I should leave, I reckon, on tiptoes. Walk a bit. Call a taxi.
The floor creaks under my feet.
“Marc—‘s that you?” a low voice calls out from the living room. She’s still up then. Jane.
“Not sleeping yet?” I ask back.
“No,” the voice answers, much closer now. The door opens. Jane stands there, frowning and smiling at the same time. “C’me on, son. Step in.”
“Uhm, I… I’d better be leaving,” I answer.
“No way. Haul your ass in here. We gotta talk, son.”
Despite my tiredness and mushy head, I have to admit that she really talks in a droll way. Her outspokenness, her frequent use of swear words combined with her appearance and her American accent result in a mixture that even at three o’clock in the morning I find refreshing. All the more if you consider that this woman has been teaching history for years! Her students must have loved her classes.
It’s clear I can’t refuse her invitation, so I follow her.
The living room into which she leads me doesn’t look like one after all. It’s a stuffy, crammed library, in an Old-English, Lord-of-the-Manor-style, with lots of dark wooden shelves covering the walls and loads of books and magazines and manuscripts. It smells of yellowed pages, erudition, and tobacco, with a whiff of weed. Two worn-out, dark blue armchairs are waiting for us in a corner; a small table stands in the middle of them, holding a ceramic ashtray with a half-smoked joint, an empty glass, a bottle of J&B, a thermos, and two big cups.
“Uhm, sorry, but I left all the champagne in Angélique’s fridge.” I sit down on the chair Jane has pointed out.
“No sweat, dude,” Jane says. “Leave that girly pee to the youngsters upstairs. I’m gonna have a coffee, if you don’t mind. You want some? You look as if you need caffeine.” She chuckles. Her speech sounds clear, with just the slightest trace of a slur. Indeed, the J&B and the empty tumbler prove she had herself a stiff one or two to wash down Kristeva.
“Coffee would be great, thanks,” I answer.
Jane pours the steaming liquid from the thermos. She adds a generous swig of J&B to her cup, takes a sip, stares into the brown swirl in her cup.
“What is it you want to discuss with me?” I finally ask.
“Loads of things,” Jane mumbles.
“Shoot then,” I say. “Talk.”
“Let’s start with those messages,” Jane says.
I stare at her, startled. “Messages?” I croak.
She lights the joint, leans back, exhales the smoke. “Yes, messages. Text messages. The ones you must have received on your mobile.”
A shiver runs down my spine. “Talk,” I repeat.
And she does. A lot.
Nothing of it makes sense in the beginning. Nothing of it seems real. In fact, reality appears to slip away with each sentence, following the trail of heavy smoke she sends upwards. What she says sounds like a bad joke.
Yet Jane’s serious face proves the contrary.
—73—
The bottle of J&B is empty now. The first joint stubbed out in the ashtray, joined by another one Jane has rolled and smoked in the meantime. She offered me a drag, but I declined. Unfortunately, I must say; I stuck to coffee, which sobered me up to an unbearable state of alertness.
“Let me get this right,” I whisper, trying to sum up Jane’s revelations. “You mean to tell me that you’re working for one of your government’s intelligence agencies? How’s that even possible? I mean, with all due respect, but look at you…”
Jane doesn’t seem to take offence with my words even though I’ve basically just insulted her. “I know,” she says. “Beggars belief, doesn’t it? But it’s the truth. Sometimes it’s better to hide in plain sight. I’m outspoken, I’m visibly a dyke, garish and marginal, so people tend to react like you. No one would even remotely dream of thinking that I do what I do.”
I still can’t wrap my mind around the new reality she presented me. “All right. Let’s accept you’re a spy. But—my father? My father was, what? Loyal? And he protected me?” I’m spitting out these words like insults. They seem so absurd when connected with my father.
Words are not the problem, however; words are but sounds, sometimes nothing more than a noise. What they conceal, mean, and express are ideas and concepts, and that’s where the problems begin. Words tell stories. Stories that don’t match what I remember of my father. Jane could as well have told me fairy tales. Hers are words, concepts, stories I don’t want to acknowledge. Things I would rather Jane hadn’t said.
“You really want me to believe you?” I ask, drained of energy. “The whole thing? I mean, it’s very hard to accept. I thought you were just a harmless, retired women’s studies scholar…”
“I don’t want anything, Marc! And even if I did, that wouldn’t make a fucking difference,” Jane answers.
I watch her, still unbelieving.
“It doesn’t matter if you believe me or not,” she continues, sounding huskier, more blurred than before. “Well, I mean, it does. For you. But it doesn’t matter as far as the facts are concerned. Facts have that inconvenience, you know—they’re there, even if nobody wants to acknowledge their existence.” She brings her chubby face closer to mine; I smell the whiskey and weed on her breath. “Face it, Marc. Just do it, for once in your life! It would be time. Face reality. All I’ve told you is the goddam truth. No more, no less.”
“How can you pretend he was loyal?” I ask.
“Because he was. Maybe not to the right people or the right country if you consider it from a French perspective. But from our perspective, he was. Then, there was money involved,” Jane replies. She leans back, tired of repeating the same thing over and over again. “Much money. I told you. Money can engender strange loyalties, you know.”
“Oh yeah, that makes it much easier to grasp. He gave a fuck about loyalty to his party, that much I knew. But he betrayed his country!”
“Oh, stop whining!” Jane barks. “I didn’t know you were so smitten with your country. You have to put it into a larger perspective. We’re on your side, dude. What do you think Reagan thought of the French getting a totally new government that consisted of socialists and communists, huh? Of course, he wanted to have inside intel about what was going on. And your father was willing…”
“But he betrayed his whole family!”
“You think you got it bad? You think you got a shitty family? Lemme tell you: my parents threw me out at sixteen because I was a dyke. I was hurt, I was ugly, I had nowhere to go, I didn’t have any money! That’s a shitty family for you, okay? Do I whine like a spoiled kid? Do I?”
“But…”
“And you! I mean, you must’ve been aware of something! The money you blackmailed out of the Old Man to buy your apartment—where do you think it came from, you blue-eyed dreamer?”
“What the fuck are you trying to tell me?” I choke on the words.
Jane smiles like the Cheshire Cat. “Jesus Christ. You got eyes, son, dontcha? You got ears. Why dontcha use them to see and hear? Why on earth do you refuse to use that handsome little head of yours to think?”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about, that’s all.”
She sits up straight now and locks her eyes with mine. “Listen, you little fucker! There’s only one thing you need to understand. Your father’s gone, okay? He’s dead. And therefore, his protection is gone, too. That’s the only thing he demanded of us: that you and your sisters be kept safe. Well, the game has changed. Some might want to have their money back. There are guys out there who’d sell you in a second. To the highest bidder.”
“I’m used to selling myself.”
“Are you listening to me or not? Do you hear what I’m saying? I’m not talking about that precious ass of yours. We all know how little that costs. I’m talking about your fuckin’ life!
I’m talking about that bitch sister of yours, Raphaëlle! More importantly, I’m talking about people I really care about, okay? I’m talking about Carole and Angélique. And Emma. You cannot drag her in. If the truth about her were revealed, if that precious little angel were hurt in any way, I think I’d kill you with my own hands! Is that understood?”
Eyes wide open, I catch a glimpse of the whole picture. Only fleetingly, but I feel as if trapped in a strange spy movie. “Who… who are they? Those people threatening us?”
“I dunno!” Jane sighs, shaking her shaved head. “I fucking dunno, son. That’s the problem.”
“Oh.” I’m so weary that I’m shivering. “But what should I do?”
“You’ll have to find out by yourself.” Jane sounds tired, too. “But I’ll try to help you, buddy. If I come up with something, I’ll let you know.”
“You got my phone number?”
“I won’t call you, silly-head. And for God’s sake, don’t call me either. I’ll give you a sign. You can be smart—you’ll understand. Just one last thing: be very, very careful.”
—72—
The first glimmers of morning illuminate the tranquil suburb, which is still sleeping the sleep of the just and straightforward. A new day, probably as sunny and warm as the last ones, floats in the air. Yet as I walk down the lane, I’m cold, frozen in a never-ending night.
I know, deep inside, that control over things, beings, events is impossible. But, like all humans, I tend to cling to the illusion that it is not. Being robbed of that illusion leaves me an orphan, a bear that has been woken up from its hibernation too early.
It’s silly to shoot the messenger. But still. I resent Jane for tearing my nice little world to pieces. For leaving wide open the doors to the harsh and ugly reality I normally blot out with great talent.
If someone had taught me to weep, I would be weeping right now.
But no one has ever bothered.
Part Four | Ordinary Comeback
—71—
“Good morning, sweetie. I hope I’m not waking you up?” The sugary female voice on the phone sounds vaguely familiar.
“You are waking me up,” I reply, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. “Who are you in the first place?”
“Oh, come on! Sweetie!” The woman giggles playfully.
I frown. My intuition tells me I know the voice as well as the attitude. My intuition further tells me I wouldn’t have answered the phone if I had guessed who it was.
That’s when the woman announces with pride, “It’s me—your mom!”
And yes, Jesus Christ, it is my mother! What the dickens? She never calls me at home!
I’m fully awake now. “Mother?” I ask, sitting up on my crumbled sheets. The young day is spilling its clinical, milky light into my bedroom. “What is it? Has something happened? I mean, why are you calling me?” I sound as pleasant as a Monday morning.
“Why, Marc—do I have to have a special reason to call my only son?” I can’t believe it—Mother manages to put so much indignation in her voice that it trembles. The guts of that woman! As if she phoned me every other day to have a nice chitchat!
“Mother! You never call. So yes, you must have a special reason. What is it?”
“Okay. Shall I hang up?”
I close my eyes. Did I want to wake up to my mother sounding vexed? No, I did not, thank you very much. “So sorry, Mother dearest,” I sneer, my ironic politeness oozing through the phone. I wonder why I even bother. I’m talking to a person who’s completely impervious to such modulations of language. She wouldn’t get it even if I spelled it out in capital letters. “Good morning. How are you?”
“Now there’s a good boy. I’m fabulous, thank you, sweetie.” Then she remembers the recent events; her tone becomes soaked with fake grief and gravity. “That is, I try to, you know, cope. The house feels so empty now, with your daddy gone, and me all alone…”
She sniffs and pauses. Briefly. Then she continues: yadda this, yadda that, sweetie here, sweetie there; she italicises certain words for unnecessary emphasis. And yadda, yadda, yadda… She loves her new role as a widow, that much is obvious, adorning her superficial talk with black ribbons. I stop listening after a while, rolling my eyes. What a bad comedian she is! How I don’t give a damn about what she’s telling me! And how she gets on my tits in no time!
Finally, I interrupt her with another sigh. “Shoot it, Mother—what’s up? What do you want?”
As if she had waited for the cue, she lilts, “Marc! Oh, have I got exciting news! You’ll be sooo thrilled! You’re the first person I tell! Well, besides that darling Jean-Paul, of course.”
As soon as she mentions his name, I know that, on the contrary, I won’t be thrilled at all. Jean-Paul is her agent and manager, the guy who handled her career before she put an end to it when marrying Father. Alas, she stayed in touch with him and inflicted him on us on various occasions. Dread starts to grab me. I say in a toneless voice, “Just, you know, do it. Thrill me.”
“Guess what? I’m going to make my comeback!”
It takes me a moment to digest her announcement. How enormous is that? I swallow the first remark that comes to mind—necessarily an unkind one—and spit, “Are you shitting me? You’re going to make what?”
Like irony, consternation is lost on that woman. She chirps, “You’ve heard me all right, sweetie! Isn’t that wonderful! I’m going to make a fabulous comeback on stage! Probably at L’Olympia! Well, of course, before we do that, Jean-Paul suggested I return to the studio to rerecord my greatest hits. I have to confess I don’t understand why he would want to have them remixed and remastered and stuff but…”
I guess this is it: we’ve hit rock bottom. Definitely. This woman is planning to relaunch a stage career that culminated in songs such as Les fi-filles et les garçons (a semisuccess in the late 60s) and René, tu m’as fait souffrir. A number one hit, all right. But still.
Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!
Mother was eighteen when René made her suffer so atrociously in that song of hers. Just to think of the words, their poetic richness, their profoundness… “René, you made me suffer, suffer, suffer, and my heart’s a-bleeding, a-bleeding, a-bleeding…” A fairly cute, eighteen-year-old chick can get away with shit like that. A fairly cute, eighteen-year-old chick could even sing the Yellow Pages without anyone complaining.
But hey, that woman is over sixty now!
“… of course, Jean-Paul wants me to record some new songs, too. Perhaps some Broadway classics, you know. He says my old repertoire might be a teensy bit too lightweight…’
A masterpiece of understatement! And she can’t sing, for heaven’s sake!
I’m boiling. Nonetheless I don’t want to comment. The less I say, the faster this mock conversation will be over.
As a result, Mother gets carried away by her excitement, chippering on and on about her career, her hits. When I feel a migraine coming up, I interrupt her eager blabber. “You’re really going to pull this off? I mean, you’re serious with that… comeback crap? You don’t tell me all this just to pull my leg?”
Mother remains good-humoured. “Of course not, sweetie! This is the chance I’ve been dreaming of! And I’ve got to think of my fans, after all, says Jean-Paul. He’s right, you know…”
That old fraud should’ve overdosed ages ago. Why didn’t he? Out of mere spite, I’m sure. “Great. Congrats, then,” I say at last. “But wait a second—you didn’t call me just to tell me that?”
Silence.
I must be spot-on, then. She doesn’t care whether she personally breaks the news about her comeback to me or whether I learn it in the press. I can hear her cogitate. Which means she’s only served the starters. Something else is going on, for sure. And it must be something I’ll like even less.
“You’re my son,” she observes after a mom
ent’s hesitation. “I thought you’d be happy for me. That’s all.”
“That’s all? Don’t give me that shit, Mother,” I reply. “You never call!”
“Yes, I do, sweetie!” she protests. “I tried to call you recently. Several times, in fact. Have you been abroad?”
“Mother! Ever heard that a phone call leaves a trace on someone’s mobile? Well, surprise—on mine, no trace of you calling. Ever. So, spare me that shit. What do you really want?”
“It’s just that Jean-Paul suggested I call you…”
Jean-Paul! Again! My dread increases. I think I guess what she wants.
“… and he told me… things. Oh—not that I believe all the nasty rumours, not a second, sweetie, of course not. But, you understand, don’t you, that I have to think of my career now. I can’t afford to have, like, any faux-pas, any bad publicity, sweetie, not now, even if it’s only nasty lies about my family…”
“Hell, stop beating around the bush. What kind of rumours? What kind of lies about our family?”
“Well, you know…” Mother doesn’t finish that sentence. She prefers to try a pleading tone. “Could you just keep a low profile for the next few weeks—could you? Please? Sweetie? I’d very much appreciate that, sweetie!”
“Mother,” I say, trembling with barely suppressed fury, “Mother, first of all, please tell Jean-Paul to go fuck himself! And secondly, don’t call me again, okay? You make me want to puke.”
Then, I hang up.
—70—
Still whoring around?
When will you stop?
Be very careful, otherwise…
—69—
Two days later. The train compartment looks as bleak and tired as an outworn pair of corduroy trousers. Outside, it’s drizzling. The rain curtains prevent us from seeing the flat landscapes as we clatter towards Normandy. From time to time, a forlorn station, a dripping tree or bush whiz by like ghosts. The rest is grey and sad, horizonless, contourless monotony.
A rainy morn in a dusty train. The three of us—Angélique, Emma, and I—all alone in this train compartment. We left Saint-Lazare Station half an hour ago.
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