Elle

by Philippe Djian

  It isn’t late, the sun hasn’t reached its apex. The frozen peas have helped my ankle regain a nearly acceptable appearance. I tie my bandage snugly and, brandishing a cane, I take a few steps around the room for practice while I wait for my taxi. It’s a fine day, the snow in the garden has bright hard crystals at the surface.

  I give my mother’s address. On the way, we pass the tow truck winching my car up out of the ditch.

  I go inside. I walk toward the study, which Irène had converted to a walk-in closet, and I start opening a few drawers when Ralf comes up on my heels, hair all mussed, wearing only boxers and a T-shirt. He shakes his head, upset. “Oh, no, Michèle. Come on, you can’t do this.”

  I turn around toward him. “Hi, Ralf. What’s the matter? What can’t I do?”

  “This. Just showing up, letting yourself in without ringing the bell.”

  “You know I have a key, Ralf. I don’t have to ring the bell. You shouldn’t have bothered, I’m not staying long.”

  “That you’re not staying long doesn’t change anything, Michèle.”

  “Of course it does, it changes everything. Don’t be unpleasant.”

  “No means no. Sorry.”

  I scratch my temple a little. “Look, Ralf, I came to pick up some important documents. I can’t wait for you to buckle your suitcase, it needs to get done now. So let’s not make a big deal of this, all right?”

  He waves his hands and shakes his head in protest and just then an entirely naked brunette woman, about half the age of Irène, comes up behind him and juts her chin out toward me to ask who I am. I don’t say anything, I ignore them.

  I finally get my hands on a shoe box, full of photographs that I identify at first glance, and I close it back up right away, as if some fumes of hell might come wafting out of it. Then I jump back into the taxi, which is waiting in the icy sunlight.

  The daylight has started to wane. I don’t bother to take off my coat. I go straight to the garage for a shovel and walk outside behind the house. Because it hasn’t been very cold for very long, the earth isn’t too hard. Then I get some denatured alcohol, empty the box over the hole, soak the photographs through and through, light the fire.

  I don’t go as far as putting out my hands to warm them by the flames, but I can feel the heat on my face and I close my eyes for a moment and listen to the reedy hiss of the flames and I stay there long enough, I stay long enough to be certain that it’s all been reduced to ashes, shivering in the cool evening. Then I fill the hole back up and tamp the earth with the shovel while a crow crosses through the sky, balefully cackling.

  Irène would have had a fit. I remain outside a moment, leaning against the side of the house in the pale dusk and the odor of burnt paper. There was never a time when she stopped seeing him. She kept in touch, maintained a physical link to him, which regularly gave rise to spectacular clashes between her and me, mostly toward the beginning, but which never stopped her from making those goddamn visits. Still and all, God knows she never hid the rancor she felt toward him, considering the life he left us, one of paying bills and getting insulted, running away, etc. She kept going back to see him again and again, which made me absolutely furious at her and which she could never quite explain. She remained voluntarily muddled. She would never have forgiven me for burning those photographs. I can just hear her accusing me of killing this man a second time—which seems impossible.

  I think again of her last request, that last gesture she expected of me, and that just shows how she remained attached to him despite the aimless life she led between visits, when she would generally show up with a scarf around her head and a skirt with a hemline below her knees. I’m angry at her for thinking that her stroke might melt my resistance and usher me down a road of indulgence. Is that all she thought of me?

  I have a message from Robert. I call him back. “Hello, Robert? I was going to call you. About tomorrow, actually. Could we reschedule? It turns out I can’t walk.”

  “It’s no problem if you can’t walk,” he replies, “we’re not going on a hike.” His implacable logic leaves me speechless.

  I’m not in a fantastic mood when I show up for our appointment. He’s already in bed—it seems to me that the hair on his chest has gotten even a little whiter since our last roll in the hay, during which that detail had already struck me and completely knocked me out for an instant. “Whatever else, Robert, don’t expect anything complicated out of me. As you can see and as I told you, I’m not going dancing or jumping around the room. And Anna and I have had a rough day, into the bargain. See, the holidays are over.”

  I put down my cane and start to take my clothes off. “I can’t get over how you have gone about getting me into bed. Just don’t come complaining afterward. When I’ve lost all but my last ounce of respect for you, don’t come complaining.”

  I don’t turn away when he tries to kiss me on the mouth, but I’m like a lifeless doll. It’s already dark outside and the room is lit only by the lights of the city. I’ve always known I’d wind up regretting falling for him. So here we are, I think, it’s done. And I think of the work I brought home from the office and how I should be taking care of it right now rather than doing anything else. It’ll take me half the night as it is, if I never stop to eat.

  “Relax,” he says to me.

  “I’m not a machine, Robert. You can’t just press a button.”

  It’s his move. After a minute, I’m beginning to wonder why I’m making this all so complicated while Robert is there with a certain level of mastery concerning my body and appears relatively sane. But I don’t have the answer.

  I try not to let my pleasure show because I don’t know what strings it comes with. It isn’t easy. I taught him everything and he was a good student. I clench my teeth so as not to bite my lip.

  We have two gin and tonics sent up when we’re done. I get out of bed and limp toward the bathroom. I use a chamomile body wash and I clean myself thoroughly—having the scent of another person on me has always disturbed me.

  He comes in to comb his hair. He’s nude. He looks at himself in the mirror.

  “You were fabulous,” he says to me. At first I think he’s kidding—I went completely inert while he rode me like a rodeo—but he’s as serious as serious can be. “You provided some very special sensations,” he goes on. “How did you hit on that idea of playing dead?”

  I look at him for a moment without answering. “Anyway, whatever,” I say. “You see, I’m as good as my word. You got what you wanted. Fine. Let’s stay friends.”

  “Of course. I totally agree.”

  I look him over for a few more seconds and decide it would be useful to stipulate that remaining friends doesn’t mean having sex.

  I don’t take calls with blocked caller IDs, in order to avoid journalists, penitentiary officials, and anything even remotely related to the death of my father. Regarding the funeral, I decide not to lift a finger, to play dead once again though in a different context. Even if that means picking up the tab when it’s all over.

  Richard supports me. There is no need to explain to him why I’m acting this way. He knows, he saw what it did to me when we first met, in what condition my father had left my mother and me by slaughtering those children. I think I might have gone insane if I hadn’t met Richard, if he hadn’t watched over me so carefully during the years when I first came up for air—somber, wan, and scared stiff. Watched over me while I learned to live again, made me a child so I could get my feet back on the ground, find some peace—I’m not sure, by the way, that I found any peace at all in Vincent’s birth; I didn’t notice it if I did.

  “It’s incredible that your mother died on Christmas Eve,” he says, “and your father on New Year’s Eve.”

  “Yes, I noticed that,” I answer.

  Sympathetic to my plight, he holds me in one arm. I break away before he sheds a tear on my neck. “We weren’t supposed to live with other people,” I toss out. “It ruins everything, you know?”<
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  He looks down. Breaking his word is heartbreak for him. I’m thrilled to be his guilty conscience.

  It probably has something to do with the holidays, but I see him often these days, just as I run into Hélène fairly regularly and I can just imagine what stream he’s carried away on, what intoxication he just could not resist. I know what he’s looking for with me. I know what excitement and what anguish wash over him lately, because I lived with him for twenty years and I can see how he behaves with her, how his eyes give him away, expressing the painful thirst he has for her. But I can’t help it. I can’t help this terrible, laughable absurdity that rules our lives.

  Our son Vincent is a good example of where this dangerous road has led. Now he’s had a fight with the manager at the McDonald’s during a meeting and he’s lost his job. That is going to put a serious crimp in his ability to pay rent, for which I am listed as guarantor.

  It’s cold and sunny, the traffic is moving, the tops of the cars capped with snow. Josie hasn’t lost an ounce, she might even have gained a little. The apartment is small, with a fairly low ceiling, so she seems huge to me—two hundred pounds, Richard tells me, and he’s more up on these things than I am. He’s come as an observer, being that he can’t weigh in on financial matters because his resources are so scant.

  Josie has made scones. A dozen of them. As soon as we’re seated, she takes one and swallows it in one mouthful. While Vincent is holding out Édouard-baby to us for the customary kisses and compliments, she makes another one disappear in the same manner—as if by magic.

  “Some things are unacceptable,” he explains. “True, I wasn’t thinking about my rent. But in that case you just stand there and you let some asshole walk all over your life. Is that what you want me to do?”

  “That’s not what your mother’s saying, Vincent,” Richard chimes in.

  “He knows very well that’s not what I’m saying.”

  “You’re not saying it, but that’s what you’re thinking. That I should have shut my mouth.”

  “What about your pride, darling?” asks Josie, staring dreamily at the scones. “What could you have done with your pride?”

  Richard coughs into a fist, trying to create a diversion, but I pay no mind. “Josie,” I say, “when one must support a wife and a child, pride becomes a luxury. I thought that when he took this job, Vincent understood that. I thought he and I had discussed it thoroughly.”

  “Excuse me,” he says, “but you’re the one who hammered this into me, don’t you remember? Never let them walk all over me, always stick up for what I believe in. Did you forget? That little flame I must always keep lit?”

  “I never told you not to think, Vincent. Besides, I always told you to think beforehand, not afterward.”

  “I can’t let him call me a dirty little Jew without reacting.”

  “Well, for starters you’re not Jewish. No one’s asking you to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. There are millions of jobless people out there. Thirty million in Europe alone. That’s a lot.”

  “Your mother is worried about you, Vincent.”

  “I’m worried about myself as well,” I say.

  I shouldn’t be afraid, but I am, because this weakness, instability, this precarious situation is suggestive—it takes me back to the dark years my mother and I went through, when we didn’t know how we would make it through tomorrow, whether we would have a bed to sleep in and food to eat once my father was convicted and thrown into prison for his crimes. I don’t feel I can go through another ordeal like that. I really don’t want the hard times to come back.

  “All right, Vincent,” I say. “Fine. Do the best you can. We’ll see what happens. Let’s cross our fingers.”

  Satisfied, Richard feels obliged to massage my shoulder with a tender hand. He has been so frightfully sentimental lately. The demise of my parents has apparently rekindled his protective instincts toward me.

  “Fucking trust me,” says Vincent. “I won’t have much trouble finding something better.”

  I look at him but I don’t answer because I don’t want to douse his enthusiasm, which I love for its purity and naïveté. I would love to find such innocence again myself, once in a while, to be certain my powers remain intact, that nothing is insurmountable, everything is possible.

  There are only two scones left on the plate Josie is sliding toward us. Neither Richard nor Vincent nor I have touched them. She asks if she can kiss me. I nod, though there is a piece of pastry still stuck to her lip.

  The burden of an extra rent is not good news for my finances, but I put a good face on it and I let them compliment me for my generosity, my indulgence, my kindness, and all that. I use the occasion to ask after Édouard-baby’s father, the one who is in prison, using the generally euphoric mood to bring up a topic I wouldn’t have known how to broach in other circumstances.

  For a moment, they’re thrown. Richard once again clears his throat in his fist. “How is this going to work?” I ask, keeping my tone breezy. “Seems to me, a child can’t have two fathers.”

  Obviously, I’m not interested in the fate of the biological father, nor in the reasons that brought him to where he is today. I only want to know what they are planning to do and, just as I feared, they haven’t planned anything at all.

  It’s better to leave. It’s better to leave than to have a falling-out with them, better than saying things you’ll regret later but will remain etched in stone. Anna isn’t surprised. She came to the same conclusion before Josie decided she would never set foot in her house again. And although Josie never convinced Vincent to follow her example, she did manage to reduce their time together and Anna can’t forgive that extremely grave low blow.

  The snow that fell this morning has stuck and the temperature has dropped. There is an icy wind blowing. I came home early because of the traffic hazard warning—heavy precipitation is forecast for tonight. There is whitish smoke curling from his chimney. Over a cup of piping-hot tea, I watch him go back and forth carrying logs. He’s lucky, I think, his secret is well guarded. I haven’t turned him in. I could send him to prison or to a loony bin, but I’m not going to. He’s lucky he’s dealing with me. He should come over here and kiss my feet.

  The woods nearby are white. I look up at the sky. Shimmering brown clouds break up and scatter as the wind picks up. Evening comes. I call him to close my shutters. After a few moments of silence, I ask, “Have you gone deaf?”

  I have to force myself to see his other, the one hiding within, the one behind. It’s so much effort it’s nearly impossible. I’m practically wondering if it was a dream.

  “How about that ankle?” he asks, already rushing to the nearest window, just like the last time—though for the moment the wind isn’t nearly as strong.

  “My ankle is fine,” I reply. “Thank you. How’s your hand?”

  He shrugs and smiles, resigned. “Nothing too horrible,” he assures me, rotating it side to side on its axis, like a puppet.

  I follow him in his duties, going from window to window throughout the house and at no point does he make a move to even come near me, at no point does that jovial expression leave his face, at no point can I make out his other, not even a trace, not even a fleeting glimmer, and I haven’t taken my eyes off Patrick, not for one second.

  Does a demon dwell within a body twenty-four seven, or does he only drop in for a moment? It’s a question I’ve asked myself about my father. Sometimes I lean one way, sometimes the other, always convinced I have just now found the correct answer.

  He hurries home—he’s alone, with Rébecca on her way to Compostelle—to get some eggplant caviar he bought in the Marais, which I’m supposed to flip over. I watch him run outside and meet the rising storm. It isn’t snowing yet but the sky keeps getting heavier. A pearly halo comes off the moon. Meanwhile, I mix a couple of Black Russians. Then he comes racing back down, swept along like a wisp of straw in the gusts of wind, zigzagging this way and that, but ever makin
g his way toward my door, which I open, letting him in. He’s out of breath.

  I am astounded by my behavior. Patrick himself doesn’t seem able to figure out what’s going on. He stands there in the foyer, struck dumb and smiling, an almost painful smile that seems to ask what’s wrong. He waits for me to tell him what comes next. I’m astounded. Now it’s my turn—apparently there is another Michèle.

  “Let’s see about this eggplant caviar,” I say, turning around.

  There is no way it’s dinner, an invitation to sit at the same table like we were old friends, to share a meal, to act as if nothing has happened, but there’s no denying I called him. I’m the one who asked him to come over. And honestly, I can hardly believe it. I want to pinch myself.

  I hand him his drink. He hands me my piece of toast. “Delicious,” I say. The wind starts to roar in the chimney. I still have a few memories of a time when the use of amphetamines was widespread at exam time or under pressure, and I literally have that same sensation at that precise moment—an electric current shot through me from head to toe, my face stuck in spider silk, my palms getting clammy, my mouth drying up, my thoughts coming fast and furious.

  “Well,” I ask, “how was it?”

  I don’t recognize my own voice. He’s kneeling near the coffee table, seeing to the toast, then stops in midspread and looks up at me. He looks back down and shakes his head, like he just heard a good joke.

  When he’s all done squirming and manages to look back at me, the other appears to me for a second, frowning and terrifying, and I’m about to grab the poker to keep him at bay. But he disappears and it’s Patrick again, touched, sitting on his heels and looking at his drink, which he picks up and finishes in a few quick sips.