The Life to Come

by Michelle De Kretser

  In the hotel lobby, the stainless steel bowl on the floor shone silver; the surface of the water gleamed. Céleste could easily have walked around it. But it was like stepping over the moon.

  On Sunday morning, Céleste was woken by the outbreak of civil war. That was what it sounded like—either that, or a reconstruction of the Battle of the Somme for an educational film. When she opened the shutters, the golden autumn weather of the previous day had vanished, and it looked as if they were in for rain. Céleste had envisaged a slow, luxurious rising, but Sabine was already in the shower. When she emerged from the bathroom, she announced that between calling home and visiting Tante Rosalie, she wished to take ‘a violent walk’. She said, ‘I ate so much last night. And there’ll be no time for the gym when I go home.’ Strands of her hair, darkened by the shower, were stuck to her breasts. She turned her back and began to drag clothes from her case. Below her shoulderblades, her flesh was dimpled. Céleste went into the bathroom, where a hag with red eyes peered blurrily through the condensation on the mirror. She had drunk only three glasses of wine the previous night, so why was a mud-brown river flowing through her skull? When she sat on the lavatory, a fart sighed free. Would the bowl have contained it, or would Sabine have heard? Céleste bowed her head and spread her hands over her face. She remembered that, returning from her excursion in the night, she had opened the door on robust snoring. Sabine lay on her back in the middle of the bed, a white figure on a tomb.

  In the breakfast room, the gunfire was even louder. ‘Hunters,’ said the manager, placing a basket of croissants on their table; her varnished toenails shone through her tights. ‘Dentists and bank clerks. Sad bastards. They think a gun makes them interesting.’ She picked at her tongue as if removing a stray hair and yielded to her matted cough.

  After breakfast, Sabine went to their room to make her phone calls, and Céleste steadied herself with a second cup of tea. When she went upstairs, she stood outside their door and listened to the plink plink plink that was Sabine texting. Sabine sprang up when Céleste entered, saying that there was something she had to see. She herded Céleste back to the stairs, then up and up: ‘I was dreaming and climbed too far.’

  At the top of the house, a tight corridor wormed past attic rooms. Céleste found herself in front of an oval mirror. What was left of its silvering had dimmed: her face showed simplified and strange. Sabine placed her cheek next to Céleste’s as if posing for a selfie. They saw themselves as they might have looked to an artist who scorned the present, painting for the centuries instead.

  Tante Rosalie’s house stood white as a ship on its hill. Here and there, where a track ran through the trees, hi-vis jackets dabbed fluorescent orange on an adjoining hillside, but the woods all around were still unbroken green. ‘They’ll be hunting boar,’ said Sabine. She had sprayed herself with Bernard’s perfume—with the addition of fresh air, it turned into unwashed feet.

  That year there had been a craze for brooches fashioned from resin or lightweight wood to resemble birds. Soon it extended to dogs, cats, horses’ heads. When the trend spread to clothing, woodland animals—foxes, rabbits, deer—appeared, appliquéd or printed across young women’s breasts. To ward off the morning’s chill, Sabine was wearing a cotton scarf, and a sweatshirt on which a hare crouched in grass. What did the fashion for these creatures signal, wondered Céleste. Shyness? Wildness? An invitation to the chase?

  The women continued along the riverside path, the wind at their backs, and so reached the outskirts of the town. Webs glimmering in the bushes masqueraded as the skeletons of LPs. The busy spiders had also stretched snares across the path, so that every few minutes one of the women had to pluck a sticky thread from her face.

  Ducks sat on their watery doubles where the mist had lifted from the river. There were houses now beside the promenade; long, raked gardens boasted walnut trees, eggplants, cabbages big as heads. A dog came along the path at a trot: her ears, blown sideways, were mussel shells lined with pink. ‘Oh, the gorgeous little doggie!’ cried Sabine, stooping, her hand out. The dog, collarless but sleek, went by without a glance. Her smell made it plain that she had rolled in something foul. Céleste was lost in a future where she and Sabine lived beside the river in a creepered villa with green shutters; in a bed that ran beside the fence, dahlias grew like weeds. Their leeks flourished and their pear tree, and they kept a boat tied to the bank. The dog entered this idyll and passed through it, lending it fullness and truth.

  ‘It’s a different story when the river floods,’ remarked Sabine, continuing an uncanny conversation. ‘I’ve seen ducks swimming about in dining rooms here.’

  Céleste’s imagination widened to take in a duck paddling past a sideboard. Or a swan gliding by, its smooth white curves ghosted in oakwood—why not?

  ‘When the water goes down, everything is streaked with filth. The doors are twisted off their hinges. And the stench—my God!’

  Westminster chimes played; Sabine took out her phone. She read the text that had just arrived and, without comment, returned the phone to her bag. Céleste fingered her cornelian beads. The phantom swan had vanished, leaving only a horse chestnut tree that dropped diseased brown leaves on the path.

  They had turned back towards the town when a plump young man with his arm in a cast came into view. The wind ran past and twitched his beard. When he was out of earshot, Céleste raised her eyebrows: ‘Another one! What does it mean?’

  ‘But is it another one? Or the same man, in disguise? I think he’s stalking you. The cast is a fake. He wants to tell you, “I would risk my limbs for you.”’ Sabine’s hand slipped like a snake through Céleste’s arm. She said, ‘When we get back to Paris, we should get off the train separately. In case Bernard takes it into his head to come to the station.’

  So that was the text she had received.

  Barr’s Facebook posts now consisted of images from the Occupy movement. Céleste Liked every photo of protesters crammed into Zuccotti Park. One held a sign that read, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised—how did Barr feel about that?

  Dominic emailed: ‘Will you get in touch with Barr? You might get through.’

  ‘I’ve no idea what to say,’ said Céleste to Sabine.

  ‘Tell him you know why his father marry his mother.’

  Céleste looked at her.

  ‘To have someone to attract the mosquitos.’ Sabine rolled over in bed, laughing. Jennifer had brought the joke home from school. Sabine grew serious. ‘Teenage is a difficult time. It is so important to have a good home environment. Mother, father, everything very regular. Les ados se perturbent facilement.’

  This was plainly a warning that Céleste would be sacrificed to ensure Madison and Jennifer’s smooth passage through their teenage years. She said coldly, ‘There’s nothing wrong with Barr’s home environment. It’s entirely what you call regular.’

  ‘Ah, but the poor boy struggle with his sexuality. He know his parents do not accept it.’

  ‘Barr’s never shown the least sign of being gay.’

  ‘No, he must be secret, the brave child.’

  ‘If he were gay, his parents would be nothing but supportive. They know I’m a lesbian. It doesn’t matter to them in the least.’

  ‘You live at the other end of the world. You are not their only child.’

  ‘Nor is Barr, actually.’

  ‘The youngest is always the most precious.’ Sabine stroked the inside of Céleste’s thigh. One of the drawbacks of le cinq à sept was that there was no time for both sex and talk. A great deal went unsaid.

  Wendy wrote: ‘I never apportion blame, but I wonder if Dom’s provided an adequate model of masculinity for Barr. Can it be helpful to a young boy to see his father in an apron every evening? There is still time for Dom to take up a sport. Fencing develops poise and should come naturally to him, since he is half French. I’ve always explained to the boys that your side of the family is eccentric and that we must try to understand without judging, but B
arr is just much more impressionable than Mitch. It’s so difficult to remain hopeful and so easy to imagine the worst. Last night I dreamed that Barr came out of his room and told us he’d become a Christian.’

  Céleste sent Barr a haiku Djamila had written:

  Autumn is here.

  The big moon high up in the fur tree

  Is stuck like me.

  As usual, Barr didn’t reply. Céleste’s last email to Pippa, sent two weeks earlier, had also gone unanswered. During that time, Pippa had uploaded a blog post about her travels in Italy as well as posting several new photos on Facebook. She also Liked or left comments on various friends’ pages. Reading these supportive remarks, Céleste was fifteen years old, standing alone at a party: defeated by connections that were invisible, exclusive, hip.

  Barr posted a photo, taken earlier in the year, of a crowd packed into a Cairo square. The striped flags in the square were clearly visible, while the people wielding them were coloured blobs. Barr had captioned it: ‘I want to be a pixel.’

  On Skype, Wendy was wearing a sleeveless top. She said, ‘Barr is manifesting a desire for self-effacement that’s perfectly normal for sensitive boys at his stage of development.’ Her left hand slipped up through the armhole of her blouse as she talked and began to caress her chest; the creased skin there, below her neck, was twenty years older than Wendy’s face. Then the video froze. With her mouth slung sideways and her eyes showing their whites, Wendy appeared to have suffered a stroke. Her hand, arrested, was a caramel claw, fashioned into a brooch and pinned to crepe. Céleste thought, Summer in Perth. She closed her eyes and summoned grevilleas that were past their peak. In the vast innocence of air-conditioned bedrooms, becoming a Christian was the worst fate people could imagine for their children. A freeway warbled in the distance, where cars ran through the night like rats.

  ‘…global phenomenon.’ Wendy dissolved into life. ‘Young people in Japan, boys mostly, shut themselves up in their rooms all the time.’

  ‘How long do they stay there?’

  ‘Forever, sometimes.’ Wendy’s voice was level. But any fool could see that she was screaming on the inside of her face.

  Céleste and Djamila were determining whether Céleste was a Healer, an Analyst, an Adventurer or a Commander. Djamila read out: ‘“Which statement describes you best? (a) People say you are inflexible; (b) You are happy being the centre of attention; (c) Your home environment is very tidy.”’ As Céleste hesitated, ‘The answer is a,’ said Djamila. ‘C’est évident.’

  Pippa’s blog announced that she was pregnant. The baby had been conceived in Italy. ‘If she’s a girl, we’re going to call her Roma.’ A photograph showed a piazza, a fountain, bougainvillea tumbling over a burnt-orange wall. Rome was where Céleste was going at Christmas. Now a ghost who had yet to be born would track her like mist among the ruins, through the icy, empty palaces. The update had been posted while Europe slept—Céleste read twenty-seven congratulatory messages from Pippa’s Australian friends. What she had just fully grasped was that she was now one of the many people to whom Pippa told one thing at a time: there would be no more sharing of many things with only her. That was modern life, it was stupid to mind. Céleste told herself, You are a person of the past. She remembered the way Pippa would yawn hugely, making her eyes shine. That first evening at the embassy came back, the slow-mo swirl of a big green skirt.

  It was Friday morning. Céleste stayed in bed and worked. Then she got dressed and left her flat. On her way down, she saw Madame Kateb coming out of an apartment on the fourth floor. She fixed her atrocious gaze on Céleste. ‘Monsieur Alessi is away,’ she said. ‘He asked me to water his plants.’

  Her voice followed Céleste onto the metro, onto the train. Monsieur Alessi asked me to water his plants. It would never have occurred to Céleste to question what Madame Kateb was doing in their neighbour’s apartment, but the concierge had judged it necessary to explain. Consequently, it was Céleste who felt accused of something sordid. She took out her phone, accessed her bank account and checked her savings. It would soon be Christmas. Every year, there were residents who presented Madame Kateb with a scarf they didn’t like or a vase that clashed with a new couch. Céleste, being short of money, knew the value of it and always left the concierge an envelope that contained notes. So why turn her into a class enemy now? She wondered if she could get away with shaving twenty euros off the sum she had set aside for Madame Kateb, or at least ten.

  Céleste got off the train in a suburb to the west of the city. A mall stood across the parking lot in front of the station, but her destination lay further out. Winter had gripped the day like a lover. Céleste’s ears ached, and her eyes. Her made-up face was compacted sugar. She walked along what had once been a village street, past a boulangerie that had closed and a pizza place that was serving lunch. There was the soft sound of tyres in the road. Electric stars had been strung between lampposts, and the middle distance was a fuzzy sort of blue. Céleste came to a pair of flat-faced village houses, one a beauty salon, the other a funeral parlour, their windows outlined in coloured bulbs; then, on the far side of a bridge, the houses grew imposing and were set back from the road. Silvery, leafless branches impersonated frozen lightning behind high stone walls. There would be big dogs there, padding beside the exhausted earth in the flowerbeds. Two men came out of a gate that one of them locked with a remote. On this sunless day, both wore rapacious dark glasses that curved around the sides of their heads. Céleste passed them with her white stare.

  The medical centre was on the slip road that ran down from the motorway. There was a sports ground across the street, overlooked by daunting blocks of flats. Céleste waited for a van that was pulling out of a service station; the centre, built of sand-coloured bricks, lay just beyond. A flight of steps with turquoise railings led up to the pharmacy, which was signalled by a trembling green cross. Its window framed a frightening, giant close-up of a fat-mottled thigh. Fortunately, all any woman had to do to avoid that fate was to massage her flesh with the firming lotion on display.

  Inside the pharmacy, Céleste undid her coat and unwound her scarf. A sales assistant was serving a customer, an old man with hippyish hair, who was complaining of the cold. A woman accompanied by a child in a stroller was examining a range of herbal teas—the child gave off a violent smell of sour milk. It mingled with air-freshener to suggest that plastic roses were being boiled down with a goatskin at the back of the shop.

  ‘It’s the internet,’ said the old man. ‘It interferes with the weather. My nephew, the one who works for the post office, can explain it all to you. His family is scientific, his father bred English setters.’

  Céleste picked up a tester for an expensive lipstick and drew a stroke on the back of her hand. She drew another, in a different shade, and mimed indecision, frowning slightly, angling her hand. Her performance was wasted. The assistant, a gaunt brunette, was listening without impatience as the old man aired his views on Corsica, where he had never been. Whenever he paused, ‘Quite so,’ she murmured. ‘Quite so.’

  The pharmacist emerged from his dispensary. He nodded to the young mother, and began to run through her medication: her sore throat required the application of a spray, a syrup with which she was to gargle after meals and at bedtime, and anti-inflammatory suppositories. The child gurgled and flung out a fleece-clad arm; the pharmacist leaned his elbows on the counter and clicked his tongue to return the salute. Céleste had drawn closer and was peering around a display of organic skin care. When Bernard appeared in his white coat, reality had stretched like a balloon. A phantom solidified instead of melting away—Céleste’s head filled with light. She thought, I know so much about you. As if he had heard, Bernard glanced her way. He resembled his Facebook photographs exactly. Life closed over and absorbed the wedge of eeriness. Céleste shoved the lipstick onto a shelf and left.

  There was a long wait for the next train. Céleste checked her messages: nothing from Sabine. It was drizzling as sh
e crossed the road to the mall, where she found a cafe and ordered tea—her mouth felt stiff when she spoke. When the tea arrived, there was still a faint tingling along her arms. Why had she come here, what had she imagined the sight of Bernard would change? She noticed that she had dressed up for the encounter in a slinky black Agnès B. rip-off that one of her students, a buyer at Printemps, had sold her at a knockdown price. Since the dress had been pretty much hidden under her patchwork coat, its effect was lost except on Céleste. She turned her hands over on the table and saw two stripes, one coral, one rose. Her nails were unpainted. She owned no rings. Sabine appeared to her, examining the contents of a bowl, plucking a ruby from a lump of rank meat.

  A girl entered the cafe, bringing the chilly smell of outdoors—there was rain on her shoulders. She had Djamila’s hunched look, the same short neck surmounted by elaborate waves of hair. Tiny stones sparkled along her eyebrow, ran down her dark ear. A group of girls, the children or grandchildren of immigrants, all dressed in bright, synthetic clothing, hailed her. The pierced girl raised her hand in greeting, and Céleste saw that her fake fingernails were set with shining chips.

  At the end of George Meshaw’s novel, his hero was diagnosed with an eye disease that would soon destroy his sight. His wife had left him. His house was for sale. The conflict at work had been smoothed over, but he knew that he would be eased out at the next restructure—his Indian colleague, meanwhile, was promoted. The novel ended with the man going into St James Station, on his way home from an appointment with a Macquarie Street ophthalmologist. It was his usual station, the one he had arrived at and departed from every day of his working life. For the first time, he noticed the glitter of mica in the granite under his feet. It kept catching his eye, as he fed his ticket into the turnstile and started down the stairs.

  Céleste had read these sentences, the last in the novel, over and over. Sometimes the mica offered the only pinpricks of hope in a merciless book. Then she would change her mind, deciding that the sparkling stone was a last, mocking cruelty: soon the man would be denied the sight of even that modest splendour. Céleste googled reviews of the novel—they were useless. On the wall-mounted TV in the cafe, the hit of the summer started up. A few of the teenagers sang along: ‘She’s got two lives…Lonely Lisa!’ The pierced girl was tearing at a croissant with her glittering nails. Céleste took out a Kleenex and wiped the lipstick stripes off her hand. She found coins for the tea she had left untasted, and removed her coat from the stand in a corner. It was time for her train.