The Most Beautiful Book in the World Read Free Page A

tenderness that she was certain, this time around, of victory. How could he resist such an onslaught of love?
    When she came to him, once he had received the message, he was wearing a stern expression and he asked her, coldly, to go with him out onto the dock. They sat facing the sea, their feet dangling near the water.
    â€œWendy, you’re adorable, writing what you did to me. I’m very honored. You seem like a good person to me, very passionate . . .”
    â€œDon’t you like me? You think I’m ugly, don’t you!”
    He burst out laughing.
    â€œLook at this little tigress, ready to pounce! No, you’re very beautiful. Too beautiful, even. That’s just the problem. I’m not a bastard.”
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean?”
    â€œYou’re fifteen years old. You could never tell, that’s true, but I know that you’re only fifteen. You have to wait—”
    â€œAnd if I don’t want to wait?”
    â€œIf you don’t want to wait, you can do what you want with whoever you want. But my advice is that you should wait. You mustn’t make love just like that, nor with just anybody.”
    â€œWell, that’s why I chose you!”
    Astonished by the young girl’s ardor, Cesario looked at her in a new light.
    â€œI’m really shaken up by all this, Wendy, and you can be sure that I’d say yes if you were of age, I swear. It would be yes right away. You wouldn’t even have to ask, in fact, I’d be running after you. But as long as you’re underage . . .”
    Wanda burst into tears, her body shaking with sorrow. Cesario tried timidly to console her, taking care to push her away gently the moment she tried to take advantage of the situation and throw herself at him.
    A few days later, Wanda came back to the beach, fortified by their conversation earlier that week: he was attracted to her, and she would have him!
    Playing the adolescent who is resigned to her fate, she stopped titillating him or harassing him, and focused rather on taking a psychological angle of attack.
    At thirty-eight years of age, Cesario was considered to be what they call, in Provence, a layabout: a good-looking sort who lives off nothing—just the fish he happens to catch—and who wants nothing more than to make the most of the sun, the water, and women, without sparing a thought for the future. But people were mistaken, at least in part, for Cesario did have a passion: he painted. In his wooden hut between the beach and the road, there were dozens of boards—he didn’t have the means to buy proper canvases—and tubes of paint, and old brushes. Although no one else thought of him as a painter, in his own eyes he was one. If he failed to marry or start a family, and was happy to have a string of girlfriends, it was not because he was an idler—although that is what everyone believed—but because he wanted to sacrifice himself, devote himself entirely to his vocation as an artist.
    Unfortunately, a quick glance was enough to realize that the end result did not justify the effort invested: Cesario produced one lousy painting after another, for he had no imagination, no sense of color, no draftsman’s talents. Despite the hours he spent at work, there was no chance he’d ever get better, because his passion was accompanied by a total absence of judgment; he took his qualities for flaws and his flaws for qualities. He raised his clumsiness to the level of a style; and he destroyed the spontaneous balance he could have given to his volumes, on the pretext that such a balance was “too classical.”
    No one took Cesario’s creations seriously: neither the gallery owners, nor collectors, nor the people on the beach, and his various mistresses even less. For him, their indifference was proof of his genius: he must follow his path until he eventually gained recognition—even posthumously.
    Wanda had understood