I turned around.
‘He’ll be back.’
‘Do you think so?’
*
Stuck on the Place de Clichy behind the number 81 bus and in another century, with absolute clarity he recalled her incredulous little smile, when she finally resolved to lift her chin. And her face, so disturbing, so . . . naked, and the sound of the door in his back, and the number of steps that separated him from the world of the living: twenty-seven.
Twenty-seven steps in the course of which he felt himself getting thicker, heavier. Twenty-seven times his foot in the void and his fists crammed ever tighter into his pockets. Twenty-seven steps to realize that this was it, he’d gone over to the other side. Because instead of sympathizing with her sorrow and blaming Alexis for his behaviour he could not help but be pleased: Alexis had left his spot vacant.
And when his mother started to nag because he’d forgotten to bring back the cake dish, for the first time in his life he told her where to get off.
He’d left his little boy skin in that stairway.
He didn’t revise for his lessons in the train, and that night he fell asleep reconciled with his right hand. After all, it was she who’d grabbed hold of it. But he didn’t feel any less ashamed for all that, he was just . . . older.
As for the rest, I was right, yet again. Alexis did come back.
‘When is your father coming to get you?’ asked Anouk at the end of the Easter break.
‘Never.’
Thanks to my mother and her charitable works, they offered Alexis a place at the Collège Saint-Joseph, and I followed in his wake . . .
I was relieved. Anouk must have struck a bargain with fate, or with the devil, more like it, and she changed her life. Stopped drinking, cut her hair very short, asked to work in the operating theatre, and stopped letting her patients get her down. Was content just to lull them to sleep.
She also decided to repaint their flat, just like that, with a snap of her fingers after she’d drunk her coffee:
‘Go and get Charles! This weekend we’ll start on the kitchen!’
And it was then, while the three of us were scrubbing the walls, that we found out how the story ended . . . I don’t remember how we got onto the subject of his father, but for a moment Anouk and I both stopped worrying at our sponges:
‘In fact, he needed a partner, but when he realized I wasn’t old enough to get paid, it was over, he lost interest . . .’
‘Oh, come on . . .’ Anouk sighed.
‘I swear! He’d screwed up his sums, the idiot. “You’re only fifteen? You’re only fifteen?” he went, over and over, getting mad, “You’re sure? You’re only fifteen?”’
Since he was laughing about it, we did likewise, but . . . how to put it . . . This washing soda really takes off the surface, doesn’t it? No, I just said that because it took us a good while before we got to talking again, busy as we were spitting out those soda crystals . . .
‘I’ve spoiled the mood, I see,’ joked Alexis, ‘but hey! It’s okay, really! I didn’t die or anything . . .’
As for Anouk, on the other hand – and no matter how I rework the sums, they don’t come out – she didn’t survive during his absence. That whole time she never let me see her again. I’d knock on the door in vain, and go away again, worried, as I went down their rotting staircase four steps at a time.
I’d got it all wrong. That spot would never be vacant.
But I got a letter . . . The only letter I ever had during four years at boarding school.
Sorry if I didn’t open the door for you yesterday. I think about you a lot. I miss you two. I love you both.
I was a bit annoyed at first, then I tried to imagine she hadn’t written ‘two’ or ‘both’. I burned the letter, since I’d read it. She missed me, that was all I wanted to know.
Why am I stirring all this up, anyway? Oh, yes . . . the cemetery.
It’s true you’re no longer a minor. Your betrayals are legal.
She was never the same again after your little escapade in the Italian sports car. Was it her abstinence that made her more . . . moderate? That prevented her from that point on from taking us and holding us, from devouring us and giving us everything? I don’t think so.
It was wariness. The certainty of solitude. And how careful she was, all of a sudden, with that strange sort of gentleness, a change of voltage: it was a tourniquet, a clamp on the vena cava. She didn’t tease us any more, she no longer chuckled, ‘Uh, there’s a certain Julie on the phone . . .’ when in fact it was that cretin Pierre who’d forgotten his geography book yet again, and she’d go to her room and shut the door when you were playing particularly well.
She was afraid.
*
After the Gare Saint-Lazare the traffic was lighter. Charles changed direction, left the herd behind, taking back routes worthy of a clever street kid, and began looking at the details on facades again whenever a red light stopped him. That one in particular, along the Square Louis XVI, with the art deco animals: a particular favourite.
That was how he’d charmed Laurence.
He was broke, she was sublime, what could he offer her? Paris.
He’d shown her things other people never see. He’d pushed open the heavy porte-cochères, climbed over little walls, held her hand, and torn off a bit of vine before her eyes. He’d taught her the finer points of mascarons, and atlantes, and carved pediments. He’d arranged to meet her at the Passage du Désir, and he’d declared his love on Rue Gît-le-Coeur. He must have thought he was being bloody clever; in fact he was silly.
He was in love.
She’d inspect her heels while he showed his student card to slippered concierges straight out of a photo by Doisneau; he held her around her waist, raised his index finger, and kissed her neck when she was looking for the face of Madame Lavirotte along the Avenue Rapp, or the rats in Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois.
‘I can’t see them,’ she said with despair.
Not surprising. He’d deliberately pointed to the wrong gargoyle, to make the high from the line of her Nº5 last longer.
His best notebooks were from that era, when all the caryatids in Paris owed her something: the curve of her shoulder, her pretty nose, the shape of her breast.
A bloke cut in front of him, shaking his fist.
Once he’d crossed the Seine, he calmed down. He remembered that he was driving in her direction, and it made him happy. Laurence, and Mathilde, his two shrews . . .
Who frequently ran rings round him.
Huh, he didn’t mind, their ring-running . . . Could be a bit dizzying now and again, but it was more cheerful, at least.
5
HE DECIDED TO surprise them with a good dinner. He thought over the menu while he waited in the queue at the butcher’s, bought some flowers, and went to the wine merchant’s.
He put on some music, rolled up his sleeves, looked for a tea towel and finely chopped everything for the dinner: garlic, shallots, his weakness and his wandering. Truce, tonight: he was there to listen to them.
He’d get her drunk, and caress her as long as possible. While undressing her, he’d take off his phantom skin, and while he licked her, he’d forget the bitterness of these last days. He’d bury Anouk, forget Alexis, call Claire back to tell her that life was beautiful and that Alexis’s tart had a shrill voice. He’d go to meet Mathilde at her school the next day and would give her another voice to discover, one that cracked in a different register – Nina Simone.
I sing just to know that I’m alive.
Yes.
He was alive.
He lowered the flame, set the table, took a shower, shaved, poured himself a glass of wine, and sat closer to the speakers, thinking back on fat Voernoodt and the printing press.
Well, after all, it wasn’t so bad . . . For once he could work without an estimate, without jet lag, and without drama. That was luxury . . . He recalled an expression that angry typographers used in the old days, and which he foun
d irresistible: to pack it all in, they’d threaten to ‘shit in the apostrophe type case’. Right, he promised to keep his aim less precise.
Maybe he’d be able to rescue that light, at least . . .
The wine was perfect, the pressure cooker was hissing nicely, and he was listening to Sibelius while waiting for two pretty Parisiennes to come home. Everything was fine.
Soon the finale of Symphony No. 2. Silence.
Silence inside his skull.
*
It was the chill that woke him up. He groaned – his back – and took a few seconds to recover his wits. The night was burned, no, the dinner was . . . shit, what time was it?
Ten thirty. What on –
He called Laurence: voicemail.
He got hold of Mathilde: ‘Where are you, girls?’
‘Charles? But . . . Aren’t you in Canada?’
‘Where are you?’
‘Well, it’s the school holidays, I’m at my Dad’s . . .’
‘Oh?’
‘Mum’s not there?’
Ooh, he did not like that little voice . . .
‘Hold on, that’s the door to the lift I can hear,’ he lied, ‘I’ll ring off now. I’ll call you tomorrow.’
‘Hey?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you tell her it’s all right for Saturday? She’ll know what I mean.’
‘Okay.’
‘One more thing . . . You know, I listen to your song all the time . . .’
‘Which one?’
‘You know – the Leonard Cohen one.’
‘Oh?’
‘I love it.’
‘Brilliant. So I can adopt you now, at last?’
And he hung up, guessing her smile.
What came next is a lot sadder.
He put Sibelius back in his case, pulled on a jumper, headed for the kitchen, lifted up the saucepan lids, began by sorting the overcooked from the charred, sighed, and finally tossed the whole lot into the rubbish. Had just enough gallantry left to put the saucepans in to soak, grabbed hold of the bottle, and glanced one last time at those ridiculous candlesticks.
He switched off the light, locked the door and . . . didn’t know what else to do.
So he did nothing.
He waited.
And drank.
And, as in his hotel room on the previous ‘night’, he kept looking at the second hand.
He tried to read.
And couldn’t.
What about an opera?
Too noisy.
At around midnight he rallied. Laurence wasn’t the type to take the risk of losing a lovely slipper on the pavement . . .
Or was she?
No fairy godmother tonight . . .
So he aimed for two a.m. A dinner in good company and the time it would take to find a taxi, two a.m. was reasonable.
Or was it?
He opened the second bottle.
The clock struck three, the mouse fell down.
It was dead.
An expression of Mathilde’s that meant strictly nothing.
What was dead?
Nothing.
Everything.
Sat drinking in the dark.
Good for him.
That would teach him to come home without warning . . .
He went to fetch the envelope with the photos.
The way things stood, he may as well rub some more salt in the wound.
Alexis and him. Children. Friends. Brothers. In the park. In the garden. In the schoolyard. By the sea. The day there was the Tour de France. At his grandmother’s. Feeding the rabbits on the farm and behind Monsieur Canut’s tractor.
Alexis and him. Arm in arm. Always. And for ever. They’d become blood brothers, they’d saved a baby bird and stolen a copy of Playboy from the café-tabac in Brécy. They’d read it behind the wash house, and had giggled a lot, but they still preferred Astérix. They’d swapped it with fat Didier for a ride on his moped.
Alexis before an audition. Serious, his shirt buttoned, the tie that Henri gave him, and his trumpet held tight against his heart.
Anouk after the same audition. Proud. Moved. Her index finger under her eye, and her eyelashes washed pale of make-up.
Finally, there was Nana, with Claire on his knees. Claire with her head down; she must have been playing with his rings.
His father. The photo with a piece cut out. No comment.
Charles as a student with a lot of hair. Waving his hand to the camera lens, making a face.
Anouk dancing at his parents’.
White dress, hair pulled back, the exact same smile as on the first photograph, beneath the cherry tree, almost fifteen years earlier.
And yet, in a few hours she –
Never mind.
Charles fell back against the cushions. What the hell is going on? he grumbled. Here you are, wallowing in the past like a pig in its sty, when it’s the present which should be troubling you. It’s the present that’s running off the rails, mate. Don’t you realize that your woman is in someone else’s arms, while you sit here whinging with your short trousers on?
React, damn it! Get up. Scream. Hit the wall. Hate her. Bleed.
I beg you . . .
Cry, at least.
I cried all I could in the plane.
Well, say at least that you’re unhappy!
Unhappy? He shook his head. But . . . What does that mean, unhappy?
You’ve had too much to drink, you’ll find out in a few hours.
No. I’ve never been as clear-headed in my life. Quite the reverse.
Charles . . .
Now what? he said, annoyed.
Unhappy is the opposite of happy.
What does that mean, hap—
No, nothing. He closed his eyes.
And it was as he finally decided to pull himself out of his slump, to go back to work, that he heard the sound of a key in the lock.
She walked by him without seeing him, and headed for the bathroom.
Rinsed off the other man’s cum.
Went into their room, got dressed, and came back to put her make-up on.
She opened the door to the kitchen.
She may not have shown any dismay, but he could sense her irritation. Yet she stood fast and made herself a coffee before she came to confront him.
What sang-froid, mused Charles; what bloody sang-froid.
She came over, blowing on her cup, sat on the armchair opposite him and steadily met his gaze in the semi-darkness.
‘What can I say?’ she asked, folding her legs under her.
‘Nothing.’
‘Did you remember to collect your luggage this time, at least?’
‘Yes. Thanks. By the way . . .’
He reached out and picked up the plastic bag next to his briefcase.
‘Look what I found for Mathilde.’
On his head he placed a cap stamped I Canada with big sheepskin caribou’s antlers on either side.
‘It’s funny, no? I think I should keep it . . .’
‘Charles . . .’
‘Quiet,’ he interrupted, ‘I just told you I didn’t want to hear what you have to say.’
‘That is not what you –’
He got up and went to put his cup in the kitchen.
‘What are all these photos?’
He came back and took them from her hands and put them back in the envelope.
‘Take off that ridiculous cap,’ she sighed.
‘What are we doing?’
‘Sorry?’
‘What are we doing together?’
‘We’re doing the same as everyone else. We’re doing what we can. We’re making headway.’
‘Without me.’
‘I know. You haven’t been around in a while, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
‘C’mon,’ he replied, with a tender smile, ‘this is your scene. Don’t reverse the roles, my tacky little Madame Bovary, tell me, rather, what . . .’
‘What?’
/>
‘No. Nothing.’
She swayed her hips and scratched at something on her skirt:
‘Hey . . . you’ve lost weight, haven’t you?’
He gathered up his things, changed his shirt, and closed the door on the second-rate vaudeville sketch.
‘Charles!’
She’d followed him out into the stairway.
‘Stop . . . It was nothing . . . You know very well it was nothing . . .’
‘Of course. That’s why I’m asking you what we’re doing together.’
‘No, but I meant tonight . . .’
‘Oh, really?’ he said sympathetically, ‘you mean it wasn’t even any good? Poor darling . . . When I think I’d opened a nice bottle of Pomerol for you . . . You have to admit that life is cruel.’
He went down a few more steps before announcing: ‘Don’t expect me this evening. I’ve got a networking thing at the Arsenal and I –’
She caught him by the sleeve of his jacket.
‘Stop it,’ she murmured.
He stood still.
‘Stop it.’
Then he turned around.
‘Mathilde?’
‘What about Mathilde?’
‘You won’t stop me from seeing her, will you?’
A big first: he saw something like panic on her lovely face.
‘Why are you saying that?’
‘I haven’t got the strength to clear the table, Laurence. I . . . I needed you, I think, and –’
‘But what – but what is going on? Where are you going? What are you doing?’
‘I’m tired.’
‘That, I know. Thanks. You’ve already told me a hundred times. But what’s it all about, this being tired? What exactly do you mean?’
‘I don’t know. I’m searching.’
‘Come,’ she pleaded in a low voice.
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s too sad, what we’ve become. We can’t go on just for her sake. It won’t . . . Do you remember . . . And it was on the stairs that time, too . . . Do you remember what you told me . . . The first day . . .’
‘What did I tell you, then?’ she exclaimed, exasperated.
‘“She deserves better.”’
Silence.
‘If she weren’t there,’ continued Charles, ‘you’re the one who’d’ve left. A long time ago, as well.’
He could feel her nails closing on his shoulder: ‘Who’s that dark-haired woman in the photos? Is she the woman, the one who died, that you were talking about the other day? The mother of someone or other? Is she the one who’s been fucking up our life for weeks? Who is she? What is this – some sort of Mrs Robinson thing?’