Someone Else

by Tonino Benacquista

  He definitely did not miss anything about the days when he was sober, apart perhaps from the energy of the first few hours of the day. The only true enemy of the drunk was not cirrhosis of the liver, the worrying, the possible cancers, the hangovers, the redundancies or the sideways glances: it was the tiredness. Even first thing in the morning he had trouble overcoming the weakness in his limbs; he had to wait till that “little water” had done a whole circuit of his organism, till the beloved molecule had set its chain reactions in motion, and till his brain found a good reason to set the body to work. Then he had to run the gauntlet of the mirror.

  Gredzinski’s mask had fallen and the Other’s true face had finally appeared. He expected to see the face of a depressive or the distorted features of some otherworldly creature; he found only dark rings under the eyes, blotches with red highlights, sagging eyelids and patchy stubble. So was this the face of his double, then? Something about it was similar to him, but there was something sad about it as well, like the bloated, decomposing body of an older brother. Seen in the cold light of dawn, this Other – who was so eloquent, so dazzling when he was a creature of the night – had the sickly expression of someone who already knows their fate. He would die blind drunk, with a bottle in his hand and oblivion in his head; which was still better than dying praying to whatever spare God might be knocking about. Nicolas may, without realizing it, always have been afraid of death, but to the Other it was a distant promise of deliverance. He found it reassuring that all this could come to an end one day. And if life was a shooting star across some dark eternity, each of us was free to make it shine in their own way. Nicolas still remembered Loraine’s words, the tone of her voice, the little blue twinkle in the depths of her retina which gave a malicious edge to everything she said: You’re so lucky . . . You’ve got a liver like a baby’s. She was right, this predictable death could wait a while yet. Major-league alcoholics had been known to drink right to the end of their life expectancy without missing a single drop.

  But on that particular morning, Nicolas was in the grips of an uncomfortable feeling of foreboding. An unpleasant impression which was very different from the dying notes of a night laden with dreams or the first mists of intoxication. An indefinable threat which he tried to drive out with a good mouthful of vodka.

  He always ended up going to the office. He still found the little performance of his daily life amusing; this masquerade would soon come to an end, but he preferred the decision to come from above. In the meantime, he kept testing the limits the way children do to see just how powerful they are. He could see he was going too far, he could feel all of them trying to contain themselves when he came near them.

  “They’re all there for the departmental meeting – they’re only waiting for you now.”

  “Thank you, Muriel.”

  He did a detour via his office, dived straight into the bottom drawer to check that he had something to fill up his flask with; the bottle of Wyborowa had barely been touched. His tiredness had evaporated in a downward movement, releasing first his head, then his arms and finally his legs. He took a swig of vodka in preparation for the Friday meeting, strode through the corridors in a beautifully relaxed way, and stepped into the workshop where everyone was waiting for him round a long trestle table.

  “You look tired, Nicolas,” said Cécile.

  “Tired? Are you sure that’s the word you want? Don’t you mean ‘depressed’ or ‘plastered’?”

  Cécile was too embarrassed to reply.

  “It doesn’t matter. Let’s get on with the catalogue of complaints. Who’s going first?”

  Now they were all embarrassed.

  “Well, that’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?”

  “Perhaps you should get some rest, Nicolas. We’ve been under incredible pressure these last few weeks.”

  “What do you lot know about pressure? You, Valerie, you spend the best part of the day stretching text to fit the space and choosing typefaces, and that’s when the computer’s not doing it for you. And you, Jean-Jean, the biggest tragedy in your life is that you’ve lost your Rotring pen. Last time I borrowed it from you, you looked like someone had disembowelled your little sister. You, Véro, you deserve a special mention for your arsy vocab, your de-stressing holidays, your lunch slots and your debriefings round the coffee machine. And then with you, Cécile, everything’s always massively urgent because you’re only any good up against a deadline. And Bernardo, incapable of doing simple division without his IBM computer, and Marie-Paule, queen of the Internet, of faxes and phones and mobiles, always so keen to communicate, yet the only things you can say are ‘Where are you? Can I call you back?’”

  There was a painful silence round the room.

  Which went on.

  And on.

  “All that would be bearable if you didn’t spend your time – my time! – complaining. Are you wishing you were dying slowly in some factory so that you only survived for three weeks of your retirement? Do you want to have a chat about redundancy and all the horrors that go with it?”

  “Nobody told us we were on trial. What is this?” said Bernardo.

  “Well, if everyone took that line . . .!” added Cécile.

  “No one’s asking you to take a particular line, but just to stop listening to yourselves all day long. I’m not saying this for me, or even for the work or the Communications Department or the whole Group. In the long run, what do we actually do all year? We dress up merchandise, we give a bit of colour to other people’s profits, a little logo here, a metal plaque there, no one gives a damn but it keeps us alive. I’m only telling you this for your own sakes, because if you take everything that happens here seriously, you’re heading for trouble.”

  He stood up and disappeared off to the toilets, where he locked himself in, put down the seat and sat down. Blue-grey metal, immaculate white china, halogen lighting. Swig of vodka. Big sigh. He liked these moments of ultra-modern contemplation.

  *

  The company restaurant only ever had one free space at the busiest time, right opposite Gredzinski. He had not had lunch with the others for weeks now. Another paradoxical effect of alcoholism: he had become very particular about subjects of conversation. Any apparently banal chitter chatter was “deadly” according to his criteria; his barometer of mediocrity had an almost instant tolerance threshold. Nicolas no longer had the strength to play-act politely while waiting for his dessert, and one fine day he announced that he would be considerably less bored on his own.

  The afternoon slipped by so calmly he should have been suspicious. His feeling of foreboding had been with him all day.

  “Hello, it’s Alissa, how are things?”

  “What’s the news?”

  “Could you nip up to see my boss later?”

  “Broaters wants to see me in person?”

  “Just for a couple of minutes, if you’ve got time, at about five-thirty.”

  “That’s not going to be easy today,” he said, to be sure about how serious this was.

  “Can’t you try?”

  “So I’m being summoned.”

  “If you want to see it like that.”

  It could not go on forever, after all. His relationship with the Group had come to term. Good! He had other territories to explore, other worlds to conquer. He promised himself he would buy a ticket to New Guinea the very next day, and would be playing cricket with the natives within a week. He would even be the first Westerner in the world to be accepted as part of a Papuan team. After that, life would go on to set him other impossible tasks.

  “It’s good of you to find the time, Nicolas. Rumours are just rumours, but I do have to deal with them and find out how they started. Did you have some sort of problem this morning, during your briefing?”

  “The same problems you have every day, Christian. By the way, we can call each other by our first names, can’t we?”

  Broaters was surprised and replied with a slight nod.

  “Report
s have come back to me. Are you having problems in your private life? Or a disagreement with Lefébure?”

  “He’s a prick.”

  “Please. He’s a close collaborator, and I respect him as a person and in his professional capacity.”

  “Do you want to know if I drink? It’s true.”

  Broaters said nothing.

  “Vodka. It’s a love affair.”

  Still Broaters said nothing, and Nicolas looked at him steadily.

  “I’m sure you’ll understand that we can’t keep you any longer. Your behaviour, the friction you’ve created because of your . . . condition. I’m sorry to be so blunt. You’re an intelligent man, I expect you already see what I mean.”

  “It’s not so much the fact that I drink that bothers you, the results have been much better since I’ve been heading up the department. I sorted the sheep from the goats; I’m a useful ally, and you know it. The problem is you’ve got to get rid of someone who’s no longer frightened. The Group can’t cope with someone who’s not afraid of leaving the Group. Even if it gets results, my independence isn’t acceptable. You’re like Dobermans, you can smell when people are afraid. Like here, right now, in this office, you can smell that I’m not afraid of you, or of your decisions. Under all your gentlemanly airs and graces, you look at the staff with a very clear message in your eye: It’s cold outside. It’s cold outside the Group, and anyone might find themselves outside from one day to the next, even someone like Bardane, who thought he was untouchable. But I’m not cold any more. It must be the vodka, they used to give it to Russian soldiers. How much do you get a month, Christian?”

  Broaters was too surprised to answer.

  “Two hundred thousand? Two hundred and twenty? Let’s say two forty, we shouldn’t skimp. That’s way below what I make when I’m asleep. It’s not especially glorious, but it means I can stand in front of you without shaking – with fear or with cold. I didn’t need to go to some swanky college and be ragged as a new boy, I didn’t have to swear allegiance to any brotherhood or play watchdog to anyone’s profits, I haven’t made or broken any marriages, or made anyone redundant or dallied with power. I just had an idea, a stupid, pointless invention, I put it down on paper and found a use for it in minutes. I exploited the absurdity of the whole system – like you do every day – and the system paid me back very nicely. It sheltered me from itself. Thanks to that, I’m highly likely to die an extremely rich man.”

  Broaters, who did not understand a single word, stood up and headed for the door to be sure that Nicolas left his office.

  “. . . I’ve still got a lot to do today, I have to justify this salary, which, sadly for me, is way below what you think. I will, therefore, have to ask you to leave, Monsieur Gredzinski.”

  “So, what are we going to do about my compensation?”

  Broaters looked at him in speechless amazement.

  “As a matter of principle.”

  “You’ll have to see Alissa about that.”

  “No hard feelings,” said Gredzinski, holding out his hand.

  Broaters could not avoid shaking it. As he left the floor, Nicolas wondered whether the gesture had been a sign of fair play or rather pathetic. He went back to his office and sat slumped in his chair for a long while. Oddly, his feeling of premonition still dogged him.

  *

  Usually, someone who had been made redundant left his office with a little cardboard box full of his personal effects. A couple of files, a sweater, a photograph of loved ones, a mug, an umbrella, a few headache pills in a box. Nicolas could find nothing to take except for his complete collection of Trickpacks, a fob watch he had found in the corridor, and a postcard Jacot had sent him from Kauai. The latter had gone back to his barrister’s robes and his speeches for the defence now that the doctors had officially announced that he was in remission. He had rediscovered his will to fight; Nicolas could leave with a clear conscience.

  He left the premises with his head held high, not before emptying what was left of the bottle of Wyborowa into his flask. He would have liked to know how other people would tell his story, later, in the corridors of the Group. Grezinski? He started drinking after his promotion, he always turned up drunk, he’d hide in the toilets to drink on the sly, he was kicked out in the end. That would be all they would remember. My God, collective memory was unfair. In the evening rush hour he took the lift with all the people who would be there again the next day. The atrium opened up before him; he strode across it imperiously. He was so impatient to do battle with the world that he had pushed himself to the point of being thrown out, and now there was nothing that would make him backtrack. He passed the Nemrod, knowing they would be there having their aperitifs. Something persuaded him to go and say goodbye to them. As he drew closer to them he could hear them falling silent.

  “I’ve come to say goodbye.”

  The girls prayed that José or Marcheschi would say something but neither of them could make up their mind to.

  “I know what you think. Why’s he coming to drink with us when he’s already drunk?”

  “No, that’s not what we think,” said Régine rather sadly.

  “And don’t go putting words into our mouths,” José added. “No one here has ever judged you.”

  “Come and sit down and have a drink with us, what does it matter if it’s the first or the last?”

  To reinforce what he was saying, Marcheschi took a chair from a neighbouring table and everyone moved up to make room for Nicolas. Arnaud waved to the waiter, who brought over a beer. The embarrassment gradually faded, and the conversation picked up again.

  “Apparently everyone working on 4.99 is going to be entitled to an improvers’ course,” said Régine.

  “Where?”

  “In Nîmes.”

  “Doesn’t bother me. I love that cod dish they make down there, brandade.”

  “Does brandade come from Nîmes?”

  Nicolas realized that these volatile little moments would never happen again. From now on he would not have the same references, the same preoccupations, the same reflexes. He would have to find his way on his own, in a great anonymous crowd. Vodka excluded any other company.

  “I won’t be joining you here next week,” said Marcheschi. “I’m off to Seattle.”

  “For work?”

  “I’m signing a deal with Slocombe & Partridge. I won’t go into details but it’s huge.”

  “Well the drinks are on you, then,” said Arnaud.

  Marcheschi did not stop at that. Nicolas regretted coming to say goodbye.

  “I had Europe, Africa with Exacom, Asia with Kuala Lumpur, Oceania with Camberoil, and I’ve just hooked the only continent I was missing!”

  It was too late to leave, too late to backtrack, to pretend Marcheschi had not said anything.

  “Marcheschi, you’re not a saint or a sinner, you’re neither good or bad, brilliant or stupid, attractive or ugly. You’re there in that worrying middle ground of people always trying to prove how individual they are. The affection you feel for us is quite touching, it’s a love story which always has a happy ending. You’re not a genius, but don’t get upset, no one’s a genius, almost all of us have managed to accept that. Even the statue you raise in your image is far from being a masterpiece. You’ll never have the effortless class of Cary Grant, Billy Wilder’s humour, Lucky Luciano’s nerves of steel, Marie Curie’s determination or the bravery of . . .”

  Marcheschi did not even take the trouble to hear him through to the end; he stood up, took Nicolas by the lapels and head butted him. The impact of their foreheads made a dull thud which surprised them both; before they even realized it, they were on the ground, taking the table and glasses with them as they fell. Marcheschi fell on his shoulders and stayed motionless for a few seconds, while Nicolas brought his hand up to his nose which was bleeding all over his shirt. Terrified by the red stickiness on his fingers, he was overcome by instinctive fury and hammered punches on Marcheschi’s face. For tho
se few seconds he struck him with supernatural glee and strength, as if suddenly shaking off all the fears he had felt since his childhood so that the beast in him could reign over the world at last. Amid the cries and commotion, Arnaud and José tried in vain to stop him, and they all stood rooted to the spot, petrified and impotent in the face of this violence which seemed to come from so deep inside him. Eventually, José managed to trip him so that he fell to the ground, and Arnaud picked Marcheschi up. It should all have stopped there, but, forgetting his own fear and now also furious at the sight of his own blood, Marcheschi threw himself down onto Nicolas with all his weight, knocking the breath out of him. He grabbed him by the hair, lifted up his head and bashed it against the ground several times. In spite of the screams, everyone heard the bones in his nose cracking and his cheekbones caving in. Marcheschi stopped of his own accord when Gredzinski’s face was nothing more than a blur of red.

  And then silence fell.

  Uncoordinated flapping gestures from Arnaud and José, panic from Régine, the waiters and the patron, who had no idea what to do. Marcheschi stood up, leant against a wall for a moment and, ignoring the blood still dribbling from his nose, wiped his tears with the handkerchief that someone handed to him. Nicolas was no longer there.

  He was in a school playground in blazing sunshine. He was lying on the ground, bent double, completely unaware of the pain. He was reduced to pure humiliation. The boys who had beaten him up were standing round him and looking down at their feet at the little bundle of shame which no longer dared stand up. That was probably his baptism of fear, it had taken up residence in him and would never be driven out again.

  “We’ve got to call a doctor!”

  Marcheschi walked shakily out of the café followed by Régine. Everybody’s eyes had come to rest on Nicolas. He refused to see a doctor.

  “You’re bleeding. We’ve got to get you to hospital.”