The Life of an Unknown Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

come to terms with the rules of this stupid game: on television, speaking last at midnight, a woman with her looks has no chance. Pensively, her head bowed, she met no one’s eyes. It seemed to Shutov as if she were addressing him alone.
    The story is very simple, she was saying, a woman loves a very young man who is hooked on drugs. After a year and a half of struggle she manages to save him. A month later he meets a girl of his own age and leaves.
    “In fact, the book starts when it’s all over for my heroine. I think that’s how it is in our lives. When you expect nothing more, life opens up to what is really important . . .”
    Suddenly, still in her calm voice, she addressed Shutov: “Just now you were quoting Chekhov . . . Yes, he encouraged us to cut the opening and the ending of a story. But I don’t know if Doctor Chekhov’s remedy can cure a novel. In any event, my heroine comes to life in the part of the story he advised us to cut.”
    And without any change of tone, without declaiming, she read several sentences from the book open in front of her. A forest in winter, a woman on a footpath with a brown carpet of fallen leaves, a soothing, acrid scent, grief turning to joy at each step taken down a misty avenue of trees . . .
    The broadcast ended. Shutov remained seated, his eyes half closed. A forest in the mist, a figure disappearing at the end of a pathway . . . A technician roused him to retrieve his microphone. In the corridor, near the makeup room, he caught up with the gray-haired woman. “Why did you take part in that farce?” He did not have the courage to ask her this, murmuring instead: “I was grateful for Chekhov! Thanks to you I didn’t look so stupid. But I didn’t catch the name of your book . . .”
    “ After Her Life. I’ll send it to you. I read yours when it came out. I’ve read all your books. But I didn’t expect to see you here. Why did you come?”
    They smiled, imagining the excuses writers generally concoct: my publisher was very insistent, I was there to hold the line against dumbing down . . . And at that moment he saw Léa.
    “That was fantastic!” she declared, kissing him on the cheek. He turned to introduce her to the gray-haired woman but the latter had already gone into the makeup room. “No, it was great,” Léa went on. “It made you want to read the books. Especially that Chinese writer. I really liked him. What he said about the yin and the yang was really deep. But I thought the woman next to you, the one who came on last, was, like, hopeless. Did you see how she was made up? She looked . . .”
    The “hopeless” woman emerged from the makeup room and Shutov saw her moving away. As she walked along she was rubbing her face with a tissue and from a distance one might have thought she was wiping away tears.
    In the taxi Léa’s enthusiasm knew no bounds. Shutov reflected that the stupid media magic had given him a makeover and perhaps what had felt like a wretched failure would give their partnership a new lease on life. Léa praised the young witch’s performance. She thought it clever how she had “only just got away with it.” Then she went back to the woman reading a few lines from her book. “I simply can’t make that one out. It was a real mistake putting her on. She’s, like, old and dreary, you know, not sexy at all. And she looked as if she was bored out of her skull. It was lucky for her you mentioned Chekhov. It gave her the chance to show off a bit . . .”
    Shutov touched Léa’s hand and murmured very calmly: “You don’t need to go on, Léa. I know you’re not as moronic as you make out.”
    Then he quickly regretted this undiplomatic remark, knowing that people never forgive you for refusing to join in games of self-deception.

N or was Shutov deceived by Léa’s “infidelities.” The word had a farcical ring to it—he found others (“she sleeps with a friend from time to time”), preferring to act