The Woman With the Bouquet by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt Page A

she retorted, bursting out laughing, “but you are such a good listener.”
    “I listen the way a child does, I accept what people tell me. So, if you had made up those stories yesterday, I wouldn’t realize.”
    She nodded, as if I were telling her a nursery rhyme. I ventured even further: “Every time we invent something, it’s a confession, with every lie we are sharing a secret. If you were making fun of me yesterday, I would not hold it against you, I would thank you, because you chose me to tell your tale to, and you considered me worthy of your story, you opened your heart and your fantasies. What could be more singular than creativity? Can one give anything more precious? I would have been very privileged. The chosen one.”
    There was a shiver on her features that showed me she was beginning to understand. I hurriedly continued: “Yes, you’ve recognized me, I’m a sort of brother, a brother in falsehood, a brother who has chosen, like you, to open up by making up stories. Nowadays, great value is placed on sincerity in literature. What a joke! Sincerity can only be a quality in a report or some sort of legal testimony—and even then, it is more a matter of duty than quality. Constructing a story, the art of attracting a reader’s interest, the gift of storytelling, the ability to see close up something that is far away, or to evoke without describing, the ability to give an illusion of reality—all of that has nothing to do with sincerity, and owes nothing to it. Moreover, stories that are driven not by reality but by fantasy—scenes one would like to experience, stifled desires, repeated urges—all mean more to me than any minor news story in the paper.”
    She opened her eyes wide, twisting her lips.
    “You . . . you don’t believe me?”
    “Not for a moment, but it doesn’t matter.”
    “What!”
    “Thank you all the same.”
    Where did she find the strength to punch me so hard? She struck my chest and I fell backward.
    “Imbecile!”
    She was furious.
    “Get out of here! Leave this room immediately! Get out! I don’t want to see you anymore.”
    Alarmed by the shouting, Gerda rushed into the library.
    “What’s going on?”
    Emma saw her niece and thought for a moment before she answered. In the meantime, the sturdy woman had located me, on the rug, and was hurrying over to help me to my feet.
    “Well I never, Monsieur! You fell over! How’d you manage to do that? Did you trip on the rug?”
    “Precisely, Gerda, he tripped on the rug. That’s why I called you. Now I’d like to be left alone, I need to rest. Alone!”
    Faced with such authority from a timid old lady, Gerda and I hardly knew what to say, so we beat a hasty retreat.
    Once I had found refuge upstairs, I was filled with remorse for having precipitated this crisis. I thought Emma was a liar, not that she was disturbed. Her reaction showed me that she believed in all her fabulations. Now, through my fault, she was suffering even more. What should I do?
    Gerda came to join me on the pretext of serving me some tea, but in fact she wanted to get more information out of me regarding the scene she had just witnessed.
    “What did you say to her? She was hopping mad!”
    “I told her that I might not believe everything she had told me yesterday . . .”
    “Oh, yes . . . I get it, and now . . .”
    “I added politely that I adored her story, and that it didn’t matter at all if she was making it up. And then she hit me!”
    “Ouch!”
    “I didn’t know she had gone so far in her ravings. Totally unbalanced. I figured she must be a liar, or fond of making things up all the time, but I didn’t think she would turn out to be . . .”
    “Crazy?”
    “Oh, that word is . . .”
    “I am sorry, Monsieur, but you have to admit that aunt Emma is deranged. Do you think that the novels you write are true? No. So, that’s what I’m telling you: my aunt is out to lunch. Hey, it’s not the first time we’ve talked about it . . .