I try to explain to Dr Felsenberg the feeling of betrayal that takes hold of me in the middle of the night. Yes, William has betrayed me. William has hidden from me this part of himself that was spoiling for a fight, ready to destroy everything, who writes the opposite of what he thinks, or what he pretends to think.
Dr Felsenberg backs me into a corner. He asks if William knows everything about my life, my dark zones.
Of course not. But that’s not the same.
‘Oh, really?’ he says, looking surprised.
‘I’m not talking about a secret fantasy or a secret garden. I’m talking about cartloads of filth poured into a public place.’
‘But maybe he’s hiding them from you because he’s ashamed?’
‘Or maybe he thinks I’m too stupid to understand. Before this, William has never been shy of including me.’
‘In what?’
‘His little accommodations with reality.’
‘Which ones?’
‘The same sort that unite all couples, I imagine.’
‘For example?’
He irritates me with his pretend questions. I answer him all the same.
‘All couples abide by rules and customs, usually implicit ones, don’t they? It’s a sort of tacit contract that unites two people, however long that union lasts. I mean those more or less crude tricks that the two of you make without ever formalising them. Accommodations with reality – for example, with truth itself.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Well, for instance, at a dinner party, the husband will tell an anecdote about something that happened to them as a couple or a family: the amazing stroke of luck by which they met, the plane strike that began the day before their honeymoon, the storm of 1999 when they were driving their new car on a main road somewhere in the north, or when they found themselves in a house with no water that was nothing like the one they’d rented from the travel website, or when their daughter fell off the big toboggan in the Parc de la Villette. So the husband is describing something they experienced together. And because he likes to make an impression, he embellishes a bit. Or goes further and adds some sensational details to make the story funnier, more gripping. He exaggerates, transforms. He assumes in doing so that his wife will make his lies her own. He assumes, rightly, that she will keep quiet and become his accomplice. And that’s what she does.’
‘Really?’
‘Don’t you? Do you contradict your wife in public when she tells a tiny fib?’
(I know Dr Felsenberg is married because he wears a wedding ring.)
He smiles. I pursue my train of thought.
‘I think this tacit contract exists between every couple. To different degrees. Let’s say the confidentiality clauses vary in length. And these exploits, revised to a greater or lesser extent, eventually construct a sort of family romance. An epic. Because after a time, you end up believing them.’
Dr Felsenberg remained silent.
Then I added this sentence, without knowing if it was the conclusion of what came before or the beginning of an argument I was yet to make.
‘In fact, a couple is a partnership of malefactors.’
He waited a few seconds before starting again.
‘The problem is that now you aren’t part of it. And moreover, you don’t want to be. Because this story is outside the contract. Ultimately, you could say that this time your husband didn’t want to compromise you. He didn’t seek your complicity.’
‘That’s true. But the problem is, I’ve seen it.’
He decided we would end the session there.
I’m starting to be familiar with his expert interruptions and cunning strategies. He’s told himself that I’ll cope on my own with my third-rate aphorisms and their hidden meanings. That those will get me there.
Yes, we’re malefactors. Most likely. To one way of thinking. We negotiate relentlessly, practise concessions, compromise, we protect our offspring, obey the laws of the clan, we equivocate, simmer our little plans. But for how long? How long can you be the other person’s accomplice? How far can you follow them, protect them, cover for them, act as their alibi?
That’s the question Dr Felsenberg didn’t ask. The one contained within my own words and which is bound to catch up with me in the end.
Yes, I love my husband. At least, I think I do.
But it has become so hard to love him.
Do people change that much? Do we all harbour something unnameable within us that is likely to reveal itself one day, as an ugly message in invisible ink would reveal itself in the heat of a flame? Do all of us hide a silent inner demon capable of leading a fool’s existence for years?
I watch my husband at the dinner table and wonder: did the monster within him give a hint of his smell, his ways and the echo of his rage, which I didn’t know how to recognise?
Am I the one who’s changed? Am I the one who has turned him into this bitter creature full of bile?
MATHIS
He’s not sure he finds it such fun any more.
At the beginning there was the shiver that ran through his spine, a faster heartbeat, a shot of adrenalin he felt spread through his whole body every time he and Théo managed to hide. Behind the cupboard they had an appointment with drunkenness. An excitement similar to the one he felt as a little boy when his mother took him to the merry-go-round and he climbed into the helicopter, which went up and down until he was dizzy.
But now he doesn’t really want to any more. He’s afraid he’ll be seen, afraid of getting stuck behind the cupboard, of throwing up like Théo, of his mother finding out that he’s been drinking again. He doesn’t dare tell his friend he’s scared. That he’d rather stop. Because that’s all Théo’s interested in: finding times when they can drink, escape attention, isolate themselves. Increase the measures, drink faster. The other games they invented or played together when they first met have been replaced by this game that Théo is playing against himself. Mathis misses the old days, when they swapped cards, shared comics, told each other about films or videos they loved. He doesn’t really know any more how it began, how alcohol made its appearance. Maybe it was through Hugo the first time. Hugo had found the remains of a bottle his brother had left and hid it in his bag. They all took turns drinking and they laughed a lot.
Drinking was a game. At the start. A secret game the two of them shared.
Now it’s all Théo thinks about. Mathis has barely set foot in the playground before he has to answer his friend’s urgent questions: Has he found any money? Has he bought a little bottle? How much is left?
Two weeks ago Théo got a €20 note from his grandmother. They ordered a big bottle of whisky from Hugo’s brother, Baptiste, who still hasn’t delivered it.
Today Ms Destrée has organised a trip to the Natural History Museum. She’s decided to take them to the Evolution Gallery so that they can take part in the workshop on classifying living things.
This morning before leaving she took the register and then asked each student to send her their mobile number in case someone gets lost. They all left the school together and walked to the metro.
Théo isn’t with them. Mathis is disappointed, but in the end he enjoyed the workshop a lot. By examining several animal species they worked out what attributes they have in common and the method scientists use to classify species.
He’d like to become a vet.
On the way back, as the class is walking to the school (there was no question of scattering into the wild, as the students had to be counted on their return from the trip), Ms Destrée asks him some questions. She wants to know why Théo doesn’t take part in any outings.
Is he afraid of something? Has someone forbidden him to take part?
Mathis replies politely that he doesn’t know.
As she allows the silence to go on, he feels obliged to add, ‘Maybe he doesn’t have the money.’
He’d really like to join the little group of girls walking just ahead of them, but Ms Destrée has
no intention of letting him escape. She has more questions. She says she thinks Théo seems tired and sad. For a few minutes, Mathis wonders if she has noticed them, or if she suspects something, but what she wants to know is whether he’s ever been to Théo’s house, if he’s met his parents. Mathis tries hard to reply as casually as possible, but he can tell how worried Ms Destrée is.
As they approach the school, with her still walking close beside him, now lost in thought, like someone searching for the solution to a mystery that’s eluding her, he’s on the point of coming straight out and saying, ‘Théo’s drinking alcohol like he wants to kill himself.’ This sentence goes round in his head for several minutes: serious, solemn and impossible to say.
Rose suddenly catches up with them and almost as soon as she draws level asks if their next test will be about the trip.
Ms Destrée sighs. No, there won’t be a test.
Mathis stays silent.
It’s too late.
He should have said what he saw the day he went back to Théo’s dad’s with him.
It was the first time he’d been to the apartment.
Théo had never invited him up before, and every time he’d been to call for him, he’d stayed downstairs.
But this day Théo had slipped behind the cupboard on his own. He’d made himself ill with rum. In the end he’d come out and been sick in the school toilets. Mathis had found him there and helped him collect his things from his locker and then steered him down the stairs. They took the metro together, stopping several times on the way because of the nausea, then they went slowly all the way to Théo’s block. Once they were at the foot of the block, Théo tried to dissuade Mathis from going up with him, but he couldn’t walk by himself. He had no other option than to tell him the entry code, floor and apartment number.
It was Mathis who put the key in the door. The apartment was in complete darkness, the curtains drawn. The smell caught his throat at once. The air was rancid, stale. The windows couldn’t have been opened for a long time.
Théo called out, ‘Dad, it’s me. I’m with a friend.’
Mathis’s eyes gradually became accustomed to the dark and he began to make out his surroundings. He had never seen such chaos. There were things scattered on the floor, all over the place, as though they had been abandoned there, in the middle of the room, in the passage, as though time had stopped. The table was covered in crumbs, empty yoghurt pots, piles of plates; bowls with dried-up liquids of different colours at the bottom sat beside the sofa; the remains of a pizza had hardened on a plate.
Théo began tidying up the things that were lying around, but his movements were clumsy and he almost broke a glass, so he stopped.
There was no point.
Théo’s father appeared in the living room, barefoot and squinting as though getting used to a strong light, although the only light in the room came from the gap in the curtains. He was wearing some sort of loose trousers, though Mathis couldn’t tell if they were pyjamas or tracksuit bottoms that sat low on his hips. He was like the caveman in the comic on human history that his grandmother had given him.
Mathis introduced himself politely the way his mother had taught him and then kept quiet. Théo’s father scared him. He sat down at the table and looked at them, one after the other, without noticing the state his son was in. Mathis’s mother, with her radar, would never have missed that.
‘Everything OK, lads?’
Théo turned to Mathis and told him he could go.
He thanked him several times for coming up, having come all the way back with him, probably without meaning a word of it. He probably wished Mathis would disappear, or had never come. He felt ashamed and Mathis could sense that shame as though it were his own.
With his eyes lowered, Théo’s father said nothing, frozen in a strange posture of reflection and withdrawal.
That was when Mathis noticed the gas cooker. One of the rings was on and turned up high, but there was no pan or casserole on it. From where he was, he could hear the gas burning as it fed the flame.
As he was about to leave, Mathis managed to look at Théo’s father for several seconds and register the strange colour of his skin and his trembling hands. He mustn’t forget a single detail. But why did this idea come into his head? Perhaps because of the flickering, pointless flame a short distance from them that no one seemed to see.
Mathis got up and said, ‘Your gas is on . . .’
Then Théo turned to his father and spoke to him as though scolding a child. ‘Not again, Dad . . . Were you wanting to make something to eat?’
Théo’s father didn’t reply. His gaze was lost in something vast and inaccessible and there was dried saliva at the corners of his mouth.
Théo went over to the cooker to turn it off. Apologetically, his father said, ‘I was cold.’
Mathis asked if he could have a glass of water and his friend had to turn on the light. He came back and handed him the glass, which was dripping on the floor. His expression sealed a pact of silence between them.
Théo pushed Mathis towards the door. With a final thank you, he closed the door on him. Mathis still had the glass in his hand. He almost rang the bell, but in the end decided to leave the glass next to the doormat.
He headed back to the metro.
On his way, he remembered that when he was little and collecting pebbles with Sonia in the Bois de Vincennes, he’d say they were injured sparrows. He’d hold them carefully, stroke them with his fingertips, sometimes even talk to them to comfort them. He promised them they’d get better, grow bigger. He told them they’d soon be able to fly away. And when each pebble had absorbed the heat from his palm, when it seemed reassured, he’d put it in his pocket with the other pebbles he’d saved.
THÉO
Has his mother always been this thin-skinned woman from whom he keeps his distance, capable of changing her mood in a matter of seconds? He doesn’t know. He’s stopped snuggling against her when they’re watching television, or giving her a hug when he says goodnight, or seeking the contact of her hand against his cheek. He’s stopped kissing her. He has grown up and drawn away from her body.
Since she stopped crying, she always has this tense expression, pinched lips, watchful eyes. She’s on her guard, ready to defend herself, to respond, to pick a quarrel. She never lets go. He rarely sees her laugh and when she does – as she did last week when one of her girlfriends came round for dinner – he’s astonished by her face, which suddenly seems younger and gentler.
What he notices above all is the clot of hate his mother has kept within her, which has never been reabsorbed. He knows the clot is there and that all it takes is a few words for it to split in two and spread the black blood it contains. He knows that this hatred is the rotten fruit of a wound.
When he goes back to her house after a week at his father’s, after he’s put his things in the laundry basket and had a shower, once he’s got rid of every trace of the enemy from himself, he can face her. And every time, at that precise moment, he wishes he could go over to her and, in a quiet voice, tell her everything. He wishes he could tell her how afraid he is for his father, how aware he is of the dark power that’s crushing him and holding him down. He knows that every day his father is getting closer to a danger zone from which there is no return.
He wishes he could take refuge in his mother’s arms. Calm himself in the cloud of her perfume. But he always encounters the stiffness of her back, arms by her sides, neck tense, her movements sharp and brusque. She can’t enfold him. She has trouble looking at him. She’s completely taken up with this: accepting into her domain the son who has returned from the detested land.
So this time, once again, he gives up.
He won’t say anything.
It’s OK. It’ll work itself out. His father will get better. He’ll help him.
Next week, he won’t let himself be browbeaten. He won’t allow crumpled paper and piles of bowls to be left lying around. He’ll wipe the table and th
row away the empty yoghurt pots.
And then he’ll turn on the computer and look online for job ads for his father. He’ll enter his selection criteria and call him to come and see.
Sometimes he wonders if being an adult is worth the trouble. ‘Whether the game is worth the candle,’ as his grandma would say. When she has to make an important decision, she fills columns with arguments ‘for’ and ‘against’, separated by a long line drawn with a ruler. When the question is about becoming an adult, are the two columns the same length?
Unlike most foods, alcohol is not digested. It goes direct from the digestive tract into the blood vessels. Only a tiny fraction of alcohol molecules are metabolised by enzymes in the intestine: that is, broken down into smaller fragments. The rest cross the stomach lining or the small intestine and immediately circulate in the blood. Within a few minutes, blood is transporting the alcohol to all parts of the body. They learned that in Ms Destrée’s class.
The effects are felt quickest in the brain. Worry and fear recede and sometimes even disappear. They give way to a sort of dizziness or excitement that can last several hours.
But Théo wants something different.
He wants to reach the stage where the brain goes into standby mode. That state of unconsciousness. He wants the high-pitched noise that only he can hear to finally stop, the noise that wells up in the night and sometimes in the middle of the day.
For that, you need four grams of alcohol in the blood. At his age, probably a bit less. According to what he’s read online, it also depends on what you eat and how quickly you drink.
It’s called an alcoholic coma.
He likes these words, their sound, their promise: a moment of disappearance, obliteration, when you no longer owe anyone anything.
But every time he’s come close, he’s thrown up before he got there.
Loyalties Page 7