I said goodbye to my son just as the gate into his summer club was about to close. For a while, I debated taking a taxi to the business district, but then I pushed on my sunglasses, wound my scarf around my pounding head and started to make my way towards the metro. The thought of the missing flowers suddenly came flooding back, but it was interrupted by a car slamming on its brakes right next to me. I jumped. I had been centimetres from being run over.
The receptionist smiled at me. The office felt particularly clean and tidy. I logged in. Two emails had arrived after I left yesterday. Before I even had time to open the first of them, the second email grabbed my attention. It wasn’t from [email protected]. It was from Monsieur Bellivier. The subject line held a question mark.
My heart was racing as I opened the email. ‘Where are you?’ it said. No hello or signature of any kind. I took a deep breath. I knew I had to reply quickly to show I was there. Should I be detailed or brief, apologetic or …? Maybe it was enough to simply forward the message I had missed yesterday, to show Monsieur Bellivier I was back? I replied: ‘Migraine yesterday, sorry.’ I tried to calm myself down by looking out over Paris. Was it because I hadn’t forwarded the email that Monsieur Bellivier knew I wasn’t in the office, or was it because I hadn’t taken the flowers?
Maybe he was waiting in the church. Maybe he was eating lunch with colleagues, maybe he was travelling. Thoughts of Christophe appeared one after another over the course of the morning. Lunchtime arrived, but hunger hadn’t dared return to my body yet. I went downstairs, to foreign territory one floor below, to buy a coffee from the machine, but I drank it back in my office. The sun was shining brutally through the windows, and I kept my sunglasses on. There were only a few days of the experiment left. The question was how it would end. Would Monsieur Bellivier himself come up to thank me on the last day? If I was going to be paid, how would the money reach me? And would I ever find out why I had been forwarding these messages?
I thought of Christophe again. Maybe he would be worried if I didn’t turn up? No, why would he?
By chance, my leg bumped against the box beneath the desk. Since there was no reason to start working before my lunch break was over, I pulled it out to look at the books. I opened the lid, which was just folded over, and found myself face to face with a huge number of bright white polystyrene chips. Their whiteness stung my eyes. I dug as deep as I could, causing the sugar-lump-shaped contents to overflow onto the brown carpet. There wasn’t a single book inside. I tried to think calmly and logically. What did I know about the box?
The man had said it was full of books I could read if I got bored. But hadn’t I opened the box and seen the books before? Or was that a false memory, nothing but a fantasy? I closed my eyes. There had been a number of well-thumbed paperbacks inside, hadn’t there?
I heard a pling. I read the string of letters and numbers and forwarded the message. The man had said that the box beneath the desk was full of books. I was sure of that now. Either he was lying or someone had stolen the books and filled the box with polystyrene. There was no point trying to work for that last half-hour, because those polystyrene chips had taken up all the free space in my mind and sucked the air out of the room. I decided that the man must have thought there were books in the box. That theory seemed manageable. Time moved slowly, and for the first time, I wished I had a good book to read.
The sound of the phone interrupted my polystyrene thoughts. I looked down at my mobile. It wasn’t a number I recognised, and I hoped my son wasn’t ill or hurt.
‘Hello?’
‘Is that the journalist?’
‘Yes … I’m a journalist.’
‘Hello, I’d like you meet you.’
The voice belonged to a woman. She sounded older.
‘Who is this?’
‘My name is Edith Prévost.’
‘And why do you want to meet me?’
‘I’d rather not get into that on here, but I think I’ve got a … project, an idea for you, madame.’
It sounded as though she had only just realised that she really did have something for me.
‘I work during the day, and can’t meet in the evenings. Could you tell me any more about your idea? Is it a suggestion for an article? Could you email it to me?’
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
‘But who are you? How did you get my number?’
‘I’m a pensioner. I got your number from a friend of yours.’
‘Who?’
‘I would rather not reveal that until I’ve told you about my idea.’
I couldn’t take any unnecessary risks.
‘I could meet you at lunchtime. Twelve o’clock tomorrow? But I’m in La Défense, so you would have to come here.’
‘La Défense, OK …’ She laughed. ‘It’s been a few years since I last went there, but I can get the metro. It’s line one, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, I’ll meet you by La Grande Arche.’
‘OK, thank you, madame.’
‘Thanks, see you tomorrow.’
There was another pling. It had to be the last message of the day. Time to pick up my son and then head home to bed. I pulled on my scarf. I’d been wearing the sunglasses all day. A few women gave me odd looks as I made my way out of the lift. Suddenly, I stopped dead. I was already outside. Empty-handed. No flowers. Should I just continue without them? But it felt like part of my task.
I bit my lip and cursed the fact that I couldn’t make quick, rational decisions. The receptionist must simply have missed me, probably because I was wearing a scarf and sunglasses. If she was in cahoots with Monsieur Bellivier, she would probably tell him that I hadn’t picked up the flowers for two days in a row. I didn’t have the courage to leave the building without them and so I went back inside. Would she give me yesterday’s bouquet too? The receptionist was gazing towards the lifts. I took off my sunglasses and waited like any other visitor. She caught sight of me.
‘Oh, I thought I’d missed you again today.’
She smiled and handed me three lilies.
‘Winter whites,’ she said with another smile.
Like polystyrene, I thought.
The early bird gets the worm, Mancebo thinks, wondering why that particular expression has come to him today. It’s slightly ironic, considering how tired he feels after last night’s dispute with Fatima. He hears a scraping sound in the kitchen and goes out to see what Amir is doing up so early. There, in the middle of the little kitchen, he is calmly buttering a piece of bread in his underpants.
‘Are you up already, my son?’
‘No, I haven’t been to bed yet. We’ve got the oral exam today, Khaled and I, to see if we can apply for a year abroad. It’s at eleven, so I’m going to bed now.’
Mancebo remembers Fatima mentioning something about Amir wanting to study abroad. He takes in his son’s young body. He looks like a baby bird, standing there, almost naked, with a piece of buttered bread in his hand.
‘You know how proud of you I am, my son. I always have been. You’re so intelligent, you do everything so well. I just want you to know that no matter how the test goes today, I love you.’
Amir is embarrassed and looks down at the floor.
‘It should go fine, Dad. But … thanks.’
Amir pours a glass of milk and takes it and the piece of bread to his room. Mancebo watches him close the door and feels pleased with himself, almost grateful to Tariq. After all, it’s his comment about Mancebo’s relationship with his children which made him tell Amir he loves him. Maybe the early bird really does catch the worm, he thinks, heading into the bathroom.
Mancebo stretches his neck. His working position that afternoon has made it stiff. He’s had a lot of paperwork to do, goods to order, invoices to check, and a couple of insurance forms to fill in.
In order to stay alert and aware of whatever might be going on in the apartment opposite, he has been using the drinks shelf as a desk, albeit a sticky one. But it also means that every tim
e he looks up towards Madame Cat’s apartment, which he has done countless times now, he’s had to turn his head, which has resulted in a dull ache in his neck. Nothing noteworthy has happened in the apartment over the road, or not until now, as Mancebo stretches his aching neck.
The door opens and Madame Cat comes out onto the fire escape in a pretty, tight, navy skirt, a fitted jacket made from the same material, and a white blouse. She is carrying a small suitcase and seems slightly stressed. Her eyes sweep the boulevard as though she is searching for someone. Not long afterwards, a blue car pulls up alongside her and she opens the boot for her bag. She jumps into the car. The driver seems to be a middle-aged man. Mancebo gets up and goes calmly out onto the pavement, pretending to be doing something with the plastic bags for the fruit.
The four black spots on the tarmac stare up at him. They have done every day for years. For a moment or two, a few times a day, they get the chance to look him straight in the eye. But Mancebo has never noticed them before. Round, black impressions in the tarmac, left by the legs of his stool, they glare up at him today. For the first time, he notices them, and for the first time, he picks up the stool to work out how it can be possible for a green wooden stool to make black marks on the ground.
He shakes his head and places the stool perfectly on top of its markings. But then he picks it up again and pauses with it in his hand. He studies the black grooves, then the stool and then the marks once more. Eventually, he places the stool a few centimetres away from the marks. He stands there for a moment, and then he picks up the stool, places it on the other side of the entrance and sits back down.
A strange feeling comes over him. It starts in his stomach and slowly spreads through his entire body. It’s almost dizzying to be on the other side of the door. For almost thirty years now, he has always sat to the left of it, he has no idea why. And why today, of all days, he decided to move the stool isn’t something he knows either. Suddenly, he feels as though everyone is staring at him, but why should they be?
Maybe it’s to do with feng shui, Mancebo thinks, before he gets up to help two girls who have come into the shop.
‘I’m a rabbit.’
‘And I’m a horse.’
Mancebo bends down to see whether there are any horses or rabbits left.
Once he’s back on his stool, Mancebo gets back to work, that is he looks up at the apartment opposite. To begin with, he shudders. He suddenly feels like he has come too close. In truth, he’s no closer to the object than before, but everything seems different when viewed from another angle, unfamiliar somehow. From his new vantage point, he can see one of the side walls in the writer’s office. There’s a portrait on it. He can’t make out who the portrait is of, but he has the feeling that it’s someone famous. He has no idea why. Nothing really suggests that. But nothing suggests otherwise, either. The wallpaper is greenish, or maybe greyish, and it features some kind of busy pattern, perhaps flowers.
Everything feels so unfamiliar. Mancebo thinks about how well he would be able to see with his binoculars, but he leaves it as a thought. If he could sit in the exact same spot watching his surroundings all these years, he can manage a few hours in his new position without any help.
Mancebo’s new spot on the pavement amuses him so much that he finds it irritating when two boys go into the shop. He knows what they want.
‘Afternoon, do you know which animals you are?’
‘Monkeys.’
‘Both of you?’
The boys nod. Mancebo rifles among the twelve remaining notebooks. This time, he doesn’t bother encouraging them to buy anything. All he wants is for the notebooks to run out so that he can get back to his important work.
‘There’s only one monkey. One of you’ll have to convert to a horse or a rooster.’
The boys quietly confer.
‘We’ll take a monkey and a rooster. Thank you, monsieur,’ they say in unison.
Mancebo can’t help but laugh; their conversation sounds more suited to a pet shop than a greengrocer’s. He is just about to sit down again, but then he changes his mind. He picks up the stool and takes a few steps towards the right of the entrance, then a few more. He sets the stool down. Once you’ve made one change, it’s all about continuing, he thinks.
He is now so far from the entrance to the shop that one of the awnings is blocking his view of the door, but he’ll still be able to see if anyone goes in. He can see why passers-by might find it odd that the owner of the shop is sitting so far from his business. It must look like the shop and I have had an argument and now we’re sulking on our own, Mancebo thinks. And in a way, it’s true.
Mancebo isn’t fond of his shop today. Rather than being the base for his surveillance, it has now become a hindrance, a prison. He doesn’t know if it’s because he has grown away from it or just because the case now demands more flexibility. Suddenly, he feels a burning sensation on his hand. But Mancebo is so lost in his own fantasies that his brain doesn’t do anything but register the pain. It doesn’t send any follow-up questions so that he can work out what could have caused the pain. His sense of smell takes over instead. Cigarette smoke, his brain notes. Mancebo’s sense of smell is always engaged, there’s no off button for that. That’s how he knows when dinner is ready every day. Mancebo is sitting perfectly still. He feels a sudden burning sensation on his other hand, and he pulls it back without moving the rest of his body. As though in slow motion, he looks up. A few metres above him, he spots Fatima’s fat, gold-clad hand clutching a cigarette. He doesn’t need binoculars to see that.
For the rest of the afternoon, it’s as though he’s in a haze. Customers come and go, but afterwards he barely knows who has been in nor what they bought. Mancebo is in shock. Despite that, he manages to stay cool, until his brain has time to process the shocking reality that has just emerged. His wife smokes. A revolutionary fact for Mancebo, who, for almost forty years, has been living with a woman who complains when he smokes and claims to be allergic to nicotine.
The private anti-smoking campaign that she has been waging rushes through his head at high speed. Occasionally, the memories crash into one another, mix together, weaken, strengthen, and he doesn’t know how to organise, calm or give structure to them. He has no control. He remembers one occasion when they had to change restaurants because they didn’t have any non-smoking tables, and he remembers how Fatima had applauded from the sofa when she learnt that there would be a smoking ban in bars and restaurants on the news.
He also remembers countless occasions when she hit his fingers as he tried to smoke a cigarette over his daily allowance. Memories of the evening when they celebrated Tariq’s lotto win overtake and mow down all the others. Fatima slamming the lid of the cigar box onto his fingers. Mancebo really doesn’t need to go looking for these memories. Some come crashing in like steamrollers, others like small, irritating flies.
A young woman leaves the shop with a smile, and Mancebo finds himself standing with money in his hand. He doesn’t know whether it’s the change he has forgotten to give her or if it’s the money she gave him. But if she’s paid, then why hasn’t he put the money into the till? Mancebo pants, his heart starts beating more quickly, and he feels anxious. Imagine if Fatima’s smoking gives him a heart attack. That would be too ironic. Mancebo takes a couple of deep breaths. The memories are coming to him more slowly now, and he knows that in just a few hours it’ll be time to face his wife.
He picks up the stool from behind the counter, though he has no memory of putting it there. He goes outside and consciously places it back on top of the four black impressions on the tarmac. That’ll have to be enough for the day. He doesn’t want to discover anything else, or not today anyway. He has no desire to spend yet another night in hospital.
Being back in his safe place just to the left of the door does him good. It lulls him, if not into a sense of security, which would be an exaggeration, then at least into a certain state of calm. The evening air rolling in over the city
helps to cool his overheating brain, and his heart starts beating more normally. But then he notices the scent of dinner and his pulse picks up again. He knows he is going to have to face his wife. How long has Fatima been smoking? Why has she kept it secret? Why does she claim to be allergic to cigarette smoke? How much does she smoke? And the last, and most important question: what else doesn’t he know about?
His questions head off down the boulevard. He doesn’t know whether anyone will answer them. Sitting outside his shop, on his green wooden stool, Mancebo feels incredibly lonely.
Mancebo gets up and reluctantly starts packing away the fruit and vegetable stands. He does it slowly. As though he is attempting to gain some time before he has to see his wife, who now feels like a stranger to him. All the same, part of him wants to rush up to their apartment to find the evidence. Maybe she has a box of cigarettes stashed away somewhere, maybe she smells of smoke? Tariq closed up his shop early today, and he’s now sitting in his office as usual. Every now and then he gets up to light a cigarette, but he quickly returns to his paper. He seems restless. Mancebo registers that fact, but he has things other than his cousin on his mind.
Tariq drums his fingers on the table in irritation. Fatima huffs and puffs as she brings the food to the table. Amir pulls at his lip as he reads a book about blue whales. Adèle is filing her nails with a smile on her lips. Mancebo’s eyes flit between the members of his family. It’s as though he has come across a body, and now his job is to work out who the murderer is. The culprit is in the room. It could be the person he least suspects.
‘My old friend Ali called today. Good man, that one,’ Tariq says, stopping his drumming.
Mancebo casts a glance at his cousin. When no one comments on the news that his friend called, Tariq starts drumming his fingers again. Mancebo’s eyes pan over the dinner guests.
‘Think we’re going to the races in Auteuil tomorrow. Ali’s probably keen to win after my jackpot.’
Waiting for Monsieur Bellivier Page 22