French Windows E-Book

Antoine Laurain

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

Seitenzahl: 197

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Nathalia Guitry is an enigma that psychotherapist Doctor Faber can't solve. A photographer who can't take photographs since witnessing a murder, she is self-assured, self-aware, and seemingly impervious to his usually effective techniques. He hasn't been able to stop thinking about her since she walked into his consulting room and shattered his predictable professional routine.Desperate to break through Nathalia's uncrackable façade, he proposes something unusual: she'll write him a story about each resident of the building opposite, moving up floor by floor. But as the therapy progresses, he finds his own mask beginning to slip as he becomes consumed by her tales. How does she know so much about these strangers' lives? And what's waiting on the final floor?

Leseprobe

1

‘Masterful storytelling that brings the streets of Paris to life. And enough twists and turns that will leave you wondering what the hell is going on right until the last page’

Sun

‘Intriguing, comic and poignant by turns, this is a sheer delight’

Guardian

‘This short but sweet mystery is … a delicious jeu d’esprit’

The Times

‘French Windows oozes Parisian perfection with a good dose of mystery, intrigue, and suspense from a master storyteller’

Chicago Book Review

praise for

An Astronomer in Love

longlisted for the dublin literary award 2024

shortlisted for the edward stanford viking award for fiction 2024

winner of the prix de l’union interallié and the grand prix jules-verne 2023

‘Perfect for the poolside or sitting outside a café with a pastis and olives – and bound to give you just the same cheering lift’ 2

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’

Foreword Reviews (starred)

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

Fiona Valpy, author of The Dressmaker’s Gift

‘A witty, lovely, surprising triumph’

William Ryan, author of A House of Ghosts

praise for

Vintage 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’ 3

Phaedra Patrick, author of The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper

praise for

The Red Notebook

‘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 The Red Notebook is 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

‘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’ 4

San Francisco Book Review

praise for

The President’s Hat

‘A hymn to la vie Parisienne … 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’ 5

Library Journal

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To P., for ever and ever

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11

Who would we be if we could not sympathize with those who are not us or ours? Who would we be if we could not forget ourselves, at least some of the time? Who would we be if we could not learn? Forgive? Become something other than we are?

Susan SontagLiteratureasFreedom, acceptance speech for the Friedenspreis (Peace Prize), Frankfurt Book Fair, 200312

Contents

Title PageDedicationEpigraphGround floorFirst floorSecond floorThird floorFifth floorMore from Antoine LaurainAvailable and Coming Soon from Pushkin PressAbout the AuthorsCopyright

13

In the middle of the unevenly cobbled courtyard stands a tall tree. No one has ever quite determined its species; some people in the building see a wild cherry, others an oak, though it has never produced an acorn. To stand beneath its branches, you must enter the courtyard from the south, through the round arch used by horse-drawn carriages long ago. Staircases rise all around – one is of cream-coloured stone, supporting the delicate twists of its wrought-iron railing, but the rest are wooden. Those serving the east wing are permanently dark. The building as a whole – the hallway, staircases and ceilings – is in need of renovation, but no one here seems in any hurry to live with the smell of fresh plaster and paint, let alone to put up scaffolding.

Shadows can be seen passing behind the windows that look down from all sides. One window closes, another is set slightly ajar, filtering sounds from the world within: a song, the TV news, the spatter of a shower, the ring of a mobile phone.

The carriage door closes heavily at your back, and you stand for a few seconds in the gloom, feeling for the once-illuminated 14switch whose tiny bulb has long since fizzled out. Yellow light spills over the stonework and cobbles from the dusty, opalescent glass lantern. You make for the tree and take out your keys, which jingle faintly as you walk up to your floor by the stone or wooden staircase.

You’re inside, you’re home. You pour yourself a drink and, as if by instinct, you cross to the window.

15

She sits herself on the couch and then, very slowly and carefully, she lies down. She must be about thirty. Her pale complexion contrasts with the ink-black hair that falls around her shoulders. I think her eyes are blue. I’ve never been very good at determining the colour of people’s eyes. Just recently, my wife pointed out that my best friend has dark blue eyes, which is quite unusual. I’ve known him for thirty-three years. If anyone had asked me the colour of his eyes I would have answered: Brown?

Physical details such as this escape me. I see the whole person, nothing else. For Nathalia Guitry, I’d say: a young woman of about thirty, attractive, dark hair, pale eyes. That’s all.

Neither of us has spoken for about a minute. I always wait for the patient to break the silence, but in this instance nothing happens. Time passes. You can let the entire hour allotted for the session slip by without anyone saying a word: there’s no rule that says the silence must be broken. On the contrary, it can be seen as an introduction, an overture. Silence is not a void.

Nathalia Guitry has never been here before. Indeed, it 16seems this is her first-ever therapy session. I could ask her how she found my address, but that has never seemed to me to be of the slightest importance. The patient would very likely give me the name of their doctor, or a friend who comes to see me or has come in the past. But to my mind, this conjuring of other individuals dilutes that initial moment of contact. There should be two people here in the room, the patient and me. No one else. Two is enough. Quite enough.

It is winter. Outside, a fine sleet is falling. As usual, I have drawn the red curtains. The weather has an impact on people with depression; sun, snow, rain, wind, cold, heat, all affect their state of mind in the moment. Here, everything is neutral. Neutrality is essential. My consulting room is conceived as a sort of anti-space, geographically speaking. The patient must forget about their city, their country, their smartphone, their Facebook and their Instagram. The office – I prefer to call it the ‘office’, it implies the notion of work, which I hold dear – is an Everywhere. An island adrift from one continent to the next, from neurosis to psychosis, melancholy to suffering, dreams to fantasies. The office is a lightship, transmitting its signal. No one is ever caught in its beam by chance. They have sought that guiding light, sometimes without knowing it. And I am the captain of that ship.

‘Doctor Faber…?’

‘I’m listening,’ I say, from the trough between two fifty-metre waves. Sometimes the line of communication crackles with interference: silence, anxiety, fear, slips of the tongue. It doesn’t matter. The office remains afloat through bad weather of every kind. Unsinkable, and silent. 17

‘I feel as if I’m in a submarine, you know? One of those immense submarines that runs silently under the thickest ice, in utter secrecy.’ A patient told me that once, and I smiled. I should have picked up on the idea of secrecy, of the ice as a symptom of oppression, but in the moment, I was charmed by the seductive image of black metal gliding unseen through icy waters, and all I said in reply was:

‘Yes, it’s a little like that.’ He was happy with this. Reassured. Which was the main thing.

She hasn’t said anything further about herself, or the weather, or the person who directed her to me, so I shall break the silence. We’ll see.

‘Your family name is Guitry. Are you any relation to Sacha Guitry?’

She smiles. One point to me. A slightly bitter smile, but a smile all the same.

‘None whatsoever… And anyway, Sacha Guitry never had children.’

Silence again. It must not be allowed to take hold. I’d like to go further with Sacha Guitry; she seems to know her subject. Of course, Guitry may not be her real name – I never check my patients’ identities. It doesn’t matter who they are. I keep to the basic principles of traditional psychoanalysis – payment for each session in cash, for example. No cheques, no cards, no clues to the individual’s identity. I’m a qualified medical doctor, and as such, I must have filled out any number of forms that my patients have never sent off for their treatment to be reimbursed. I keep to the basics 18of traditional psychoanalytical practice, too: Freudian slips or ‘misperformances’, for example. I use them sparingly but they’re there, like an old set of tools at the bottom of the cupboard. They can prove useful. Sometimes very useful.

‘What can I do for you, Nathalia?’

‘I think my I’ve screwed up my life.’

A phrase I hear often within these walls. There are several variations: ‘I’ve screwed up my life’ is a definitive statement, presaging a long, often very long, stint of hard work. ‘I think I’ve screwed up my life’ hints at the element of doubt. Things are not quite so serious. The patient’s life is screwed up, but not explicitly the patient themselves. The life is a thing apart. Like a pet one has had since childhood, but which has always proved unsatisfactory. You live with a fox-terrier, but you realise that what you truly desire is a Bengal cat.

In the case of Nathalia Guitry – who showed no reaction when I addressed her informally, by her first name – what interests me is her use of the word ‘think’.

‘And what makes you think that?’

‘I feel as if I’m not fully alive. My professional life is a failure.’

‘And what is it you do?’

She hesitates for just a few too many seconds before answering.

‘I’m a photographer.’ She smiles apologetically.

‘Why do you smile?’

‘I’m a photographer who doesn’t take photographs.’

‘Tell me about that.’

Now, at this precise moment, we are in analysis. That 19harmless-sounding phrase marks the first real contact with the patient.

Tell me about that. We’re going to talk about them, about their problem, or what they believe is their problem. Unless it proves to be a trap, concealing deeper, far more damaging fault lines.

‘I’ve run out of work,’ she tells me.

‘And why do you think that is?’

‘I’ve lost my talent.’

Her words have a romantic, disenchanted quality that is not lost on me. But she speaks in a firm, assertive tone that puts me on my guard, more than is usual.

I ask the straightforward, unavoidable question:

‘You’ve lost your love of photography?’

‘Yes.’

‘And why is that?’

‘When you can no longer do the job you love, you lose interest, and you don’t love it any more.’

I turn the phrase over in my mind, searching for the fault line, but she goes on:

‘It’s like with actors. If an actor can’t act, they die.’

Fault line. Response:

‘Those are someone else’s words.’

‘You’re right. I was photographing a famous actor a few years ago. It’s what he told me.’

‘So you were getting paid work, before.’

‘Yes.’

‘And now you’re experiencing a lull, and you can’t bear it.’

She says nothing. I was expecting another ‘Yes.’ Nathalia 20seems to like answering in the affirmative, which suggests a determined character, perhaps excessively so, but very much alive. So many patients – men and women alike – lie on my couch, moaning endlessly: ‘I don’t know…’, ‘Perhaps…’, ‘Yeahhhh…’, ‘Hmmmm…’, ‘Pffffft.’ Seconds pass, during which I try to categorise Nathalia’s case, however vaguely. For now, I’ll put her with the Melancholic Depressives.

‘Can you remember the last photograph you took?’

‘Yes.’

‘What was it of?’

‘A murder.’

Nathalia has left. I brought the session to a close just after those last words. Never play the patient at their own game. Life in here is not like life out there. Out there, anyone to whom you announce such a thing will be dumbfounded, shocked. They’ll fire questions at you, be transfixed, experience an adrenaline rush. Not here. Here, things are different. She got up from the couch and paid me. We exchanged our mobile numbers. I always do this. The patient can contact me in an emergency, and I can contact them. It’s a connecting thread, and we can use it – or not.

I fill out a new client card:

First name: Nathalia

Family name: Guitry

Reason for starting therapy: Has photographed a murder. 21

Symptoms: Inertia.

Pathology: Melancholic depression.

In another column, I always jot down some initial ideas, anything that occurs to me after the first session. This time, I scribble the words: imagination, truth, mythomania.

We haven’t fixed another appointment. It is up to her to contact me again if she wishes.

22

She lies down slowly and carefully, just as she did the first time.

I want very much to return to the subject of her last photograph, but I sense that Nathalia requires a different angle of approach. Murder, though… Most of my clients come to vent about neuroses of a more everyday kind: problems at work, a complicated divorce, an inferiority complex. They feel disorientated, lost in the modern world – the Covid crisis, international tensions – and they feel its effects in their day-to-day lives, on their savings. Stress. Stress made worse by children who’ve sprouted suddenly into turbulent teenagers, when they were malleable and charming just a year or two before. Not to mention that perennial classic, the Oedipus complex.

I have two of those: Lemont and Robotti. I really should organise a group therapy session, a weekend in the country, so that the two of them can get to know one another. Together, they might almost be classed as a two-man ‘twin complex’, to borrow a term from my American colleagues. Two individuals whose neuroses derive from identical causes, and who express them to their analyst in identical terms. Lemont and Robotti 23were both stifled in childhood by mothers who dressed them in girls’ clothes, in secret, until they were six years old. Now in his prime, Robotti tells me that these days he would be considered transgender. Lemont has a subtle variation on the same theme: perhaps he should identify as non-binary? And I sit, and listen, and try to help them acknowledge their feelings. It’s difficult, even exhausting at times. It’s quite unusual for an attractive young woman to sit herself down on the couch and just talk to me about her creative block. Murder, rather. Not her creative block: murder.

‘You’ve spoken about your professional life, but not your private life.’ It’s a question I hesitate to ask, but it’s a necessary question all the same. Some patients develop an urgent case of verbal diarrhoea when they hear these words. But not here, not now. All she says in reply is:

‘Yes.’

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ I ask. But her answer is a reassuring silence. I’m not sure I’m in the best frame of mind for a string of childhood stories, each more sordid than the last. In truth, analysis is quite boring. Every now and then a patient will stand out from the crowd – gifted, intelligent, succinct in their answers – you can spot them straight away.

Some analysts call such patients their ‘assistant’, because they assist you in the work of analysis, rather than lying on the couch, passive and unresponsive, waiting for a miracle to descend.

Questions followed by long silences only really occur in here. Out there, if you ask someone a question and they 24don’t reply, it introduces what Freud terms ‘the uncanny’ – a troubling sense of alienation. Here, nothing is uncanny or strange. Everything is normal. And so I wait.

‘I don’t seem to be capable of living.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I look at other people’s lives and I ask myself: How do they do it?’

‘And how do they do it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you see your camera as a barrier between you and the world, a form of protection?’

‘It’s a little like that.’

‘You aren’t taking pictures any more, so the barrier has gone, and you feel vulnerable.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘What do you do all day?’

‘Nothing.’

I wait for her to say something else. Experience has shown that the word ‘nothing’, firmly pronounced, usually prefaces a whole catalogue of activities. One patient, Guichard, assured me that his Wednesday afternoons were filled with nothing, followed by an exhaustive, detailed list of every possible and imaginable sado-masochistic practice, the clubs specialising in said practices, secret addresses and women’s first names passed from hand to hand, invariably preceded by the dominatrix’s classification number. For Guichard, ‘nothing’ meant bondage and a whipping from Mistress Caroline in a smartly appointed studio flat in the 6th arrondissement. Not 25for one second did he think that this particular definition of ‘nothing’ might be of relevance to our work together. The most perverted individuals are often the most naïve.

‘I sleep, and I wish I could sleep for ever.’

‘Do you have suicidal thoughts?’

‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, I don’t want to kill myself.’

Often, my patients lie. But she’s telling me the truth – or I’d like to think she is. If I heard, tomorrow, that she had killed herself with an overdose of barbiturates, I would be genuinely surprised.

‘What else, apart from sleep?’ I ask.

‘I write in my diary.’

‘Do you like writing?’

‘Yes.’

‘And apart from writing?’

‘I go for walks.’

‘Where do you walk?’

‘In my apartment… I watch the people opposite. In the north wing.’

‘You watch your neighbours?’

‘Yes. Force of professional habit. I feel as if I’m an eye.’

She has internalised a form of perversion: voyeurism, rendered harmless through the practice of her profession. But Nathalia cannot be a perverted voyeur because she is a photographer by trade. For her, the act of seeing is a continuation of her work. 26True voyeurs are never professionally involved with image-making. They are genuine, passionate amateurs, bankrupting themselves with expensive telephoto lenses, infrared and night vision binoculars. They hide in their cars, playing ‘I spy’, in the Bois de Boulogne or other open spaces. Sometimes, they will visit saunas or naturist beaches, and leave all their pseudo-military paraphernalia in the boot of their car. They are gentle, sensitive, shy creatures, albeit capable of capturing the most sordid scenes on their retinas. They’re easily identified: they cannot be touched. They recoil from physical contact like an oyster from a drizzle of lemon juice. I know this. I never shake their hand. They are grateful for that.

‘An eye that looks but sees nothing?’

‘Yes.’

‘How many floors are there?’

‘Five.’

‘And what do you see on those five floors?’

‘Stories. Lives. Life.’

Detached from life, but not from the act of looking. Nathalia hides behind her own eyes. Huddled behind the crystal of her lenses like an animal curled in a ball, hibernating in her lacrimal fluid. A foetus in its sac, going back to her first beginnings. She is proving to be a more difficult subject than I had imagined at first. Melancholic depression due to a loss of a professional framework is quite common. It happens with artists, of which she is one, and with executives suffering the consequences of a corporate restructuring beyond their 27control. As a rule, I try to help melancholics rediscover their interest in life by finding them an activity, however trivial. It’s always a step in the right direction. I might ask an executive who’s been made redundant to give me their analysis of the financial markets. I’m careful to situate the small task I ask of them – but which may require a superhuman effort on their part – in their particular field of competence. With Nathalia, this is something of a challenge: she doesn’t take photographs any more and she hardly ever goes out.

‘Nathalia, I’d like to ask you to do something for me.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’d like to suggest an activity.’

‘I don’t want to take photographs,’ she says straight away.

‘That’s not what I was thinking.’

The silence settles around us once again. All I can see is her glossy black hair and her delicate hands resting on her skirt. We’ll get nowhere like this. Talking has its limits. ‘One must find a way to deviate,’ said Malevinsky – my mentor and master. Deviation from the spoken word means finding an alternative confessional form. The written word. ‘The written word is thought, it has been thought, and thought may be expressed in the mouth or from the nib of a fountain pen. It has existence; our body – the mouth, or the hand guiding a pen – serves merely as a vector for that other, invisible body of thought, and it is this that concerns us.’ Malevinsky again. We write in solitude and in silence, and Nathalia seems quite accustomed to both states. I try an approach:

‘You say you watch the occupants of the five floors of 28the north wing of your building. I’m going to make a suggestion: a change of strategy for our sessions. We’re going to communicate differently, you and I. Here’s what I suggest: you will bring a short, written piece each time, about life on one floor of the building. A true story, or one you’ve made up, it doesn’t matter which. And we’ll go from floor to floor, starting at the ground floor, then the first, second, third… Up to the fifth floor. Do you think you can do that?’

‘And at the fifth floor, we stop?’

‘By the fifth floor, we’ll have made a great deal of progress,’ I tell her.

‘You think I’m going to tell you about myself, through these stories?’

She has understood the exercise perfectly, but she seems on her guard. It’s my job to bring down those last defences, the sentinels of clear consciousness who believe they are protecting the Self when, in reality, they are stifling it.

‘I should like to try this exercise with you.’

‘OK, but there’s one thing: I won’t bring the story with me each time, I’ll post it to you. I couldn’t bear to watch you read what I’ve written.’

‘Fine by me.’

She pays me, and I remind her that she can smoke during our sessions.

‘How do you know I smoke?’ she replies.

‘I can smell it on your clothes,’ I say, with a knowing smile.