Elle

by Philippe Djian

  “Was it good? How was it?” I insist, with a smile so forced it looks like I just tasted something sour. “Answer me.”

  If he could lower his head any more, I’m fairly sure he would.

  “Well? Did you like it?” he forces me to repeat in a low voice.

  He looks up at me again. There is that touch of madness, sure, but he’s still attractive and, when he feels like it, his eyes are pure poison.

  Now the wind is howling, ample and deep, and you can feel the pressure on the walls. “It was necessary,” he finally affirms.

  I don’t react. Those words get etched inside my head.

  I light a cigarette. I am entirely thrown by his answer. And furious as well. My eyes dart around the room with every issue battened down and I give myself quite an earful for being feckless, arrogant, stupid. But I’m not afraid of him. I turn my back on him to adjust a log, I’m not afraid. When I’m finished, I ask him to leave my home.

  “Right now,” I add. And when he stays there, dumbstruck and smiling—apparently he’s the dumbstruck-and-smiling type—I point my Guardian Angel at him and I warn him, I won’t say it again.

  He understands. I probably used just the right tone of voice, probably had just the right expression of resolve on my face, practically foaming at the mouth. I see him to the exit, pointing my spray can at his eyes the whole time. I am so tense that I am practically trembling and I can see that he’s worried about my nervousness, fearing some uncontrolled or rash act. I’m experienced with this kind of equipment, although I did once inadvertently trip the spray mechanism and one joker almost lost an eye.

  When he opens the door, we remain there stock-still in the whistling, howling dark of the garden. With a frown, he seeks my forgiveness. God only knows how long you can stay standing in that storm.

  “Get out!” I say through clenched teeth.

  I am very upset about the way I’ve reacted to this whole thing, about the confusion it’s caused in me, seemingly more unimaginable and obscure with each passing day. I hate having to struggle against myself, to wonder who I am. Not having access to what is buried, buried so deep inside me that only the tiniest, vaguest murmur can be heard far away, like some forgotten, heart-wrenching, and totally incomprehensible song—that doesn’t help matters.

  A few days later, Anna suggests we hire Vincent and of course that would also be a way of solving the problem of his income, but I’m not sure about it at all. I did have the idea, but I gave up on it because, first of all, I’m not at all sure Vincent would be able to handle a desk job of any kind, but also because he told me to mind my own business and hung up on me. Things are a little better between us now that his father is living with another woman, but I’m not certain that’s enough.

  Anna brushes my reticence aside.

  “Well, in any case,” I say, “I’m not going to be the hardest one to convince.”

  Josie will go ballistic, that’s easy. Anna answers that she would just love to see that.

  As for Vincent, he maintains it’s only temporary and he will talk sense to Josie, make her appreciate the climate of uncertainty that reigns high and low in the Old World.

  I don’t know. I don’t want any confrontations. I’m being cautious. I’m thrilled that things are looking up for Vincent but I’m nevertheless wary of having a professional relationship with him—an experiment that turned out to be very disappointing with his father and me, only making things worse between us.

  “He won’t be in your way,” Anna says, trying to reassure me. “He’ll be my responsibility. I’ll find him a desk somewhere.”

  I think she really is trying to wipe Josie off the board. I can feel that exuberant fury coursing through her, that dark desire to have someone to battle, to measure herself against—and with each passing year she only gets stonier and more pugnacious, and her spoiling for a fight just sharpens, overshadowing the rest. I observe her, intrigued. I can see how she has Vincent coming and going, her web growing around him. I can see the stage being set for the coming battle. I am very glad to stay out of it. Let them complain about my lack of enthusiasm—too bad.

  The storms of these past few days have taken some trees, broken a lot of branches, and a truck full of wood stops in front of my house one early morning and, while two men unload it and stack the logs behind the house, Patrick tells me not to thank him, that we couldn’t just let all that wood rot, and blah blah blah. He blinks in the clear morning air and smiles on my doorstep. He adds that it’s heaven sent.

  Any excuse, apparently, to keep our relationship alive after each of our despicable encounters—but sometimes, I tell myself though I don’t believe it, even things that start out terribly wind up falling into place surprisingly well in the end. “I think we should have dinner,” he says to me all of a sudden, staring at my doorbell.

  “No,” I say, “that’s impossible.”

  He takes a moment to recover from this, then peeks at me with one eye. “I meant I’d take you out to dinner, not at my place.”

  “You have a sense of humor,” I say, “a great sense of humor.”

  For three days, I don’t even see him. His chimney is smoking from morning to night, there are lights on inside but I can’t make out any movement. I have other things on my mind, I can’t worry about Patrick’s schedule, but it happens that I’m working at home—which allows Vincent’s arrival at the AV Production offices to happen without my worrying about it, about finding him a spot, making the introductions, showing him how the copier works, the finer points of the coffee machine, and so on. All things that would have very quickly driven me up a wall.

  In my office at home the worktable is at the window, with Patrick’s house right across the way. The best view is from the attic, but this window is quite sufficient. I am here to work, not for anything else. Yet any movement—someone leaving, coming home, a car door slamming—immediately gets my attention, forces me to look up. And for the last three days there is nothing moving at all besides the evening lights getting turned on and the wisp of smoke from the chimney. It’s a still and silent winter tableau, a slightly tedious one.

  On the morning of the fourth day, coming home from my practically one-legged run, I take a detour past his house and catch my breath, hands on my hips, overheated and frozen stiff.

  The dusting of snow from the night before has erased every track and footprint around. The weather is fine, the silence punctuated by cries of birds.

  Nothing is visible inside—the curtains have been drawn. I ring the bell. I turn around to look at my own house across the road, and I blink. I ring the bell again, no answer, so I walk around back. His car is in the garage.

  He is dead drunk. I find him collapsed in the living room, unconscious, after having carefully slipped in through the kitchen door, one step at a time, calling aloud, “Hello? Hello!” while the clumps of snow from the soles of my shoes melted in shiny little puddles at precise intervals on the parquet floor.

  I open the curtains. There are empty bottles strewn all around.

  It’s evening when he comes over and rings my bell, to apologize for that pitiful display and to thank me for dragging him into the shower and deservedly blasting him with cold water and for making a pot of strong coffee. I didn’t stick around to see how he managed, but he’s wearing clean clothes and he shaved and combed his hair and, were it not for that pale complexion, he could go back to his bank right now and no one would hesitate to entrust his life savings to such a nicely turned out and likable guy.

  “I get the feeling you don’t really get it,” I say. “But that’s my fault. I have only myself to blame. It isn’t easy, all right? I’m going through a hard time right now, I feel a little lost. So you should take that into account. If I haven’t been as clear as I should have been, I’m really very sorry, Patrick. But take that into account. You know, sometimes people would do just about anything to feel a tiny bit better.”

  Before I can make a move, he gets one foot inside, presses his l
ips to mine, and backs me up, kicking the door closed behind him, and we are sprawled on the floor in the very spot where he raped me the first time, and we are grunting and groaning and fighting like dogs in an alley.

  He pulls up my skirt, rips open my panty hose, and grabs for my genitals while I hammer him with my fists and try to bite him. Then suddenly a veil is torn, the path is lit before me and I immediately stop struggling, lying there inert and consenting just as he is about to do the deed.

  He is lying on top of me. He hesitates, stiffens for a second and moans, then collapses like a soufflé.

  Then he leaps to his feet and races outside, not even bothering to close the door behind him. I stand up and do it for him. Marty, who once again has been watching the whole thing, stares in surprise as I go by. “It’s a little complicated to explain,” I tell him as he tags along behind.

  During the next few days I don’t think much about these events because I have lots of work and I’m out of the house very early and get home in the evening, and I have neither the strength nor the will for any adventures. I sort of glance toward his house on my way out. The shutters are closed, smoke rising from the chimney, all is quiet. I do the same thing on the way in, I see his windows lit, nighttime sparkling on the snow in his garden, but nothing more. I pull into my garage, turn off the engine, find my keys, and stop thinking about it.

  In life, work is actually the simplest of things and I can get used to the fatigue that accompanies the endless meetings, endless phone calls, and endless rereads and so forth, just as long as I can come home at night, whip myself up a sandwich, hole up in my bedroom, get undressed, run myself a bath, smoke a little grass to relax, listen to music while playing with my glycerin soap. Alone with my aging cat.

  Originally, Marty was supposed to be for Vincent, who for months had been begging us to get a dog. Richard wouldn’t hear of it and figured a cat would do the trick, but Vincent wouldn’t even pick him up. In the end, the kitten found safety in my arms.

  I’m glad I have him with me. He’s not much help when I’m being assaulted, but so what? At least with him I don’t feel like I live in an empty house. I talk to him. And we have no mice.

  Vincent’s arrival slows our work, of course, because he’s often getting underfoot, looking for a pencil or a stapler or waving to us from behind the glass because he wants some question answered about the archiving assignment he’s been given, just until we figure something out. I tried to argue the point—this was no time to be training someone, we had to play catch-up on certain projects, we were behind schedule—but Anna was too much in a hurry to put her plan into action to be bothered listening to me. So my days are long and busy as it is, I have no intention of adding more stuff.

  Especially since things soon get ugly with Josie demanding that Vincent immediately give up the position Anna found him just when he needed it most.

  “So she doesn’t know what a permanent position represents?” I ask with feigned indignation, in order to quickly quash any suspicion that there might be, given my pathetic neutrality, some secret agreement between Josie and me. Anna smiles in the shadows while Vincent nibbles on his thumbnail. I consider bringing up what an absurd rush he had been in to throw herself at this woman’s feet, despite all our warnings.

  Richard has gone to flirt with Hélène for a few minutes, and when he comes back down he inquires about his son’s decision. “Well, buddy, what do you say?” Frightful suspense. Then Vincent looks up to Anna and says he’s staying. Anna is very happy. I recognize that look of unabashed joy that Vincent inspires in her at times, the first of which was when she carried him up to the baptismal font. I poked Richard with my elbow, pointing out the picture of pure happiness she embodied.

  She suggests we all have lunch. I say we can’t, we don’t have the time, but it’s three against one—then four, because Anna tells Richard to go get his new partner.

  “Oh,” I say, “is that what you call her? Are they getting married?”

  She shrugs. “They’re together, right?”

  “Quit it, Mom,” says Vincent with a sigh. “You know that very well.”

  I light a cigarette. When they arrive, I look elsewhere.

  A few suspicions do nevertheless persist concerning Vincent’s ability to stand up to Josie. Still and all, he looks determined and he’s even thinking about spending the night at a hotel if he can’t get her to listen to reason. I steal glances at Richard and Hélène. He and I used to be a couple. Now he and another woman are a couple. We’re in the middle of the meal but I’m no longer hungry and I order a gin and tonic.

  When it comes, he turns to me and gives me a look.

  I pay the bill for my father’s funeral. A few articles appeared, noting his death and recalling the massacre, but apart from the string of insults posted in the readers’ comments nothing has gotten back to me—not a phone call, no contact of any kind, until Ralf remedies this oversight.

  “Just one last maniac,” he says to me, “if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  I’m packing up Irène’s clothing for the Red Cross. I pause in my duties, explain in a pleasant tone of voice that no decent man would go around insulting a dead man in front of his daughter. Then I basically ignore him, getting back to my task.

  “Stop putting on airs,” he says, “I could never stand that crap.”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “I never could tolerate a prig.”

  With that, he caves. December is a month when men get drunk—they kill, rape, form new couples, recognize children who aren’t their own, run away, moan, die—but at least this one can still talk and in the end I learn that long ago we went to the same school and he remembers how the whole country was horror-struck by my father’s deed and, even at the time, he couldn’t stand me because I was so stuck-up. I can’t remember a single face from those years, perhaps what he’s saying is true.

  “Go take a shower,” I say. “You don’t smell good.”

  He gives me the evil eye, shaking his head a little. “One less asshole in the world, anyway. And I’m glad I fucked his wife.”

  I don’t answer. I slip on my coat and gloves. “Well, don’t be long packing your bags,” I say.

  A few patches of ice are floating on the Seine. I meet Anna for dinner with two important and rather hardnosed investors, to win them over. We manage to get things turned around our way. It’s late and I’m tired when we come out of the restaurant, and I get a text from Vincent, who’s locked out of his apartment. I wait to see if Anna gets the same message. I answer that I’m on my way.

  I’m pleasantly surprised that in a tight spot he reached out to me. I go pick him up and when he tells me she’s changed the locks I look incensed. “That’s outrageous,” I say.

  He’s both twitchy and helpless. I think he hadn’t expected such a radical reaction out of Josie and he can’t get his mind around the consequences. He doesn’t ask me where we’re going. I drive along the river.

  “I know Grandfather died,” he says.

  This is an area where Irène defeated me. She used Vincent’s awkward years, when he would immediately take to anything that might upset or annoy his mother, to her advantage. “Don’t call him Grandfather,” I would say. “You don’t have a grandfather. That man is nothing to you.” And then I would turn to Irène and say, “When will you stop filling his head with this crap? What do you get out of it, anyway?” We had bitter arguments over it, I would literally have fits, but the position I’d taken wasn’t easy to defend. I couldn’t just erase a blood relation.

  I glance at him, wary, but I can’t make out any sarcastic intent in his use of the word “grandfather” and I’m reassured by the peaceful look on his face.

  “Yes, he hanged himself,” I say.

  He nods and stares into space. We cross the Pont de Sèvres. “Fuck, I mean after all he was your father,” he says.

  When we get there, I don’t need to show him where his bedroom is. He knows. I find him a too
thbrush. Outside, the moon is shining in the cold night. “Seven o’clock departure tomorrow morning,” I tell him. He nods, he yawns. He gives me the slightest of waves. “Thanks for helping me out, Mom,” he says.

  “You don’t have to thank me. I’m your mother, that’s what I’m here for.”

  “Well, thanks just the same.”

  He’s looking around for something. I hand him a book of short stories by Eudora Welty.

  “What do you think?” he asks me.

  “She’s one of the greatest.”

  “No, I mean what would you do if you were me?”

  How could I have imagined he wanted my opinion? I’m in shock. I pretend to think it over, studying the pattern of the rug in the hallway outside my bedroom.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know how much you care for her. But if I were you I wouldn’t come charging back too quickly. I’d wait it out a day or two, making no contact at all. Give yourself an observation period. Make sure you master the calendar. The steadiest nerves win the day, don’t forget that. And frankly, I don’t know her very well but I get the feeling hers are pretty steady, that she’s not the type to back down with anyone.”

  “Never seen anything like it. She’s so impossible.”

  “That’s what I’m saying, expect some resistance. But this isn’t all bad. It’ll give you both time to think about what you really want. It’s a chance to test this relationship, to see if it will stand up. Because I mean, Vincent, that is something you’ll have to think about at some point. Speaking of which, isn’t Édouard’s father supposed to get out soon?”

  “I’m his father.”

  “Right, I understand. But what does he say about it?”

  “No idea. They’re separated.”

  “So what’s the big deal about getting him out? All that money spent.”

  “It’s about justice. The cops wanted to make an example of him. It’s intolerable. Fuck.”

  “Right, whatever. That’s just one more thing for you to consider. It’s just one problem among many you’re going to have to face. You must know that. There’s no harm in taking everything into account. Just know I’ll be there for you, whatever happens. I went through hell to bring you into the world, you understand?”