The psychologist interrupts his thoughts.
‘How has your life been lately?’
If only you knew, madame, Mancebo thinks. I’ve become a private detective, earned some money and been attacked by two madmen.
‘Chugging along.’
‘Chugging along like normal, or perhaps a little faster?’
Now he almost wishes that Fatima would come in and speak on his behalf. Maybe I do need her after all, Mancebo thinks, though he quickly brushes the thought to one side.
‘Yes, I’ve had a lot on the go, if I may say so.’
‘Have you felt under pressure?’
Mancebo feels like laughing. Under pressure? That would be putting it mildly.
‘Yes, business has to go on.’
‘As you perhaps already know, you suffered a migraine, and possibly also a mental breakdown. The two often go hand in hand, and I’m trying to understand whether you have any sense of what may have caused it. Do you have any idea?’
Mancebo shakes his head.
‘Not the foggiest.’
‘I can drive,’ Mancebo says, holding out his hand for the keys to his van.
‘No, thank you. Tariq will drive,’ Fatima hisses.
She jumps into the front seat next to Tariq. The van doesn’t have a back seat, so Mancebo opens the back doors and climbs into the roomy storage area. He sits cross-legged on the floor where he usually stacks the fruit and vegetables. The white van pulls away from A&E, and Tariq has to give way to an incoming ambulance with its blue lights flashing.
‘Now it’s some other poor soul’s turn to be taken care of,’ Mancebo says, following the events with excitement from the back.
‘Yeah, but as long as the sirens are going, there’s hope. It’d be worse if the ambulance was creeping along without any,’ Tariq explains.
‘Like we are,’ Fatima says with a laugh.
Tariq agrees with his bullish laugh, and it strikes Mancebo that his cousin and his wife have something in common.
The rest of the journey takes place in silence. Mancebo looks out of the window and remembers the way he often used to ride backwards in a horse-drawn cart as a child.
Tariq is heading back towards the neighbourhood where everything happens. Mancebo can see Sacré-Cœur rising up in the distance, and despite everything that has happened, he feels an inexplicable happiness. It’s as though the collapse has put an end to the after-effects of the attack. Mancebo is back to normal and feels, if not stronger, then at least slightly calmer than before.
The entire Marais district smelled like falafel. We pushed our way through the hungry queues of people. There might not have been many Parisians around, but there were plenty of tourists interested in experiencing the multifaceted neighbourhood. And through them all, I walked hand in hand with my son, struck by a feeling of sorrow, of being on the outside.
For the first time, I realised how absent I had been lately. Now that I was holding my son’s hand, it seemed especially obvious. He had grown, I could see it from his shorts. To him, these past few weeks had been like any other, full of summer club and football practice. He wouldn’t have any lasting memories of them, other than the time he and his father had gone to A&E to pick up his mother after she saw an old man collapse in a cemetery. I squeezed his hand. He seemed sad. Had he looked that way for long?
‘Has something happened, darling?’
He shook his head.
‘Is everything OK otherwise? Summer club? Have you been playing with David?’
He nodded. It felt good to walk, and my sadness at having lost out on time with my son was replaced by an unbecoming self-pity at having to deal with everything myself. Having to watch a neighbour fade away, having to keep secrets, constantly being worried about what I had got myself into.
Though it was, to a certain extent, something I had chosen, I still needed to feel sorry for myself. We pushed our way forward through the falafel-eating crowds.
‘Can I do it?’ my son asked.
I picked him up and his eyes shone as he punched in the door code I whispered into his ear. He made a mistake twice, but it didn’t matter, I was just enjoying having him in my arms, feeling his body, the smell of the back of his neck. The door buzzed open, and he glanced at me to make sure it was a good idea to go in. I smiled and stepped over the wide threshold which led into the inner courtyard. He took my hand and we crossed it.
‘It looks like the gardener’s.’
He was right. There were plants and flowers everywhere. Someone had even planted some in the basket of an old bike leaning against the drainpipe. My son pointed over to it. The door into the stairwell was ajar, meaning, to my son’s disappointment, that we didn’t need to use the second code. We went in and climbed the stairs. At first, I thought the woman’s voice we could hear in the stairwell was coming from Monsieur Caro’s apartment, and that threw me off balance, but then the door of the apartment opposite flew open, and a woman in a green silk dress came out, laughing. She was clutching a bottle of wine, and said hello to us before she disappeared upstairs.
‘She wasn’t wearing any shoes,’ my son pointed out.
I knocked firmly on the door and glanced at my watch to make sure we were on time, something I assumed was important to Monsieur Caro. I heard a cough, the rattling of the safety chain, and then the door was flung open. Monsieur Caro looked at me in surprise, as though he hadn’t been expecting to see me, and then pointed at my son. He didn’t look at him.
‘What’s he doing here?’
Had it been our first meeting, I probably would have been angry and turned on my heel. But by now I knew there was no point. Once you had joined the game, you had to accept the consequences. My son hadn’t interpreted Monsieur Caro’s comments as anything unfriendly, and if I had given the old man a telling-off he would have realised that it meant he wasn’t welcome.
‘This is Monsieur Caro. He’s the one who was ill and had to go to the hospital.’
I realised my son knew who he was, but I said it to put Monsieur Caro in his place. And his reaction was exactly as I had expected.
‘Ill! And who was it that made me ill?’
Suddenly, he had forgotten all about the fact I had brought my son with me. I was the problem for Monsieur Caro now, and I could take it. Without waiting for him to invite us in, we stepped inside. I straightened my son’s T-shirt, pushed a strand of hair from his face and hung up my bag. Everything took its time, and I did it all with a certain conscientiousness.
Once I was finished, I was able to observe two people staring awkwardly at one another. One of them, my son, was peering all around. Occasionally, he smiled at the old man, probably so that he wouldn’t be told he had been impolite later. Monsieur Caro’s eyes didn’t wander, he stared straight at my son with a mixture of fear and uncertainty.
‘What does it eat?’ he asked, looking over to me with wide eyes.
I had never seen him so animated before, and I couldn’t help but laugh.
‘It eats the same as you and me. And it can also go without being fed for an hour or two.’
Monsieur Caro disappeared into the kitchen. My son and I glanced at one another and shrugged before we continued into the apartment.
Now that my son was there, the apartment felt different. From the way he moved, I could tell that he was scared of breaking something in the living room. I sat down in my usual armchair and gestured for him to sit in my lap. He turned down my offer, even though a part of him probably wanted to take it up. Six-year-olds always want to show that they’re big boys, even though it would still feel comforting to sit in Mum’s lap, particularly in an unfamiliar place with an unpredictable man.
Monsieur Caro strode into the room, and my son quickly sat down in the big armchair. The old man was about to say something, but he stopped himself when he saw that the boy had taken his place. He looked over to me, and I pretended not to know what was bothering him. Rather than comment on the situation, Monsieur Caro held out a bo
wl of pine nuts. I nodded and he put it down on the table.
A clock started to chime. Monsieur Caro went over to the bookcase and turned off the small, red alarm clock.
‘You can turn on the TV now, please.’
‘Do you want to turn the TV on for Monsieur Caro?’ I asked my son, who seemed relieved to have been given something to do.
He went over and switched on the old TV. Monsieur Caro vanished into the kitchen, and this time came back with a pretty silver pot of coffee, which he also put down on the table. He stared at my son and then went back to the kitchen to fetch a glass of juice.
‘Blackcurrant,’ he mumbled, glancing around to see where he could sit.
Eventually, he sat down opposite me and poured the coffee, first for himself and then for me. He didn’t ask whether I wanted sugar or milk, probably because he was so absorbed by the programme he wanted to watch. My son took a sip of juice, glanced at the TV and then at me. I smiled. The programme was about the history of the Silk Road.
‘You can help yourself if you want. They’re nuts.’
I pointed to the bowl.
‘Quiet,’ Monsieur Caro hissed, glaring at me.
We drank our coffee and juice. It didn’t take long. My son twisted in his seat.
‘Sorry to interrupt, monsieur, but when does the programme finish?’ I asked, winking at my son.
‘13.55.’
‘In that case, I think we’ll say thanks for the coffee. I hope you have a nice weekend. You have my number, so feel free to call.’
My son quickly got to his feet, he seemed relieved.
‘But you need to turn the TV off.’
‘OK, then let’s do this. We’ll go out for a while and buy some new clothes for my son, then we’ll come back and turn off the TV, OK?’
It felt like I had two children.
‘And then you’ll leave?’
‘Yes, then we need to go to football practice.’
Monsieur Caro’s face was expressionless, and he continued watching the programme.
‘OK, we’ll be back later,’ I said, gesturing to my son that we were leaving.
‘You play football?’ Monsieur Caro suddenly asked, looking over to my son, who nodded shyly.
‘What position? Forward?’
‘I’m goalkeeper.’
Monsieur Caro nodded slowly and poured himself more coffee.
‘Goalkeeper. That’s good. Someone who defends. Someone who is looking for results, not glory. Someone who takes responsibility, who’s solitary, and strong in that role; someone who knows their place, who has to do it all on their own.’
I had never heard someone dwell so deeply on the role of the goalkeeper before. My son didn’t quite seem to know what to say, but that didn’t matter, because Monsieur Caro was on a roll.
‘So you’re not like your mother. She’d probably be a midfielder, someone who wants it all, who pokes her nose in everywhere, who doesn’t understand the difference between your territory and mine, who’d barge in, barge about, who’d help herself, but who’d fight …’
I laughed.
‘I’ll take that last part as a compliment.’
‘You should, because it’s the only one you’ll get.’
Somehow, I felt incredibly amused by Monsieur Caro’s behaviour. There was an ounce of truth in what he had said. And surprisingly enough, it was also amusing my son. He thought it was funny that the old man was pretending to argue with his mother. The programme on TV no longer had Monsieur Caro’s attention. Philosophising about football seemed to be far more entertaining. I winked at my son, as though to say that we should tease the old man a little.
‘Which position would you hold on the team, monsieur?’
‘Defender. Not quite as brave as keeper, but defending what I believe in, holding my own. I don’t need any glory. I see the people in front of me, the people running around like idiots, but I’m still enough of a coward to need someone behind me. Too much to completely put my foot down … too much to tell certain truths. That’s probably some damn inherited gene from my mother.’
‘I think you’re pretty good at telling truths,’ I butted in.
‘I could be better.’
Monsieur Caro’s face had taken on a healthy colour during our football discussion.
‘Sit down here,’ Monsieur Caro said to my son.
He disappeared out of the room and returned with a big brown box which he put down on the table.
‘Do you know what this is?’
My son peered into the box.
‘A chess set.’
‘Bravo! And do you know how to play chess?’
My son shook his head.
‘Chess is superior to every other game, even football. Do you know why?’
My son bit his lip.
‘Because in chess, it’s black and white that matters. As in life. There’s only ever one winner. Either the black or the white. As in life. Which will win is determined by the sum of their moves, tiny steps, as in life. You get many chances. It’s natural to make mistakes. It’s human to make bad judgements, once, maybe twice … but if you do it again and again, you lose.’
As he launched into the rules of chess, Monsieur Caro got himself worked up again. It struck me that he had his mother on his mind. In everything he said. To Monsieur Caro, life was black or white. Good or bad. In his view, his mother had chosen the bad side, time and time again. I curled up on the sofa and studied the two boys in front of me, huddled up together. Maybe Monsieur Caro was interested in me because he didn’t know where to place me. I was in the grey zone.
He took piece after piece from the box, said their names and explained how they could move. My son seemed genuinely interested in learning the rules. Monsieur Caro set out the pieces to begin the game, and I got up and went over to the window which looked out onto the courtyard. There wasn’t a soul outside. It looked warm. I moved over to the bookshelf and studied the photos of the young and the old, children and newborns. All the men wore kippah, and even the boys seemed to be wearing them, made from some kind of softer material. How could such a lonely person have such a huge family? Maybe he had decided they were all on the dark side. That was bound to be lonely.
He had a lot of books, from many different genres. The German dictionary seemed slightly out of place in his collection, but that might only have been because I knew about his history. Otherwise, the majority of the books were by French Nobel Prize winners. I found a book about the Silk Road next to one on the history of Paris. I pulled it out and sat down in the armchair, and my son asked Monsieur Caro why it was always the white pieces which started in chess. Most of the pages in the book had been folded down at the corner, which bothered me greatly. A good deal of text had also been underlined in pencil, and I decided to read only that, to see what Monsieur Caro had deemed important and interesting.
I closed the book. The underlining had been done by someone who wasn’t interested in the importance of the economic exchange between countries, only in how different religions and syncretic philosophies had been spread by that medieval network of trade routes. I studied Monsieur Caro. He was probably a well-read man with an interest in mankind, despite often suggesting otherwise. A man who chased people away when all he really wanted was to understand them. I glanced at the clock and realised it was time for us to leave.
‘Darling, it’s time to go if we want to make it to football practice.’
Monsieur Caro glared at me, as though to make me understand that I was a traitor. Someone who came along and ruined a nice moment. He really did have an ability to shine a light on my negative sides. He was probably doing all he could to place me on the bad side. The chess pieces were carefully returned to the box, and I was pleased to see my son help even though I hadn’t asked him to. Despite everything, he probably did respect the old man. We went out into the hallway and Monsieur Caro undid the security chain. I kissed his cheeks. He was surprised but accepted it, and we went out into the stairwell.
‘The TV!’ he suddenly shouted.
It took me a moment to realise that he wanted us to turn it off.
‘You can go in and turn the TV off if you like,’ I said to my son.
But then I suddenly worried that Monsieur Caro would slam the door shut, put on the chain and take my son captive. I didn’t really know the man, and I didn’t think he was the most level-headed of people. In fact, he was unpredictable and had a twisted view of the world. I quickly went back into the hallway. Monsieur Caro glared at me again. It was his way of behaving when he didn’t understand something. My son came back, I took his hand and we left.
‘Why can’t he turn the TV on and off himself? It’s really easy.’
‘For Monsieur Caro, Saturday is a day of rest, and that means he doesn’t want to turn on the TV himself. He thinks he’ll do something stupid if he does.’
My son looked bewildered.
On the way back to the metro, my son’s hand no longer felt strange, and his too-small shorts no longer made me feel guilty. Now, they actually gave me a certain sense of comfort. Maybe he could keep wearing them all summer after all. I studied him as we moved between the tourists. He was whistling. His face no longer seemed sad, and he looked relaxed and lively.
‘Are you looking forward to football?’
‘Chess was fun.’
The night after the collapse, Mancebo is sitting in the armchair by the window, his eyes fixed on the writer’s apartment. For once, Tariq and Adèle have come up to the apartment he shares with Fatima. Maybe they don’t want to leave Fatima alone with him. Everyone is pussyfooting around Mancebo, constantly casting anxious glances in his direction, as though to reassure themselves that he isn’t about to suffer another migraine attack. If it even was a migraine. Not everyone is completely convinced about that. Adèle has announced that she also suffers from migraines once a month, when she gets her period. Tariq and Fatima laughed and said that probably wasn’t the same kind of migraine.
Mancebo enjoyed being the centre of attention, being taken care of. They never stopped asking whether he needed anything. They thought that he was getting some rest in his seat by the window, but what they didn’t realise was that he was actually hard at work. Not that anything of interest was happening on the other side of the boulevard.
Waiting for Monsieur Bellivier Page 17