‘When is it?’
‘The twenty-second.’
‘How old will he be?’
‘Fifty-four. You’re invited to the little gathering.’
‘I shan’t be going, and you know why. What are you giving him?’
‘A rare volume on Japan.’
‘Are you trying to make your adoptive father homesick? How long is it since he left, twenty or thirty years? He should take his daughter on a pilgrimage. They’re very strong on loyalty over there!’
‘A little more respect for Mademoiselle Iris, please, Joseph. She hasn’t been unfaithful to you.’
‘I’m only pointing out that your half-sister’s European side has made her frivolous.’ Joseph added, bitterly, ‘And anyway, what’s keeping me here?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! All you do is whine and moan and feel sorry for yourself! Show a bit of spirit, for goodness’ sake! Don’t give up at the first hurdle! I’m sure she loves you and is full of remorse; she never stops saying so, you great dolt!’
Victor composed himself then paused before adding, ‘Jojo, I hope that you two haven’t … er, well, you know, the birds and the bees and the butterflies …’
‘No, Boss, we vowed not to give in to our animal instincts before marriage and, if you want the truth, I regret it,’ replied Joseph.
He looked at Victor with a strange expression then burst out angrily, ‘If it had been you, if Mademoiselle Tasha had behaved like that, you would have had fifty fits, with your suspicious nature!’
‘Me? Suspicious?’
Shocked and horrified, Victor threw his arms up to heaven, ready to swear that he’d cured himself of his bad habit, when the doorbell tinkled.
Blanche de Cambrésis swept in. The lace trim on her dark-red pleated dress snagged on a pile of Émile Zola’s Doctor Pascal, recently published by Charpentier and Fasquelle, bringing it crashing to the floor. Victor gathered up the books while his visitor remarked on how cramped the shop was.
‘We remove the chairs, replace the desk with a pedestal table and still the battle-axe isn’t satisfied,’ muttered Joseph, who was hiding behind a wall of quarto volumes.
‘Is it any good?’ asked Blanche de Cambrésis, whose haughty expression made her look like a nanny-goat.
‘Tripe, Madame, utter tripe. How may I help you?’ Victor enquired in a conciliatory voice.
Unable to bear it any longer, Joseph made a dash for the back of the shop where he vented his anger.
‘Just listen to him fawning. He probably expects me to grovel at his sister’s feet, though he wasn’t exactly keen on our engagement in the beginning, any more than Monsieur Mori. But now the tables are turned, they can’t wait for me to marry her and put a stop to all the gossip. Even Maman has turned against me. It’s not fair!’ he muttered, dusting off the coats-of-arms on the backs of a set of hardbacks.
The touch of leather in his hands calmed his rage. Images of the not so distant past flashed painfully through his mind. How fleeting his joy had been back in February when his bosses had not only celebrated his engagement to Iris but given him a rise. Since then he’d been earning one thousand six hundred francs a year. This allowed him to put aside a substantial sum as he and Iris would be taking over Monsieur Legris’s old flat above the bookshop. Joseph had been keen to move in as soon as possible, but had said nothing to his future wife, who appeared not to share his need for independence, and was still very attached to her father.
And then Mademoiselle Tasha, whom he so admired, had taken it into her head to paint Iris’s portrait! How was he to know it would be the cause of such strife? Accordingly, he’d no more objected to his fiancée posing for her than he’d tried to dissuade her from taking twice-weekly watercolour lessons with Mademoiselle Tasha’s mother, Madame Djina Kherson. The latter had recently emigrated from Russia via Berlin and thanks to Monsieur Legris was now living in Rue des Dunes, near Buttes-Chaumont.
March had been taken up with preliminary drawings. Iris could talk of nothing else, to the point where Monsieur Mori had nicknamed her ‘Mona Lisa’. And then one day a painter friend of Mademoiselle Tasha’s, the conceited Maurice Laumier whom Monsieur Legris had never liked, had seen one of her sketches on an easel. He had praised her artistic progress and the model’s beauty. Who was she? Mademoiselle Tasha replied that she was Victor Legris’s half-sister. Maurice Laumier had used the age-old method of the lightning strike – his main weapon surprise, his lure throwing himself on his quarry’s mercy. He had approached her hat in hand.
‘Mademoiselle, I don’t usually accost young ladies in the street, but when I saw you coming out of my fellow artist Tasha Kherson’s house I couldn’t stop myself. You see, I’ve been commissioned to paint an exotic portrait of the Virgin Mary to exhibit at this year’s Salon, and when I saw those extraordinary eyes, that flawless complexion, your adorable face, I …’
Later on, in floods of tears, Iris had given her father, brother and fiancé a blow-by-blow account of the repulsive tale. She’d portrayed herself as a poor innocent girl, ambushed outside Tasha and Victor’s home by a man whose name she already knew. Why should she have mistrusted this attractive charmer in search of a model with Asian features?
At this point in the story, Joseph had had little difficulty imagining the young girl succumbing to the virility of the handsome dauber; he could understand why she would prefer this Don Juan to a hunchback like him; he could understand how from then on she’d woven her web of lies in order to be able to carry on her twice-weekly meetings with that libertine from Rue Girardon. Yes, he understood – he was a writer, after all – but he could not forgive!
The ‘poor ingénue’ had then explained to Djina Kherson that she must give up her watercolour classes and had begged her not to tell anybody. She wanted to surprise her fiancé. She’d had no difficulty believing her own lies: she would buy Maurice Laumier’s portrait as well as Tasha’s and make a gift of them to Joseph as a mark of her undying love!
Joseph did not want to know what had really taken place in the notorious womaniser’s studio. According to Iris, after four or five sessions the painter had stolen a kiss, and two or three weeks later he’d taken liberties that had earned him a slap. Finally, towards the middle of May, when she had confused her dates and turned up at Laumier’s studio on the wrong day, he had appeared at the door in shirt-tails and declared his love for her. At that very moment, the door separating the studio and the bedroom had opened to reveal a totally naked woman. The shrew had bombarded Iris with insults, which she was too polite to repeat, unless she washed out her mouth with soap and water afterwards.
She had confessed everything to Joseph and begged his forgiveness. She’d been so filled with remorse that even Euphrosine Pignot, outraged by her son’s heartlessness, had leapt to her defence, growling, ‘Men! Scoundrels the lot of them!’
Joseph had been unbending. He announced that he was postponing their wedding date, set for the end of July, indefinitely. For the past six weeks, Iris, in a state of despair, had shut herself away on the first floor; Kenji was giving his assistant the cold shoulder and Victor was playing go-between. As for the guilty party, when questioned by Mademoiselle Tasha he had cynically summed up events in a mocking voice.
‘What do you expect, my dear? She’s a very pretty girl; what man wouldn’t want to have his way with her? A shame she showed up unexpectedly and Mimi laid into her!’
Blanche de Cambrésis pursed her lips and took her leave of Victor Legris after purchasing a novel she had delightedly unearthed by Arsène Houssaye. Joseph waited until she had left before emerging from his hiding place at the very moment that Kenji Mori descended the stairs. The two men pretended not to notice one another.
‘I have an appointment