Adultery(63)

All of it completely false. It’s the type of happiness that addicts must find when they do drugs. Sooner or later the effects pass, and the despair becomes even greater.

The former tycoon starts talking about money. I didn’t ask anything about it, but he talks anyway. He has an enormous need to say he isn’t poor, that he can maintain his lifestyle for decades to come.

I can’t stand to be here any longer. I thank him for the interview, turn off the recorder, and go get my coat.

“Are you free this evening? We could get a drink and finish this conversation,” he suggests.

It’s not the first time this has happened. In fact, it’s almost a given with me. Even though Mme K?nig won’t admit it, I am pretty and smart and I’ve used my charm to get certain people to say things they wouldn’t normally say to journalists, even after warning them I could publish everything. But the men … oh, the men! They do everything they can to hide their weaknesses and any eighteen-year-old girl can manipulate them without much effort.

I thank him for the invitation and say I already have plans for that evening. I’m tempted to ask how his latest girlfriend reacted to the wave of negative press and the collapse of his empire. But I can already imagine, and it’s of no interest to the newspaper.

I leave, cross the street, and go to the Jardin Anglais, where, moments ago, I imagined walking. I go to the old-fashioned ice-cream parlor on the corner of Rue du 31 Décembre. I like the name of this street because it always reminds me that sooner or later, another year will end and, once again, I’ll make big resolutions for the next.

I order a scoop of pistachio with chocolate. I walk to the pier and eat my ice cream while looking at the symbol of Geneva, its jet of water shooting up in the sky and creating a curtain of droplets before me. Tourists get closer and take photos that will come out poorly lit. Wouldn’t it be easier to just buy a postcard?

I have visited many monuments around the world, many of mighty men whose names are long forgotten, but who will remain eternally mounted on their beautiful horses. Of women holding their crowns or swords to the sky, symbolizing victories that no longer appear even in textbooks. Of lone, nameless children carved in stone, their innocence lost forever during the hours and days they were forced to pose for an artist whose name history has also stamped out.

With very few exceptions, in the end a city’s landmarks aren’t its statues, but unexpected things. When Eiffel built a steel tower for the World’s Fair, he never even dreamed it would wind up becoming the symbol of Paris—over the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, and its magnificent gardens. An apple represents New York. A not-so-crowded bridge is the symbol of San Francisco. Another bridge, this one over the Tagus, dominates the picture postcards of Lisbon. Barcelona has an unfinished cathedral as its most emblematic monument.

And so it is with Geneva. Lake Léman meets the Rh?ne River at precisely this point, creating a very strong current. A hydroelectric power station was built here to take advantage of the hydraulic power (we’re masters at taking advantage of things), but when the workers returned home and closed the valves, the pressure was too great and the turbines ended up bursting.

Until an engineer had the idea to put a fountain in place, allowing the excess water to run off.

Over time, engineers solved the problem and the fountain became unnecessary. But the city’s residents voted in a referendum to keep it. The city already had many fountains, and this one was in the middle of a lake. How could they make it more visible?

That was how the mutant monument was born. Powerful pumps were installed and now an extremely forceful jet shoots out five hundred liters of water per second, at two hundred kilometers per hour. They say, and I’ve confirmed it, that it can be seen from an airplane at thirty thousand feet. It doesn’t have a special name; it’s just called Jet d’Eau (jet of water), the city’s landmark in spite of all the sculptures of men on horses, heroic women, lonely children.

I once asked Denise, a Swiss scientist, what she thought of the Jet d’Eau.

“Our body is made almost entirely of water, through which electrical discharges pass, communicating information. One such piece of information is called love, and it can interfere with the entire organism. Love is always changing. I think that the Jet d’Eau is the most beautiful monument to love conceived by the art of man, because it is also never the same.”





I TAKE my phone and call Jacob’s office. Sure, I could dial his personal number, but no. I speak with his assistant and let her know I’m going to meet him.