Léon and Louise

by Alex Capus

  But still the special train didn’t come.

  Then another year was over and the rain abruptly ceased once more. Louise had long ago resumed cutting her own hair, which grew appreciably faster in Africa than at home. The mud dried up, went hard and became threaded with a network of dark cracks. Galiani stowed his umbrella under his bed in the absolute certainty that not a drop of rain would fall in the next six months. On her day off Louise took the train to Kayes, where she bought a new mosquito net and a replacement for her old bicycle at the market.

  And then the special train turned up at last.

  Perhaps it arrived during the day, perhaps during the night. In the latter case, Louise would have seen the locomotive puffing smoke in front of the buffers a stone’s throw from her window when she got up in the morning. We don’t know how many goods wagons were hitched to it, or whether it took more than one trip to transport the gold back to Dakar. All one gathers from the records of the Banque de France is that 346.535 tonnes of bullion were loaded aboard the Île de Cléron and that the ship put to sea on 30 September 1945. If all went well and the autumn storms in the Atlantic weren’t too violent, the Île de Cléron must have entered Toulon harbour around 12 October.

  I picture Louise going down the gangway to the quayside and setting foot on French soil after five years’ absence, suntanned and slim as a girl, though her hair was now grey. She would have kissed her companions of the last five years farewell, possibly devoting a little more time to Radio Operator Galiani, whose wife was waiting for him beyond the customs post, than she did to the others. And because she was only carrying hand baggage and the rest had to wait for their cabin trunks, she walked off quickly in the knowledge that she would never see any of them again.

  It may have been late afternoon when she walked up the Avenue Henri Pastoureau to Toulon station, carrying her suitcase, perhaps stopping at a pâtisserie en route to buy her first chocolate éclair for a long time. She could then have caught the eight-thirty night train to Paris from Marseille Saint-Charles and arrived in the capital shortly before eight the following morning.

  I don’t believe Louise was standing impatiently at the open carriage door with her head out when the train pulled into the Gare de Lyon. I don’t believe she crossed the concourse at the double, and I can’t believe that she actually, as she had forecast in her last letter, jumped into a taxi and drove straight to the Rue des Écoles.

  It think it far more probable that she sat quietly in her third-class compartment until all her fellow passengers had alighted, and that she then, slowly and carefully – almost hesitantly – got down on the platform, made her way across the concourse in the brightness of that fine autumn day, and walked out on to the cobblestones of the Boulevard Diderot, which already, as if there had never been a war, resounded to the roar of the buses, cars and lorries streaming past.

  I picture her crossing the boulevard and walking straight on down the Rue de Lyon, amazed to see the buildings on either side so incomprehensibly unscathed. At the Bastille she sat down in a pavement café, ordered a café au lait and a croissant, picked up a newspaper, and cast a casual glance at the houseboats peacefully rocking in the breeze in the Arsenal harbour.

  Then she strolled on through the cool morning air, carrying her little suitcase like a tourist. She went straight on down the Rue Saint-Antoine and the Rue de Rivoli, and after a while, as if by chance, she came to the headquarters of the Banque de France. She climbed the broad flight of steps to the entrance. The porter, a walrus-moustachioed man named Darnier, had either returned to the bank or had never been away. Louise gave him an airy wave and disappeared down the long, gloomy passage she had trodden a thousand times before, ready to report back for duty.

  I picture her going to the Rue des Écoles a few days later, not before. I believe she began by moving into a hotel room provided by the bank as temporary accommodation, and that she first bought herself a new wardrobe, had a manicure, and got a dentist to fix the left upper molar that had been paining her for quite a while. Then she went to the hairdresser and had her hair cut. She didn’t have it dyed, though, I’m sure of that.

  I picture Louise timing her visit to the Rue des Écoles for late in the morning. She would have come by taxi, not yet having a car of her own. I picture Madame Rossetos pricking up her ears at the sound of a car door, then glancing at the mirror that gave her a periscopic view of the front door via two other mirrors. The concierge would then have heaved herself out of the armchair beside the stove and gone to do her duty as a watchdog.

  ‘Who were you wanting?’

  ‘The Le Galls, please.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘The Le Galls do live here, don’t they?’

  ‘What’s it about, please?’

  ‘It’s a personal visit.’

  ‘Are they expecting you?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Who shall I say it is?’

  ‘Look – ’

  ‘Residents’ rules state that strangers aren’t to be admitted except by appointment.’

  ‘Are the Le Galls still here?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’ve just got back from Africa.’

  ‘I can’t make any exceptions for reasons of security, you must underst... From Africa, you say?’

  ‘French Sudan.’

  ‘Then you’re...’

  ‘Which floor, please?’

  The door to the flat was ajar. Louise rang the bell.

  ‘Who’s there?

  ‘Louise.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Louise.’

  ‘WHO?’

  ‘LOUISE JANVIER!’

  ‘LITTLE LOUISE?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well I never!’

  ‘Yes, it’s me.’

  ‘Come in. Straight down the passage. I’m in the living room.’

  Louise pushed the door open and pulled it to behind her. A few more steps and she was in the living room she had so often seen through her binoculars. Yvonne was sitting in Léon’s armchair by the window. Louise wouldn’t have recognized her, but it couldn’t be anyone else. She was wearing checked carpet slippers. Her thighs were bloated, her neck was encircled by a thick roll of fat, and her straggly hair was shoulder-length.

  ‘Léon isn’t here.’

  ‘You’re alone?’

  ‘The children are at school.’

  ‘All the better,’ said Louise. ‘It’s you I came to see.’

  ‘Sit down, then, So that’s what you look like. Quite like the photo you sent from Africa.’

  ‘I’ve gone grey.’

  ‘Time flies. One always looks younger in photos than in real life.’

  ‘It can’t be helped.’

  ‘You don’t wear make-up.’

  ‘Nor do you.’

  ‘I haven’t for a long time,’ said Yvonne. ‘I suppose I’ve put on a bit of weight lately, too.’

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Oh, you know, what I like best is just sitting here beside the window, sunning myself like a pussycat. When I’m tired I go to sleep and when I’m hungry I eat. The truth is, I’m always tired and always hungry. Except when I’m asleep.’

  ‘You never go out?’

  ‘Not if I can avoid it. I’ve bustled around so much all these years, all I want to do now is sit in the sun. Nothing else matters. How are you doing?’

  ‘I’ve sat in the sun so much these last few years...’

  ‘And I enjoy eating. I starved myself for so long, I like to have a good tuck-in. I’ve got some raspberry gâteau and whipped cream here. Would you like some?’

  So the two women sat there in the autumn sunshine and ate raspberry gâteau together. They ate slowly and in silence, passing each other the sugar, whipped cream and paper napkins. One of them occasionally said something and the other listened, then they both fell silent again and smiled.

  Louise offered to go to the kitchen and make some coffee, and Yvonne said tha
t would be charming of her. Meantime, Yvonne fetched a bottle of Calvados and two glasses from the sideboard and cut another two big slices of raspberry gâteau. The clock on the sideboard was ticking. Eleven o’clock had already come and gone. The children would be home from school in an hour. The two women ate and drank in silence.

  ‘And Léon?’ Louise asked at last. ‘Is he well?’

  ‘Outrageously well,’ said Yvonne. ‘You’ll see, he’s hardly changed.’

  ‘After all these years?’

  ‘After all these decades. I don’t know how they manage it, but these Le Gall men certainly are durable. Not even war leaves a mark on them. We women show signs of wear and our warranty runs out, but Léon? He’s indestructible. Rustproof and easy to maintain, I always say. Like agricultural machinery.’

  Louise laughed and Yvonne joined in.

  ‘His hair’s a bit thinner,’ Yvonne went on, ‘and his toenails have developed these funny ridges in the last few years. Know the ones I mean? Do other men get them too?’

  ‘Most of them, after a certain age,’ said Louise.

  ‘And do they sigh when they get up in the mornings?’

  ‘That too,’ said Louise.

  ‘He never sighed once upon a time, but he does now.’

  ‘Does he still laugh?’

  ‘Would you say he laughed a lot in the old days?’

  ‘Not very loudly.’

  ‘No, he tends to smile.’

  ‘Especially when he thinks no one’s looking.’

  ‘You ought to pay him a visit, he’d like that.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Definitely. Why not, after so many years?’

  ‘When should I come?’

  ‘Not here. Go to the Arsenal harbour, he keeps a boat there. It’s a blue and white boat called Fleur du Miel. He flies the flag of Lower Normandy, overgrown schoolboy that he is. Two golden lions on a red background. You know, William the Conqueror and all that. Anyone would think he was getting ready to cross the Channel in his cabin cruiser and conquer perfidious Albion.’

  20

  Louise and Léon met at the Arsenal harbour very, very often in the years that followed. From Monday to Saturday they spent their lunch breaks together, likewise the time between the end of office hours and supper. Sunday was the only day they didn’t see each other. When it rained they stayed inside the cabin; at other times they sat on the wooden bench seat in the stern or went for walks along the canal bank. She took his arm and he sniffed the scent of her sunlit hair, and they chatted casually together.

  But it wasn’t until the end of the third week that they drew the cabin curtains for the first time.

  When winter arrived in November they lit the cast-iron stove, made coffee and fried eggs. They bought a gramophone and some records by Édith Piaf, later by Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel. They made friends with the other boat-owners and got on to first-name terms with them. Sometimes they invited them over for drinks. If anyone asked how long they’d been married, they said nearly thirty years.

  But always, at exactly quarter past seven every evening without exception, Louise returned to the flat in the Marais obtained for her by the Banque de France and Léon went home to the Rue des Écoles to have supper with Yvonne and the children. Afterwards he helped the younger ones with their homework, played cards with the older ones, and then retired to bed with Yvonne.

  By continuing to live like this, the three of them made no sacrifices, practised no deceit and kept no guilty secrets from each other; they merely continued their previous lives in the only possible way. There could be no new life without the old one, they knew, and because nothing could alter that, no altercations or arguments about the rights and wrongs of the situation were necessary.

  So they kept silent about these things. Louise’s name was never uttered in the Rue des Écoles and the boat in the Arsenal harbour was never mentioned. Yvonne, who had no wish to disrupt her feline, armchair-bound contentment, refrained from any needlessly explicit allusions to the arrangement, which would only have led to undignified scenes, sham reconciliations and insincere vows of fidelity. She did not, however, insist on keeping up false appearances because she was at peace with herself and Léon and the life they had led. All she asked was that her dignity be respected and tactless behaviour avoided.

  There could in any case be no question of keeping the arrangement secret once Madame Rossetos had put two and two together, kept her eyes and ears open, and deemed it her duty to inform all the neighbours of what went on in the Le Gall family.

  Even the children were in the know, but because they too maintained a discreet silence and communicated at most by means of ironical sidelong glances and muttered remarks, Yvonne could continue to live in peace inside her own four walls, which she seldom left.

  Then came the time when the children moved out one by one. Because of his mediocre examination marks, Michel had vainly waited, term after term, for admission to engineering college. In the spring of 1947, when Renault opened a new factory, he took an assistant mechanic’s job and moved into a furnished room at Issy-les-Moulineaux. Two years later his seventeen-year-old brother Yves joined the army and was posted to the Tchad Regiment. The same year, Madame Rossetos died in hospital after a short illness and her functions in the Rue des Écoles were taken over by a cleaning firm and an electric intercom system. In summer 1950, Robert also took leave of his parents and went to learn how to breed Charolais cattle at an agricultural college in Burgundy, and another two years later, when sixteen-year-old Muriel departed the Rue des Écoles to acquire a primary schoolteacher’s diploma at a convent school near Chartres, Léon and Yvonne were left on their own with eleven-year-old Philippe, who was girlishly delicate.

  Yvonne did not labour under her sudden solitude but accepted it as the natural course of events. All she wanted was sunshine and plenty of food and sleep.

  For a few months in the mid-1950s she received visits from a Jehovah’s Witness whose bloodthirsty tales of human depravity and retribution by a vengeful God amused her for a while. In winter 1958, when young Philippe went off to do his military service, she had a television set installed in the living room. Her favourite programmes were boxing matches and car racing.

  One morning in May 1961, when running a flannel over her neck, she noticed a small, hard lump beneath her right ear. The lump grew bigger every day. Then another one developed beneath her left ear as well.

  ‘They may go away by themselves,’ she said when Léon wanted to call the doctor.

  ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ said Léon. ‘But the doctor should definitely take a look at them.’

  ‘No,’ said Yvonne.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They may be serious. You want to die of them?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Yvonne. ‘But if the Almighty wants me to go, I’ll go.’

  ‘The Almighty doesn’t care whether you go or not, you silly thing. He’s got plenty of other things on his plate.’

  ‘There you are, then.’

  ‘But I care, and I’m telling you they should be operated on.’

  ‘Are you a doctor?’

  ‘No, but I’ve got a pair of eyes in my head and a brain between my ears.’

  ‘So have I,’ said Yvonne. ‘That’s why I’m telling you to leave me alone. When I’m meant to go, I’ll go.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Just like that.’

  So the tumours in her neck continued to grow until they constricted her windpipe. After a few weeks came a night when her breathing was so bad she could hardly speak. She told Léon about her indiscretion with Raoul over thirty years earlier, and he took her in his arms and said it didn’t matter any more. Then she fell asleep, or pretended to, and Léon fell asleep beside her.

  On the first anniversary of Yvonne’s funeral, Léon and Louise met at the Arsenal harbour at seven in the morning. It was a cool, fine day, and the sun had just risen above the buildings in the Bou
levard de la Bastille. They were wearing their Sunday best although it was a Tuesday. A healthy, happy, good-looking couple, they were both sixty-two years old.

  Louise had brought some bread, cheese and ham; Léon had come bearing bottled water, cider and red wine.

  ‘You’re sure the tub won’t sink?’ she asked.

  ‘Positive,’ he replied. ‘I’ve scraped and repainted the hull every two years, the way Caron asked me to. The engine is in tip-top condition too.’

  ‘Let’s go, then. It’s high time we did.’

  They went aboard, stowed their supplies in the cabin, and started the engine. Then they cast off, put out into the Seine from the harbour basin, and headed downstream towards the sea.

  THE END

  Table of Contents

  Title page

  Copyright page

  Epigraph page

  Dedication page

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20