And Their Children After Them

by Nicolas Mathieu

  —

  The first guests arrived a little after six o’clock. They came in couples or alone, more rarely with children. Most were wearing light-colored clothes. Cyril had put on an elegant Parma colored jacket to greet them. Given the forecast, tents had to be rented at the last minute to protect the buffet in case it rained. They’d had to put all this up in a hurry, and Anthony didn’t have time to wash. He just gave himself a quick splash in the kitchen and put on a clean T-shirt. It wasn’t nearly enough.

  Outside, torches standing here and there gave off a powerful smell of citronella. The tablecloths, chairs, and drapery were white. Champagne buckets stood awaiting their bottles. The overall impression was one of order and cleanliness. A little music was playing from the speakers. Cyril had brought in a DJ from Luxembourg. Once it was dark, there would be dancing. All in all, everything seemed to be going fine. Except maybe for the big mound of crushed ice for the shellfish, which was already melting at top speed. Anthony watched for Stéphanie’s arrival with growing impatience. When he spotted Sonia, he ran over to her.

  “Hey, where’d you get to? Is everything okay?”

  “I quit.”

  “No kidding!”

  “Damn straight. I’m stopping. I’m out of here. Finito.”

  She didn’t seem to be in a better mood for all that.

  “So when are you leaving?”

  “Right away.”

  “That’s heavy. You could’ve talked to me about it.”

  “There’s nothing to say.”

  Still, she had bothered to change for the evening and was wearing a little flowered top and a diamond in each ear.

  On the other hand, she was still wearing her Walkman headset around her neck and her Doc Martens.

  “You look good like that,” said Anthony.

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s a change from black.”

  “I got it.”

  “You gonna hang around for a bit?”

  “Yeah. I still have to see Cyril about something.”

  “What is this thing you have with him?”

  She shrugged. There was no thing.

  “Okay, see you,” she said.

  “Don’t leave without saying goodbye to me,” Anthony insisted.

  “Sure, don’t worry.”

  She put her headphones back on and left.

  * * *

  —

  Pierre Chaussoy and his wife arrived a little after seven. He was paunchy and affable, with sharp features and gray hair combed flat. When he talked and smiled, his features would jerk upward, as if a puppet master was pulling strings attached to his face. At his side, Caroline Chaussoy was a moderately dazzling bottle blonde wearing lots of rings. She was heavy in the knee but had the well-preserved face of an outdoorsy Swede. Cyril chatted them up for a while, until they turned away to pursue more meaningful handshakes. Two waiters had started to circulate with coupes of champagne. Cyril went to find Anthony:

  “Things aren’t moving along. Find your friend and go handle the buffet. Try to get them to drink water. They’re getting out of hand.”

  In fact, the guests were already talking loudly, holding each other by the arm, laughing inappropriately, and draining their glasses the moment they were filled. All this was happening in an electric atmosphere that was hard to endure, with the low sky hovering ominously. The crushed ice had almost completely melted by now, and water pouring from the buffet had turned the shellfish area into a swamp. Drinkers who approached got their feet wet. A few women even took their shoes off to enjoy the coolness. Anthony and Romain started filling people’s glasses. They also offered them Badoit water but got no takers. Soon Caroline Chaussoy came over to get a glass. Recognizing Romain, she exclaimed:

  “I didn’t know you were working here.”

  “Sure am.”

  “Still, not a bad way to spend the summer.”

  Romain nodded politely and offered the blond woman a coupe.

  “Ah, that’s perfect,” she said, pleased.

  Anthony would have liked Romain to introduce him, but it didn’t occur to him. On the other hand, he had the presence of mind to ask if Steph would be there soon.

  “Oh, with her, you know…”

  They chatted for a few more minutes, mainly about mutual acquaintances. Then a crackle came from the speakers. The new president had climbed onto the small stage set up for the purpose.

  “Your attention, please!” he said.

  The hum of conversations stopped. Pierre Chaussoy raised his hands and again asked for silence, and the crowd quickly settled down to listen to him.

  “I’ll be brief. To start with, I want to thank you all for coming in spite of the rainstorm we’re expecting.”

  These thanks preceded others. The speech went on. It was skillful, familiar, with well-chosen moments, winks, and outstretched hands. An occasional witticism raised a smile, and the damp, motionless spectators snuck glances at their neighbors. Cyril had taken a position in the very back, from which he watched people’s faces with deep anxiety. From time to time he nodded approvingly at something the president said. Standing off to one side, Caroline Chaussoy listened while twisting a white gold bracelet around her wrist. Suddenly Anthony thought he glimpsed a squirrel scampering along. It was Sonia. He looked for her, but she had already disappeared.

  The president had promised to be brief; that was a lie. Instead, he recounted the history of the club, which had once been threatened, then saved, revived, and today was flourishing. Naturally, that destiny was part of a broader panorama, one that was national, economic, and global. Pierre Chaussoy said the words “deindustrialization,” “stakeholders,” and “modern.” People applauded.

  “Hey, there!”

  Cyril had stationed himself behind Anthony and grabbed his arm. He seemed in a complete panic.

  “Did you see the ice?” he said. “It’s dripping everywhere, the shrimp are falling onto the ground, it’s disgusting. You gotta clean that up for me. Go get buckets from the kitchen. You can toss the shellfish in the garbage. It’s all over for tonight. Get going!”

  Anthony hurried away. Onstage, Pierre Chaussoy was searching in his pocket for the piece of paper where he had jotted down a few thoughts.

  “Yes…What I especially wanted to tell you was that the time for tears is over. We’ve been mourning Metalor’s closing for ten years now. Whenever people mention Heillange, it’s to talk about crisis, poverty, and society breaking down. Enough of that! Today we have the right to think about other things. About the future, for example.”

  Again, people applauded. Anthony, who wasn’t completely indifferent to these arguments, stopped on his way to the kitchen to hear the rest. After all, he, too, was tired of this whole remembered industrial past. It made people who hadn’t lived through it feel like they’d missed the big event. It made any enterprise seem laughable by comparison, any success minuscule. The iron men and their good old days had been a pain in the butt for too long.

  The president continued. The sailing club was a perfect example of the valley’s possibilities, he said. Recent improvements had restored the campground to its former glory, and the place had been nearly full ever since. Next year, an aquatic complex would be built there with a wave pool, a waterslide, and a twenty-five-meter lap pool. Productivist notions were out of date; the future lay in leisure activities. When it came to recreation, the Henne Valley enjoyed some major assets. In summer, it had a remarkable number of sunny days. Its lake, forests, and countryside were as fine as any other. It was blessed with a first-class highway infrastructure. Its proximity to richer countries like Luxembourg and Germany was a real boon. Not to mention Heillange’s time-honored tradition of hospitality, since it had once welcomed the down-and-out from the Continent and the Mediterranean to run its famous mills. Chaussoy also mentioned Holland, Belgium,
and Switzerland, which weren’t all that far away and could provide an admirably solvent customer base. One could also count on subsidies from the region, from Paris, and from Brussels. Depressed areas had the right to appeal to the country’s generosity. Studies would soon prove what he was saying, and subsidies would follow. The program was an attractive one. People applauded again, at length. The audience of notables gathered that evening was tired of the prevailing melancholy. They had no reason to despair, after all. They recognized that thirty years of devastation had reshaped the world of work, the nature of jobs, and the bases of French prosperity, and they sympathized, but they were full of dynamism. It was time to forge ahead. The support structures would appear.

  * * *

  —

  “Hi, there.”

  Anthony was standing in front of the bar with a bucket of crushed ice in each hand when Stéphanie came in the door.

  “Hi,” he said.

  Romain had vanished, so he’d had to do all the cleaning up by himself. He threw out four thousand francs’ worth of shellfish, the equivalent of a month’s salary. The smell stuck to his hands. It had taken him five round trips to pack out the remaining ice, and he was soaking wet.

  “Am I too late?” asked Steph, hearing the racket outside.

  “No. It’s more that they started early.”

  In fact, the president’s speech had unleashed unexpected powers of optimism. People had relaxed and were having fun. An allergist threw up, and a service manager tossed her glass over her shoulder. There wasn’t a drop of champagne left. For his part, Cyril was going along with the disorder. At least people were having a good time.

  “So you’re working here now?” Stéphanie began.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s funny.”

  “What is?”

  She took her time before answering.

  “You’ve grown.”

  It was nice to hear, even if she was sort of treating him like a kid. They didn’t have much to say, just looked at each other.

  “Are you in college now?” Anthony asked.

  “No,” she said. “I just took the bac.”

  “Did you pass?”

  “With honors.”

  She gave a dismissive little wave to express how silly the thing was. Just the same, she was proud of herself. Anthony found her even more beautiful than before. Her face had lost its chubby, childish look. But she still had her incredible hair and that famous ponytail. Her eyes seemed larger; she must have been making them up differently, better. Also, she was wearing a low-cut sleeveless white blouse that displayed her cleavage. Anthony was making a great effort to look her in the face.

  “I think I’m going to go,” she said.

  “Yeah. See you later.”

  “Yeah, later.”

  As she walked by him, Anthony thought of the smell of shrimp and stupidly held his breath. He was hoping for a last glance back before she went out the door. But they weren’t in a movie.

  * * *

  —

  From then on, Anthony’s evening mainly consisted in searching for Steph among the guests while pretending to pick up empty glasses. At every instant, he spotted her ponytail, thought he saw her shoulder, glimpsed her eyes or face, found her in places where she wasn’t. He was reconstructing her from scratch, starting with nothing, making it all up, and would then unexpectedly bump into her in the frenzy of the party. Stéphanie got tipsy fast and soon joined in the game. Anthony kept getting a hard-on. She was returning his glances. Smiling. Her cleavage glowed like the sun.

  For his part, the famous DJ from Luxembourg had tried in vain to get the guests interested in various kinds of music. Nobody felt like dancing. It was too hot; they were tired, and drunk, besides. A little breeze was now raising moiré ripples on the dark waters of the lake. People still expected rain. Lubricated by liquor, men who were normally restrained by their ambitions allowed themselves sarcastic pronouncements. Their wives often tried to hush them, without success. The debriefing would come later, in the car. Going home, they might argue, take a shower, or make love, being careful not to wake the children. It would still be a pleasant evening.

  Past midnight, things with Steph began to move faster. She had taken to seeking Anthony out as well. She was playing up to him; they had brushed by each other. It should be said that there were no other young people their age at the party. Anthony was enjoying a miraculous but very temporary exclusivity. He had to take advantage of it. At one moment Steph even came to find him in the kitchen, where he was washing some dishes. In the harsh neon light, he saw her as he never had before. The fuzz on her thighs, her shiny skin, the armature of her bra, a minute crop of acne on her forehead and cheeks under her makeup. Faced with the raw reality of this imperfect body, he found himself desiring her more than ever.

  “What are you doing afterward?” she asked.

  “Nothing special.”

  “Could you give me a lift home? I’ve been drinkin’ all evening. Apparently there are cops everywhere now.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  She said all this with a disarming neutrality, leaning on her right leg, hip cocked a little. She had painted her fingernails and toenails. It was crazy, how girls focused on those details in their desire to be beautiful, their hunger to please. It was all part of a nuptial dance as old as time. In the end, the entire species depended on those meticulous touches.

  “How soon will you be done?”

  “In half an hour, if that works for you.”

  “Yeah, half an hour’s good.”

  “Cool.”

  “See you later.”

  Watching Steph as she walked out of the kitchen, Anthony gazed at her ass and hips and started flipping out for real. Everything suddenly seemed possible, and at the same time so uncertain. This window of opportunity was becoming the chance of a lifetime. And here he was, reeking of shrimps and Paic dish soap. He absolutely had to have that shower.

  After making sure Cyril wasn’t monitoring him, Anthony took off for the bungalows. They called them bungalows, but they were actually just gussied-up locker rooms. There were three wooden cabins set back a little near the road, with toilets, showers, and a patio with chaise longues for show. It gave the place a kind of safari atmosphere that the clients loved. Anthony had brought a bar of soap and a clean dish towel to dry himself off. He didn’t have any more fresh T-shirts, unfortunately, which really bothered him. He first hurried, then started running, caught up in his excitement.

  But a light in the distance stopped him dead.

  It was shining through the cracks in the first bungalow, outlining a shutter and a door. He approached cautiously. Nobody had any business being there. He thought about the inbreds, about prowlers. He should have turned around and gone back, but cowardice didn’t seem a reasonable option at that point. He crept closer and listened through the closed door. He tried to open it, but the door was latched.

  “Who’s in there?”

  He tried the handle, and shook the door, but the latch held fast. From inside he heard footsteps, murmurs, rustling, a bunch of noises spelling confusion and concern.

  “Open up!” Anthony shouted, more to give himself courage than for any other reason. He wrapped the bar of soap in the dishcloth to make a kind of sling, but it didn’t have much heft.

  “Okay, just a minute,” said a voice.

  The door opened and there stood Romain, with Sonia behind him, her eyes downcast.

  “What the fuck is this shit?” asked Anthony.

  “What?”

  Suddenly Romain wasn’t so friendly anymore.

  “She’s fourteen years old! Are you out of your gourd?”

  “Take it easy, okay?”

  “What the fuck’s your problem?”

  Romain walked up to Anthony and shoved him backward.

 
“I told you, take it easy.”

  Stunned, Anthony took two steps back. He could feel the shove vibrating through his whole body. Its power surprised and humiliated him. His anger increased.

  “I’m out of here,” said Sonia, seeing that things were taking a nasty turn.

  “I’ll take you home,” said Anthony.

  “I wouldn’t bet on it,” she said.

  Anthony tried to follow Sonia as she was leaving, but Romain’s large hand clapped him on the shoulder.

  “You’re staying here.”

  With his other hand, Romain grabbed him by the nape of the neck like a puppy. Anthony struggled to get free, first annoyed, then suddenly enraged. He wanted to punch Romain in the face, but that face was too far and too high. He was trapped, and he couldn’t see clearly. Romain slapped him hard, hitting his eye. Anthony immediately felt tears welling up, stinging his nose.

  “Stop it!” Sonia shouted.

  It was too late; Anthony’s pride had taken over. He fought harder, grabbing for Romain’s eyes and mouth, trying to bite him. The two tumbled backward and started trading blows randomly. But the punches didn’t carry. They lacked power and accuracy, and the boys were hampered by being on the ground in darkness. They were rolling around and Sonia was screaming. In the end, the two bodies tangling awkwardly looked pretty ridiculous. Anthony was biting at random. Then Romain yanked him up, slammed him down on his back, and punched him twice.

  “You’re both crazy! Stop it!”

  The taste of blood filled Anthony’s mouth. It was metallic, a sharp, disgusting taste like iodine or ether, and it calmed him.

  The bungalow light went out. He thought of Stéphanie. He still had to bring her home.

  2

  Hacine was driving a Volvo station wagon, but if you’d asked him what color it was, he couldn’t say.

  He was heading home.

  Two years earlier, Hacine and his father had gone to Morocco with their car crammed full of stuff. They were bringing perfume, coffee, bar soap, clothes bought at Kiabi for their little cousins, and a few pairs of Levi’s to be resold over there. On the ferry, his father cut Hacine’s hair, then took new clothes and leather shoes out of his suitcase for him. He had to look good.