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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2011 by Editions Gallimard, Paris
Translation by Alison Anderson
Original Title: Homo erectus
Translation copyright © 2012 by Europa Editions
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Cover Art by Emanuele Ragnisco
www.mekkanografici.com
Cover illustration by Luca Laurenti
ISBN 9781609458652
Tonino Benacquista
THE THURSDAY NIGHT MEN
Translated from the French
by Alison Anderson
To all the women in my life
1
For some of them, it was an opportunity to meet on their own, among men, to talk about women. Others were in need of solidarity, and this was their last refuge, where the deep wounds from the never-ending battle would have time to heal. For everyone, no matter where they were from or what they had experienced, it was first and foremost a place to tell a story. Or, to make a clean breast of it, not trying to convince anyone or thinking of it as therapy, not hoping for anything in return other than to have their words strike a chord with those anonymous listeners who’d come in search of an answer. Each participant was the sole judge of his story’s validity and had any number of reasons to share it. Perhaps he wanted to get it off his chest once and for all, or to give it the false veneer of a fable, transforming it into an epic memory. He could also share his story in order to help others, to keep them from wallowing in a similar torment. Or perhaps his motive was the chance, in the presence of others, to go back over the many choices he had had to make, the twists of fate he had managed to avoid. And, if his misadventure had turned to tragedy, by sharing it here he would find consolation that he had not suffered in vain.
The regular participants kept quiet about the existence of these sessions. If they had to mention them, they would resort to neutral expressions, calling it their Thursday group. Lodge, club, coterie, brotherhood: the fact that each member could use the term of his choice to designate the assembly prevented any temptation to turn it into a ritual or let it become a secret society, with the requisite laws and exclusions. Still, only sincere individuals were tolerated, men who had no malicious intent. Anyone else never came back, or only in an emergency, for no one, in these matters, was safe from a stroke of fate.
There were no written records regarding the brotherhood, and no one knew how it had come about. Poets and storytellers claimed it had been around since time immemorial, a place for men to gather in a forum and try to understand the infinite workings of the random events that governed their destiny. Some maintained that the tradition had been born with the despair of the Sabines as they mourned their women, whom the Romans, bent on founding families for their Empire, had abducted. Others supported the idea that the tradition had been imported from North America, the offshoot of an ancient Indian custom where warriors sang their joy, or their distress, at having met, or failed to meet, the mother of their children. Another theory posited that it had been formed during the post-war reconstruction, to allow survivors to evoke the idylls incited by the dark years, in each of the camps. Others, finally, claimed that they had attended the very first sessions in the late 1960s, in Paris, a time when social movements and the sexual revolution were giving rise to all sorts of committees—some of which, like this one, had survived, even though there’d been no proselytizing.
Nowadays the sessions were held on Thursdays at seven p.m., including holidays, summer and winter alike—there was no season, no respite, for a meeting like this. The number of participants did not vary greatly, and that was a real mystery. Given the diversity of those attending—some were just passing by, some disappeared once they’d shared their testimony, others waited for months before they could bring themselves to speak; some were regulars, some showed up again at a scheduled date—an odd law seemed to hold that their numbers always balanced out at roughly a hundred, give or take a few. The mystics among them saw this as a magic number, but the more pragmatic attendees could see no rational explanation. In spite of the absence of by-laws, there was one law that seemed irrevocable: a participant could have his say only once. Even if there were unexpected repercussions, out of respect for the audience, a speaker was not allowed to go back over his testimony at a later date, once it had been voiced. Tough luck for those who hadn’t known how to express what was in their hearts: others were waiting their turn.
While the day for the meeting never varied, the venue changed regularly: empty, anonymous apartments, private rooms in bistros, cellars that were barely furnished, abandoned theatres and cinemas, derelict buildings scheduled for demolition. No matter where the men met, and despite their great discretion, they always ended up making the landlords, managers, or neighbors suspicious: they had no idea what these occult meetings were about, so they imagined all sorts of conspiracies or twisted intrigues, and eventually asked them to get the hell out. So everyone came up with new suggestions, even the most off the wall sorts of places, and more often than not a new venue was found.
It was early spring then, and the sessions were being held not far from the Place de la Nation in the prefabricated premises of a technical high school that had burned down ten years earlier. Before those temporary classrooms were demolished to make room for a permanent construction, the guidance counselor took advantage of the headmistress’s tolerance in order to lend out one of them. When she asked, What sort of meetings? the counselor replied, It’s a non-profit organization that studies contemporary society and mores.
There were some new faces that Thursday. A tall, dark-haired fellow in his early forties slipped into the back of the room. Yves Lehaleur, in his black jeans and motorcycle jacket, had a casual air about him, as if he were just a visitor—he’d even prepared his answer in case anyone asked, I’m just visiting, but no one ever asked any questions, even inadvertently. Being back in a classroom made him think of the few exams he’d taken in his life—back in the days when someone had checked the working life box on his report card, and his parents, who had worked all their lives, had not protested. Before walking into the room Yves had been obliged to set aside a sort of hereditary complex that made him feel he did not belong there, particularly if it meant having to get up and speak. The friend who had told him about the brotherhood had reassured him on that score.
“As long as you don’t disrupt the flow of the meeting, and don’t leave the room while someone is speaking, you don’t have to say a thing.”
This final argument was what persuaded him in the end. The anger he felt inside and his need to vent it took care of the rest.
A first speaker—over seventy, probably the oldest one there—raised his hand, saw that no one else had raised his, and headed up to the teacher’s podium, where he stood next to a leatherette armchair spilling its yellow foam guts. He had attended the three previous sessions before deciding, this evening, to take the plunge.
After a few weeks of palliative care at the Hôpital de Villejuif, his wife had died in his arms. He related the events as if he’d gone through a sort of reverse adolescence, that time in life when everything happens for “the first time”: the first cigarette, the first love letter, the first kiss. In that sterile hospital room, he and his wife had just had their sweet, beautiful last times together—their last laugh, their last glass of alcohol, their last k
iss. He had read her an entire novel by an author she liked: the very last book in a long life of ardent reading.
“She left like that, in a breath, her eyes wide open.”
Then he spoke about his life to come, because he would have a life to come. The final days of the woman he had loved so dearly were not his final days, and while he might not come right out and say it, it was a confession all the same. Infinitely tender, she had told him, Don’t stay by yourself. He had replied, Don’t be silly, but there was nothing silly about it. This evening he was saying as much, and with a hundred people as his witnesses. Other than to an audience like this, to whom did an old man have the right to say that he still had enough life left in him to fall in love? That all those first times could come once again?
There were some who were convinced they would die alone the way they had lived alone, and therefore his story did not touch them. Others did not rule out the possibility that some day they might ask themselves the same questions as this newly-widowed participant. Custom had it that no one must react to any of the stories; it was a tacit but essential rule for all those who, like Yves Lehaleur, feared any confrontation. Every individual was entitled to speak without fear of counterpoint, question, or commentary, no matter how kindly. Neither distress nor joy was a cause for debate. There had been such rich, fervent silence; any everyday platitude would have ruined it in an instant. But nothing prevented a participant from going up to someone at the end of a session to exchange a few words, go back over a detail, offer or ask for clarification. It was not unusual to see little groups form, prolonging the meeting with a conversation at a bistro, but that was no longer a matter for the brotherhood, and it happened elsewhere.
Others came up to the podium; the length of their talks varied. One of them related how he had fallen in love at first sight, in very particular circumstances: a week earlier, at the bottle bank, he had met a young woman who, like him, was recycling her empty bottles.
“It’s the sort of situation where you would rather there weren’t any witnesses. Whether you’re holding a bottle of Benedictine or a jar of ratatouille you always feel a bit ridiculous.”
But the girl was dispatching her chore with the majestic flourish of a queen granting clemency to an unfortunate wretch. She honored every label with a final gaze, as if saying goodbye, and yet it was the very same wine that the speaker preferred over all others: a Puligny-Montrachet, a white Burgundy. He had appropriated it, labeled it his favorite, had become its greatest advocate, so much so that when he described it, he was describing himself: a wine that was neither modest nor pretentious, a wine that was elegant yet accessible, a wine that needed neither feast nor ceremony to come into its own. On the contrary, this wine was never more eloquent than when accompanying the complicitous inebriation of a romantic rendezvous. And the beautiful stranger he’d met on the street corner seemed to drink nothing else.
“Yet there were more surprises in store. The last bottle was the coup de grâce: a Petrus Boonekamp.”
A name that would mean nothing to those present, who were hardly amateurs of bitter liqueurs.
“It’s Dutch, black as gall, and it tastes like it too. I always have some at home.”
He had never met anyone who shared his penchant for that thick bile, meant to be drunk like a shot of sheer nastiness. More than once he had tried to convert a friend, but they had all spat it back out like a spurt of ink. And while he hadn’t dared react as the empties of Puligny-Montrachet were flashing before his eyes, this unhoped-for appearance of the Petrus Boonekamp provided him with an opportunity to speak to the astonishing young woman. They debated the relative merits of Hungarian Unicum, German Jägermeister, and Italian Fernet-Branca, but nothing, in their opinion, nothing could equal the Petrus Boonekamp. The uninitiated—everyone else, in other words—were not worthy of such an elixir, or of its benefits, or of its mysterious ingredients, or of its closely kept recipe. They went even further: if you could handle that much bitterness, it was proof of an intense inner life.
There was a moment of awkwardness at the end of their exchange: they became two strangers standing next to a gutter. She said, No fruit juice, not a single water bottle, just booze, I’m ashamed. And as if to confirm her single status: The worst of it is that I don’t even share it with anyone.
It had been terribly unwise of him to let her get away. Ever since, he had been feeling bankrupt, ashamed he hadn’t been able to hold onto the only woman whom fate had so clearly earmarked for him.
“If two people can get along because they think the same, then this was the woman for me.”
As the weeks went by he waited, hoped, even kept a lookout for her. She must live only a stone’s throw from his own place, and the only link he could count on from then on was the bottle bank. He went there as often as he could, knowing full well that chance, like lightning, would never strike twice in the same place, but nearby—at a local shop, in one of the adjacent streets, in the nearest park, and at the most unexpected time.
Those in the audience who had fallen in love in unusual circumstances silently wished him luck. He went back to his seat, and another man came to lean against the blackboard; he took a deep breath then launched into a confusing story, told all out of order, mingling objective information and personal points of view. He described himself as physically unattractive, rather gauche and irascible—something his listeners saw as the typical pose of a person who wants to produce the opposite effect. He said it was beyond his ability to avoid quarrels or power struggles, principally with women. Until the day he had met a certain Nadine, a sort of alter ego who, similarly, described herself as ugly and not very cultured.
“We’re not in love, we won’t grow old together, but together we are irresistible.”
He made a comparison with two chemical components that are harmless on their own but explosive the moment they are mixed together. If anyone didn’t understand what he meant, he was referring to the mathematic principle whereby the sum of two negatives is a positive: minus plus minus equals plus. Driven by their bitterness and frustration, and a thirst for revenge, they formed a couple not so much to nurture one another as to devour everything around them. And as they were not fated to stay together in a relationship, and had nothing to build, they remained separate individuals, without any fear of revealing their shadow sides. She laughed at his fits of anger, he couldn’t care less if she was dishonest, and when they did happen to spend the night together, they would betray the secrets of their own sex while going on and on about the opposite sex. But that was not their favorite pastime. Left to their own devices, they turned into formidable predators. In public, this meant provoking, acting debauched and, if either one of them was attracted to someone else, the other partner would give instructions on how to proceed. Their victims were fascinated by the strange game this extravagant couple played, and fell all too easily into the trap.
Yves Lehaleur studied the speakers for inspiration, for the day he would feel ready. But how could you find inspiration among such atypical cases, when their logic, while it deserved to be exposed, only seemed valid to the interested party? Two seats over from him sat another newcomer, Denis Benitez, head waiter at a renowned Paris brasserie, a bachelor like so many others and then some. One evening when he was complaining about living alone, his brigade’s maître d’ hinted covertly at the existence of a circle he used to frequent, where guys who have a story to tell would get together, regardless of the nature of their confession, banal or extravagant. The maître d’ had since remarried, and no longer felt the need to attend, but he still felt a certain affection for those who’d been a part of it. Denis had decided to take the plunge, and now he was about to speak out, unafraid of being ridiculed—unlike Yves Lehaleur, after twenty years working at a brasserie he had no difficulty at all speaking to complete strangers. And God knows that what he had to say was irrational, and might seem like vain, absurd, disproportionate navel-gazing,
or even just terribly naïve, to any other assembly. Except this one.
“Maybe everyone else here has a story to tell, but not me: I don’t have a story. I’ve been living without a woman for years now, which wouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary if I hadn’t managed to figure out the reason why—and the reason is out of the ordinary.”
Denis had grown up to be a typical young man with a determination to enjoy life before he thought of settling down. He had fallen in love dozens of times, and he had charming memories of the many young women he had lured into his bed. But by the time he turned thirty, and finally felt ready for a lasting relationship, the women had begun to flee.
“At first I put it down to bad luck, since I’d been attracted to women who were married or engaged, or women who were in love and happy in their relationship and made that dead clear to me. I was careful from then on to avoid that kind of obstacle, but there were others barring the way. Right from the first date the woman would announce that she’d love to have me as the friend she’d never had, or she’d hand me her résumé as a barmaid, or she’d make it clear that she didn’t want to get involved for the time being. The list started to get long.”
After numerous attempts he came to realize that the range of excuses was infinite—as if simply suggesting to a stranger that he’d like to see her again had become the most unnatural gesture on earth. What had happened to make women so evasive, to the point where they would give him a wrong number or never return his calls?
“And God only knows, as a waiter, I have the odds on my side. I would say that on average, fifty to eighty times a day, I ask my customers, on their own or in a group, What would make you happy today?”
From his very first day on the job, he had entertained countless women with his joking manner, or flattered them with his attention. Very often, when clearing the tables, he found napkins scribbled with flirtatious messages: Denis, I’ve got your number, here’s mine, or I’m coming back for dinner on Tuesday, alone this time, or even, in English, What a waiter! He would share them with his brigade, then toss them out, and he never tried to contact any of their authors; a minimum of professional ethics held him back. Over time, his success faded, for no reason, as if he had lost some of his presence and charisma.