He was sobbing, hiding his entire face behind his hand.
‘Are you all right?’ asked his neighbour anxiously.
He did not hear her, submerged as he was, drifting off in his own zone of turbulence; then he stood up, climbed over her, holding on to the headrests, went round to the other side of the curtain, found an empty row and collapsed into it.
End of business class.
He pressed his face against the window and covered it with vapour.
They sent a steward to see him.
‘Do you need a doctor, Sir?’
Charles raised his head, tried to smile, and pulled out his bullshit secret weapon: ‘Just tired . . .’
The steward was reassured and they left him in peace.
Rarely has an expression been so misused.
In peace? When has he ever lived in peace?
The last time, he was six and a half years old and was walking up the Rue Berthelot with his new friend.
A boy in his class, whose name was Le Men, in two words, and who had just moved in next door. He had noticed him from the very first day because he wore his house key round his neck.
It was really something, in those days, to have your house key round your neck. It made a man of you, in the schoolyard during break . . .
He’d already come to Charles’s place several times for afterschool snack, but that day it was his turn, and Alexis had said, taking his shoes off, ‘You know, you have to be quiet, because my mum is asleep.’
‘Oh?’
Charles was impressed. There were mums who could sleep in the afternoon?
‘Is she sick?’ he asked in a very low voice.
‘No, she’s a nurse, but since she leaves very early in the morning, she often has a nap . . . Look, the door to her room is closed. That’s our code.’
It all seemed very romantic. Because it was an added game, to play that way, to roll their little cars without having them collide; to whisper, catching each other by the sleeve; to cut their slices of gingerbread all by themselves.
The two of them all alone in the world, starting at the slightest pschitt from the lemonade bottle . . .
Yes, and even then peace was not such a sure thing, because every time he went by that door he could feel his heart beat.
A little.
It was as if Sleeping Beauty, or a very weary princess, who’d been condemned, or perhaps disfigured? were hiding behind that door . . . He walked on tiptoes, held his breath, and made his way to his friend’s room placing his feet just so on the parquet floor so that he wouldn’t fall over.
The corridor was a bridge suspended above crocodiles.
Charles went there several more times, and he was always fascinated by the closed door.
He must have wondered if she were dead, in fact. Perhaps Alexis was lying to him. Perhaps he managed on his own all the time, and lived on biscuits . . .
Perhaps she looked like one of those statues in their history book?
And she was shrouded in a stiff veil, with her feet sticking out at the other end?
But no, it couldn’t be, because the kitchen table was always a mess . . . Bowls of coffee and half-finished crosswords, strands of hair in a slide, an orange peel, torn envelopes, crumbs . . .
And Charles watched Alexis cleaning it all as if it were the most natural thing in the world, to empty your mum’s ashtrays, and fold her cardigans.
Thus, no longer was his friend the little boy the teacher had put in the corner a few hours earlier, he was . . .
It was strange. Even his face changed. He stood up straighter, and he counted the cigarette butts with a frown.
That particular day, for example, he’d shaken his head and broken the silence: ‘Pfff . . . It’s disgusting.’
Three butts stuck into a yoghurt that had hardly been touched.
‘If you want,’ he added, confused, ‘I have a new marble, a gigantic one . . . It’s on my night table.’
Charles removed his shoes and set off on an expedition.
Oh, oh. The door was wide open. He looked to one side on the outward trip, but on the return he could not keep from taking a quick look.
The sheet had slipped and you could see her shoulders. And even half of her back. He stood still. Her skin was so white and her hair so very long . . .
He had to get away from there, he really must, he was about to, when she opened her eyes.
How lovely she was. Lovely like in Bible stories. Silent and still, but with a sort of light all around her.
‘Hey. Hello there,’ she said, lifting herself up slightly in order to wedge her palm under the back of her neck.
‘You’re Charles, isn’t that right?’
He couldn’t reply because you could see a bit of her . . . Well, her . . .
He couldn’t reply so he ran off.
‘What are you doing? Are you leaving?’
‘Yes,’ mumbled Charles, struggling with his shoelaces, ‘I have to do my homework.’
‘Hey!’ exclaimed Alexis, ‘but it’s Saturday tomor—’
The door had already slammed.
2
LET’S FORGET THAT whole thing about peace, whether stolen or condemned. He had been protesting too much to be honest. Of course Charles, once he was in the street, had knelt down and dealt with his shoelaces the way he should, passing the big loop around the small one, then off he set again best foot forward.
Of course.
What’s more, he could smile about it now. Talk about Holy Virgins . . .
He was amused by the little boy he’d been, illuminated and touched by grace, yet still puzzled. Yes, puzzled. A boy who lived surrounded by girls but would never have imagined that there was another colour, that bit he saw . . .
He didn’t lose his peace, but he gained a sort of agitation, a disturbing feeling that would grow as he did, lengthening at the same pace as his trouser legs. It would hide his scrapes, circle his hips and expand at the bottom. It would be flattened by his mother’s iron and reproved by his father’s elegance. As time passed it would start to get frayed. It would roll up in a ball and get covered with marks. Then it would gain in maturity, therefore in quality, and acquire an impeccable crease, and turn-ups too, and it would demand to be dry cleaned, only to end up all wrinkled amidst the gravel of a creepy cemetery.
He lowered his seat back and blessed the sky.
How lucky he was to be on a plane, in the end. Flying so high, and high on other things, with an empty stomach; how lucky he was to have found them again, to have recalled Nana’s perfume and its scent of old tart; how lucky to have known them, to have been loved by them, and never to have recovered.
At the time, he thought of her as a lady, but now he knows this was not the case. Now he knows that she must have been twenty-five or twenty-six and that this age business – which had so haunted him – had finally proved him right: it did not matter in the least.
Anouk was ageless because you could not pigeonhole her, and she would fight any attempt to circumscribe her.
She often behaved like a child. She’d curl up in a ball in the middle of their Meccano games and fall asleep in the way of their toy truck convoy. She’d sulk when it was time for homework, would copy her son’s signature, write exaggerated excuses for them, could go for days without speaking, fell in love without care or caution, spent her evenings waiting for the phone to ring, giving it dark glances, exasperated them with her repeated questions, did they think she was beautiful, no, she meant really beautiful, and ended up telling them off because there was nothing for dinner.
And then there were other times . . . no. Other times when she saved people’s lives, and not only at the hospital. People like Nana, and so many others who worshipped her as the most solid of idols.
She was not afraid of anything or anybody. Stepped nimbly aside when the sky was falling. Dealt with things. No fear of crossing swords. Took the rap. Batted her eyelashes, clenched her fists or raised her middle finger, depending on the e
nemy, and eventually understood that the line had gone dead, hung up, shrugged her shoulders, put on some fresh make-up and took them all out to a restaurant.
Yes, her age, the difference in their ages, were the only figures that proved elusive to this good pupil. An inequation left in the margin . . . Too many unknowns . . . And yet he remembers how her face had affected him, the last time. But it wasn’t her wrinkles, or her white roots that were disconcerting, it was her withdrawal.
Something, someone, life itself, had switched off the light.
They offered him a coffee, revolting dishwater that he accepted joyfully. He sipped the burning plastic, his forehead against the pane of glass, while he observed the trembling of the wing, and he tried to distinguish the stars from other long-haul aircraft; then he wound back the hands of his watch and forged onwards into the night.
*
The second photo was one he’d taken . . . He remembers because his uncle Pierre had just given him the camera, a little Kodak Instamatic that he’d been dreaming about for ages, and he’d rolled up the sleeve of his communion gown to be able to christen it.
Alexis and he had just taken first communion, and everyone had gathered in the family garden. Beneath the cherry tree that had just been chopped down the week before, to be precise . . . His uncle must have been driving him nuts telling him over and over that he had to read the instructions first, and check the light, and make sure the film was properly loaded, and . . . did you wash your hands, first? but Charles wasn’t listening: Anouk was already posing.
She’d wedged a lock of hair between her nose and her upper lip and, making faces, seemed to be sending him an enormous moustachioed kiss from beneath her straw hat.
If he’d known he would go cross-eyed staring at this photo several lives later, he would have paid more attention to his uncle’s advice . . . It was poorly framed and the focus left something to be desired, but, oh well . . . It was Anouk. And if it was blurry, it was because she’d been clowning around . . .
Yes, she was clowning around. And not just for the photo. Not just to rescue Charles from his four-eyed uncle. Not just because the weather was splendid and in the viewfinder of someone who loved her she felt trusting. She was laughing, licking the edge of her glass when the foam spilled over, she pelted them with sugared almonds, and even made vampire’s fangs out of nougatine, but it was just . . . to create a distraction . . . To forget, and above all, make them all forget, that her entire family, the only human beings with whom later in life she would be able to say, ‘Don’t you remember? It was at my little boy’s communion, you know . . .’ and who had agreed at the last minute to act as godfather and godmother when it was time to sign the register, were a colleague from work and an old trouper whose beehive was bigger than ever . . .
Ah, speaking of which. There he is . . . The magnificent Nana . . . Flanked on either side by his two cherubs, proud as Punch and scarcely taller than they were, despite his little heels and his expandable hairdo.
‘Oh, ducks! Do be careful with your candles! With all the spray Jackie put on my head, I’ll just explode! Touch it, you’ll see . . .’
They had touched it, and it was indeed just like the sugary frosting on top of the fanciest cakes.
‘What did I tell you . . . Right, go on, big smile now!’
And they were smiling for the photograph. Smiling. Clinging tenderly to his arm, to wipe their fingers on his alpaca sleeve.
Alpaca . . . That was the first time Charles ever heard the word. They were all out on the square in front of the church, deafened by the racket from the bells, and peering into the distance, twisting the cord of their communion gowns because Nana was late.
Mado could make neither head nor tail of it all, and just when they had given up, oh well, time to go in, there he was, climbing out of a taxi as if it were a limousine at Cannes.
Anouk burst out laughing, ‘But Nana – you look fabulous! Really!’
‘Please,’ he replied, primly, ‘it’s just a little alpaca suit, after all . . . I had it made for Orlanda Marshall’s tour in . . .’
‘Who was she?’ I asked, as we headed towards the sacristy.
Long dramatic sigh.
‘Oh . . . A good friend of mine . . . But she never made it . . . The tour was cancelled . . . someone was getting his leg over, if you want my opinion . . .’
Then, kissing his index finger and touching their foreheads (with his Rouge Baiser lipstick, the best of all holy oils): ‘Off you go, my little Jesus boys, . . . And if you see the light, no kidding you look down, all right?’
But Charles had recited his Lord’s Prayer with his eyes wide open, and he’d seen her, smiling her crooked smile, hanging onto her neighbour’s hand for dear life.
At the time, it had annoyed him a bit. But not now, hey. Pax. She wasn’t going to start weeping now, was she? But today . . . Our emotion, which art in heaven . . . Hallowed be thy name, thy will be done. It was the first communion of her only child, a day full of grace, a little official truce in the midst of a life full of thorns, and her only past, her only shoulder, the only fingers she could crush during all the organ grinding, were those of Orlanda Marshall’s old girlfriend, with her patent leather boots and her rosary on a chain over her violet suit . . .
It was nothing.
And yet it was a great deal.
Any old rubbish.
It was her life.
Nana had offered Charles a pen, which had belonged to ‘Monsieur Maurice Chevalier, if you please’, but no one could get the cap off any more.
‘Well? Isn’t your heart going pitty-pat, now?’ he’d added, when he saw Charles’s embarrassed smile.
‘Uh, yes . . .’
And when the little boy had wandered off, it was the pout on Anouk’s face that he felt obliged to deal with: ‘What are you looking at me like that for?’
‘I don’t know . . . Last time, you told me that damned pen belonged to Bing Crosby . . .’
‘Oh please, sweetheart . . .’
A great, alpaca weariness.
‘It’s the dream that matters, you know that . . . And anyway, I thought that Maurice Chavelier, for a communion, well it would be . . . it would be better.’
‘You’re right. Bing Crosby, that’s a Christmas fantasy.’
She burst out laughing; he frowned.
‘Oh, c’mon dear Nana . . . Where would I be without you?’
He blushed beneath his foundation.
Charles put the photos back onto the tray. He would have liked to go farther, but that old strolling player had to be in the limelight, as usual. And you couldn’t hold it against him. The stage, the show, was his raison d’être: ‘Ze show must go on,’ he would say, in his thick Frenchy accent . . .
Right, he mused, off we go. After the little dogs wearing fake fur collars and before the lights come back on, Ladies and Gentlemen, exceptionally, this evening, straight from his triumphal New World Tour, in front of your very own bedazzled eyes, I give you the One, the Only, the Unforgettable: Nana!
*
One night in January, 1966 (when she told him the story, much later, Anouk, who never remembered a thing, would use this reference: the night before, a Boeing had crashed into Mont Blanc), an old lady died in cardiology. That is, three floors up. That is, light years away from the immediate concerns of Nurse Le Men, who, in those days, worked in shock recovery. Charles is using the word shock on purpose: it’s his word, but just to be clear: in the emergency unit. Anouk – and it suited her so well – was an accident and emergency nurse.
Yes, an old lady had died, and why should Anouk have known anything about it, since there is nothing more hermetic than a hospital ward. Each department has its own parties, its own victories, its own misfortunes . . .
But that’s without taking rumours into account. Or the humming of the coffee machine, to be exact . . . On that particular day, one of her colleagues was complaining about a weirdo who was beginning to get on their nerves upstairs, because he
kept coming to visit his late mother with fresh flowers every day, and was surprised that they dare try and send him away. Then he would laugh about it and ask the assembled company if someone was willing to sign him into the psych ward.
At the time she paid no particular attention. Her heart and her paper cup were equally crumpled before she tossed them into the bin. She had enough on her plate.
It was only when security got involved and they wouldn’t allow him to go upstairs that the weirdo in question entered her life. At all hours of the day or night, whether she was going on duty or off again, she would find him there, in the reception lobby, seated between two potted plants and the accounting office. He was devastated, he was tolerated, buffeted by draughts and the flow of crowds, shunted about to the rhythm of the empty seats, his face constantly turned towards the doors of the lifts.
But even then she wouldn’t look at him. She had her own fate, her own sorrow – the bodies pulled from the wreckage, the scalded infants, the winos’ puke, the firefighters who were too slow, her babysitting crises, her money problems, her solitude, her . . . She looked away.
And then one evening, who knows why, because it was a Sunday and Sundays are the most unfair days on earth, and her shift was over, and because Alexis was safe and sound with their kindly neighbours, and because she was too exhausted to notice her fatigue just yet, because it was cold, because her car had broken down and the very idea of walking all the way to the bus stop stuck in her throat, and because he was bound to die at this rate, sitting there motionless: instead of slipping out the service entry, she walked out into the light and, instead of looking away, she came and sat next to him.
For a long time she remained silent, racking her brains to think of a way to make him give up his bouquet without breaking him into a thousand pieces, but she couldn’t find one, and, head down, she’d eventually had to concede that she herself was far too badly off to help anyone at all.
‘And so?’ asked Charles.
‘Um . . . I asked him if he had a light.’
He doubled over with laughter. ‘Hey! Incredibly original way to start a conversation!’