King Solomon’s forgotten love

‘L’angoscia del Re Salomone’

Author: Emile Ajar Publisher: Romanzo Rizzoli Year: 1981 Pages: 292

Emile Ajar is the pen name of Romain Gary who was born as Roman Kacew in 1914 in Vilnius. He was a French novelist, diplomat, film director and World War II aviator.

He is considered a major writer of French literature of the second half of the 20th century. He is the only author to have won the Prix Goncourt under two names.

Although he often alluded to Tartar and Cossack blood, his parents were Russian Jews. He was fluent in six languages and he became a master of multiple literary personae, and a decorated hero of the French resistance.

In between, he forged a morethan-respectable career in the French diplomatic service, ending up consul general in Los Angeles where he left his English wife, author Lesley Blanch, for nouvelle vague queen Jean Seberg. He even challenged Clint Eastwood to a duel when he suspected the actor of infidelity with Jean.

Gary died, one December afternoon in 1980, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

It was only after his death that it was revealed he was also the famous author Emile Ajar.

He became one of the most famous 20th century literary bad boys – Ernest Hemingway was a philandering bear-slayer who chased wars and crashed planes. Hunter S. Thompson, a gun-loving druggy, had his ashes fired from a fist-shaped cannon. Heroin addict William Burroughs accidentally killed his second wife in a drunken game of William Tell. And then there’s Romain Gary, hoaxer extraordinaire.

He was as popular as he was prolific, producing more than 30 volumes of prize-winning essays, plays, memoirs and fiction, including La Vie deviant soi, the bestselling French novel of the 20th century.

But he star-faded as he aged and was further dimmed by posthumous revelation that he’d duped the Parisian literary establishment, publishing some of his most rapturously received works (La Vie, among them) under a fake name.

In addition to Kacew and Gary, he published under the names Fosco Sinibaldi and Shatan Bogat. Then, in 1973, having already notched up one Prix Goncourt, two divorces and 22 published book, he invented his most famous alter ego.

Emile Ajar was a 34-year-old Algerian who’d performed a botched abortion on a Parisian while still a medical student. To escape prison he’d had to flee to Brazil, from where he began his literary career.

A friend in Rio helped mail the manuscripts and Gary’s cousin, Paul Pavlovitch, was roped in to play Ajar himself, fielding demands for telephone interviews and photographs.

The instant success of Ajar’s first novel, Gros-Calin, was then eclipsed by the triumph of his second, La Vie devant soi (The life before us).

Despite all this playing around with the truth, he was possessed of a tolerant, humane, grown-up moral vision.

The book being reviewed today is the last book he wrote. Salomon Rubinstein, a rich Polish Jew who in France had become extremely rich manufacturing trousers, decides to retire and sets up a philanthropic society which aims to alleviate the suffering of people and receives the phone appeals of those in urgent need of help because of money problems or because they are sick or because, as in this case, they are lonely.

We meet two personages who are both “anguished” – old Salomon Rubinstein and young Jean, who tries to mend everything.

Jean finds employment with Salomon and is sent by him to home-visit those who have called in with pleas for help. Among these there is Cora Lamenaire, who in her time had been a popular singer and had been Salomon’s friend. Now, aged 65, she feels useless and forgotten.

Through visiting her to see she does not lack anything, Jean becomes her lover. To soothe his conscience he tells himself he does not love her personally but only “in general”.

At the end Jean manages to get Cora and Salomon to repair their relationship while he goes back to his real job, that of repairing household appliances and the like.