Enough About Love

THOMAS AND YVES

• •

THOMAS LE GALL IS CURIOUS about Louise Blum, curious and in a hurry.

The moment the door to his office is closed, he calls the friend who invited him to Sammy’s dinner, thanking him yet again. Feigning detachment, he tries to find out more about Louise. He clearly is not discreet enough: he earns an ironic laugh.

“Are you interested in Romain Vidal’s wife, then?”

Thomas does not deny it, but changes the subject. The name Romain Vidal means something to him. In a few clicks, he knows almost everything about Louise Blum’s husband: a doctor of biology and linguistics, he is a respected researcher and a shameless popularizer with over two hundred thousand references on the Internet. Thomas types in his own name. Ten times fewer, nothing to show off about. Not forgetting that there are also Thomas Le Galls who are pharmacists in Saint-Malo or headmasters of elementary schools in Quebec … Yves Janvier, how many of them? Thirty-five thousand times. Thomas switches off his computer and closes up.

In the bookstore on the Place de la Contrescarpe, there are piles of copies of Yves Janvier’s Two-Leaf Clover. He asks the proprietor about it, and the total lack of conviction in the man’s voice—“It’s not bad”—proves he knows absolutely nothing about it. Thomas buys one and, because the sun is shining, because it is still warm, he sits out on a terrace facing the fountain on the rue Mouffetard and orders a cup of coffee.

Janvier, on the back cover, is not smiling at the photographer. The face does have its curves but long vertical creases on the cheeks and forehead disrupt its softness. The fair hair grows more scant over the forehead. The man’s jaw is a blend of tough and gentle. Thomas would never have guessed he was Anna’s type.

Two-Leaf Clover is a far cry from a Russian novel. At barely a hundred pages, it is more a novella, clipping along energetically, comprising twelve short chapters. He finishes it in less than an hour. Anna Stein summarized the premise well: under intermittent Celtic rain, a man is confronted with a young mistress’s cold shoulder and the casual hostility of a rented Toyota. Sickly sweet cruelty, tidy economy of expression, moments of linguistic invention. Is it the sunlight, the Indian summer, the bittersweetness of his coffee? This slender book has dropped him straight into friendly territory. If Louise could be Anna’s cousin, then Yves — he can see it himself — could easily be Thomas’s own brother. Of course, they do have Anna in common. Getting to know Janvier better hardly strikes him as intrusive. Lacan never hesitated to make contact with his patients’ partners or even their mothers. That was still more extreme, but is far from a valid argument.

Thomas puts down his glasses — he and his glasses have been inseparable for several years. Philosophy may aim to domesticate death, but farsightedness is there every day to reinforce it. He looks at the fine tortoiseshell frame, the light reflected in the lenses, not realizing he is inadvertently grimacing.

Thomas stands up and gazes briefly at the water spilling from the fountain. His cell phone rings and the screen shows a woman’s name, an old girlfriend with whom, some evenings, he likes to be a cuddling companion. A “colorful friendship” is the way they describe their intimacy. It sounds a lot better than colorless love. Thomas answers.