Free Happy Are the Happy by Yasmina Reza Page A

the piano. The waiter says in a frightfully clear voice, Monsieur Ardashir? I flutter my eyelids in confirmation. He goes away. I fall on the mixed pistachios and cashews. I absolutely must not look at what’s going on beside the piano. The journalist has roused herself from her torpor, taken off her eyeglasses, and stored them in their case. Now she’s starting to put away her documents. I can’t be abandoned there, not right away. I say to her, you know, I feel old. One doesn’t feel young at thirty. Last night I couldn’t sleep, and I read Cesare Pavese’s journal. Do you know it? It’s on my night table. Reading sad things is good for you. In one passage, he says, “Madmen and wretches have all been children, they played as you did, they believed something beautiful was waiting for them.” Don’t write this, but I’ve thought for a long time I wouldn’t be anything more than a shooting star in this profession. The journalist looks at me nervously. She’s nice, poor thing. The waiter comes back with the folded paper. I’m trembling. I keep it in my hand for a moment before unfolding it. There’s what I wrote at the top, “Tell her you only like beginnings,” and at the bottom, in a fine, black hand, he’s written, “Not always”. Nothing else. No period. To whom do those words refer? To me? To his wife? I turn my head toward the piano corner. Darius Ardashir and the woman are in a very good mood. The journalist leans toward me and says, something beautiful
was
waiting for you, Loula.

Raoul Barnèche
    I ate a king of clubs. Not all of it, but almost. I am a man who reached such an extreme that I was capable of putting a king of clubs in my mouth and chewing part of it to pieces, munching and swallowing it the way a savage would munch and swallow raw flesh. I did that. I ate a card that had been handled by dozens of other people before me, and I did it in the middle of the annual bridge tournament in Juan-les-Pins. I admit only one error, the original mistake: playing with Hélène. Letting myself be taken in by the sentimental little song-and-dance women do. I’ve known for years that I shouldn’t play with my wife as my partner anymore. The period when Hélène and I could play as a team, in a spirit of harmony – the word’s an exaggeration and doesn’t exist in bridge, let’s say indulgence then, on my part in any case, or in a spirit of, I’m looking for the right word, of conciliation – that period is long gone. One day, by a stroke of luck, we won the French mixed open pairs championship together. Since then, our alliance has produced not a single spark and ruined my blood pressure. Hélène didn’t know how to play bridge when I met her. A friend of hers brought her to a café where there were games at night. She was taking a secretarial course at the time. She sat down, she watched. She came back. I taught her everything. My father was an automotive toolmaker in a Renault plant and my mother a seamstress. Hélène came from the North. Her parents were textileworkers. Nowadays things have become democratized, but in former times people like us wouldn’t have been allowed into the clubs. Before I left everything for bridge, I was a chemical engineer at Labinal. I spent my days working in Saint-Ouen, my evenings at the Darcey in Place Clichy, and then in the clubs. Weekends at the racetrack. Little Hélène followed along. The passion for cards can’t be communicated. There’s a box in some brains, a box separate from the rest. It’s the
Cards
box. Those who don’t have it don’t have it. You can take all the lessons in the world, there’s nothing to be done. Hélène had it. In the short run, she played quite decently. Women can’t concentrate for long periods of time. After thirteen years of playing bridge separately, one fine day Hélène woke up and suggested we go back to the Juan-les-Pins tournament and play together. Juan-les-Pins, the blue sky, the sea, the memory of a