An Astronomer in Love E-Book

Antoine Laurain

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 309

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

'A brilliant love story' The Lady 'Like finding a gem among the bric-a-brac in a local brocante' Telegraph From the bestselling author of The Red Notebook In 1760, Guillaume le Gentil, astronomer to King Louis XV, sets sail for India. He hopes to record the transit of Venus, but rough seas - and war with the British - make his quest more complicated than he could have imagined. Two hundred and fifty years later, anxious, lonely Xavier Lemercier chances upon Guillaume's telescope. As he looks out across the rooftops of Paris, he glimpses an intriguing woman with a zebra in her apartment. Then she walks into his office, and his life changes forever... Translated by Louise Rogers Lalaurie and Megan Jones.

Leseprobe

3

WINNER OF THE GRAND PRIX JULES VERNE 2023

WINNER OF THE PRIX DU CERCLE DE L’UNION INTERALLIÉE 2023

LONGLISTED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2024

SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANFORD VIKING AWARD FOR FICTION 2024  

‘Perfect for the poolside or sitting outside a café with a pastis and olives – and bound to give you just the same cheering lift’

The Times

‘A brilliant love story … The supporting cast, including a not-quite-dead dodo and a zebra, will have readers laughing and crying in equal measure’

The Lady

‘Cinematic and enchanting’

ForewordReviews(starred)

‘Simply beautiful. An enchanting dual-timeline story of a love written in the stars’

Fiona Valpy, author of TheDressmaker’sGift

‘A witty, lovely, surprising triumph’

William Ryan, author of AHouseofGhosts 4

PRAISE FORVintage 1954

‘A glorious time-slip caper … Just wonderful’

Daily Mail

‘Delightfully nostalgic escapism set in a gorgeously conjured Paris of 1954’

Sunday Mirror

‘Like fine wine, Laurain’s novels get better with each one he writes … a charming and warm-hearted read’

Phaedra Patrick, author of TheCuriousCharmsofArthurPepper

PRAISE FORTheRedNotebook

‘A clever, funny novel… a masterpiece of Parisian perfection’

HM The Queen

‘In equal parts an offbeat romance, detective story and a clarion call for metropolitans to look after their neighbours… Reading TheRedNotebookis a little like finding a gem among the bric-a-brac in a local brocante’

Telegraph

‘Resist this novel if you can; it’s the very quintessence of French romance’

The Times 5

‘Soaked in Parisian atmosphere, this lovely, clever, funny novel will have you rushing to the Eurostar post-haste… A gem’

Daily Mail

‘An endearing love story written in beautifully poetic prose. It is an enthralling mystery about chasing the unknown, the nostalgia for what could have been, and most importantly, the persistence of curiosity’

SanFranciscoBookReview

PRAISE FORThePresident’sHat

‘A hymn to lavieParisienne… enjoy it for its fabulistic narrative, and the way it teeters pleasantly on the edge of Gallic whimsy’

Guardian

‘Flawless … a funny, clever, feel-good social satire with the page-turning quality of a great detective novel’

Rosie Goldsmith

‘A fable of romance and redemption’

Telegraph

‘Part eccentric romance, part detective story … this book makes perfect holiday reading’

The Lady

‘Its gentle satirical humor reminded me of Jacques Tati’s classic films, and, no, you don’t have to know French politics to enjoy this novel’

LibraryJournal 67

8

9

10

11

This book is dedicated to Guillaume Le Gentil (1725–1792). A luckless astronomer, an honest soul, and a true hero.

12

13

The sun is the shadow of God

Michelangelo14

Contents

Title PageDedicationEpigraphAn Astronomer in LoveEpilogueMore From Antoine LaurainAvailable and Coming Soon From Pushkin Press About the AuthorsCopyright

15

An Astronomer in Love

On the twenty-sixth of March 1760, Guillaume Joseph Hyacinthe Jean-Baptiste Le Gentil de La Galaisière, astronomer to the Académie Royale des Sciences, boarded the fifty-gun ship LeBerryerin the French port of Lorient,bound for India. As the naval vessel put to sea, he just about managed to cling to the mast – his silver-buckled, patent-leather shoes had almost caused him to lose his footing on the slippery deck. A stiff Breton gale whipped his blue frock coat and lace jabot, and he pressed his right hand firmly to the crown of his three-cornered black felt hat. The start of a long and perilous voyage. When a man set sail to journey halfway around the globe, there was no knowing, in those days, whether he would be seen alive again. Guillaume Le Gentil was travelling on the orders of His Majesty Louis XV, charged with a precise mission – for which he was most uniquely qualified – to measure, with the aid of his telescopes and astronomical instruments, the true (rather than the supposed) distance from the Earth to the sun, on the occasion of the transit of Venus across our star.

The small planet named for the Goddess of Love took an unusual sequence of turns across the sun’s disc, to say the least: one passage was followed by a second 8 years later, after which a whole 122 years would pass before the next. Then another 8 year interval, but after that, it would be 105 years until another transit could be 16observed. The alternating sequence of 8, 122 and 105 years was unchanged since the creation of the universe itself.

Guillaume Le Gentil had taken every care not to miss the exceptional observations he would make from Pondicherry on 6 June 1761, more than a year after his departure from France. Thanks to which he might, perhaps, become the first man to measure the true distance between the Earth and the star that is the source of all its light.

Everything was prepared down to the last detail, and yet nothing whatsoever would go as planned.

17

Breathe.

Youarealive.

Everythingisfine.

Youaresittingdown.Feel the weight of your body, the weight ofyourfeetandyourhands.

Takenoteofthesoundsthatsurroundyou.

The familiar female voice was reassuring. It was the same for every session. Xavier Lemercier was on his fifteenth daily session of so-called ‘mindful’ meditation. This scientific practice had been one of his discoveries when he’d tried to quit smoking. Until now, Xavier had never got into meditation, and as a matter of principle he was hesitant about this sort of thing, imagining it to be full of obscure phrases, with echoes of the New Age and cheap shamanism. ‘Imagine you are a fox. Feel the flower within you.’ ‘Turn your heart towards the eternal Planet Gaia, nurturing mother of all living things.’ But that wasn’t the case with the app he had downloaded, the only goal of which was to establish thirty-minute pauses each day, and to quieten the frenetic buzz of thoughts that intruded upon every moment like so many wasps. Now the habit of returning to the voice and its soothing phrases was almost as pleasant as pouring oneself a cold aperitif on a sunny terrace after a day’s work. For thirty minutes a day, Xavier almost managed to forget his worries, which, for him, was no small feat.18

Now,whenyoufeelready,leaveyourthoughtsbehindandlet’sbeginthe body scan.

The body scan consisted of mentally sweeping the body, from the tip of your toes to the top of your head, locating any points of discomfort. Xavier often noted a pain in his lower back and a tightness in his stomach.

He had been anxious for two long months. His estate agency was stagnating. Sales were inexplicably few and far between. Admittedly, the Parisian market was over-inflated; prices weren’t going down, but by 2012 fewer people were interested in buying and selling property. The usual indicators – household consumption, buying power, the stock market – hardly accounted for the weak sales. But the ‘market stakeholders’, according to their sacred slogan, all gave the same report: not much was going on at the moment. The most robust among them were unfazed, or seemed to be, but the more fragile ones were beginning to ask themselves questions. The Lemercier and Bricard agency had been well established for twenty years now. Xavier had started out in the Parisian real-estate market with a friend from business school. Now forty-seven years old, Xavier was left as the sole head of Lemercier and Bricard. When someone asked for ‘Monsieur Bricard’, Xavier replied, calmly, that he was on a business trip. An agency with two names lent it a more reputable air, suggesting a solid team and numerous colleagues at the ready.

Bruno Bricard, his partner who was ‘on a business trip’, had suddenly decided to return to the countryside two years ago. Tired of city life, tired of all the commuting and the pollution, he told his friend that he wanted to sell his shares. Along with his wife and two children, he had overhauled his life by buying, for the price of their Parisian apartment, a seventeenth-century mansion with eighteen 19hectares of land in the Dordogne, which they planned to turn into a bed and breakfast. During his last months at the agency, Bruno had tried over and over again to convince Xavier to do the same, with persuasive drawings, surveys and projections detailing how cities would soon become saturated with fine particulate matter and pollution, invaded by cars that reproduced like rabbits. Bruno was certainly right, at least in part, but Xavier couldn’t see himself living in the countryside. Also, Bruno had his family with him, which was no longer the case for Xavier. Since his difficult divorce from Céline, there had been no other women, and he had joint custody of his eleven-year-old son, Olivier. When he presented this argument to his colleague, Bruno could only agree, chastened. ‘Yes, you’re right. It’s more complicated for you,’ he had admitted.

It seemed to Xavier that his life had gone off track at some point, and he had trouble pinpointing that particular moment. Often, he felt like a bachelor with no future, selling apartments to other people who were full of energy and ambition, so that they could build their lives there. These were the kind of plans that no longer seemed within his reach.

Nothingisreallythatcomplicated.

The things you perceive as difficult are most often just mental blocks. You’re adding layers of unnecessary and unproductive anxiety.

Set them aside.

20

Nothing is especially complicated on board a ship, except when the vessel climbs up, then plummets down waves the height of a tall building, when seasickness strikes, and when a man suffers from claustrophobia. The captain of the Berryer, Louis de Vauquois, had been instructed by the Duc de La Vrillière to take great care of his astronomer. Guillaume Le Gentil wore a greenish pallor and a fixed stare whenever they ran into a storm. He said his prayers more often than the crew, but on a calm sea, on a sunny day, he was a delightful travelling companion indeed. The astronomer proved most useful, too: his precisely calibrated instruments provided the captain with measurements and information unmarked on his maps. Le Gentil plotted their course by observing the stars and the moon. On occasion, he succeeded in correcting the Berryer’s distance from land by several nautical miles. The great copper-and-brass telescope that he used for his observations, bright as gold on its tripod, had attracted Vauquois’s admiration. Guillaume Le Gentil had invited him to put his eye to the small glass when the instrument was pointed at the full moon. What Vauquois saw took his breath away: the Earth’s satellite loomed so large that its craters could be seen as clearly as the Saint-Malo lighthouse on his ship’s return to port. On another occasion, the captain pointed out a streak of light in the sky that had been following them, to 21all appearances, for the past half-hour or more. Straightaway, Le Gentil fetched another telescope, shorter and thicker in diameter, standing on a single foot. The object was a comet, and squinting into his lens, the astronomer could just about make out its tail. For the next eight days, he busied himself with quill pen and compasses, darkening the pages of several notebooks in an attempt to calculate the comet’s speed. The challenge filled him with delight, and as they approached the Cape of Good Hope, in fine weather, he forgot his fears of life afloat, even his seasickness. He took luncheon and dinner in the captain’s quarters, feasting on succulent grilled fish unlike any in France. One morning, the Berryer’s nets even brought in a squid the size of a horse, with tentacles as long as the ship itself from prow to poop. The crew chopped it to pieces with their axes and the cook emptied an entire barrel of wine into several cast-iron cauldrons, so as to stew it in a heady court-bouillonof his own invention. That same evening, the entire company savoured the giant cephalopod’s tender, salty flesh. The unexpected catch prompted tales of the terrifying sea creatures so often depicted in engravings, though it was never clear whether these were the fruit of man’s imagination or a record of genuine sightings. According to the mariners, the strong currents and headwinds off the Cape of Good Hope sometimes gave a rare glimpse of the dreaded Caracac. The captain had never seen it, but he knew its description from the accounts of others. From his bookshelves, he produced a vast tome that must have taken the hides of a couple of fat sows for its binding, and opened it on a well-thumbed page. Guillaume Le Gentil bent over the book to discover a woodcut of a monster that resembled a scorpion fish as big as the Berryer. The creature’s gaping jaws were easily five times the size of the great iron gates of Versailles, and from the top of its head a jet of water shot up like 22a fountain. The astronomer felt an icy shiver down his spine. If ever he crossed the monster’s path, said Vauquois, in conclusion, he prayed God would come to his aid. Then he crossed himself and slammed the volume shut.

A few days later, Le Gentil stepped up to the bridge as the ship began its course around the southernmost tip of Africa. Standing close by the rail, he saw a great mass emerge from the waves, muscular, grey and gleaming, its skin tanned by the salt of the deep. A spout of water and air burst forth, rising to a height of fifty feet or more. Guillaume’s heart stopped: the woodcut was made flesh. The Caracac was preparing to dive, and it would take the entire ship down with it.

He had never seen a whale, not even in a book, and now they surrounded the ship in great numbers, their blowholes spouting both to port and starboard, to the delight of the mariners who broke into hearty, rousing song. Reassured, Guillaume Le Gentil took a pair of steel-framed spectacles from his waistcoat pocket. They had been made to order by Margissier, who crafted all the lenses for his telescopes. The spectacles comprised two circles of ink-black glass, through which he could observe the sun with no risk to his eyes. He thought of Hortense, the wife he had left behind in Paris, who would have to wait for him for almost a year and a half. He pictured her in the silence of their lodgings, her slender fingers embroidering a delicate motif on a tablecloth, while his ship plied the waves with its escort of sperm whales. He was smiling at the thought of all he would tell her on his return, when a sudden gust of wind snatched the three-cornered black felt hat from his head. It came to land on the back of a nearby whale, from where, just as suddenly, it shot high into the air atop a powerful jet of water.

23

Xavier thought of her often. Nothing had worked with Céline. Could he ever have imagined that the wonderful moment of their first meeting would end, twelve years later, in court, with the decree absolute of a divorce judgement? Their story was just so ordinary, and it was this very ordinariness that made it all the more final. In its lack of originality there was no opportunity for a sudden change of heart. No, the banality of the statistics loomed large: one in two marriages end in divorce. The statistics were like a steamroller. A 50 per cent chance. Three years after a painful separation that had turned poisonous in its last few months, Xavier still found himself thinking about it several times a week. When the voice said: Ifyourthoughtsarewandering,gentlybutfirmlybringyourattentionbacktoyourbreathing, he knew very well that such wandering would lead to the corridors of the Palais de Justice, to his lawyer, Maître Murier, and Céline’s lawyer, Maître Guerinon, and to her friends’ false testimonies, which described Xavier as a domestic tyrant who had Céline and their son living in a state of permanent terror. It would lead to the enormous demands of child support and his son, Olivier, whom Céline had full custody of that first year, and whom she had turned against him by telling him the divorce was all Xavier’s fault. Bruno had been a great help during that difficult period, and a few good apartment sales at high prices had helped 24Xavier weather the storm. He had come out of it exhausted, but the seas were calmer after that, and he had managed to patch things up a little with Olivier. Xavier had made the decision never to speak badly of Céline in front of his son. This strategy of appeasement had worked in his favour, because Céline had relentlessly continued her character assassination of Xavier in front of the young boy. For a few months now, Olivier had seemed less susceptible to his mother’s tactics.

The gong that signalled the end of the session chimed and Xavier opened his eyes. Sunlight flooded the sixty-square-metre apartment that he now called home. His job had helped with that, at least. He sold their 130-square-metre Haussmannian apartment in the best market conditions and used his contacts to find a quiet, well-located new one. There was one room for him, another for his son and a large balcony looking onto a courtyard that was usually deserted. It seemed to him that, in this life, nothing of significance would happen from now on.

Xavier got up from his chair and stretched. It was time to go to the agency.

Frédéric Chamois, his trainee, had received two phone calls. One was a request to view an eighty-square-metre apartment overlooking the courtyard, on the fifth floor with a lift – a good prospect that he’d had for sale for three months. The other phone call was from the new owners of the last apartment he’d sold before the noticeable recent decline in the market. Madame Carmillon had told him that a cupboard in the hallway hadn’t been cleared by the previous owners. She had asked the agency to tell them to collect their belongings so she could use the cupboard. Having finished the refurbishments, the Carmillons had apparently just moved in.25

‘Did you complete the inventory of fixtures and fittings, Frédéric?’ asked Xavier.

‘Y-y-y-yes,’ said the young man. ‘I-I-I don’t remember a full cupboard.’

‘Me neither,’ Xavier agreed. ‘Oh well.’

Frédéric Chamois had a stammer. His stammer varied depending on the day and, mostly, depending on the rain. Xavier had noticed that ‘Chamois’ – he always called him by his last name – stammered less when it was raining. He had been very careful not to share that observation with him.

Xavier left the old owners a message. The following day there was no response, nor the day after. The contents of the cupboard must have been of no great importance, and Xavier was not surprised that there was no sign of life from the previous occupants. Once people have sold an asset, they don’t like to return to it or hear any more about it. After they’ve cashed their cheque, they move on, forgetting even the face of the estate agent who negotiated the sale. Xavier’s phone rang. marchandeau bank appeared on the screen.

‘Monsieur Lemercier, hello,’ said his account manager. ‘Are you in Paris, or overseas on business?’

‘I’m in Paris, at my agency,’ Xavier replied.

‘As I suspected,’ said the banker. ‘Six hundred and fifty euros have been debited from your account, from Hong Kong. Your card has been hacked. I’ll take care of it and I’ll call you back, Monsieur Lemercier.’

26

‘Pirates! Pirates! Pirates to starboard!’

Every man on deck interrupted his task to turn to the lookout boy. From his perch in a huge wicker basket just below the top of the mainmast, the boy’s mission was to scan the horizon all around, using his spyglass to check the flags of ships passing near and far.

Guillaume Le Gentil hurried out of his cabin, clutching his great telescope and tripod. He trained the lens to starboard. In the bright circle of light he saw a ship emerge over the horizon, smaller than the Berryerbut imposing nonetheless. Moving his lens up the mast, he saw the banner flying from the top: a skull and crossbones.

‘They’re manoeuvring!’ the lookout bawled. ‘They’re coming straight for us!’

The captain stood beside the astronomer and extended his spyglass, scanning the horizon in his turn. Guillaume Le Gentil waited. A word of reassurance, perhaps, from the master of their ship. But Vauquois remained silent. He lowered his instrument and called out to his men: ‘Half a point to starboard and hoist the mainsail!’ The phrase was repeated instantly by the crew, and the ship turned sharply. Guillaume Le Gentil closed his eyes. His mind filled with images of cruel-eyed, gap-toothed men, their bodies covered in scars and tattoos. They would manhandle him, rip the silk and velvet from his back, throw his equipment overboard, then 27blindfold him and force him to walk the plank, out over the deep, in a hail of laughter, insults and spittle. He would lose his footing on the plank and plummet into the icy, pitch-dark water. He could not swim. He would die of exhaustion in the immensity of the ocean, if the fish didn’t tear him to shreds first. All for the vagaries of a heavenly body no bigger than a marble, that would cross the sun more than a year from now.

‘We’ll play the bastard a tune on His Majesty’s pipes. Cannons to starboard side!’ bawled the captain.

‘Cannons to starboard!’ hollered his men, in echo, and beneath their feet they felt the rumble of the huge guns, pushed into position by the crew in the hold. The shutters of twenty-five gunports clapped open all at once and the cannons’ iron maws appeared, burnished bright from the damp below decks.

‘We’ll let him get a little bit closer,’ said the captain, a sardonic smile playing at his lips. He took a clay pipe from his pocket and set about stuffing it, with an air of tremendous calm.

‘Nothing like the smell of tobacco mixed with gunpowder,’ he observed. Next, he struck an elegant, wrought-iron flint lighter, sending a cascade of sparks into the barrel of his pipe, which set the tobacco aglow. After a few puffs – an aromatic blend of spices and woodsmoke – he muttered: ‘Monsieur Le Gentil, my most esteemed passenger, I suggest you cover your ears.’

28

The building was entered through one of those heavy oak doors which open with an electronic click of the lock triggered by the digital code. Behind the door was a foyer in the form of a broad passage leading to a courtyard, and on the right, the concierge’s lodge. The passage was usually in darkness, and you had to find the light switch by feeling along the cool stone walls with your hands. It was an entryway typical of Haussmannian buildings which have kept their original door. Outside on the street, Xavier was waiting for his clients for their viewing of the fifth-floor apartment overlooking the courtyard. He watched the couples making their way across the small crossroads, waiting for one of them to come towards him: the Pichards. He had only spoken to them on the phone so far — in his line of work, you often didn’t see people’s faces until their first viewing. It was happening more and more. Email requests were increasing and everything was electronic. The sun was high in the blue sky and Xavier squinted and took out his Persol sunglasses, with their frames and lenses as black as ink. None of the passing couples approached him. He felt like a sentinel at the bottom of the building, of which he was neither an owner nor a tenant. He was just a passing man making a sale, taking his commission. He would never know the day-to-day life of this building, the neighbours, the co-op board meetings or the sun in 29the courtyard. There was a doctor on the second floor. He would never know the face of Dr Zarnitsky, GP, as indicated on the brass plaque which shone like gold in the doorway. He wondered how many times he had been stationed like this outside the entrance to a building, early for a meeting, with the apartment keys in his pocket and his information file in hand, standing all alone, like a lookout. It must have been hundreds of times. His profession was strangely intimate: selling an apartment or a house was a big deal. It was selling a piece of your life, a piece of your memories – sometimes even a whole life. It was closing a door that you would never open again. During the weeks or months their house was on the market, sellers would often reveal to him personal anecdotes about their lives, their parents, their wife or their grandparents. Generations passed, places changed hands, and often you would know nothing of the previous occupants. Xavier had recently read an article that had plunged him into confusion: apparently 85 per cent of people had no knowledge of their ancestors further back than 150 years. He had been struck by this statistic before realising that he too was among their number; here in 2012, he knew nothing whatsoever about his ancestors of 1862. Who were those people? No one in his family had ever mentioned them, and probably didn’t know anything about them either – which made the figure of 150 years look optimistic.

A few months ago, he had found himself back at the edge of the neighbourhood, and it was only when he pushed open the entrance door that that he recognised it – the place had been one of his first sales. It was a good sale: a unique, 120-square-metre apartment in a 1970s building with an eighty-square-metre garden beyond the patio door. And it was all on one floor – a real find. It was certainly the apartment he had sold, but the owners were not the ones he 30had sold it to twenty years earlier. The apartment with the garden had come back on the market and come back to him. The cherry tree was still there, and the sellers had asked him to try a cherry – just like the previous owners had done. The fruit was still just as good, just as sweet. This same tree had continued its peaceful life, continuing to blossom while owners came and went. Xavier thought about telling them that he already knew the place, but in the end decided to keep the information to himself.

‘Are you Monsieur Lemercier?’

He turned around.

31

The salvo’s blast rang out like a great thunderclap. The cannonballs hit the water just short of the enemy’s hull, sending up great sprays of water. The pirate ship showed no interest at all in what might come next; it made a sharp turn to the portside and sailed swiftly away. Guillaume Le Gentil had blocked his ears as instructed, but now he could hear a sort of high-pitched piping in his left ear, though no one was whistling nearby. He thought of his colleague Louis de La Marchandière, a renowned astronomer, who talked of nothing in recent years but the whistling he claimed to hear by night and day. He had ended his days in a lunatic asylum. But the affliction had struck when he was already well advanced in years, and somewhat senile, which was not the case for Le Gentil. The other, dreadful mishap was that his telescope had slipped from his grasp when the cannon blast shook the entire ship. Now there was a small dent in the tube. Guillaume checked Margissier’s lenses straightaway, with trembling hands. Thankfully, everything seemed in working order.

Captain Vauquois had advised him to rinse out his ear with salt water and to remain lying down. Guillaume lay stretched out in his berth. Youarealive, he told himself. Youarebreathing.Everythingisasitshouldbe.He felt the weight of his body, of his feet and hands, and he was mindful of the sounds all around him: the creak of timbers in the hull, the distant voices of the crew.32

He closed his eyes. He thought of his Paris apartment, and pictured himself there, in such detail it seemed almost real. Here were all his books, his astronomical treatises. Here, he received eminent, elderly scholars. At thirty-five, he was as learned as a man twice his age, but with the fire of youth and the dreams that had carried him always onwards and upwards, from his first observations of the night sky at Coutances, in Normandy, when he was a small boy, to his Chair at the Académie des Sciences.

‘My dearest,’ he told his wife, ‘a man who lives his passion is blessed by the gods.’

‘Quite right, my darling,’ Hortense told him in reply.

‘Transit of Venus!’ squawked a gravelly, piercing voice. Guillaume Le Gentil opened his eyes: Molière, the captain’s myna bird, was perched on his bedside table and fixed him with an ink-black eye. Vauquois had determined to teach it a phrase connected with astronomy, in his honour. It had taken the bird barely more than a day to memorise the words, and it repeated them now at random intervals – as it would for the rest of its life. ‘Transit of Venus!’

‘Yes, the transit of Venus…’ Guillaume sighed. ‘Which last occurred one hundred and twenty-two years ago, and will occur next in one year’s time, and then again eight years after that.’

‘Eight years!’ screeched the bird.

‘Eight years…’ sighed Guillaume, ‘and then a hundred and five years more. In the years 1874 and 1882. After that, 2004 and 2012, and then 2117 and 2125…’ and then Guillaume fell fast asleep.

33

The Pichards wanted to ‘think about it’ – which didn’t sound promising. Xavier had been in the business long enough to be able to pick out the nuances of the end-of-visit conversation. ‘We’re going to talk about it’ was better than ‘We’re going to think about it’. An ‘I’ll call you by tomorrow morning’ meant the sale was as good as done. This visit had once again confirmed, as if confirmation were needed, the precariousness of the sales market. Xavier sat down at a café terrace and ordered a Perrier. That evening, Céline would come and drop Olivier off for the weekend. Their conversation would be very brief. You could always cut the tension with a knife, and the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees as soon as she rang the bell.

Xavier needed to think of something to do with his son at the weekend, but nothing really came to mind, except perhaps a trip to Parc de Bagatelle to see the peacocks – but would Olivier want to see the peacocks? Xavier had always tried his best to be creative with his suggestions for spending time with Olivier. The idea of having a son glued to his tablet or to video games horrified him. Even though he had witnessed the dawn of video games with Pac-Man and Space Invaders, technology had given gaming a disproportionate place in the hearts and minds of today’s children and teenagers.34

‘You can’t spend your life in front of a screen! That’s not living. I should know - I spend all my time in front of a screen,’ he exploded at Céline one day. She was the one who had bought Olivier every app and tablet possible, seemingly with the sole aim of annoying his father.

‘Ispend my life in front of a screen. You, you do your viewings, you spend entire afternoons out and about,’ Céline had replied, arguing that she couldn’t do the same in her office, that at most all she could do was leave the building long enough for a cigarette break.

‘My son is not going to become a mindless idiot playing video games. Life is museums, gardens, walks.’

The conversation grew more venomous and, in the end, Céline had simply hung up. She had reappeared the next day, expressionless, with Olivier in tow. Father and son had taken a boat out on the lake in the Bois de Boulogne. While he rowed, Xavier had had to respond carefully to questions like ‘Why aren’t you together? Do you love each other or not?’ and ‘If I wasn’t here, you would never see each other again, would you?’ Answering Olivier’s questions required great tact; every single word had to be deliberated over before being spoken aloud.

Some evenings, Xavier called Bruno to talk. Bruno didn’t have a solution and felt badly placed to give advice, given that he was living a wonderful life with his wife and two daughters. At least Bruno listened to him, which was better than nothing. He thought about calling Bruno now. He’d sent Xavier lots of photos of the work being done on the house. The new bed and breakfast was under construction in an outbuilding, and he was waiting for his friend to come and visit so he could show him his new life. He had made an Instagram account, a website, a Facebook page and 35a listing on Booking.com, and was pouring considerable energy into promoting The Dovecot. The most recent photo was of a basket of blackberries with the caption ‘blackberries from the garden’, followed by wink emojis. Bruno’s life was now completely different to that of his former colleague. The photos had left Xavier nonplussed, but he sent back a smiling emoji, saying ‘Well done, I’ll come and visit soon.’ But that was months ago.

His phone rang. Frédéric Chamois informed him that the new owners were getting impatient about the cupboard filled with stuff from the previous occupants. ‘I-I-I-I spoke to the woman, she’s v-v-very annoyed,’ Frédéric said.

‘Okay,’ Xavier cut him off. ‘I’ll deal with it.’ The apartment in question was a twenty-minute walk from the café; he would go and take what he could or come back the next day with the car. It was clear that the previous occupants were not going to reply to his messages. It was up to him to load it all up and take it to the dump.

‘I’m sorry for disturbing you, Monsieur Lemercier,’ said the woman, who didn’t seem at all sorry, but rather convinced of her right to demand the immediate clearing out of the cupboard in question. As Xavier had suspected, the apartment had since been refurbished; the office had been transformed into an open-plan kitchen living room, the old-fashioned ceiling mouldings had disappeared, and from what he could tell the kitchen at the end of the corridor had been converted into a children’s bedroom. An aluminium scooter stood in the hallway. You saw it more and more in the city. Xavier found it irksome the way adults had patently appropriated what was a child’s toy. With the greatest sincerity, they talked of how light and smooth it made getting around the city, without realising how ridiculous they sounded. Céline herself had dreamed of buying one for commuting to work.36

‘Here it is,’ said Madame Carmillon, opening the much talked-about cupboard door with a flourish. The cupboard was hidden in the panelling of the wall and had a small key in guise of a handle. Xavier had simply not seen it. It wasn’t even on the apartment inventory. It contained three ancient rolls of fabric, a vase, a broken barometer and a varnished, rectangular wooden chest, which must have been about five feet tall and a foot wide. It had leather straps held in place by large upholstery nails. Three old iron padlocks, opened with numbered codes, held it closed.

‘It’s mostly that,’ said the owner, pointing to the chest. ‘It weighs a ton,’ she added. ‘My husband has a trapped sciatic nerve from running. There’s no way he could lift it, and neither can I.’

‘I understand,’ said Xavier, and he took the chest out of the cupboard. A ton was an exaggeration, but it weighed at least sixty pounds.

‘I’ll deal with the fabric and the old barometer,’ Madame Carmillon conceded, appeased by having the estate agent at hand to deal with the matter immediately. ‘But get rid of that chest, Monsieur Lemercier.’