Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud - A Life on Paper - Stories

A submarine grotto, with lighting, decorations, and a sound system, no doubt. I'd forgotten I was dealing with a billionaire.

Laurencais took a cell phone from his pocket. "Let's check, just to be sure."

He dialed and waited, shooting me a sideways glance. "You can visit if you'd like. There's a stairway, too, of course! Now, what can she be doing-ah! Hold, eres tu? Como estas? Muy Bien! Figa to que el senor…"

The conversation was brief.

"She had a good laugh when I told her you'd seen her drown," he said, putting the phone away.

"She's quite an individual… individual!" I said. "What does she do in life?"

"What does she do in life? Since you're a writer, I assume you've already pondered the strangeness of that expression, right?"

"Indeed I have."

"Indeed, it reveals the full extent of its strangeness when applied to a creature like her. What does Ligeia do in life? What do lions do in life? Or wild geese?" He laughed with relish. "Ligeia swims in the lagoon, she haunts the underwater grotto, and when she comes back to the surface she snorts and falls asleep in the sun. Vila!"

"But how did she come into your life?"

"It was I who came into hers, to her misfortune, I fear." He fell silent. He'd intrigued me, of course.

"What do you mean by that?"

"No more for today I must confess something. I didn't ask you here for the same reasons as the others" He gestured offhandedly toward the buildings where the demigods were lazing about. "I collect stars. For me, these people are objects I line up on a shelf in my head. Handsome items, of course! Mostly. But you're something else. I have a story I can't keep to myself. I can't imagine dying without having told it to someone. And you're one of the people I plan to tell. However, it isn t time yet.

"If you've read my work," I said, "you must know I'm not much interested in true stories."

"Precisely. Precisely!"

"I'm leaving soon. You'll have to make up your mind."

"The main thing is knowing what you'll make of this story"

"Probably another story, if it sets the little wheels in my mind spinning.

"There you have it! Another story! And I'll also tell two or three of your professional brethren, who will do the same, I'm sure. Thus Ligeia's true story will give birth to three or four fictional ones. People will read this one, or that, in New York, or Mexico, or Paris, without knowing they're reading a variation on a true story. Anyway, no story is entirely true, or entirely false. I want Ligeia's story to make its way around the world. I want it to escape the dangerously close circle of those who know it. When the time comes, you'll help me!"

To keep my curiosity at bay in the days that followed, I settled for Cindy/Christie. She had to have a story, too. I undertook to make her tell it. But the life of Cindy/Christie, as told by hers truly, was but a humongous, incoherent, and wildly proliferating lie. She'd gone through every conceivable kind of upbringing, every kind of misfortune, and every excuse, but also every rebellion, every ambition, and every kind of courage. She was Juliette, the victim of universal lust; she was Justine, priding herself on challenging the status quo by displaying her own infectious lubricity. Then she turned sweet and amusing when you stopped analyzing her soul to concentrate on her boo-boos and ailments.

Laurencais knew life and in lordly fashion assessed the loss of earnings a week of inactivity implied for the sacred monsters he hosted. A practical lord: the lavish gifts he gave his guests at their farewell party could easily be converted into cash. We could choose to keep them, or exchange them for dollars, yen, or Swiss francs, in which case they'd be used for the next lucky visitors. How many guests with their checks in their pockets had pretended to gush over a Sevres vase or contemporary sculpture they'd leave behind without regret?

When it was my turn, I played the game as sanctimoniously as anyone else. I found myself faced with a check, or selections from The Odyssey. Flustered at first, I clapped like a child when, beneath a sorrylooking binding, all sooty and crumbling, I recognized an authentic incunabulum, all the more precious because ancient authors, along with their great contemporaries, were the least well served during the first century of printing. I set out to look for Laurencais and thank him. He was nowhere to be seen, which surprised me, since the party was in full swing and he should've been the life of it.

It was barely noticeable from the glass-walled rooms overlooking the lagoon, but the weather was dreadful at sea. A raging, rain-laden wind swept the terraces and even the sheltered paths set back in the bowers. Rounding a corner in a hallway, I ran into one of Laurencais' young assistants, and asked after the master of the house. She bade me follow her down a narrow spiral staircase of white concrete. I recalled Laurencais' invitation to visit the grotto, which I hadn't given further thought to taking him up on… Come to think of it, hadn't he told me he was hardly ever down there? Why tonight then, while a bevy of celebrities cracked open the champagne without him?

The young woman bowed and stepped gracefully aside to let me pass. I stepped into the green light that bathed the grotto. I found it childlike in spirit and Hollywood in its actuality. Surely the austere Benito Guardicci had never had a hand in this. Still, it was pleasant: the womb we should never have left, the ideal lap to lay our head in and fall asleep on returning from a terrifying adventure in the world.

Laurencais called out to me. I spotted him, haloed at the far end of a golden beach that gently sloped down to the emerald water. He seemed to take a long time reaching me, though the distance between us couldn't have been more than sixty yards or so.

"Hello! Have you made up your mind?"

"I wanted to thank you for The Odyssey. A princely gift! I have a few misgivings-not about accepting it, but owning it. These things are really only safe in museums or major libraries."

"Bah! If your apartment catches fire, that book is probably the first thing you'll try and save. In any case, I'm happy you like it."

I jerked my head, indicating the grotto. "I should've come earlier. It's a stunning place."

"I'm not sure it's in good taste, but I wanted it. You can adjust the lighting to suit your mood, like in a theatre."

"Ligeia's not here?"

"No. I'm worried, I'll admit. As always, at spring tide-she goes out, see? She can't help it, she has to go back…"

"Where? This entire island is yours, and we're-how many miles did you say, the other day? Eleven hundred nautical miles from settled land?"

Laurencais shook his head. "I see I'm either going to have to tell you everyt ing, or keep my mout s ut.

"Is this about-"

"Yes. The story. Let's go back to the past. A short hop: twenty years. Picture me twenty years younger, stronger, more adventurous… but already rich enough to be offered certain experiences exclusive to a handful of individuals for whom money no longer has any reality. This time it's not about sex, but rather sport. I can still picture the man who contacted me. He was a sailor, a Chilean. He died later, of delirium. He was possessed-but that doesn't matter. This man said: `I hear you're a fisherman, Senor Laurencais…' As a matter of fact, I went deep-sea fishing at the time. `I'm offering you a fishing trip the likes of which you've never seen. This is an opportunity not to be missed, senor! It might be the last time…' I shrugged. I'd hunted every creature of the sea, even whales! But the good man smiled in commiseration, his eyes agleam: he had a billionaire on the hook. `Senor, there is a creature you've never caught before-the one I'm bringing you! Of course it'll cost you a great deal, but only if you're satisfied…' I'll spare you the negotiations and the details. Finally the Chilean convinced me."