William Boyd - The Destiny of Nathalie X

I found it hard to paint in the house now that its routines revolved around Dominic’s noisy needs rather than my own. I was trying to complete enough work for an exhibition that a friend, who owned a little gallery in the rue Jacob, was kindly arranging for me, and so, most days I would load the panniers on my bicycle with my paints and brushes and set off for various parts of the island that were not pestered with tourists or summer residents, returning home as evening began to approach. I found a place overlooking the salt pans which promised great refulgent expanses of sky and water. I loved the salt pans with their strange poetry of dessication, though the series of watercolors I produced there, well enough done, had a lonely simplicity that seemed a little repetitive.

So it was in search of some contrasting bustle and busyness that I reluctantly ventured into one of the little ports and set up my easel by the marina. But after the serenity of the salt pans I found the presence of curious sightseers peering over my shoulder off-putting and, to be frank, my technique was found wanting when I came to render the bobbing mass of yachts and powerboats, dinghies and cruisers, that were crowded in among the piers and the jetties.

I was sitting there one midmorning, having torn up my first attempt, wondering vaguely if it would be worth looking at some Dufys that I knew hung in a provincial gallery not more than half a day’s drive away, when my peripheral attention was caught by a half-glimpsed figure, male, slim in white khakis and a navy sweater, that I was convinced was familiar. You know the way your instinctive apprehension is often more sure and certain than something studied and sought for: the glance is often more accurate than the stare. I was oddly positive that I had seen someone I knew and, having nothing on the easel to detain me, I sauntered off to find out who it was.

Didier Van Breuer sat in the sunshine of the restaurant terrace with a small glass of brandy and a caffè latte on the table in front of him, shirtless with a navy blue cotton sweater. He had a small red bandanna at his throat. He looked changed since we had last seen him, older and more gaunt. He did not seem too surprised to see me (he knew I summered on the island, he said) but I was glad to discover that my instincts and my eyesight were as sharp and shrewd as they had always been. He was cordial, with none of that reserve I had always associated with him.

“Where are you staying?” I asked.

He pointed to the harbor, at a vast gin-palace of a motor yacht with a single tall funnel (yellow with a magenta stripe). Crew members swabbed down bleached teak decks; brown water was being pumped from bilges. He was alone, he told me, on an endless meandering summer cruise trying to forget Charlotte and her grotesque betrayal (she was living with Didier’s estranged son). I asked him to dinner that night (I had seen Odette empty almost an entire tin of cumin into a lobster stew) but he declined, saying they were setting sail for the Azores later. He finished his drink and we wandered around the quay to his boat (his trousers were pale blue, I noticed with a private smile; however vigilant, the corner of your eye cannot achieve 20/20 vision). He had changed the name from Charlotte III to Clymene , who, he told me, with harsh irony, was the mistress of the sun. He invited me on board and we strolled through the empty staterooms smoking cigars, the warm buttock of a brandy goblet cupped in my tight palm. I felt sad for him, with his pointless wealth and the cheerless luxury of his life, and felt sad myself as the boat reminded me of Pappi’s old schooner, the Vergissmeinnicht , and my lost childhood. He had a rather fine Dufy in the dining room and I took the opportunity to make a few quick notes and sketches while he went upstairs to make a telephone call.

Nota bene . To be remembered: the serene roseate beauty of the summer dusk as I cycled homeward, a little drunk, a rare cloud trapped in a cloud-reflecting puddle at the side of the road. To be remembered: my almost insupportable feeling of happiness.

4 a.m. I am alone on the terrace of my small house, looking east beyond my blue hydrangeas toward the mainland, waiting for the sun to rise. I wonder how many people there are on that mainland as miserable as I am.

Golo’s note was terse. She had left me and our child. She was no longer in love with me. There was another man in her life whose identity she would not reveal at this moment. I must not look for her. She would be in touch with me in due course. This was the only way. She needed none of my money. She asked my forgiveness and understanding and hoped, for the sake of Dominic, that we could remain friends.

Odette said simply that during the day Madame had received and made numerous phone calls, had packed one suitcase and then, at about four o’clock, she heard the taxi claxoning for her in the lane. She was going to visit her family, she had told Odette, she had left a note for me and was gone.

I wasted no time. I drove at once back to the port, where of course there was no sign of the Clymene . En route for the Azores or God knew where. I returned to my house (not our house anymore) and cried a few hot tears of rage and frustration over my son’s cot ( my son, not our son anymore) until I woke him and he began to bawl as well. I drank half a bottle of Pernod, then drove the car to the ferry and was transported to the mainland. I spent a fruitless hour searching for a “Venus of the Crossroads,” as Pappi used to refer to them, feeling the urge for revenge slowly ebb from me. At around midnight, in an overlit dockside bar I halfheartedly bought a large woman with bobbed hair and a tight jersey a few drinks but then lost my nerve. On the last ferry back to the island a bearded youngster played some form of Hawaiian music on a guitar.

The sky is lightening, a pale cornflower blue shading into lemon; my dead eyes watch the beautiful transformation, unmarveling. I must think, I must clarify my thoughts. The betrayed husband is always the last to know, they say. Didier Van Breuer. Were our friends in Sydney, Australia, all laughing behind my back that winter? What had made Didier come to our house to announce his separation? What had made him break down that way over the meal? What had been said while I was out of the room? To end this stream of answerless questions I force myself to think of Encarnación, a Mexican girl I had briefly loved and to whom I had once thought of proposing. Dear, lissome Encarna, some kind of ex-athlete, a hurdler or swimmer. So different from Golo. I think of a meal we shared in New York, that little restaurant in New York, south of Greenwich Village, where she cajoled me into eating a pungent, shouting salsa from her native province that made my eyes water, obliging me to suck peppermints for days …

This is what I must retain. These are the fragments I must hoard from these last three years. The soft explosion of a pile of leaves. The querulous where-the-hell-are-you? tooting of a waiting motorist. The scent of menthol jujubes. A lone yacht on a silver bay. The immaculate dicing of a garlic clove. The dark trees of Carlyle Square. Oursins à la provençale. A slim male figure in white khakis and a navy sweater. A tin of cumin. A taxi claxoning in the lane. A pungent, shouting salsa that obliged me to suck peppermints for days.

O hornern não é um animal

É uma carne inteligente

Embora às vezes doente.

(A man is not an animal;

Is intelligent flesh,

Although sometimes ill.)

Fernando Pessoa

MY NAME is Lily Campendonc. A long time ago I used to live in Lisbon.

I lived in Lisbon between 1929 and 1935. A beautiful city, but melancholy.