Interlogue

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Samsara Heights

2011

Have I loved -- no, not loved, just worshiped -- an impostor?

The most constant, solid presence throughout my adult life, during the past fifteen years, everything I have achieved was under his guidance.

To his suggestion I have moved to Samsara Heights, where I watch the sun set over the sea thinking it is headed to Punaouilo, the island of my birth. This nostalgic happiness -- or was it unhappiness? -- that softens my days in a city where I have practically no friends, I owe it to him.

That I now have the Pacific Ocean of my childhood at my feet -- that, too, I owe him. One just needs descend the hill, wandering through an enchanted garden trail, the final steps leading to the beach where I can relish bathing in the same waters of my early years. Melancholically poetical and marvelous as it is, it has been his idea, first of all, that I moved to the West Coast.

Once I bought the land, he indicated the best contemporary architects to build my dream house. Yet, it took him three years, since it has been completed, to accept the invitation to visit me.  Now, I am not just anxious with his visit -- I fear it. I fear how our relationship will evolve from there. The questions I am about to ask him won't necessarily lead to disaster -- but most possibly. 

My artistic career -- I owe it thoroughly to him. And to my talent, too, of course. Since the day he first visited my atelier, it has been under his sole guidance. I have entrusted him the power to determine my steps in the art world. Be it my solid prestige in the museums circuit, or my thundering commercial success, Dan Charmand has led me all along the controversies of my triumphant career.

That envious people call me Dan's boy, or Dan's toy, I couldn't care less. They are right -- to some extent. I am his creature. A happy creature have I been, so far -- living in ignorance of what, now, I think have been his ruthless intentions.

For love of my father, Dan will probably have to step out of my life. Like before, as I am led to believe, my father has gotten out of my life because of him.

Quite naturally, he occupied the place left vacant by my father. At twenty, when we first met, without being conscious of it, I was eager to find an adult masculine figure to replace Carlo. Angelo, then my boyfriend -- and through whom I met Dan -- was sure a strong enough manly presence in my days. But he was just as young and lost as I was, making me the more lost. Having been dumped, in the labyrinth of loss and hollowness that Angelo's absence ensued, Dan had taken the center of stage -- to never, ever again leave it.

Irascible to most, Dan took me into his liking. Because, like Catherine used to say, I was an obedient boy? Dan's advices were guidance to me,  his suggestions like marching orders. Books I should read, movies I should watch, exhibitions I should visit -- I was always up to date with his check lists. Jazz to Britt pop, Japanese food to hamburgers. He told me what I should prefer, if I were to be the 'citizen of the world' he wanted to turn me into -- and turned me into it he has. In ways I could not guess -- at least not until now --, he echoed my grandmother Celeste. 

"Do you think Charmand gets to choose D'Allegro's underwear color, or if he should put no underwear at all?" Jokes about us abounded. No matter how many lovers I was 'allowed' to have, I remained being Dan's boy. But I was no puppet of his. I was not just free in sex -- there was intelligent life for me outside Dan's perimeter. For instance, he wanted me to dress Boss, but I had insisted on Armani. I had kept my own style -- unless I was to accompany him to a dinner party, or a gala evening. Then I would need Dan's approval on how I dressed. I had to match his impeccable elegance to remain being his constant escort to ballets and operas and all other openings. 

He does not have a family -- not a single member. He once mentioned being raised by a grandmother in Tunisia -- or was it Algeria? --, who has already died. Once, when I was crying over Angelo, he implied to have suffered a great loss, due to a tragedy of some sort.  "Death only should be mourned, Laurent.", he had stated. To that, I dried my tears, and never let them flow again, not for my ex-boyfriend. Even his scolding was benevolent.

That is all I know about the story of his life. No details, nothing concrete. I have never had the occasion to ask any further. There is no space for personal matters in his days. The present only exists for him, dominated by impressive professional achievements -- 24/7, Dan is the almighty director of Vice City's acclaimed Contemporary Art Museum. 

I do not worry who will inherit his fortune, his precious art collection, his ultra elegant penthouse, his partnerships in several businesses -- such material matters concern the gossipers only. Why should I think about Dan's death, when he is the best thing to have happened in my life in all the years spent at Vice City? I already have the unique privilege of being his intellectual heir.

I have been family for him, and he has been family, for me. We do not try to disguise a rather compensatory father and son relationship -- that people mistake for a daddy and son fantasy. I couldn't care less.  

What I do care, though, is that he has lied to me. No, not perhaps lied -- just omitted. But omitted too great a deal, from our very start.

I had to go to Sweden to find out about Dan's passage through Paris. Nothing unusual, for someone who, in the sixties or seventies, wished to make a career in the arts. But I am left breathless, my heart racing, at the simple recollection of the nature of his connection to Monsieur de Montbelle -- my grandfather, if I am to still believe Catherine. 

I have heard it from the mouth of Armand de Montbelle himself . Plus many other facts that gets me wondering why I couldn't have a normal family like everybody else -- instead of that kaleidoscopical mess that leaves me gaping and panting and traveling from one corner of the planet to another, trying to gain some sense and perspective on my own origins. 

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Episode 98 | Tardy rebellion

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nudity

"I'm so happy that you have called, Laurent!" Catherine sounded joyful enough when she finally picked my call. Yet, tension tinged her voice, that echoed around her -- and after so many years of telephonic conversations, I had come to enjoy trying to guess where my mother was. Being a consummate writer, though, Catherine always offered the appropriate settings of her background, and I needn't ask."Though I'm at the hallway of my apartment waiting for Vladimir... He's gone to fetch our coats... It's colder than one might have expected for an Autumn evening..." She had hesitated before adding each sentence, as if waiting for my reaction. I chose to remain silent, trying to picture Catherine in her Russian life. St. Petersburg was a lovely city with hundreds of well preserved Baroque and neoclassical buildings, and I was certain my mother would have found something special for herself, like the historical site where some famous author might have lived. "We're going to the theater soon, and I'm afraid we won't speak for long..." Catherine paused. She must have decided it was enough for a preamble, and directed us toward more meaningful matters, without abandoning safe ground. "Do you need anything, darling? How are your finances?"

I knew that it would come. Over the weeks we had remained silent and distant, my mother should have pondered about the best start for the conversation that would renew our contact, which she knew was going to be bumpy. Even after I had received all that money from Celeste's inheritance, and though my mother had given me the whole sum for which she sold the rural house of my teenage years in France -- she still worried about my finances. At that, despite knowing it actually was a sort of emotional blackmail, I felt my disposition of confronting Catherine weakening. Her concern was a poignant reminder of how she had always financially supported me, throughout my life. 

"It's alright, Catherine. I'm not starving, haha! And I shall never become the 'Hungerkünstler' you fear! You don't have to worry about that at all!" I tried to laugh at our private joke, that Carlo had reminded me about.

"You know I worry about your well being, mon couer. Is there anything else you need?" Catherine was tactfully trying to sense what my call was about, but I have to confess I did not know it either.

During the last weeks, I had allowed Carlo's painful retelling of my own story and origins to sink deep in me. At first, it had stirred powerfully disturbing emotions, and I had been caught in a voracious whirlpool that dragged me down into a new, devastating spiral of resentment and anger, this time directed at my mother, and at her mother. Carlo hadn't victimized himself, but that's exactly what he had been -- a sacrificial lamb in the mean hands of the Mortinnés, and Monsieur de Montbelle's. But after the emotions had stormed through me, exhausting their own energy in depleting my soul, and finally decanted -- or so I thought -- I was led to believe, in contrast, while experimenting a prostration that was not real peace, to be seeing more clearly. My past laid before me in a brand novel, nearly unrecognizable weave, I was left only with the simple wish to understand my mother's reasons in creating that daunting web of lies that had directly and lifelong affected me, keeping me from my father and from having a family.

Sometimes, I wished I hadn't let Carlo speak so freely, sharing even his intimacy with my mother -- while, on the other hand, hiding his most intimate moments with Armand from me. Was it out of fear, out of discretion, caution or may it be secrecy, I felt my father hadn't been thoroughly sincere with me. There were still some things missing -- but then, that was the feeling I had always had, from as far as I could remember in my life. 

It was not just missing my mother when she had left Punaouilo, and then missing Punaouilo, and then missing my father, and then missing Angelo... No, I sensed there was something crucial, at the very beginning of my life that was missing. And Carlo hadn't told me what it was -- and I wasn't very enthusiastic about Catherine's truthfulness either.

Could the piece that I felt was missing in my life have been the family I had secretly belonged to? Extending to centuries of history and tradition, I was now aware that I carried the De Montbelle blood. To try to understand what that meant, I had done some research -- and though I found no references to the judicial battle between Celeste and Armand for Gaston's inheritance, I did learn that my uncle had been able to keep the Château De Montbelle, opening its magnificent art collection to visitation, but only for students, teachers and scholars. And he was currently converting it into an Art School.

I decided to try that approach with Catherine. The De Montbelles now interested me as much as they had always been my mother's main fixation.

"Catherine, did you know Armand had already found a new partner when you dumped Carlo?" I had also done some research specifically on my uncle, and though he was very discreet about his personal life, I did find out he had had a partner for nearly twenty years, recently deceased, to whom he had dedicated his Pritzker Prize.

I could not be sure about the dates, but when Carlo had fled France to seek refuge in England, Armand was already living in Morocco with his partner for some years. From the story my father had told me, it seemed like he no longer had value for Catherine when her half brother had found a new love, seemingly having overcome grieving for Carlo -- and she might have liberated my father once she was sure Armand had no longer any romantic interest in him. To my eyes, her perfect revenge on Armand had been plain cruelty towards Carlo.

"Why go into that, darling? Why mess up with the past?" Catherine moaned and sighed. "Yes, I knew it." She replied, calmly, trying to avert the quicksand of the past. "There were lawyers being paid to inform us, your grandmother and me, about his life and all his moves, and whatever mattered to the issues we were discussing at court. But it has nothing to do with Carlo leaving home. It's hard for a child to understand that, but... Carlo and I... our relationship was over."

"Did you denounce him to the Tax Authorities?" I tried to sound curious, but it actually sounded rather accusing.

"Did he say that?" Catherine gasped.

"He didn't. That's why I'm asking you."

"That's so rude of you, Laurent. Accusing me. To dare think I could ever do something like that against Carlo!" She paused. "I did ask him to leave. Several times. I was concerned our fights were affecting you..." The walls of that silent and isolated country home seemed to boost our relationship's death-rattles, Catherine had written once. When I read that excerpt from one of her best-sellers, I realized how she must have hated our house, specially during Carlo's final months in it. "But I never forced him to leave, like the circumstances he forged for himself did." She seemed to reflect. "I never threw him out. On the contrary, I let him stay, though it was over for us. And Carlo only left home when his own irresponsibility led him to."

"But you did hide from me that he would have returned if I asked him to!" From all of the facts Catherine had concealed from me, that was what had brought the heaviest damage. The lies about Punaouilo, about my De Montbelle relatives -- nothing was worse than her hiding Carlo's pleading from me. It had led to the wrong conclusions for both him and me, and into further hurting and parting. Though we both wanted to reunite right after the separation, for two decades we had believed the opposite, and it altered the course of my whole emotional life. Once, a guy I had dumped said I had a 'crippled personality', and I had thought he couldn't have nailed it any better -- my personal story perfectly justified it.

"But why, Laurent? Why... what would he have returned for? We needed another chance, my darling! You agreed on that, don't you recall it?"

"Let's say I was led to agree, Catherine. But you... you got your new chance!" I snorted, like whenever I talked about Edoardo, Catherine's last and longest love. "I didn't get anything." 

My voice had raised since the start of our conversation, and after having stretched midst the white linen like in a nest of clouds, Gabriel emerged out of bed, a male version of Botticelli's Venus, his hair grown almost as long as hers. He sat on top of the kitchen balcony like a Greek god would have occupied his throne on the Olympus, adopting a posture that seemed careless but I knew was rather self-conscious. He was naked, his glorious muscles relaxed from a good night of sleep after an intense session of love making, and I could not help but marvel at his majestic beauty -- even though he was chewing rather noisily on a toast with peanut butter.

"Of course you did, Laurent!" Catherine retorted. "You met Angelo!" I received her words like a punch. "It changed your life!"

For the worse, I thought, but instead I said, "It changed your life even more, Catherine!" Edoardo was Angelo's intractable father, and it had been so awkward and even a bit wicked when Catherine had fallen for the father of my first boyfriend. Our household had turned out impracticable, due to the fact that he was conservative to the point of being homophobic, and couldn't accept my relationship with his son.

"Do you think so? You wouldn't be in Vice City and have an exhibition at its most important museum if it weren't for him, have you reflected about that?" Catherine paused, allowing me time to think. But I could only think that Gabriel looked outrageously sexy with peanut butter oozing down his ripped abdomen. Like in a trance, he simply observed it leave an oily trail as it opened a wet path on the bump of his muscles. "What are you trying to tell me, Laurent?"

"I don't know what I'm trying to say, Catherine." Gabriel had lifted a sly gaze at me, as if inviting me to lick the peanut butter from his body, and I lost my train of thought. At that moment, I just felt nauseated at the possibility fanned by Catherine that Angelo was somehow responsible for my glorious night at one of the most prestigious Art museums in the world. I had tried to forget that I'd met Dan Charmand through him. Unfortunately, Catherine was right; yet, I did not want to bring my ex-boyfriend into the conversation. She was clearly using him to avert us from what really mattered. "I don't know. But there is something missing and something very wrong in this story. And I'm asking you, Catherine... What is it?"

"Aren't you again in good terms with Carlo?" Catherine asked instead. "Haven't you 'reconnected', like you've put it yourself? Why can't we bury the past and leave it behind, mon cher? What could be so wrong in your life that you have to still try to change it?" It was typical of Catherine to answer with questions -- I had read in an interview how it was essential to her creative process. 

"I'm not a damn character from one of your novels, and I'm tired of being a puppet on your strings, Catherine. That's what!" Sometimes, and more often in my teenage years when I had shared the same house with her, I had the impression of being an experiment my mother was conducing. "You've let me down just too often, Catherine." I realized I was no longer mad at her, but just sad, and immensely disappointed. I let out a heavy sigh, realizing I was ready to let her go. "Right now. Why did you have to go to Russia instead of coming to my vernissage?" It had probably been the most important night of my life, and Catherine had never even tried to come. "Is it because Carlo was here?"

"Of course not! I wouldn't mind seeing Carlo. I might have even enjoyed it, after all these years..." I heard my mother startle -- she had seen Vladimir standing in a dark corner of the hallway, glancing at her with curiosity. "I guess I have to go, darling..."

I simply ignored her excuse to drop our conversation. I couldn't have known her boyfriend was there, clearly demonstrating his impatience, specially since she was talking to me, her 'bad son'. 

"Then why, Catherine?" I spur on. "Carlo left his hermitage in the mountains and flew all the way to--"

"Careful there!" Since my teenage years, I hadn't heard my mother talking to me in such a menacing tone. "Don't you dare compare me to him!" Suddenly she sounded exasperated, and I wasn't aware she was angry with Vladimir too, who was paying attention to our conversation. When Catherine walked away from him across the hall, I could distinguish the sound of her high heels on the hard wood floor, and how it suddenly muffled when she stepped onto a rug."Carlo is no longer with you in Vice City, is he? He has returned to his retreat in the mountains, hasn't he?" She was talking faster, and I thought she was losing her temper -- when, in fact, she was trying to make it harder for Vlad to understand. He had finally decided to improve his French, sensing the end of his relationship with Catherine might come anytime. "As soon as he could, wasn't it? If Carlo can isolate himself, then why can't I have my own appointments, and still be in contact with you? Don't be unfair, Laurent! It's not because you've reconnected to your father... and I'm happy about that... that you can so easily forgive him. And for things he told you, start blaming me! He's been absent all those years, while I've never abandoned you--"

"Never?" I sneered. " But of course you have, Catherine!" My voice trembled, and I felt the little boy in me wanting, needing to cry. "Have you forgotten Punaouilo, and how you left us... how you left me behind?"

"Mon Dieu, Laurent!" She let out a cry as if she was falling in a hole -- the dark hole of old sorrows that I insisted to cling to. "Those were the circumstances at the time! I was heartbroken because I couldn't bring you with me. But we had no money then, and I had to accept Celeste's conditions! You know that perfectly well. Or should I have tried to smuggle you? But I worked diligently on promoting my first novel and getting the second one published, all the time thinking of you as the main reason why I should succeed. And once things went smoothly for me, and I started making good money to establish myself in France, and when I found a decent house--"

Her earring kept banging against the mobile -- something that had too often annoyed me in our conversations. Other times, I had asked her to take them off, but now it seemed a very small nuisance, in contrast to all that was being discussed. I grew impatient, sensing my mother was subtly diverting from the questions I confronted her with -- and again, I veered the conversation.

"Did you know Celeste was paying the art dealer in Punaouilo to burn Carlo's paintings?" My heart shrank and I had to bite my tongue as I so carelessly revealed what Carlo had kept in secrecy for two decades.

"What?!" Catherine shrieked. "Where did you hear that?!" She gasped. 

And immediately, Catherine must have known it must have been true! As she heard my explanations, and the reason why Carlo had hidden it from her, my mother intuited how a disaster starting in a previous generation of our family was still reverberating on our lives. "Mon cher--" She started saying, but I wouldn't let her go on.

"You have lied to me, Catherine! About too many things. Too important things. I'm sorry, mother" I knew using the word 'mother', that I rarely pronounced, added effect to my statement, "but I'm tired of your intrigues and your lies." 

In fact, I was more tired of begging for her approval, her recognition -- and they hadn't come, neither for the stories I had written, trying to pair with her, nor for my paintings, about which she couldn't care less -- all through my life. And why did I have to feel sorry once I was finally giving up on her estranged love?

"Darling child, you have to understand that your grandmother lied to me, too! I am trying to untie her knots, that are strangling your life... and mine as well! What I'm doing here in Russia is for both of us, but--" 

Suddenly, I glanced over at Gabriel, about whom I had completely forgotten for the last ten minutes or so that I had been talking to my mother.

He had moved around the room, waiting for me to go into the shower. The peanut butter had oozed until the silky bush of his pubic hair, when he gave up counting on my lips to clean him up. Instead of pleasing my partner, I had drowned in the murky waters of my old sorrows. And I then realized the phantasmagoria my life had become -- Gabriel was there, but hidden behind a thick veil, since I was more concerned with ghosts from the past. 

Gaston and Celeste were dead. I had never met my grandfather, and I hadn't really known my grandmother, though I had visited her once in Paris. Armand I hadn't yet met, and it would take me still a couple of years to. I hadn't seen Carlo for twenty years, and even now that we had reconnected, I couldn't be sure when I was going too see him again. I would probably have to climb the Apennines for another reunion. And Angelo -- other than the occasional advertisement or photo in gossip magazines, I hadn't seen him for ten years now. Yet, they all materialized and rose like a wall between me and my present, between me and my new boyfriend. 

It was dangerously melancholic, and it was a terrible waste of life, I finally realized it.

"This is between only you and me, Catherine. Don't try to bring my grandmother into this..." I sighed, emotionally exhausted, feeling the last threads of the bonds that tied me to Catherine breaking loose. "I'm tired of all this mess." I had been trying to understand it, to explain it to myself, but more and more I was convinced that I should meet my uncle Armand to rescue that part of my family's story. "I really have to go now, Catherine." Gabriel was already in the shower, turning the water on, whistling a rhumba and starting a sexy and funny dance to his own tune. No matter what, and I had left him waiting for so long, he never seemed to abdicate from his good humor. "Bye, mother."

I hadn't seen my mother -- well, just over the internet -- for many years, already. She had never visited me either, in Vice City nor at Samsara Heights, and I hadn't been so willing to travel to France. I hadn't returned for Celeste's funeral, but I did go back when Catherine decided to sell our rural house, once she started occupying the apartment on the Rue de Furstemberg. At first, I had said I didn't care about anything in the house, and that she could sell or dump whatever she wanted. But then I changed my mind and flew to France, where we spent two weeks emptying the house together. I rescued from oblivion some childhood drawings, the long-play collection from my teenage years, and our living room furniture that was vintage fifties. But that last live meeting had been nearly six years ago, already.

And as things turned out, because I had promised myself to never return to Russia -- unless, of course, I was offered an exhibition at Moscow's Museum of Modern Art -- I would meet my mother again only in four more years -- and during that whole time I would speak briefly to her on festive occasions only, disciplined and stubbornly keeping my distance and a forced formality with her, after one more disastrous call that was yet to happen. 

It had taken decades, and I was aware I was no longer a teenager, but at last I was rebelling against her tyranny, and that of the entire Mortinné legacy. It didn't hurt as much as I thought it would -- it wasn't actually hard to take the leap of faith into a life without Catherine. It was a life devoid of a core, but with time I'd settle to the feeling that being motherless or having Catherine as a mother were almost the same -- the first option being much less troubled.

Would I have acted more compassionately, towards her and myself -- would I have forgiven her, had I known my life could end in a fraction of seconds on a dark night in Iceland?

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Episode 95 | Why, Catherine?

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nudity

"Oh, Katerina, please let me sleep..." Vlad grunted from bed. Catherine had let him sleep through her not so silent process of getting dressed and applying makeup and perfume, but now she demanded his help.

"Then you shouldn't have messed with my mobile!" Typical as it was for the youthful, Vlad enjoyed playing with technology when he was bored, and had changed not just the ringtone to the kitsch "La Cumparsita" but several other configurations of her mobile, which Catherine tended to regard as mysteriously untouchable. "I want to call my son, Vlad. Now! How do I do it?"

"You just have to press the key where I've stored his phone number, Katerina... Try 1..." The young man groaned, as Catherine walked over to the living room, her high heels hitting the wooden floor intentionally hard like spikes, reverberating against the dark wood panels that covered the bottom half of the walls, yet being softened by the top half, upholstered in a golden and brown damask that had seen nobler days. The floor, alternating patterns of squares and lines between brown and yellow woods, was uneven, and some of the furniture trembled as she walked past -- the sconces fluttered like withered flowers about to fall, as the crystal cabinet emitted a curiously delicate tinkling symphony. 

Catherine dialed 1, and Vlad's mobile started ringing from inside his backpack.

"Then your son must be number 2, Katerina!" Vlad was buckling with silent laughter underneath the sheets. "Please let me sleep..." He moaned. Catherine had purposefully left wide open the curtains that divided the bedroom and the living room, doubting the young man would get up from the bed to close them. When she first inspected the apartment, the estate agent had informed her those panels had been removed due to termites, but they would soon be replaced, and the curtains dividing the rooms were temporary. To Catherine, it seemed the damaged panels could have been removed a century or two ago, since the velvet curtains looked a hundred years old at least -- all very temporary still, depending on the point of view. She didn't care, really, once the apartment was well located and properly furnished with exquisite furniture that had belonged to decayed nobles. She intended to use the apartment on her own, and would only close the curtains when she had visitors -- though, somehow, that awkward curtain scheme reminded her of the Île du Blanchomme, and that was a part of her life she simply wished to forsake.

"Don't you always say French sounds like a beautiful lullaby?" She paced a little more, enjoying the sound of her own steps, in the known that they would be enough to keep her young lover awake. Maybe even make him lose his temper, and then he would make a scene and leave. "I hope you can lure yourself into sleep all through my conversation with Laurent!" She challenged him.

But Catherine wasn't in the mood for arguing about the childish joke her young lover had set up on her mobile, putting Laurent in second place. Otherwise, she might have just sent him home, to sleep at the horrible little old apartment without heating nor running water he shared with three other young writers, all very talented -- the new Gogol, the new Tolstoy and the new Chekov -- and equally penniless. But she actually pitied Vladimir -- the new Dostoyevsky --, helplessly struggling in an oppressive scenery of no opportunities, and she wanted to help him -- and the rest of the boys, too -- as much as she could.

She forgot him the next moment, though, and was so exultant when the call did get through, and Laurent's full, silky voice sounded on the other side.

*****

"Catherine!" Upon seeing my mother's name on the screen, I had answered the telephone straight away. She might interpret that prompt answer as me being anxious to talk to her -- and wasn't I? -, an strategy that would reassure her that everything was fine on her front. Since she had called, she was expecting to be the one in control. I guessed if I did not attack her right at the start, she might lower her defenses, becoming more open to my questioning.

"Bonjour, chéri! How are you today?"

"I'm alright, Catherine..." I murmured. Maybe I should go into the bathroom for privacy?

"Why are you whispering, dear? Where are you? You're not in another of those useless meditation retreats, are you?" She snorted, demonstrating her dissatisfaction at the idea. "Can we talk or should I try it again later?" When, still speaking low, I told her I was in my hotel room, she immediately guessed, "So you're not alone, are you? Who is he?"

"It's ok, Catherine. We can talk. We have to talk!'"

Did I hear my mother gulp as I prompted her? Anyway, she was completely silent, and that meant she wasn't facilitating things for me. She was already defensive.

"Why, Catherine?" My voice broke as anger and sadness clashed in me.

"Just because, Laurent." She had answered, still cheerfully. "Of course I cannot give a more appropriate answer to your question, since I don't know what it refers to. You haven't regressed to that age, after having spoken to Carlo, when you were asking 'why' all the time, have you?"

My childhood. It struck me how I had adored Catherine. Suddenly, I felt touched about how I had struggled for her attention and approval. How I had worshiped her and fought for her love, battling against things that I had barely comprehended -- letters and books. Things I would later bring into my own life in an effort to share my mother's same planet. A fictional planet, it seemed, full of fantasies for her readers -- while lies had been reserved mostly for me.

All the while, she had been cheating on me, lying to me, hiding my own story from me. Pretty much what Gaston, with his second family, had done to Marie Heléne and Armand -- and again, I felt connected to my uncle. 

Above all, it seemed an unjust pay off to my desperate, obedient adoration for Catherine all through life.

"Why? Why have you hidden my family from me, Catherine? Actually, why have you deprived me from having a family?"

"Are you again talking about Carlo and the reasons why he left us, Laurent?"

"That too, Catherine. But we will come to it later. I'm talking about my uncle!"

"Uncle!" Catherine gasped. "And you are talking about..." The curiosity in her voice ringed thoroughly fake.

"Armand! Who else?" 

"That!" She snorted again, emphasizing her misprize. "He is just your half-uncle."

"Don't play with words, Catherine. Not today, not with me -- not any longer! And what about Gaston? Why have you kept me from meeting him?"

In the brief silence that followed, I could hear Catherine's high heels echoing as she paced her apartment in St. Petersburg -- and that had been the sound setting the rhythm of our conversations for the past decade. Catherine had always been wearing them, as far as I could remember -- at least, since we had reunited in France, when I was eight years old. In her youth, my mother had been famed for her daring and elegant way of walking. Mr. Truffaut had wanted to invite her as an extra on his famous sequence in 'The man who loved women', but in 1977 she had been abroad, on her involuntary exile.

"I did not, Laurent. Your grandmother did. Carlo must have told you. She held us in Punaouilo." She gulped, and her nervousness was not insincere. She dreaded any mention of her tropical exile, as if she could be sent back anytime. "All the while, I wanted to go back to France. Taking you with me, of course!"

"That's not what I mean, Catherine." And that was not what she had done, leaving me behind when finally had had the opportunity to flee. But those were old wounds, and I wanted to concentrate on the most recent. "You were lying to me, when I asked about your father... my grandfather... Gaston..."

"I never lied to you, Laurent. I said you did not have a grandfather, and you didn't. To the same extent that I did not have a father, do you understand that?" She sighed. "Because you were not legally a De Montbelle, and Gaston would never have recognized you, just like he wasn't willing to recognize me... What else should I have told a child? How could I have explained legal problems to you? There are no such meanders to a child, Laurent. Just rejection, believe me. And after all, that's the reason why your grandmother kept us in Punaouilo. She didn't want me to fight for my rights." Or what I have always imagined to be my rights, Catherine thought, but it was too early to talk about that to her son. "She thought I was going to hinder her relationship with Gaston by taking him to court, and she kept me away until he was already in his deathbed, completely senile."

"Carlo has explained that to me, Catherine." Either it was the final truth, or another lie they had put up together. "Still, you lied to me! You used to say my grandfather was dead, when Gaston was still alive..."

"I don't think so, Laurent." She paused. "No, I didn't. I remember it clearly. I only gave you that answer when we were in France, already. And by then, Gaston was dead indeed." Again, what she said confirmed Carlo's retelling of the story. "Are you calling me a liar, Laurent?"

"Didn't you lie to me about my birth? And how you and Carlo had met in Punaouilo and--" I now moved through my own story like in a maze, so many walls to dumbfound me having been added too recently, "Why did you hide the Île du Blanchomme and my uncle Armand from me, Catherine? Or were you actually hiding me from the De Montbelle family?" 

"I did not hide you from Gaston -- your grandmother did! And I did not hide you from Armand. He is perfectly aware of your existence, Laurent. Just like he was about mine, after he and his mother discovered about Gaston's double life..." Her breath had become heavy, and I realized Catherine, having never cultivated equanimity, could not talk about the past with detachment like Carlo had. "And yet he never tried to contact me, are you aware of that, too? Actually, what did Carlo tell you?"

I tried to summarize the first part of my conversation with Carlo, our tropical years and my parents' torrid affair on the Île du Blanchomme. 

I might have been talking too loud, since I had already grown completely oblivious of Gabriel, but when I checked he remained sound asleep. Gabriel's working routine made him very tired, and I always tried to preserve his sleep. I was just glad the carpet on the hotel room must have muffled my barefoot steps, and my voice too.

"I hope you'll understand the reason why I've hidden the De Montbelle family from you. And please don't refer to Armand as your uncle, as if he was family, as if he was..." She hesitated, "dear to you! I'll repeat it... he has always been aware of your existence, and he has never tried to contact you, chéri... Why should I let you suffer from his disdain, when I know exactly how appalling it feels, Laurent? I did not simply lie to you. I have protected you from his scorn!"

"How can you say that, Catherine? How can you shrink my family and say it was for my own sake?"

"Listen to yourself, Laurent! You think I am trying to hurt you. Your own mother! But I was protecting you, don't you see? You are thirty three years old... and for all this time, though aware of your existence, I repeat, Armand has never tried to contact you. That's what is breaking your heart, Laurent, and that's what I've always tried my best to avoid."

It was hard for me to understand Catherine's feelings on that matter. Almost impossible, I should say, since I had learned about Armand just a few days ago. And she had lived under his shadow for fifty eight years now, always comparing herself to him -- and losing, as from birth she had been destined to. How could I understand how being a bastard, an illegitimate child had affected her? She had not been recognized by her father, and never accepted by her brother -- and for thirty three years, on top of that, Armand had ignored me, too, increasing her revolt and suffering. At that point, I still didn't get any of that, and I couldn't sympathize with Catherine.

"You should have given me the choice to decide for myself, Catherine."

"Decide on what? Now that you have the chance to do something about this matter, you're doing it all wrong! You're not begging for that man's attention! I forbid you, Laurent! We only talk to him through lawyers! Do you understand me?" She had raised her voice at me, but at the same time, the sound of her high heels had stopped. She was no longer pacing, frozen in place -- and was that place her own past?

"That's your story with Armand, Catherine." I retorted, unmoved by her suffering. "It's not mine. I want a fresh start with him... I don't care about the money... It's all about the money for you, isn't it, Catherine? This whole mess--"

"It was never about the money for me, Laurent."

"How can you say that, Catherine? Did Carlo lie when he said you've taken Armand to court? Oh, no, even before that, Celeste was already disputing the money--"

"And your grandmother won, to a great extent! It was a just decision. Armand has not even tried to question it further, did you know that? She did help Gaston in making considerable profit and increasing the De Montbelle fortune, and that has been proved. Your grandmother was very influential in the social net of businessmen and politicians she built around herself, and Gaston knew how to take advantage of it. They were a good match, actually." Her voice caught. "And you've benefited from that already, Laurent. Let us be fair. The money you've inherited from Celeste... a lot of it came through Gaston!"

And with that money, I thought, I had built my dream house on a promontory on a secluded beach near Samsara Heights. Pointed towards the Pacific Ocean, from the living room and my bedroom, with windows from floor to ceiling, I could watch storms approaching -- and they came from the direction where Punaouilo used to. A bit like it was happening at that very moment, though that was an emotional storm.

I had never asked about the money's provenance. I had never questioned the humongous amount I had inherited, no matter how implausible it had seemed coming from a theater's ex-diva. My grandmother had always lived so well, her table always topped with imported delicacies and the best wines. Her wardrobe held several unique pieces by the best French couturiers, and more than once we had been contacted by prestigious museums who wanted to house and display her collection. Like if it were a museum itself, she had lived on the Rue de Furstemberg's apartment surrounded by works of art and luxurious furniture -- if Catherine would sell just one or two paintings from Celeste's collection, for instance the Matisse and the Chagall, we would have enough money for the rest of our lives. Catherine and I had agreed about not selling them -- since we had money for the rest of our lives, already. De Montbelle money, apparently. 

A money I had very happily used. And the perspective was there was more money for me, now that I was the last De Montbelle heir.

"It was never about the money, for me." Catherine's voice had again softened. She had just parted one of the curtains in the living room, and seeing the Neva and the array of historical pretty buildings on the other margin always pacified her. Whenever she was entangled with a scene from her book, or legal questions about the Rostoffs, she just had to glance out of the window to remind herself she was living in St. Petersburg, like she had always dreamed. "Maybe Carlo has influenced me more than I would like to admit, and I've learned to live a relatively simple life, ha-ha..." She giggled, as she looked at the room full of antiquities. "It was about dignity for me, Laurent. For us! Do you realize it?"

Catherine's quest for a family name. Though so similar to my own issues, that was something I could not quite grasp yet about my mother -- her quest for acceptance, approval, and validation, sprung from the crib. It was a core hollowness. Even with Gaston dead, the De Montbelle's influence and importance reduced and ever fading -- she still wanted to have his name on her birth certificate. It was about honor, or justice as she understood it.

"I respect that, Catherine." My disposition for fighting had subsided, as I looked out through the windows and realized the sun was already shining. From the heights of my room, the city looked like a game map laid with miniatures, that I could scoop and reorder at my own will. Behind the glasses, it was colorful, silent and unpolluted -- and I was aware it was not. But if I allowed my criticism  to be cooled by the air conditioning from the room, instead of fueled by the scorching sun outdoors, I could appreciate that it was going to be another beautiful day in Vice City. And I had a beautiful man in my bed. After making love, we could go to the park, or maybe drive to a beach and spend the day out of town. It was Gabriel's free day, and I had nothing scheduled myself. My present was actually good, and would be better still if I could let go of my past. But could I? I pressed on. "If I may ask... Is it really justice... or simply revenge?" Or vanity, since I have to confess I was also thrilled about adding De Montbelle to my name, for the family name's prestige and pedigree remained.

"I hear another question behind that one." Being a professional writer, Catherine was very perspicacious with words and their meaning. "Is it just or unjust? Fair or not fair? Good or evil? I'm being judged behind that question, isn't it so, Laurent?"

"I'm not being judgmental, I'm just trying to understand all this mess. You've never loved Carlo, Catherine! Yet, you snatched him from Armand, from your half-brother," I avoided saying 'my uncle', no matter how sweet that sounded to my ears, "who truly loved Carlo.'

"What do you know about Armand, Laurent? What do you think you know about him? Anyway, Carlo did not love Armand. And he wasn't pretty much in love with me, either. The whole mess, as you put it, did not involve as much love as you think. You have never dated anyone since..." Catherine silenced before pronouncing Angelo's name, and it was loving from her part that she was still so careful about my old wounds, "but you remain being a romantic. Maybe some things are not clear for you yet, and you are missing the right perspective here." She took a deed breath before adding, "Carlo did not leave Armand because of me... He left Armand... for you!"

I gasped. I had arrived to the same painful conclusion, but coming from Catherine, it sounded the more cruel. "So... I am responsible for separating Armand and Carlo?" One more perspective on which my father and mother seemed to coincide. And yet, it was awkward to me that, just like my father had implied, I had responsibility in keeping him separated from me for the past twenty years. And now my mother telling me I had changed the life of three adults when I was just a fetus yet.

"You are now thirty three years old, Laurent! It's time you understand your own participation in the lives of others. No matter how central, you are not like the Sun and we are not planets evolving around you." I'm sure she wasn't thinking of the song 'The Sunrise Son' when she stated that. "Our lives did not start with your birth, Laurent. Yet, you changed them forever. Your father gave up a few things, while I gave up others, many others..."

"You've always made that so clear, Catherine!" I exclaimed, and in the back of my mind I thought I had yelled at my father more than once. Never yet, not even once, at my mother. Just like Carlo, I remained being submissive and obedient to her? "I now understand how I have destroyed your life. Should I apologize? But in this process you might have doomed Carlo's life as well, not to mention Armand's--"

"Stop it now!" She interrupted me. "Don't be ridiculous, Laurent! That's so melodramatic, and egocentric of you! You have destroyed nothing. Your father is a well known and wealthy painter, just like he wanted to be. He has achieved his dream, which was making a living from this art. Armand won the Pritzker Prize, to say the least. I have had a different career from what I had pictured for myself, but nonetheless fulfilling. And even the trip to Russia, that should have happened after my vacations in the Indian Ocean, three decades ago..." She paused, as if indicating that those three decades implied my birth and upbringing. "It has finally come true, and here I am, in the company of the new Dostoyevsky!" She laughed gently.

Back in 1974, Catherine had been trying to obtain money from Monsieur de Montbelle to live in Russia. Her purpose was to track down a seventeenth century mystic writer who she believed had been a woman disguised as a monk. And Catherine had been right -- her professor had carried on her research, and gotten all the praise and recognition for that amazing discovery. Without ever mentioning it was Catherine's discovery. For the French academic world, she might have as well drowned in the Indian Ocean.

"There is nothing to blame yourself for, Laurent." Catherine was trying to reassure me by lessening the damage of my birth in her own life, as well as in Carlo's and Armand's. Why did she bother to even try to be motherly sometimes?

"I understand what you're saying, Catherine. You have carried on with your professional lives and everything worked out very fine for all of you... But still--"  I stopped. Suddenly, the thought strike me that, had Carlo chosen to stay with Armand to live their love, I would have been left like Catherine with a blank space in my birth certificate. If she hadn't snatched her half-brother's man, what kind of fatherless life would have I led? In a way, I could now understand why Carlo had always defended Catherine.

Had Catherine been a feminist, she would have carried Carlo's seed in herself and raised a child on her own. But because she had been a bastard child, she had made sure to bring my father along with her -- and since Carlo had been willing to follow her, it hadn't been that hard.

In fact, in a period when feminists were agitating to pass the law that would ban paternity tests in France, Catherine's extremely long, posthumous process of recognition against Gaston de Montbelle led her to be demonized in several intellectual circles -- and that extended torment coming from her peers, that was again exiling her in her own country, had been another reason that influenced her in going to Russia, and that led her to accept the invitation to teach at the Faculty of Philology in St. Petersburg State University, where she would remain for almost five years.

"Let me get this straight!" Catherine snorted. "Are you defending Armand? Who never wanted to have any contact with you? Listen to me again, Laurent. He has been aware of your existence for thirty three years and--"

"No, Catherine." Armand had to be sacrificed, I suddenly understood it, for my own sake. It was bad and sad that it had happened that way, but it could have been worse... for me! Perhaps I owed him apologies? "I'm just considering whether you have done with him what you have done to Carlo... Saying that he shouldn't come looking for me if I did not look for him in the first place... That was so selfish of you, Catherine..." I finally blurted my biggest resentment in the whole story. That she had mercilessly kept my father and I separated

"Mon Dieu! You are going after Armand!" Catherine's strategy of concentrating on Armand actually helped her avoiding the issues involving my father. "You are not going to humiliate yourself before that man, Laurent! Just a few hours in Carlo's company and you are again humble and submissive like him?" She paused, all of a sudden. "Oh no, I can't believe it!"

"You should believe it, Catherine!" I was determined to meet Armand, and my mother's opposition only strengthened my convictions that it was the right thing to do. I was going to look for my uncle Armand, and talk to him. I wanted to locate the Île du Blanchomme, too -- a quick search on the internet had brought no results, none whatsoever -- and visit the place of my conception.

"No, it's not that! I mean, it's not about Armand! Didn't you hear that beep? My mobile is running off its battery... Someone tried to call me the whole morning and now..." 

"Don't lie to me Catherine!" I was closer than ever to yelling at my mother. Instead, I just hissed my dissatisfaction. Such a cheap trick she wanted to use on me, as an excuse to end our discussion.

"Stop accusing me, Laurent. Do you think I want to  interrupt this conversation on purpose? If you want to, we can turn our computers on--"

But Gabriel had just opened his eyes, and was addressing his gorgeous smile at me. Since I wasn't ready yet to let Catherine see my new lover's butt on the cam, and I was very nervous and exasperated already, I simply sighed as the call ended with one last beep from my mother's phone.

And just because Catherine had so vehemently forbidden me, my impulse was to turn on my laptop and try to find my uncle Armand on the internet -- he was well known and it shouldn't be hard to find his architectural firm contacts -- and phone him right away.

But instead, I heard Gabriel asking from the bed "Is everything alright, Lau?" -- and just because I hated that nickname, I decided to punish him with a long, vigorous session of love making and just drown myself into forgetfulness again. 

next episode

Author's note: having been imported from a former version of the story, some of the comments below are dated previous to this post. Once the plot has not been altered, just the pagination, I am keeping them since they are very dear and precious to me.