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Back The Martins Save as PDF
Contents (99)
  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
  83. 83
  84. 84
  85. 85
  86. 86
  87. 87
  88. 88
  89. 89
  90. 90
  91. 91
  92. 92
  93. EPILOGUE
  94. 1
  95. 2
  96. 3
  97. 4
  98. 5
  99. 6

76

The next day, I went to pick up Madeleine and we got a taxi together to the airport. Just before boarding, I sent Valérie a message to let her know that all was well, but she didn’t reply. She didn’t even write to her mother to wish her a good flight. I was starting to find her silence a little worrying.

77

Once we were above the clouds, we ordered a glass of champagne each. Madeleine wanted this trip to be unforgettable. How could it be otherwise? Everything we were going through was an antidote to amnesia. The bubbles quickly went to my head, and my intoxication came as a relief. I love travelling, but I do tend to get quite stressed while I’m flying. I prefer the train. My ideal mode of transport would be railway tracks in the sky.

The flight attendant came up to me then and asked: ‘Are you working on a new book?’ I hesitated before answering. I always find it strange when people recognise me. It’s true that some of my books have been successful, but it still strikes me as improbable. I wanted to say: ‘Yes, it’s sitting next to me,’ but I didn’t want to reveal anything about my current project. Generally, talking about a book when you’re still working on it strikes me as a good way of killing it at birth. For every novel I’ve written, I’ve spent months without mentioning it to anyone. In the end, I told the flight attendant that I was taking a rest from fiction, and she told me I was right to enjoy life.

She went off to spread her good cheer among the other passengers before I had time to reply that I enjoyed life a lot more when I was working on a new book. Madeleine interrupted these existential reflections by asking me what meal I was going to choose. I hadn’t even opened the menu yet.19 After looking through it, I went for the vegetarian option. Madeleine looked very happy as she told me that she’d chosen the same thing, as if this meant that we had the same view of life.

  1. 19. Not that it mattered: the meat and the fish always taste exactly the same on aeroplanes.

78

Prior to that moment, Madeleine had told me briefly about the trauma of Yves’s departure, and the torments of her love for him, but I didn’t know many details. I needed to gather more material before the reunion. And so, above the Atlantic, we travelled back into the past.

It had all started in a jazz club, although she couldn’t remember its name. I mentioned a few legendary places such as Le Caveau de la Huchette or Le Duc des Lombards, but none of those names rang a bell for her. All she could tell me was that Miles Davis had played there, accompanied by Juliette Gréco, about ten years earlier. This wasn’t particularly helpful: that famous couple had played most of Paris’s big jazz clubs.