We thank you in advance for any information you can give us, no matter how seemingly trivial, and we hope to welcome you very soon for another stay at the Beau Rivage Hotel.
Blah blah blah.
Here, dear Sylvestre, is the template I sent to my friend. I have little hope of receiving a response, but at least I will know that I have tried everything to discover the identity of your coauthor.
Hoping for your support for my plan.
Your Belgian detective (minus the mustache!),
Anne-Lise
P.S. How did you know that I detest costume parties and sporting events? I don’t remember sharing these details and I am surprised by how well you know me already … Am I that obvious?
P.P.S. I belong to the category of Folivora, even if I had to look up what this curious animal is …
from Nahima Reza to Anne-Lise Briard
RUE MAURICE-THOREZ, SAINT-DENIS, MAY 22, 2016
Madame Briard,
I’m writing to you following the letter addressed to me by the manager of the Beau Rivage Hotel in Le Conquet. The letter mentioned a manuscript and I know how it arrived in her establishment. I’m the one who put it there, and I left it in room 128 because August 12 (the twelfth day of the eighth month), is an important date for me.
I don’t know what connection you have to this book, but for you to contact all the clients of the hotel, as you’ve done, it must hold a lot of value to you. Is it yours? Do you know the author?
I picked it up on the beach in Roscoff on January 17. Flipping through it, I quickly understood that I was holding the original copy and therefore that it was missing from its owner. So I brought it to the bartender of the Bellevue, who was manning the heated terrace nearby. He thanked me, then confessed that he was the one who had placed the novel on the beach, in the hopes of a walker picking it up. I must have been what he had in mind because he suggested I keep it. Apparently it had transformed his life. So I read it.
Five times. Yes, it took a little while for the words to imprint themselves onto my mind and eventually into my body. Two weeks later, I sat in front of a mirror to do my makeup. Nothing out of the ordinary for you, probably. But I had spent months wallowing in front of the TV in a shapeless tracksuit, eating cakes and watching trash TV, and that sudden interest in my appearance was something of a miracle. Over the following days, the transformation continued. I returned to the Paris area. I went to the office and all my colleagues saw me reborn. At night, I plunged back into this book that I kept on the coffee table next to my couch and, little by little, the weight that I had been dragging around seemed lighter. Until the day when I decided to get in touch with my child. I don’t know you well enough to tell you about my past, and we would need more of a relationship for me to tell you about all this.
You must be asking yourself why I abandoned the book in that hotel. The answer is simple. When I met my son for the first time, I was staying there. I thought of that bartender who had saved me and I wanted to show the same generosity. I decided the guesthouse on the cul-de-sac facing the sea was a good choice, for I believe it’s the kind of place we visit when we have to make a decision that will determine the rest of our lives. This manuscript had already proven its worth twice over and I wanted to give it the chance to help a third reader.
There you have it, now you know everything, or close to it.
Cordially,
Nahima Reza
from Anne-Lise to Sylvestre
RUE DES MORILLONS, MAY 25, 2016
Dear Sylvestre,
Bingo! I’ve found the person who left your book in room 128! It was a young woman who owes a lot to your words. The glimpse of life outlined in her letter profoundly moved me and I’m sure it will have the same effect on you.
I’m attaching a copy of her letter for you here.
Warmly,
Anne-Lise
P.S. Do you think you will pitch your story to a publisher once you finish it? Is it really autobiographical? And if so, have you spoken of that part of your life to those who share it today?
P.P.S. I am annoyingly curious so feel free to ignore the above questions without any hard feelings.
From Anne-Lise to Nahima
RUE DES MORILLONS, MAY 26, 2016
Dear Nahima,
I’m addressing you by your first name and I hope you won’t be offended. You don’t know me, I know nothing about you, or almost nothing, and yet, I feel as though we share a big secret. We’ve both read a novel that should never have fallen into our hands, an intimate and delicate work that was not meant for us, but which shook up our existences.
I am not personally involved in this work. I am merely a book lover and this book moved me. I wanted to meet its author, or rather its authors, because it was written by four hands. Of course, there is love in these pages. But above all there is that cliffhanger ending to the story …
Perhaps it’s that mystery that buries its teeth in us once the book is finished. It’s certainly that suspense that gives the book a timeless and incomplete quality.
I will now approach, via a proxy, the bartender who gave you this beautiful gift. My journey continues and, who knows, perhaps that man will guide me to another reader.
I cannot end this letter without mentioning my wish to hear more about your child (and yet, I swore that I would restrain myself). I just wonder how this novel led you to him (God knows that “just” is an understatement!). But you are speaking to someone who isn’t shy, as you are well aware now that you’ve seen what I’m capable of doing for a simple manuscript. You don’t have to answer me, unless you’d like to, and no matter what, I thank you with all my heart for having sent me your first letter.
Sending a hug to you and to your child as well,
Anne-Lise
P.S. Did you choose the Beau Rivage Hotel because it’s all the way at the very tip of the country? And do you really believe that bringing oneself to the end of the road helps to open other doors?
from Sylvestre to Anne-Lise
LES CHAYETS, MAY 28, 2016
It’s true, I was a bit annoyed with you for entering into my life without knocking and leading a search that should have been my own. But your last letter erased all resentment. Nahima’s words flooded my daily life like one of those catchy tunes that have the inexplicable power of bringing us out of our sadness despite ourselves. Thank you for contacting her. Thank you for sharing all the good she got out of the book.
Is this what sustains writers and gives them the strength to confront the blank page? The certainty that in the end, they’ll be able to save someone from despair? My mood is as stable as a dead leaf drifting in an Autan wind. On the one hand, the joy of feeling that power; on the other, the regret at not having seized that opportunity on a larger scale by publishing the book and multiplying by ten or a hundred the happiness that I’ve just discovered.
I will satisfy your curiosity even though I don’t have to. No, my wife doesn’t know about the existence of this manuscript, and neither does my daughter. Yes, the brief romance that spans those pages is autobiographical. And no, for those two reasons, I don’t envision submitting the book to a publisher, who, in any event, would send it back to me at the first opportunity. I am certainly naïve, but not enough to believe that a narrative that contains no shouts, no revolt, not an ounce of the supernatural, and no trace of a political message can pique the interest of a scrutinizing editor on the hunt for a bestseller … And then, the idea of revealing, at fifty-six years old, to those around me that I’ve kept in the back of my mind the memory of a bygone romance would start conversations I wouldn’t want to bring about for anything in the world.