To Sabine, Marine and Bastien,
my three suns.
To my mother,
for the life lesson that she
gives us every day.
CONTENTS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
1
Manelle was on edge, as she always was when she crossed the threshold of Marcel Mauvinier’s apartment. This man had the art of driving her round the bend. ‘You won’t forget to empty my pot, will you, mademoiselle?’ was his usual greeting. Never hello, or the least word of welcome. No, just this call to order barked from the living room where his posterior was glued to an armchair from dawn till dusk: ‘You won’t forget to empty my pot, mademoiselle?’ Implying that she was in the habit of not emptying his wretched pot. But that was the only thing Manelle thought about when she came here, the enamel chamber pot painted with purple flowers which she had to lug every morning from the bedroom to the bathroom to pour the contents – the product of a night of prostate disorder – down the toilet.
At almost eighty-three, having recently lost his wife, Mauvinier was entitled to four hours of home care a week, spread over five forty-eight-minute visits from Monday to Friday. Visits during which, as well as emptying the old boy’s chamber pot, Manelle had to carry out a number of chores including vacuuming, making the bed, doing the ironing and peeling vegetables, all under the wary eye of the old monster who always tried to get more than his money’s worth. ‘I’ve made a list for you,’ he simpered. Every morning she found the sheet of squared paper with a list of the day’s tasks lying on the waxed kitchen tablecloth. Manelle slipped on her pale green overalls and scanned Marcel Mauvinier’s cramped handwriting, the writing of a skinflint which never strayed outside the lines. Words written parsimoniously.
Empty chamber pot
Hang out washing
Put a white wash on
Make the bed (change the pillowcase)
Water the ficus in the dining room
Sweep kitchen + passage
Go down and fetch post
Marcel Mauvinier, former owner of a domestic appliance store, had become a champion at the little game of how-to-keep-your-home-help-busy-for-forty-eight-minutes. Manelle always wondered why they were called home helps – skivvies would be more apt. She checked her instructions again, trying to guess where the old ogre could have hidden the fifty-euro note today. She was ready to bet on the ficus. The money had become Manelle’s daily quest. Finding its hiding place was a challenge that spiced up the forty-eight minutes ahead. A year earlier, when for the first time she had come across the banknote that seemed to have been innocently left on the bedside table, she had stopped in mid-air as she was about to pick it up. The words ‘danger’ and ‘minefield’ had flashed across her mind. This highly visible fifty-euro note, lying nice and flat in the middle of the little doily on the bedside table, had felt a bit too obviously like a trap to be genuine. Marcel Mauvinier was not the sort to leave money lying around, let alone a large amount. For a few seconds, Manelle thought of all the things she could do with such a sum. Meals out, cinema, clothes, books and shoes had danced in front of her eyes. Things as specific as that pair of funky sandals she’d spotted the previous day in the window of San Marina on sale at €49.99 briefly entered her head. In the end, she decided to ignore the money. She made the bed and left the room without a glance at the lace-framed fifty-euro note taunting her.
Marcel Mauvinier had torn himself away from his TV screen to point his nose in the direction of the kitchen.
‘Is everything all right?’ the old man had inquired as she was filling in the time sheet. Never until now had the old man shown any concern for her wellbeing.
‘Yes, everything’s fine,’ she replied, looking him in the eye.
‘No problems?’ he added suspiciously, padding towards the bedroom.
‘Ought there to be a problem?’ she’d asked innocently behind his back.
The sight of his discombobulated expression on his return to the kitchen had delighted Manelle. A discomfiture that in her eyes was worth a lot more than fifty miserable euros.
Ever since that day, the note numbered U18190763573 – Manelle had jotted down the number to check whether it was always the same one – had travelled to the four corners of Marcel Mauvinier’s apartment. Tantalizing Manelle seemed to have become one of the old man’s reasons for living. The CCTV cameras had appeared a little later. A whole network of miniature cameras carefully positioned so as to cover almost the entire 110 square metres. Manelle had counted five. One in the kitchen, one in the bedroom, one covering the passage, one in the bathroom and another in the living room. Five cold black eyes that recorded her every movement. But the octogenarian had fallen into his own insidious trap by creating an idiotic addiction that consisted of trying to catch his home help stealing from him red-handed. One day she’d surprised the old ogre when he was watching the previous day’s footage. The minute she had the chance, Manelle had blinded the miniature cyclops by moving an object so it obscured the view, or given a vigorous flick of the duster, re-angling the camera towards the floor or the ceiling. Not once had Manelle mentioned the nomadic banknote, something that continued to puzzle Mauvinier and irritate him greatly. Several times, the young woman had been tempted to turn the note over, or fold it in four, just to signal to this crazy old man that she wasn’t fooled by his little game, but in the end she decided that to ignore the fifty euros completely was the best way of paying her tormentor back. So, every day, the banknote lay waiting for her. On the rug in the living room, on top of the washing machine, on the fridge, wedged between two books, next to the telephone, in the shoe closet, on top of a pile of towels in the bathroom cupboard, in the fruit basket, slipped in among a pile of letters. Or, like today, under the ficus to be watered. The note was poking out from beneath the terracotta pot. As she was fetching the post from the letter box downstairs, Manelle suddenly wondered anxiously how she would react if one day Marcel Mauvinier were to tire of the game and put the note back in his wallet once and for all. She had ended up growing fond of the fifty-euro note that turned her round of chores into a treasure hunt.
At 9.45 precisely, once her work was done, Manelle removed her overalls and signed the time sheet. From having seen him do so time and time again, she knew that at the same time Marcel Mauvinier was fishing out the pocket watch he kept hidden in his waistcoat to check that she had scrupulously adhered to the allotted forty-eight minutes.
2
Every morning, as soon as he had eaten the three buttered crispbreads spread with blackberry jam – the only kind he liked – and taken a few sips of café au lait, Ambroise hastily put the bowl and breakfast things in the sink, wiped away the crumbs scattered over the wax cloth, then crept down the long corridor that ran the length of the apartment. He never failed to stop halfway, by the first door, and press his ear to the wooden panel that barely dampened Beth’s snores. He loved listening to the deep
glottal noises that emanated from the elderly woman. Today, from the depths of the room, the sound of a becalmed sea reached his ears, the waves washing over the shingle followed by the fizzing of the sand. Inhalation, exhalation. Ebb and flow. Reassured, Ambroise continued down the corridor and slipped noiselessly into the bathroom adjacent to his room. The tired neon strip light always flickered twice before bathing the floor and walls in its cold light. A rectangle of plywood covered the ancient hip bath cluttering the space. Ambroise was always filled with the same sense of wonderment on seeing the makeshift draining board where the instruments lay. Spread out on the terry towel that had absorbed their moisture during the night, they gleamed brightly under the harsh lighting. He never tired of gazing at the sparkling reflections of the stainless-steel surfaces. That moment suspended in time when he found himself alone with them in the tiny, overheated room smelling of detergent gave him a particular thrill. He quietly ran through his checklist, his eyes darting from right to left over the terry towel. Scalpel, aneurysm hooks, bone separators, fixation forceps, gathering forceps, straight scissors, curved scissors, curved and double-curved needles, probes, nose clamp, haemostatic forceps, incision spreaders, flexible and rigid spatulas. He picked up the instrument he found the most beautiful of them all, the trocar. The fifty-centimetre metal shaft was agreeable to the touch. Its point, sharpened like a pencil, had a dozen tiny holes which he carefully cleaned with a miniature brush. On the floor by the bath stood a bulky leather case with its flaps wide open, exposing its dark innards. Ambroise grabbed the shammy cloth hanging above the washbasin and polished the instruments one by one to remove any last traces of moisture. The cloth glided along the needles, caressed the blades and made the handles gleam. One by one, he replaced the tools in their cases and put them away in the bag. After tossing the towel into the laundry basket, Ambroise closed and locked the case and took it into his room, where it joined its twin, an identical case which contained the pump and the embalming fluid. His mobile phone on the bedside table was vibrating frantically. Ambroise cleared his throat and took the call.
Roland Bourdin of Roland Bourdin & Sons never bothered to announce himself when he called, identifiable solely from the cold, distant tone he had always used with Ambroise. Over the four years that the young man had been working for the company, their relationship had not changed one jot. Professional and nothing more. With craggy features, a sickly pallor and a sparse goatee beard surrounding lips so thin that they were like blueish-purple scars, his boss was one of those people who look the way they sound. Since Monsieur Bourdin’s only descendant was a daughter, the addition of ‘& Sons’ to his company name had no other raison d’être than that of conferring on the firm a veneer of intergenerational respectability which reassured the clientele. Ambroise’s boss was calling to book in a home visit. As was his wont, and with no linguistic flourishes other than what was strictly necessary for making himself understood, Bourdin rapped out the information in an order determined by him alone and from which he never departed: client’s surname, first name, gender, age and address where the procedure was to take place. ‘Didn’t write down house number but it’s yellow according to the wife,’ he added curtly before hanging up. As sparing with his definite articles as he was with social niceties, thought Ambroise as he noted the details on his iPhone. He went into the vast main bathroom he shared with Beth, brushed his teeth, shaved, tamed his thick black mop with hair gel and spritzed his cheeks with two squirts of aftershave. On the hanger in the wardrobe, his work suit awaited him. White shirt, dark grey tie, black jacket and trousers. He eased his seventy-six kilos into the freshly ironed clothes. Later, he would don the protective clothing that was his real work outfit, the one people never saw, over the first, like a second skin. For now, appearances were paramount. Don’t cause alarm, be as smooth as possible. A ghost, that’s what he must try to be like. A ghost in a suit and tie who must leave no more trace than a passing shadow. Satisfied with his reflection in the mirror above the washbasin, Ambroise headed for the front door, swinging one precious case from each hand. A tourist setting off for a distant country, he thought with a smile. His grin broadened on seeing Beth standing in the middle of the corridor. Whatever the hour and despite all the precautions he took to be as discreet as possible, he always found the old lady barring his path when he left the apartment, offering him her radiant face. He bent his one-metre-eighty frame so that his grandmother could deposit the day’s kiss on his forehead and whisper in his ear the word, ‘Go,’ which sounded like a blessing each time. More would have been pointless. That one syllable contained all the love in the world.
3
‘At the roundabout, take the third exit then keep right,’ boomed Fabrice Luchini’s rich thespian voice, filling the cab of the brand-new van and startling Ambroise. He hadn’t yet got used to his GPS. ‘This amazing technology gives you a whole array of famous voices to choose from,’ the Renault salesman had told him when he went to pick up the vehicle. ‘From Carole Bouquet to Jean Gabin, or Louis de Funès, Bourvil, Mitterrand, De Gaulle, Brigitte Bardot and lots of others,’ the vendor had added proudly. Imagining De Gaulle suggesting he turn left or Mitterrand telling him to keep right amused Ambroise. He promised himself he would ditch Luchini at the first opportunity and replace him with Carole Bouquet. Once again, Bourdin had chosen white for this new acquisition. ‘You are artisans like any others,’ he dinned into his staff all year round. ‘Artisans of the human body, fair enough, but you are still artisans. And artisans always drive white vans!’ Ambroise was not particularly happy about turning up at clients’ homes in the same sort of vehicle as a decorator, plumber or electrician. He would have preferred a nobler colour – the same grey, for example, as the one his boss kept for ceremonial hearses, a halfway colour that exuded neutrality, sobriety and efficiency. Instead, he had to be content with this non-colour, and all because Monsieur Bourdin wanted to save four hundred euros on the metallic paint option.
Fabrice broke in again. ‘In two hundred metres, turn right, then you have reached your destination.’ Rows of identical houses stood on either side of Impasse des Sorbiers. Dubiously Ambroise contemplated the dozens of small, cloned houses, all with the same garage and tiny conservatory, identical balconies and anthracite-grey slate roofs, the same dormer windows, each house enclosed by a conifer hedge. To his dismay, all the houses were painted some shade of yellow: straw, sunshine, lemon, canary, corn, broom, mustard. ‘Thank you, Roland Bourdin & Sons,’ he cursed under his breath. Trusting his instinct, he headed for the one which had the most cars standing outside. After parking his van half on the pavement with the rear parking sensors beeping tyrannically, he unloaded his two bulging bags and mounted the front steps. Before he could press the bell, the door opened to reveal a woman in her sixties with a puffy face, her eyes red from crying. Her whispered ‘hello’ barely passed the barrier of her lips. She was distracted, stumbled over her words, murmured rather than spoke. Like all the others, thought Ambroise. Grief had that terrible effect of muffling the vocal cords and stifling sounds in the back of the throat. He bowed his head in greeting to the small gathering in the house. People stood aside to make way for him as he followed the mistress of the house. The sadness imprisoned in the walls made the atmosphere suffocating. Ambroise took the woman and children to one side and explained very briefly why he was there, without really going into detail. Only give a vague idea, don’t disclose anything of the process, that was the rule, whatever questions people asked. The less they knew, the better it was for all concerned. He chose his words carefully, words tested on many occasions, words to soothe. He asked for access to a washbasin before being shown into the room. He reassured the woman one last time before entering. An hour and a half alone with her husband was all he required to do what had to be done.
4
The curtains had been drawn and the room was in half-darkness. The characteristic cloying smell that sometimes assailed his nostrils when he arrived in a home was impercept
ible here. Ambroise put his bags down on the floor, turned on the centre light and opened the curtains to let in as much daylight as possible. On a chair, suit, shirt, tie and underwear had been neatly arranged, and on the floor was a pair of freshly polished shoes. The body lay on the bed. Sixty-something, very stout. Over ninety kilos, guessed Ambroise at a glance, pulling a face. This was going to take a toll on his back, once again. The man looked as though he’d enjoyed the good life. Ambroise was going to have to watch out. He had often been struck by how those who’d lived a good life made bad corpses. The gaping pyjama jacket revealed dark blotches on the man’s sides. His ears and hands had already turned a lovely blueish purple. Ambroise removed his jacket, slipped on his white coat and a pair of latex gloves, and put a mask over his nose and mouth. He unfurled the plastic body bag next to the deceased and rolled the body onto it. Rigor mortis had already set in, making the limbs and jaws stiff. Relaxing the muscles was the first task. Ambroise grabbed one of the arms and moved it back and forth from the shoulder, then leaned on it with all his weight to bend the elbow. He took the hand and stretched and loosened the fingers. He did the same with the other arm, then attacked the legs. All this time, he was listening to the body, his gaze roving over the surface, attentive to the slightest detail. Cardiac massage, he inferred, noting the blueish area around the sternum. He manipulated the lower jaw to restore its mobility. Then Ambroise tackled the deceased head-on to raise him up and remove his pyjama top. ‘Last tango, old fellow,’ his former supervisor used to say to the person in his embrace. He had taught Ambroise everything he knew and was affectionately nicknamed the Master in the funeral business. ‘Illusionists, Ambroise, that’s all we are,’ he would say. ‘No more than illusionists whose job is to make people believe that everything stops the instant death strikes. Nonsense. Life doesn’t stop with death, quite the opposite. It loves bodies, it’s never finished with them. Without us, it would transform every corpse into an abomination. We’re there to inhibit its invasive presence and repel it as if it were an army on the march. Hunt it down, deep inside the tiniest organs, then expel it and bolt the doors to defer the inevitable disintegration of the flesh. Magicians, young Padawan,’ he would blaze proudly, ‘that’s what we are, magicians whose arduous task it is to transform corpses into peaceful slumberers.’
The Rest of Their Lives Page 1