‘I guess she thought they were the tip of the iceberg.’
‘What do you want me to say? Sorry?’
‘Only if you really mean it.’
‘I don’t.’
‘And you don’t need to, either.’
My head was spinning as I went down the stairs. Christophe was still up in the church, but I stepped outside into reality again. Thousands of people all gasping for air during their lunch breaks, but inside the church everything went on as normal. Christophe was thinking about forgiveness, the door creaked, someone came and left.
It was only when I heard her shuffling footsteps that I realised it was time to leave. Oddly enough, I hadn’t even heard the lift arrive.
‘Good afternoon,’ I said.
‘Good afternoon,’ the woman replied, giving me the evil eye as she started pulling at the vacuum cleaner cable.
‘You’re a Muslim, no?’ I asked.
The cleaner looked at me with a weary expression.
‘I was thinking … I was wondering, what’s your view on forgiveness?’
She muttered something and wiped her nose with her hand.
‘Why were you wondering that?’
‘I’m … going to a debate tomorrow … on forgiveness, not at Areva, it’s a private lecture, and wanted to get some input …’
‘Input?’
‘Just thought it would be good to get another viewpoint …’
‘Allah says that those of us who enjoy a privileged position and live in comfort may never refuse to help those closest to us, those in need, nor anyone who has abandoned the kingdom of evil for Allah’s cause. If they have done wrong, we should forgive and forget. Allah is always forgiving, always merciful.’
‘OK. And how do you view the truth?’
‘You ask a lot of questions, madame.’
The vacuum cleaner roared to life. She was free. The on switch was her stop button. I put on my sunglasses. The cleaner glanced at me. I packed away my computer, though I took my time doing it. It was almost like I was challenging her, attempting to prove, perhaps mostly to myself, that this was my office. If I hadn’t had this strange contract which told me to go home at a specific time, I would have stayed behind. I left without saying goodbye. It felt like we had already done that through our conversation.
He was dead. I was sure of it. It was almost like I could smell that corpse scent in the stairwell. And if he was still alive, he would surely be in hospital somewhere, on morphine and awaiting the end. I was convinced he was dead, or at least dying, but I doubted whether I could do it.
I was aware that my everyday had become extremely unusual, which meant I could easily carry out peculiar tasks. Imagine if he wasn’t dead and came home in a tracksuit with needle marks all over his arms, only to be met by a bouquet of flowers hanging from his door handle. Maybe he would take it as a sign that someone wanted to welcome him home. If he didn’t have any relatives, he might just assume it was a neighbour, or why not the concierge who had hung them there. And if he was dead … well, then it didn’t matter.
The flowers were a mix of every cheery colour possible. You’re worth it, I thought as I tied the bouquet to the handle. I had a sudden feeling that the door was about to fly open, and there he would be, healthy and strong. Like he had never been unwell. And I would stutter some odd explanation. I even imagined I could hear footsteps behind the door. I stood there for a while, just to make sure no one would open up. But the door remained closed. And without really thinking, I knocked. I didn’t hear any footsteps. A closed door meant a dead neighbour, which meant I was still in possession of my wits. So far, anyway.
Everything goes as planned. Mancebo pulls on his blue coat and his black cap, tiptoes out of the apartment and down the first set of stairs. He passes Tariq and Adèle’s door. Just like always. He goes down the next set of stairs and unlocks the door to the shop, but he doesn’t turn on the lights, only the little reading lamp. Things aren’t like usual. Mancebo isn’t going to Rungis today. The case needs to move forward; he needs to change his routines without anyone suspecting as much. Hence his decision to skip Rungis.
He sits down on the little stool behind the counter. No one would suspect that there was anyone in the shop. Nor would anyone be able to see the small beam of light casting its cold glow onto Ted Baker’s book, The Rat Catcher. Odd name, Mancebo thinks, turning to the first page.
It’s unusually quiet. Mancebo can’t remember the shop ever having been this quiet before. I should have arrived in Rungis by now, he thinks, glancing at his wristwatch. Though he’s been doing business there for years, he is still relatively anonymous at the huge market. He changes traders quite often, and there are always new staff. Everyone who goes to Rungis is in a hurry to find the best goods they can before they rush back to their shops, restaurants, cafés or wherever else they work.
It’s true there are some people there that Mancebo usually exchanges a few words with, but if he doesn’t turn up one morning, there’s nothing strange about that. They probably just assume that their goods didn’t live up to the grocer’s high demands. It’s important that Mancebo keeps an eye on the time so that he knows when he should be heading to Le Soleil. François will be waiting for him, he knows that. If he doesn’t turn up, the bar owner will think that something is very wrong, particularly after his collapse.
Mancebo jumps. Just as the tough journalist in Ted Baker’s book finds himself in a fix in a dark garage, Mancebo suddenly hears a noise behind him. It’s the front door slamming shut. Usually, that wouldn’t scare him, but he was so engrossed in The Rat Catcher. He spots Fatima hurrying over the road, or hurrying as fast as she can in her slippers and with her hulking great shape.
Mancebo glances at his watch. What is she doing up so early? Before he has time to wonder any further, he watches his wife go into the bakery. It doesn’t take long before she’s back out again, recrossing the boulevard with a paper bag in her hand. Mancebo returns to his seat behind the counter, waiting and listening. The door creaks open and swings shut with a thud. He hears her shuffling footsteps on the stairs, and then silence. How can an iceberg disappear so quietly?
Without thinking about it, he turns off the reading lamp and carefully opens the door to the stairwell. It’s dark and empty. He goes out through the front door, closing it gently behind him, and then heads for the bakery, sticking close to the building. After a quick glance at his watch, he grabs the door handle and goes in. A wonderful smell greets him.
‘Good morning, Monsieur Mancebo!’
‘Good morning.’
‘How can I help you?’
‘My wife was just here … a few minutes ago …’
‘Yes?’
The red-cheeked baker is looking at Mancebo in bewilderment.
‘I just wanted to know what she was doing … what she bought.’
Maybe he should have thought about how he would explain his visit.
‘What did she buy? She bought the same as always.’
‘The same as always?’ Mancebo says in surprise.
‘Yes, every morning.’
‘My wife, Fatima, she comes here every morning?’
‘Yes. And she always buys three pains au chocolat.’
Mancebo looks like he has just found out that Fatima is involved in some kind of organised crime.
‘Aha. Could I ask you a favour? Don’t tell my wife I was here.’
The baker seems confused, but then he laughs.
‘Is she on a diet or something, cheating with the odd treat?’
Mancebo smiles. Let the baker believe that.
‘No, I won’t say a word, even if I don’t understand a thing. Won’t you take a warm croissant?’
The entire situation is absurd. In truth, there’s nothing odd about Fatima buying breakfast pastries every morning, but she has never mentioned eating breakfast with anyone. In fact, she always says that she has so much to do that breakfast is nothing but a coffee on the go. Why lie about it?
The chocolate pastries raise a number of questions. Seemingly innocent ones, but Mancebo is starting to feel like more and more of an outsider in his own family, detached from the people he thought he knew. And it’s not like he can just ask Fatima about her breakfast routine. If he did that, she would wonder why he hadn’t been to Rungis. An absurd situation. Mancebo comes close to bumping into a badly parked car, and he has to do an extra lap around the block to approach Le Soleil from the same side as usual. He parks his van in the disabled space.
Though the temperature climbs above twenty-five degrees that day, the majority of Parisians have pulled on a cardigan or chosen a long-sleeved sweater. Some are doing it to convince themselves that the heatwave is finally over. Others are wearing that extra layer in the belief that they actually need it. They’re used to temperatures above thirty now.
For Mancebo, the slightly cooler temperature doesn’t change a thing, he always wears the same clothes. The fruit and vegetable stands are outside and open. The apples and strawberries have kept well overnight. The same can’t be said of the plums, but Mancebo still doesn’t regret his decision not to go to the market. He sprays a little extra water onto the fruit and vegetables. He’s wearing his watch, high up on his wrist, and he has counted the notebooks. Thirty-one left. He doesn’t know why he did that. Some kind of countdown, perhaps. But to what?
He opens The Rat Catcher and starts reading where he left off. The main character, Stéphane, a journalist in his thirties, is waiting on an enormous amount of money from a drug smuggler who calls himself The Rat, hence the title of the book. Stéphane is blackmailing The Rat in exchange for putting a stop to an article on the Paris drug trade. As he reads, Mancebo is surprised by how much he can recognise Ted Baker in his words. He feels like he can make out the writer’s light, lively walk between the lines. There are no slow, heavy sections to the book, everything flows easily, perhaps too easily at times. It actually annoys Mancebo slightly, and the section in which the drug dealer is meant to hand over the bag of money to the journalist is a good example. Everything happens smoothly and quickly. No unforeseen events hindering or even prolonging the scene. No, the drug baron simply hands over the bag, Stéphane takes it and leaves. Mancebo can practically see the journalist skipping out of the garage, and he recalls Amir’s words about Ted Baker not being one of the greats. Is this the kind of thing they call pulp fiction, Mancebo wonders, shutting the book as his first customer of the day comes in.
The temperature continues to climb during the course of the day, and the Parisians take off their cardigans. The homeless crowd around the Picard chain, which sells nothing but frozen goods. The company’s air vents save lives. And never before have so many people made their way to the city’s libraries. Inside, the homeless have pulled out books at random and are now resting their heads on them. The guards know they aren’t there for the sake of literature, but they leave them to sleep with the books as pillows. And not because they feel a sense of compassion for these unfortunate Parisians, they just don’t have the energy to do anything about them. Everything they have is going towards coping themselves. Out on the boulevards, the victims of the heatwave are also visible. More drivers are crashing. Some shops have already closed for the day, and people are hauling so much mineral water that their hands turn pale.
Tariq is out on the pavement, and Mancebo wonders why he hasn’t installed the air conditioning he has been talking about for so long. He gestures to his cousin that it’s time to head to Le Soleil.
The dirty money is false. Worthless. He has lost.
The heat has given Mancebo more time to read during the afternoon, he doesn’t have the energy for anything else. Hidden away behind the counter, he swallows and raises his hand to his mouth. The thought that the money from Madame Cat could be fake had never occurred to him before. Up until that point, he had seen the money as evidence that she wasn’t using or deceiving him as part of some kind of writing project.
The thought is dizzying. Not just that he might find himself drawn into a book, but also that he might have received fake money. He has to read on. The Rat Catcher has captivated Mancebo. The book he was reading so reluctantly at first now has him completely hooked. Ted Baker has gone from being a zero to an average writer in Mancebo’s eyes. But at the same time, if you’re working for that writer’s wife, and have received money in a similar way to the lead character in the book, it’s obvious that a text like that would drag you in. It’s nothing to do with the quality of the writing, Mancebo thinks, not at all fond of the idea that he might appreciate anything created by Ted Baker. And yet he spends the rest of the day with the novel in hand, on the edge of his seat.
The story of the deceived journalist continues in the same monotonous way, but in Mancebo’s mind, a completely different tale is playing out. This one is about a grocer who has been drawn into a dirty affair. When a couple of girls come to the shop to collect their notebooks, the grocer is being interviewed by the police; they’ve had reports that he is in possession of a large number of fake 50 euro notes. What really happens in the book is lost on Mancebo, because his imagination has run away with him. One of the girls asks whether the book is good, but he doesn’t hear her.
The book has come to an end, and with it, the day. The evening air has already begun its laborious task of cooling the city. Tariq’s cobbler’s shop has been closed for some time now, and he is sitting in the office with his well-polished shoes on the desk, reading the newspaper. Mancebo studies his younger cousin. Before Tariq turns off the lights for the day, he picks up his phone. Does he normally ring someone before he locks up? Or did he get a call?
Mancebo is standing with a couple of half-rotten tomatoes in his hand, waiting for the answer to his question. He has never really cared about what Tariq gets up to at this time of day, given that he is usually up to his ears trying to ward off his hunger pangs so that he can finish shutting up. But today his hunger has given way to other feelings. Mancebo lost his appetite the moment he read about the fake notes in Ted Baker’s book. Tariq slams down the phone after a short conversation. Mancebo watches him grab a shoebox and throw it straight across the office.
It’s not long before Mancebo feels a familiar hand on his shoulder.
‘Everything OK, brother?’
‘All fine.’
‘It’s been the quietest day in a long time.’
‘Yeah, it’s been quiet here too.’
‘Maybe today’s the day we can finally say that our wives have worked harder than we have.’
Tariq laughs and heads towards the door and the staircase with his usual boorish gait.
‘Was it something particular?’ Mancebo asks.
Tariq turns around and gives his little cousin, the man he calls brother, a questioning look. Mancebo doesn’t know whether he should go on. He stays silent for a moment, mostly to give himself a bit of thinking time.
‘I saw you got a phone call which seemed to … upset you.’
Tariq is completely motionless. Then he lets go of the door handle and moves right in front of Mancebo, as though he were preparing to attack. His eyes darken, and Mancebo suddenly feels panic-stricken. He doesn’t recognise his cousin. But as quickly as the darkness in his eyes appeared, it disappears again, and Tariq smiles. The fact is, however, that Mancebo prefers the dark eyes to the smile. He tries to tell himself that he should probably stop reading crime novels. They just put ideas into his head, and he starts reimagining reality.
‘What? A phone call?’
Mancebo tries an easy-going nod, but it comes out more like an apology for ever having raised the subject.
‘I was on the phone? I don’t remember that.’
‘No, you weren’t on the phone.’
A completely joyless laugh comes out of Tariq’s mouth. Mancebo doesn’t want to know where it has come from.
‘I wasn’t talking on the phone? You just said I was. Listen, brother, is the heat getting to you again?’
&nbs
p; Tariq shakes his head and leaves the shop.
He leaves behind a chill, the likes of which has never been felt in the shop before. It gives Mancebo goosebumps. Something worrying has crawled in beneath his skin. There’s something I’m not seeing here, something right in front of me, he thinks, and swallows.
Mancebo hears a laugh, then a bang, and after that another howl of laughter. As Mancebo opens the door, he sees the cause of the commotion, and with it the laughter. Adèle is on the floor, holding her stomach and laughing. A wooden chair is in pieces next to her. Mancebo can’t work out whether the mood in the apartment is unusually cheerful or whether it’s just that he has his frequency set to a lower level, meaning that his surroundings seem oddly easy-going. Things don’t improve when Fatima pats him on the cheek.
Memories of that morning come flooding back, and he finds himself being drawn deeper into his already thick bubble. From the inside, he peers out at the world around him, a world which is acting oddly. Fatima’s hand feels surreal on his cheek, and he imagines that it smells like butter pastry and greasy chocolate. Lying on the floor, Adèle’s cheeks are rosy. Mancebo can’t remember ever having seen her look so healthy before.
‘Has someone won the lotto again?’
Mancebo is pleased that he came up with the lotto win as his opening line. It’ll make them believe he’s with them, at least for a while. Now he just has to come up with more of the kind of thing he would usually say. The fact that it won’t have any basis in what he is really thinking and feeling isn’t something his family will notice, because they’re too exhilarated.
‘No lotto wins today, but my wife just managed to sit down on Fatima’s bread, which was proving under a tea towel.’
Tariq points to a baking tin on top of a small green stool.
‘And then she moved on to the wooden chair and took its life.’
Adèle creeps into her husband’s arms, and Tariq holds her as though he never wanted her to leave him.
‘And I think I laughed more at that than the lotto win. But I’ve already won the jackpot with my wife!’
Waiting for Monsieur Bellivier Page 19