“If you want to see his portrait, it’s hanging on the wall,” she says by way of conclusion. How did she guess I was still thinking of her father?
On the wall she points to, between the two windows, a small ebony frame does hold the photograph of a man, about thirty, in the uniform of a petty officer. A commemorative sprig of boxwood has been slipped under the black wood of the frame.
“He was a sailor?”
“Obviously.”
“He died at sea?”
I am sure she is going to say “Obviously” again, with that barely perceptible shrug of the shoulders. But, in fact, her answers always disappoint my expectations. And, this time, she only rectifies it, like a teacher correcting a pupil: “Lost at sea,” which is the accurate expression when speaking of a shipwreck.
Yet, such distinctions are hardly what one would expect coming from a child that age. And I suddenly feel that she is mouthing a well-rehearsed lesson. Under the photograph, a careful hand has written these words: “For Marie and Jean, their loving Papa.” I half turn to the little girl:
“You are called Marie?”
“Obviously. What else do you want to call me?”
While I examine the portrait, I can suddenly sense a trap. But already the little girl goes on:
“And you, you are called Simon. There is a letter for you, Si.”
I have just noticed a white envelope protruding slightly from under the sprig of boxwood. So I don’t have time to mull over the surprising changes in Marie’s behavior: now, she knows my first name and uses it as though she knew me well.
I carefully grasp the letter with two fingers, and I pull it out of its hiding place without damaging the leaves of the boxwood. Light and air will soon turn this kind of paper yellow. Yet, it is neither yellowed, nor old, as far as I can tell under this poor light. It can’t have been here long.
The envelope bears the complete name of the addressee: “Monsieur Simon Lecoeur, alias Boris”—that is to say, not only my own name, but also the password of the organization for which I have been working barely a few hours.
More strangely yet, the writing resembles in every way (same ink, same pen, same hand) that on the dedication of the sailor’s photograph. . . .
But, at this very moment, the little girl shouts at the top of her lungs, behind me: “All right, Jean, you may wake up. He has found the message.”
I turn with a start, and I see the inanimate kid sit up suddenly on the edge of the mattress, legs dangling, next to his delighted sister. Both of them applaud in unison and shake with mirth as the metal box spring vibrates under their laughter for almost a minute. I feel like a complete idiot.
Then Marie, as abruptly as before, turns serious again. The boy soon does likewise; he obeys—I think—this little girl who is clearly younger than he, but sharper. She declares then for my benefit:
“Now, it is you who are our papa. I am Marie Lecoeur. And this is Jean Lecoeur.”
She leaps to her feet to point to her accomplice, ceremoniously, while taking a bow in my direction. Next, she runs to the door that opens onto the landing; there, she apparently presses an electric switch (placed outside), for suddenly a brilliant light fills the entire room, as in a theater at intermission.
The many lamps, antique sconces shaped like birds, are as a matter of fact quite visible; but when unlit, they can well pass unnoticed. Marie, quick and light, has come back to the bed where she sat again close to her big brother. They whisper in each other’s ear.
Then, they stare at me again. They now have a quiet and attentive look. They want to see what comes next. They are at the theater, and I am on the stage, performing an unknown play, written for me by a man I do not know . . . or perhaps a woman?
I open the unsealed envelope. In it, there is a sheet of paper, folded in four. I unfold it carefully. The handwriting is still the same, that of a left handed man, no doubt, or, more accurately, of a left handed woman. My heart leaps when I see the signature. . . .
Not only that, but I can suddenly understand better my instinctive suspicion, of a moment ago, at the sight of the letters slanting backward, under the black framed portrait: very few people, in France, write with their left hand, especially in that sailor’s generation.
The letter is hardly a love letter, undoubtedly. But a few words mean a lot, especially when they come from someone whom one has just lost forever. In high spirits now, facing my youthful audience, I read the text aloud, like a comedian:
“The Amsterdam train was a false track, meant to mislead suspicions. The true mission begins here. Now that you have met, the children will lead you where you are supposed to go together. Good luck.”
The letter is signed “Jean,” that is to say Djinn, without any possible error. But: I don’t get the part about suspicions. Who’s supposed to be suspicious? I refold the paper, and I slip it back into its envelope. Marie applauds briefly. Jean imitates her, with some delay, unenthusiastically.
“I’m hungry,” he says. “I get tired being dead.”
The two children then come toward me, and each grabs one of my hands, with authority. I let them, since these are the instructions. Thus we leave, the three of us, going first out of the room, then out of the house, like a family on an outing.
The staircase and the downstairs hall, like the upstairs landing, are now also brilliantly lit by powerful bulbs. (Who in the world has turned them on?) Since Marie, as we leave, doesn’t turn off the lights or close the door, I ask her why. Her answer is no more surprising than the rest of the situation:
“It doesn’t matter,” she says, “since Jeanne and Joseph are here.”
“Who are Jeanne and Joseph?”
“Well, Joseph is Joseph and Jeanne is Jeanne . . .”
I complete her sentence myself: “. . . obviously.”
She pulls me by the hand toward the large avenue, walking with a quick step, or sometimes hopping, hopscotch fashion, on the uneven paving stones. Jean, on the contrary, lets himself be dragged along. After a few minutes, he repeats:
“I am very hungry.”
“It is time for his dinner,” says Marie. “He’s got to be fed. Otherwise he is going to die again; and we haven’t got the time anymore to play that game.”
Saying these last words, she bursts into a short, shrill laugh that doesn’t sound right. She is quite mad, like most children who are too grown-up for their age. I wonder how old she could be, in fact. She is short and petite, but she might be a lot older than eight.
“Marie, how old are you?”
“It’s bad manners, you know, to question ladies on the subject of their age.”
“Even at this age?”
“Obviously. There is no age to learn manners.”
She delivered this pronouncement in a sententious tone, without the slightest smile of connivance. Is she or is she not conscious of the absurdity of her reasoning? She has turned to the left, onto the avenue, pulling us both, Jean and me, after her. Her step, as decisive as her character, does not encourage questions. But she suddenly stops short to ask one herself, staring up at me sternly:
“What about you? Do you know how to lie?”
“Sometimes, when it’s necessary.”
“I can lie very well, even when it’s pointless. When one lies out of necessity, it has less value, obviously. I can go for a whole day without saying a single true thing. I even won a lying award, at school, last year.”
“You are lying,” I say. But my reply doesn’t bother her for a second. She goes on, brooking no interruption, with quiet self-assurance:
“In our Logic class this year, we are doing lying exercises of the second degree. We are also studying first-degree lying with two unknowns. And sometimes, we lie in harmony. It’s very exciting. In the advanced class, the girls do second-degree lying, with two unknowns, and lying of the third degree. That must be hard. I can’t wait till next year.”
Then, just as suddenly, she springs forward again. As for the boy, he doesn�
��t open his mouth. I ask:
“Where are we going?”
“To the restaurant.”
“We have time?”
“Obviously. What was written in the letter?”
“That you are going to take me where I’m supposed to go.”
“Then, since I am taking you to the restaurant, you must therefore go to the restaurant.”
That is indeed logic itself. Anyway, we arrive in front of a coffee shop. The little girl pushes the glass door with authority, and surprising vigor. We walk in behind her, Jean and I. I immediately recognize the café where I met the medical student in the red jacket. . . .
She is still there, sitting at the same place, in the center of the large empty room. She stands up when she sees us enter. I am convinced that she has been watching for my return. Passing close to us, she gives Marie a little sign and says in a low voice:
“Everything’s okay?”
“Fine,” says Marie, very loud and unconcerned. And she adds immediately: “Obviously.”
The phony student leaves, not favoring me with a glance. We sit at one of the rectangular tables in the back of the room. For no apparent reason, the children choose the least-lighted one. They seem to avoid overly bright lights. In any case, it is up to Marie to decide.
“I want a pizza,” says Jean.
“No,” says his sister, “you know very well they stuff them with bacteria and viruses, on purpose.”
Well, I say to myself, prophylaxy is gaining ground among the young generation. Or else, are these kids raised by an American family? As the waiter approaches, Marie orders croque-monsieur for everyone, two 7-Ups, “and a beer for Monsieur, who is a Russian.” She makes an awful face at me, while the man walks away, still silent.
“Why did you say I was Russian? Anyway, Russians don’t drink any more beer than the French, or the Germans . . .”
“You are a Russian, because your name is Boris. And you drink beer like everybody else, Boris Lecoeurovich!”
Then changing both her tone and her subject, she leans toward my ear to whisper in a confidential tone:
“Did you notice the face on that waiter? That’s him in the photograph, in the sailor’s uniform, in the mourning frame.”
“He is really dead?”
“Obviously. Lost at sea. His ghost comes back to serve in the café where he used to work in days gone by. That’s why he never says a word.”
“Ah well,” I say. “I see.”
The man in the white jacket appears suddenly in front of us with the drinks. His resemblance to the sailor is not obvious. Marie tells him, acting very worldly:
“I do thank you. My mother will come around tomorrow to pay the bill.”
CHAPTER FOUR
While we were eating, I asked Marie how that waiter could be employed in a café before his death, since he was a sailor. But that did not cause her to lose her poise:
“That was obviously during his shore leaves. As soon as he hit shore, he would come to see his mistress, who worked here. And he would serve with her, out of love, glasses of white wine and cups of coffee. Love, it makes one do great things.”
“What about his mistress? What became of her?”
“When she heard of her lover’s tragic end, she committed suicide, by eating a mass-produced pizza.”
Next, Marie wanted me to tell her how people live in Moscow, since she had just granted me Russian citizenship. I told her that: she ought to know, since she was my daughter. She then made up another cock-and-bull story:
“Oh, but no. We did not live with you. Gypsies had kidnapped us, Jean and me, when we were just babies. We lived in caravans, crisscrossed Europe and Asia, begged, sang, danced in circuses. Our adoptive parents even forced us to steal money, or things from stores.
“When we disobeyed, they would punish us cruelly: Jean had to sleep on the flying trapeze, and I in the tiger’s cage. Fortunately, the tiger was quite nice; but he had nightmares and he would roar all night long. This would wake me up with a start. When I got up in the morning, I had never had enough sleep.
“You, in the meantime, were searching the world for us. You would go every night to the circus—a new circus every night—and you would roam backstage to question all the little children you found. But I bet you were mostly looking at the pretty bareback riders. . . . So it is only today that we found each other again.”
Marie was speaking fast, with a sort of anxious certainty. Suddenly, her excitement fell. She thought for a moment in a sudden dreamy mood, then she concluded sadly:
“And still, we’re not certain that we have found each other. Perhaps it is not us, nor you, either. . . .”
Probably judging that she had spoken enough nonsense, Marie next declared that it was my turn to tell a story.
Since I ate faster than the children, I have finished my croque-monsieur some time ago. Marie, who chews every mouthful slowly and carefully in between her lengthy speeches, doesn’t seem anywhere near having finished her meal. I want to know what kind of a story she wishes to hear. She says—that’s definite—“a story of love and science fiction.” So I begin:
“Here you go. A robot meets a young lady. . . .”
My listener allows me to go no further.
“You don’t know how to tell stories,” she says. “A real story has to be in the past.”
“As you wish. A robot, then, met a . . .”
“No, no, not that way. A story has to be told like a story. Or else nobody knows it’s a story.”
She is probably right. I think it over for a moment, unaccustomed to that manner of speech, and I start again:
“Once upon a time, in the long, long ago, in the fair Kingdom of France, a robot who was very intelligent, even though strictly metallic, met at a royal ball a young and lovely lady of the nobility. They danced together. He whispered sweet nothings in her ear. She blushed. He apologized.
“By and by, they danced again. She thought he was a bit rigid, but charming with his stiff manners, which gave him a great deal of distinction. They were married the very next day. They received sumptuous wedding presents and departed on their honeymoon. . . . Is it okay this way?”
“It’s no great shakes,” says Marie, “but it will do. In any case, you’re telling it like a real story.”
“Then, I’ll go on. The bride, whose name was Blanche, as compensation, because she had raven black hair, the bride, I said, was naïve, and she did not notice right away that her spouse was a product of cybernetics. Yet, she could see that he would always make the same gestures and that he would always say the same things. Well, she thought, here is a man who knows how to follow up on his ideas.
“But one fine morning, having risen earlier than was her custom, she saw him oiling the mechanism of his coxo-femoral articulations, in the bathroom, with the oil can from the sewing machine. Since she was well bred, she made no remark. From that day on, however, doubt invaded her heart.
“Small, unexplained details now came back to her mind: nocturnal creaking sounds, for example, which couldn’t really come from the box spring, while her husband embraced her in the secrecy of their alcove; or else the curious ticktock that: filled the air around him.
“Blanche had also discovered that his gray eyes, rather inexpressive, would sometimes light up and blink, to the left or to the right, like a car about to change direction. Other signs, as well, mechanical in nature, eventually increased her concern to the utmost.
“Finally, she became certain of even more disturbing peculiarities, and truly diabolical ones: her husband never forgot anything. His stupefying memory, concerning the slightest daily events, as well as the inexplicable rapidity of the mental calculations he effected at the end of each month, when they would check their household accounts together, gave Blanche a treacherous idea. She wanted to know more, and conceived then a Machiavellian plan. . . .”
The children, meanwhile, have both emptied their plates. As for me, I am burning with impatience, anxious a
s I am to leave this café, and to know at last where we are going next. I rush my conclusion accordingly.
“Unfortunately,” I say, “the Seventeenth Crusade broke out right at that moment, and the robot was drafted into the colonial infantry, third armored regiment. He embarked at the port of Marseilles and went to fight the war, in the Near East, against the Palestinians.
“Since all the knights wore articulated stainless steel armor, the physical peculiarities of the robot passed henceforth unnoticed. And he never returned to Sweet France, for he died absurdly, one summer night, without attracting anyone’s attention, under the ramparts of Jerusalem. The poisoned arrow of an Infidel had pierced his helmet and caused a short circuit inside his electronic brain.”
Marie pouts:
“The ending is idiotic,” she says. “You had a few good ideas, but you did not know how to exploit them intelligently. And, above all, you never succeeded, at any time, in giving life to your characters or in making them sympathetic. When the hero dies, at the end, the audience is not moved at all.”
“When the hero expired, wast thou not moved?” I joke.
This time, I did win at least a pretty smile of amusement from my too demanding professor of narration. She answers in the same tone of parody:
“I had, nonetheless, a certain pleasure in listening to thee, my dear, when thou recounted the ball whereat they met and courted. When we had consumed our repast, Jean and I deplored it, for that curtailed thy story: We could divine thy sudden haste at that point. . . .” Then, changing her tone: “Later, I want to study to become a heroine in novels. It is a good job, and it allows one to live in the literary style. Don’t you thinks that’s prettier?”
“I’m still hungry,” says her brother at that point. “Now, I want a pizza.”
It must be a joke, for they both laugh. But I don’t understand why. It must be part of their private folklore. There follows a very long silence which feels to me like a hole in time or like a blank space between two chapters. I conclude that something new will probably happen. I wait.
La Maison de Rendez-Vous and Djinn Page 3