More recent sketches and engravings and very beautiful pastels—and the children’s drawings, stuck with magnets to the refrigerator door: a golden moon, circle-shaped hearts, and princesses with disproportionately long arms.
Fotomat strips unapproved by the Ministry of the Interior, with nobody in them, or the tip of a doll’s ear in the lower right-hand corner, maybe. School memos about swimming days and the dreaded return of lice. Teapots, antique bowls, canisters of tea. Cast iron, stoneware, wicker, and turned wood. Lacquer and a bamboo whisk. Alice’s passion for ceramics: Raku ware, bone china, celadon glaze, faience, porcelain, and smoke-fired ceramic.
She told me about the various items (the vitreous layer, a type of glaze with which pieces are coated at the time of firing) (uh, I think, anyway . . . ) (she talked fast) (and I was pretty cooked myself!), which have a much more rustic quality in Japan because testaments to the superiority of nature over the creative power of mankind (asymmetries or irregularities caused by the Spirit of the earth, wind, sun, water, wood, or fire) were perceived as a sign of perfection, while Chinese bowls were judged on their uniformity and extraordinary smoothness.
The kilns of Ru, Jun, Longquan. This bowl “with such a fine lip,” this “soft” glaze, and this one, in “jackrabbit hair.” The splendors of the Song dynasty, and the especial joy of hearing Chinese civilization spoken of, rather than Chinese imports.
The stopped clock, the bird skulls sitting on a shelf between a packet of Chocapic and some jars of jam, a reproduction of a photo by Jacques-Henri Lartigue (the one of the girl who, just about a century ago, fell down and revealed her petticoats, laughing). The exhibition advertisements, invitations to private showings, and friendly little notes from gallery owners who know how to network. “Inevitably, all the money Isaac earns by selling his old-fashioned things, I give back to living artists!” The braid of heads of pink garlic, the Espelette peppers, the plump quinces, the mummified pomegranate, the ginger preserves in a silver goblet, the collection of peppers (long peppers, Kampot, and Muntok white peppercorns), the heap of fresh mint, the bunch of coriander, the bush of thyme, the wooden spoons.
The cat’s dish full of fish-shaped kibble and the cat itself winding between my ankles; the overflowing garbage can, the dish towels (both clean and dirty), the cookbooks, the recipes by Olivier Roellinger and Mapie de Toulouse-Lautrec, a dietician’s prescription forgotten between La Bible de la tripe et des abats and Le Dictionnaire des noms de cépages en France; the soft music, Caribbean reggae; the basket filled with almonds, which Isaac cracked and offered to each of us in turn; the taste of the cool, fruity white wine after you’d crunched down two or three of the almonds; the scent of clementines and their glow (you could turn them into little makeshift candles if you knew how to peel them correctly and pour a little olive oil on them), and the lights we turned out to admire their quivering luminescent candlelight.
The grain of their beautiful transparent orange color, the aroma of whatever was bubbling on the stove, the smell of cardamom, cloves, honey, and soy sauce mingling with meat juices, and the scent of chamomile when you leaned over the heads of the little girls to relight a reluctant candle . . .
The alabaster drops of Alice’s earrings; her tiny antique watch, her loose chignon and broad neck. The stirring line of delicate vertebrae running from the bottom of her nape. Her man’s shirt, monogrammed “I.M.” beneath the right breast; her worn jeans, her belt buckle (simple, hammered, rustic, very Thorgal and Aaricia). The way she held her wineglass in front of her mouth and smiled at us through it; the way she laughed when her husband said something funny, and her wonderment at him, at realizing that it was still there, that it still worked, that she loved him as surely and hopelessly as the first time they met—he was just in the middle of telling me about it—in the lingerie department at La Samaritaine; he was with his poor mama, who was in despair of finding panties in her size, while she was examining some ridiculous bustier intended to stun someone other than him, and, to seduce her, he had launched into an imitation of Sophia Loren in Heller in Pink Tights (original and subtitled versions)—after bursting out of a dressing room like a jack-in-the-box . . . dressed in said pink tights.
She recounted how she had waited delicately—she only admitted this to him for the first time right then—for them to slink away before continuing to rifle shamelessly through the racks of fluff, and how, arriving at the checkout counter, she had been struck with the realization that she didn’t want to salvage her relationship anymore; she only wanted to laugh again with the plump little man in the light linen suit who spoke the Yiddish of the Saint-Paul metro stop with his mother and the Italian of Aldo Maccione with her. She wanted him to perform for her, as he had promised, scenes from Two Women and Sex Pot. She had never in her life wanted anything so ferociously, so desperately. She had searched for them everywhere, run after them in the street, and—at the Quai de la Mégisserie, breathless, scarlet-faced, panting, in front of the window of a packed bird shop, she had invited him for dinner that same evening. “Son, son,” the old lady had quavered, “did we forget to pay for something?” “No, Mama, no. Don’t worry. It’s only this young lady, who has come to ask me to marry her.” “Oh, is that all? You scared me!” And she told us how, her heart still confused, she had again watched them walk away arm-in-arm, beneath the mocking gazes of dozens of jeering birds.
Every one of my senses was being appealed to, flattered, fêted. It wasn’t the wine that was making me drunk; it was them. The two of them. This building-up, this game between them, the way they had of constantly interrupting each other while holding out a hand to me to haul me on board, on board with them, and make me laugh again. I loved it. I felt like a piece of frozen meat put out to thaw in the sunshine.
I couldn’t remember when I’d been a part of so much witty repartee, when I’d been so open, so tender, considered so worthy of attention. Yes, I’d forgotten. Or maybe I’d never known.
I grew old and then young again; I was melting with happiness.
Of course, at some point I asked myself the natural question. Of course I wondered if it was my presence that sharpened and inspired them so much, or if they were always this way . . . but I knew the answer: as conductive as we were, alcohol and I could never carry this much weight; what I was seeing was their life, their daily routine, the usual. I was a welcome and warmly received witness, but I was only a passing spectator, and tomorrow, in this kitchen, they would have every bit as much fun together.
I was dumbfounded.
I didn’t know you could live like this. I didn’t know. I was like a pauper invited into an extremely wealthy home, and I confess, along with my pleasure, I felt a rising prickle of sadness, of envy. Just a prickle. Something that hurt. I could never—would never know how to—claim all this for myself. It was too elusive.
As I listened to them and bantered endlessly with them, I was also admiring the way their daughters linked elbows beneath this umbrella that was too small for them both. They already understood that these adults would never be as interested in the two of them as they were in each other, and calmly equipped themselves so that they wouldn’t suffer because of it.
They chattered to each other, laughed with each other, lived as a duo, took care of one another, and had already left the table when Isaac—who, bellowing, “Married within the year!” (gulp) as he poured the dregs of the first bottle of wine into my glass (he had chosen three, including two bottles of red, which he had uncorked and recorked and immediately returned to the cellar . . . )—chuckled in his beard as he listened, maybe for the thousandth time, to the end of the beginning of their story.
So he had accepted Alice’s invitation and entertained her for the whole evening—but not only that; he had affected and intrigued her as well, and then walked her back to his place (it was difficult at hers; a cuckold-in-training had taken to spying through the peephole) before suddenly taking his leave by standing on
tiptoe to kiss her on the cheek.
“Alice, my little Alice,” he had said, holding her long-fingered hands tightly in his short-fingered ones, “I’d rather warn you right away: it won’t be an easy match. I’m forty-five years old, an old man, and I still live with my mother . . . but trust me, the day I introduce her to you, we’ll bring our baby along, and she’ll be much too busy looking for a resemblance to me to chastise you for not being Jewish.” She had bent her knees to offer him her other cheek, and everything had happened exactly as he predicted . . . except that all these years later—that is, tonight—she still hadn’t recovered! Her expression mocking, hands clasped, she reenacted the crazy scene for me, imitating the sudden gravity of his voice: “Alice . . . my little Alice . . . it won’t be an easy match,” and laughed, as we clinked glasses to her memory of the memory of this sweet madness.
Madeleine and Misia (I discovered their first names at the same time as the “mode of use” of my gift) had basically climbed up me like a mountain, and listened to me silently.
“See, you push this button . . . the little mouth, there . . . and when the green light comes on, you record your first name. Or whatever you want, really. Now imagine what your keychain would say to you if it was really calling you. For example: ‘Misia! Find me!’ or ‘Madeleine! Here I am!’ and then you press the same button again, like that, and when you lose it you clap, and it’ll say exactly what you recorded. Handy, right?”
“And then what?”
“Then . . . uh, then . . . well, I don’t know. Then you just test them out! Each of you can record whatever she wants, and give it to her sister, who will hide it the very best she can, and the first one who finds her keychain wins!”
(Hey, I’m pretty good with kids, right? Too goddamn bad I never came back.)
“Wins what?”
“The cat-o’-nine-tails . . . ” intoned their father spookily, “ . . . the cat-o’-nine-tails, and two bloody behinds!”
And the little mice scurried away, shrieking loudly.
I don’t remember how we got on the subject, but we were in the middle of discussing Brazilian architecture of the ‘50s and ‘60s; Caldas, Tenreiro, Sergio Rodrigues, etc., while Isaac (who knew everything about everything, and knew everyone, and never said anything unoriginal, and—and this was the most refreshing thing of all—never talked about money, or speculations, or sales records, or any of those boastful anecdotes that generally fill discussions about art, and design in particular) was handing me plates and glasses which I arranged awkwardly in their dishwasher when, suddenly, metallic, nasal salvos of “Wiener fart!” and “Butt fart!” were heard from the depths of the hallway, echoing more and more and more AND EVEN MORE LOUDLY throughout the apartment.
Scato, allegro, crescendo, vivacissimo!
The keychains were apparently well-hidden, and the little darlings much too overstimulated to take the trouble of finding them.
They clapped their hands, listened for a response, and laughed hysterically, cheering at the consistency and obstinacy of their big Asian parrots, which obliged them even more loudly.
Alice snorted with laughter because her daughters were as silly as she was, while Isaac shook his head hopelessly, in despair over being the only male trapped in this gymnasium of ridiculous females, and I couldn’t believe my ears: how could such angelic beings, with such tiny bodies and such crystalline little voices, produce such booming laughter?
* * *
There was no question of my staying for dinner. What I mean is, the question wasn’t even asked. On a white tablecloth which Alice smoothed, leaning in my direction (ahhh . . . the sound, the touch of her palm on the linen . . . and the gaping of her blouse . . . and the . . . the silky sheen of her bra . . . and . . . oh, my heart . . . how it crumbled into pieces . . .) . . . ahem, anyway, on the tablecloth, Isaac arranged three place settings, still talking to me about the Brasilia of Oscar Niemeyer as he had experienced it in 1976.
He reminisced about the cathedral, its size, its acoustics, and the absence of God, too intimidated and lost in there; he found the bread and sliced it, describing the Supreme Court and the government ministries, asking me if he should put out soup plates, regretted not going into the Place du Colonel-Fabien, offered to be my tour guide there one day, and shook out a clean napkin for me.
Instead of being his wife’s lover, I could have been his son . . .
“You’re tired,” he said suddenly. “I’m boring you silly with all my stories, aren’t I?”
“Not at all! Not at all! Quite the opposite!”
If I was rubbing my eyes like that it wasn’t because I was sleepy, but to dry my tears on the sly.
Unsuccessfully.
And the more I rubbed, the more the tears came.
Stupid.
I made a joke of it. I said it was the wine. That my wine tasted of sea air and salt. The fault—really—of the scent of granite that consumes your soul, the outdoor crosses, the votive offerings, the spring tides. The famous saudade of the Côtes-d’Armor . . .
I wasn’t fooling anyone, of course. It was just that I had thawed out completely by that time . . . and in doing so I leaked a little water. That’s all.
Move along, move along. Nothing to see here. Everyone gets screwed over by his soul every now and then, right? That son of am bitch of a little thought bubble that rises up without warning to remind you that your life doesn’t measure up, and that you’re lost in your absurd dreams, which are much too grand for you. If that doesn’t happen to you, you’ve given up. Or, even better, much better and much easier, you’ve never felt the need to measure yourself against . . . I don’t know . . . to hold yourself accountable, to look yourself up and down. God, how I envied those people. And the further I went, the more I felt like they—other people—were almost all like that, and I was the fool. Like I was just listening to myself piss on dead leaves.
But that isn’t my style, I’m sure of it. I don’t like to complain. I wasn’t at all like that when I was little. The thing is that I don’t know where I am in my life. And I don’t mean in life, I mean in my life. My age, my purposeless youth, my degree that impresses no one, my bullshit job, Mélanie’s sixty points, her fake cheek kisses that flicker in the empty air, my parents . . . My parents, who I don’t dare call anymore, who don’t dare call me, who have always been so very present, and who have nothing left to offer me for the moment except their discretion.
It’s horrible.
Diversion:
Once, when I’d gone with her to visit her son’s grave (my mother’s older brother, the last deep-sea fisherman in the family), my granny Saint-Quay explained to me that you could recognize happiness by the sound it made as it left. I must have been ten or eleven, and my knife and shackle wrench had just been stolen, and I got the message loud and clear.
With love, it’s the opposite. Love, you recognize by the mess it makes when it turns up. For example, for me, all it took was a kind, funny, cultivated man, a neighbor I barely knew, to set a glass and a plate and a knife and fork in front of me, for me to break apart from head to toe.
It was as if this man had pushed a wedge into my most secret breach, and was slowly opening me up, an enormous crank in his hand.
Love.
Suddenly, I understood Alice. I understood why she had panicked so much on that first day at La Samaritaine, when she had looked up and believed she had lost him forever. I understand why she had taken off running like a crazy person, and all but tackled him in the street.
That violence with which she had caught his arm—it wasn’t to force him to turn around; it was because she was grabbing on to him. And that was what brought me to tears, that gesture. Terra firma.
“Alice, my dear . . . this boy is starving to death.”
“The girls have school tomorrow; I should put them to bed first,” she grimaced.
In the
distance, moments of quiet (recording sessions) alternated with bursts of pure madness (hide-and-seek on the last day of school and other wild exclamations like something off an African savannah).
“Would have had school,” she corrected herself. “Well, let’s sit down, then. I have a pumpkin soup with chestnuts that should restore our handsome Breton’s spirits . . . joli Breton; poil au téton!”
It was as if an angel had become tarnished and been cast out of heaven.
“Oh, please, you two! Don’t look at me like that! Surely I have the right to regress a little too, don’t I?”
Isaac told me where to find the bathroom, and I went to wash my hands.
Aside from the little girls’ room at the end of the hallway, which was pink and sparkly, the rest of their apartment—what I could see of it, at least—was empty. No carpets, no furniture, no lamps or curtains or anything else, and bare walls.
It made an odd impression, as if life on this planet was completely restricted to their kitchen.
“Are you moving?” I asked, unfolding my napkin.
No, no, it was just to rest the eyes. They had an old country place in the South to which they escaped as often as possible, which was stuffed to the gills with all kinds of sentimental bric-a-brac, but here, outside the kitchen, they didn’t want anything to remind Isaac of his job.
“A bedroom for the girls, a kitchen for the family, a sofa for music, and a bed for love!” he crowed.
Alice explained that she was fine with it, understood it, appreciated it. And that she had a marvelous bed. Immense. A king-size.
(A king-size . . . ) (This woman had the gift of eroticizing everything as if it were nothing at all.) (It was exhausting.) (Etymologically speaking.) (It was backbreaking.)