Enough About Love

YVES AND ANNA

• •

YVES HAS NOT SEEN ANNA again since their first meeting. The elevator drops him off at her floor. There is only one door, and the hallway acts as storage space for children’s bicycles, scooters, a little red Ferrari with pedals. So many warning signs: Anna’s life is as cluttered as her hallway.

He rings the bell. A little boy opens the door — Karl, Yves remembers — and stares at him.

“Mommy, there’s a man.”

The child runs off.

“Come in, Yves,” Anna’s voice calls out. “Did you say hello, Karl?”

Yves takes one step into the foyer, Anna is still invisible. Her voice comes to him along the corridor, from her bedroom, Yves presumes.

“I’m sorry, I’m not dressed yet. My parents will keep you company.”

Yves takes another step. It is a nice apartment with a mishmash of furniture, strongly biased toward the sixties. A woman wearing a lot of gold and pearls and with a Sephardic beauty is sitting in an armchair smoothing a little girl’s blond curls for the night. Yves recognizes Anna’s smile in hers.

“Hello … I’m Anna’s mother. Beatrice. You know her, always late. Well, aren’t you going to say hello, Lea?”

Lea, sulking, does not look up. Her grandmother does not push her.

“Laurent, my husband.”

Yves has not noticed the man with the long white hair and regal features standing by the bookshelves, leafing through a book.

“Good evening. Laurent Stein, the father of the woman who’s late.”

Yves shakes his hand: “Yves Janvier.”

“I know,” says Laurent Stein, turning over the book’s cover. Yves recognizes The Two-Leaf Clover. “It’s my reading for this evening,” Anna’s father explains. “It starts really well.”

“Thanks. But it ends badly. Luckily it’s very short.”

“It ends badly, it’s very short … That’s a definition of life.” Yves smiles. Anna’s father watches him, half opens the book. “Do you mind if I make a criticism? Or let’s call it just a comment.”

“Please do.”

“It’s about the quote from Pascal that you use as an epigraph: ‘We never love a person, but only qualities.’ ”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry, but I wonder whether it’s not the exact opposite: what attracts us about another person has more to do with what makes them fragile, the chink in their armor. Love is kindled by the weakness we perceive, the flaw we get in through, wouldn’t you say?”

Yves is disoriented, wants to argue the point. “Perhaps. But I felt Pascal used the word ‘qualities’ to mean character traits in general …”

“I’m afraid his meaning was more prosaic. I have to admit I loathe Pascal. He’s a narrow-minded, third-rate philosopher pinioned by superstition. To be honest, I can’t think of anything more stupid than his challenge.”³

“I’m with you on that,” Yves smiles.

Anna interrupts, her voice amused: “I’ll be quick, Yves, or my father will corner you and then we’ll be really late. And you, daddy, stop teasing Yves. Yves, if my father’s bothering you—”

“Not in the least, your father’s not bothering me …”

“Are you working on a novel at the moment, Mr. Janvier?”

“Yves. Please, Mr. Stein, call me Yves … Yes, I’ve started on something, about a relationship … Well, when I put it like that, it sounds terribly banal …”

“No it doesn’t. Do you have a title yet?”

“I’d like to call it The Together Theory, together as in ‘being together,’ not ‘get it together.’ Or maybe Abkhazian Dominoes, I’m not sure yet.”

“Abkhazian?”

“From Abkhazia. It’s a small state to the north of the Black Sea.”

“They’re both good titles. A bit intellectual, though, wouldn’t you say? My daughter’s right, I’m teasing you.”

“Um … Yes, what I wanted was—”

“Okay, I’m ready.”

Anna emerges from the bedroom, sheathed in a red satin dress with oriental patterns on it. Yves thinks she looks dazzling. She has bare feet, and is holding a pair of sandals in each hand.

“Mom, do you think these ones, the Cretan look, or these which are more Roman?”

Yves can see no difference at all. The mother can, though. She opts for the Cretan pair.

“We’re off, mom. Maureen’s just called. She can’t find anywhere to park and she’s waiting outside. Bye, daddy. Kids, are you going to give me a kiss?”

Lea and Karl hurtle out of their room and almost suffocate her with hugs, Lea acting abandoned, laughing as she pretends to snivel. Anna tears herself away from them gently in the hallway. She goes into the elevator and Yves follows her. He has one last look at the little red Ferrari. The door closes.

There are four inches separating Yves and Anna. She wears a fresh perfume, all woods and ivy, she says nothing, smiles, lowers her eyes. To resist the urge to take her in his arms, Yves concentrates on their surroundings: elevator branded ART, tinted mirror, coarse black carpeting on the walls. A copper plaque: MAX: 3 PEOPLE, 240 KG. A control panel with six black buttons, GROUND, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, one red button, STOP, one green button, 24 HR. CALL. A cutout area covered with wire netting, a loudspeaker, and a microphone. IN THE EVENT OF AN INCIDENT, PLEASE REFER TO TL1034.

But there is no incident, and the trip down takes fifteen seconds. Yves succeeds in trying nothing. All through the evening he will not have another opportunity, however slight, to kiss Anna. She and her cousin Maureen will go home early.

In the morning, when Stan comes home from night duty, she will tell him about Christiane’s party, at length, more than usual. About Jean, Maureen’s new boyfriend, “charming, but maybe a bit smug,” about Christiane’s illness, “stabilized,” about the famous and very talented filmmaker who was there, “of course you remember, Stan, Thirty Years Without Seeing the Sea, he directed that, we saw it together.”

“Thirty Years Without Seeing the Sea,” Stan says. “Yes.”

About Yves, Anna says nothing.

3. Pascal published a challenge, offering prizes for solutions to two complex mathematical problems involving Cavalieri’s calculus of indivisibles, problems he himself had already solved. He sent the challenge out to Wren, Laloubère, Leibniz, Huygens, Wallis, Fermat, and several other mathematicians.