The Reader on the 6.27

by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent

  Guylain gratified Monique with an indulgent smile for mangling his name and greeted the gathering with a curt nod. Mademoiselle Delacôte number two fluttered her eyelids at him in a flash of pearly salmon-pink eyeshadow and jerked her chin at the armchair inviting him to be seated. Like a robot, Guylain walked across the room with a gait he intended to be casual but which was stilted and unsteady due to the huge bag he was carrying. The room was as hot as a pizza oven, minus the aroma. Guylain sat down on the padded velvet Louis-something-or-other armchair and took the little bundle of loose pages from his satchel. Then, with all eyes staring at him through their cataracts or incipient cataracts, he began reading the first live skin:

  ‘Ilsa watched the fly. The dog gazed, fascinated, at the insect as it continually buzzed in and out of the man’s gaping mouth. It was always the same little game. The fly rose up into the air for a moment, with that funny way flies have of flying and which irritated Ilsa, veering off at right angles as if imprisoned in an invisible cube and then returning to its starting point. It was a plump bluebottle, its shiny blue abdomen swollen to bursting with hundreds of eggs that were just waiting to hatch as soon as they were deposited in the midst of all that dead meat. The dog had never noticed just how interesting a fly could be. She usually just chased them by moving her head, seeing them simply as little black specks that buzzed through the air. Her jaws often snapped shut on thin air. When winter came, the flies vanished as if by magic, leaving behind them the occasional desiccated corpse on the windowsill. In winter, the dog forgot about flies until the following summer.

  ‘The fly landed on the man’s lower lip, marched up and down like a soldier patrolling the battlements, then went in and wandered over the purple tongue. It vanished completely from Ilsa’s sight as it disappeared into the dark, moist depths to go and lay its new clutch of eggs in the cold flesh. From time to time, the fly abandoned the corpse to go and settle on the pot of jam sitting on the table. The dog could see its tiny proboscis attach itself to the translucent surface of the redcurrant jelly. The smell of coffee still hung in the air, heavy and sweet. When the bowl had shattered, it left a pretty star-shaped puddle . . .’

  A muted purring reached Guylain’s ears from the third row where a dear lady, her head lolling back and her mouth wide open, seemed to be inviting the fly to come and visit her next. The rest of the audience, sitting stock-still, waited in reverent silence to hear more. Beaming with delight, Monique gave him the thumbs up. As he turned the page over to read the other side, a lady bleated a question: ‘But do we know what this man died of?’ This was the cue for others to pipe up. Questions and suppositions rained down from all sides.

  ‘From an attack; it’s bound to be an attack.’

  ‘What kind of attack? And why would it be an attack, can you tell us that, André?’ sniped a sickly-looking lady.

  Guylain did not know what André had done or not done to this fury in a sky-blue quilted dressing gown, but the reply had the sting of a hard slap.

  ‘How on earth would I know? An aneurysmal rupture or a heart attack. Some sort of attack,’ mumbled the old fellow.

  ‘Ye-es, but why doesn’t his wife call an ambulance?’ asked another.

  ‘What wife? It’s not his wife, it’s his dog. Lisa, her name is,’ chipped in an old man wearing a baseball hat.

  ‘Lisa’s no name for a dog.’

  ‘Why not? Look at Germaine – she called her canary Roger, like her late husband.’ The Germaine in question squirmed in her chair with embarrassment.

  ‘I thought it was the fly that was called Lisa, I did,’ stuttered an old bod dressed in black from head to toe.

  ‘Please, please, maybe we could let Monsieur Gignal read us the next bit, which I’m sure will tell us more,’ cut in Monique authoritatively.

  Clearly, thought Guylain, Mademoiselle Delacôte number one had the art of truncating his name every time she opened her mouth. Taking advantage of the brief lull, he jumped into the breach of silence that she had opened up to carry on reading:

  ‘. . . and splattered the chair legs and the man’s socks. But beneath the fragrant aroma rising from the floor, Ilsa detected another much headier smell. It was the lingering odour of blood. It was everywhere, imbuing every molecule of air that the dog breathed, a prisoner like her of the tiny enclosed space. Ilsa could not get away from it. This smell was driving her crazy. The bright red pool had rapidly spread on the Formica top, first surrounding the pot of jam and then reaching the edge of the table and dripping slowly onto the floor. Litres of blood had gushed out in a beautiful scarlet geyser through the tiny bullet hole . . .’

  ‘Ha! You see, André, it wasn’t an attack.’

  ‘Shh!’

  ‘. . . in the man’s temple. When the shot rang out, Ilsa curled up into a tight ball, her heart pounding wildly. She was unable to take her eyes off the smoking muzzle of the gun which had clattered onto the wooden floor. The man was slumped forward onto the table like a sandbag, his head turned towards her, his wide-open eyes staring. For three days now, his eyelids had not blinked. Once again, the dog scrambled up the narrow staircase to the door, which its paws had scratched with all the energy of despair, achieving nothing but chipping the varnish. Ilsa gulped at the warm, moisture-laden air surging through the keyhole. It had a stale, briny tang.’

  End of the first sheet. Usually, when he read on the train in the mornings, Guylain immediately went on to the next page, but today – was it their burning gaze or the depth of the silence that had fallen? – he paused and looked up. Every single person was staring at him, even the lady-who-snored-with-her-head-thrown-back who was back among them. He had the sense that there were too many questions left hanging in the air, too many mysteries that needed resolving, or at least containing.

  ‘So it wasn’t an attack,’ rapped out the fat woman full of venom, who above all sounded thrilled to have caught André out. To her left, a woman raised her hand. Monique gave her a curt nod, permitting her to speak.

  ‘Is it a suicide?’

  ‘Well, it certainly looks like it,’ he was surprised to hear himself answer in a conciliatory tone.

  ‘I bet he did it with a .45,’ stated a short, tubby man with a rasping voice.

  ‘Nah, I reckon it was a .22. It says there was a tiny hole,’ piped up another.

  ‘And why wouldn’t it be a rifle?’ mumbled an elderly lady hunched in her wheelchair.

  ‘Come on, Madame Ramier, how can a person shoot themselves in the temple with a rifle?’

  ‘Or it’s a murder, but I don’t think so,’ suggested a little old man, looking dubious.

  ‘But where is this happening?’ asked the one called André.

  ‘Yes, where is it happening? And why did the man do it?’ added an old dear in a worried tone.

  ‘Well, I think it’s in a farmhouse in the middle of the woods.’

  ‘And why not an apartment in the city? It’s not unheard of. Every year they find people who’ve been dead for days, sometimes weeks, even though there were neighbours all around them.’

  ‘Well, I say that it’s on a boat. A sailing ship or a little yacht. The fellow’s set sail for the open seas with his dog before blowing his brains out. It says so: it talks about moisture-laden air with a stale, briny tang.’

  Monique, who seemed embarrassed by the turn things had taken, went over to Guylain to whisper some advice.

  ‘Monsieur Vignal, it might be a good idea to carry on and start the second reading. Time’s getting on.’

  ‘You are right, Monette.’

  ‘No, I’m Monique.’

  Monique’s thing must be contagious, thought Guylain. ‘Sorry, Monique.’

  He regretted to say that although their questions were justified, they needed to move on and leave the corpse, the fly and the dog to carry on roaming the seas, the woods or Montmartre if they preferred. A little old lady in the front row who had been fidgeting for a good five minutes raised her hand.

  ‘Yes, Gisèle?
’ asked Monique.

  ‘May I be excused?’

  ‘Of course you may, Gisèle.’

  Guylain witnessed the flight of half a dozen old biddies amid a tapping of sticks and a scraping of chairs. The whole lot of them scurried, wheeled themselves or hobbled off in the direction of the toilets.

  Monique signalled to him that it was getting late and that he should start a new reading. He selected a new live skin at random from the pile at his feet.

  ‘For nearly ten minutes, Yvonne Pinchard’s voice had been pouring into the priest’s ear. The little latticework shutter behind which Father Duchaussoy was ensconced was barely able to filter the stream of whispered words that gushed into the confessional in a torrent of syllables. The woman’s whining tone conveyed great outbursts of repentance. From time to time, the priest murmured a discreet “yes” to encourage her. After several decades of priesthood, he excelled in that art which consists of inviting people to continue without ever interrupting them. Blowing gently on the embers, rekindling the transgression in order to spark penitence. Not putting the semblance of forgiveness in their path. No, let them go through with it to the end, until at last they crumple of their own accord under the burden of remorse. Despite the rapid pace of her confession, it took Yvonne Pinchard a good five minutes more to pour out her soul. Leaning against the partition, the man of the Church collected an umpteenth yawn in his hands while his stomach rumbled in protest. The elderly priest was hungry. Since the early years of his priesthood, he had grown accustomed to dining frugally on confession nights – a salad followed by fresh fruit was often sufficient. Not stuffing himself unreasonably and saving room for all the rest. The weight of sins was not a hollow expression, oh no. Two hours of penitential vigil could nourish you and satiate your body just as much as a communion banquet. A sink waste pipe – that was what he was when he found himself shut up with God in that tiny cubbyhole. No more and no less than one of those huge waste pipes that collected all the filth of the Earth in their metal bowl. People kneeled, placed their dirty little souls under his nose just as they would hold their mud-caked shoes under the kitchen tap. A quick absolution and they were done. They left with the light tread of the pure. Then he would leave the church with a laboured step, his head nauseous with the filth that had seeped into his ears. But now, inured over the years, he heard confession without joy, without sadness either, contenting himself with plunging into the semi-torpor inevitably induced in him by the cosy atmosphere of the confessional.’

  Guylain quickly grabbed a third sheet before the avalanche of questions that was bound to follow if he waited too long. The clock over the double door already showed 11.15.

  ‘The hitchhiker had told him her name was Gina.

  John had desperately tried to catch the eye of the young woman hidden behind a huge pair of sunglasses. For the umpteenth—’

  ‘Monsieur Vagnol, I think Madame Lignon wants to ask you something,’ interrupted Monique.

  The elderly lady in question was a tall, thin woman who sat stiff as a ramrod beside Monique. A Giacometti sculpture in flesh and bone, thought Guylain.

  ‘No problem, carry on reading.’

  ‘Go on, Huguette,’ encouraged Delacôte number one.

  ‘Well, I was a primary school teacher for nearly forty years and I always loved those reading aloud exercises. I’d be delighted to read a page.’

  ‘With the greatest of pleasure. Huguette, is that right? Come and make yourself comfortable, Huguette.’

  She clawed the page from his fingers and she seated herself in the armchair. The steel-rimmed spectacles balanced on her nose made her look like a retired schoolmarm, which was very fitting, thought Guylain, because that’s what she was. The class immediately fell silent. Her voice was surprisingly clear except for a slight tremor, probably due to her emotion:

  ‘The hitchhiker had told him her name was Gina.

  John had desperately tried to catch the eye of the young woman hidden behind a huge pair of sunglasses. For the umpteenth time since he had picked her up, Gina crossed her legs, shapely legs that seemed to go on forever. The silky rustle of her nylon stockings was torture.’

  Guylain jumped. That last sentence read by Huguette Lignon made him break out in a cold sweat. He instantly grasped that there was going to be a little problem. Since he had been rescuing live skins from the belly of the Zerstor, he had never taken the trouble to glance at them beforehand, preferring to deliver his reading without knowing the content in advance. In all these years, never until this moment had he come across the kind of excerpt that Huguette was reading, a Huguette in seventh heaven who was trying her utmost to find the right tone. So far she did not seem to have realized that she was heading down a slippery slope. Nor for that matter had the audience, who sat spellbound.

  ‘As he forced himself to keep his eyes on the road ahead, the woman asked him for a light. Generally, he would not allow anyone to smoke inside his truck, but he found himself proffering her his lighter. She grasped his wrist in both hands and brought the flame close to the Chesterfield wedged between her lips, two full lips emphasized with a touch of gloss. She leaned forward towards the ashtray, brushing John’s muscular biceps with her nipple as she did so. John shivered at the contact with her delightfully firm breast.’

  Christ! It was what he feared. They were heading for disaster if he didn’t step in quickly. He had to stop this before John and Gina ended up lying stark naked on the bunk exchanging bodily fluids. And at this rate, it was likely to happen before the end of page two.

  ‘Huguette, I think it might be better to—’

  ‘Hush!’ was the unanimous response of the audience, who hadn’t missed a crumb of the story, making it plain to Guylain that any intervention on his part would be most unwelcome. He attracted Monique’s attention by clicking his fingers but she was utterly mesmerized. As for her little sister, leaning against the wall, her eyes closed, she was lapping up the increasingly clear and less and less quavering voice of Huguette, who ploughed ahead without deviating from her course.

  ‘Filled with a growing desire, the truck driver soon felt a little too constricted in his tight jeans. This woman was the devil, a desirable devil who flung her head back each time she exhaled, blowing out her cigarette smoke towards the ceiling light, arching her hips and thrusting her breasts forward. She removed her sunglasses, revealing two vivid blue eyes. Resting her elbow on the door, she turned towards John and partially opened her legs in a lascivious pose. Then, unable to control himself, he brought the thirty-eight-tonne vehicle to an abrupt halt on the hard shoulder, sending up a huge cloud of dust, and threw himself on the woman, who offered herself to him without any resistance. As he ripped off her lace panties, he tasted those lips parted to receive him. Gina slid an expert hand inside John’s trousers, seeking his turgescent cock.’

  A car hooting outside brought everyone back down to earth again. On the gravelled drive, the taxi was flashing its lights impatiently. A few of the residents came over to thank Guylain warmly for his visit, saying they were sorry it had been so brief. There was colour in their cheeks, a sparkle in their eyes. Huguette’s reading seemed to have brought a bit of life back to Magnolia Court. One dear old soul, her napkin already around her neck for lunch, asked anyone who happened to be listening what ‘turgescent’ meant. Guylain dashed off, not without promising to come back the following Saturday. He had not felt so alive for a long time.

  15

  The memory stick came into Guylain Vignolles’s life through pure chance. He could so easily not have seen it, or even quite simply ignored it. It might also have ended up in other hands, met a different fate. The fact is that early one chilly March morning, it jumped out of the folding seat as he lowered it. A little plastic thing barely the size of a domino which bounced across the floor of the compartment and came to a halt between his feet. At first he thought it was a lighter before noticing that it was a USB stick – an ordinary dark red USB stick. He picked it up, turned it ov
er in his hand not knowing what to do with it and then slipped it into his jacket pocket.

  His ensuing reading of the live skins was automatic, so preoccupied was his mind by the condensed memory lying deep in his pocket. That day, he barely heard Kowalski yelling, paid scant attention to Brunner’s sardonic smiles. Even Yvon’s lunchtime soliloquies failed to distract him from his thoughts. And that evening, the first thing he did on reaching home was not to feed Rouget de Lisle, as was his wont, but to rush over to his laptop and insert the memory stick, opening it up with a double click.

  Guylain glowered at the nineteen-inch screen in frustration. The stick opened up a desert. Lost in the midst of the luminescent wilderness, the only folder it contained was prosaically called ‘New folder’ and did not promise anything very exciting. A gentle pressure of his index finger on the mouse unlocked the gates to the unknown. There were seventy-two text files called only by their respective numbers. Intrigued, Guylain moved the cursor to the first one and clicked apprehensively.

  1.doc

  Once a year, at the spring equinox, I do a recount. Just to see, to make sure that nothing ever changes. At this very special time of year, when day and night share time equally, I do a recount with, lodged in the back of my mind, the ludicrous idea that perhaps, yes, perhaps one day, even something as unchanging as the number of tiles covering my dominion from floor to ceiling might change. It’s as hopeless and stupid as believing in the existence of Prince Charming, but deep down inside me is that little girl who refuses to die and who, once a year, wants to believe in miracles. I know every one of my white tiles by heart. Despite the daily assaults with the sponge and detergent, many of them are still as shiny as on the first day and have preserved intact that slightly milky glaze covering the terracotta. To be honest, those aren’t the ones I’m particularly interested in. There are so many of them that their perfection holds no charm. No, my attention is drawn rather to the injured, the cracked, the yellowing, the chipped, all those that time has maimed and which give the place, in addition to the slightly old-fashioned character that I’ve come to love, a touch of imperfection that I find strangely endearing. ‘It is in the scars on the faces of the veterans that you can see wars, Julie, not in the photos of the generals in their starched, freshly pressed uniforms,’ my aunt said to me once while we were vigorously polishing the tiles with shammies to restore their former lustre. Sometimes I say to myself that my aunt’s common sense should be taught at university. My war veterans testify to the fact that here, as elsewhere, there is no such thing as immortality. Naturally I have my favourites among this little population of the wounded, like the one above the third tap, to the left, whose missing sheen makes a pretty five-point star, or the other one whose lustre has gone forever and whose strangely dull look contrasts with the sparkling purity of its fellow tiles on the north wall.