Flowers of Darkness by Tatiana Rosnay (free ebook reader for iphone TXT) 📗

of a creative virtuoso who had never ceased to reinvent himself. Who was Romain Gary? All his life, he excelled in the art of covering his tracks. A young author, Dominique Bona, had just published the first biography concerning him. Clarissa had devoured it.

Clarissa crossed the street again, with Mia White following her, over to the iron fence enclosing number 108. She placed her palm on the handle. She said in French, “I needed to come back here regularly, especially since I’d read his books. I was following in his footsteps, setting my hand where he’d set his over and over again, like an intimate pilgrimage.”

“I understand,” said the young woman solemnly.

“You don’t find it morbid?”

“No. Not at all. It’s like paying tribute to him.”

There was curiosity mingled with admiration in Mia White’s scrutiny. Clarissa took up with her story. One morning, as she was passing by, some time after the measuring of the third-floor flat, she noticed the gate of number 108 was held open by a wedge. She had made the most of it, slipping inside. She hurried to the main stairway, on the right. As she went up the steps, she discovered movers emptying Romain Gary’s old apartment on the second floor. The door was half-closed. She had hesitated, fleetingly, on the landing. Since 1980 and Gary’s death, she realized, several occupants had probably lived here one after the other. She was not going to walk into a home that still bore his imprint, as his furniture, paintings, and books were no longer here. But it was the layout of the flat that drew her in, how this man, whom she found mesmerizing, had moved within these very walls, how he had occupied the premises. She put one foot into the entrance. She remembered the third-floor flat measured with her colleagues was L-shaped, 372 square meters, with eight rooms giving on to a tree-lined private lane.

Romain Gary’s sixty-six-year-old body had been carried from here, over this threshold, and down the stairs behind her. She moved forward, cautiously at first, then with a firmer gait. If someone asked her what the hell she was doing, she’d say she had made a mistake and ended up on the wrong floor. But no one came. She had remained alone in a string of vast rooms leading one into the next. She noticed the parquet floors had here and there been replaced by charcoal slate tiles, that fireplaces had been removed. A large bedroom overlooked the courtyard and its chestnut trees. She had a gut feeling it had happened here. The bed must have been placed against the wall on the left, between two electrical sockets. A bed made of copper. She’d read that in the biography. He’d lain down for the last time where she was standing now. He had placed his last handwritten letter at the foot of the bed. A note that began with “D-Day. No connection with Jean Seberg.” A year before, in 1979, the actress, with whom he no longer lived, had been found dead in her car near avenue Victor-Hugo in Paris, the police ruling her demise a probable suicide. After that, Romain Gary had given up writing for good.

Clarissa’s expert gaze, honed by her professional training, scanned the room. The radiator was vintage; so was the door leading into the adjacent bathroom. She passed into it. There had been no recent refurbishments here. She’d read that Gary used to dictate his books to his secretary (and lover) while he took his bath, cigar clamped between his teeth. Romain Gary had looked at himself daily in this very mirror. In this private place, he had washed and groomed himself, had tended to his body and its needs. These walls had witnessed his nakedness.

It felt like he was beside her now, buttoning up one of his custom-made mauve satin shirts, an ornate cabochon ring on his left hand, and he seemed close enough for her to make out the blue intensity of his eyes, his bittersweet smile, and the beard he carefully blackened to wipe out traces of gray. Did she perceive the acrid waft of a Montecristo? Almost. She stood at the heart of his private life, where he had slept, dreamed, and loved; where he had decided to end it all. The perimeter of his death was revealed to her.

Clarissa went on, while Mia White listened attentively. Tuesday, December 2, 1980, had been a rainy day. After lunching with his editor in the neighborhood, and relishing a last cigar, Romain Gary had walked home along the rue de Babylone. He was by himself. He had closed the shutters and the curtains. He had planned it all. He had not faltered. He had done what he had intended to do. Killing himself, in his room. He had taken the Smith & Wesson from its case, spread a red towel over his pillow, and had lain down, the barrel lodged between his lips. No one had heard the gunshot.

Clarissa remained quiet for a while.

“When I read that part in your book, I felt like I was there with you,” whispered Mia White.

Clarissa continued. She had looked at the ceiling for a long moment, which must have been the last thing Gary’s eyes had glimpsed. She had wondered, since that rainy afternoon, what Gary had left behind. Those who slept there, in that room, within those walls, had they not been marked, in one way or another, by his bloodstained wake? Without meaning to, Clarissa had picked up the writer’s fragility, connecting to his torment, loneliness, and despair; the emotions had engulfed her as soon as she had walked into his old apartment, leaving their stain on her.

“Did Gary transmit a form of gloom to you?” asked Mia White.

“He had already done that through his books. There’s this beautifully melancholic quote in The Life Before Us: ‘It’s always in the eyes that people are the saddest.’ I experienced a special connection with him that day on rue