by Anna Gavalda
He turned to face the fire.
‘Garden variety, but not very sharp, right? I waited to have dinner with him. I waited for hours. Sometimes I even fell asleep waiting for him … He would finally come home, wearing a long face, with his tail between his legs. I would yawn and stretch and guide him to the kitchen, bustling about. He wasn’t hungry, of course, he had the decency to not have any appetite. Or maybe they had already eaten? Most likely …
‘It must have been hell for him to sit across from me! What a trial I must have been with my cheerful nature and my soap opera stories about the goings-on of Firmin-Gédon Square. Torture for him, when I think of it … Lucie lost a tooth, my mother’s not doing well, the Polish au pair girl who looks after little Arthur is going out with the neighbour’s son, I finished my sculpture this morning, Marion cut her hair and it looks terrible, the teacher needs egg-boxes, you look tired, take a day off, give me your hand, do you want some more spinach? Poor thing … a form of torture for an unfaithful but scrupulous husband. What torture … But I didn’t suspect a thing. I didn’t see it coming, do you understand? How could I have been so blind? How? Either I was completely stupid or completely trusting. It amounts to the same thing, really …’
I leaned my chair back.
‘Oh, Pierre … What a bad joke life is …’
‘It’s good, isn’t it?’
‘Very. Too bad it doesn’t keep any of its promises …’
‘It’s the first time I’ve drunk it.’
‘Me too.’
‘It’s like your rosebush; I bought it for the label …’
‘Mm. A bad joke … What stupidity.’
‘But you’re still young …’
‘No, I’m old, I feel old. I’m all used up. I feel like I’m going to become wary. I’ll watch my life through a peephole. I won’t open the door. “Step back. Let me see your hands. That’s good, now the other. Don’t scuff the parquet. Stay in the hallway. Don’t move.”’
‘No, you’ll never become that kind of woman. As much as you might want to, you can’t. People will keep walking into your life, you will continue to suffer and it’s better that way. I’m not worried about you.’
‘No, of course not.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Of course you’re not worried about me. You don’t worry about people, ever …’
‘That’s true, you’re right. It’s hard for me to care.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. Because other people don’t interest me, I suppose …’
‘… except Adrien.’
‘What do you mean, Adrien?’
‘I think about him.’
‘You worry about Adrien?’
‘Yes, I think so … Yes.
‘At any rate, he’s the one I worry about the most.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he’s unhappy.’
I was completely taken aback.
‘Well, now I’ve heard everything! He’s not unhappy at all … On the contrary, he’s very happy! He’s traded in his boring, used wife for a brand-new, amusing model. His life is a lot more fun today, you know.’
I looked at my wrist.
‘Let’s see, what time is it? A quarter to ten. Where is our martyr now? Where could he be? At the movies, or the theatre perhaps? Or maybe they’re having dinner somewhere. They must have finished their starter by now … He caresses her palm while dreaming about later. Careful, here comes the main course, she pulls her hand back and gives him a smile. Or perhaps they’re in bed … That’s most likely, isn’t it? In the beginning one makes love a lot, if I remember correctly …’
‘You’re being cynical.’
‘I’m protecting myself.’
‘Whatever he’s doing, he’s unhappy.’
‘Because of me, you mean? I’m spoiling his fun? Oh, that ungrateful woman …’
‘No. Not because of you, because of him. Because of this life, which never does what you want it to. Our efforts are so laughable …’
‘You’re right, the poor thing …’
‘You’re not listening to me.’
‘No.’
‘Why aren’t you listening to me?’
I bit into a piece of bread.
‘Because you’re a bulldozer, you flatten everything in your path … For you, my sorrow is … what? … a burden, and soon it will start to get on your nerves. And then this thing about blood ties … This stupid notion … You didn’t give a damn about taking your children in your arms, about telling them that you loved them even once, but despite this, I know that you’ll always leap to their defence. No matter what they say or do, they will always be right in contrast to the rest of us barbarians – the ones who don’t have the same name as you.
‘Your children haven’t given you a whole lot of reasons to be happy, but you’re the only one who can criticise them. The only one! Adrien takes off and leaves me here with the girls. All right, that bothers you, but I’ve given up hope of hearing you speak a few harsh words against him. A few harsh words … it wouldn’t change anything, but it would give me a bit of pleasure. So much pleasure, if you only knew … Yes, it’s hopeless. I’m hopeless. But just a couple of heartfelt words, really bitter words, the ones you know so well how to say … Why not for him? I deserve that, after all. I’m waiting for the condemnation of the patriarch seated at the head of the table. All these years I’ve listened to you divide up the world. The good and the bad, those who have earned your respect and those who haven’t. All these years I’ve run up against your speeches, your authority, your commander-in-chief expressions, your silences … So much arrogance. So much arrogance … While all along being a pain in the arse, Pierre …
‘You see, I’m not that complicated a person and I need to hear you say, “My son is a bastard, and I ask for your forgiveness.” I need that, do you understand?’
‘Don’t count on it.’
I cleared the plates.
‘I wouldn’t count on it.’
‘Would you like dessert?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t want anything?’
‘So it’s ruined … I must have pulled on the wrong thread …’
I wasn’t listening anymore.
‘The knot is tightened, and here we are, further apart than ever. So I’m an old bastard … A monster … And what else?’
I was looking for the sponge.
‘And what else?’
I looked him right in the eyes.
‘Listen to me, Pierre; for years I lived with a man who couldn’t stand up straight because his father hadn’t given him the support he needed. When I met Adrien, he didn’t dare do anything for fear of disappointing you. And everything he did disappointed me because he never did it for himself, he did it for you. To amaze you or to irritate you. To provoke you or to please you. It was pathetic. I was barely twenty years old and I gave up my life for him. To listen to him and stroke his neck when he finally opened up. I don’t regret it, I couldn’t do anything else, anyway. It made me sick to see someone abase himself like that. We spent whole nights unravelling things and putting them in perspective. I gave him a shaking-up. I told him a thousand times that he was taking the easy way out. The easy way out! We made resolutions and then we broke them, we made others, and then finally I quit my studies so that he could pick his up again. I rolled up my sleeves and for three years I dropped him off at the university before going off to waste time in the basement of the Louvre. It was our deal: I wouldn’t complain as long as he didn’t talk about you. I’m not special. I never said he was the best. I just loved him. Loved. Him. Do you know what I’m talking about?’
He said nothing.
‘So, you can see why I’m a little unhappy today …’
I wiped the sponge around his hands that were placed on the table.
‘He got his confidence back; the prodigal son is a new man. He can sail his boat like a big boy, and here he is, discarding his old self, right und
er the nose of his big, bad father. You have to admit, it’s a little rough, no?’
Silence.
‘You have nothing to say?’
‘No. I’m going to bed.’
I set the machine going.
‘That’s it, good night.’
• • •
I bit my cheeks.
I kept some dreadful things to myself.
I took my glass and went to sit on the couch. I took off my shoes and sank into the cushions. I got up to get the bottle from the table. I poked the fire, turned out the light, and buried myself there.
I regretted not being drunk yet.
I regretted being there.
I regretted … I regretted so many things.
So many things …
I laid my head on the armrest and closed my eyes.
‘ARE YOU ASLEEP?’
‘No.’
He went to pour himself a glass of wine and sat down in an armchair next to the sofa.
The wind continued to blow. We sat in the dark. We watched the fire.
From time to time, one of us took a drink and then the other followed suit.
We were neither happy nor sad. We were tired.
After a very long moment he said:
‘You know, I wouldn’t be the person you said I was if I had had more courage …’
‘I’m sorry?’
I already regretted having answered him. I didn’t want to talk about this shit anymore. I just wanted to be left in peace.
‘Everyone always talks about the sorrow of those left behind, but did you ever consider the sorrow of the ones who leave?’
Here we go again, I thought to myself, what kind of crazy idea is he going to try and put over on me now, the old fool?
I looked around for my shoes.
‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow, Pierre, I’m going … I’m fed up with this.’
‘The sorrow of those who cause unhappiness … We pity the ones who stay, we comfort them, but what about those who leave?’
‘What else do they want?’ I exploded. ‘A medal? Words of encouragement?’
He wasn’t listening to me.
‘The courage of those who look in the mirror one morning and say to themselves: “Do I have the right to make a mistake?” Just those few words … The courage to look their lives in the face and see nothing settled or harmonious there. The courage to destroy everything, to smash it out of … out of selfishness? Out of pure selfishness? No, not that … So what is it? Survival instinct? A moment of lucidity? Fear of death?
‘The courage to confront yourself just once in your life. Confront yourself. By yourself. Finally.
‘“The right to make a mistake”, it’s just a little expression, one tiny little phrase, but who gives you that right?
‘Who, if not yourself?’
His hands were trembling.
*
‘I never gave it to myself … I never gave myself any right. Only duty. And look what I’ve become: an old bastard. An old bastard in the eyes of one of the precious few people for whom I have a bit of respect. What a fiasco …
‘I’ve made lots of enemies. I’m not bragging, and I’m not complaining either. I just don’t give a damn. But friends, those I wanted to please? There are so few, so few … and you’re one of them. You, Chloé, because you have such a gift for life. You grab hold of it with both hands. You move, you dance, you know how to make the rain and the sunshine in a home. You have this incredible gift for making the people around you happy. You’re so at ease, so at ease on this little planet …’
‘I have the feeling we’re not talking about the same person …’
He hadn’t heard me.
He sat straight in his chair. He had stopped speaking. He hadn’t crossed his legs, and his glass rested between his thighs.
I couldn’t see his face.
His face was in the shadow of the armchair.
‘I loved a woman … I’m not talking about Suzanne, I’m talking about another woman.’
I opened my eyes.
*
‘I loved her more than anything. More than anything … I didn’t know that someone could love that much. Or me, at any rate, I thought that I wasn’t … programmed to love like that … Declarations, insomnia, the ravages of passion, all that was for other people. Besides, just the word “passion” made me snigger. Passion, passion! I filed that somewhere between “hypnosis” and “superstition” … The way I said it, it was practically a four-letter word. And then, it hit me at the moment when I least expected it. I … I loved a woman.
‘I fell in love like you catch a cold. Without wanting to, without believing in it, against my will and with no way to defend myself, and then …’
He cleared his throat.
‘And then I lost her. In the same way.’
• • •
I couldn’t move. An anvil had just fallen on my head.
‘Her name was Mathilde. Her name is still Mathilde, by the way. Mathilde Courbet. Like the painter …
‘I was forty-two years old and I thought I was already old. I’ve always thought I was old. It’s Paul who was young. Paul will always be young and handsome.
‘I’m Pierre. Pierre the plodder, Pierre the hard worker.
‘When I was ten years old, I already had the face I have today. The same haircut, the same glasses, the same gestures, the same little tics. At ten, I already changed my plate for the cheese course, I imagine …’
In the dark, I smiled at him.
‘Forty-two years old … What can you expect from life at forty-two?
‘Me, nothing. I expected nothing. I worked. More and more and always more. It was like camouflage for me, my armour and my alibi. My alibi for not living. Because I didn’t like living all that much. I thought I didn’t have a gift for it.
‘I invented hardships for myself, mountains to climb. Very high ones, very steep. Then I rolled up my sleeves, climbed them, and then invented others. And yet, I wasn’t ambitious, I just had no imagination.’
He took a sip of wine.
• • •
‘I … I didn’t know anything about this, you know … It was Mathilde who taught me. Oh, Chloé … How I loved her … How I loved her … Are you still there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you listening to me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Am I boring you?’
‘No.’
‘Are you going to fall asleep?’
‘No.’
He got up and put another log on the fire. He stayed crouched in front of the fireplace.
‘You know what she complained about? That I was too talkative. Can you believe that? Me … too talkative! Incredible, isn’t it? But it was true … I put my head on her stomach and I talked. I talked for hours, for whole days, even. I heard the sound of my voice grow deep beneath her skin and I loved it. I was a word machine … I made her head spin. I inundated her with words. She laughed. She told me, “Shhh, don’t talk so much, I can’t listen to you anymore. Why do you go on like that?”
‘I had forty-two years of silence to catch up on. Forty-two years of not speaking, of keeping everything to myself. What did you say a while ago? That my silence looks like disdain, wasn’t that it? That hurt, but I can understand, I understand why people criticise me. I understand, but I have no interest in defending myself. That’s the problem, really … But disdain, I don’t think so. As strange as it may seem, my silence is more like shyness. I don’t like myself enough to attach the least importance to what I say. Think twice, speak once, as the old saying goes. I always think one too many times. People find me pretty discouraging … I didn’t like myself before Mathilde and I like myself even less since. I suppose I’m hard because of that …’
He sat back down.
‘I’m tough at work, but that’s just because I’m playing a role, you see? I have to be tough, I have to make them think I’m a tyrant. Can you imagine if they discovered my secret? If they f
igured out that I’m shy? That I have to work three times harder than the others for the same result? That I have a bad memory? That I’m slow to understand? If they knew that, they’d eat me alive!
‘Plus, I don’t know how to make myself liked … I have no charisma, as they say. If I give someone a rise, I do it in a curt voice; when someone thanks me, I don’t answer. When I want to do something nice for someone, I stop myself, and if I have good news to announce, I let my secretary Françoise do it. When it comes to management, or human resources as they say, I’m a disaster, a complete disaster.
‘It was Françoise who signed me up against my will for a sort of training course for hopeless bosses. What a lot of nonsense … Shut up for two days at the Concorde Lafayette Hotel at Porte Maillot, being force-fed popular drivel by a shrink and an overexcited American. He sold his book at the end. Work, Love, and Be the Best it was called. My God, what a joke, now that I look back on it …
‘At the end of the course, as I recall, they handed out diplomas for kind, understanding bosses. I gave it to Françoise, who pinned it up in the closet where we keep the cleaning products and toilet paper.
‘“How was it?” she asked me.
‘“It was pathetic.”
‘She smiled.
‘“Listen, Françoise,” I told her, “you’re like God Almighty around here. Tell anyone who’s interested that I’m not nice, but that they’ll never lose their job because I’m very good at making the numbers work.”
‘“Amen,” she murmured, bowing her head.
‘And it was true. In twenty-five years of being a tyrant, I never had a strike and I never laid anyone off. Even when things were so bad in the early ’90s, I never laid off a soul. Not one, do you understand?’
‘And Suzanne?’
He was silent.
‘Why are you so hard with her?’
‘You think I’m hard?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hard in what way?’
‘Hard.’
He rested his head on the armchair again.
*
‘When Suzanne figured out that I had been unfaithful to her, it had already been over for a long time. I had … I’ll tell you that later … In those years, we lived on Rue de la Convention. I didn’t like the apartment. I didn’t like the way she had decorated it. It was suffocating: too much furniture, too many knickknacks, too many photos of us, too much of everything. I’m telling you this, but it’s not important. I went back to that apartment to sleep and because my family lived there, period. One evening, she asked me to take her out to dinner. We went to a place just down the street, a horrible pizzeria. The neon lights made her look awful, and since she was already wearing the face of an outraged wife, they didn’t help. It was cruel, but I hadn’t done it on purpose, you see. I opened the door of the first cheap place I saw … I knew what was coming, and I had no desire to be far from my bed. And, as it turns out, it didn’t take her long to get started. She had barely laid down the menu when she broke down sobbing.