Free The Other Story by Tatiana De Rosnay Page B

To this day,” Nicolas said over and over again in his interviews, “I still hope against hope that my father might walk through that door. He would be fifty-one today. I know it is impossible, because I know my father most probably fell off his boat and drowned, but there is still that inkling, that possibility, that he might still be alive, somewhere, somehow. Margaux Dansor, unlike me, does find out the truth about what happened to her father. But her story is not my story. Let’s say I invented her story in order to try to answer my unanswerable questions about my own father.” The journalists asked again and again, “And what about your name? Did you change your name when you wrote the book? How did Nicolas Duhamel become Nicolas Kolt?” Nicolas tried to answer them with the same patience each time. “Kolt is a abbreviation of Koltchine, my father’s real name. When I was told the book was going to be published, all of a sudden, Duhamel made no sense.”
    Théodore Duhamel would never read The Envelope. But the book was dedicated to him.
    To my father, Fiodor Koltchine (Saint Petersburg, June 12, 1960–Guéthary, August 7, 1993).

     
    T HE SUN IS SLOWLY sinking behind a high, rocky hill. It is not going to set in the sea, in front of them. Nicolas is disappointed. He was expecting a glorious pink sunset. Most people have turned their chairs away from the horizon, worshiping the final golden rays being swallowed up by the looming hill. He is secretly proud of the fact that for the last hour or so he has resisted the temptation of glancing at his BlackBerry. Mr. Wong and Miss Ming are playing mah-jongg. The gay couple are listening to the same iPod and swinging their heads in the same movement. The Belgian family is having a last dip. The Swiss are dutifully reading the papers. Alessandra and her mother seem to be fast asleep. The hairy man is puffing away on a cigarette, phone clamped to his ear, oblivious to the fact that his buxom girlfriend is chatting up the French guy (whose wife is no doubt at the spa). A puce-faced, tipsy Nelson Novézan makes a quick appearance, a pitiful sight in faded swim shorts that sag around his equally sagging buttocks. He plunges a toe into the water, yelps, and scuttles back to the elevator.
    Boats are coming in again from the yachts, bringing more exclusive clients to the Gallo Nero for drinks and dinner, and perhaps to spend the night. Once again, Nicolas thinks of the book he has been lying about to his entourage. One day soon, he will have to sit down, be responsible, and write that novel. No more procrastination. No more sloth. But how? If only energy for the book could come flowing in like those elegant guests smoothly riding in on the black Rivas. He remembered that when he started The Envelope, it was as if Margaux Dansor took him by the hand and led him onward. He could feel her hand, the texture of it, smooth, a little dry; he could feel the tug, the pull. He saw Margaux Dansor perfectly, as clearly as if she had been standing in front of him. It had been effortless creating her. She looked nothing like Emma Duhamel, his mother. Nor did she have Delphine’s auburn hair, white skin, green eyes. Margaux had a long Modigliani-like face, hazel eyes, thick silver hair. She was a piano teacher. She lived in the rue Daguerre with her husband, Arnaud Dansor (a doctor), and their two girls, Rose and Angèle. One day, she had to get her passport renewed. Margaux soon discovered this was an impossible feat, according to recent laws, even though she had been born in the chic suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris. All this because her mother (Claire Nadelhoffer) had been born in Landquart, Switzerland, and her father (Luc Zech, who died in an avalanche when she was a child) in San Rocco di Camogli, Italy. At the Pôle de la nationalité française, Margaux was told to bring in every single document she could get ahold of concerning her father’s family—birth, death, and