Ricochet

by Robyn Neilson

  The next day, I carry a hotel sachet of shampoo with me on my run. I plan a route so that I will arrive at my staircase at the very end. Again, I pass the crew of young guys and some girls down at the bridge. Loup had scoffed, ‘they’ll get caught’. I scan the horizon. No one. Only the trucks whizzing by, and some horses in the paddock opposite. Downward I waddle. Outward I launch and the feeling is just as exquisite as yesterday. I rip open the sachet with my teeth, and wash my hair. First time in a week, why does that make a person feel so damned good, so brand new? When Loup comes home late, it is still 37 degrees. I convince him to come down to the water. A summer fog intensifies the sun, now a red rubber band blistering behind a curtain of grey.

  Doubtfully, Loup edges into the canal. But then with a kingfisher’s flash, he takes off, making measured laps, across and back. A huge smile cracks opens his face. Loup and swimming go together, like running and me. He is in his habitat, and neither of us can believe it has taken him this long. When I suggest we should be discreet, and not attract the attention of approaching walkers, Loup simply shrugs…

  ‘Tant pis! I don’t give a damn, we’re the poor suckers without a pool!’

  Totally won over, it seemed the risk of getting caught might now be part of Loup’s thrill. And so continued our law-breaking ritual: I most afternoons; both of us most nights. I still quail at the thought of being found out. But the dread of shrivelling up like a dry leaf is worse.

  The bathing keeps madness at bay for another two weeks, but when the temperatures rise again to the 40’s, and persist for another fortnight; melancholy and self-loathing creep back. And my mind plays tricks. There are three things that have always thrilled me with possibility and terror: jumping into the deepest ocean, straddling a mountain chasm, or being a prostitute, une pute like those women of the Bois de Boulogne. Before I met Loup, I would stand outside a brothel on my way home from Uni, being permanently skint and not knowing how I could make my daughters’ life more comfortable. I would hear women talking with enviable self-assuredness on the radio of how being a single Mum was no impediment to aspiration: in fact, life as an up-market call-girl post-divorce afforded their kids private school education and piano and tennis lessons. Watching closely each client go in and out, wondering if I could ever do what needed to be done, I felt like a coward, like I had let my girls down again.

  And now, as Loup proffered,

  ‘Freya, why don’t you stand on the corner and make us some cash, you do have the talent for it,’ would seem like a dare I could not refuse. Hell, even my old friend Gretje Reyniers did it way back in the 17th Century in the seedy docks of New Amsterdam. But I was not as brave as she.

  So I prepared to leave. Once I have the answer to my question, ‘Loup, do you really want me to do what I do with you for other men?’ I feel safe to return to Wonderland, and a challenge that was left incomplete. And to write where my brain could function. Loup helpfully rationalises my meltdown,

  ‘Chérie, your brain is just like your laptop… full of computer chips; full of delicate parts that simply melt at a certain point. You have to cool it down’.

  The canal, reassuring as it was, was still a constant reminder that Loup and I are outsiders.The funny thing is that Loup, the initial naysayer, now calls it his pool, and goes there often whilst I am away. Perhaps it is his baptism. Later that night whilst Loup is with Morphée, I reflect upon another paradox. This minor law breaking I commit… is it not a nod to my forefathers in their ball and chains? We’ve shared the same slippery slope.

  What if the SNCF pursue me, the Gendarmerie descend in outrage that I (quite innocently, it must be said, your honour) incurred a fine which was then sent to my husband’s false (not fake, just ancient, your honour) address, ensuring that said fine would never be paid and decide to exercise their punitive rights?

  What if they arrest me at the airport for assisting my husband in fraud, (your honour, I believe that all my husband’s actions were and are ‘parfaitment legale’) and attempting to flee the country instead of paying what we owe? What if they take from me my tiny (please your honour, it’s all I have) whaler’s cottage in Australia? What if the EDF are indignant, and decree that the water that I carried off in my grateful hair and skin, in droplets I guarded between my eyelashes and toes, be put back again? What if I really am, as Loup lovingly points out, a loser married to a loser? Will I find myself soon back in my own puny dinghy, rowing desperately against the current, as the canal propels me toward the jagged teeth in its dam mouth, flushing me down its concrete throat into the red-algae scum of the Étang de Berre?

  And my mother is nowhere in sight to bail me out, herself being at home, where she thinks I ought to be.

  Chemin de l’Homme Rouge, La Ciotat, 2011.

  "Imaginings and resonances and pain and small longings and prejudices. They mean nothing against the resolute hardness of the sea."

  Colm Tóibin, The Blackwater Lightship.

  When I realized that my second address in France contained the same descriptive ‘Rouge’ colour as the track I had walked up each day to do my thinking at the Auriol chapel, our move felt propitious. Chemin Rural du Rouge, in the hills behind Auriol, had always puzzled me. I wondered if it was named so due to the slaughter of two world wars, and the red poppies that flourished there afterwards. For la terre herself was not red, rather speckled white with chalky limestone.

  When we moved to La Ciotat, to the street named after a Red Man, we left certain things behind. For instance, we left in our blue-door stable the smell of our neighbour’s ablutions, the view out the window of the ankles of passer’s by, and the moist air that drifted down between the mossy boulders behind Léo and Jeanine’s hillside terrace. We left behind the screech of mopeds under our bedroom at night, the cobbled laneways that led me to the famous patisserie and the pulsing market under the enormous plain trees beside the shallow rush of l’Huveaune, where people walked their grateful dogs after work, who sniffed out other dogs’ sex and shat and smiled as their owners smiled back and greeted ‘Bonsoir’ to the other dog-walkers.

  For a time, we left behind the knocking on doors by Gendarmes. (But they would find us again, for other reasons). Left in that suffocating kitchen the shock of that day. For a time, we left behind hopeless dogged déception. Left behind my sickness and Loup’s dark night. For a time, we joyfully threw ourselves into our little studio, as this time the home really was ours. Well, the bank’s and ours.

  My memories of La Ciotat come in disarray, not in chronological convenience. For La Ciotat was the middle period, supposedly the fresh start of our new life by the sea, where everything would be sorted and sifted and settled. But what actually happened was a deep underground swell of recrimination and anger from Loup and desperation to find answers from me. A rhythm of slow reckonings, a tidal restitution: one day’s flow dumping residue of rubbish, the next day’s ebb starting afresh, revealing lost remnants in the sand.

  Our fights were wretched. I had no idea what they were about, apart from a need for Loup to constantly pack his bags and leave. Which was always late at night. The moment he grabbed his laptop and work files, I would topple: he took the things he treasured most. At that time I had no car of my own, knew no one in La Ciotat, no last minute escape plan of my own. Apart from a friendly hedgehog that I would often meet late at night when I fled down to the sea, staging my own feeble getaway. (Un-witnessed by Loup, for he was already gone, and therefore my departure was ineffective.) Stooping over the steepest part of the retaining wall where the water was deep and turbulent with kelp and the pancake-shaped rocks clapped and collided, I was stirred to abandon my hollow ground and join the cacophony.

  That little hedgehog and our clandestine meetings outside the extravagant gates of a Riviera villa, brought to mind Muriel Barbery’s ‘l’Élégance du Hérisson’. I imagined myself clothed in quills, fiercely proud of my solitude, and in possession of sufficient dignity and fortitude to get us out of this mess. However, not caring ab
out crossing the busy road below wisely was definitely not élégante. Reminded of the stoic, patient diligence of the cousin-echidnas back home, I avoided that idiocy. Instead, I imagined my quills penning words to win Loup back.

  One full moon night, mesmerised by the silver line dancing on the water straight toward me, I had more pause to reflect on what may have gone wrong. All I could think was that none of this mess was rational or legitimate. It seemed simply to stem from you Pascal, now that it was clear you were never coming back.

  The Old White Telephone Box

  Our white Ikea table is not the crafted designer object we would both desire, but the places where we have taken it and the windows we have looked out whilst sitting at it, afford it a kind of ethereal beauty. And because this is where I do most of my conversing with Pascal, it is no longer banal.

  Today on France Inter I listen to a program about an old-fashioned white phone box perched on a green knoll in Japan overlooking the Pacific Ocean. A grieving Japanese man installed it there so that he could properly and openly mourn for his cousin and then a year later Fukushima ripped apart and broke his nation. Slowly the ruptured families trickled to his seaside town to step out of their shattered world, back in time to the safety of the cabinet’s comforting interior and in the confidence of a non-working telephone, could tentatively begin their conversations. Weeping out their rage and guilt at being the survivors.

  I wish that Loup would have his own white telephone box. Perhaps he does, where he goes at night when he leaves me.

  The Sea, La Mer.

  Meanwhile, La Ciotat possessed things that Auriol lacked. It certainly possessed things that the Hut lacked. Most profoundly the sea; where I finally enticed Loup and where playful times were shared, once he stopped leaving me and I stopped retreating there at night. Our new home was a four-metre by five-metre room: it must house all that we had, which was not a lot, but more than we had space for. Loup’s mission in life was to be a minimalist, and so we redefined our lives within 20 square metres. Loup’s own life was defined by his work away from home, compressed inside his laptop; mine however was by the work I did at home… sprawling possibilities of sewing, drawing, cooking and gardening, thus our restricted space was ultimately my biggest challenge.

  Unlike Auriol, we had no nuptial bed. Instead, we slept on bunks in the cramped entry, next to our front door, which opened onto the apartment block foyer. There was no other room apart from the bathroom with a door, directly opposite our bunks. So that is where we went for privacy: to sit on the toilet, or stand in the shower. Here, in this cell, with no window or natural light, Loup ate his breakfast sitting in semi-darkness on the toilet at 6.30 in the morning, out of deference to me. And I read my books there til well after midnight, out of deference to him. It is also where I would sometimes speak with my daughters on the phone, as they greeted their day and I welcomed our night. And where I sobbed quietly to my father and mother on the night of my 53rd Birthday, after Loup and I had had a resurgence of arguing, and I had spent the night curled under our table out on the balcony. Crumpled up with remorse, because I knew I was to blame as much as he. Knowing that we were at risk of dismembering our compass, which thus far had guided us; one arm leaning inward, poising to balance the other one’s stray.

  Our one by four-metre balcony where I spent that sleepless night soon became our saving grace. It brought us air and levity. A place where I could grow things in pots and dry our washing and imagine the space multiplying beyond. And listen to the folk guitar of a neighbour above and cough at the cigarette fumes from below and feel somehow included in the hilarity of our retired neighbours playing cards next door. Our view was the parking lot. Beyond a stand of majestic Mediterranean pines, with more apartments behind. The knowledge that way in the distance behind those pines and concrete and beach bars and le vieux ville, rose a massive terracotta flank out of the tourmaline depths of Le Mugel; that knowledge kept me comfort like an exquisite secret.

  A hot August night. Lying in our new bed, having ditched the bunks, our beautiful big bed which takes up one third of our living space, and upon which our rare visitors must arrange themselves self-consciously amongst our various pillows. Or sit perched upright on the edge. The French doors are wide open; our only source of air. The air we crave, this interminable canicule. Below on the beaches of La Ciotat, the summer carnival throbs and swells into the night.

  ‘Putain’ says Loup, ‘doesn’t anybody fucking work in this country?’

  Loup, who must arise in six hours and drive himself and his Polish and Turkish labourers hard in the 35-degree heat to get the building site finished before their turn comes for their annual holiday, has no patience for the estivale.

  Soon our turn will come. But Loup’s holiday is not a holiday. We will drive to Strasbourg for the fifth time in two years and immerse ourselves in Pascal’s forgotten kingdom. And along with Odette and Pauline and their husbands, will finish resurrecting the house of Pascal’s dream. Except that for us, it is a nightmare. Un cauchemare. As if to prepare us for what is to come, something leaps onto our bed and scampers across our legs.

  ‘What the fuck?’ Grabbing my headlamp, ‘Jesus Loup, it’s a rat! There are fucking RATS in our bed!’

  ‘Dégueulasse neighbour downstairs. It’s their fault…their shitty garden is a nothing but a rat-hole. I’m going write to the syndicate. Sale trou de cul!’

  But soon Loup is inert, having finally found morphée. And I lie there tossing in the heat, feet curled up into tight balls, sheet pulled taut, imagining the black plague creep up my legs, reliving the tales of Marcel Pagnol and the pestilence that destroyed the good citoyens of Marseille in 1720.

  And when we return ragged and weary from another two weeks work in Strasbourg, we throw open the doors to see one rat disappearing down the balustrade, and another devouring my cherry tomato plants. There is a nauseating stench on our balcony. It is not until the following Sunday that I finally convince Loup that we might be the source of the mauvaise odour, not our negligent neighbours below. Reluctantly he helps me move aside our washing machine, and we uncover the source of the smell. I gag. A whole family of rats lie rotting; a pile of emaciated bone and matted hair and maggot-squirming flesh jammed between the machine and our wall.

  ‘So who’s the fucking trou de cul, chéri?’

  Loup gallantly offers to don gloves and remove the rot. I ferry numerous plastic bags and disinfectants and sprays. But the odour remains for another week.

  Eventually, La Ciotat offers a kind of renaissance. Apart from another stint in emergency, and further health scares, life takes on a distinctly French rhythm, and I begin to feel at home.

  Until ‘hyponatraemia’. When the French Doctor who had kindly come to visit me at home announced his diagnosis, I felt both relief and panic. My head was fit to burst: fluid swelling upon my brain as I vomited and trembled. For days I had held a migraine at bay, and wandered in and out of a wilderness where it seemed possible I might never return. And wherein it seemed necessary to stagger up to the big bins outside the apartment block and dispose of any kitchen knives, or even Loup’s best hunting knife, which had of course once been Pascal’s, for Loup was no chasseur. (He had a different method. I knew from experience, my husband could wait: wait in stealth until his prey came to him, their soul vacant and their body supplicant, weary from the silent suspense.) I lay in the darkened room against the ferocity of summer, and shook. That night, Loup was at a loss and fatigued. The threat to take me to hospital made me feign an uneasy calm. But still no sleep came.

  The next day we went to the pathology clinic. The kind male nurse with one good eye and one detached retina, which took my attention off my own misery, examined my blood then explained to Loup that my sodium levels were shot, and I could tell by his tone that he was worried.

  ‘You can go back to hospital, or you can stay here and treat yourself,’ said the Doctor when we were back home.

  ‘Mais, I warn you Madame, il sera dur, t
rès dur.’ And it was. Bloody hard. Whilst Loup worked for the weekend, I stayed in our 31-degree room, forced to limit my fluid intake to 600mls each 24-hour period, from Friday night until Monday morning. By Sunday 1am, I became so dehydrated I started hallucinating and talking gibberish. I have rarely been so scared.

  By Monday midday my sodium levels tested normal again, and I was allowed to drink. Never before had a cup of tea tasted so miraculous. It turns out the culprit was a drug called Carbamazepine, which had in fact been a godsend when illness tracked me down in Auriol, and a pain free life was made possible by this epileptic medication. For almost two years, I enjoyed great health. But now it had caught me up: messing up other parts of me. Now, Loup only had to mention the word hospital, and I would cower and promise eternal good behaviour. The first stint during those first months in Auriol, had been in retrospect, a rich and comic microcosm of all that I would love and hate about my new land….

  The day my legs stopped working, Sunday April 2009.

  Easter Sunday in Auriol: three months into our marriage. We were getting ready to celebrate the fête de Pâques at Odette’s house. I was excited, as this was my first entrée into an old French tradition. I had worked hard to bake cakes in our small bench-top oven that I hoped Loup might be proud of. But there was something wrong.

  For several nights I had lain awake until the cars beneath our window revved and Jeanine would laboriously reverse out of her garage, negotiating the three tight turns necessary to emerge into the narrow Rue. And only then, after the village had awoken and commenced it’s day, only then would I manage to sleep. An incessant drilling throbbed under and around my left eye, shooting across to my ear, above my eye, traversing my scull and down the back of my neck. I wanted to scratch out my eye and itch and scrape away the nerves underneath.