‘They haven’t yet . . .’
‘Liar.’
‘What about you? What news from the front?’
‘Oh, me,’ she sighs, reaching for her glass, ‘I chose this job to save the planet and here I am trying to hide people’s shit underneath a carpet made of genetically modified lawn, but other than that everything’s fine.’
She chuckles.
‘And that business with the dam?’ I add.
‘It’s over with. They were had.’
‘You see.’
‘Pfff . . .’
‘What do you mean, pfff? That’s enough, hey, you need to follow the instructions on Mathilde’s T-shirt!’
‘In other words?’
‘Enjoy!’
‘Charles?’
‘Mmm?’
‘We should go into business together, you know . . .’
‘To do what?’
‘To build an ideal city.’
‘But we are in an ideal city, love, you know that perfectly well . . .’
‘Oh, I don’t know that I’d say that . . .’ she says, making a face, ‘we need a few more Champion supermarkets here and there, don’t you think?’
No sooner are the words out of her mouth than tring! his master’s voice, our brother-in-law, butts in, ‘Did you say something?’
‘No, it was nothing. We were talking about your latest advertising campaign for caviar.’
‘I’m sorry?’
Claire smiles at him. He shrugs his shoulders and goes back to his little speech. ‘What the hell do they do with our tax money?’
All of a sudden I feel tired. Tired, tired, tired, so I pass the cheese plate round, without taking any, just to make things move a little faster.
I look at my father, always so discreet, courteous, and elegant. I look at Laurence and Edith telling their stories about stubborn stick-in-the-mud teachers and clumsy cleaning women, or was it the other way round, I look at the décor in this dining room where nothing has changed in fifty years, I look at . . .
‘When do we do the presents?’
The kids have come charging downstairs, bless them. This means my bed can’t be that far away.
‘Clear the plates and come and join me in the kitchen,’ their grandmother orders.
My sisters get up to go and fetch their packages. Mathilde winks at me and points to the bag containing our bag and John James Rockefeller Sainsbury ends the debate and wipes his mouth, ‘And in any case, we’re headed straight for disaster!’
There. You said it. In general, he waits until the coffee is served but now, with what might be prostate problems I suppose, he’s got ahead of himself. Right . . . now put a sock in it.
Forgive me, but I’m tired, as I was saying.
Françoise comes in with her camera, switches off the lights, Laurence discreetly adjusts her hair, and the children scrape at the matches.
‘There’s still some light in the hallway!’ someone shouts.
I volunteer to take care of it.
But as I am searching for the switch, I notice an envelope on the top of my pile of mail.
A long white envelope with black handwriting that seems familiar although I don’t recognize it. The postmark means nothing to me. The name of a town and a postal code that I can’t locate on the map, but the handwriting, on the other hand . . .
‘Charles! What are you up to?’ someone complains, and the cake is already quivering in the reflection in the window.
I switch off the light and come back to join the others.
But I’m no longer here.
I don’t see Laurence’s face in the bright candlelight. I don’t start singing Happy Birthday. I don’t even try to applaud. I . . . I’m like the other bloke when he bit into his madeleine, except that for me it’s all different. I’m already retracting. I don’t want to let anything in. I sense that a whole dimension of a forgotten world is opening up beneath my feet, I can sense the void beyond the fringe of the carpet and I’m transfixed, looking instinctively for a doorframe or a chairback to cling to. Because, yes, I do know that handwriting and there’s something wrong. Something in me is resisting, something is already afraid of it. I’m looking. The clicking in my brain has been set in motion and is hiding the rush of sound from outside. I cannot hear their shouts, I cannot hear that they’re asking me to put the lights back on.
‘Char-ley!’
Sorry.
Laurence is rummaging through her presents and Claire hands me the cake server. ‘Hey, what are you up to? You going to eat standing up?’
I sit down, take a slice of cake, attack with my little sp . . . I get back up again.
Because it’s intimidating, I open the letter very carefully with a key in order not to tear it. The sheet has been folded in three. I lift the first fold, feel my heart pounding, then the second, and my heart stops.
Three words.
No signature. Nothing.
Three words.
Then the sound of the blade falling. Shlack.
Lift the blade back up.
As I look up I meet my own reflection in the mirror above the console. I feel like shaking that guy, feel like telling him, What the hell did you think, trying to fool us with your Proustian nonsense just now? Because you knew all along . . .
Didn’t you?
He has nothing to say.
He looks at me and as I don’t react he eventually murmurs something. I can’t hear a thing but I can see his lips trembling. Something like, You stay. Just stay there with her. I’ll go on in. I’m obliged to, you see, but you just stay there. I’ll take care of everything.
So he goes back to his strawberry gateau. Hears sounds, voices, laughter, takes the glass of champagne someone hands to him and chinks it against others with a smile. The woman who has been sharing his life for years goes round the table with a kiss for everyone. She kisses him too. She says, it’s just lovely, thank you. He protects himself from this surge of tenderness by admitting that it was Mathilde who picked it out and hears Mathilde contradicting him vehemently, as if he’d betrayed her. But he has smelled her perfume, and reaches for her hand, only she has already left, and she’s kissing someone else. He holds his glass out for more. The bottle is empty. He gets up, goes to fetch another one. Opens it too quickly. A geyser of foam. Helps himself, empties his glass, starts again.
‘Are you okay?’ asks the woman next to him.
He says nothing.
‘What’s wrong? You’re all pale. You look as if you’d seen a ghost . . .’
He drinks.
‘Charles,’ murmurs Claire.
‘Nothing. I’m exhausted.’
He drinks.
Cracks inside. Fissures. He’s crazed with tiny lines. Doesn’t want this.
The varnish cracks, the hinges give way, the bolts snap.
He doesn’t want this. He struggles. He drinks.
His older sister is giving him a funny look. He raises his glass in a toast to her. She persists. He declares with a smile, carefully detaching each syllable, ‘Françoise . . . Just for once, just for one time in your life . . . try not to piss me off . . .’
She looks for her valiant knight of a stupid ass of a husband to come to her rescue, but he fails to grasp her outraged sign language. Her face falls. Fortunately, ta-da! her other sister is there.
Edith gently reprimands Charles with a shake of her headband, ‘Charley . . .’
He raises his glass to her as well, and is in the process of finding his words when a hand comes to rest on his wrist. He turns, her grip is firm, he goes quiet.
The noise and chatter continue. Her hand is still there. He looks at her.
He asks, ‘D’you have any cigarettes?’
‘Well . . . You stopped smoking five years ago, might I remind you . . .’
‘Well do you?’
His voice frightens her. She pulls her arm back.
*
They are standing together with their elbows on the railing of the terra
ce, their backs to the light and to the world.
Opposite them is the garden of their childhood. The same swing, the same impeccably manicured flowerbeds, the same incinerator for dead leaves, the same view, the same lack of horizon.
Claire pulls her pack from her pocket and slides it along the stone. He is about to grab it but she doesn’t let go.
‘Do you remember how hard it was, those first months? Do you remember what a rough time you had stopping?’
He tightens his hold on her hand. He is really hurting her now, and he says, ‘Anouk is dead.’
3
HOW LONG DOES a cigarette last?
Five minutes?
If so, they stand there for five minutes without a word.
She gives in first, and her words overwhelm him. Because he was dreading them, because –
‘So you’ve heard from Alexis?’
‘I knew you were going to ask,’ he says, in a very weary voice, ‘I’d have staked my life on it and you cannot imagine how I –’
‘How you what?’
‘How it bothers me, how it upsets me . . . How I resent you for it. I thought you’d be a bit more generous, given the circumstances. I thought you’d ask me, “How did she die?” or “When?” or . . . I don’t know. But to ask about him, fuck . . . No, not him. Not straight out of the blue like that . . . He doesn’t deserve that any more.’
Another silence.
‘How did she die?’
He takes the letter from his inside pocket.
‘Here . . . And don’t say, “It’s his handwriting,” or I’ll kill you.’
She unfolds it, then folds it up again, and murmurs, ‘Yes. It is his handwriting.’
He turns to her.
There are so many things he would like to say to her. Tender things, terrible things, words that cut and words that soothe, crazy words, words of a brother in arms or words of a sister of mercy. Or he could shake her, or knock her about, or split her down the middle, but the only thing he manages to moan, is one syllable.
‘Claire . . .’
And doesn’t she call his bluff and smile. But he knows her well, so he simply throws down his cards and grabs her by the elbow to bring her back to earth.
She twists her ankles in the gravel and he’s talking to himself. Talking into the night.
He’s talking for her sake and for his own, he’s talking to the incinerator and the stars, and he says, ‘There. It’s over.’
Tears up the letter and tosses it into the bin in the kitchen. When he lifts his foot from the pedal and the lid falls back down, bang, he has the feeling he has managed to close some sort of Pandora’s box, just in time. And since he’s right there by the sink, he splashes his face, groaning.
Goes back to join the others, back to life. Feels better already. It’s over.
*
And the soothing impression of a splash of cold water on an exhausted face, how long does that last?
Twenty seconds?
Time’s up. He searches for his glass, downs it in one, and pours himself another.
And goes to sit on the sofa. Right up close to his partner. She tugs on her jacket.
‘And you, you . . . Be kind to me, you . . .’ he warns, ‘’cause I’ve already had a few, y’know . . .’
She doesn’t find it funny at all, if anything she’s ruffled, put out. And this has a sobering effect on him.
He leans over, places his hand on her knee and looks up at her: ‘You know that you’re going to die someday, too? You know that, my sweet? That you too are going to snuff it?’
‘He really has had too much to drink!’ she protests, forcing a laugh, then thinking better of it: ‘Get up, please, you’re hurting me.’
There is an uneasy silence over the sugar bowl. Mado looks questioningly at her youngest daughter; Claire signals to her to go on drinking her coffee as if there were nothing wrong. Stir, Maman, stir. I’ll explain. Kazatchok makes a joke that falls flat, and the country bumpkin grows restless.
‘Right,’ sighs Edith, ‘let’s get going. Bernard, will you call the children, please?’
‘Good idea!’ adds Charles, ‘pack ’em all up in the big SUV! Hey, champion? Now that you’ve got that lovely SUV? I saw it just now . . . Smoked glass, an’ all . . .’
‘Charles, please. You’re not funny any more.’
‘But . . . I’ve never been funny, Edith. You know that perfectly well.’
He gets up, stands at the bottom of the stairs and shouts, ‘Mathilde! Come on, heel, dog!’
Then turning to the assembly of dumbstruck jurors: ‘Don’t panic. It’s a private joke.’
Embarrassed silence suddenly broken by delirious yapping.
‘What’d I tell you?’
He spins around, holding onto the brass knob, and says sharply to the queen of the party, ‘It’s true she’s a pain, your kid, these days, but y’know what? She’s the only beautiful thing you’ve ever given me.’
‘Right. Let’s go,’ says Laurence, who’s had enough, ‘and give me the keys. I’m not letting you drive in that state.’
‘Well said!’
He buttons his jacket, submits.
‘Good night, all. I’m dead.’
4
‘BUT HOW?’ ASKS Mado.
‘That’s all I know,’ replies Claire, who has stayed behind after the last farewells to help them shake out the tablecloth.
Her father has just joined them in the kitchen with a pile of dirty plates.
‘Now what’s going on in this madhouse?’ he sighs.
‘Our old neighbour died . . .’
‘Which one this time? Old Madame Verdier?’
‘No. Anouk.’
Oh, how heavy the plates seem suddenly. He puts them down and sits at the end of the table.
‘But . . . When did it happen?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘An accident?’
‘We don’t know, I said!’ says his wife, annoyed.
Silence.
‘And yet she was young, she was born in . . .’
‘She was sixty-three,’ murmurs her husband.
‘Oh . . . it can’t be. Not her. She was . . . too alive to go and die . . .’
‘Maybe it was cancer?’ suggests Claire.
‘Yes, or . . .’
Her mother glances at an empty bottle.
‘Mado . . .’ frowns her husband.
‘What, Mado? What, Mado? She drank, and you know it!’
‘She moved away such a long time ago . . . We don’t know how she lived after that.’
‘Always ready to defind her, aren’t you?’
How nasty Mado seemed all of a sudden. Claire reckoned that she had missed a few episodes, but had never imagined they’d still be at this point this evening . . .
Charles, herself, and now her father . . . A fine game of skittles.
Oh, it was such a long time ago, all that. But no, on the other hand . . . Charles losing his grip and now you, Papa. I’ve never seen you look as old as in this light . . . You . . .
Anouk. Anouk and Alexis Le Men. When will you leave us in peace? Just look at them, Charles and his dad . . . The grass never grew back after you’d been through here.
Right. Now get out of here. Get lost.
You don’t go shooting at convalescents.
‘Pass me the glasses, Maman.’
‘I just can’t believe it.’
‘Maman . . . Enough, now. She’s dead.’
‘No. She isn’t.’
‘What do you mean, she isn’t?’
‘People like her lot never die.’
‘They do, too! Proof is . . . C’mon, give me a hand, I’ve got to get going.’
Silence. Purr of the dishwasher.
‘She was mad.’
‘I’m going to bed,’ announces her father.
‘Yes, Henri, she was mad!’
He turns around, very weary. ‘All I said was that I’m going to bed, Mado.’
‘O
h, I know what you’re thinking!’
She was silent for a moment, then in a flat voice, looking away, out of the window, at a shadow that no longer existed, not caring whether anyone heard or not: ‘One day, I recall – it was at the beginning, I hardly knew her – I’d given her a plant . . . or a flower in a pot, I don’t remember . . . To thank her for having Charles over, I suppose . . . Oh! It was nothing special, right. A silly little plant that I must have brought home from the market . . . And a few days later, when I’d utterly forgotten about it, she rang at the door. She was in quite a state and she was bringing my present back to me and shoving it into my hands.
‘“What is it?” I muttered, “is something wrong?” “I . . . I can’t keep it,” she spluttered, “it . . . it’s going to die . . .” She was white as a sheet. “But why do you say that? The plant looks absolutely fine!”“No, look . . . There are some leaves that have turned yellow, there, look . . .” She was trembling. “Oh go on,” I said, laughing, “that’s perfectly normal. You just pull the leaves off, and that’s it!” And then – I remember as if it were yesterday – she began to sob and she pushed against me to put the plant down at my feet.
‘We could not get her to calm down.
‘“Forgive me. Forgive me. But I can’t,” she hiccupped, “I just can’t, you see . . . I haven’t the strength. I have no more strength . . . For people, yes, for the children, yes, I can make an effort . . . but sometimes even then it does no good, I . . . they’ll leave me anyway, you know . . . But now, when I see this plant is dying, too, I . . .” A veritable fountain. “I can’t. And you can’t make me. Because . . . it’s not as important, you understand . . . Huh? Don’t you see, it’s less important?”
‘She frightened me. It didn’t even occur to me to offer her a coffee or tell her to come and sit down for a while. I watched her blow her nose in her sleeve with her eyes popping out and I said to myself, This woman is mad. She is completely bonkers.’
‘And then?’ asked Claire.
‘And then, nothing. What did you expect me to do? I took the plant, put it with the others in the living room, and I probably had it for years.’
Claire was struggling with the bin liner.
‘What would you have done in my place?’
‘I don’t know,’ she murmured.