I saw the gleam in his eyes, the slight lack of coordination in his movements. I asked him to come and breathe on me so that I could smell his breath.
There wasn’t a shadow of doubt.
He hadn’t been drinking beer or cider. No, he’d been drinking spirits.
I’m the daughter of an alcoholic. That’s how I began the session with Dr Felsenberg the next day. That was my lead-in. Even before I sat down. So that things were quite clear. My father drank every day from the moment he got home from work until late into the night. He’d repeat the same phrases until he was intoxicated, sitting in front of a bottle of table wine, preferably red. He would rail against the whole world: drivers, TV presenters, singers, neighbours, politicians, chemists, department heads, employees, attendants, delegates, to name but a few. He was never aggressive to us or our mother. That’s how I saw him throughout my childhood and adolescence, sitting in front of a screen that he was barely watching, endlessly repeating the perpetual monologue that we no longer listened to. You could say he was part of the furniture. I think I always felt an indulgent affection for him, though it was tinged with shame. I never invited school friends home. He was a burnt-out man, whose sensibility was so awkward and ill-adapted to his environment that all he could do was drown it in alcohol. I never heard my mother complain. She took charge of everything: not just things related to domestic life, but also forms, official things, medical stuff, school, tax. People called her a saint. I didn’t understand why, because she didn’t believe in any god. But she put up with this man who had long preferred alcohol to any other form of consolation. When he lost his job, I thought he’d sink like a stone. But the programme stayed the same; the only difference was he started earlier. He remained on the surface, making no waves, with just his head above water. He rarely moved. Just enough to survive. He would sit in the same place and stick to the same rhythm (between three and five glasses an hour) and check the lights were out before going up to bed. He was allowing himself to die without making a fuss. My mother never passed comment or made the slightest protest. My elder brother did night security at an electronics warehouse for a few years. After he broke up with his girlfriend, he spent his days in his room listening to records. I looked at the colour of his skin and wondered how long he could live without seeing daylight.
One evening the television news had shown a report about an oil slick caused by a tanker accident. We were at the table. I looked at those birds caught in the sticky oil and I immediately thought of us, all of us. Those pictures represented us better than any family photo. They were us. They were our black, oily bodies, deprived of movement, numb and poisoned.
The next day all four of us set off in the car to a cousin’s wedding. My brother was driving. It hadn’t stopped raining all morning. The rain made a metallic sound as it bounced off the windscreen. The sky was low and seemed to be waiting to close on us like a jaw when we reached the horizon. Long streams of raindrops quivered on the side windows, held there by the wind. The noise of the windscreen wipers was audible inside the car, a wet sloshing sound, relentless, a hypnotising refrain that encouraged drowsiness. My father was sitting beside my brother in the front. He was looking ahead of him, without really looking at anything. Beside me, my mother was holding her bag on her knees, as though an unexpected signal might at any moment require her to get out of the car. I could also see that she was keeping an eye on the speedometer. Because Thierry was driving fast, very fast. Even though you couldn’t see more than a few metres ahead. I’d already asked him once to slow down. He pretended not to hear. A few minutes later, when we were going even faster, I asked him more sharply. My brother muttered something to suggest he had the situation under control and then got on the tail of the car in front to force it to allow us to overtake it. My father was staring at a point in front of him, with that look of having given up that I had known for ever. My mother was hunched over her bag. But I could see the spray thrown back by the cars we were overtaking one after another, then their tail lights began to dance before my eyes, and then all the lights started to blur together.
Dead silence had filled the car.
Then I thought of the expression breakneck speed. The deadly atmosphere that suddenly overwhelmed me was not confined to the car, it was how we had been living for years. I began to scream.
‘Stop! Stop now! I want to get out of the car!’
Stunned, my brother slowed down.
‘I want to get out of this car! Stop! Let me out! I want to get out! I want to get out!’
I was shrieking like I was crazy.
Thierry stopped at the next lay-by a few hundred metres further on. He pulled up abruptly and I kept repeating the same phrase, ‘I want to get out, I want to get out, do you understand? I want to get out.’ But actually what I was shouting was, ‘I want to live,’ as they knew full well.
I got out of the car. Without saying anything, my father opened his door, walked round and opened Thierry’s door. My brother quickly moved over to give him the driving seat. My father nodded to me to get back in the car and I shook my head. My whole body was shaking.
He hesitated for a second, then started the engine.
When I think back to that moment, to the final glance he shot me before he rejoined the traffic, I know my father understood that day that I was going to leave them. That I was going to launch myself into different worlds, different ways of being, and that one day we would probably no longer speak the same language.
I watched our car drive away. I was at the side of a main road. In the distance I could see the outline of a town or a village. I began walking. After a few minutes a woman stopped and offered me a lift.
I come from a family where people say ‘my cousin could of’ and ‘my sister should of’. And we say ‘Auntie Nadine’ or ‘Nunky Jacques’. ‘Look what I done.’ ‘We’re going up the town.’ We eat our tea every evening at the set time in front of the television news. Just to make things quite clear.
When I met William, I discovered a universe with customs and taboos I knew nothing about. He would gently pick me up when I made mistakes. Later he congratulated me on my progress. I read dozens of books and learned quickly. He was proud of me. When Sonia was born, or rather when she started saying her first words, he told me that it was out of the question that she should call my mother ‘Nana’ or my brother ‘Nunky Thierry’. Rules were laid down. We’ve raised our children to speak his language. They say ‘Grandmother’ and ‘Grandfather’. They go to Paris, not ‘up the town’. They have dinner in the evening, never tea.
This is what I said, as chaotically as this and in a continuous stream (to be honest, like someone who hadn’t opened their mouth for several years), to explain to Dr Felsenberg the strength of my reaction when I discovered Mathis had been drinking.
Of course, I immediately thought that it came from me, that it was my fault. He’s not yet thirteen and he’s drinking alcohol. Isn’t that proof that something is dormant in him, just waiting to burst out, roaring? Something that of course comes from me, from ‘my side’? Because I was quite certain that if I spoke to William about it he’d ask, ‘Who does he get that from?’
But I had no desire to talk to William about it.
It was well worth expending so much time and energy blending into the background and eliminating everything in me that offended the ears of my husband and his family, trying to pass on elegant turns of phrase and genteel manners to my children.
It was well worth learning to say ‘Mathis could have’ and ‘Sonia should have’, just to end up here.
THÉO
When he got out of school, he needed air, needed to stretch his legs. He couldn’t go straight home. That was too risky.
After twenty minutes the feeling of drunkenness had worn off. His breath made a little vapour cloud in the cold air. The alcohol was evaporating.
Just before seven, he opened the apartment door and checked the coast was clear. For a few months, his mother had been doing
a gym class at the end of the day on Friday. This spared them both the tense moment of parting, with all the things that couldn’t be said and unspoken recommendations. Generally he sends her a message a bit later to let her know he’s arrived safely. She makes do with an ‘OK’ in reply.
Then the connection is broken for a week. Over and out.
He’s looked everywhere for his coat but hasn’t found it. He looked in the dirty washing and checked it wasn’t drying.
In a few minutes Théo has gathered together the rest of his things for the week. He’s turned off all the lights and locked the door behind him.
He takes the overhead metro to the place d’Italie.
He gets to his father’s building.
He would like to have hung on to a vague feeling of drunkenness in some distant corner of his brain so that he could now regain access to it. He searches within himself for a trace of intoxication. He’d like to recover alcohol’s influence over his movements – a slowness, a drowsiness, however tiny – but it’s all gone. He’s lost his carapace. He’s burned it all up in the winter air. He’s become the child he hates again, who feels fear in his stomach as he presses the lift button. The fear emerges from a numb sleep whose golden taste has gone. It spreads through his whole body and increases his heart rate.
When Théo rings the bell, it takes his father several minutes to open the door. The last time he waited for almost half an hour. He could hear him inside, or at least sense his presence, a breathing or a scraping, but his father wasn’t ready to open the door, to welcome him, as though the increasing amount of time he needed to come to the door would enable him to become human again. That’s what he reckons today as he waits on the doormat, that his father needs all this time to be able to face him. He has the key for downstairs but not the one for this lock, which his father turns when he wants to be sure he won’t be disturbed. So Théo eventually sits on the top step and waits. And every eighty seconds he gets up to press the timer switch.
When his father appears at last, even if Théo has spent all day preparing himself for this image, even if he has mentally pictured it dozens of times to get himself used to it, even if he has known for several months that he’ll find him in this state, he finds it hard to conceal the movement of recoil that his body makes in spite of himself. Recoil and revulsion, because every time it’s worse than the last, as though it’s possible to keep sinking deeper into self-neglect. In a fraction of a second, Théo registers everything: the pyjamas, the egg or urine stain around the crotch, the beard, the smell, the bare feet in flip-flops, the nails that are too long, the dilated pupils trying to adjust to the presence of another human being.
And then his father smiles at him, with a sort of sad-looking grimace.
His father used to pull him towards him and give him a hug, but he no longer dares. He smells bad and he knows it.
Next he goes back to bed or sits at his desk in front of the computer. He makes a superhuman effort to ask some questions. Théo could describe every little detail of the slow progress of this effort, its cogs and gears, whose unbearable rusty creaking he thinks he can almost hear. The time his father takes to think up his questions and then ask them. In a sort of failed ritual, he asks for news about school, the handball team (which Théo quit almost a year ago), but he’s incapable of concentrating on his answers. Théo always ends up getting irritated because his father asks him the same question twice or because he only pretends to listen. Sometimes he tries to confuse him, to catch him out not paying attention; he suddenly asks him to repeat what he just said and then lets him get tangled up in some words, which his brain has superficially retained in a vain attempt to put them together again. Actually, his father doesn’t do too badly. Then Théo can’t stop himself smiling at him; he says, ‘It’s OK, don’t worry, I’ll tell you another time.’
Later, he’ll sort through the leftovers in the refrigerator, throwing out what’s rotten or mouldy, checking the use-by dates. He’ll strip his father’s bed and open the windows to air the rooms. If there’s any washing powder left, he’ll put the machine on. He’ll run the dishwasher. Or he’ll let the plates soak because of the food, which is sometimes so dry it seems encrusted on.
Then he’ll go back downstairs with his father’s bank card and go to the cash machine. First he’ll try to get €50. If the machine refuses, he’ll start again and try for €20. It doesn’t give out tens.
He’ll go to the supermarket.
When he gets back, he’ll try to convince his father to get up, have a wash and get dressed. He’ll raise the electric blind and go and talk to him in his room. He’ll try to drag him outside, at least for a bit of a walk. He’ll call to him from the living room several times to come and watch a film or a television programme together.
Or maybe he won’t do any of that.
This time he may no longer have the strength. Perhaps he’ll just let things go, without trying to repair them, to put them in order. Perhaps he’ll simply sit in the dark, letting his legs swing between the legs of the chair, because he no longer knows what to say or do, because he knows all this is too much for him, that he isn’t strong enough.
He doesn’t remember how long it’s been since his father stopped working. Two years? Three? He knows that one evening he promised to keep quiet about it. Because if his mother finds out that his father is no longer working, she’ll go to court to seek sole custody. That’s what his father said.
He promised not to mention it, which is why he didn’t say anything to his grandmother, or to his father’s sister, who sometimes called.
Before, his father used to work too much. He got back late from the office, spent the evening in front of the computer, stayed up late. One day he got suspended by his company. Théo has never forgotten that word: suspended. He immediately imagined his father hoisted off the ground, kept there helpless, at the whim of some line manager as a sign of victory and domination. What it really meant was that his father was no longer allowed to return to work, have access to his files or his computer. Had he done something wrong? Made a serious mistake? Théo had been too young for his father to explain to him what happened, but he had retained this image of the terrible humiliation that had destroyed him.
His father had spent a few months looking for a job. He’d taken a course to broaden his skills, had gone back to English classes. He’d gone to meetings, had interviews.
And then gradually the contacts his father maintained with the outside world became fewer and fewer. And then everything that sustained his connection with others, everything that was cause for hope he would one day start a new job, everything that made him leave the apartment, broke. Théo didn’t realise at once, because this rupture happened without drama or fireworks – unlike the rupture between his parents, which had made them tear each other to pieces for months in a relentless struggle, with lawyers as their intermediaries and him as the witness condemned to silence. At first his father had started hanging around home a bit more, in the morning or the afternoon. He loved spending time with him. They’d go for a drive; his father would drive with one hand, relaxed, and say, ‘This is good, isn’t it, just us two?’ He was planning to take him to London or Berlin when he had topped up the coffers. And then he stopped driving because there was no fuel in the car. And then he stopped leaving the flat. And then he sold the car. And then he limited the time he spent away from his bed or the living-room sofa as much as possible. Now he rents his parking space to a neighbour for €100 a month and this money represents a significant proportion of his income.
Théo doesn’t know how long it’s been since they went on an outing, played cards or Ludo, or how long it is since his father made dinner, turned on the oven, how long since he raised the blinds for himself, put on a wash, emptied the bin.
Nor does he know how long it’s been since his grandmother, grandfather, uncle and aunt visited, how long his father has been on medication, has spent all day dozing, hardly ever washing, how long there have been
weeks when they have to feed themselves on €20.
MATHIS
He’s not allowed to see his friends at the weekend because his mother noticed he’d been drinking. She conducted her interrogation methodically. Since they’re not allowed out during their study periods, she wanted to know what ruse he’d used to manage to drink inside the school. Had he finished an hour early? Had he left without permission? Within a few minutes, Mathis had invented a whole story: a girl in his class had brought in a little bottle of rum to make a cake and they’d shared what was left of that. It tasted a bit sugary and spicy; they didn’t realise how much they’d had. He had the sort of mother who would believe they still baked cakes in school. She wanted to know if Théo was with them (she’s convinced that Théo is behind everything). With a confidence that surprised even him, he said no. Théo had been absent.
In the end she let it drop. This time she wouldn’t say anything to his father. But she warned him: if it happened again, if she found out that he’d drunk alcohol in or out of school, she wouldn’t hesitate to tell him.
He wasn’t allowed to play on his games console either. He wasn’t allowed to contact anyone at all because she’d confiscated his mobile. In any case, when Théo is at his dad’s, they never meet up.
On Saturday afternoon Mathis went with her to buy new trainers because his old ones were starting to pinch. When they left the shop, they went to see his big sister, who lives with a friend near Montparnasse Cemetery, and drop off the shopping his mother said she’d get her. They had tea with Sonia, then they walked home. On the way they looked at the film posters and discussed which ones they’d like to see.
All afternoon, he noticed his mother had that vague sadness that he hates because he can’t shake off the feeling that he’s responsible for it. There’s a certain tone in her voice that he alone seems to catch and a way she has of looking at him as though he’s become an adult overnight and is preparing to depart for the other end of the earth. Or as though he’s committed some mistake that he’s completely unaware of.
Loyalties Page 4