Early one morning, Yves Lehaleur was riding his scooter at the speed limit along a deserted freeway. He was sensitive to the autumnal atmosphere; he too felt he was in a moment of after. The time had come to put an end to that strange phase of his life that he had lived through like some long summer, troubled by unexpected encounters and the frenzy of sleepless nights. In less than a year, he had had enough extravagant experiences for an entire lifetime, far beyond the scope of any ordinary window installer. As he no longer had the means or the inclination to continue his experiences, they must now take their proper place in his memory. He would create a mosaic of the moments when he’d seen how he could go to any extreme, a vast fresco that would always remind him—now that he’d taken all those women into his bed, and listened to the tales of all those men—of how he had come to love the human comedy. He had worked it out: a single day, planned down to the hour, would suffice to put an end to the last convulsions of his debauched life, before it was time to invent the future of the new Yves Lehaleur.
He left the freeway at Palaiseau, and sooner than he’d expected he found the dry cleaner’s by the station with its orange sign, a relic of the 1970s. Through the tinted window he saw a woman in her sixties, wearing a dreary overall and waving a pole to reach the highest racks. He waited for the shop to empty, then went in and asked to see Annie—the real name of the villainous Maud, whose only known address, so hard to track down, was this shop in the outskirts of Paris.
“Who’s asking for her?”
“Yves. I’m a friend.”
How else could he introduce himself to a mother, whom Annie no doubt continued to call Maman?
“She’s still asleep. Do you mind waiting for a while? I hesitate to wake her up, she came in late.”
Madame Lemercier called to her husband, a little man bent over an ironing board, to introduce him to a friend of Nanou’s, and she asked him to keep an eye on things while she went to make some coffee. Yves found himself stuck with a cup in his hand between a Formica table and laundry driers spinning at full capacity; an aroma of Arabica mingled with the warm smell of steam.
“Annie has so many friends but I don’t know any of them.”
For a moment Yves was afraid that this tranquil, tired lady might, by friends, mean precisely the very men who were hardly likely to be found in her daughter’s company.
“With her job,” she continued, “it must be so hard to choose.”
He was equally fearful of what might be implied by the word job. She launched into a long summary of her lovely Nanou’s activities, which were fascinating, but complicated. She still did not altogether understand what that job consisted of, nor its purpose, but it had thrust her daughter into a whirlwind of responsibilities. To be in touch with so many individuals, from many different milieus; to have to remember all those names, and keep track of their contact information, and recognize every single face. It was not surprising that she came home so late, exhausted. But despite everything, that is what she was cut out to do. A gift. Already as a little girl. She was the one who organized the parties, the soirées, the year-end festivities. And she’d kept on with it, but now she was employed by big companies and big bosses, to look after their public image. After a childhood spent in their modest shop, you had to wonder where she had learned so much class, so much know-how.
Public relations? Why not, after all. Literally, that’s how you could sum up Maud’s career. Yves was curious to hear about the various stages that had driven a girl called Nanou, a lively, joyful child, lacking nothing, born to devoted parents, to prostitute herself by creating Maud. From the little her mother had told him, he could imagine this Nanou, first prize in the friendship category, a socialite before the term was even invented, more attentive to her social calendar than to her school notebooks, aware that she was pretty, and popular, but bitterly ashamed to see other families’ dirty laundry being washed by her own.
“I’ve become a specialist in cleaning cocktail dresses and Chanel suits. Sometimes I like to tell myself that if she always looks so impeccable, it’s partly due to me.”
Yves had to acknowledge his guilt for having crumpled not a few of those dresses himself, thus causing good Madame Lemercier to work overtime. Obviously she had to take care of numerous other household tasks, but looking after her little girl was, despite her age, a sweet obligation. And anyway, Annie paid her share, in her way; she may have had to spend recklessly at Hermès or Balenciaga—the job called for it—but she had plenty left over to give her parents presents.
“Sometimes she helps out in the shop.”
Twenty years later, Maud and Nanou were sharing the same roof. After renting out her sex until late at night, Maud went back to the Pressing de la Gare in Palaiseau and straight to sleep, exhausted by her double life. Nanou woke up late, rested after the previous night’s indiscretions, ready to reinvent the previous evening for her two greatest admirers. They were partial to names and details, and Nanou knew how to give them plenty. Their beloved daughter was on a first-name basis with television celebrities, and some of them invited her to their luxury hotel suites. Papa and Maman often wondered why, for all her Parisian high life, she had not met Mr. Right—they wanted so badly to have grandchildren. She was beginning to behave like an old maid averse to leaving her cocoon.
Yves understood by this that neither Nanou nor even Maud, despite her hundreds of lovers, had ever fallen in love.
Madame Lemercier sensed a faint trembling that would be inaudible to anyone else. She was about to appear. Yves saw Nanou coming down the stairs, her features still puffy with sleep, brown circles under her eyes, a smudge of mascara in the corner of her eyelid, her hair disheveled. Wearing a flannelette nightie so threadbare it was practically transparent, her feet in white mules she’d brought back from a luxury hotel, she closed her eyes with a final yawn. She opened them again on Yves Lehaleur and suddenly let go of the banister.
“Hello, Annie.”
She was speechless.
He could have just left them there without even saying another word. Just savoring Maud’s considerable discomfiture was revenge enough for Yves: she was ashamed to have been found out as Nanou, straight out of bed on top of it.
How many years of hiding had led to this moment, how many years of living life against the grain, patching makeup in nocturnal taxis, finding runs in her seamed stockings, stopping off at pharmacies after hours, so many sordid moments to overcome? She had managed so carefully to keep her dark secret from her parents, from the other neighborhood shopkeepers, and from her childhood girlfriends who still lived nearby. Now Yves had her at his mercy, in the palm of his hand; all he had to do was squeeze, and twenty years of depravity beyond suspicion would be reduced to nothing. He prolonged as best he could that spark of terror in her eyes, Maud the full-time whore and small-time thief.
And yet he had called her Annie. Maud would be able to negotiate.
Yves kissed her on both cheeks. I was just passing through. The mother served her daughter coffee in a cracked bowl with a yellow edge which probably dated back to childhood hot chocolates. Maud sought a reprieve during her short bitter sips, and managed to simulate the joy of seeing a friend again. I’m glad you stopped by. Yves did not seem to want to destroy anyone’s life, but no doubt he was going to ask her to pay the price of her felony. And she would pay, no matter the price. To fill the silence, Madame Lemercier told a story about little Nanou, one of those stories that overwhelm a mother with nostalgia and a child with shame. Annie threw her a look that seemed to say, Don’t bother, Maman, he’s not some chosen one I’ve been hiding from you, there is no chosen one.
After she had quickly pulled on her jeans, a sweater, and a pair of espadrilles, Annie walked with Yves back to his scooter.
“Tell me what you want.”
“I got what I wanted.”
“To humiliate me?”
“Of all the s
uperb whores I’ve met, you are the one whose other life I have most wanted to know about.”
“Are you disappointed?”
“No, not at all. I’m glad to have met Nanou. Commonplace, to be sure, but so much more believable than Maud.”
“We all play a part.”
“And of all the whores I’ve known, you are the worst actress. You lie to your parents, you lie to your clients, but the one you’re lying to the most is your own self. You dress up like a seductress, as if you’d been dreaming of some fairy costume. But you ought to know that the only mistress in you that anyone could enjoy is the schoolmistress. You think you can turn men’s heads, but all you have are clients like me who like to get your satin bolero jackets dirty.”
She did not answer.
“Make your peace with Nanou. Everything will go better after that. You’ll avoid any more rough spots.”
Yves put on his helmet, to ward off kisses as much as blows. He kick-started the scooter right away. Into the pocket of his jacket she slid Grandfather Horace’s flask. He looked into her eyes to say goodbye then pulled out into the street, rode around the town for a short while, and found the road back to Paris. Time to deal with the next one.
At eleven o’clock, Denis was finishing up setting the tables for lunch when his boss stuck his head outside to decide whether to use the terrace or not. In early autumn it was still debatable. A faint ray of sunshine was threatening to break through the gray veil of mist. They set up a few tables on the sidewalk.
Most of the brigade congregated on the terrace to share either the beef with carrots or the salmon cooked on salt, which was the plat du jour. Denis was more talkative than usual, displaying a systematic, biting irony. As was usual before the noontime rush, he had drunk only water, and yet his joyful misanthropy seemed to stem from a sudden drunkenness. Nothing was spared: the chef’s new menu, the bartender’s stress, the boss’s anal behavior, but above all the diners’ moods, and by diners you were meant to infer all of humanity, that drearily predictable mob, that catalog of noxious creatures. Denis drew up a long list of daily oddities, ludicrous whims, bottomless pettiness. Don’t even try to settle the score with people who are cantankerous or authoritarian, vulgar or bad-mannered; you can tell who they are the moment they sit down. Denis’s condemnation was aimed, rather, at the devious types, whose courtesy was more strategic than sincere. Polite people were often hiding their condescension toward servants. The friendly ones betrayed how uncomfortable they were with class differences. If they were generous, they expected to be treated like royalty. In sum, any individual who went into a place in order to have food served to him was suspect. All the waiters could recall certain regular customers or typical phrases, and they added their personal touches to Denis’s eloquent exposé. Yet Denis was not fooled by his own disingenuousness; as a good professional waiter working at a brasserie, he was no longer offended by the everyday lack of elegance. That morning, Denis Benitez’s bitter loquaciousness, enough to make him despair of his peers, was aimed straight at Marie-Jeanne Pereyres.
Weary of blaming her for her stubborn refusal to share any of her plans, all that was left was to take it out on other people, on everyone he could.
Yves drove past the Montparnasse cemetery along the Boulevard Edgar-Quinet, and stopped his scooter outside a café where Jacek Kowalczyk was waiting for him. Ever since they had met on the construction site of a private villa in Saint-Cloud, Yves had been giving out Jacek’s contact information to those in need of a good electrician; Jacek never failed to thank him, but the opportunities to do it in person were rare. Yves was relieved to see him there, sitting at a table, but surprised to see he was not alone. Jacek introduced a little blonde woman with curly shoulder-length hair, chubby cheeks, and a worried smile on her lips.
“This is my wife, Ewa.”
Yves complimented Madame Kowalczyk, then shot a dark look at his colleague.
“I told you it was about a delicate matter.”
“Exactly! I brought her along to help. Especially with this sort of business . . . ”
Jacek’s blunder was compounded by his wife’s accusing expression: to be requisitioned for some sex scandal! Bound to be some crooked business, the way it always was. At opposite extremes from her concerns as a wife and mother and worker. Yves felt he was being judged by the woman’s gaze, and as the conversation progressed he began to feel more and more uncomfortable, and it only got worse when Agnieszka walked through the door. Since their last meeting, the marks on her face from the attack had vanished, but an invisible veil had tarnished the bloom of her features, and the spark of naïveté in her eyes had disappeared. Yves, in French, invited her to sit down, then handed it over to Jacek.
“Explain to her that for once I’m going to need a translator. Two, as it happens.”
Yves heard from Jacek’s intonation that he was trying to be diplomatic, then saw the relief in Agnieszka’s eyes, their shared delight at becoming acquainted in their native tongue. In Ewa’s eyes he read a mixture of curiosity and reserve regarding a woman who had chosen prostitution to earn her living. Had the girl’s obvious beauty had anything to do with it? Had both of them emigrated for the same reasons? Had Agnieszka suffered, as she had, during her childhood? What ties had she maintained with their country? Among their first words, Yves thought he recognized the word Kraków, then a few dates, and it all resembled a ritual between two immigrants from the same country: place of birth, date of arrival in France, profession. The dialogue quickly lapsed into easy chatter, and Yves no longer dared intervene. Ewa had let her guard down, and asked a question that made Agnieszka laugh.
“What are they saying?”
“Nothing,” answered Jacek. “Ewa just made a joke, you can’t translate.”
Yves gave a faint smile to join in the sudden conviviality then, as if giving a discreet call to order, he placed an airplane ticket on the table.
“Round-trip for Warsaw. Tell her the return is open but she doesn’t have to use it.”
Ewa translated in Jacek’s place, so mindful of accuracy that she even imitated Yves’s intonation.
“I’ve added €2,000 to make up for loss of earnings. Tell her to use the trip as a vacation, more than anything. To make the most of it to see her family.”
This time, after his wife had translated, Jacek added a detail that his wife immediately questioned, and which gave rise to controversy. Jacek was trying to get Agnieszka’s consent about a precise detail but Ewa would not let go, for that particular point required a sense of nuance that was lost on her husband. Yves wondered what he was doing there.
“Can you explain what is going on?”
“It’s nothing,” said Jacek, “but my wife wants to know how long it takes Agnieszka to earn €2,000.”
“What on earth!” exclaimed Ewa. “He doesn’t know how to translate ‘loss of earnings.’”
Yves began to feel a tug of annoyance; he had hoped, in a way, despite the strangeness of the situation, to keep it solemn. Now he was sorry he’d called on others; never, before now, had he needed anyone to convey even the most subtle argument to Agnieszka.
“Listen, you two. This girl has been having a rough time ever since she got to Paris—she may be brave but she’s in constant fear. Of the police, of being attacked, of her family finding out what she does for a living, and worse yet, she’s afraid her family might forget all about her. She takes it because she’s learned to take it, but sooner or later something pretty awful will happen to her.”
After what she’d been through, wasn’t it time for Agnieszka, who was still in shock and beset by doubt, to seize this chance to start over? Once she recovered from this attack, nothing—not the next attack, or the one after that, or any of the psychological or physical attacks to come—would stop her from following a destiny that was all mapped out. Now was the time to transform her misfortune into an opportunity, before
her delicate skin grew tough as leather and her heart hardened until she no longer felt a thing.
“I get the impression your wife just asked her something, but I didn’t ask any questions!”
“Ewa asked Agnieszka if she had many clients who gave her gifts like this.”
“And what did she say?”
“That you were the first.”
Yves’s instinct had been right, his fair lady was homesick, and this joyful impromptu encounter with people from back there was ample confirmation of the fact. Ewa, vested with a solemn mission, wanted to be a loyal spokeswoman, but she could not help but exaggerate: she was burning with solidarity, mixing her story up with Agnieszka’s in a flood of words she could not contain. Soon the two women forgot their surroundings, an anecdote seemed to lead to a confession, a digression, and a host of childhood memories, for one in Lublin, for the other in Kraków. Yves looked at his watch again and fidgeted with impatience, worried he would not have his say.
“Now what are they saying?”
“Agnieszka has a sister who is studying in Kraków, in a neighborhood not far from where Ewa was born. They have found a place they both know, a little neighborhood bistro where they serve an onion salami. But they are wondering whether they might have met at the Christmas mass at the Polish Catholic Mission on the Rue Saint-Honoré.”
Yves was speechless.
Jacek took the opportunity, while the two women were lost in conversation, to lower his voice and ask, “Out of curiosity, how much do you pay for an hour with a girl like her?”
Even if he had wanted to, Yves did not have time to reply. As if she sensed her husband had said something appalling, Ewa rebuked him for never surprising her with a trip—thus, without realizing it, suggesting a much better way for him to spend his money.