‘A bunch of drug addicts, probably . . .’ Mum remarked, before learning that these masochistic urban communions had already attracted several million people around the globe.
I was starting to get stressed when I discovered that, beneath its festive appearance, this event was a half marathon, that Budapest was a very hilly city, and my body was still battered from the football ordeal. Since the Budapest race wouldn’t be taking place until May, I’d have to create my own event. I suddenly had this pathetic vision of chucking coloured paints over myself and collapsing, exhausted, on a hilly street . . . Clearly, I was going to need help with throwing the paints and with my likely physical feebleness.
I asked Edgar to come with me. My mother – who never misses a trick – offered to come instead, sniggering with Charlotte in the hospital corridor.
‘Don’t be offended, Mum, but you’re not exactly built like a tank, and I’m going to need physical support. I think Edgar’s a much sounder option, that’s all.’
I went in to see Louis, congratulated him on all his sporting ambitions, which were news to me, and explained to him that I was relying on Edgar to stop me having a heart attack on the Hungarian capital’s famous Chain Bridge.
‘Edgar’s going to film me, and Granny Odette will show you the whole thing live, on the iPad. Grandma can also cheer me on – right, Grandma? – because I’ll have the headphones and mic on all the time.’
‘Yes, of course, pussycat,’ she replied, a little too enthusiastically.
*
Edgar threw himself wholeheartedly into his mission and took care of all the preparations. He explained that the coloured paints could easily be found in Passage Brady, the ‘little India’ district of Paris, because throwing paint was an ancient Hindu tradition: during Holi, the spring equinox festival, crowds of Indians paraded through the streets spraying coloured water over one another. Westerners had simply adapted the concept, adding a sporting dimension. No, the simple corn starch with natural dyes wouldn’t leave a stain on me, and no, we weren’t going to get ourselves banged up by the Hungarian police . . . ‘It’s all perfectly harmless, don’t worry.’
When we arrived in Budapest, we dropped our luggage off at the apartment I’d rented, two bedrooms of course, and Edgar asked me to wait for a couple of hours before walking to meet him at the foot of the Buda Castle Funicular – he had ‘a few details to sort out’.
Finally, I was ready to set off, bundled up in my white puffa jacket, and Edgar was waiting for me, camera at the ready. Very soon, I realized that this race would be a physical ordeal festooned with zany, poetic touches. Edgar had organized a little welcome committee every two kilometres, made up of assorted families, old ladies, students, shopkeepers and tourists amused by the spectacle I offered. My supporters had laid a white sheet on the ground next to where they stood, so as not to stain the pretty medieval streets. I’d stop for a few seconds, close my eyes, and set off again splattered with a new colour, to their applause.
Edgar had delegated all that in order to keep his hands free. He filmed the entire time so that Louis wouldn’t miss a thing. I don’t know how much my son picked up exactly, but I can say with certainty that my mother watched every moment of my performance.
Jesus, if she’d been there with me, I’d seriously have contemplated strangling her. She didn’t stop cackling in my ears, and she’d rounded up half the hospital to watch. I do believe there was a peak audience of a dozen Parisian spectators, openly making fun of me. She explained to them – laughing her head off – that I’d always been absolutely hopeless at sport, that finding her middle-aged kitten had all these hidden talents was an amazing discovery, and that the yellow, green and pink streaks in my hair finally revealed my inner punk to one and all.
The torture lasted over three hours. I yelled at Edgar that it was freezing, I stopped, I set off again, I forced myself to smile when all those adorable Hungarians cheered me on, but I was on my knees.
‘You didn’t exactly run the Color wotsit half marathon, but you could say you walked it,’ teased my mother in front of a gathering used to her wisecracks by now.
After two hours, I wasn’t laughing any more. I sent the headphones flying. I was behaving like a woman in labour – insults and crushed hands included – but Edgar stayed calm throughout. Despite the pain and the superhuman effort this challenge demanded of me, I was touched that Edgar had gone to so much trouble.
The torment ended in front of the dome of Saint Stephen’s Basilica, in the heart of Belváros, Pest’s ‘inner city’. I collapsed. Edgar gave me a piggyback to our little apartment, which was only a stone’s throw from there. It had an incredible vintage bath that I’d been dreaming about all day. I lay soaking for a good hour, gently massaging my aching calves and thighs. When I got out, I flung myself on to my bed and didn’t open my eyes until early the next morning.
*
Edgar and I spent the next day being tourists. I rediscovered the places I’d run through, and this time I was able to appreciate them properly: the steep streets on Castle Hill, the soaring Matthias Church spire, the majestic Parliament Building, the stately Danube – not exactly blue – and the trendy shops and restaurants in the Erzsébetváros district.
I loved Budapest as much as Tokyo. Two cities that could not be more different. But both of them had a touch of innocent madness that resonated with Louis’s character.
I loved every nook of those cities as if they were pieces of my son.
*
Louis had perfectly summed up our evening activity in his notebook. We were to go in for a different type of competition. A ‘party marathon’, described as follows:
Have a drink in a dozen ruin bars and then stay out all night at the wild techno party in the Széchenyi Baths!!! (All without throwing up, please.)
I hoped that Louis had planned to wait until he reached the legal age before embarking on the alcohol-sodden adventures on which he was sending me, but I very much doubted it. When I was a teenager, I too would have a little drink, naively thinking I’d pulled the wool over my mother’s eyes, until she told me one day, without batting an eyelid, that my breath stank and that I couldn’t teach an old dog to drink beer.
The weather was freezing, but Edgar and I soon warmed up wandering from kert to kert. These ‘ruin bars’ are in abandoned courtyards in the old Jewish quarter. Disorientating places of decadent beauty, cleverly designed grunge decors, where Budapest’s cosmopolitan youth chills out at night. We ate in one of them, to soak up the alcohol that had even seeped into our frozen toes, then, with a mix of apprehension and excitement, we headed for the rave at the Széchenyi Baths.
The place was crazy. Széchenyi, the most famous of Budapest’s thermal baths, was a magnificent edifice that looked like a neo-baroque palace. We were outdoors, in sub-zero temperatures, and the spa waters were thirty-eight degrees Celsius. The ochre-coloured walls contrasted with the blue glow of the baths, and the dense steam rising from the swimming pools muted the whiteness of the snow-covered statues. In these funky surroundings, thousands of young people, completely sloshed, were dancing in swimsuits to hardcore techno, jumping up and down to the flashing lasers in a doomsday scenario.
I too started to move – I had no choice, otherwise I’d freeze to death. Timidly, at first. I watched Edgar out of the corner of my eye. The strobe made him look like a Roman statue. He turned towards me, smiled and leaned over to speak. He said, ‘We’re not going to stay like this, watching life pass us by.’ Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe he didn’t say that. Maybe I imagined it. Edgar took my hand and led me into the centre of the crowd.
We danced like kids, for hours and hours, until we were exhausted. Teenagers barely older than my son danced with me . . . I laughed and tried to bounce around like them. Creased up with laughter, Edgar filmed it all.
We were far too old for all these experiences, but letting our hair down like that felt so good. It was wonderful to forget about being reasonable for a short while. I
realized that, once out of my twenties, I’d decided to start behaving like a responsible adult. I sneered at those thirty-somethings hanging out at rock concerts, those gamers devoting entire nights to their online heroes, those others whose free time was devoted to generating ‘likes’ on social networks. They were all adrenaline junkies, behaving as if they were still fifteen, still thrill-seeking, busting their guts in their futile pursuit of fun. Maybe, ultimately, they were right.
That night, my son helped me revive a few too-quickly-turned pages of my youth. That night, I understood that life – true life, which stays in your memory – is nothing other than a succession of moments of freedom. And that no adult ambition can make a person happier than the teenage ability to seize the moment.
We took a taxi back, picked up our luggage and went straight to the airport, still numb from the cold and dazed from the loud music.
Both of us exhausted, but happy.
Excerpt from the Book of Wonders
Push boundaries ☺
– Take part in The Color Run and get to the end. The Budapest race sounds cool . . . especially because it turns into the party marathon I saw on MTV.
– So, the party marathon: have a drink in a dozen ruin bars and then stay out all night at the wild techno party at the Széchenyi Baths. (All without throwing up, please.)
19
5 to 3 Days
Team Spirit
Over the past few days, we’d been a real team. At the hospital, the motley collection of individuals, aged from twelve to sixty, who were keeping watch on my son around the clock had been dubbed ‘team Louis’. I always found it hard to admit publicly, but sharing the burden with team Louis did me the world of good.
For the following challenge – in Paris, this time – I decided to recruit Isadora. We had to fine-tune our act, because Louis’s goal was far from easy. We rehearsed a little mother–daughter number that was totally insane. Ordinarily so poised, sensible and friendly, Isadora had to give a credible performance as a temperamental teen, swear like a trooper and vent her frustration with tears and tantrums. Truth be told, Isa was having the time of her life. Contrary to what she’d told me during our football training, she was not a terrible actress at all, and in fact played the part so well that she frightened her father. Isa flew into a rage when Edgar said he didn’t have the two euros she wanted to buy her favourite magazine. She stamped her foot, flushed crimson and began to sob. I applauded her performance, she bowed and we burst out laughing at Edgar’s half-astonished, half-relieved look. For a moment, he’d really believed that his daughter had completely lost it.
Having perfected our number, we put on our glad rags and headed for the N.R.J. Music Awards party, which was taking place that evening, 14 February, Valentine’s Day. Once inside the building, we marched determinedly towards the stage door. As expected, it was guarded by two giant bouncers. Isadora was chewing gum outrageously, keeping her nose glued to her phone. She seemed to be developing a taste for her role. Edgar would have to watch out, in a few years’ time . . .
The Hégémonie group was one of the event’s sponsors. So I flashed my old business card, which said I was the company’s marketing director. A card with a gilt logo, like that, intimidated people. I acted the stressed-out, borderline-hysterical executive, swearing I’d left my accreditation in the taxi, and I dropped a few names of senior people in the company – I’d done my homework thoroughly. I kept this act up for ten long minutes, and, faced with the bouncers’ reasonable refusal to let me past, I produced my trump card: my daughter for the evening. Isadora began to yell, calling on the security guards as witnesses, telling them that not only did she never get to see me because of my job, but – worse – every time I promised her something, I screwed it up. That I’d promised to take her backstage, and a promise was a promise. In a final theatrical flourish, she sat down on the floor and sobbed her heart out. A young woman with a V.I.P. badge came over to us, said a few words to Isadora, then turned to the security guards and said, ‘They’re with me; let them through.’ Bingo.
Once past, we thanked the pretty young woman, who gave Isa a kiss and asked if everything was OK now. She was sorry to leave us there, but she had to go and get ready. Isa threw her arms around my neck in a daze, thanking me a thousand times for allowing her to kiss Lulu something or other – her schoolfriends would be sooo jealous.
‘I allowed you to kiss Lulu who?’
‘Louane Emera. She’s a really famous singer? OK, you’ve obviously never heard of her . . . I know, for the past two years, you’ve been shut away in your cave, listening to Wham! records, haven’t you?’
I’d never seen Isa so bubbly. She didn’t stop smiling all evening.
We wandered around backstage, then we froze. We were close to our goal. Holding our breath, we pushed open the door on which a clumsily Sellotaped plain sheet of A4 paper announced soberly, Maître Gims.
He was there, but he wasn’t alone. He leapt up, two men and a woman barred our path and tried to push us back. Isa managed to wriggle past and sum up the reasons for our intrusion in a few seconds: Louis, the coma, the notebook, our mission, his invaluable help. OK, our sheer gall, as well. I don’t know whether he believed us, but the guy started to laugh and said, ‘OK.’
‘Super cool, super swag, a legend,’ declared Isadora as we left some minutes later. She still couldn’t get over it, but, in her phone, she had the irrefutable proof: I’d jammed with the rapper Maître Gims. I can tell you that hearing myself screech, ‘Elle répondait au nom de Bella . . . ’ was worth its weight in peanuts, as my mother would say.
*
The following morning, I took Isa with me into Louis’s hospital room, for the first time. She hadn’t seen him since the accident. Of course, I’d prepared her, explaining that he’d lost a lot of weight, that he was pale, his features were sharper, and he was hooked up to countless machines. I was used to seeing him like that, but the reality was hard for Isa’s tender little heart to take. She cried silently for a while, watching Louis and holding his hand. She kissed him on the cheek. For me, too, that scene was gruelling. I managed to hide my emotion, but I couldn’t help thinking that Louis might never know what it was to be in love. That he might never feel that glow in the pit of his stomach, desire, the need to feel his arms around another person.
Isa gradually regained her composure, her voice, her natural language, and told Louis about our evening, Louane’s kiss, my a cappella with Maître Gims. I think she played him the soundtrack of my little private gig a dozen times. I didn’t have such a bad voice, after all. ‘Maybe you chose the wrong career,’ teased Charlotte, who’d joined us.
That seemingly harmless joke deeply perturbed me. No, I had no ambition to become a singer, but, yes, I had chosen the wrong career. Or, rather, I’d chosen the wrong life.
I had no wish to carry on with my job from before. I had no wish to carry on with my life from before. In fulfilling my son’s dreams at high speed, I’d blown apart my relationships with other people, and the very idea of my future.
Of my previous life, I only wanted to keep the foundations. Those pillars that stood firm, come rain or shine: my fragile structure. My mother. The upbringing she’d given me. My culture. My values. My memories.
And, above all else, my son.
Excerpt from the Book of Wonders
Push the boundaries!!!! (cont.)
– Meet Maître Gims or Black M . . . but, most importantly, do a duet with one of them!!!! (Otherwise it’s too easy!)
It Hurts, But It Doesn’t Matter
Today, Mum’s voice sounded weird – sort of sad and happy at the same time. Her voice has been like that for several days. It’s like it’s changed. Before, her voice was just sad (except when she was telling me about the adventures from my notebook, then she was LOL (that means ‘laughing out loud’, for the over-forties)).
Since my ears are the only bit of me that works, I’ve become acutely sensitive to details, to changes in intonati
ons. I’d never realized how much you could grasp just from listening. On the TV, there are programmes where they pretend to judge singers purely on their voices, but everyone knows that’s crap, because, before they appear on stage, the competitors are preselected by people who’ve seen them. Result: not many ugly ones, just a few to make it look more authentic, but they’re thrown out in the later stages, seeing as they’re ugly. The ugly people always lose at some point – that’s the rule. Me, if I was one of the judges, I’d make sure the ugly ones won, because now I know how important it is to really listen to people without being affected by appearances. If you listen closely to someone, if you concentrate hard, it’s as if you can see them. No, it’s even better: you hear what the person says and also what they don’t say. Me, I listen to the silences, the hesitations, the words they choose, the ones that slipped out and they wish they hadn’t said, the melody, the humour, their breathing. That’s all I do. I decipher, I understand voices.
I’ve picked up on several things in Mum’s voice recently. Three, to be exact. Three things that Mum hasn’t told me, but which I’ve sussed anyway.
The first one is that Mum’s got a crush on Edgar. I’m convinced. That’s new, too. I’ve never ever heard Mum talk about someone in such glowing language. I must admit, I’m super envious. She talks all the time about what she did with Edgar, or – worse – and this makes me a thousand times more envious – with Isa. Over the past few days, she’s involved both of them in the challenges in my Book of Wonders. At first, it made me sick. I had the feeling that Edgar and Isa were taking my place in Mum’s heart. Now, I’m still envious, I can’t help it. But I really like Edgar and I adore Isa, so I tell myself that, if I am going to be replaced, it may as well be by the best league players. So, I listen to Mum telling me about my dreams and living my life in my stead with her new friends. It hurts not to be part of it all, but, at the same time, it does me no end of good! Mum’s had so much fun turning the pages and doing the things written in my notebook. She always manages to make me laugh my head off and cheer me up when she tells me about her adventures. I’m sure it’s good for me to be shaken up, even though I can’t move.
The Book of Wonders Page 11