Consolation

  ‘And he lived happily ever after.’

  But the author is feeling a certain reluctance.

  There have been taxi drivers, family dinners, loaded letters, jet lag, insomnia, chaos, lost tenders, muddy building sites, an injection of Valium/potassium/morphine, cemeteries, morgues, ashes, closed cabarets, a ruined abbey, renunciation, repudiation, breakups, two overdoses, one abortion, bruises, too many lists, judicial decisions, and even hysterical Korean women.

  Might have liked a bit of grass, too . . .

  Sorry, a bit of greenery.

  What is to be done?

  Dig deeper into this lexicon of literary devices.

  OTHER DEFINITIONS: An elliptical story strictly observes the unity of action, avoiding any pointless episodes and uniting everything essential in a few scenes.

  Thus, we are entitled to a few scenes . . .

  Thank you.

  Too kind of you, dictionary.

  But which scenes?

  Since everything is a story . . .

  The author refuses to take responsibility. To determine what is ‘pointless’ and what is not.

  And, rather than judge, shall entrust what follows to our sensitive hero.

  He has proven his worth.

  Let’s open his notebook.

  In which an ellipsis could be a Roman amphitheatre, the colonnades on St Peter’s Square, or Paul Andreu’s Performing Arts Centre in Beijing – but under no circumstances an omission.

  On the left-hand page, a sales receipt from the DIY where Ken, Samuel, and Charles had gone the previous day. You should always save sales receipts. Everyone knows that.

  It’s never the right thing. Never the right bolt, or the right length nail . . . You always forget something, and then they hadn’t bought enough sandpaper. The girls complained because of the splinters.

  Opposite, some sketches and some sums. Nothing insurmountable. Child’s play.

  A real game for children, as it happens. And for Kate.

  Kate, who never went bathing with them in the stream . . .

  ‘There’s too much silt,’ she said, making a face.

  Charles was the head, Ken the right-hand man, and Tom in charge of the refreshment stand, cold beers at the ready at the end of a rope attached to the rowlock.

  The three of them had designed and manufactured a magnificent landing stage.

  And even a diving board on piles.

  They’d gone to collect huge oil drums at the nearby waste depot and placed pine planks over them.

  Charles had even thought of steps and a railing in the ‘Russian Dacha’ style, for drying towels and leaning against during the endless diving contests that would ensue . . .

  He’d even thought about it some more during the night, and the next morning he climbed up a tree with Sam and stretched a steel wire from one bank to the other.

  And here’s what you can see on the third page.

  A strange contraption made out of old bicycle handlebars: the children’s zipwire.

  He’d gone back to FixItFreddy for the third time and brought back two ladders that were sturdier. Then with the other ‘grown-ups’ they’d spent the rest of the day lolling about on their elegant wooden beach, encouraging any number of little scamps who would fly over their heads with a cry of Banzai! before dropping into the current.

  ‘How many of them are there?’ he asked, dumbfounded.

  ‘The entire village,’ smiled Kate.

  Even Lucas and his big sister . . .

  The ones who didn’t know how to swim were desperate.

  But not for long.

  Kate could not stand desperate children. So she went to get a rope.

  Thus, the ones who didn’t know how to swim were only half-drowned. They were pulled back to shore, and they had to recover from their excitement and all the mouthfuls of stream they’d swallowed before they were allowed to go back in.

  The dogs yapped, the llama chewed its cud and the water spiders moved elsewhere.

  The kids who didn’t have a swimming costume wore their knickers, and their wet knickers became transparent.

  The more modest among them would sit astride their bikes. Most of them came back with a swimming costume and a sleeping bag on the bike-rack.

  Debbie was in charge of tea and snacks. She loved the Aga’s pastry oven.

  The drawings on the following pages have only one subject: little Tarzan figures suspended between sky and water, hanging onto a pair of old handlebars. With both hands, with one hand, with two fingers, one finger, right side up, upside down, head first. All for one and one for all.

  But Tom is there, too, in his rowing boat, to pick up the dazed ones; there are a dozen pairs of sandals and trainers lined up along the bank, spots of sun sparkling on the water through the branches of a poplar tree, Marion sitting on the bottom step handing a piece of cake to her brother, and a big ninny standing behind her about to shove her into the water with a laugh.

  Her profile, for Anouk, and Kate’s, for himself.

  Quick sketch. He didn’t dare sit drawing her for too long.

  He was trying to forestall any social worker discussions.

  Alexis came to fetch his brood.

  ‘Charles? What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘Offshore engineering . . .’

  ‘But you . . . How long are you here for?’

  ‘Depends . . . If we find oil under the stream, for quite a while yet, I suppose . . .’

  ‘You’ll have to come over for dinner one evening!’

  And Charles, our kind Charles, declined.

  Said that he didn’t feel like it.

  And Alexis went off, and took it out on his kids, What are all those marks on your thighs? And what is Mummy going to say? And how’d you get that hole in your swimming costume and where are your socks and niggle niggle nag and naggle naggle nig. Charles turned round and realized Kate had heard him.

  You still haven’t told me your story, said her gaze.

  ‘I have a bottle of Port Ellen in my briefcase,’ he replied.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She put on her dark glasses and smiled.

  She hadn’t been in the water once, let alone put on her swimming costume.

  She’d tricked them good and proper.

  She wore long white shirts in cotton canvas, split high up, usually missing a few buttons . . . Charles didn’t draw her, but what was behind her, so that he could eye her calmly. A lot of the drawings in these pages are based on her skin. If you look at the foreground you can always see the top of a knee, a bit of shoulder, or her hand placed on the railing . . .

  And that handsome lad, there?

  No, it’s not Ken. It’s her ancient Greek boyfriend, the one she wears on her finger.

  The next two pages have been torn out.

  The same landing stage, and the same zipwire, but neatly drawn, with all the dimensions conscientiously indicated.

  For Yacine. Who sent them to the editor of a junior science magazine, to the column entitled ‘Innovation Competition’.

  ‘Look,’ he’d said one evening, climbing onto Charles’s lap.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Samuel had moaned, ‘you’re not going to start with that, again . . . He’s been driving us nuts for over two years . . .’

  And since Charles, as usual, didn’t know what was going on, Kate interrupted: ‘Every month he rushes to that page to see which little genius, never as brilliant as he is, has won the thousand euros . . .’

  ‘A thousand euros . . .’ came the languishing echo, ‘and their inventions are always useless . . . Look, Charles, what you have to send in –’ he said, grabbing the magazine from his hands, ‘– is the “prototype of an original, useful, clever and even entertaining invention. Send your application with diagrams and a precise description . . .” Isn’t that exactly what you’ve got? Right? Could you send it? Could you?’

  So the two pages were sent, and from the very next day and every day th
ereafter, until the end of the holidays, Yacine and Hideous would rush out to meet the postman.

  The rest of the time was spent wondering what they would do with all that money . . .

  ‘You can pay for your pooch to have a facelift!’ squawked the jealous bystanders.

  A few lines . . .

  My dear, my angel, my little pumpkin, my favourite down- loader . . .

  Where are you? What are you up to? Are you into surfing, or surfers?

  I often think about . . .

  The draft stopped there. The bell had rung and Charles, still groggy from thinking about Mathilde, had gone to join the others, taking a detour via the hill. The only spot where you could get a bit of satellite reception, provided you stood on one leg, with your arms in the air, and wriggled around to face west.

  He’d heard her voice, her laugh, vague echoes, and clinking cocktail glasses.

  She asked him when he was going to join them, but didn’t listen to her stepfather’s mumbling reply to the end. They were waiting for her.

  She sent a kiss and added, ‘D’you want to speak to Mum?’

  Charles lowered his arms.

  ‘Emergency calls only,’ flashed the screen.

  Why was she pretending not to understand, this child of divorced parents?

  Did she think he’d taken a bachelor flat for the summer?

  He didn’t drink much that evening, and went back to his garret room well before curfew.

  He wrote her a long letter.

  Mathilde,

  Those songs you listen to all day long . . .

  He hunted for a second envelope.

  No hope of winning. He hadn’t invented anything original, and for the first time in his life, he was quite incapable of providing a precise diagram.

  Pastern, withers, fetlock, hock, cannon, gaskin, and dock. Charles wasn’t familiar with any of these terms, and yet these drawings are probably the most exquisite ones in the notebook.

  Kate had taken the tourists on an outing and he had worked all morning.

  He had lunch the way he’d been taught, with a few warm tomatoes nicked from the garden and a piece of cheese, and then he went for a stroll along the edge of the property with a book she had lent him, ‘A fantastic treatise on architecture’.

  The Life of the Bee, by Maurice Maeterlinck.

  He went in search of a good vantage point to vent his spleen.

  For he was cogitating later and later into the night, restarting his calculations ten times or more, and breaking his neck on those 4% gradients.

  He was a family man without a family. He was forty-seven years old and he was having a hard time finding his position on the curve . . .

  Could it be that he had already gone halfway?

  No.

  Yes?

  Good Lord.

  And now? Wasn’t he wasting the little time he had remaining?

  Should he leave?

  To go where?

  To an empty flat with a bricked-up fireplace?

  How could this be? After he’d worked so hard – to find himself with so little at his age?

  That other cow had been right, after all . . .

  He had followed her to the stream, like a rat.

  And now?

  The rope!

  It could well be that at night she was having it off with Monsieur Barbie, while he was manufacturing his bloody housing estates.

  And something in his crotch was itching terribly.

  (Harvest mites.)

  He leaned into the shade of a tree.

  First sentence: ‘I have no intention of writing a treatise on apiculture or beekeeping.’

  Contrary to expectation, he devoured the book. It was THE thriller of the summer. All the ingredients were present: life, death, the necessity of life, the necessity of death, allegiance, massacres, madness, sacrifice, the foundation of the citadel, young queens, nuptial flight, the massacre of the males, and the females’ genius in construction. The extraordinary hexagonal cell which ‘attains absolute perfection from every perspective, and it would be impossible, even were one to unite all the geniuses, to improve on it.’

  He nodded. He looked around for René’s three hives, and reread one of the last paragraphs:

  ‘And just as it is written in the tongue, stomach, and mouth of the bee that it must make honey, so is it written in our eyes, our ears, our nerves, our marrow, in every lobe of our head, in all the nervous systems of our body, that we are created to transform what we absorb of the things of the earth into a particular energy that is of a unique quality on the planet. No other creature, that I know of, has been so equipped to produce, as we are, this strange fluid, that we name thought, intelligence, understanding, reason, soul, spirit, cerebral power, virtue, goodness, justice, knowledge; for it has a thousand names, although it is all of one essence. Everything in us has been sacrificed to it. Our muscles, our health, the agility of our limbs, the equilibrium of our animal functions, the tranquility of our life: all bear the growing burden of its preponderance. It is the most precious and most difficult of states in which to raise matter. Fire, heat, light, life itself, and then the instinct more subtle than life and the majority of all those elusive forces which crowned the world before our advent, all pale upon contact with this new fluid.

  We do not know where it is taking us, nor what it will make of us, nor what we shall make of it.’

  Well, well, mused Charles, that doesn’t half leave us in a bloody fix . . .

  He stretched out, chuckling to himself. As far as he was concerned, he was more than ready to produce the strange fluid that would necessitate the sacrifice of his muscles, of the agility of his limbs, and of the equilibrium of his animal functions.

  What an idiot.

  He awoke in a very different state of mind. A horse – huge, fat, terrible – was grazing not three feet away. He thought he would pass out, and was overcome with a fit of anxiety the likes of which he’d rarely known.

  He did not move an inch, only blinking when a drop of sweat tickled his eyelashes.

  After a few minutes of wildly racing heartbeat, Charles reached gingerly for his notebook, wiped his palm on the dry grass, and drew a line.

  ‘When there is something you do not understand,’ he never failed to tell his young students, ‘something that escapes you, is beyond you, draw it. Even poorly, even just a rough sketch. When you aim to draw something, it obliges you to sit still long enough to observe it, and if you observe it you’ll see that you have already understood it.’

  Pastern, withers, fetlock, hock, cannon, gaskin, and dock – he wasn’t familiar with any of these terms, and the little round handwriting that inserted the caption beneath each watercolour sketch, still crinkly from his sweat, was Harriet’s.

  ‘Brilliant! You’re really good! Can I have this one?’

  So, another page torn out.

  He made a detour by the stream to wash his hide and, while he was rubbing himself with his damp shirt, he decided that he’d take advantage of the others’ departure to prepare his own.

  He wasn’t really getting much work done and, all in all, he would have preferred it if she had drowned him outright.

  This life just below the surface was making him stupid.

  He decided to prepare dinner while waiting for them, and went into the village to do some shopping.

  He took advantage of the fact that he was back in civilization in order to listen to his phone messages.

  Marc briefly enumerated a whole list of setbacks and asked that Charles return the call as soon as possible; his mother complained of his ingratitude and brought him up to date on all the mishaps of the summer; Philippe wanted to know how far he’d got and told him about his meeting at Sorensen’s offices; and Claire, finally, while he stood in front of the monument to the dead, told him off in no uncertain terms.

  Had he forgotten that he had her car?

  When did he intend to give it back to her?

  Had he forgotten that s
he was going next week to Paule and Jacques’?

  And that she was too much of an old bag to get herself picked up if she hitch-hiked?

  Why couldn’t she reach him?

  Was he too busy fucking to spare a thought for others?

  Was he happy?

  Are you happy?

  Tell me.

  He sat down at an outdoor café, ordered a glass of white wine and pressed the return call button four times.

  Began with the most unpleasant one and then was very pleased to hear the voices of those he loved.

  And came up with a really amazing thing.

  He licked the wooden spoon, put all the lids back on, went round humming as he set the table, Ne me quitte pas, ne me quitte pas and all that rubbish. Fed the dogs and took the seed to the hens.

  If Claire could see him now . . . Calling the hens, with all the majestic gestures of the sower . . .

  On his way back he spotted Sam and Ramon training in the large meadow, generally referred to as the château meadow; they were slaloming in and out among the haystacks.

  He went over to them. He leaned against the gate and greeted all the teenagers who’d been sleeping in the stables with him, and whom he’d been spending more and more time with, playing endless poker games.

  He’d already lost 95 Euros, but he figured that wasn’t a lot to pay if it kept him from brooding in the dark.

  The donkey didn’t seem very motivated, and when Sam went by, grumbling and cursing, Mickaël called out, ‘Why don’t you whip him?’

  Charles was delighted with Sam’s reply.

  True horsemen require legs and hands; incompetent riders need a whip.

  A revelation like that was well worth a blank page.

  He closed his notebook, and welcomed the mistress of the house and her guests with glasses of champagne and a feast beneath the arbour.

  ‘I didn’t know you were such a good cook,’ said Kate, with wonder.

  Charles served her seconds.

  ‘It’s true I don’t know a thing,’ she added, stiffening.