So that is where he was, lost in the study of an extremely complicated spec sheet, his palms flat against his temples, as if he were trying to stick back together a skull that was cracking on every side, taking notes with his teeth clenched, and then his assistant was there again in the door, clearing her throat. (He had left the phone off the hook.)
‘It’s her again . . .’
‘The lady from the Borgen Bank?’
‘No . . . the personal call I told you about this morning . . . What shall I say?’
A sigh.
‘It’s about a woman that you both knew.’
Ever polite in his despair, Charles owed her at least a smile.
‘Goodness! I’ve known so many women! Tell me everything, what’s her voice like? Husky?’
But Barbara wasn’t smiling.
‘A certain Anouk, I think.’
12
‘THE PAINT ON her headstone, that was you, wasn’t it?’
‘Sorry? Yes, but . . . who’s speaking?’
‘I knew it. It’s Sylvie, Charles . . . You don’t remember me? I worked with her at the Pitié-Salpêtrière. I was there for your first communion and –’
‘Sylvie. Of course . . . Sylvie.’
‘I don’t want to keep you, it was just to –’
Her voice had grown thick.
‘– to thank you.’
Charles closed his eyes, let his hand slide down his face, abandoned his pain, pinched his nose, tried to gag himself once again.
Stop. Stop that right now. It’s nothing, it’s her emotion, not yours. It’s the medication that’s got you out of kilter without providing any relief, and all those perfect blueprints that are already taking up too much room in your archives. Get a grip, for God’s sake.
‘Are you still there?’
‘Sylvie . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Wh-how,’ he fumbled, ‘how did she die?’
Silence on the line.
‘Hello?’
‘Alexis didn’t tell you?’
‘No.’
‘She killed herself.’
Silence.
‘Charles?’
‘Where do you live? I’d like to see you, Madame Béramiand.’
‘Don’t be so formal, Charles . . . And yes in fact, I have something for –’
‘Now? This evening? When?’
Ten o’clock the following morning. He made her repeat her address one more time, and then he got straight back to work.
Sideration. A state of sideration. Anouk had taught him the word. When the pain is so extreme that the brain just gives up, for a while, ceases to transmit.
That stupor between the tragedy and the first screams of pain.
‘So it’s like what happens with Monsieur Canut’s ducks when he chops off their heads and they keep running around like crazy?’
‘No,’ she replied, rolling her eyes skyward, ‘that’s just a joke in very poor taste that they invented in the country to frighten people from Paris. It’s utterly stupid, anyway . . . We’re not afraid of anything, are we?’
Where had it taken place, that conversation? In the car, surely. It was in the car that she said the silliest things.
Like all children, we were terribly sadistic and, on the pretext that we were revising our biology lessons, we always tried to get her to talk about the goriest side of her profession. We loved wounds, pus, and amputations. Detailed descriptions of leprosy, cholera, rabies. People foaming at the mouth, fits of lockjaw, fingertips left stuck in mittens. Did she believe us? Of course not. She knew our minds were warped, so on occasion she’d lay it on thick and, when she thought that we were well up on the matter, she’d slip in something with a casual air: ‘Well, actually, pain is a good thing, you know . . . It’s a good thing it exists . . . Pain is survival, boys . . . It is! Without pain, we’d lose our hands in the fire, and it’s because you swear when you miss the head of the nail that you still have all ten fingers! Which just goes to show that . . . What’s the matter with that idiot, flashing his headlights at me like that? Just overtake, wanker! Now . . . where was I?’
‘Nails,’ sighed Alexis.
‘Ah, yes. Which all goes to show that . . . DIY and barbecues, they’re all very well, you know what I mean, there . . . But later on in life you’ll find out that there are things that will make you suffer. I say “things” but I really mean people. People, situations, feelings, and . . .’
On the rear seat Alexis signalled to me that she was utterly off her rocker.
‘Hey, if I can see people flashing headlamps at me, I can see you too, you little cretin! C’mon! I’m telling you something important. Anything that looks like it might make you suffer in life, get out of there fast, my little darlings. Run as far away as you can, as quick as you can. You promise?’
‘Okay, okay, we’ll do just like the ducks, don’t worry.’
‘Charles?’
‘Yes?’
‘How do you manage to put up with him?’
I was smiling. I had a good time with them.
‘Charles?’
‘Yes?’
‘Did you understand what I said just now?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did I say?’
‘That pain is good because it means we’ll survive but you have to run away from it even if you’ve lost your head . . .’
‘What an arse-licker . . .’ moaned my neighbour.
How did you destroy yourself, Anouk Le Men?
With a very big hammer?
13
SYLVIE LIVED IN the 19th arrondissement, near the Robert-Debré hospital. Charles arrived more than an hour early. He wandered along the Maréchaux remembering the very upright gentleman who had built the hospital in the 1980s. Pierre Riboulet, his professor of urban composition at engineering school.
Very upright, very handsome, very intelligent. He spoke little. But so well. To Charles he seemed the most accessible of all his professors, but he never dared approach him. Riboulet had been born in an airless, sunless, squalid building, and had never forgotten it. He often said that the creation of beauty served an ‘obvious social purpose’. He inspired them to shun competitions and opt rather for the healthy atmosphere of rivalry among studios. He’d introduced them to the Goldberg Variations, the Ode to Charles Fourier, the texts of Friedrich Engels and, most important of all, the writer Henri Calet. He created on a human scale, on a scale of the soul – hospitals, universities, libraries, and, on the ruins of council estates, housing that had greater dignity. He had died a few years earlier, at the age of 75, and he left behind a number of orphaned building sites.
Exactly the trajectory that Anouk must have dreamt of . . .
He turned round and went looking for the Rue Haxo.
He walked right by the house he was looking for, grimaced as he shoved open the door of a café, ordered a coffee that he had no intention of drinking, and headed for the back of the room. His guts were playing up again.
Fastened his belt: he was now at the last notch.
He got a shock when he walked up to the sink. The bloke standing there really had a nasty look about him – but that’s you, you wretch. That’s you.
He hadn’t eaten for two days. He’d spent all his time at the agency, where he unfolded the emergency bunk, in other words a sort of huge foam armchair that smelled of stale smoke; he had not got much sleep, nor had he shaved.
His hair (ah, ah) was long, the shadows under his eyes were blackish-brown, and his voice was full of mockery: ‘Go on, Jesus . . . this is the last station coming up. Two hours from now and it will all be over.’
He left a coin on the counter and went back the way he’d come.
*
She was as moved as he was, didn’t know what to do with her hands, brought him into an immaculate room while she apologized for the mess, and offered him something to drink.
‘Have you got any Coca-Cola?’
‘Oh, I’d thought of everything but I d
idn’t expect that . . . Wait a moment . . .’
She went out into the corridor and opened a closet that smelled of old trainers.
‘You’re in luck . . . I think the grandchildren have left you some . . .’
Charles did not dare ask for ice, and imbibed his lukewarm panacea, asking her in an almost affable voice how many grandchildren she had.
He heard her answer, did not register the number, and assured her that that was wonderful.
He would not have recognized her if he had passed her in the street. He remembered a perpetually cheerful little brunette, on the plump side. He remembered her buttocks, a great topic of conversation back in those days, and that she had given them a record, a 45 rpm of Le Bal des Laze. Anouk was mad about Michel Polnareff in those days, and they eventually grew to hate the song.
‘Be quiet, be quiet. Can’t you hear how beautiful it is?’
‘Fuck, haven’t they strung him up yet, that bloke? We can’t take it any more, Mum, we just can’t take it . . .’
What a strange filing cabinet memory could be . . . Jane and her fiancé – so went the song – and Anouk . . . It had all just come back to him.
Sylvie’s hair was an astonishing colour now; she wore glasses with incredibly glitzy frames, and seemed to Charles to be wearing too much make-up. Her foundation had left a tidemark beneath her chin, and her eyebrows had been redrawn with a crayon. At that point in time he felt too wobbly in his guts to really pay attention, but later he would think back on that morning – and God knows he would think back on it – and he would understand. A woman who is lively and still cares about her looks, and who is expecting a visit from a man she has not seen in over thirty years – that was the least she could do. Honestly.
Charles sat down on a leather sofa that was slippery as oilcloth and set his glass on the coaster she had placed before him, between a Sudoku magazine and an enormous remote control.
They looked at each other. They smiled. Charles, who was the most courteous of men, hunted for a compliment, a pleasantry, a little phrase without consequence to lighten the weight of all the doilies, but no. That was just too much to ask.
She lowered her gaze, fiddled with her rings one after the other, and asked, ‘So you’re an architect now?’
He sat up, opened his mouth, was about to answer that . . . and then went, ‘Tell me what happened.’
She seemed relieved. She couldn’t care less whether he was an architect or a butcher and she couldn’t bear it any longer, keeping everything she was about to tell him all bottled up inside. Moreover, that was why she’d felt it was all right to harass that stuck-up secretary . . . She needed to find someone who’d known Anouk, so she could tell the story, relieve herself of her burden, get it off her chest, pass on her weary load, and move on to something else.
‘What happened – starting when?’
Charles grew thoughtful.
‘The last time I saw her was in the early 90s . . . As a rule I’m more precise than that, but . . .’ He shook his head with a smile. ‘I’ve made great efforts not to be that way any more, I think . . . She had invited me to lunch on my birthday, as she did every year, and . . .’
His hostess encouraged him to continue. A kindly little nod of the head, but so cruel. A little gesture which said, Don’t worry, take your time, there’s no hurry, you know . . . No, there’s no hurry, now.
‘. . . it was the saddest of all my birthdays . . . In the space of one year, she’d grown terribly old. Her face had got puffy, her hands were trembling . . . She didn’t want me to order any wine and she smoked one cigarette after the other to make it through. She asked me questions, but couldn’t care less about my replies. She was lying, she said that Alexis was fine and sent his regards, whereas I knew perfectly well that wasn’t true. And she knew that I knew . . . She was wearing a cardigan that was covered with stains and smelled of . . . I don’t know what . . . sorrow . . . A mixture of cold ashtrays and eau de Cologne . . . the only time there was a spark in her eye was when I offered to go with her some day to Nana’s grave, she’d never been back. Oh yes! What a good idea! she said, suddenly cheerful. You remember him? You remember how nice he was? You . . . and then huge tears drowned it all.
‘Her hand was icy. When I took it into my own, I suddenly realized that that old fellow, who could have been her father, and who didn’t even like women – he’d been her only love story . . .
‘She insisted I talk about him. Tell her my memories, over and over, even the ones she knew by heart. It was a bit of an effort, but I had an important appointment that afternoon, and I was doing a lot of sleeve-adjusting to keep an eye on my watch without it being obvious. And to be honest I really didn’t feel like reminiscing any more . . . Or at least not with her. Sitting opposite that ravaged face – it spoiled everything . . .’
Silence.
‘I didn’t suggest any dessert. What was the point? She hadn’t eaten anything anyway. I ordered two coffees and called the waiter back to signal to him to bring the bill at the same time, and then I went with her to her metro station and . . .’
Sylvie must have felt that the time had come to help him a bit: ‘And then?’
‘I never took her to Normandy. I never called her. Out of cowardice. So that I wouldn’t have to see how she was going downhill, so that I could keep her in the museum of my memories and stop her from giving me a guilty conscience. Because it was too much . . . And yet my guilty conscience did trouble me, and I’d lighten the load every year when it came time to send greetings cards. From the agency, of course . . . Impersonal, commercial, stupid, and acting the fine gentleman I’d add a few words by hand and “hugs and kisses”, like a rubber stamp. I called her two or three times after that; in particular, I recall one time when my niece had swallowed some medicine or other . . . And then one day my parents, who hadn’t seen her in a long time, told me that she had moved away and that she’d gone . . . to Brittany, I think –’
‘No.’
‘Pardon?’
‘She wasn’t in Brittany.’
‘Oh really?’
‘She was not far from here.’
‘Where?’
‘In a housing estate, near Bobigny.’
Charles closed his eyes.
‘But how?’ he murmured, ‘I mean, why? That was the one thing she was determined never to – I remember, the only promise she ever made, never to – How can that be? What happened?’
She raised her head, looked him straight in the eye, let her arm drop alongside the armchair and let it all out.
‘In the early 90s . . . Well, I suppose it was then, I’m not good at dates . . . You must be the last person she went to have lunch with in those days . . . Where to begin? I’m lost, now . . . I’ll start with Alexis, I guess. Since it was because of him that everything started to go to pieces. She hadn’t had any news from him for years. I think you were one of their only links as well, weren’t you?’
Charles nodded.
‘It was hard for her. So as a result she was working an enormous amount, piling on shifts and overtime, never taking any holiday, living for the hospital alone. I think she was already drinking quite a bit, too, what have you . . . It didn’t prevent her from becoming head nurse, and she was always in the toughest departments . . . After immunology she went to neurology and that’s when I started working with her. I liked working with her . . . And she was a lousy head nurse by the way . . . She preferred care-giving to organizing people’s shifts. She would forbid the patients to die, I remember . . . She’d shout at them, make them cry, make them laugh . . . In short, all sorts of things that weren’t allowed . . .’
A smile.
‘But she was untouchable because she was the best. Whatever she was lacking in the way of medical knowledge she made up for with the way she cared for people.
‘Not only was she the first one to notice if there’d been any change, even the faintest symptom, but in addition she had an extraordinary instinct . . . A nose .
. . You can’t imagine . . . The doctors had understood as much, and they always arranged it so that they could do their rounds when she was on duty . . . Of course they’d listen to the patients but when she added something, believe me, it did not fall on deaf ears. I’ve always thought that if her childhood had been different, if she’d been able to go to university, she’d have made a truly great doctor. One of those who do honour to the profession, without ever forgetting the first and last name or the face or the concerns on the chart . . .’
She sighed.
‘She was great. And it was because she had no more life of her own that she gave them so much, I suppose . . . Not only did she look after her patients, but their families as well . . . And her youngest co-workers, too, the little auxiliaries who would go into certain patients’ rooms dragging their feet, it was so hard for them to put a bedpan under a body that was so . . . She would touch people, take them in her arms, caress them, come back after she’d put in so many hours already, out of uniform, with a bit of make-up, to fill in for the visits they hadn’t got, or more. She’d tell them stories, talked a lot about you, I recall . . . Said you were the most intelligent boy on earth . . . She was so proud . . . This was at a time when you were still having lunch together now and again, and lunch with you was sacred. Good Lord, no messing around with the schedule, there, and the entire hospital could go hang! And then she’d talk about Alexis, and music . . . She invented all sorts of stuff, concerts, standing room only, fantastic contracts . . . In the evening . . . and we’d all be staggering with fatigue and you could hear her voice in the corridor . . . Her lies, her fantasies. She was comforting herself, then, she didn’t fool anyone. And then one morning, a call from the emergency services was like a bucket of cold water on her head: her so-called virtuoso was dying from an overdose . . .
‘And that’s when she began to go downhill. For a start, she didn’t expect this at all – which will never cease to surprise me in fact – the old story about the shoemaker’s children. She thought he was smoking a joint or two from time to time because that helped him to “play better”. A likely story . . . And here’s this woman, the most professional person I’ve ever worked with – I’ve been talking about her gentle ways, but she also knew how to be tough, she could keep them all at a distance: the Grim Reaper, the doctors who were always overwhelmed, the snooty little interns, her blasé colleagues, the administrative stuffed shirts, the invasive families, the complacent patients – No one, you hear? No one could resist her. They called her La Men, they said, Amen. It was her mixture of gentleness and professionalism that was so astonishing, so exceptional, and which earned her their respect . . . Wait, I’ve forgotten what I was going to say . . .’