The Happy Marriage

One day, when he’d gone back to the clinic for a checkup, he received a phone call. One of the Twins had given him the handset and told him: “It’s Madame Kiara!” which he’d accompanied with an incomprehensible gesture. He’d immediately recognized her voice and was stunned that she hadn’t forgotten him. She had asked him for news, but had quickly realized that he still found it difficult to talk. She told him that Ricardo was doing spectacularly better. They had spent some time in Italy, but had soon been able to travel to set up a new life in the United States, where Ricardo’s physical therapy had completely changed him. His agent had taken care of everything. Ricardo could now move his fingers and when they sat him in front of the piano, he could still play, albeit slightly off-key, just like Glenn Gould, who interpreted Bach in his own inimitable way. His agent had immediately decided to exploit this new angle to Ricardo’s style. “Producers always have their heads screwed on,” she’d added, “but what we really care about is for Ricardo to regain the full use of his reflexes.”

The painter had been pleased to receive news of his old roommate. He told himself that hope could be found on the other side of pain.

Once he’d returned home after his checkup, he had amused himself by imagining how rumors of his stroke had spread and what they must be saying behind his back: “You didn’t know he’d had a stroke? Poor guy, he can’t even paint anymore … now is the perfect time to buy his canvases!” Or even: “He was arrogant and selfish and now God has given him a sign: it’s a warning, the next time will be his last!” Or even more cruelly: “He’s completely fucked now, he won’t even be able to get an erection, a tragedy for someone who loved women the way he did!.. As for his wife, that poor lady he treated so badly, she can at least rest assured now that his willy isn’t good for anything apart from pissing! There’s a poetic justice to that, isn’t there?” “The great seducer will now become acquainted with our solitude. I must admit we were jealous of his conquests, and after all that, his paintings even sold well!” He tried to picture what his art dealer would have said to the buyers: “Whatever you do, don’t sell, wait a few months!” And what about his wife, what had she been up to ever since she’d learned the news? Would she not try to exact her revenge? No, no, he’d promised himself he wouldn’t ask those kinds of questions. He didn’t want to fight with her, he wanted peace, so that he could heal.

Whenever you’re struck by misfortune, either through an illness or an accident, the people around you suddenly change. There are those who scurry off the sinking ship, like rats, those who wait to see how the situation develops before making their next move, and finally those who remain loyal to their feelings and whose behavior doesn’t change. Those friends are both rare and precious.

He was surrounded by people who belonged to each of the three categories. He’d never deluded himself about this particular fact. Before taking up painting, he had devoted himself to studying philosophy. He had especially loved Schopenhauer and his aphorisms; those cutting remarks of his had made him laugh, and they had also taught him to never trust in appearances and to watch out for their traps. For a while, he had even resisted studying philosophy, because he had believed that painting and reading Nietzsche and Schopenhauer were irreconcilable. But he knew how to handle pencils and brushes better than anyone he knew, and his art teacher had strongly encouraged him to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Those encouragements had helped him put his dreams of being a philosopher to the side.