Pan Bouyoucas - Portrait of a Husband with the Ashes of His Wife

“Yes, I remember him.”

“He’s in jail.”

“Why?”

“A couple of months ago he picked up a fare who wanted to go to the corner of Monkland and Royal, in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. When he realized that Georges was Lebanese too, he started telling him that he was going to get it off with a married woman he’d met in a bar where she hung out when her husband was at work. She wasn’t hot but she was submissive and compliant, he said… You hear these things in a taxi, Doctor… You have no idea what tales our fares tell us. At first, Georges only half-listened. But the more the guy said about what he was going to do to the woman he was on his way to get it on with, the worse Georges felt for her and for her husband. Until they arrived at the corner of Monkland and Royal. The guy paid Georges, with a tip as big as the prospect of the pleasures he was going to experience, then he got out. But Georges didn’t leave. He lived in the same neighbourhood and he wanted to see which of his neighbours’ houses the guy would go into. And what doorbell do you think he saw Casanova ring?”

He laughed.

“I tell you, Doctor, there are coincidences that make a man really believe in the existence of Satan…”

Doctor Maras did not laugh at all. In fact, if Abdo Adaïmi wanted to cheer him up he’d only managed to make him gloomier. And now it was with a sombre face that, as soon as he was buckled into his seat, he asked the flight attendant not to let anyone wake him up before arrival, then he gulped a sleeping pill to give himself a rest from his thoughts.

HE LANDED ATCharles de Gaulle on Sunday morning. Hélène and her husband, director of photography Franck Rondot, had the day off and had come to meet him.

In the car, Hélène informed her brother that she’d made an appointment for him with Serge Groslin on Tuesday afternoon.

“Why not tomorrow?”

“He left for Marseille yesterday and won’t be back till noon on Tuesday.”

He was going to stew in doubt for another day and just thinking about it made him choke. Hélène knew that and it pained her to see her brother so broken. But she also knew that only Groslin could take him out of the abyss into which Alma’s last wishes had cast him and said nothing.

Franck was driving.

Suddenly he said:

“If it was me, instead of torturing myself I’d go and find that son of a bitch’s wife.”

Doctor Maras did not react.

Neither did his sister.

Franck raised his voice.

“Groslin must’ve told his wife about whatever feelings Alma still had for him, even if it was just to brag. I know him.”

The other two still said nothing.

Franck glanced in the rearview mirror.

“If you’re afraid of confronting his wife, I’ll go with you.”

“I’ll wait till Tuesday,” Doctor Maras finally said.

“Do you think Groslin will tell you the truth? Coward that he is, he’ll be super careful not to reveal anything for fear that you’ll smash his face. And that scum won’t just take the mickey out of you. What a great idea for a film, he’ll say, a guy looks for the place where his beloved was the happiest to scatter her ashes. And as soon as you’re gone, he’ll jot down everything you told him to pass on to his buddies or use in a film, never overburdening himself with scruples as you do.”

“Maybe so. I’m still waiting till Tuesday.”

Franck turned towards his wife.

“They’re something else, these Canadians, eh? He’s been given horns and he’d rather mope and feel sorry for himself than upset the wife of the guy that cuckolded him. Finally I understand why you’ve turned out as many great men as we’ve produced seal hunters.”

Hélène observed her husband for a moment.

“You seem to be mad at Groslin.”

“I’m just trying to help your brother. Obviously, even though he’s a doctor he doesn’t know what cowardice can lead to. At first, it seems easy. You invent a thousand reasons for not putting your words into action. But you always pay the price in the end. Pimples, ulcers, insomnia, cancer…”

FRANK WOULDN’T LETthe matter go. While Doctor Maras settled into the guest room, washed, and called his daughter to tell her he’d be coming home a day later, his brother-in-law, an assiduous reader of scholarly works as well as fiction, consulted several in search of arguments that would help him convince his guest to go and see Ninon Conti. And at dinner that night, all puffed up with his finds, he asked:

“What is happiness, Alexandre? What in your opinion is the meaning of that word?”

Because of jet lag, fatigue, and his torments, Doctor Maras had trouble focusing his thoughts and, caught off guard, he spluttered.

Franck burst out laughing.

“You’re hilarious! You’re trying to find the place where your wife was happiest and you don’t know the meaning of the word?”

“You aren’t going to start bugging him again with that,” Hélène said.

“Feeling his pain won’t lighten his suffering,” her husband replied. “As long as we’re at it why not drive nails into his hands and pour him some vinegar to quench his thirst?”

Then he launched into an exposition that quickly revealed the extent of his knowledge both general and specific.

Reduced to silence by his brother-in-law’s verbal avalanche, Doctor Maras, whenever an argument came to the tip of his tongue to defend the happiness he had experienced so often when he was back home with his wife and his daughter, for example, after a good day’s work, he would think to himself: That’s too superficial, and choke it back. Hence, when his sister finally asked her husband if one had to conclude that happiness on earth is a figment of the imagination, even if his whole body wanted to cry out No, he waited for Franck’s reply with the expression his patients wore when they were waiting for his diagnosis.

“ Happiness is merely an idea ,” Franck read in a psychiatry text. “ Only pleasure is concrete, as is displeasure. And one of the most complex and most interesting points in psychiatry is the coexistence of pleasure and pain. Masochism is the most obvious form of that state. ”

Doctor Maras protested:

“I came to Paris out of duty.”

Franck turned toward his wife and, savouring every word, said to her:

“Typical reply of a masochist, like the saint or the soldier who devote themselves to a noble cause, regardless of the danger and pain involved. And Alma, knowing her husband’s sense of duty, arranged through her last wishes to make him pay for all the years she’d devoted to him rather than to her career.”

Doctor Maras protested again. Yes, he said, like everyone else Alma had her faults and she could occasionally be nasty, especially when she heard the excessive flattery that less talented actresses received for roles that she was no longer offered. She could also prove to be jealous and possessive, especially when she saw the way young women made eyes at her husband. But never, ever had she in a calculating way caused harm to another. “What is it about young girls?” she said quite simply. “To keep in shape they just have to flutter their eyelashes.” Yes, she had humour and wit, even if she preferred to play tragic roles. Alma also had a big heart, even when it was at its sickest.