Read Online The President's Hat by Antoine Laurain - Free Book Online

perfectly wearable. The only item Pierre would have liked to hold on to would have been ‘Tony Curtis’s hat’, but he’d left it on an aeroplane a few years earlier.

 
    Perhaps it doesn’t go with your beard
. At three in the morning he grabbed his glasses from the bedside table and got up without waking Esther. On his return from the session with his analyst, Esther had been playing the first movement of Bach’s Toccata in C minor, practising one particular passage. Pierre had followed the sound of the Steinway until he reached the sitting room where he found her concentrating on the keys, her back to the door, her hair up in a bun. She repeated four or five notes several times. Each time they sounded the same, but to her they obviously weren’t right. It was a question of touch or duration. The timing was probably only out by a nanosecond , but she wasn’t satisfied.
    Demand for absolute perfection characterised both their professions. A tiny detail became a huge obstacle and they could only rest easy once they had surmounted it. The repetition of notes might last a few minutes or it might go on all afternoon. A perfume could be created after a few weeks, or several months and sometimes several years ofresearch. The composition of Shalimar had been a fluke. In a trial, Jacques Guerlain had poured a few drops of synthetic vanilla into a bottle of Jicky, and he had created Shalimar. Patou’s 1000 on the other hand had taken years and years of research and no less than a thousand trials, hence its name. Esther was perfectly capable of practising the same phrase a thousand times if necessary. He had intended to withdraw without disturbing her work, but a floorboard had creaked under his foot. Esther turned round.
    â€˜You frightened me! What’s that hat?’
    â€˜It’s a black hat,’ Pierre had replied
    â€˜I see that, but where did you get it?’
    â€˜In a little second-hand designer shop on Boulevard de Courcelles.’
    â€˜I thought they only sold women’s clothes.’
    â€˜So did I, but it was in the window; it had just been dropped off.’ Pierre was thinking on his feet. His wife was already finding it hard to take the old sheepskin jacket and the threadbare Girbaud jeans. She certainly wouldn’t approve of him wearing a hat found on a bench. The boutique,
Des marques et vous,
was on his way to Fremenberg’s, so it was perfectly believable that he might have spotted the hat in the window and gone in to try it on.
    â€˜It’s been a long time since you last wore a hat,’ said Esther, looking at him closely. ‘It does suit you, but …’ she was frowning, her head on one side, ‘perhaps it doesn’t go with your beard; it makes you look …’
    â€˜What does it make me look?’
    â€˜A bit strange.’
    Pierre had walked over to the mirror above the mantelpiece and didn’t think he looked strange. Esther had repeated the notes from Bach then asked him how the session with Fremenberg had gone. ‘Well,’ said Pierre without elaborating. At that moment he felt as if he could spend the rest of his life leaning on the mantelpiece, the hat on his head, contemplating his wife’s reflection as she played Bach. The repetition of the notes helped create a reassuring impression of eternity.
    Â 
    Perhaps it doesn’t go with your beard
. The moonlight was filtering through the net curtains into the sitting room. Pierre nearly knocked into the coffee table but soon oriented himself by the dark mass of the sofa. Once out of the door, he crossed the corridor, passed his son’s bedroom and reached the bathroom, locking himself in.
    The fluorescent light blinked as it warmed up. He closed his eyes painfully then flicked the switch off. Candles. There were candles in the broom cupboard. Blinded by the harsh light which was still imprinted on his retina, he went out of the bathroom and felt