The Reader on the 6.27

by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent

  Guylain tore himself from the comfy armchair. He felt better and better among his Magnolias. Monique and Josette each offered him an arm to help him back onto terra firma. He took advantage of the lull to raise the subject of Yvon. The two sisters said they would be delighted to welcome an additional reader to their residence and agreed, providing the session could be extended by half an hour. Guylain saw no reason why not. He kissed them, inhaling a parting whiff of eau de cologne before going out to the taxi that had just come into view at the end of the drive.

  20

  Rouget de Lisle V had died during Guylain’s absence. He found the fish’s little body lying next to the bowl when he came home from Magnolia Court. His replacement aquarium must have felt too narrow for him to be able to stretch his fins properly and Rouget had preferred to take the great leap into the unknown, to find out whether the world wasn’t better elsewhere. His final dream of freedom was shattered on the cold stainless steel of my draining board, thought Guylain ruefully. He delicately picked up the tiny corpse, holding the tail between his thumb and forefinger, and slipped it into a plastic bag. In the early afternoon, he went out, heading in the direction of Les Pavillons-sous-Bois.

  Guylain knew the way by heart, having made the trip four times before. After a twenty-minute walk, he stopped halfway across the bridge over the Ourcq canal, extracted Rouget de Lisle’s already stiff body and threw it into the calm waters. ‘Peace upon your little fish bones, my brother.’

  He had never been able to dispose of his deceased fish by throwing them into the rubbish chute like ordinary waste. To him they were a bit more than mere ornamental fish. Each one took with it Guylain’s most intimate secrets locked in its gills. In the absence of a mighty river, the Ourcq canal was the noblest grave he had been able to find. After a parting glance at the orange streak descending into the murky depths, Guylain retraced his path with a brisk step. A quarter of an hour later, the bell above the door of the pet shop tinkled cheerily as he stepped inside. His entrance was greeted by a chorus of squawking budgies, yapping puppies, mewing kittens, squealing rabbits and cheeping chicks. Only the fish were silent, content to send up the occasional stream of bubbles.

  ‘Can I help you?’ The assistant was just like her surly voice. Cold and pale.

  ‘I need a goldfish,’ mumbled Guylain. Need – that was indeed the word. He was truly addicted to the golden creatures. Guylain could no longer cope without that silent, colourful presence gracing his bedside table. From experience, he knew that there was a vast difference between living alone and living alone with a goldfish.

  ‘What type?’ asked the anaemic girl, opening a fat catalogue. ‘We have Lionheads, Comets with long forked tails, red-capped Orandas, Pompoms, Ryukin, Shubunkin, Ranchu or Black Moors – very original with their dark colouring. Our top-selling variety right now is the Celestial Eye with its double tail and telescope eyes turned upwards. Very trendy.’

  Guylain wanted to ask if they didn’t have the standard model, the ordinary goldfish with two little eyes on either side of its head, where they should be. For what it did – swim round and round – that was perfectly sufficient. Instead, he pulled out of his pocket the tattered photo of Rouget I, the father of the dynasty, the one who had started it all, and waved it under the assistant’s nose: ‘I would simply like the same as this one,’ he said, tapping the tired image.

  The girl inspected the photo with an experienced eye and led him to the big aquarium at the back of the shop where around fifty potential Rouget de Lisles were swimming around. ‘I’ll leave you to make up your mind. Just call me when you’re ready. I’ll be next door,’ she said, holding out a net.

  She had no interest in him and his common-or-garden goldfish. Photo in hand, Guylain gazed at the orange display swirling in front of him in search of the perfect clone. He soon spotted one. Same colour, slightly paler on the sides, same fins, same affable eyes. After three fruitless attempts to net it, he caught it on the fourth. He inquired about a new bowl too.

  ‘Spherical or rectangular?’ asked the assistant. Cruel dilemma to have to choose between a deadly monotonous circular path or a halting circuit that’s all sharp angles. In the end he opted for the usual glass globe. Even for the most common of fish, there could be no worse ordeal than constantly banging into corners.

  Back home, Guylain hurriedly poured in a bed of white sand, laid the previous tenant’s miniature amphora on it and planted the synthetic seaweed. Soon, a new Rouget de Lisle was happily splashing around in this fairy-tale decor. This tiny fish, which was the spitting image of its brothers, exuded a sense of immortality that Guylain found pleasing. For a fleeting second he thought he saw in Rouget VI’s eye the full acknowledgement of his five predecessors.

  21

  That morning, the old-man-in-slippers-and-pyjamas-under-his-raincoat was wandering around outside number 154 like a lost soul, without his Balthus. Overnight, the dog’s hindquarters had become paralysed. Right now he was under observation at the vet’s clinic. ‘Until he can walk again,’ the old man added. ‘Because my Balthus is going to walk again, isn’t he? They’ll put him to rights, won’t they?’ he entreated, clutching Guylain’s arm, his voice thick with tears. Guylain promised that yes, of course, there was no reason why Balthus shouldn’t recover the use of his hind legs, even though deep down he was convinced that the mutt had probably reached the end of the road and that it wouldn’t be long before he joined Rouget V in the great animal kingdom in the sky. It was a well-known fact, old dogs nearly always began to die from the rear. Guylain took his leave of the old fellow with a parting bow of the head that was more like an expression of condolence, and continued on to the station. He felt a genuine pleasure as he sat down on his folding seat. Julie was burning his fingers.

  ‘Saturday is always the busiest day of the week, along with Wednesday, but when Saturday is also the last day of the sales, then you can tell a mile off that it’s going to be a horrendous day, the kind of day when even the shopping centre’s 100,000 square metres seem to be hard put to hold so many people. It was packed from the minute the doors opened. Hordes of visitors poured into my cave all day long to deposit their stream of urine, excrement, blood and even vomit. Sometimes I see them reduced purely to sphincters, stomachs, intestines and bladders on legs and no longer as entire human beings. I don’t particularly like these peak shopping days which turn the shopping centre into a giant ant hill. I find all this frantic activity disturbing, even though it often heralds excellent takings. You have to be on your toes the whole time so as to keep up. Restock the cubicles with toilet paper; don’t forget to wipe the seats as soon as you get a chance; chuck bleach blocks into the urinals regularly, not forgetting to sit by the saucer as often as possible. Thank you, goodbye. Thank you, have a nice day. Hello, thank you, goodbye. The thing is that a lot of them don’t give anything if there’s no witness to appreciate their generosity. Auntologism number 4: Beggar absent, begging bowl empty. I think the entire human race has come by here today. That’s what I said to myself as I locked the gates, exhausted, my back broken, my nostrils saturated with the smell of bleach and ammonia.

  I far prefer the midweek early-morning calm with its slow trickle of customers to these fraught periods. When it’s like this, I sometimes put aside my writing or my magazines to listen to them. Holding my breath, my eyes closed, I ignore the constant rumble of the shopping centre and concentrate all my attention on the noises coming from the toilets. My hearing has become more refined over time and now I’m able to identify each of the sounds that reach me through the closed doors, no matter how muffled, without hesitation. My aunt, armed with her characteristic bleach-infused omniscience, classified these noises into three main categories. First of all there are the ones she prettily calls “noble sounds”. The discreet click of a belt being unbuckled, the gentle whoosh of a zip being pulled down, the snap of a press stud, as well as all those rustlings of fabrics – silks, nylon, cottons and other materials that sing against the s
kin with a rippling, crinkling, swishing, and other murmurings. Then come what she calls the “cover-up sounds”. Embarrassed coughing, deceptively cheerful whistling, activating the flush – all those sounds designed to drown out the third category, that of “active sounds”: flatulence, gargling, tinkling, the song of the enamel, the plopping of high dives, the toilet roll unspooling, the paper tearing. And I would add a final category, rarer but O so interesting – sounds of relief, all those grunts and groans and sighs of contentment that sometimes rise up to the ceiling when the floodgates open and that liberating stream held in for too long cascades onto the enamel, or the sonorous avalanche of over-full bowels. Sometimes I love people when they fetch up here, so vulnerable in their need to relieve their bladder or empty their stomach. And during the brief time that they are hidden from view behind the cubicle doors, whatever their condition or social status, I know they are returning to the dawn of time, mammals satisfying the call of nature, their buttocks glued to the seat, their trousers corkscrewed around their calves, their forehead dripping with sweat as they labour to open their sphincter, alone with themselves, far from the world above. But the people here do not only leave me the contents of their bowels or their bladder. It’s not unusual for some of them to relieve themselves in here and then come over to me to pour out their woes. I listen to people. I let them vent their gall, wring out their little lives, chat to me about their various problems. They confide, they moan, they cry; they’re jealous, they tell their stories. Auntologism number 12: Toilets are confessionals without a priest. Luckily there are others who come and chit-chat for the simple pleasure of exchanging a few pleasantries, and for whom I am more than just two ears there to listen to their sorrows. I’ve put a visitors’ book at the exit, like in some famous restaurants – a visitors’ book where people can leave me, in addition to a small coin, a memento of their visit in the form of a message. And every night, when I close up, I draw in my nets and take a few moments to skim through these words of love or loathing, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, which will always teach me a lot more about human nature than any encyclopaedia.

  “Beautifully clean. Isabelle”

  “Better than a mere public toilet. A clean, very well-maintained haven. Keep it up. René”

  “You should have stayed on at school, stupid cow! X”

  “Your paper is a bit rough for my taste, otherwise everything was perfect. Marcelle”

  “We were just passing through, but we’ll be back for the simple reason that your toilets are immaculately clean. Xavier, Martine and their children, Thomas and Quentin”

  “Suck my dick, bitch.”

  “Kings and philosophers defecate, and so do ladies. Montaigne”

  “It would be good to have magazines available in the cubicles. Furthermore, it is somewhat annoying that there is no choice of soap. It would be nice to be able to choose one’s own fragrance. The place is clean (other than a few stains around the washers – try white vinegar). Madeleine de Borneuil”

  “I had a wank in your crappy toilet thinking about you, you slag.”’

  There were a few laughs in the compartment mingled with exclamations of indignation. Guylain looked up. Most of the commuters were looking at him encouragingly. He half smiled and then launched into another of Julie’s diary entries:

  ‘I wouldn’t swear to it, but it looks to me as though it’s got even bigger. Not a lot, only a few centimetres, but at this rate, it could reach the big mirrors on the women’s side before the end of the decade. My aunt told me that the crack appeared nearly thirty years ago, when they demolished the central staircase to put in the new escalators. It was born under the first battering of the pneumatic drill, pointing its nose towards the north corner, under the basins, and then it began to spread. It wasn’t very wide at the time, barely a hair’s breadth and not much longer than a blade of grass, but it has grown wider as it has crept over the white expanse, streaking each of the tiles it met on the way with a thin, dark line. Its advance has never halted; it continues on its way without ever deviating an inch from its path, no matter what obstacles it encounters. It was born under Mitterrand, celebrated its first metre before the Russians left Afghanistan and its second metre as Pope John-Paul was being buried. Now it is over three metres long. It’s like a wrinkle on a face, marking the passage of time. I’m fond of this fissure that somehow continues its path, tracing its own destiny without giving the slightest consideration to the planet’s ups and downs.’

  When the train pulled into the station and the passengers alighted, an outside observer would have had no trouble noticing how Guylain’s listeners stood out from the rest of the commuters. Their faces did not wear that off-putting mask of indifference. They all had the contented look of an infant that has drunk its fill of milk.

  22

  It was 7 p.m. when Guylain rang Giuseppe’s bell. Exceptionally, the old boy had contacted him at work in the middle of the afternoon. He had phoned Kowalski and asked to speak to Guylain. Suddenly Felix Kowalski’s voice, sounding even angrier than usual, reached Guylain’s ears through his radio headphones. Kowalski didn’t like his staff being disturbed when they were hard at work.

  ‘Vignolles, telephone.’

  Guylain snatched the receiver from Fatso’s outstretched hand, wondering who on earth could be calling him at the plant.

  ‘Can you come by after work?’

  ‘Yes, why?’

  Giuseppe’s only reply was a brusque, ‘You’ll find out,’ before hanging up. And again that evening, Giuseppe kept Guylain on tenterhooks while they had an aperitif, even though it was obvious that the old boy was bursting to tell him something. He kept rolling his wheelchair backwards and forwards, clumsily grabbing little handfuls of pistachios and peanuts, constantly squirming in his chair. Unable to contain himself any longer, Guylain finally came out with the question he had been burning to ask since his arrival: ‘You haven’t brought me here simply to drink a glass of Moscato, have you, Giuseppe?’

  ‘I haven’t been sitting here twiddling my thumbs in your absence, you know, kiddo.’ There was a mischievous glint in his eye. He executed a half-turn and invited Guylain to follow the wheelchair into the bedroom, which doubled as his office. The room was in a glorious state of disarray. The rickety desk was buried under piles of documents. The computer and printer had been relegated to the floor to make room. The hospital bed itself had not been spared by the tidal wave and it too was covered in loose sheets of paper. There was a huge map of Paris and the surrounding region with scrawled notes all over it tacked to the wall at wheelchair height. Several circles had been crudely drawn in red felt-tip. In other places, identical rings had been crossed out. Some names of towns were underlined, others deleted. Post-its covered in the illegible, spidery handwriting understandable only to Giuseppe blossomed everywhere in the capital and its suburbs. The map was a mass of deletions, alterations and stuck-on notes. The room resembled a wartime military HQ.

  ‘What the hell’s this mess, Giuseppe?’

  ‘Oh, that! You can’t say it happened all by itself. Two whole days to draw up an inventory and another two days to sort and refine the data. It wasn’t easy, but I’m pretty chuffed. I finished this morning.’

  ‘Finished what, Giuseppe?’

  ‘Your Julie, of course. Do you or don’t you want to find her? I read the whole thing three times, you know, to be sure not to overlook any clues. Rather thin on the ground, they are. She’s pretty stingy on the detail, your young lady. In the seventy-two files, she doesn’t once mention her surname or even the name of the town where she works. A really accomplished author. But it takes more than that to deter old Giuseppe.’

  ‘I started with this,’ he went on, placing a piece of paper in Guylain’s hands. ‘We know her name is Julie, that she’s a lavatory attendant, that she’s twenty-eight and that once a year, at the spring equinox, the young lady counts her tiles, which number 14,717. But I particularly noted clues 4, 9 and 11, the most importa
nt ones: her toilets are in a shopping centre. This centre has an area of 100,000 square metres and is at least thirty years old, as evidenced by the crack.’

  Guylain stared in disbelief at the brief list in front of his eyes. Clues 4, 9 and 11 had been highlighted in green. Giuseppe then explained the methodology he had used to create the huge rainbow-coloured hodgepodge tacked to the wall. He had googled all the major shopping centres in Paris and the surrounding region and come up with a list of eighteen centres, mainly in the inner suburbs. Then he had gone over the details of each one with a fine-tooth comb to find out when they were built, so as to eliminate the most recent. That way he had ruled out Le Millénaire in Aubervilliers, Val d’Europe in Marne-la-Vallée and Carré Sénart in Lieusaint, all three too recent. A second sifting process based on surface area had whittled his list down to eight finalists. And Giuseppe proudly declaimed the names of the lucky winners, pointing to them on the map with a ruler, detailing their pedigrees:

  ‘O’Parinor in Aulnay, 1974, 90,000 square metres. I know, it’s not 100,000 but I kept it in anyway. Rosny 2, 1973, 106,000 square metres. Créteil Soleil, 1974, 124,000 square metres. Belle Épine in Thiais, 1971, 140,000 square metres. A bit big, but anyway. Évry 2, 1975, bang on 100,000 square metres. Vélizy 2, built in 1972, 98,000 square metres. Parly 2, in Le Chesnay, 1969, 90,000 square metres. Like Aulnay, just under, but why not? And the last one, Les Quatre Temps in La Défense, 1981, 110,000 square metres. They all have a public toilet but I wasn’t able to check whether there’s an attendant. It doesn’t say that anywhere on the website – anyone would think it’s taboo.’