“How are you?”
“Fine.”
“That blue dress is new.”
“I saw Anne wearing it, and I wanted the same one. She sends her love.”
No, she doesn’t send me her love, she thinks I should get some therapy. She’s your best friend, you can’t really blame her, she’s annoyed with me.
“Don’t let her forget she’s still got my cotton overall, I really liked that one.”
That’s a detail you’ll remember at the police station. A man who’s asking to have his cotton overall back isn’t thinking of staging a disappearance.
“What are we going to do about this health insurance business?”
“If I could stay on yours for a few more months, just until I go back to work.”
“. . . You’re going back to work?”
“I’ve had enough of doing bugger all.”
“Are you getting bored, then?”
You’re surprised, aren’t you? I made it look as if I found my nightly outings fascinating. I may even have gone a bit far. You tried to understand, to talk to me about a mid-life crisis, about the way I wanted to put myself in danger. What happened next made it look as if you were right.
“I might go back to The Blue Frame.”
“If you have trouble with the rent, I could always let you have some money for now.”
“No, it’s fine, I’ve got enough to see me through.”
You know perfectly well that I’ve borrowed money from friends, and they’re sure they’ll never see it again. They talked to you about it, which was the whole point of the exercise.
“Don’t be embarrassed with me, will you? If you’re in debt. . . .”
“Debt, what debt?”
“Apparently you’re still playing . . .”
Pretty good going, I would say!
“Look, just drop this, Nadine . . . Tell me what you’re up to. How’s your new apartment?”
“It’s on the Rue de Prony, really close to work. It’s changed my life so much, I can’t believe it.”
You still haven’t met anyone, but it won’t be long, I can tell, you want to captivate someone again.
“Are you in a hurry, Nadine? Do you want a cup of coffee?”
“I have to get home.”
When they come to find you to tell you I’ve disappeared, don’t forget anything, the smell of alcohol and sweet perfumes, the ties I used to put in my pocket for when I was going out, my bank account drained in less than a year and – especially – the credit card receipts showing the address of a brothel which I made sure I left lying about on my bedside table. Say things like: “He must have got involved with some shady characters who made life difficult for him.” You won’t need to lie, you’ll be very convincing.
“I’m having a little house-warming party a week on Friday. Would you like to come along?”
“Friday the 17th? I’m not doing anything, I’ll make a note. I’ll make some zakouski.”
I’ll have a face full of bandaging, but I’ll be thinking of you all. And you in particular.
Nicolas Gredzinski
Nicolas woke up that morning with the appetite of a truly happy man, not a feeling he recognized. Loraine had left the hotel long before he woke, thereby depriving him of the spectacle of her breakfast in bed – when she was still only just awake she craved fresh fruit, buttered toast, tea and everything – a ceremony he had taken a liking to without touching anything on the tray himself; distracting her with a few caresses while she tasted the jam with a finger was enough for him. To wake up feeling hungry in your belly, you really had to like life, he thought. With his face buried in Loraine’s pillow, he succumbed to a few thrusts of his pelvis, making the most of a morning erection.
They had been seeing each other on average three evenings a week for more than a year. Most of the time they ended the evening in this same hotel and, out of habit, they asked for Room 318, which had provided a haven for their first moments together. Nicolas made sure he was available whenever Loraine was, with no set days. When he tried to make sense of some clues, they would contradict each other the next time; she obeyed some logic known only to her which made her everyday life unfathomable. With time, he had grown used to it, even though during the course of each day he would have given everything to know what she was doing at that exact moment.
Still, he did have to recognize the fact that mornings were far easier than before. Waking up alone no longer really mattered since that famous night when Loraine had disappeared even before the sun was up. In her usual capable way, she had managed to find a solution to a problem which had been dividing couples for generations.
“I have to get up at about five tomorrow.”
“I’ll ask reception for a wake-up call.”
“No you won’t, you’ll never get back to sleep.”
She was right. The moment Nicolas became aware that the world existed, there was no longer any way of denying it, it had to be endured. That was the story of his life. The subsequent negotiations (“but it really doesn’t matter, I promise/it seems a pity, are you sure/it honestly doesn’t bother me/you could have another two hours’ sleep after I’ve left,” etc) had come to an abrupt end when Loraine had an inspired idea and picked up her mobile.
“If I programme the alarm to go off at five and put the phone under my pillow on vibrate mode . . .”
He could not understand her machinations and went off to sleep, telling her she was mad. Two hours later, while he was swimming through a lake populated with fabulous creatures, Loraine felt slight vibrations near her left ear and woke up. She kissed her sleeping lover on the temples and tiptoed out while it was still dark. Nicolas could go on dreaming of all kinds of paradise lost. There was no doubt about it, this was a giant leap for mankind.
Even without her imagination, he was in love with the element of freedom in her, which manifested itself in the most unexpected ways. A funny little meaningless sentence which did him the world of good, a disconcerting gesture which was actually far more calculated that it appeared, some brainwave which was shrugged off as absurd for fear of being taken too seriously.
Loraine was not the only person to restore his confidence in himself. “The man in the night”, his feverish alter ego who sent him messages, now watched over him. Nicolas had initially hated this incandescent Other who drank and then landed him with the hangover, who burned the midnight oil without a thought for the mess in the morning. With time, he had learned to listen to him and to make a friend of him. How did he have all this knowledge that Nicolas missed from day to day? How did he manage to orchestrate improvisation and a sense of rhythm while putting everything in perspective? Where did he get his skill for walking the tightrope of living for the moment? How was he the only philosopher in the world who understood everything? Nicolas owed it to himself to be in touch with his Mr Hyde as often as possible, to follow his teaching and benefit from his experience. Like someone rushing to open a letter box, before he even got out of bed he would reach for the little black book in which the Other – serene and happy as he watched Loraine sleeping – had scribbled a few decisive lines in the night. There was a bit of everything on those pages: orders, self-evident facts which needed to be repeated, everyday decisions which found their solutions there, but also a few lyrical flights of fancy, written down quite shamelessly because they were sincere.
Before having his shower, he opened the notebook. As usual, he remembered nothing.
People who give you funny looks when you’re drinking whisky have no greater ambition in life than to place the word “whisky” on the Scrabble board.
Go back to the dentist. I really mean it.
We all say: “I don’t care what happens after I’ve gone,” but we’re all very keen to know what does happen!
He left the hotel and went on foot to the towers of the Parena empire, stopping at the coffee shop to buy two croissants and a cold beer. He had his breakfast in his office, and felt that his life was utterly co
herent. He loved Loraine, but he also liked the thought that people he knew would warn him against this she-devil of a woman. He liked the taste of beer in the morning, he liked hiding it in his Trickpack, and he liked imagining the looks on his colleagues’ faces if they found out that his Coke was 6% vol. He liked his most recent discoveries, he already liked the progress he still had to make on the path to inner peace, and – over and above everything else – he liked the opportunity he had been given to become the man he deserved to be. The night, like the others before it, had been short and Nicolas waited discreetly for the little whiplash he would get from the fizz of the hop, a true pleasure every morning which he had taken to as naturally as a cup of tea or a clean shirt. The bubbles were already going to his head, and dancing round in little clusters.
The time had come to devote all his energy to work. His appointment to head up the art department did not really need any consideration; he felt no pressure from his new responsibilities, and played things by ear, trying to give solidarity preference over every kind of authority. He made the mistake of thinking that trust is a good basis on which to operate, and took into account the majority views. Bardane had had a knack for promising the impossible to the client and then allowing himself the luxury of twisting a few ears if no one came up with a miraculous solution. Nicolas had wasted too much time to fall into the same rut. He always asked what the person in charge of production thought, as well as consulting the artistic department, which was made up of three women and two men, all graphic designers and all more or less the same age. He had fun testing the much vaunted concept of “synergy”. He had never been a leader, and for as far back as he could remember he had always avoided the idea of competition: he had never distinguished himself at tennis, had never come to blows over a parking space and had generally never looked for any form of promotion. Only someone with as little grasp of psychology as Bardane could suspect Gredzinski of being ruthlessly ambitious.
“I’ve had some news of your ex-boss,” José said in the canteen.
Bardane had left the Group, having come to an arrangement which meant he could keep his head held high while looking for a new job (where he would not make the mistake of trying to humiliate someone to make an example of them). Hearing his name halfway through lunch like that, six months after he had left, had a feeling of commemoration about it. Nicolas could have done without it.
“Molin, who works in my department, is his son’s godfather. Did you know that Bardane has two children with his present wife, one with his ex and a fourth one who’s adopted?”
For reasons which he had no need to air, Nicolas felt happier changing the subject; José found his embarrassment amusing, and pursued the point.
“He still hasn’t found work. Mind you, it’s hardly surprising, in communications, when you’re over fifty . . . Amber made him an offer of 200,000 francs, as production manager, but he turned it down, of course. The problem is he’s proud. Apparently he spends his time arguing with his wife, when she’d be prepared to take any sort of work. In the meantime they’re selling the house in Montfort.”
José did not succeed in upsetting Nicolas (there were too many people far more deserving of pity than Bardane in this miserable world), but Nicolas cut the conversation short and went back up to his office where there was a message waiting for him from a Mme Lemarié, asking him to call back urgently.
“Who’s this, Muriel?”
“She said it was personal.”
Nicolas did not like strangers who left personal messages, any more than he liked recorded delivery letters or any sort of summons. Potential danger, cause for concern, the sort of thing that could put his whole life on the back-burner until the business was cleared up. He looked at the clock as he picked up the telephone.
“Madame Lemarié? Nicolas Gredzinski.”
“It’s very nice to hear from you. I look after your account at the Crédit Agricole. You used to deal with Monsieur N’Guyen, but he’s been made manager of our Lyon branch.”
Nicolas had absolutely no memories of M. N’Guyen or of any other bank employee since he had opened his account twenty-two years earlier. He asked nothing of a bank. He did not know how to make the most of it nor to evade the traps it set. He had never asked for a loan and had absolutely never been subjected to a lecture because of an overdraft. To him the bank was just the link between his salary and his spending; the debit and credit columns should never be anything to worry about. Never.
“I imagine the 435,000 francs which have just been credited to your account won’t be staying there.”
How could he answer the question? He had not yet had time to accept the idea that an aluminium cylinder might change his life.
“If you were thinking of investing the money, I could suggest some of our products which are performing very favourably on the market. You would need to drop by at the bank to discuss them. Would you have the time next week?”
“No.”
“The week after that?”
Nicolas felt just enough resentment towards Mme Lemarié to allow himself the luxury of disconcerting her in a way he would not have thought possible a few months earlier.
“I’m going to have some fun first. I’ll spend forty or fifty thousand on all sorts of nonsense. I won’t have any regrets about wasting it, life’s too short.”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“Don’t you think life’s short?”
“Yes, I do . . .”
“I’m also going to take this opportunity to make some gifts to people who aren’t as lucky as me.”
“Be careful with the Inland Revenue.”
“This 435,000 is just a down payment, I’ve got an accountant friend who’s going to manage the whole thing for me, don’t you worry. Thanks for your call.”
The idea she had just unwittingly suggested to him was not all that stupid. Nicolas put his jacket back on, left his office and told Muriel that he was out at a meeting all afternoon. Half an hour later he was trawling through the Galeries Lafayette with his hands in his pockets, eager to give in to temptation.
The first person on whom he should bestow his generosity was Mme Zabel, the plump little woman with the half-moon glasses who had handled his registration at the National Institute of Patent Rights. The advice she had given him, putting him in touch with manufacturers who might be interested in his Trickpack, had borne fruit. A manufacturer of gadgets who had room for yet another absurd object (the world had him to thank for a constant stream of brightly coloured plastic things for kitchens and bathrooms) had asked him to sign a contract which had duly been checked through by a legal advisor recommended by the same Mme Zabel. The rest – the manufacturing and marketing – had gone ahead without him. No one had even needed his opinion on the possible uses for the Trickpack; his industrialist from the world of knick-knacks had found unimaginable ones, not least on the American market, where there was a law forbidding anyone from displaying the label of any alcohol in public. It was not unusual to see people in the street bringing brown paper bags up to their mouths; these were people who would welcome the Trickpack with open arms.
A limited company called Altux had just launched nine different versions of the Trickpack, four of them for invented drinks which played on the logos of well-known fizzy drinks. The others, contrary to all expectations, were well and truly real: five widely available brands (which, to cap it all, included a beer!) had agreed to put their logos on Trickpacks to send out a message which was heavily ironic. The Trickpack was sold in gadget shops and gift departments, and had already earned its creator a cheque for 435,000 francs.
For the first time in his life Nicolas could enjoy himself with no spending limit. He thought of giving himself some extravagant present which he really did not need, but which would have symbolic value. Twenty or thirty thousands francs spent in one go, without thinking about it, would mean he could always treasure the memory of a moment of madness. He started dreaming about a suit like
the ones in Mafioso films, pinstripes which can change a man into a thug, the sort of thing that might inspire respect in the likes of a Marcheschi. He tried one on, then another; by the third his heart was already no longer in it. He only had to see the suit jacket on his shoulders to be able to imagine it in his wardrobe, eaten by moth. The need to be invisible, which had been with him since his childhood, had become the only suit he wore; tailored from the very fabric of anonymity, it fitted him like a glove. He tried to look elsewhere for something that would make him happy: the 100 albums that he would like to listen to even if only once, the 1,000 books he had promised himself he would read one day, the films which would tell him about the world around him. But there was nothing he really longed for, the sense of urgency was somewhere else: every day, every night, here and now. Where had he found his share of excitement before? Nowhere – there was no before.
He had to face the facts: since he had taken up his quarters at the hotel (where nothing belonged to him except for the fundamentals, his time, his life and his body), material things had lost all their appeal; he now preferred admiring different scenery. The scenery at the Galeries Lafayette was no longer entertaining, and the urge to treat himself was fading away. If only he had inherited some passion from his childhood. He remembered envying other children their fads for model aeroplanes, miniatures, stamps or fishing; sometimes he had pretended to be interested in them, just to conform, but boredom had very quickly got the upper hand. He was one of those rare children who could sit motionless on a sofa for hours. People saw it as a sort of precocious wisdom, when it was in fact just withdrawal. Who could have guessed? Children have absolutely nothing to worry about, that is what their parents like to think.