the use of torturing herself, she will write her letter or her single word, something, at any rate, and then leave. With two nimble steps she reaches the desk, stretches out her hand toward the stack of paper, and, in spite of herself, her gaze settles on the gray, loose-leaf binder and, oh, it’s just like the one she used to use at school, she has not seen a binder like that for ages. She picks it up (simply to stroke the rough grain of the cover, to smell the scent of the pages, things you do when you come across something old) and there, underneath the binder, she discovers a pile of loose sheets neatly squared off and on the top page there is this:
The Melody of Adèle
It seems to her as if these words have no meaning, are they written in a foreign language? are they a scholarly expression?, but she does
