And Their Children After Them

by Nicolas Mathieu

  With all this studying, strange things started happening in her head. Shortcuts, surprises, insights. Up to now, she had always thought the disciplines she was taught to be diversions, pastimes for channeling the young. But once the force feeding started, it changed the way she saw things. Steph would’ve had trouble defining this turnabout. She felt both more confident and less certain. Under pressure, a brief Eureka! would sometimes light up her mind. Or, to the contrary, some obvious truism would fade away before her very eyes. The world was becoming fragmented, ramified, infinite.

  Gradually, she began to enjoy it.

  And a terrible worry hit her. She was belatedly realizing that her view of success was totally fallacious. Her parents’ ideal, with their idea of exponential comfort—the chalet in the mountains and the condo in Juan-les-Pins, their need to be well-connected and have status—she now clearly saw as pathetic. To be successful, it wasn’t enough to sell luxury cars and know all the rich people in town. That was a horizon for small-timers and the perpetually confused. A cocooned place that hung by a thread. Steph’s folks thought themselves lords, but they were actually mediocre stewards for a rule operating elsewhere.

  With Clémence, Steph was starting to see the big picture. France’s real decision-makers went through the préparatoire courses and private academies. As early as elementary school, society started sorting its children, picking the most promising ones, the ones best suited to reinforcing the status quo. The result of this systematic selection was a prodigious underpinning of existing power. Each generation produced its batch of gifted people who were quickly converted and duly rewarded, and who went on to strengthen inheritances, revive dynasties, and consolidate the huge architecture of the country’s social pyramid. In the end, merit wasn’t opposed to the laws of birth and blood, as had been imagined by jurists, thinkers, the rebels of 1789 or the black hussars of the Republic. It actually disguised a huge winnowing operation, an extraordinary power of agglomeration, a continuous shoring up of existing hierarchies. It was a very clever system.

  After hours of studying, beating herself up, eating Pepito sandwiches, and sitting inside while the sun was shining, Steph came to despise the entire edifice. She and Clémence got enormously worked up, wanting to overthrow the whole system and go live cheaply, listening to music on some faraway beach. This revolutionary ardor barely disguised their fatigue, their laziness, and the fear that they would fail and find themselves at the bottom of the ladder. In May, they were still burning with this feeling of injustice. Then came the exams. Steph passed with an A average. Her baccalauréat with honors in hand, she quickly reconciled with the ways of the world. Nothing remained of her political fervor, including the quickly jettisoned notion of joining the young socialists. Delighted, her father bought her the little red car.

  * * *

  —

  While they were waiting, other travelers had joined the girls on Platform 2. Clémence did her best to ignore them. Steph could hardly keep still. Then the train appeared.

  Steph immediately ran to the last car. A moment later, Simon stepped down carrying his suitcase, looking fresh. He took her in his arms and they shared a deep kiss.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  She looked at him. He smiled. She immediately sensed that something was off.

  “I have my car,” she said.

  “Cool.”

  “I can’t tell you how happy I am.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “Did you get a haircut?”

  “Yeah.”

  They joined Clémence and headed out. Simon insisted on sitting in the back with his suitcase, and they got under way.

  Steph had dreamed of this moment dozens of times. They would get into the convertible. They were young, beautiful, and free. She had even made a custom cassette tape for the car’s player, with songs by the Beach Boys and Mano Negra. But instead of that, Simon was acting distant, Clémence was feigning indifference, and she herself felt burdened and unwell, as if she were having her period and had just eaten a couple of Snickers bars.

  “So, how was it?”

  “Cool.”

  “What did you do? Did you go to concerts?”

  “For sure.”

  “Did you see the Eiffel Tower?” Clémence asked with a straight face.

  “Yeah.”

  “Super.”

  Steph kept asking questions. She already assumed there was some girl behind Simon’s laconic answers. But all in all, that was a lesser evil. The Basque country was calling. Distance would quickly make him forget his accidental Parisienne. Besides, Simon went to Paris pretty regularly. He had cousins there. If he had in fact found himself a girlfriend, Steph would just have to keep an eye on him. He said “Paris,” but the cousins in question actually lived out in Rueil-Malmaison. She was a top executive with Danone; her husband worked for Matra, in La Défense. They had three children. Judging by the photos, they looked a lot like the Triplés, the insufferable blond kids in the cartoon strip that ran in Figaro Madame.

  “So what did you do there?”

  “Nothing special.”

  “Did you have friends? Did you go out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Yeah’?”

  Steph checked the rearview mirror. Simon was wearing his Quiksilver glasses and looked very superior to everything, as usual, and that indifference drove her completely crazy. She couldn’t help it. She wanted to matter to him, and right away. She fell silent, in a hurry to be alone with him. She would do whatever he wanted.

  Then Simon spoke up.

  “By the way, Biarritz isn’t happening,” he said offhandedly.

  “What?”

  Clémence spun around in her seat, and Steph almost stalled the car.

  “We aren’t going. It’s off. I’m sorry.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Clémence.

  “Are you serious?” asked Steph.

  “C’mon, talk. What the hell is this shit?”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry. That’s the way it is. The trip is off.”

  Steph brought the car to a screeching stop on the shoulder. Another car passed them, honking furiously. The girls gaped at Simon, incredulous. He actually didn’t seem all that sorry.

  “Explain yourself at least.”

  “It’s nothing. Drive on, I’ll tell you about it.”

  Steph set the hand brake instead. Simon looked around the area where they had stopped. It was one of those ambiguous zones where scattered houses with little gardens, fences, and colored shutters formed an intermittent archipelago. There were highway signs, electric wires, spaces between people. It wasn’t the countryside, but neither was it a town or a housing development. A bus stop shelter maintained the fiction of a link with civilization. Two old people were waiting there—since when?

  “So?”

  “I’m sorry,” Simon repeated, about as convincingly as before.

  “What part of ‘We want an explanation’ don’t you understand?” asked Clémence.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Get out of my car,” said Steph.

  “You’re joking.”

  “Yeah. We’re dying of laughter. Get out, right now.”

  “Wait.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll explain it to you. It isn’t my fault.”

  Simon told them what had happened. Julien, the oldest of his cousins, was due to go to the West Coast of the United States for a whole month that summer. It was a big deal and had been arranged a long time ago. But he’d had the bad luck to break his leg roller skating. So Simon stepped in to take his place. He was leaving in three days; his bags were already packed. A month with a family of psychologists in Carmel, California. It was a golden opportunity; no way was he going to pass it up. H
e was very sorry.

  “So you’re just ditching us?” asked Steph.

  “Well, what would you want me to do?”

  “You could start by drowning in your own vomit,” suggested Clémence.

  “How long have you known?”

  “A week.”

  “And you didn’t warn us?”

  “You realize we made all our plans around you, don’t you?”

  “Well, yeah. I’m really sorry. That was just it. I actually didn’t know how to tell you. I’m really sorry, girls.”

  There he was, sitting on his ass, with his white polo shirt and his little head hiding behind his glasses. Steph hated him so much, especially because she couldn’t help thinking him cute. That was her drama. For nearly two years now, Simon had made her life a living hell. They had broken up a dozen times. And not just because she caught him kissing other girls at parties. He lied all the time, stole money from his parents, got bombed on TCE, and never kept his word. And the worst was that he always managed to land on his feet. Steph had always been the one to initiate their reconciliations. She told herself stories about crazy love and attraction/repulsion, like Dylan and Kelly in Beverly Hills, 90210. Simon was tortured, selfish, and sexy. In short, a real asshole.

  “You know, I always said he was a born loser,” observed Clémence.

  Steph was thinking hard. Things couldn’t just spiral out of control this way.

  “What about your brother? Couldn’t he open the house for us?”

  “You can always ask him,” answered Simon sarcastically.

  “You’re a truly sick individual,” said Clémence.

  “You gave me no choice,” he said, frowning. “I knew you were gonna give me a hard time. I’ve been wondering for days how I was going to break the news to you.”

  You had to admit that Simon had a kind of genius for getting himself out of tight spots. You criticized him for something, and two seconds later you found yourself apologizing. Steph had gotten her head turned around so many times, she’d lost count. But this time, she wasn’t falling for it.

  “You’re gonna take your little suitcase and split.”

  She opened the door and tipped her seat to let him through.

  “I’m not getting out here. This is the middle of nowhere.”

  Steph looked around. It would take Simon at least an hour to walk to town. With his suitcase and in this heat. The idea pleased her enormously.

  “Come on, raus! You’re getting out, now.”

  Clémence was silently jubilant. With ill grace, Simon finally got out of the car. He started walking toward the bus stop, occasionally looking over his shoulder in the hope that they would say, “No, it’s okay, we’ll drive you home.” But Steph was too disgusted. She thought about Simon’s hands on her ass, her crotch, everywhere. Shit.

  “What a loser,” said Clémence.

  “No shit.”

  Stéphanie got back in the car, released the hand brake, and headed for Heillange under a cement-like sky, in the thickness of July. She drove quite fast, without caution, without pleasure, without a word. Their vacation was fucked. Their last one as high schoolers. A brand-new sadness rose in their tight throats.

  8

  To close the mass, the organist played a customary Bach toccata. The staccato, tubular, vaguely metaphysical chords rose very high. Despite Anthony’s refusal to believe in this biblical fantasia, the soaring stone, the blues of the stained glass windows, and the church’s verticality wound up moving him. In the nave a little farther away, four men were carrying a corpse sealed in a box. People shuffled toward the light. Thousands of Sundays had been spent this way, in hymns, canticles, anxiety, and hope. He shivered. It certainly was cold in here.

  Anthony gave his father a hug when he reached him, and recognized his cologne. Hélène gave him a peck on the cheek. Then they found themselves outside on the forecourt, dazed, having lost some of their composure. They needed to get oriented. Hélène folded the little yellow pamphlet that helped people follow the service, and rummaged in her purse for her sunglasses. She avoided meeting her ex-husband’s eye. She put on the glasses and crossed her arms under her bosom.

  “Are you doing okay?” asked Patrick.

  “Yes. How about you?”

  “I’m fine. Feels funny, though.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  He was talking about the dead man; she, about their being together. The kids nudged each other with their shoulders, and Anthony nearly took Vanessa’s hand.

  On the forecourt, the faithful emerging from the church mixed with the people who hadn’t wanted to attend the mass. There was a heck of a crowd. It was easy to spot Luc Grandemange’s old Muslim coworkers and the union diehards who’d rather be run over by a train than set foot in a church. But for all their acting like wise guys and renegades, they felt uncomfortable. A big chunk of their history was being buried along with Luc. Since he paid his first union dues back in 1963, he’d been a little of everything: union rep, workers’ delegate, officer at large, secretary. He even became a movement figure during the big Metalor strikes. He wasn’t one of the ideologues, and he didn’t have a gift for negotiating. Other guys were smarter, stupider, more committed, had more to lose, or would hang in over the long haul. But Luc had a seemingly superfluous quality: He set the mood. In a struggle, you needed guys like him, to goof off, slap the waverers on the back, call the hotheads “sweetheart.” Sometimes it was a drag. It wasted time. Luc’s jokes were rarely funny, and with him, it was always party time. But in his own way, he created bonds between people and held them together, right to the end.

  Since then, his involvement and good cheer had taken a distinctly chauvinistic turn. He gradually began to think that the poor suckers whose cause he served weren’t just workers, wage earners, provincials, and dropouts. They were also native-born Frenchmen. The real problem was the influx of immigrants. You could just do the math. The number of immigrants, about three million, exactly matched the number of the unemployed. Hell of a coincidence, right? When you thought about it, a lot of complicated problems got simpler once you realized that those lazy people from abroad were the main cause of our current woes.

  Plenty of people around Luc agreed with that diagnosis, and pleaded for quotas and deportation flights, a sharp reminder that France was our home, after all. But despite their popularity, those ideas stayed out of sight and under cover. They weren’t mentioned in places where you had to behave yourself. A kind of vague shame, like politeness, kept them in check. The priest didn’t say anything about those questionable beliefs when he summed up Luc’s biography. Nor did they appear in his obituary in L’Est républicain. And when they were mentioned within Évelyne’s earshot, she minimized them with a sigh and a wave of the hand. Her husband had just gotten carried away. He was like that about soccer, too.

  * * *

  —

  Once the coffin was in the hearse, Évelyne’s nephew stood at the top of the steps between the forecourt and the church porch and clapped his hands to get people’s attention. Évelyne, who hadn’t stopped thanking people and nodding gravely, took the opportunity to light herself a cigarette. The flame shot up and her cheeks hollowed as she inhaled the brown smoke.

  “We’re going to Saint-Michel cemetery,” said her nephew. “Those who care to are free to follow us. But there may be no point in everyone coming.”

  Almost apologetically, he went on to say that there wouldn’t be enough room in the parking lot, and that the family would like a little privacy. The forecourt was jammed with people; you’d think the whole town was there. Everyone listened to him impassively. They silently exchanged glances and little signs. At one moment Anthony caught his parents looking at each other without a word. Then his mother looked away. His father stared at his feet.

  “On the other hand, we’re not going to part like this,” the nephew continued. “
Évelyne is inviting you to L’Usine for brioche. I don’t suppose I need to give you the address.”

  The comment was greeted by laughter, and another murmur went through the crowd when he announced that Évelyne was also paying for coffee and the first round of drinks.

  “Champagne!” someone yelled.

  Évelyne smiled, and the lout was put in his place. The mood had changed, anyway. Death was all very well, but we’re going to go have a drink.

  “Hey, there!”

  Anthony’s cousin was walking toward them, tightly holding his girlfriend’s hand.

  “So what’s new?”

  “I’m okay. What about you?”

  “I’m doing great.”

  Patrick seemed delighted at this little family get-together. He grabbed the cousin by the shoulder and gave him a friendly shake.

  “Been a long time, hasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it has,” he said, embarrassed but also pleased.

  “Your mother told me that you’re moving in together,” said Hélène.

  “Not yet; we’re looking,” he said.

  “We’ll find something,” said Séverine.

  “Where are you looking?”

  “Over by Blonds-Champs. There are some brand-new apartments there. We went to see at City Hall. They don’t have anything right now. Anyway, we don’t have priority. It’s always the same thing.”

  They knew what she meant.

  Anthony asked a couple of questions out of politeness, but his mother and his aunt had gotten much closer since his parents’ split, so he already knew all about the couple’s problems. His cousin had decided to quit school and was working part-time on stupid little stuff, maintenance, cleaning, odd jobs. The beautiful Séverine wanted to earn a technical diploma, but that was complicated because she hadn’t passed the baccalauréat. She’d taken a few vague steps to get an equivalency, but her zeal was greatly undermined by her love for the Spice Girls and her secret conviction that she was destined for a career in show business. She was making the rounds of karaoke bars and local beauty contests, taking acting classes, and sending her resume off to Paris. Anyway, the two of them loved each other. That clearly justified anything.