“Doesn’t she eat?”
“How would I know? And what do I care?”
“What’s her name?”
“Camille.”
“What is she like?”
“I just told you.”
“Her face?”
“Hey, why are you asking me all this?”
“To keep you here longer. No—because I’m interested.”
“Well, she has very short hair, almost shaved off, sort of brown. She has blue eyes, I think. I don’t know—well, light, in any case. She . . . oh, what the hell do I care, I told you.”
“What about her nose?”
“Normal. I think she has freckles too. She—why are you smiling?”
“No reason, I’m just listening . . .”
“All right, I’m out of here. You’re starting to get on my nerves.”
32
“I hate December. All those holidays, it’s so depressing.”
“I know, Mom. That’s the fourth time you’ve said that since I got here.”
“It doesn’t make you depressed?”
“So, what else is new? Have you been to the movies?”
“Why on earth would I go to the movies?”
“Are you going down to Lyon for Christmas?”
“I have to. You know what your uncle’s like. He couldn’t care less about my life, but if I miss his turkey, it’ll be all hell to pay. Are you coming with me this year?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I’m working.”
“Sweeping up the needles from the Christmas trees, I suppose,” she said sarcastically.
“Exactly.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“No.”
“Still, I can see how you might. It’s the height of misery, after all, isn’t it, to have to sit there with all those jerks around the Christmas pudding?”
“Don’t exaggerate. They’re still nice people.”
She made a dismissive sound and said, “Nice people—that’s depressing, too, but hey . . .”
“My treat,” said Camille, intercepting the bill. “I have to get going now.”
“Hey, you cut your hair, didn’t you,” said her mother when they were outside the métro station.
“I wondered when you were going to notice.”
“It is truly awful. Why did you do that?”
Camille ran down the stairs as fast as she could.
Air, quickly, air.
33
CAMILLE knew the girl was there even before she saw her. From the smell.
A sort of sweet and cloying perfume, nauseating. She dashed for her room and caught a glimpse of them in the living room. Franck was sprawled on the floor, laughing stupidly as he watched the girl sway her hips. The music was on full blast.
“Evening,” blurted Camille as she went by.
Closing her door, she heard him mutter, “Ignore her. Who gives a shit, okay? Go on, keep moving—that’s the way . . .”
It wasn’t music, it was noise. Enough to drive you crazy. Everything was vibrating: walls, picture frames, even the floor. Camille waited a few more minutes before interrupting: “Hey, you’d better turn it down. We’ll get in trouble with the neighbors.”
The girl stopped moving and began to giggle.
“Hey, Franck, is that her? Is that her, huh? Are you the Conchita?”
Camille stared at her for a long time. Philibert was right: it was truly amazing.
A distillation of silliness and vulgarity. Platform shoes, jeans with frills and flounces, black bra, fishnet sweater with holes, home-styled highlights and rubbery lips: picture-perfect.
“Yes, it’s me,” said Camille. Then, looking at Franck, “Turn it down, please.”
“Christ, you really know how to piss me off. Just go away. Go on beddy-bye in your basket.”
“Isn’t Philibert around?”
“No, he’s off with Napoleon. Go on, back to your basket, I said.”
The girl was laughing louder than ever.
“Where’s the bathroom?”
“Turn it down or I’ll call the cops.”
“Yeah, sure, you do that, call the cops and stop pissing us off. Go on! Get the hell out of here, I said!”
Out of luck. Camille had just spent a few hours with her mother.
But Franck had no way of knowing that.
So he was out of luck.
Camille turned on her heel, went into Franck’s room, trampling over his stuff. She opened the window, unplugged the stereo and tossed it out, from the fifth floor.
She went back into the living room and stated calmly, “That’s fine. No need to call the cops after all.” Then, as she turned to go, “Hey, close your mouth, bitch, you might swallow a fly.”
She locked herself in. He pounded on the door, shouted, brayed, threatened her with the worst sort of revenge. All that time she looked at herself in the mirror with a smile on her face, and saw a very interesting self-portrait there. Pity she was in no state to draw anything: her palms were too damp.
She waited until she heard the front door slam before she ventured back out into the kitchen for a bite to eat, and then she went to bed.
He took his revenge in the middle of the night.
At four in the morning Camille was awoken by a long, drawn-out clamoring coming from the room next door. He grunted, she moaned. He grunted, she moaned.
Camille sat up and waited for a moment in the dark, wondering if it might not be best just to throw her stuff together then and there, and head for home.
No, she murmured, no, that’s just what he wants. What a racket, I swear to God, what a racket. They must be forcing themselves, it’s impossible otherwise. He must have asked her to overdo it, there’s no way this could be natural. Hey, did the stupid girl come with a special wah-wah pedal or something?
Franck had won.
She’d made her decision.
She couldn’t get back to sleep.
She rose very early that morning and silently got to work. She took the sheets off the bed, folded them, and found a big bag in which to take them to the laundry. She got her things together and piled them into the same little box she had come with. She felt horrible. It wasn’t so much the idea of going back up there which bothered her, but of leaving this room. The scent of dust, the light, the soft rustling of the silk curtains, the cracking noises, the lamp shades, the misty mirror. The strange impression of living outside time. Far from the world. Philibert’s ancestors had eventually accepted her and she’d had a grand time drawing them in different guises and situations. The old Marquis above all had turned out to be much funnier than expected. Younger, jollier. She unplugged her fireplace and regretted the lack of any cord storage. She didn’t dare roll it along the corridor so she left it by the door.
Then she took her sketchbook, made herself some tea and went to sit in the bathroom. She had promised herself she’d take it with her. It was the loveliest room in the house.
She moved all of Franck’s things out of the way—his Mennen X deodorant for “us guys,” his scruffy old toothbrush, his Bic razors, his gel for sensitive skin (that beat everything), and his clothes, which stank of stale fat. She tossed everything into the bathtub.
The first time she’d come in here she couldn’t help but exclaim with delight, and Philibert had told her that the entire bathroom was a Porcher model, from 1894. It had been one of his great-grandmother’s whims: she was one of the most elegant Parisiennes of the Belle Époque. A bit too elegant in fact, if you were to judge by his grandfather’s eyebrows whenever he talked about her and told stories of her escapades. Better than Offenbach.
When the bathroom was first installed, all the neighbors gathered to complain because they thought it was going to go through the floor; then they came to admire and ooh and ah. It was the finest in the whole building, perhaps in the entire street.
It was intact, a bit chipped here and there, but intact.
Camille sat
on the laundry basket and drew the shape of the tiles, the friezes, the arabesques, the huge porcelain bathtub with its four lion’s-claw feet, the worn chrome, the enormous showerhead which had been inoperable since World War I, the soap dishes scalloped like holy water fonts, and the towel racks coming loose from the wall. The empty perfume flasks: Shocking by Schiaparelli, Transparent by Houbigant, Le Chic by Molyneux, the boxes of La Diaphane talcum powder. The blue irises which lined the bidet. And the sinks, so well wrought, so elaborate, so loaded with flowers and birds that she’d always felt reluctant about putting her hideous toilet bag down on the yellowed shelf. The original toilet bowl was no more, but the flush tank was still fixed to the wall. Camille completed her inventory with a sketch of the swallows that had been flitting to and fro up there for over a century.
Her sketchbook was nearly full. Only two or three more pages.
She didn’t have the heart to leaf through it, and she saw this as a sign. End of sketchbook, end of vacation.
She rinsed out her mug and left, closing the door behind her very quietly. While the sheets were spinning she went to Darty’s near the Madeleine and bought a new stereo for Franck. She didn’t want to owe him anything. She hadn’t had time to see the make of his stereo, so she let herself be guided by the salesman.
She liked that, being guided.
When she came back, the apartment was empty. Or silent. She didn’t try to find out which. She left the Sony box outside his door, piled the sheets onto her former bed, bade farewell to the ancestors’ gallery, closed the shutters, and rolled her fireplace as far as the pantry. She couldn’t find the key. Never mind; she put her box on top of the fireplace along with her kettle, and left for work.
As evening fell and the cold air did its dreary work, she could feel a dryness in her mouth, a pit in her stomach: the stones were back. She tried to use her imagination to keep from crying, and eventually persuaded herself that she was like her mother: holidays just irritated her.
She worked alone and in silence.
Camille didn’t feel like going on with the journey. Might as well face the facts: she wasn’t going to make it.
She would go back up there, into Louise Leduc’s room, and check out.
At last.
A little note on Monsieur Erstwhile Piglet’s desk roused her from her sordid thoughts:
Who are you? inquired a cramped, black handwriting.
She put down her spray bottle and her dusters, took a seat in the enormous leather armchair and looked for two sheets of white paper.
On the first she drew a sort of Sergeant Pete, hairy and toothless, leaning on a mop and smiling maliciously. A liter of red wine stuck out from the pocket of his shirt (clearly marked All-Kleen, professionals, etc.), and he said, Well, this is me.
On the second sheet she drew a 1950s pinup. Hand on hip, mouth like a hen’s ass, one leg at an angle, and breasts squeezed into a pretty lace apron. She was holding a feather duster, retorting, What do you mean? This is me.
She used a highlighter to give herself pink cheeks.
Because of the time wasted on this nonsense, Camille missed the last train and had to walk home. Puh, maybe it was just as well. Another sign, in the end. She’d almost touched bottom, but not just yet, was that it?
One more effort.
Another few hours in the cold and that would be it.
When she pushed open the front door she remembered that she hadn’t returned her keys and that she had to get her stuff out into the service stairway.
And write a little note to her host, perhaps?
Camille headed for the kitchen and was annoyed to see that there was a light on. Surely it would be Lord Marquet de La Durbellière, sad-faced knight, with his hot plum in his mouth and his arsenal of phony pretexts to make her stay. For a split second she thought of turning back. She didn’t have the strength to listen to his waffling. But, okay, just in case she didn’t die tonight, she did need her heater.
34
HE was at the other end of the table, fiddling with the opener on his beer can.
Camille closed her hand around the door handle and felt her nails go right into her palm.
“I was waiting for you,” he said.
“Oh?”
“Yeah.”
She was silent.
“Don’t you want to sit down?”
“No.”
They remained like that, in silence, for a long while.
“Have you seen the keys to the back stairs?” she asked, finally.
“In my pocket.”
“Give them to me.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want you to leave. I’m the one who’s gonna leave. If you’re not here, Philibert will be mad at me until the end of his days. Already earlier today when he saw your box he went berserk, and he hasn’t been out of his room since. So I’m going to leave. Not for your sake, for his. I can’t do that to him. He’d get the way he was before and I don’t want that. He doesn’t deserve it. He helped me when I was in deep shit so I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t want to see him suffer, or squirm like some worm whenever anyone asks him a question, no way, never again. He was already better before you got here but since you’ve been here he’s almost normal and I know he’s not taking as many pills either. You don’t need to leave. I’ve got a pal who can put me up until after the holidays.”
Silence.
“Can I have one of your beers?”
“Go ahead.”
Camille poured a glass and sat down across from him.
“Can I light a cigarette?”
“Go ahead, I said. Pretend I’m not here.”
“No, I can’t do that. It’s impossible. When you’re in the room, there’s so much electricity in the air, so much aggressive energy that I can’t be natural, so . . .”
“So, what?”
“So I’m like you, would you believe, I’m tired. Not for the same reasons, I suppose. I don’t work as hard, but the result’s the same. Different, but the same. It’s my head that’s tired, know what I mean? And plus, I want to leave. I realize I’m really not cut out to live with other people and I—”
“You?”
“No, nothing. I’m tired, like I said. And you’re incapable of talking to people in a normal way. You’re always shouting, you’re always so . . . in everyone’s face . . . I guess it’s because of your work, the atmosphere in the kitchen must rub off on you. I don’t know, and to be honest, I don’t really care. But one thing’s for sure: I’m going to give you back your privacy.”
“No, I’m the one who’s leaving. I have no choice, like I said. You matter more to Philou, you’ve become more important to him than me.
“That’s life,” he added, laughing.
And, for the first time, they looked each other in the eye.
“I fed him better than you will, that’s for sure! But I really don’t give a fuck about Marie Antoinette’s white hair. I really don’t give a rat’s ass about any of that and that was my undoing. Oh, hey, thanks for the stereo.”
Camille rose to her feet. “It’s more or less the same one, no?”
“Probably.”
“Great,” she concluded dully. “Okay, the keys?”
“Which keys?”
“Come on.”
“Your stuff is back in your room and I made your bed for you.”
“Did you short-sheet it?”
“Shit, you really are a bitch, you know that?”
She was going to leave the room, when he tipped his chin toward her sketchbook:
“Are you the one who does those?”
“Where’d you find it?”
“Hey, take it easy, it was here, on the table. I just looked at it while I was waiting for you.” She was about to pick it up when he added, “If I say something nice to you, will you promise not to bite my head off?”
“You can always try.”
He took the sketchbook, flipped through a few pag
es, put it back down and waited a moment longer until she finally turned around. “This is brilliant, you know. Really beautiful, really well drawn. It’s . . . Well, this is just me saying it, I don’t know that much about it, nothing at all even—but I’ve been waiting for you for almost two hours, in this kitchen where you freeze your balls off, and I didn’t notice the time go by. I wasn’t bored for one second. I looked at all these faces, here, old Philou and all these other folks. You really captured them, you really make them look beautiful . . . And the apartment too. I’ve been living here for over a year and I thought it was empty—I didn’t notice any of this stuff. But you—well, they’re just really good.”
Camille was quiet.
“Hey, now, why are you crying?”
“Just nerves, I suppose.”
“That’s a whole other ball game. You want another beer?”
“No, thanks, I’m going to bed.”
While Camille was in the bathroom she heard Franck banging loudly on Philibert’s door, shouting, “C’mon, man! It’s okay! She didn’t disappear! You can go and take a leak now!”
She thought she could see the Marquis smiling at her from between his sideburns as she turned out her lamp, and she fell asleep at once.
35
THE weather was gentler. There was a gaiety, a lightness, something in the air. People were rushing around hunting for presents, and Josy B. had dyed her hair yet again. A mahogany tint, really lovely, which enhanced the frames of her glasses. And Mamadou had bought a magnificent hairpiece. One evening, between two floors, Mamadou gave them a hairdressing lesson while the four of them clinked glasses, knocking back the bottle of sparkling wine they’d bought with the money from Josy’s winning lottery ticket.
“But how long do you have to stay at the hairdresser’s to get the hair plucked from your forehead like that?”