It was the room they called Cédric’s and it had always been used as a storeroom to keep bottles of water and boxes of old papers. It was over the study and opposite their own room, and it looked straight across at the neighbors’ bedroom, where the window was blocked up, in summer and winter alike, by a cloth of turquoise batik. Claude had ended the first nights of his nausea in this room. He would not be able to take refuge here for two weeks. Simone dreaded the intimacy that would have to be reappropriated in an increasingly sensitive discomfort. Neither of them had dared to own up to their apprehensions as they straightened up the room to make it look more or less welcoming.
Gaël jumped onto the bed on his knees and hung right out of the open window over the green tangle of forsythia. He could see the street when he leaned out completely, he called out loudly, as though hoping for an echo. His T-shirt rode up and his paunchy hips mushroomed over the low waistline of his pants. In the sunshine, his hair was a dark fiery red. Simone thought he looked a bit older than the first time. He did not seem to fit in this child’s room, shrunk to a passageway between the piles of boxes draped with sheets. She told him that he was making her dizzy leaning out like that, but he wasn’t listening. So she kicked an escaping plastic crate back under the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress. Gaël sank back on his heels. His face was flushed, and he rubbed it up and down vigorously for a moment with the flat of his hands, as if to get rid of something bothering him. His bangs stuck up a bit comically in a quiff over his raised eyebrows. What was your name again? he asked suddenly with a hint of impudence. I forgot. Simone told him but did not take her eyes off him, unhinged to realize that he was already reckoning exactly how he could take advantage of her attachment to him. In fact, he was not really the way she remembered him. Nevertheless, she felt a wave of affection that took her breath away.
The backpack had toppled over at the end of the bed. Gaël bent down to stand it up but failed and sat down again, oddly breathless from the effort. He cast a look around at the piles of boxes; then his shoulders drooped slightly. He said twice that, the day he first came, he hadn’t seen that there was a child’s room. His voice sounded edgy, suggesting he’d had a nervous week that Simone felt guilty for. She wondered if he was aware and was peeved at how selfish they all were.
Jovana was standing in the corridor with Claude, leaning back against the handrail with the slightest contortion of embarrassment. Simone heard her asking how the treatment was going, carefully wording her sentences to avoid sounding either too formal or too familiar. It was fascinating how alien they were to each other and yet how true the tenderness remained. Then, finding nothing to say that had not been said the first time—the rest would have needed more time and intimacy than Jovana was probably ready to give—she gave his arm a sisterly rub and went to say good-bye to her son.
Gaël made a hopeful but prudent move when he saw her bounce in and crush her lips against his, gently rubbing their faces together. The transgressive panache of their kiss drove Simone out. She got up from the bed and left the room but was pulled up short by the surprise of seeing Claude’s unrecognizable head again, his huge forehead now wrinkled in confusion almost to the top of his skull. The noise of a lawn mower filled the rooms. The front door’s been left open, she said, hurtling down the stairs in panic and distress.
Claude followed her, and a few seconds later Jovana came down herself, probably aware and worried that she had caused offense. Her dimpled face appeared at the kitchen door. A gift was clutched under the plump flesh of her bare crossed arms. Gaël had stayed in his room and shouted down to her to look up at the window when she went out. He did not want to come down, although she insisted, and set up a lazy whining, which she dismissed with a pretty, careless toss of her head, turning to tell Claude that he shouldn’t let himself be bossed around. She obviously had no idea what she was rousing in them. Simone was touched to see the pads of pink flesh bulging over her nails, which were bitten down to the quick. She felt stupidly fragile, unable to quell the unjustified resentment that had gotten the better of her.
Jovana took a step forward to put the present on the table. I’ll be going, then, she announced to the interminable silence. Simone nodded. She could see Claude in the background, standing ignored in the darkening corridor. Finally, he disappeared. His absurd head brought tears to her eyes. What she really found unbearable was the ease with which he faced down this humiliation.
A trickle of salt was choking her. I’m sorry, I’m stupid, she just about managed to get out, tapping her lips with two fingers as though to relieve a burning mouth. Jovana glanced briefly toward the sitting room, where Claude’s figure was dwindling into the dazzling light from the garden. I’ll take Gaël back with me. I hadn’t realized things had gotten so bad. Her intonation was cheerful; it wasn’t a blunder, but a perfectly adult, graceful observation. But it pained her to give up her plans, and the faintest hint of disappointment had extinguished the warmth in her face. Simone assured her that it would be all right, that she would find a way of keeping Gaël busy if Claude felt too tired. Making an effort to be generous comforted her sense of emptiness and loss. She could not, in any case, imagine going back to being alone with Claude after having had the hope of a bit of life in the house. Jovana turned around as though to make sure Claude approved, but he was still standing facing the garden. The sun had left the lawn and the room, and his listless presence seemed increasingly ominous. Simone suddenly could no longer stand the state of submission he was reduced to by the treatment, or the sorrow, or both. Go now, she said, turning away.
Jovana jotted down her mobile number on a scrap of paper and left it beside the gift, insisting they call her if things weren’t going well. Simone closed the door without answering. There was nothing that could be said without bitterness or too much blameworthy, pointless emotion. She walked over to the open window so as not to hear them saying good-bye and, above all, not to sense him floundering so expressively. The lawn mower had stopped. A warm breeze filled the room with the rustle of leaves. The street lay in the white heat of weekend peace. Opposite, the shutters had been closed for two weeks. An unclipped rosebush cast long purple stems over the gate; at night, a hall light stayed on, probably to deter vandals, forming a round crisscrossed eye. They barely knew anyone now in the neighborhood. A lot of people had left, put off by the encroaching city and the fear of gangs. There had been scuffles and disagreements. Claude could not forgive people fleeing from a world they had allowed to degenerate. Simone could scarcely remember the morally involved man he had once been. He had been let down, had gotten tired of understanding, and had sent everyone back to their grudges with the bitter disgust that was killing him. The realization of their isolation suddenly gave her a hollow feeling. She hardly dared imagine the sense of failure and futility Claude must have to confront during the precarious silences of his illness.
Gaël’s voice echoed along the hallway, as though sucked out through the open front door. Jovana was off at last. She went down the two front steps and looked back up at the window, shielding her eyes against the brightness of the sky. Her face was once more full of eager anticipation at going away. She blew him a kiss and promised to call every day, then disappeared in a flash of blue.
A red car screeched to a halt beside the SUV, its tinted windows jarring like blind eyes in the midday light. Jovana watched it reverse and advance several times in a kind of weirdly aggressive dance that didn’t seem to make her hesitate. Claude had not closed the door, and Simone felt the call of a draft through the house. She wondered what about him, Jovana, or the SUV had made the car stop. Gaël’s voice was no longer to be heard. But he was still at the window, probably sulking, because Jovana was frowning with a pout of gentle annoyance as she turned to the gate to call out a last good-bye. The car had vanished and a great empty silence descended on them. Jovana craned her neck to scan the end of the street and threw her bag on the passenger seat. Then her bobbing ponytail slapped the edge of the c
ar roof and the door closed behind her. She took a while to get going. It dawned on Simone that she was probably leaving her son for the first time and that, however pressing the reason, at this moment she must be blaming herself for it.
Simone waited a few minutes before going to see what Claude was doing. She found him sitting at the table in the living room, his head turned to the garden, where the wind was catapulting unripe but already shriveled plums onto the lawn. His fingers were gingerly feeling the top of his scalp. Simone suddenly saw what he had found: a deep round scar, like a hole made with the point of a pencil. She noticed, too, that his feet were bare in nearly new deck shoes she had never seen him wear before. His sadness offended her, tortured her; she could figure it out only too well. Gaël’s silence upstairs was weighing on them like an accusation. She would have liked to ask him to come and help her make lunch, but she didn’t dare. His grumpiness intimidated her. Above all, she did not feel the same freedom, now that she no longer really recognized him, now that it was totally unthinkable not to find ways to endear him to them.
It was that evening when they tried to console themselves by making love, but Claude’s body would not respond. He apologized, hugging her awkwardly to his bony frame with its odor of rancid talcum powder. Morphine was casting the same somnolence over his pain and his instincts, although he had obeyed them all these years, comforting them with the regularity of their transports. Simone was in a state of vague arousal from blighted tenderness and fatigue but was not necessarily looking for satisfaction. She said it didn’t matter and closed her eyes. In truth, she was afraid he would think he had to say he loved her and would want to kiss her. She recoiled at the idea; his unhealthy saliva reminded her of chewed chalk.
It was still early. Dusk outside was visible through the blinds that hung in the thick warmth of the room. They had gone to bed at the same time as Gaël, disrupted out of their routine and strangely uneasy on this first evening, which they had weakly frittered away in front of the television. His presence on the other side of the landing recalled former weekends with Cédric. Eight years had gone by without anything jogging their memory. And now Claude’s body was no longer capable of love, and now the hand resting on her hip was touching her through a thick glove without feeling.
Simone was hot; her leg between his was tingling. Feeling her disentangling herself, Claude apologized again, rubbed her arm, and turned over. The silence in the room was oppressive. Before long, it was split by a whistle from the street, alerting them to the low thrum of stationary cars with their engines running beneath their windows, probably for a while.
The district emptied out during the holidays and had become a meeting place for dealers, some of whose faces Claude probably recognized. Simone’s heart sank when she saw him sit up on the edge of the bed. It was, in a way, his failure he was going out to contemplate. What are you going to do? she asked, rolling over on her back, pressing her hands over her eyes.
Claude went over to the window to peer through the gaps in the blinds. That red car is there again, he announced with odd impatience, and left the room. He stumbled away into the dark silence of the house. Simone sat up in bed and seemed to see its pale shape floating in the room. At least tonight, she thought with bitter relief, we won’t have to swallow the hair that falls out in handfuls. It was crazy the things one could come to look out for and put up with without complaining.
There was a sudden burst of engines revving and people shouting down below. Car doors banged and headlights briefly swept away down the street just as Claude was putting the porch light on. Simone heard him open the door, then rattle the rusty handle on the garden gate. As peace returned, the sounds reached her so clearly, she felt they were right beside her. She pictured to herself his naked scalp under the halo of streetlights. She felt so depressed by his restless urge to be out in the world again that she almost went down to join him.
Claude had reached their door, when he changed his mind and crossed the landing to Gaël’s room. Simone put one foot out of bed. The boy was leaning out of the window and must have been watching the cars maneuvering as he peered through the leaves of the silver birch. He turned around when he heard someone come in. His expression of surprise at the light was distorted by excitement. Claude went over to him, probably to ask him what he had seen. Gaël listened in silence, his buttocks squeezed between his heels. Simone guessed immediately that he was about to lie.
THE CAR HAD CRASHED and one of the passengers had been killed that night, but they did not find out till much later in the day. It was still early; it was fresh and calm and the garden was drenched in shade under a pale, milky sky. At dinner the previous day, Claude had suggested that Gaël accompany him on his morning walk to the stadium, but all he got in reply was a shyly obstinate pout. Simone found him waiting anyway, sitting on a plastic chair with his back to the house. The grass was ravaged by green plums and glistening with water. Claude sat swaddled in a blanket, his shaved head poking out, bent and unsteady. Isolated patches of persistent hair had grown back, forming the rough shapes of a jigsaw puzzle. It occurred to Simone that it was the memory of this unrecognizable man she would be left with.
He had turned around when he heard her and his right arm came out of the blanket, like a beggar putting out his hand. The veins were wasted by the poison of the injections and formed a dull red web of tiny sensitive filaments under his skin. It made it look as though his diseased blood was thinning to the surface of his body. Claude had never yet talked about it; maybe he had only just noticed. He ran his finger over the lines and said that, oddly, the burning sensation froze his limbs. His skin was poisoned and was recoiling in disgust. He could no longer bear warm water, he added, pulling down his sleeve.
The noise of a moped slaloming down the street drew his attention to the house. He stared up at the closed blinds of Gaël’s room for a few moments, then glanced impatiently at his watch. His annoyance asked for no help. Simone knew he would bear the disappointment of feeling so little understanding and pleasure alone and without a word. She hoped for his sake that it was not just guilt complicated by irreparable self-reproach and anxieties that were making him suffer the steady deterioration he was tracking so minutely. His silences unnerved her, sapped her energy. She rested her hips against the back of his chair and laid a hand on his neck, saying that he ought just to go off alone, that she would take the boy with her to work.
Claude got up to go and fetch her a chair and a coffee. The grass needed mowing, he observed, coming back to sit down. Behind the barricade of plum trees, the blinding heat of the morning was rising; on their side, the rest of the neighborhood did not exist. Claude took little sips of his drink, holding his cup through the blanket. After a long silence, when Simone thought he was toying with going upstairs to wake Gaël, he said that he had a strong feeling of death in him.
His manner was so objective that Simone was spared the need to protest. Claude was coming back to her the way she could understand and love him. Suddenly, the thought of her future solitude struck her with fresh cruelty. She started to shake and pressed two fingers to the corners of her eyes to crush any wish to cry. Claude laid his cup on his knee, took her hand, and apologized, although she did not really know what for. For losing hope? For having loved her by default? Because he didn’t even feel any desire anymore?
There was a chattering of blackbirds tearing themselves from the tangled depths of the bushes. It had been ages since they had last heard the little birds chirping in the forsythia. Either they had not survived or they had flown off. Simone had not paid attention; she had stopped going into the garden alone. It was a month since she had had any pleasures or time to herself. The sun began to rise over the trees and the sudden rattle of blinds being pulled up reminded them of the houses close by. Claude glanced at his watch again and stood up, taking off the blanket. I’ll be back for lunch, he said, then seemed not to know how to take his leave. Simone noticed that a dribble of coffee was trickling down the cleft in
his chin. The image was so wretched on his irritated face that she dared not point it out. He had turned around and was walking away, feeling the top of his head in disbelief, with his hand spread out like a jellyfish. His self-consciousness is gauche and so sad, she mused gently. In the calm of the chilly garden, pity for herself and for him revived a distant sense of love.
Simone had gone upstairs to change the sheets, when Gaël finally blundered sleepily out of his room, although the morning was well advanced. He was wearing short pants, like long swimming trunks, which had cut into his hip, leaving a red groove. Little pockets of cellulite trembled in the olive skin of his bare chest. He had the swellings of a girl’s breasts, with fleshy nipples as pink and delicate as lips. Simone had started putting clean sheets on the bed and she straightened up, a pillowcase over her hands, to watch him. He took two wobbly steps, as though walking over a bed of thorns; then he caught sight of her, clapped his arms across his chest and retreated into his room. The door gave a controlled slam. The brusqueness of his reaction caught her in the face like boiling water. She spun around to the window with the thought that she would have to make up for the insult of this misunderstanding without Claude. A group of cyclists had just come into view with the clunk of changing gears. Simone momentarily let her attention wander to the spectacle of them slowly fanning out as they left the street. Her heart had calmed down but was heavy with defeat. As usual on a Sunday, she had to go and pick up the week’s files from the dentists’ office and set out the instruments for Monday. It had been agreed with Jovana that if necessary, she would take Gaël with her. But the prospect looked suddenly impossible.
He had just left the bedroom. Simone heard him lock himself in the bathroom. The silence in the house and in the street since the cyclists had gone by was total. The sky was radiant, and the sun nibbled at the windowsill, warming the scent of dusty varnish. Simone hurriedly finished covering the quilt and picked up the pile of sheets. She rolled up Claude’s pajamas; they were damp with cold sweat, causing her an unpleasant surprise that was almost alive.
The Child Page 4