Hunting and Gathering

  “A what?”

  “A guru, a coach, the rocket fuel . . . They had a lot of trouble having a kid so they finally adopted one. Fast forward, it’s 1977 and by now they were in deep trouble as a couple. He had gone sky-high, he was a star, a kind of god. And their divorce, like all divorces, was a big mess. I mean, what could you expect—there was so much at stake. Anyway, it was getting vicious so to calm things down and sort out the business side, Marvin’s lawyers suggested that all the royalties from the next album should end up in his ex’s purse. The judge agreed and our idol rubbed his hands: he’d decided he’d write just any old shit so that would be one hassle out of the way . . . Except that it turned out he couldn’t. You can’t sell off a love story just like that. Well, okay, maybe some people manage but not him. The more he thought about it, the more he realized it was too good an opportunity . . . or too pathetic. So he shut himself away and wrote this marvelous song that tells their whole story: how they met, their passion, hatred, anger . . . you hear that? Anger, when it all goes wrong? Then how you calm down and a new love starts . . . It’s a really beautiful gift, don’t you think? He poured his guts out, gave everything he could for an album that wouldn’t make him a cent no matter what.”

  “Did she like it?”

  “His ex?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, she hated it. She was hopping mad and for a long time she couldn’t forgive him for airing their dirty laundry in public. Listen, there it is, ‘This is Anna’s song,’ do you hear? Isn’t it beautiful? You have to admit it doesn’t sound anything like revenge. It’s still about love.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Makes you think.”

  “And you believe that?”

  “What?”

  “That the first love is always the last?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not.”

  They listened to the end of the disc in silence.

  “Hey, it’s almost four in the morning, shit. I’ll be in great shape again tomorrow.” He got to his feet.

  “Are you going to see your family?” she asked.

  “What’s left of it, yeah.”

  “Not much left?”

  “About this much,” he replied, holding his thumb and forefinger close together and squinting. “And you?”

  “This much,” she answered, passing her hand above her head.

  “Okay, then, welcome to the club. Right. G’night.”

  “Are you sleeping here?”

  “Does it bother you?”

  “No, no, I was just wondering.”

  He turned around: “Are you sleeping with me?”

  “Pardon?”

  “No, no, just wondering.”

  He chuckled.

  38

  WHEN Camille got up, at around eleven, Franck had already left. She made a big pot of tea and got back into bed.

  If I could tell you only one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my head.

  At the end of the afternoon she tore herself away from the story to go and buy some tobacco. This would be tricky on a holiday, but never mind, it was mainly a pretext so the story could settle and she’d have the pleasure of meeting up with her new friend again a bit later on.

  The major avenues of the 7th arrondissement were deserted. Camille walked a long time until she found a café that was open and while she was there she called her uncle. Some of the sting was removed from her mother’s jeremiads (“I ate too much” and so on) by the distant cheer of family effusiveness.

  There were already a lot of Christmas trees out on the sidewalk.

  She stopped for a moment to watch the acrobats on Rollerblades at the Trocadéro, and she was sorry she had not brought her sketchbook with her. It wasn’t so much their laborious leaping and jumping that interested her, but the ingeniousness of their props: wobbly spring-boards, little fluorescent cones, lines of bottles, upside-down pallets and a thousand other devices for them to break their necks on while their pants fell down.

  She thought about Philibert . . . What was he doing at that very moment?

  Before long the sun had disappeared and the cold had seized her. She ordered a club sandwich in one of the huge, plush brasseries which lined the square, and on the paper tablecloth she sketched the blasé expressions of the cute local boys as, with their arms around ravishing young women all dolled up like Barbies, they compared the checks their grandmothers had given them.

  She read another quarter inch of Edgar Mint, then crossed back over the Seine, shivering.

  She was dying of loneliness.

  I’m dying of loneliness, Camille muttered to herself, I’m dying of loneliness.

  Should she go to the cinema? Hmm . . . and afterwards, who would she talk about the film with? What use are emotions you keep all to yourself? Camille slumped against the front door to open it and felt a sharp disappointment when she found the apartment empty.

  She did some housekeeping for a change, then picked up her book. I never knew a sorrow that an hour of reading could not assuage, a great man had once said. Let’s put it to the test . . .

  When she heard the jingle of keys in the lock she adopted the pose of a person who really doesn’t care, tucking her legs up underneath her, wriggling on the sofa.

  He was with a girl. A different one. Not quite as flashy.

  They hurried along the corridor and shut themselves in his room.

  Camille put on some music to drown out their romping.

  Mmm.

  It was just too much. She could hardly believe it. Just way too fucking much . . .

  Finally, she picked up her book and migrated to the kitchen, at the far end of the apartment.

  A little while later, she overheard their conversation at the door.

  “What, you’re not coming?” said the girl, sounding surprised.

  “Nah, I’m wiped out, I don’t feel like going out.”

  “Hey, wait a minute, you’ve got a lot of nerve. I dumped my whole family to be with you. You promised we’d go and eat somewhere.”

  “I’m wiped out, I said.”

  “Go for a drink, at least?”

  “You thirsty? Want a beer?”

  “Not here.”

  “Yeah, but everything’s closed today. And I have to work tomorrow.”

  “I don’t believe this. I may as well just piss off, right?”

  “Aw, come on,” he said, more gently, “you’re not going to make a scene, are you . . . Come see me tomorrow night at the restaurant.”

  “When?”

  “Around midnight.”

  “Around midnight. As if.”

  “You mad or something?”

  “Ciao.”

  Franck didn’t expect to find Camille in the kitchen all wrapped up in her duvet.

  “You here?”

  She raised her eyes, without replying.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Like I’m some piece of shit or something?”

  “Not at all!”

  “Yes, you are, I can tell.” He was getting annoyed. “Do you have a problem with me?”

  “Hey, calm down! I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t care less about your life. Do whatever the hell you want. I’m not your mother!”

  “That’s more like it.”

  “What’s for dinner?” he asked, inspecting the interior of the fridge. “Not a thing, of course. There’s never anything in here. What do you and Philibert eat, anyway? Your books? The flies who end up in your blabbing mouths?”

  Camille sighed and reached for the corners of her heavy shawl. “Are you leaving? Did you eat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, right, I forgot. You’ve put on weight, looks like.”

  “Listen,” she shouted, turning back, “I don’t pass judgment on your life, so hands off of mine, all right? Anyway, aren’t you supposed to go live at a friend’s after the holidays? You are, aren’t you? So that mea
ns we only have one week to go. We should be able to manage that, don’t you think? So listen, the easiest thing would be that you just don’t say another word to me.”

  A bit later, he knocked on the door of her room.

  “Yes?”

  He tossed a package onto her bed.

  “What’s this?”

  He’d already gone.

  It was a soft square. The paper was hideous, all wrinkled, as if it had already been used several times, and it smelled funny. A closed-in smell. Like a cafeteria tray.

  Gingerly, Camille opened the package and at first glance thought it was one of those straggly things for mopping the floor. A dubious gift from her handsome hunk of a roommate. But it wasn’t, it was a scarf, very long and loose and rather badly knitted: a hole, a thread, two stitches, a hole, a thread, and so on . . . Some new kind of stitch? The colors were . . . different, to say the least.

  There was a little note with it.

  The handwriting of a turn-of-the-century schoolteacher, pale blue, wobbly, full of loops, apologetic.

  Mademoiselle,

  Franck wasn’t able to tell me the color of your eyes, so I put a bit of everything. I wish you a merry Christmas.

  Paulette Lestafier.

  Camille bit her lip. Besides the Kesslers’ book—which didn’t really count because the subtext went something like, Well, there are people who manage to put a body of work together—this was her only present.

  God, it was ugly. My God, it was lovely.

  She stood on her bed and wrapped it seductively around her neck, as if it were a boa, to entertain a marquis . . .

  Poo poo pi doo, waah.

  Who was Paulette? His mom?

  She finished her book in the middle of the night.

  Right. Christmas was over with.

  39

  SAME old boring routine: sleep, métro, stupid job. Franck wouldn’t speak to her and she avoided him as much as possible. He was almost never there at night.

  Camille decided to get out more. She went to see Botticelli at the Luxembourg, and Zao Wou-ki at the Jeu de Paume, but she rolled her eyes heavenward when she saw the line outside the Vuillard. Besides, there was Gauguin just opposite! What a dilemma: Vuillard was great, but Gauguin . . . A titan! She stood there like Buridan’s ass, torn between Pont-Aven in Brittany, Polynesian islands or the Place Vintimille. It was dreadful.

  She ended up sketching the people standing in line, the roof of the Grand Palais, and the stairway to the Petit Palais. A Japanese woman came up and begged her to go and buy a Vuitton bag for her. She held out four five-hundred-euro notes, jiggling in place as if it were a matter of life or death.

  Camille held out her arms. “Look,” she said in English, “look at me, I am too dirty.” She pointed to her clumpy shoes, her baggy jeans, her heavy truck driver’s sweater, her idiotic scarf, and the military cap that Philibert had lent her. “They won’t let me into the shop.” The girl made a face, put away her banknotes and went up to someone else thirty feet down the line.

  On an impulse, Camille made a detour down the avenue Montaigne. Just to see.

  The security guards were really impressive. She hated this area, where money had the least amusing things to offer: bad taste, power and arrogance. She hurried past the window of the Malo cashmere shop: too many memories. And on home, by the riverbank.

  At work, nothing to report. Once Camille had finished her shift it was the cold weather which was hardest to bear.

  She went home alone, ate alone, slept alone and listened to Vivaldi, hugging her knees.

  Carine had a plan for New Year’s Eve. Camille didn’t feel at all like going, but she’d already contributed her thirty euros so that they’d leave her alone, but also to back herself into a corner.

  “You have got to go out,” she lectured herself.

  “But I hate that sort of thing.”

  “Why do you hate it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you afraid of something?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of what?”

  “I’m afraid of someone shaking up my insides. And besides . . . I can get the same feeling of going out when I get lost inside myself. I wander around . . . There’s plenty of room in there actually.”

  “Are you nuts? It’s tiny! Come on, your insides are beginning to smell.”

  That was the type of conversation between herself and her poor conscience that could nibble away at her brain for hours on end . . .

  When she got home that evening, Camille found Franck out on the landing:

  “Did you forget your keys?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Have you been here long?”

  He made an irritated gesture in front of his mouth to remind her that he couldn’t speak. She shrugged her shoulders. She was too old to be playing at that sort of idiotic game.

  Franck went to bed without taking a shower, without smoking, without bugging her. He was done in.

  He came out of his room at about ten thirty the next morning. He hadn’t heard his alarm, and didn’t even have the energy to complain. Camille was in the kitchen, and he sat down across from her, poured himself a quartful of coffee and waited a moment before he started to drink it.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Tired.”

  “Don’t you ever take any vacation?”

  “Yes. Beginning of January. So I can move house.”

  She looked out the window.

  “Will you be here at around three?”

  “To open the door for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, I’ll be here.”

  “Don’t you ever go out?”

  “Sure, from time to time, but I won’t go out then because otherwise you can’t get in.”

  He shook his head like a zombie.

  “Okay, I’m out of here, otherwise the boss’ll scalp me.”

  He got up to rinse out his mug.

  “What’s your mother’s address?”

  He stood stock-still by the sink.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “To thank her.”

  “To thank her—” He had a frog in his throat, couldn’t speak. “Thank her for what?”

  “Well, for the scarf.”

  “Aah. That’s not my mother, she didn’t make it, it was my grandma.” He seemed relieved. “No one but her can knit like that.”

  Camille smiled.

  “Hey, you don’t have to wear it, you know.”

  “No, I like it.”

  “I nearly fell off my chair when she showed it to me.”

  He was laughing.

  “And wait, you haven’t seen a thing—wait’ll you see Philibert’s.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “Orange and green.”

  “I’m sure he’ll wear it. He’ll just be sorry he can’t kiss her hand to thank her for it.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought when I was leaving her place. It’s lucky for her it’s you guys. You two must be the only people on the planet I know who could wear anything so ugly and not look completely ridiculous.”

  She looked at him for a moment, then said, “Hey, do you realize you just said something nice?”

  “You think it’s nice when I treat you like a clown?”

  “I thought you meant that Philibert and I have a certain natural class.”

  He paused, then said, “Nah, I was talking about your . . . sense of freedom, I guess. How lucky you are to live the way you do and simply not give a damn.”

  His cell phone rang. Bad timing—just when he was trying to say something sort of philosophical.

  “Hey, boss, yeah, I’m on my way. Yes, it’s fine, I’m ready . . . Well, hey, Jean-Luc can do them . . . Hey, wait, boss, I’m in the middle of trying to get off with some girl who’s way more intelligent than I am, so, yeah, it is taking longer than usual . . . What? No, I haven’t called him yet . . . Anyway, I told you he wouldn’t be able to . . . Yes, I know they’re al
l swamped, I know . . . Okay, I’ll take care of it . . . I’ll call him right away . . . What was that? . . . Forget about it, with the girl? Yeah, I’m sure you’re right, boss . . .”

  “That was my boss,” he announced, flashing her a goofy smile.

  “Oh, really?” She acted surprised.

  He dried his mug and went out, catching the door just in time to stop it from slamming.

  Okay, the girl could be a bitch but she was anything but stupid, and that was good.

  With any other girl, he would have hung up and that was that. Whereas in this case he’d said, That was my boss, to make her laugh. And she was so clever that she’d feigned surprise to return the joke. Talking with her was like playing Ping-Pong: she kept up the pace and sent you a smash ball into the corner just when you least expected it, and as a result you got to feeling that perhaps you weren’t so clueless after all.

  He went down the stairs holding on to the banister and he could hear the creaking of the cogs and gears inside his head. Philibert had the same effect on him, which is why he enjoyed talking to him. Because Franck knew he wasn’t as thick as he might seem; his problem was words, that was all . . . He could never find the right words so he tended to get frustrated trying to make himself understood. It was true, and it really pissed him off in the end.

  That was one of the reasons he didn’t feel like leaving . . . What the fuck was he supposed to do over at Kermadec’s place? Booze, smoke, watch DVDs and leaf through car maintenance magazines on the toilet?

  Great.

  Back to being twenty years old again.

  He had trouble concentrating during his shift.