Everything was in darkness now beyond the open door, where a cloud of insects was hovering. Simone felt exposed, as though in a bubble. The sound of footsteps racing down the street made her hurriedly turn out the light. Suddenly, the darkness was lit up; the silhouette of the houses opposite appeared, and soon three shadows hurtled wildly past, taking long, angry young strides. Gaël shrank back behind the car. He agreed with Simone that they had better not go out. Their cheerlessness was perfectly matched. Simone had only just realized that she probably wouldn’t see him again after he left the next day.
GAËL WAS AWAKE and ready, although it was not yet eight o’clock. Simone found him waiting for her in the gray gloom of lowered blinds. She was only just emerging from her first apprehensions on waking. Being caught with bare legs before she had showered and seeing him hanging around so early with nothing to do antagonized her. Yet she hadn’t the heart to tell him to go back up to his room for a while; guilt shackled her with far too many misgivings.
He didn’t know what he was hungry for, then wanted to fix his own slice of bread and butter, which he chewed with a long stare, swinging his legs under the table. Jovana had not called before leaving Belgrade. He was smoldering with resentment like a jealous lover. Simone was finding it increasingly hard to put up with his laziness about finding things to do on his own. She had spent the night with Claude, not daring or not knowing how to leave him in peace after that day. She felt she had slept only in short bursts of strange dreams. Her skin was prickling with tension and fatigue. She told herself that it was time for the little boy to leave now.
Huge patterned sheets with pale flowers were swinging all down one side of the garden. Malika kept appearing and disappearing, clearly intrigued by what was going on next door. Simone suggested Gaël invite her over to play with him. The idea drew a sigh from him; he thought he didn’t know her well enough, but he finally went to join her at the fence anyway. Simone could see him giving laconic answers while he unwrapped the long tendrils of white bindweed from the metal mesh. The boredom of waiting was undermining even his usual instinctive affection for other people. Claude had still not gotten up, and it occurred to her to get out the Ping-Pong table that had languished for years in the depths of the garage.
She was just pushing aside some cardboard boxes when she noticed splintered glass in the back window of the car. The door was damaged, too, with a knee-level dent several centimeters deep. She froze in bewilderment and anger that Claude had said nothing about an act of violent vandalism. Gaël had followed her and was waiting to be told what to do in a corner of the garage. His reluctance was frustrating her, flaying her, wearing her down with a barely repressed urge to scream.
They set up the table in its old place under the plum trees, now considerably broader and thicker than a few years ago. Simone went back into the garage to find the paddles and calmly examined the damage done to the car. The door had buckled at the point of impact, with a hole of flaking paint where a stone had been hurled at full force. Claude had gotten up and was looking for her in the garden, but she didn’t answer immediately. She needed to fill her mind with the calm, resolute thoughts that had been forming since the previous day.
Gaël had wandered off to watch Claude and was swinging around the pole of the rotary clothesline. Simone sensed that he was not so much resentful as self-conscious about making peace. She put the paddles down on the table and went to join Claude, brushing the dust from her clothes and preparing herself calmly for his criticisms about all the fuss. He was flexing his left hand, which edema had wrapped in a thick-feeling but apparently painless glove. Simone noticed coolly that he had taken a shower and put on clean clothes for Jovana. He had eaten nothing at all the day before. Gaunt and tired, he had a masklike stare on his completely hairless face. He must have seen his dead reflection in the mirror, she could not help thinking when he raised his eyes to her. What on earth could the people who assaulted the car have thought when they saw him like that? There was something utterly tragic about ending up so exposed to the world.
Gaël was dribbling the ball across the table, discreetly trying to attract attention. The heat was already intense and was drenching the fine curls of hair on the back of his neck. When he had hit the ball into the bushes for the tenth time, he asked Claude if he wanted a game with him. The suggestion made him blush, and Claude seemed not to know how to take it, or how to disappoint this affected effort at reconciliation. He tried to return a few balls, which he did awkwardly because he no longer had a good hand to hold the paddle properly. The strain and movement gradually turned the tense smile on his white lips into a rictus. Gaël stopped playing abruptly when he saw that Claude was going to be sick. He turned to Simone with a look of horror, as though to say Sorry. When Claude had left the lawn, stiff and bowed, transparent, Gaël went over to her, wiping his chin on the hem of his T-shirt. He wanted to know how long his father was going to be sick like that. Simone said a few days, thinking that it would more likely be a week. Tiredness was harassing her like a desire to flee. She gave herself a shake and went to pick up the paddle Claude had thrown into the grass. The green tabletop was covered in little sticky spots; she was irked to find that they were aphid droppings that had fallen from the plum trees. She thought she had heard the phone, and Gaël had already rushed to take it. She soon saw him come running back to tell her that his mother would be there in an hour. Simone guessed from his troubled face that he had only just realized they would not see one another again.
Jovana finally turned up not long after she had called. She must have heard a noise in the garden, because she appeared under the silver birch, dressed in a kind of aviator’s plastic jacket, which was odd in such fine weather. Gaël flung himself at her and buried his face in her belly. She laughed at him and pummeled his head with her fist by way of scolding him for his nonsense. Simone guessed that she was really stifling a much more serious disappointment and displeasure. Claude had not come downstairs, and Jovana looked about for him as she came over to say hello to Simone, with Gaël tucked under her arm like a bag. She wiped her forehead on her sleeve before offering her cheek, apologizing again for the hassle. She seemed to Simone to have lost some of her spontaneity, and though Simone could not bring herself to say so, she thought that maybe they ought to offer to pay for her ticket.
Claude slowly emerged from the depths of the living room, his face washed, his body ravaged under his ironed clothes. Jovana gave an involuntary start when she saw that he had changed yet again. He stopped a short distance away from them, with Gaël’s bag at his feet and his hands on his hips. Simone realized that he must be unsure how he looked and smelled and that he had given up all desire to have a moment alone with Jovana. Anyway, it was clear that she had nothing more to give just for the sake of pointless, dispiriting memories. It was nearly midday, and she let Gaël go, explaining that she had come with a friend who was waiting in the car. Claude bent down to pick up the bag and led the way out to the street.
Jovana’s friend was leaning against the trunk of the SUV, smoking a cigarette. He was a young guy of slight build, taut and slender, with thick light brown hair pulled back in a tight knot. He stubbed out his cigarette when he caught sight of Gaël running toward him and greeted him with short playful punches that made him blush with suspect pride. Claude was now at their side. He greeted the young man by holding out the bag in his waxen hand. Jovana made the introductions. The incongruity of the situation blurred her manners with cheerful, comradely bluntness. Simone hung back and watched them from under the birch tree, not wanting to confuse Claude, or Gaël, either, whose unrecognizable behavior already excluded them. Claude’s emaciated body among them looked spectral. He doesn’t even sweat anymore, thought Simone, steadying herself against the wall. The net curtains billowed out through the open windows of the study. She glanced up at the backdrop to her days for the past ten years, at the furniture that had never been hers. I won’t stay a day longer than I have to, she promised herself, d
ecisive and serene.
Jovana was coming over to her, taking springy steps enforced by her thick sneakers. He’s changed again, she said, disconcerted and chewing at her full red lips. She had dark-green-and-gray eyes, just like Gaël’s, and that fine youthful skin, prettily swollen in the heat. She’s his soft, downy side, mused Simone in a surge of affection that was a bit out of place. We haven’t been much help to you, she chimed in, trying to make light of it. Jovana shrugged her shoulders in reply, betraying more annoyance than she intended; indeed, her eyes clouded with smoky anger, which she dispelled by ruffling her bangs. Gaël had stretched out on the backseat and was watching them, propped on his elbows, while Claude waited stoically on the street in the pitiless sun. Jovana shouted to them that she was coming and moved to kiss Simone, giving off a surprisingly strong waft of perspiration. Her expression seemed to harden as she drew back. I love Gaël more than anything in the world and I’m not sorry about anything, she said, but you haven’t the faintest idea how hard it was. Simone put her hand up to her throat and took a step back to take in the full impact of the rebuke. Everything in her recoiled at the idea of having to shoulder the guilt. You think it’s because of me that Claude stopped showing up, she protested, emphasizing her words. Jovana looked as dumbfounded as Simone had been stunned, and a bit suspicious. Obviously, that was how she had understood things, and revising her opinion that day must have been hard for her. I said that so that you’d know, she conceded, her eyes on Claude, who was still standing motionless by the garden gate. Simone told her to get going; anyway, there were so many things that death would leave unresolved. Jovana made her promise hastily (thoughtlessly) not to say anything to Claude. Gaël had stuck his head and arm out of the window and was waving wearily at them. Simone realized that they had not even kissed good-bye and that, just now, she was not even sorry about it.
The Ping-Pong table was still out in the garden, and also a plastic chair, it, too, now sticky with aphid droppings. Simone had spent the day alone under the trees, in a peace she was cautiously rediscovering. As evening fell, Claude came down to join her. He felt less nauseated and had even managed to swallow a few crackers. The heat had not abated much. Simone went to open the windows upstairs and in the kitchen to get the air circulating now that the rain of rustling sprinklers in the neighboring gardens had revived it. Claude made a move to take her hand when she came to sit beside him on the sofa. His new, bald features smoothed out his expression. Simone was amazed he had not even tried to find out about the riots. She was suddenly aware that an irreversible gulf had opened up between them, between him and the world.
What happened to the car? she asked. Claude slowly turned to face her, as though she were accusing him. He aimed the remote control to change the channel and took his time to carefully word his reply. He had turned down a street cordoned off by the police and had not been quick enough getting out. The stone struck just as I was turning, he explained with odd reluctance. Did you manage to see who it was? Again, the question seemed to offend him, weary him. What makes you think it was aimed at me? Simone realized how pointed and insulting her questions were. But she had to know because she was going to outlive him—to know, too, why he had thrown Nora’s stepson out of the club.
Claude slowly drew his hand over his face to wipe away a kind of sneer of disillusionment. The moron spat on two girls and their parents complained. The third time, I had to expel him. Anyway, he hardly ever came to the training sessions. He’s a dealer, if you must know, but of course nobody notices anything. It was said in the tone he had used at the time of the trial, the voice of his worst conflicts and disappointments, which he had been so keen to die from. Simone apologized and took his hand, but he gently withdrew it with a twitch of pain. She was hungry but dared not talk of food. Noises from the street reached them through the open windows. They heard two scooters pass by, then a man talking loudly on the phone. A light breeze was picking up, and the Ping-Pong ball, which had been left out on the table with the paddles, rolled off into the grass. Claude was starting to fall into a doze, his chest rising to the rhythm of the weak rattle from his diseased lungs.
Yolande called late that evening. On the verge of tears, she told them that Cédric had been traumatized to see Claude so reduced and to have argued with him in his condition. Simone could find nothing sincere to think or say that might have comforted them. She had had a long talk with her brother earlier in the evening. He suggested she spend a month with them when everything was over, and that was what she aspired to now: peace and freedom from responsibility.
The Child Page 10