Dead and already defeated.
Defeated and totally indifferent. The prize too paltry, his gloves too tight, life too predictable.
‘Three months from now.’
That was what she said, wasn’t it?
Those four words seemed more terrible than all the rest. So, she had been keeping track from the beginning? From the first day of the end of her last period? No . . . It wasn’t possible.
And all these ellipses, this pitiful mental calculating, all the weeks and months and years living at a low ebb obliged him to look back.
He was suffocating, in any case.
His eyes are open wide. Because she said, three months from now, he thinks, okay, that means April . . . And the machine starts up again and he too is counting the gap on his fingers.
That makes July, that makes September since it had already been two months. Yes, that’s it, he remembers now . . .
End of summer. He had just finished his internship at Valmer’s and was getting ready to fly to Greece. It was the last evening, they were celebrating his departure. She had stopped by, on the off chance.
It’s lucky you stopped by, he said, pleased, come over here, let me introduce you, and when he turned round to take her by the shoulders, he understood that she . . .
Yes. He remembers. And because he remembers, he is devastated. That unbearable message was the poacher’s snare, sprung from a poorly wound ball of wire and, by opening his hand and letting out nine months – twenty years, in other words – in the dark, he had got caught in the trap.
Never mind. Too bad for him. He won’t fall asleep. The story is never-ending. And at least he is still honest enough to admit that those three months were nothing more than a pretext. If she hadn’t said that, he would have found something else. The story is never-ending. The bell has just rung and he has to get back to his feet.
Go back into the ring, get pounded some more.
Anouk was dead, and Claire, that night, had not stopped by on the off chance.
6
HE HAD FOLLOWED her down the street. It was a beautiful evening, soft, warm, elastic. The asphalt gave off a good Paris smell and the outdoor cafés were packed. Several times he asked her if she wasn’t hungry, but she kept walking ahead of him, the distance between them ever greater.
‘Right,’ he said, getting cross, ‘I’m hungry and I’m fed up. I’m stopping here.’
She turned around, took a paper out of her bag and placed it on top of his menu.
‘Tomorrow. Five o’clock.’
An address in the banlieue. An utterly improbable place.
‘At five o’clock I’ll be on the plane,’ he said with a smile.
But not for long.
How could you smile at such a face?
*
Later, she had come into that café bent double. As if she were trying to hold back what she had just lost. He had got up, put his hand on the back of her neck, and let her cry her fill. Behind her, the café owner was sending him anxious looks which Charles waved away with his other hand as best he could, flattening the air around them with his palm. Afterwards he had left a big tip, to make up for the embarrassment, and had taken her to see the sea.
It was a crazy idea but what else could he have done?
He closed the door to the toilet and put on a jumper before going back to collapse on the sofa.
What else could he have done?
They had gone on long walks, drunk a great deal, smoked all sorts of amusing grasses and even danced, on occasion. But most of the time they did nothing.
Sat there and observed the light. Charles drew, dreamt, haggled down in the port, and made their meals, while his sister read the first page of her book again and again before closing her eyes.
And yet she never slept. If he had asked her a question, she would have heard and would have responded.
But he didn’t ask.
They had been brought up together, had shared the same tiny flat for almost three years and had both known Alexis for ever. Nothing could resist them.
And there was not a shadow on this steep terrace.
Not a single one.
On the last evening, they had gone to the restaurant and, as they started on the second bottle of retsina, he tested the atmosphere:
‘Will you be okay?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sure?’
She nodded vigorously.
‘Do you want to come back home to live?’
She shook her head vigorously.
‘Where will you go?’
‘To stay with a friend . . . a girl from college . . .’
‘Okay.’
He had just shifted his chair so he could share the street scenes with her.
‘You still have keys, anyway.’
‘And you?’
‘What about me?’
‘You never talk to me about your love life.’ She made a face.
‘Um love, well, your life, what’s going on . . .’
‘Nothing terribly exciting, I should think.’
‘What about the surveyor you were seeing?’
‘She went off to take some other measurements . . .’
She smiled.
Although he was tanned, his face seemed extremely brittle. He filled their glasses again and forced her to drink to better days.
After a long while she tried to roll herself a cigarette.
‘Charles?’
‘That’s my name.’
‘You won’t tell, will you?’
‘What am I supposed to tell him?’ he sniggered. ‘Talk to him about honour?’
Her cigarette paper tore. He took the packet from her hands, painstakingly sprinkled a gutterful of tobacco into the paper and lifted it to his lips to lick it.
‘I meant Anouk.’
He froze.
‘No,’ he said, spitting out a flake of tobacco, ‘no. Of course not.’
Handed her the cigarette and shifted his chair to make more room.
‘Are . . . are you still in touch with her?’
‘Rarely.’
His glasses had just fallen down onto his nose. She didn’t push him any further.
*
In Paris it was raining. They shared a taxi and parted at Les Gobelins.
‘Thanks,’ she murmured into his ear. ‘It’s over, I promise you. I’ll be all right.’
He watched as she hurried down the steps into the metro.
She must have felt his eyes on her back because she turned round halfway down to make a diver’s O with her thumb and index finger, and gave him a wink.
A comforting little gesture, reassurance that all was well.
He’d believed her, and he’d gone off with an easy heart.
Young and naïve in those days . . . Believed in signs.
It was yesterday, and in a few weeks, it would be nineteen years.
She’d fooled him, good and proper.
7
HE WAS DOZING and when he came round, Snoopy was gazing at him silently. It was Snoopy from the old days, with a round face, puffy with sleep, rubbing her ear with her front paw.
Dawn tapping at the window; he wondered for a moment whether he was not still dreaming. The walls were so pink . . .
‘Did you sleep here?’ she asked him sadly.
Dear Lord, no. This was life. New round.
‘What time is it?’ he yawned.
She’d already turned round and was headed back to her room.
‘Mathilde . . .’
She froze.
‘It’s not what you think . . .’
‘I don’t think anything,’ she replied.
And vanished.
Six twelve. He dragged himself to the coffee maker and put in a double dose. It was going to be a long day . . .
Frozen stiff, he locked himself in the bathroom.
With one buttock on the edge of the bathtub and his chin crushed against his fist, he let his mind drift amidst the bubbling water and warm
steam. What was absorbing him at the moment did not require many words: Balanda, you’re pissing me off. Stop it right now, and get a grip.
Up to now you have always been capable of finding your way without giving it too much thought, so you’re not going to start today. It’s too late, you understand? You’re too old for the luxury of this sort of disaster. She’s dead. They’re all dead. Pull the curtain and take care of the living. Behind that wall there’s a little Dresden doll who’s acting tough, but actually she looks like she’s having a hard time. She gets up far too early for her age . . . Turn off that bloody tap and go and yank those headphones from her ears for a second.
He knocked gently and went in and sat on the floor, at her feet, his back against the side of her bed.
‘It’s not what you think.’
Silence.
‘What you up to, my loyal friend?’ he murmured, ‘are you sleeping? Are you listening to sad songs under your duvet or are you wondering what this old fool of a Charles has come to bore you with?’
Still she said nothing.
‘If I was sleeping on the sofa, it’s because I couldn’t sleep, actually . . . And I didn’t want to disturb your mum.’
He heard her turn over and felt something of hers, perhaps her knee, brush his shoulder.
‘And even as I’m telling you this, I figure I’m wrong . . . Because I don’t have to justify myself to you . . . None of this is any of your business, or, rather, it doesn’t concern you. It’s grown-up business, well, between adults, and –’
Oh, what’s the bloody use, he thought, why go getting up to your neck in . . . Talk to her about something else.
He looked up and inspected her wall in the half-light. It had been a long time since he had actually looked closely at her little world, and yet he adored everything about it. He adored seeing her photos, her drawings, her mess, her posters, her life, her memories . . .
The walls in the room of a growing child are always a funny sort of ethnology lesson. Square metres that are constantly vibrating and taking new forms as they gobble up the Blu-tack. What was she up to these days? Had she been with a few girlfriends to take goofy photos in a photo booth? What were the latest trinkets, and where had she hidden it, the face of the one who’d do better to be a tree one could put one’s arms around and it could not complain?
He was surprised to find a photo of Laurence and himself that he had never seen. A photo she had taken when she was still a child. In the days when her index finger always showed up somewhere in the sky. They looked happy, and you could see the mountain of Sainte-Victoire behind their smiles. And there was a gel capsule in a transparent bag where you could read Be a Star Instantly, a poem by Prévert copied out on large-squared paper, and which ended with:
In Paris
On earth
Earth that is a star.
Photos of blonde, fleshy-lipped actresses, codes for internet sites copied out on beer mats, key rings, idiotic cuddly toys, painstaking flyers for concerts out in the sticks, ribbon bracelets, an ad for a Monsieur G who brings back your loved one and ensures you’ll pass you’re exam the frist time round, Corto Maltese’s smile, an old ski resort day pass, and even the reproduction of the Aphrodite of Callimachus which he’d sent to her to put an end to a prickly phase.
Their first major crisis . . .
He’d gone berserk because she was exposing her belly.
‘Dye, tattoos, piercing – anything you like!’ he’d shouted, ‘even feathers out your bum if that turns you on! But not your belly, Mathilde. Not your belly . . .’ He’d oblige her to lift her arms to the sky in the morning before she left for school and he’d send her back to her room if her T-shirt rose above her bellybutton.
There ensued weeks of very bitter bad moods, but he’d stood his ground. It was the first time he resisted her. The first time he took on his role of old fart.
Not her belly, no way.
‘A woman’s belly is among the most mysterious things on earth, one of the most moving, beautiful, sexy things, as they might say in your idiot magazines,’ he waffled, under Laurence’s condescending gaze. ‘And . . . no . . . Cover it. Don’t let them steal it from you . . . It’s not that I’m trying to play Father Morality here, or to talk to you about what’s decent and what isn’t, Mathilde . . . I’m talking to you about love. Lots of blokes are going to try to guess the size of your arse or the shape of your tits, and that’s fair enough, but your belly, keep it for the man you’ll love some day, you . . . Do you understand?’
‘Yes, I think she gets the picture, now,’ said her mother dryly; she wanted to move on to other things. ‘Go and put on your nun’s habit, my child.’ Charles had looked at her, shaking his head, and finally said no more. But the next morning he went to the shop at the Louvre and sent her that postcard, where he’d written, ‘Look, it’s because you can’t see it that it’s so beautiful.’
Her face, her clothes grew longer, but she never mentioned the postcard. He was even sure she’d chucked it out. But she hadn’t, here it was . . . Between a rap singer in string underwear and a half-naked Kate Moss.
He went on exploring . . .
‘You like Chet Baker, do you?’ he asked, surprised.
‘Who?’ she grunted.
‘This guy, here.’
‘I don’t even know who he is. I just think he’s buff.’
It was a black and white shot. When he was young and looked like James Dean. A more febrile version. More intelligent, more emaciated. He was slouched against a wall, holding on to the back of a chair to keep from slipping farther.
His trumpet on his knees and his eyes staring off into space.
She was right. Buff.
‘It’s funny . . .’
‘What is?’
He could feel her knee against the back of his neck.
‘When I was your age . . . No, we were a little bit older . . . I had a friend who was crazy about Chet Baker. Completely utterly crazy. Fall down dead crazy. He must have worn the same T-shirt, and I’ll bet he knew this photo inside out and backwards . . . And it’s precisely because of him that I spent the night freezing my arse off on the sofa . . .’
‘Why?’
‘Why did I freeze my arse off?’
‘No . . . why did he like him so much?’
‘Because it was Chet Baker, that’s why! A great musician! A bloke who could speak every language and every feeling on earth with his trumpet. And his voice, too . . . I’ll lend you my recordings and then you’ll understand why you think he’s so handsome.’
‘Who was your friend?’
Charles sighed a smile. This business isn’t over yet . . . Not right away, in any case, he’ll just have to get used to it.
‘His name was Alexis. And he played the trumpet, too. Not just the trumpet, either. He played everything . . . Piano, harmonica, ukulele . . . He was –’
‘Why are you talking about him in the past tense? Is he dead?’
This business isn’t over, I said . . .
‘No, but I don’t know what became of him. Or whether he went on with his music.’
‘Did you fall out?’
‘Yes. So much so that I thought I’d wiped him from my memory . . . I thought he no longer existed and –’
‘And what?’
‘I was wrong. He still exists. And it’s because I got a letter from him last night that I slept in the living room.’
‘What did the letter say?’
‘You really want to know?’
‘Yes.’
‘It informed me that his mother had died.’
‘Great . . . That’s cheerful,’ she grumbled.
‘You said it.’
‘Hey, Charles?’
‘Hey, Mathilde?’
‘I’ve got a gi-normous mega hard physics project for tomorrow . . .’
He got to his feet, making a face. His back . . .
‘So much the better!’ he cheered. ‘Good news. That’s just what I needed. Mega hard
physics along with Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan. A dream Sunday ahead. Right . . . Go back to sleep, now. Try and get a few more hours, sweetheart.’
He was looking for the door handle when she added, ‘Why did you fall out?’
‘Because . . . precisely because he acted like he was Chet Baker, he wanted to do everything like him . . . And doing everything like him also meant doing a lot of stupid things.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as drugs, for example.’
‘And so?’
‘Well, my little girl,’ he grumbled, his hands on his hips in imitation of the big teddy bear in her childhood kiddie programme, ‘the sandman has just been through here, and I’m headed back up to my ccc-loud. Another bedtime story for you to-mor-row. And only if you’re a ve-ry good girl. Ta-dah!’
He saw her smile, faintly lit by the clock radio.
*
He ran some more hot water and sank into a tub near to overflowing, submerging his hair and thoughts too, then he rose to the surface and closed his eyes.
*
And, contrary to all expectations, it turned out to be a beautiful late winter day.
A day full of pulleys and the principle of inertia. A day for My Funny Valentine and How High the Moon. A day that was utterly indifferent to the laws of physics.
His foot kept time under the little desk that was far too cluttered for clear thinking and, with a 20-centimetre ruler in his hand, he tapped her rhythmically on the head whenever her thinking went astray.
And for a few hours he forgot his fatigue and his files. His colleagues, his migrating cranes, and his deadlines, all overdue. For a few hours, forces in movement became compensating forces.
Truce. Knockout by default. Brass instrument therapy. Placed on a drip of nostalgia and ‘black poetry,’ as they said in one of the album booklets.
The speakers on Mathilde’s computer weren’t very good, alas, but the track titles scrolled onto the screen, and it was as if each and every one were addressed to him.
To them.
In A Sentimental Mood. My Old Flame. These Foolish Things. My Foolish Heart. The Lady Is A Tramp. I’ve Never Been In Love Before. There Will Never Be Another You. If You Could See Me Now. I Waited For You and . . . I May Be Wrong.
A disturbing sort of short-cut, he mused. And also . . . perhaps . . . Something that might serve nicely as an oration, no?