by Yasmina Reza
When you ask Etienne for news on his eyesight, he answers, It’s all under control. It’s an expression he got from his father who was a police chief. I’ve always heard him say that—“it’s under control”—even when nothing is working. And actually his vision is not at all under control, since what he’s got is the dry macular degeneration, the bad kind, the form that, unlike the wet, is not helped by the shots. We don’t often ask Etienne for news on his vision. We don’t want that to become a topic of conversation. On the other hand, we can’t never worry about it. It’s a subtle balance between reserve and intrusion. On his own in the house last weekend, Etienne thought he could adjust the thermostat by touch, without his glasses or a flashlight. He turned the dial in the wrong direction. When Merle came back, she walked into a white-hot oven. “All under control” has the virtue of closing the chapter that’s barely opened. The line says nothing about reality, nor even about the speaker’s state of mind. It’s a rather practical kind of existential readiness—a standing to attention. And funny too. The body does whatever it chooses, the cells behave any way they want. In the end, what’s serious?
Recently we were talking about an episode from the time when their older son was still in high school. Merle and Etienne had got a notice from the headmaster saying that Paul Dienesmann had behaved very badly at Auschwitz. Etienne called his son into his study and, seated and looking grave, said to him—we still laugh about it—“It seems you behaved very badly at Auschwitz?” Further discussion revealed that Paul had been clowning on the bus that drove the class from Krakow to Birkenau, creating among his classmates an atmosphere antithetical to Remembrance and Contemplation. I’ve taken a dislike to the word “contemplation.” And to the principle as well. It’s become a huge fashion ever since the world has been heading into indescribable chaos. Politicians and citizens (another brilliantly empty word) spend their time “contemplating.” I liked it better before, when you carried your enemy’s head around on a pike. Even virtue isn’t serious. This morning, before I left for the Pasteur, I phoned the retirement home to ask after Jean-Lino’s aunt. With the conversation finished, I think, You’re really a good person, you’re concerned for others. Two seconds later I tell myself, It’s disgusting, this self-satisfaction over such an elementary deed. And immediately after that, Good, you keep a firm eye on your own motives, bravo. There’s always some great congratulator who has the last word. When Denner, as a child, came out of confession, he used to stop in front of Saint Joseph, breathe deep, and say to himself, Now I’m a saint. And right afterward, going down the stairs: Oh shit—sin of pride. One way or another, virtue doesn’t last. It can only exist if we’re not aware of it. I miss Denner. A man dead thirty years ago you suddenly miss. A person who would know nothing about my life, or my work, or husband or child, where I live, the places I’ve seen, or what I looked like over time. Or a million other things unimaginable back then. If he came by now what a laugh we’d have! About everything. Is there, somewhere up in the sky, a little Denner star? Seems to me I catch sight of it now and then. Joseph Denner was four years older than me. Big, muscular, anarcho and alky. His father was a line cook; at fourteen he’d been a dishwasher at the Colmar railroad station. I know that still because Denner always talked about it. Joseph had loved and admired his father, but not his mother, according to him she was a stingy petit-bourgeois monster. They lived in three connected maid’s rooms on the rue Legendre, the bathroom was also the kitchen and they’d cover the tub with a lid for a work surface. I remember a tiny slope-ceilinged living room area. And behind it, set off by a gilded metal gate that was always shut, the parents’ bedroom, also tiny. The liquor was in a cupboard back there. The top of the gate was a twisted scroll section with an opening in it. By some supernatural writhing Denner would slither through it sideways to get us some whiskey. He’d done two years’ military service in Germany with a disciplinary battalion. To scrape by he played guitar in the Pax Quartet, a more or less Catholic band that kept him on out of kindness. He believed in adventure, we dreamed of mountain climbing, about Machu Picchu, while we slugged down Carlsbergs in the Miquel Pub, we never went anywhere except for a few nighttime spins up to the seaside. He was thin-skinned and volatile. We were all younger than him, nobody dared to contradict him. I still have some books that belonged to him, Vian, Genet, Buzzati. He adored them. I’ve always kept them separate, in a corner, wherever I live, alongside the photography books, the little collection the two of us put together—Frank, Kertész, Cartier-Bresson, Winogrand, Weegee, Weiss, Arbus (we swiped them from the Pereire bookstore; at some surplus outlet Denner had found a hunting vest with a big pocket in the back). In certain Garry Winogrand photos the girls come out in the street in hair curlers with scarves wrapped around them. That gives them a slutty, don’t give-a-damn look, really sexy. I did it for a while myself. I’ve always been interested in what people do with hair. You can’t conceive of the world, or even of people in general. You can only conceive of things you’ve touched. All great events nourish thought and mind, like theater. But it’s not the great events or great ideas that make for life, it’s ordinary things. The only things I’ve retained inside me, truly, are things close by, things I could touch with my hands. Everything’s under control.
“ . . . Jean-Lino?” The suitcase had got as far as the vestibule by itself. Silence. I went to look. Jean-Lino was standing in the hallway, a bit like a shadow puppet silhouetted in the light from the bedroom. “You OK?”
“Elisabeth.”
“You’re scaring me.”
“In case something should happen to me, you never came back up here to my place. You don’t know anything.”
“All right.”
“And the suitcase is mine.”
“All right.”
He put on his Zara biker jacket and his racetrack hat. He set the purse and the coat on top of the suitcase.
“The robber would certainly have taken the wallet . . .”
“Yes. I’ll get rid of it . . . Ah, just a second . . .” He went into the bedroom again and came back with a pair of fleece-lined gloves. “Let’s go.”
We left the apartment. Jean-Lino pulled the load. We stood still for a few seconds on the landing to be sure we heard nothing. I pressed the elevator button. Actually it was still at his floor. We pushed the suitcase inside. Jean-Lino opened the door to the service stairs. Not a sound. We agreed in whispers that I would wait a moment to go down so we would reach the lobby at the same time. He turned on the hall lights and disappeared into the stairwell. I stepped into the elevator, leaving the door ajar. The cabin is very small, there wasn’t much room left. The green coat fell to the floor, I picked it up and pushed it between the vertical bars of the raised handle. I tried to fit the handle through the straps of the handbag but that didn’t work. I let the door close and pressed the lobby button. I looked at my feet, my checkered pajama pants, my fake-fur slippers. I was going down four stories alone with a corpse. No panic. I felt super-daring, really proud. I told myself, You would have been great in the Under-ground or spying for the Foreign Service. Look at you, Elisabeth! Ground floor. Jean-Lino was already there. Breathless and focused. Him too—terrific. He took the suitcase. The coat fell to the floor again, I picked it up. I was carrying the purse and the coat. The wheels made an upsetting noise on the tile floor. The car was parked out front. I could see it just past the stone curb. I calculated the trip, going around the shrubs. I pressed the door button. Jean-Lino opened it. He pulled the suitcase into the half-open doorway. A motor started up behind the building. We heard a small sound coming from outside, a damp sound of heels on wet ground, and we saw coming from the right, her head lowered against the wind, the girl from the second floor on her way home from a party. Jean-Lino drew back, he stood aside to let her come in. The girl said hello, we answered hello. She darted into the waiting elevator.
What could that bitch have noticed? Everything. The tall beanpole lady from the fourth floor holding a coat and a purse,
in fur slippers and Hello Kitty pajamas, with the guy from the fifth floor in a fedora and gloves pulling an enormous red suitcase. Heading out for god knows where at three in the morning. Everything. At the moment he runs into the girl Jean-Lino tries to look as if there’s nothing unusual going on, as if this run-of-themill encounter doesn’t affect him. After pulling aside to let her pass, he again tugs the suitcase toward the exit. He’s already gone five yards outside when I clutch at him. “She saw us!”
“What did she see?”
“Us! With the suitcase!!”
“A person has the right to go out with a suitcase.”
It’s sprinkling again. An odious drizzle.
“Not tonight. A night like this people are supposed to stay home.”
I can tell I’m irritating him. He tries to get the suitcase moving again by little tugs but I hold onto it.
“Who’s going to ask her anything?”
“The cops!”
“Why would they come talk to her?”
I tie the coat through the tall handle again and pull at the suitcase to take it back indoors. He blocks it.
“Because there’ll be an investigation! They’ll question the neighbors.”
“Go home, Elisabeth. I’ll manage.”
“She saw me, too. Our plan is ruined!”
“So what do we do?” He is frantic.
“Well at least let’s go back inside.”
“She fucked up the whole thing, that bitch!” He is shouting. He’s losing it. “I’m gonna kill her!”
“Jean-Lino, let’s go back . . .”
He lets go. I grab the retractable handle and drag the suitcase. The coat slides down, the case rolls over it and brakes, stopping me short and almost tripping me. That damn coat, falling down every two minutes!! Back into the lobby. The coat is a mess. Everything’s wet. JeanLino, with nothing in his gloved hands now, looks like he’s disguised as a fur trapper. He pulls a flattened cigarette pack from his jacket and lights up. He says, “What the hell was she doing out so late, the slut?”
“We can’t just stay here.”
“I’m gonna shut her mouth, that bitch.”
“Let’s go into the stairwell and think.”
I pulled the suitcase toward the far wall and stood it in the corner beside the service door. “Come on into the stairwell, Jean-Lino.”
I caught his arm by the leather of the jacket and I pushed him toward the stairs. He let it happen for two or three steps, his legs stiff like a robot’s. I sat down on the lowest stairs at the spot where he’d broken down in front of Rémi. Jean-Lino drew the smoke in deep with that mouth action of his, staring at the suitcase. After a moment he moved toward it, unsteadily. He stroked its top with his sheepskin glove. From left to right, several times in sequence like an unspoken poem. Then he slipped to his knees, moaning. His widespread arms gripped the case from both sides, his cheek was pressed to the canvas. He formed, half in the air, some distorted kisses. We were separated by the doorjamb—the image took on its full effect from that framing. Abyss and nonsense—why had there been no hand, no intervention, to stop the girl? Just a small flick of the thumb from the heavens to throw off by a minute her exit from the party, from the car, just one extra bit of talk there? Instead of abandoning, in this cold lobby, Jean-Lino Manoscrivi, the gentlest of men, and Lydie Gumbiner, small and crumpled in her party clothes. People who think there’s some orderly system to life—they’re lucky.
I was cold. I spread the green coat over my legs. Jean-Lino had let go of the suitcase. He was still on the floor with his legs folded under him, head low and hands on the nape of his neck. I waited. Then I went to get him. I moved to raise him up by encircling his shoulders. I picked up the hat and the glasses that had fallen onto the tile floor. Together we headed back toward the stairs, we sat down where I had been—that is, two yards farther along. Jean-Lino immediately stood up again to bring the suitcase in with us, it just cleared the doorframe and filled the whole space at the bottom of the stairs. The three of us were crammed tight. I’d rearranged the coat over us for protection. The situation reminded me of the huts you make as a kid. You pull everything close, the roof, the floor, the ceiling, walls, objects, bodies, you want the space to be as constricted as possible. The outer world is no longer visible except through a slit while tempest and storm rage outside.
He needed to piss. That was the first thing he said—“I have to piss.”
“Go outdoors.”
He didn’t move.
“I drank too much. I behaved like such an ass.”
“Go ahead, Jean-Lino, I’ll stay here.”
The light went off. We were left in near darkness. I turned it back on. I’d never seen the lobby by this glow, nor in detail. The grille on the air vent, the dirty baseboard molding. A dingy purgatory. In some book Bill Bryson said, “No room has fallen further in history than the hall.” Jean-Lino did go out, I don’t know where, while I stayed with the suitcase. I slipped into the coat, which was far too narrow for me, the sleeves reached only halfway down my arms and I couldn’t button it. It was roughly the same color as the carpeting. I thought about what to do: Go upstairs and put Lydie back on the bed as if nothing had happened? Take the suitcase and go to my own apartment while Jean-Lino called the police? It was useless. The girl from the second floor had seen us together. Whatever there might be in the suitcase, Jean-Lino had left his house after strangling his wife and I was mixed up in the business. I reviewed the sequence of events: Jean-Lino came down to our apartment. He informed us of the catastrophe. We didn’t believe him. Pierre and I went upstairs to see Lydie’s body. Pierre made me go back home and not get involved. Jean-Lino had killed his wife. We had nothing to do with it. He was supposed to phone the police and turn himself in. Pierre went to sleep. I went back upstairs. And what if I hadn’t gone up? What if, instead of going up, I had stayed home, full of anxiety (and curiosity), watching through the windows and the peephole for the slightest movement? Why through the peephole? For fear of some crazy reaction from Jean-Lino Manoscrivi? No. No. Just very simply because I didn’t stay glued to the window. I looked through the peephole from time to time, in case I’d missed something outside.
And that’s how . . . And that’s how it happened that I saw the elevator light blinking. I opened the door, I heard the sound of someone running down the stairs. I called out to my friend Jean-Lino. I grabbed my keys and I rushed down the stairs myself. I got to the bottom just as he was heading for the front door with a huge red suitcase . . . I begged him not to do this stupid thing. The second-floor neighbor came in . . . After all, I was in slippers and pajamas, nothing like a person set to go out into the wet night . . . That story made sense. That could work. It could also work for Pierre. No. He knew the suitcase. He knew the damn suitcase intimately. In fact it was pretty much his suitcase. How to explain to Pierre what the red suitcase was doing there? Not to mention the cargo. Maybe I could have lent it to the Manoscrivis for some upcoming trip? Or to move things? Yes, that’s good—I could have lent it for moving things over to the psychotherapy office. Without telling him? Well sure, I don’t tell my husband about lending somebody a suitcase. Or better . . . Better: we didn’t know about any of it. Jean-Lino never came downstairs to us, we never went upstairs. I’d given a party. I go downstairs to the trashbins, and who do I see? As I’m coming back through the lobby? Jean-Lino Manoscrivi! Pulling the big red suitcase I’d lent to Lydie . . . I didn’t wonder what was in the suitcase? No, Jean-Lino tells me he’s putting it in the trunk of the car for the next morning. The second-floor neighbor walks in from a party. She sees us on our way out . . . Not me. I’m not going out. I’m there by coincidence, just walking my friend over to the lobby door. It’s completely nothing. I just have to brief Pierre. He’ll understand that it’s in our interest.
He came back. I heard the outside door. I recognized the sound of his walk. He sat down next to me in the nook. His scalp drenched because he’d left his hat off. The rain must be c
oming down hard. The comb-over hair was plastered to his forehead and crimped up at the edge. He said, “What’s the drill?
“We can go back up . . .”
How could I tell him how close I was to abandoning him?
“ . . . but that won’t help because we could never explain what the two of us were doing here in the lobby.”
He had taken off his gloves (the gloves were sticking out of the side pockets of the biker jacket like two ruffled ears). Doubled over on the stair, he skimmed a hand over the red canvas of the suitcase, tracing vague curves with his finger. The pitted cheeks gleamed, I thought from the rain, but he was crying. When Jean-Lino was a child, after the evening meal his father would sometimes pick up the Book of Psalms and read a passage aloud. The bookmark ribbon always opened to the same place. It never occurred to his father to move it, so he always read out the same verse, the one about exile: By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and we wept, remembering Zion. Jean-Lino remembered the book, its bronze cover, the fraying ribbon, and especially the engraving on the cover: people with slack expressions, half-naked, slumped against one another, on the banks of a warm stream, with a harp hooked onto the branch of a tree. He said he’d never made the connection between the verse and the image. When his father recited the words Jean-Lino would hear the roar of many rivers, picture the tumble and crash of driftwood logs beneath a sky of defeat. And as to sitting and weeping, for him that meant being in a condition of waiting, huddled and alone. He’d had no religious instruction. The Manoscrivis observed a few holidays with the mother’s family, but that was mainly for eating stuffed carp. Jean-Lino understood nothing about the lines his father read him (neither did his father, according to him) but he liked hearing the phrases from the past. He felt he had some part in the history of mankind, even deep in the Parmentier tenement courtyard, and he likened himself to those wanderers, to those stateless exiles. What had that silly bitch from the second floor actually registered? I went over the scene again. I saw myself by the big windowed front door, behind Jean-Lino, holding the purse and the coat. Holding the purse and the coat! Holding Lydie’s purse and the long flared green frockcoat that the whole neighborhood knows . . . I’d have to drop the trashbin story, go back to the previous version. Yes, I was carrying the purse and the coat. I had torn them from Jean-Lino’s hands to keep him from committing an insane act. “Jean-Lino,” I murmured, “we have to call the police.”