Do you realize what you’ve asked me to do? I hate leaving my home, and yet, here I am in this city whose language I don’t speak, initiating an encounter with a stranger who, you admit, you know nothing about! Are you aware he could be a descendent of Jack the Ripper? I could be risking my life for you!
I’ve got to get to sleep if I want to see all of your William’s recommendations tomorrow.
Kisses and goodnight,
Maggy
P.S. I hope your Englishman is not passionate about international politics and planning to launch into a discussion about Brexit. I would then be obligated to say that I have no opinion on the matter to avoid annoying a man who might have precious clues for us …
Note my diplomacy!
from Anne-Lise to Maggy
RUE DES MORILLONS, JULY 2, 2016
My dear Maggy,
I just received your two letters mailed Thursday from the London airport … What happened over there? What did this William Grant do to you? Is it the city or the man who has bewitched you? Is my best friend really the author of these words?
As soon as I entered, my gaze was drawn to a man, alone, sitting at the back of the pub. He was looking outside, a slight smile on his lips as if he were dreaming of happy days gone by. His profile was at once soft and determined and I prayed with all my strength that this man was Mr. Grant. He had barely turned his head toward me before he stood up from his chair with a charming and entirely English stiffness. He took my coat and we discussed the sights I had seen in the city. I had to make a superhuman effort to avoid his gray eyes and I concentrated on the wall decorations in order to speak naturally, as if I regularly had lunch across from seductive men with irresistible stares.
Maggy, tell me you didn’t keep his address or his telephone number, please! What will you gain by falling in love with an Anglo-Franco-Belgian who, to top it off, occupies his time by playing poker? I am sorry for having sent you over there on a whim without doing any research into this man. Obviously he’s a rogue who spends his time seducing women and gambling in casinos! At least I am reassured to know that despite the day you two spent together, you were able to get on a plane that carried you away from this seducer and back to your village, where you will forget this senseless adventure. And drop that silly idea of learning English; it’s a dangerous language. Instead turn your attention to Brittany and find yourself a kind sailor who spends his time at sea and allows you to enjoy the liberty and solitude you went looking for in Finistère.
Nevertheless, that unwise escapade was not in vain, since now we know that after finding Sylvestre’s manuscript at his parents’ house, William Grant kept it for ten years. But with his father dead and his mother suffering from Alzheimer’s, who can tell us how those pages arrived in Lozère?
It’s strange that I have tears in my eyes at the idea that everything might end here and I thank heaven Julian isn’t at home, because I might make another scene. This quest has taken too much space in my existence, I know, but that has nothing to do with what happened to me eight years ago. At the time, you remember, I had just lost my mother, and the emotional affair I threw myself into was nothing but a desperate act, an attempt to restart the beatings of my heart like a cardiac electroshock. That jerk wasn’t important to me, and besides, his writing was rather mediocre. You understand that, so explain to me why Julian looks at me with distrust when I come home an hour late. I thought all that was far behind us and that we were past the age of conjugal suspicion.
With Sylvestre, my curiosity is purely literary. I can’t stop myself from thinking that his novel is something special. Is it the fact that it was written by two authors who don’t know each other? Is it the simplicity of the story that hangs in suspense, those naïve remarks or formulas for simple happiness created by a twenty-year-old man? I don’t know, Maggy, but I have rediscovered the wonder of walking through my own city, the bus driver’s smile at the end of the day, the smell of grass in the early morning when I cross through the Parc Georges-Brassens …
And now, should I share with Sylvestre the impasse we’ve found ourselves in?
Kisses,
Lisou
P.S. Forgive me once again for sending you on that crazy expedition to London. Forget that bewitching city and focus on our escape to Brussels … I promise, over there we’ll avoid all gray eyes …
from Anne-Lise to Sylvestre
RUE DES MORILLONS, JULY 3, 2016
Dear Sylvestre,
Note that I waited for July to respond to you. I’ve been scolded enough on the subject of this book, whether by you or by members of my family. But you can mark this date as when you recovered your property and we put an end to the question “Where’s Waldo?”
Candor is one of my qualities, and I assure you that my decision has nothing to do with your anger. Also nothing to do with any weariness on my part (perseverance is another of my character traits). To catch you up to speed, it was an Englishman, William Grant, who brought your book to Belgium and added a few lines to it. So I sent my friend Maggy to visit London and thank God she returned unscathed (well, almost). She met the man who kept your manuscript for years after finding it in his mother’s belongings in 2006. Unfortunately, the poor thing is no longer in her right mind, and so we’re having a hard time learning any more details about how it came into her possession.
It’s true that my passion for your manuscript worries those around me. My husband and children are afraid that I have become enamored with an author and that I am guiltily concealing my infatuation behind a façade of literary interest. So I will not set out to challenge the memory loss of a woman afflicted with Alzheimer’s and instead I’ll give you the telephone number of her son if you wish to try your luck. Your turn to justify such a trip if you’ve still said nothing to your family …
That’s where we’re at, dear Sylvestre, and in case our exchanges start to taper off, I thank you in advance on my behalf and on behalf of all your readers for this beautiful story you have given us to read and for the resulting benefit it has brought to our lives. You have written a text that’s spanned time and spread fragments of happiness all around it. It has brought about encounters and transformations in people’s lives as only great masterpieces can do.
With all my gratitude and best wishes,
Anne-Lise
P.S. I can’t keep the contact information of all the people who’ve helped me these last two months to myself. They’ve all read your work. So I’m including their addresses in case one day you’d like to correspond with them, which would bring you, I hope, as much satisfaction as it did me.
from William to Anne-Lise
GREAT PETER STREET, JULY 7, 2016
Dear Madame Briard,
Despite what I had planned, I cannot come to Paris in the coming weeks. I beg your pardon, but I’ve been invited to Finistère, where I’ve never been, and suddenly this discovery feels urgent to me.
Nevertheless, I want you to know that I will go to Lozère next. Once there I will track down the clues that escaped me ten years ago when I found your friend’s manuscript. During my previous attempts to sort through the family house, I kept falling on memories that stalled my progress. You see, each object seems to possess the power of recalling a multitude of lost images, as if it had preciously guarded the memory, which is returned to us when we hold the object in our hands. So I’ve put off sorting through the attic, the cellar, and my mother’s former office.