Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud - A Life on Paper - Stories

I didn't quite know why I'd been invited. For my talent, they'd said, my works. I wanted to believe it. Nevertheless, everyone else in my batch enjoyed actual international fame, except me. I won't name names. A golden voice, a sex symbol, a director, a guitar hero; two champions, one in boxing and the other in tennis; a Nobel laureate in medicine; a painter only slightly less well-known than Leonardo or Vermeer; a physicist, all torso, whom the media that year claimed was Einstein reincarnated-there were ten of us all told. Needless to say, none of these people traveled without an entourage: lovers, mistresses, confidants, nannies, secretaries, trainers, doctors, and fortunetellers… With diplomacy and a firm smile, Laurencais' butler had managed to spread the crowd of underlings out in the estate's many annexes. I was the only one who'd come alone. Which meant that I was scared stiff at first among egos all bloated to varying degrees. Most knew nothing about me and mistook me for a bartender. I cleared this up three or four times before everything got sorted out. Since Laurencais vouched for me, granting me a status like their own, be it in ever so narrow and obscure a field as French literature, the celebrities all followed suit. They lowered their guard and showed themselves for what they really were: creatures superspecialized in their chosen fields and by the same token off-true, even crippled, at once pitiful and admirable, so many products of a limited shelf life. Take the guitarist. He was from a working-class background. A hard worker, he honed riffs on his lucky Telecaster eight hours a day while smoking joints his roadie-dealer rolled. He allowed himself a line in the evening the way people had a drink after the daily grind. We became friendly, and he didn't forget to offer me a sniff from his little box. I held up my glass of scotch. He shook his head in sorrow.

"That stuff's poison!"

I also liked the porn star, an oversensitive young woman, plaintive beneath her statuesque exterior. But she had a sense of humor about herself, her line of work, and her smutty fame.

"God;" she'd moan, "I grew up wearing little white socks and blue dresses and crying at Bambi, had my first kiss at nineteen, and now I'm the biggest slut on the planet. What's wrong with me? Few! A rash! Get my doctor quick, he's around here somewhere. Tell him I'm dying!"

I didn't hit it off with everyone. The golden voice really annoyed me, and no primate deserved to be compared to the boxing champ. I found the Moldo-Wallachian director, whom I believed and still believe to be a great artist, standoffish and incapable of camaraderie. At any rate, an unusual apparition soon made me forget my disappointment. We'd been there for two days when a young woman literally sprang from the lagoon. I happened to be watching Laurencais when she joined us. I thought I spied great relief in the eyes of our host. He introduced the newcomer to us as Ligeia. She greeted us with brusque timidity, surprising for such a beauty. For though I'd called the actress statuesque, Ligeia gave the word an altogether different, more impressive meaning. The actress-call her Cindy, or Christie-embodied an admittedly stunning but eminently consumable, even comestible kind of femininity. On first sight, everything about her woke in men a predatory instinct strongly tinged with almost cannibalistic overtones. But when you met her in the flesh, this initial impulse soon faded away because of the irony she employed at her own expense, and others' when needed. In real life, Cindy/Christie was only sexy for the first three minutes, before becoming endearing and sisterly.

Ligela was another matter. A fierce presence, an aura of sexuality heady as an odor that persisted after she walked away. For I never saw her stay in any one place for long: she was always passing through. In the same way, I never heard her start a conversation of her own initiative. She answered, with a single precise sentence requiring no clarification or additions, then fell silent, as though she'd discharged a tiresome duty. I had to admit it wasn't very pleasant. Her charm lay elsewhere. What we mean today by the word "charm" in no way describes what she exuded. You'd have to restore to the word the powerful associations it possessed in antiquity: a purely physical appeal so violent it was frightening. By day she lived in the water and wore only a G-string. By night, she donned a tunic, very simple and very short. The muscles of her arms, legs, and belly were free of the softness and tenderness of Cindy/Christie's. She looked like one of Arno Brecker's valkyries. Even while admiring her you thought to detect something not alienating but alien, something animal and disconcerting that confounded compliment. Who was she? Where had she been born? Who'd raised her? I tried to imagine her at the age of ten. It was one of my favorite games: picturing how the adults fate put on my path had looked as children. With Ligeia, no image came to mind; I found it impossible to conjure her up in any normal professional environment. She gave me the impression of being able to exist only the way I saw her-that is, more than half-naked in or near the water. Laurencais had left us in the dark as to their exact relationship. There was no evidence that she was his mistress. Two or three unassuming and very young things filled that role, behind the scenes. Was Ligeia his daughter, then? She didn't look like him at all. His niece? His ward? I wound up asking her. She was slow to answer.

"Erwin? He… He fished me out of the sea!" she said at last, unsmiling. With that, she left me standing there and dove into the blue lagoon where she spent most of her time.

I never go anywhere without a good pair of binoculars. Thanks to them, I feel like I'm flipping through a picture book rather than observing reality. The general outline of things looks different. Planes of vision remain distinct instead of blending into one another. A clearly decipherable world emerges, with the false and beautiful lucidity of childlike perception. I liked to follow Ligeia with my binoculars from my room. To say she swam like a dream was an understatement. But I wasn't simply struck by the excellence of her front crawl. In the water, her face conveyed a tranquility totally lacking on land. Another woman revealed herself, resurfaced, far from the world of men…

One morning, as I was spying on her movements from my room, an incident occurred. Having swum the lagoon from one end to the other, along the craggy and impassable original shore, I saw her plunge a few dozen yards from the edge. She often went skin diving. I expected to see her come back up at any moment, but time went by and I began getting impatient. I soon panicked, dropping the binoculars and picking them up again, straining my eyes to spot the figure that would convince me my fears were ungrounded. Without success. Had I just seen someone drown? Perhaps there was still time to do something? A feeling of responsibility oppressed me. I spotted Laurencais talking to a gardener in the path beneath my balcony. I called out to them, and tried to communicate the fear that gripped me. Faced with their incomprehension, I jumped down onto the path to reach them more quickly and explain myself.

"What? Someone drowned?"

"Maybe. Over there. Ligeia-"

"Ligeia? Impossible! Where did you say?"

"Over there!"

Laurencais turned to look where I was pointing. A vague worry left his face. "Have no fear, my friend. If you saw her disappear over there, she's completely safe!"

"But-"

The Venezuelan clapped me kindly on the shoulder. "Don't worry! She went for a rest in the grotto. It's an artificial lagoon, as I'm sure you re aware…

He dismissed the gardener with a look.

"When they were digging the lagoon," he said, "I had them make an underwater grotto… We all have a fantasy like that, about one thing or another. Now that mine has been satisfied, I hardly ever go there. Besides, Ligeia's sort of made it her own private spot. She spends a lot of time there."