Life, Only Better

  “Always happy. Can you imagine the strength and the courage it takes in life for those two words to be combined within the same person for an entire lifetime? Fuck, but if that isn’t the absolute height of class, I don’t know what is. I’m going to confess something to you, Mélanie: I see no difference at all between my mother’s cheerfulness and your Goldberg Variations played by your Gould. It’s the same genius. And that woman, that queen, that queen among people, every time she calls me she asks about you, and . . . sometimes, I lie. Sometimes, before I hang up, I say ‘Mélanie sends her love’ or ‘Mélanie sends hugs to you both,’ and . . . well . . . I don’t feel like lying anymore. So there you have it.”

  STOP (red button).

  Whew.

  I pull my head out from under the water and shake myself, like the handsome guys in Olympic swimming pools do.

  I managed that pretty well, don’t you think?

  Where are those stuck-up girls from Camp Balou? Are they still there? Did they see me, at least?

  TEN, THE OPPOSITE RIVERBANK

  Talk about an achievement . . .

  I rewind just a little to make sure my demonic (nyuk nyuk) plan has worked. I do a test, and what do I hear? A voice like a constipated duck talking about a motor home . . .

  Oh my God. I shut it off immediately.

  It’s distressing.

  I’m distressed.

  Jesus. It’s hard to be yourself, when your self doesn’t inspire you. It’s so goddamned hard.

  It’s three-fifteen in the morning. I need another coffee.

  I rinse my cup and raise my head, and I see it. My reflection. I see it.

  I study it.

  I think about Isaac, and Alice, and Gabrielle, and Schubert, and Sophia Loren, and Jacqueline’s rear end, and her wall of solace.

  I think about the Justes and I think about my parents.

  I think about my job and my life and my meal vouchers and my comfort and my security. About the concept of commitment, my concept of commitment, cash, loot, dough, my benefits, my coworkers, my boss, their promises, and my work contract of indeterminate length.

  Indeterminate. How did such a weak word take on so much value?

  How?

  I look at the toy sitting on my kitchen table, which has turned into a time bomb, and I hang my head again.

  I don’t like the idea of hurting Mélanie.

  I don’t love her enough anymore to keep up the pretense of being the nice little couple, but I love people too much to take the risk of hurting any of them, even the woman who takes away my movies, my desserts, and my childhood.

  Yes. Even her.

  It’s damn hard to be cruel when you’re nice. It’s damn hard to leave someone. It’s damn hard to come together the way you have to, to fall in line and speak with one voice when you don’t like authority.

  It’s damn hard to give yourself enough importance to make a unilateral decision to change the life of another human being, and how pathetic is it to use the word “unilateral” at twenty-six years old in the kitchen of the small middle-class apartment of the old aunt of your absent girlfriend because you have a job to do at three o’clock in the morning?

  Okay.

  I feel sort of weak now.

  What am I doing?

  What am I doing with my life?

  What am I doing with my Woof-Woofs?

  Ah, fuck. What a pain in the ass.

  And on top of everything else, it’s making me use crude language.

  Well, I’m fucking annoyed.

  Let’s sum up: What you have to do is be selfish. At least a little bit selfish. Otherwise you’re not really alive, and in the end you’ll die anyway.

  Right.

  Come on, my Yannou. Be brave. Get out your cock and your knife.

  If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for your cheesecakes.

  Okay, but, stupid question: What do you do to be selfish when you just aren’t? When you were raised in a world where other people counted more than you? And right on an ocean on top of that? You have to force yourself, right? I’ve tried really hard to get on board with the concept, as hard as I could: Me, Me, Me, Myself, My life, My happiness, My nest, but I just can’t quite manage it. It doesn’t interest me. It’s like the Mickey Mouse watch: I waved my arm around to make my mom feel good, but I didn’t really want it. I thought it was ugly.

  Head down, jaw clenched, shoulders hunched, arms crossed, chest closed off, I ruminate.

  I’m completely curled in on myself. Nothing is getting in from the outside, at all. I listen to the beating of my own heart, I breathe slowly, and I try not to let myself get screwed over by the fatigue and overindulgence that have evidently invited themselves to this particular pathetic summit.

  I think.

  I think about Isaac.

  I don’t see anyone but him, Isaac Moïse, who can take me from one side of the river to the other. I think about his face, his stories, his silences, his looks, his chuckling that is sometimes lecherous and sometimes virginal. His bad faith, his egotism, his generosity, the feeble excuse of the label a little while ago, and the way he’d had of taking my hand at just the moment when I really, really needed it.

  I remember his words about politeness, and the tone of his voice when he said them. That gentleness. That gentleness and that cruelty. And I cling to that with all my strength.

  I cling to it because it’s the only absolute certainty I can still salvage from this mess, the only one. Yes. Yes, I am that. I am polite.

  And because I’m polite, I end up unfolding my body and freeing myself finally from myself, and I press the green button one more time before stashing Misia’s little tape recorder in the bottom of the fridge.

  Hopefully Melanie won’t feel the need to make fun of my pimply teenage music and my spinelessness. My Paradise Circus and my Unfinished Sympathy.

  And while my old cassette records the sound of the cold, I get my stuff together.

  * * *

  My duffel bag is ready. Clean underwear, dirty underwear, shoes, razor, books, laptop, amps. That’ll do.

  One advantage of not liking yourself at all.

  I get the tape recorder out of the fridge and, finally, push the EJECT button.

  The compartment opens with a tortured little sound. Tchak! No more shackles.

  I write her first name on the cassette and leave it on her pillow.

  No. On the kitchen table.

  If you can’t be great, at least hang on to your decency.

  * * *

  I leave my key, slam the door behind me, and go up to the fourth floor.

  I set my worldly possessions down at my feet, button my jacket, take out my gloves, sit down, and reunite with my wall.

  I give myself up to it.

  I wait for Alice or Isaac to open their door.

  I need to give them back Misia’s toy, and ask them one last question.

  ELEVEN, THE HORIZON

  My name is Yann André Marie Carcarec. I was born in Saint-Brieuc. I’ll be twenty-seven in a few months. I’m five-foot-ten and I have brown hair and blue eyes. I have no criminal record and no distinguishing marks or scars.

  I was an ordinary kid, a picture-perfect first communicant, the mascot of my Optimist Club, a quiet high school student, an honors graduate, a serious student, a sap who fell in love easily, and a faithful boyfriend.

  I’d found a job without having discovered a passion for anything or a taste for a particular career. I’d just signed an indeterminate work contract that would have enabled me to get into a little bit of debt, so as to be able to get a little bit more in debt later on, and I was going out with a girl with a much more sophisticated background than mine. A girl who showed me the good things about the middle class, and its limits too. Who would have liked to smooth off my rough
edges a bit, I know, but who unwittingly reinforced my natural tendency to be the big, boorish, untidy grandson of a fishing-boat captain. Who made me realize that my family was much less well-off than hers, but were much better people. That we paid less attention to style, but with us the chain was longer and the anchor was more secure. And that we didn’t criticize other people nearly as much. That we were less obsessed with other people. Maybe because we were too stupid to see beyond the tips of our own noses, or maybe because at the tips of our noses there was the horizon.

  Maybe that line, that infinite brushstroke that has separated sea from sky since the dawn of time, makes human beings less arrogant.

  Maybe . . . I don’t know . . . I’m definitely wrong to generalize, but . . . her father always got my first name wrong when he shook hands with me. Once it was Yvan, and once it was Yvon, and once it was Erwann. After a while it seemed pretty suspicious.

  Now, his daughter, well, I loved her. I swear on my life, I loved her. But I didn’t know what she wanted anymore. I disappointed her, and she disappointed me. We didn’t dare admit it to each other, but our bodies were less polite than we were, and said things during the intimate times. Her smell, her taste, her breath, her sweat . . . they all ganged up against me. Everything changed so as to make me uncomfortable. And I’m pretty sure the same was true for her too. That soap and toothpaste and Eau Sauvage aftershave weren’t covering up my discomfort anymore.

  No, I’m not pretty sure. I know it.

  I knew it.

  Last night, I was alone. I was supposed to go to the movies, but there was a piece of furniture blocking my landing. It belonged to some neighbors that I hardly knew. People who lived two floors above me. A couple with two little girls. I offered to help them carry it up to their apartment, and I stayed with them until the early hours of the next morning.

  The next morning—that is, this morning—I took a TGV and slept for the whole journey, and then a bus. An hour later I got off in a little square bordered with plane trees and went into a café. One that inspired me, and probably served consoling beverages to a lot of pétanque players in warm weather. After I finished my drink, I took a piece of paper out of my pocket and showed it around so that someone could tell me which direction to go, and the best road for hitchhiking.

  It was looked at, and commented on, and agreed on, and it got pretty creased along the way.

  You might have said it was a sort of map. A treasure map with a Southern Cross drawn in the middle. When I thanked them, they answered—or retorted, rather—“My pleasure.” It made me jump.

  I didn’t wait very long. A young guy picked me up in his van. He was a mason. He built swimming pools, but it was the off-season now, so he was repairing vaults in the square. With his thumb and index finger extended, he sighted crows in the distance and brought them down with the word “Bang!” When he rolled himself a cigarette, he gripped the steering wheel between his knees and accelerated “to stabilize the vehicle.” He was about to be a dad. Tonight, as a matter of fact. “Dang,” he repeated, “dang, it was gettin’ kinda nerve-wracking there . . . ”

  I smiled. Everything he said enchanted me. I loved his voice, his accent, his gift of gab. He was like the Al Pacino of the sticks. He must be about the same age as me, and he already had a van with his full name written on the side, and payroll taxes, and a family. It all seemed very exotic.

  He dropped me off at a junction. He was sorry he couldn’t take me all the way, but it was the bambino’s fault. It was way over there, behind that hill. I could follow the road, but it would be quicker to cut across the fields. I thanked him. I was glad to have to walk. I had butterflies in my stomach. I told myself that the weight of my bag multiplied by the number of steps would eventually calm me down.

  That was only one supposition among thousands of others blurring my vision.

  I thought. I walked. I came up with a plan.

  I imagined dialogues and replies and I walked faster and faster, trying to shake off my reservations.

  My bag dug into my shoulder. There was a sort of little stone hut on the side of the road. The door opened easily. I left my books there.

  I’d come back for them.

  No one ever steals books.

  I recognized the house. It was the same one as on my piece of paper. I left my bag outside, against one of the pillars by the gate. I entered a courtyard and headed for the tidiest of the group of buildings. The one with boots outside the front door and curtains at the windows. I knocked. No answer. A little louder. Still no one.

  Damn. No more treasure.

  I looked around me. I tried to understand where I was, how it all intertwined, and what the hell I was doing out here in the middle of nowhere. It was all a muddle.

  Finally, the door opened behind me. I turned with a big smile, in lieu of a bouquet of flowers. (Unfortunately, that had wilted on my way here.)

  Shit. I hadn’t been expecting this at all.

  Was she already at that point?

  With her chin, she gestured toward an outbuilding. If I couldn’t find that, all I had to do was go to the end of the path and look for a silhouette among the ridges.

  “A silhouette, or a dog! If you grab the dog’s tail, the gentleman won’t be far behind.”

  She giggled.

  I’d already gone three steps when she added:

  “Remind him that Tom has practice at six o’clock. He’ll understand! Thanks!”

  I was disturbed. I always pay close attention to people, but I couldn’t describe her to you, couldn’t tell you anything about her face or her clothes or the color of her hair. The only thing about her I can remember is what I tried desperately not to look at: a pair of crutches.

  TWELVE, TERRA FIRMA

  What was I hoping for, exactly?

  I don’t know.

  Something more meaningful.

  A scene.

  A beautiful scene.

  Like something out of a movie, or a book.

  A dazzling light, a sky in splendor, and a man standing there.

  Yeah, that’s it, a man standing with a . . . uh . . . some kind of shears in his hand.

  And even an orchestra, while I’m at it. The trumpets from Star Wars or The Ride of the Valkyries or some crap like that.

  Instead of that, I found myself in the doorway of a neon-lit shed, with a dog sniffing my crotch and the wankers from Grosses Têtes talking in the background.

  Well played, Yannou. Well played.

  That’s not a camel, you idiot, it’s a huge mutt!

  I was squinting. I couldn’t see anything.

  “Is anyone there?”

  On top of the hood of a tractor (I don’t know if tractors have hoods and I’m not actually sure the machine in question was a tractor), a hairy silhouette straightened up, swearing.

  “Goddamn,” he grumbled, “you’re the guy from the insurance company, right? Parker! Get down, dammit!”

  Christ.

  Can we do this over again without the dog?

  He eyed me. You could tell that he was doubtful. I was a little unkempt for a Groupama agent.

  When I didn’t answer him, he turned away again.

  “Can I help you?”

  And then . . .

  Then I let fly.

  “No,” I said to him. “No. You can’t help me, but I can help you. That’s what I’ve come for. To help you. I’m sorry—hello. My name is Yann. I . . . uh . . . (he had turned to me again) . . . last night I met Isaac Moïse. He invited me to dinner and we drank your wine, so he told me about you. He told me your history and the . . . your wife’s illness . . . and . . . and everything. He told me that you didn’t really believe in all this anymore, that you were tired, and you’d decided to sell your business, and . . . (He was staring at me now, and I was looking away so I wouldn’t weaken. Instead I counted
the grease spots on the floor.) . . . and, no. You won’t sell. You won’t sell because I quit my job for you. My job, my life, my girlfriend, everything. No—I mean, not for you, for me, and I . . . the . . . the Moïses are letting me stay in their house until the summer, and I have two arms and two legs and my vaccinations are up to date, and I’m Breton and I’m hardheaded, and I don’t know anything about wine, but I’ll learn. I learn fast when I’m interested in something. Also I’ve got my license. I can drive. I can run errands. I can cook the meals. I can drive Tom to practice in a few minutes, if you want. I can do everything your . . . that Ariane did, and that she can’t do anymore for now. And my parents will help you too. My dad’s a CPA; he’s retired now but he can still crunch numbers just as fast, and he’ll help you as best he can, I know it. And he and my mother belong to a kind of old people’s club that travels Europe in motor homes, and when it’s time for the grape harvest they’ll all come, you’ll see. My parents, and their English and Italian and Dutch friends, and the whole gang. And I guarantee you that it’ll be great, and those people won’t charge you anything—they’ll be proud to help, even! You can’t sell, Pierre. What you’ve built so far is too beautiful for that. You can’t throw the towel in now.”

  Silence.

  A leaden silence.