A group of girls from Belle’s class approached her, curious to inspect the new arrival. Mr Mangin, the history and geography teacher, came over to fetch them, and greeted Miss Belle Blake with a touch of ceremony. She left her brother, wishing him luck with a gesture incomprehensible to anyone not born south of Manhattan. Mme Arnaud came to tell Warren that his class didn’t start until nine and that he was to wait in the homework room. He chose instead to nose around the school, casing the joint and establishing the contours of his new prison. He went into the main building of the school, a circular building with spokes, known as “the daisy,” with a hall designed like a beehive, where the older children could hang out away from the homework room, smoke, pick each other up, put up posters and organize meetings – a sort of training ground for adult life. Warren found himself alone there, in front of a hot-drinks dispenser and a large sign advertising the school fête, which would take place on the 21st of June. He wandered down the corridors, opened a few doors, avoided some groups of adults, and ended up in a gymnasium where a basketball team was practising; he watched them for a while, intrigued as ever by the French lack of coordination. One of his happiest memories was going to a game between the Chicago Bulls and the New York Knicks, and seeing the living legend Michael Jordan flying from one basket to the other. It was enough to make you pine for your homeland for the rest of your life.
A hand on his shoulder put an end to the daydreaming. It wasn’t a monitor or a teacher charged with bringing him back in line, it was a boy, about a head taller than he was, accompanied by two acolytes in loose, too large clothes. Warren was built like his father – small, dark and wiry, with controlled gestures and a natural economy of movement. You could see gravity in the still fixity of his stare. He appeared at first as the contemplative type, the sort whose first reaction is not to react. His own sister had assured him that he would one day become a handsome, greying, experienced-looking man, but that he would have to work hard to achieve that sort of appearance.
“Are you the American?”
As if brushing off a fly, Warren pushed off the hand, which belonged to the one he correctly guessed to be the leader. The two others, apparently his lieutenants, waited cautiously. Warren, despite his youth, recognized that tone of voice, the slightly unsure aggression, the attempt at authority on the off-chance that it might work, the testing of limits. It was the most cautious form of aggression, practised by cowards. Surprised for a moment, the American boy hesitated before answering. In any case, it wasn’t really a question, and whatever it was that these three wanted, they certainly weren’t there just by chance. Why me? he wondered. Why had they picked on him, as soon as he had arrived? How had he, in less than half an hour, become the object of this vague and foolish threat, which was about to become more concrete, encouraged by his silence? He knew the answer, with a knowledge that was beyond his years.
“What do you want from me?”
“You’re American. You must be rich.”
“Cut the bullshit and tell me how your business works.”
“What d’your parents do?”
“None of your fucking business. What’s your little racket? Extortion? Piece work or contract work? How many of you – three, six, twenty? What do you reinvest in?”
“? . . .”
“Nil organization. Thought so.”
None of the three could understand a word of what he had said, nor where this confidence came from. The leader felt somehow insulted. He looked around, pulled Warren to the end of an empty corridor leading to the refectory and pushed him so hard that he fell onto a low wall.
“Don’t fuck with me, new boy.”
Then all three got together to shut him up, with knees in his ribs and wild punches in the general direction of his face. Finally one of them sat on his chest, went through his pockets and found a ten-euro note. They then demanded from a red and breathless Warren the same sum the next day as an entrance fee to the Lycée Jules-Vallès. Holding back tears, he promised not to forget.
Warren never forgot.
*
Cholong-sur-Avre is an old medieval stronghold, lying like a jewel in the bocage. It reached its apogee at the end of the Hundred Years War, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and nowadays counts seven thousand inhabitants. With its half-timbered houses, eighteenth-century mansions and streets bordered by canals, Cholong-sur-Avre is a remarkably well-preserved architectural gem.
Maggie opened her pocket dictionary to look up colombages, and then checked it with the real thing by walking down Rue Gustave Roger; most of the houses, with their framework of beams, were unlike anything she had ever seen before. As she found her way to the centre of town – Cholong was shaped like a pentagon edged with four boulevards and a highway – Maggie walked down several streets built entirely of half-timbered houses, and she very much admired the prospect. With half an eye on the guidebook, she eventually, without really looking for it, found herself in the central square, the Place de la Libération, the heart of Cholong, a large space out of proportion with the narrow streets surrounding it. There were two restaurants, several cafés, a bakery, the tourist office, a newsagent and a few old buildings around the edge of a huge rectangular space, which served as a car park on non-market days. Maggie bought some local papers and settled down on the terrace of the café Roland Fresnel, ordering a long double espresso. She closed her eyes briefly and sighed, enjoying this all too rare moment of solitude. Time spent with the family was, of course, at the top of her list of priorities, but time away from them came a close second. Cup in hand, she leafed through a local newspaper, the Dépêche de Cholong, then the Réveil Normand, (the Eure edition); it was one way of getting to know her new home country. On the front of the Dépêche was a photo of a gentleman of sixty-five, a native of Cholong, who had once been a regional middle-distance running champion, and who was now taking part in the Senior Olympics in Australia. Maggie was amused by the thought of this character, and read the article. She understood the main drift of it: here was a man with a lifelong passion for running, who had only just fulfilled his dream right at the end of his journey. As a young man, Mr Christian Mounier had been a just about passable runner. Now that he had reached retirement, he had become an international champion, competing on the other side of the world. Maggie wondered if life really could offer a chance to catch up, a last-minute opportunity to distinguish oneself. She dwelt on this problem just long enough to turn the page. There was a long list of local news stories: petty crimes, an attack on a garage owner, several burglaries in a neighbouring housing estate, one or two domestic quarrels and a few absurd pieces of hot air. Maggie couldn’t always follow the details, and wondered why editors always put all this gloomy and banal daily misery on the front pages of the paper. She deliberated over various possible answers to the question: perhaps local violence was what most interested those readers who loved to whip up feelings of fear and indignation in themselves. Or perhaps readers liked to feel that their town wasn’t quite as boring as it seemed, and had just as many incidents as any other. Or perhaps rural dwellers liked to be reminded that they suffered from all the inconveniences of town life without any of its advantages. And of course the final reason, the saddest and eternal truth – that nothing is more entertaining than the misery of others.
Back in Newark she had never read the local or national papers. Just opening one was too much of a challenge for her – she was much too afraid of what she might find leaping out at her, that she would come face to face with an all too familiar name or face. Uncomfortably reminded of her previous life, she leafed nervously through the rest of the papers, glancing at the weather forecast and the forthcoming events in the area, fairs, car-boot sales, a small art exhibition in the town hall. She gulped down her water. She was suddenly overcome by a sense of oppression, which was accentuated by a huge shadow that was darkening the square as the sun moved. It was that of Sainte Cecile, a church describe
d as a jewel of Norman Gothic art. Maggie had pretended to ignore it, but now turned to face it.
*
The Brother 900 had been placed in the middle of the Ping-Pong table, which was itself now in the centre of the veranda, a geometrical symmetry carefully arranged by Frederick. He sat in front of the machine, gathering his thoughts, with the sun behind him. He slid a piece of paper – the whitest thing he had ever seen – into the carriage. One by one he checked the mother-of-pearl keys, now sparkling – dusted and then cleaned with liquid soap. He had even managed to soften a ribbon that had become as dry as hay by holding it over a pan of boiling water. He was now ready to make contact, alone and face to face with the machine. He had probably never opened a book, had always spoken in direct and unadorned language, and had never written anything more complex than an address on the back of a matchbook. Can you say anything on this machine? he wondered, without taking his eyes off the keys.
Fred had never found an interlocutor he could respect. The lie is already in the ear of the listener, he thought. He had been obsessed with the idea of telling his version of the truth ever since the result of the trial which had obliged him to flee to Europe. Nobody had really tried to understand his evidence, not the psychiatrists, not the lawyers, not his ex-friends, nor any of the other well-intentioned people: everybody just saw him as a monster, and felt entitled to judge him. This machine wouldn’t do that, it would take everything on board, the good and the bad, the inadmissible and the unsayable, the unjust and the horrible – because they were all true, that was what was so incredible, these lumps of fact which nobody wanted to accept were all real. If one word followed another, he could select them all himself, with nobody suggesting anything. And nobody forbidding him anything either.
In the beginning was the word; somebody had said that to him long ago. Now, forty years later, he had been offered the opportunity to verify that saying. In the beginning there would certainly be one particular word; all the rest would follow.
He raised his forefinger and hit a light-blue, just visible g, then an i, then looked around for an o, then a v, and, getting bolder, found an a with his little finger, then two ns, with two different fingers, finishing off, with the forefinger again, with an i. He read it through, pleased that he hadn’t made any mistakes.
giovanni
*
The young Blakes had obtained permission to have lunch together. Belle searched for her brother in the playground, and finally found him under the covered part, with his new classmates. It looked as though he knew them; in fact he was interrogating them.
“I’m hungry,” she said.
He followed his sister to a table where they found two plates full of mixed crudités. The refectory was so exactly like the one in Cagnes that they had no comment to make about it.
“We’re not far from home,” he said, “we could go home for lunch.”
“And find Mom with her head in the fridge, wondering what to give us, and Dad in his pyjamas in front of the TV. No thanks.”
Warren began to eat, starting with what he liked best, the cucumber, while Belle started with what she liked least, the beetroot. She noticed a blue mark on her brother’s eyebrow.
“What’s that on your eye?”
“Oh nothing – I was just showing off on the basketball court. What are your classmates like?”
“The girls seem quite cool, not sure about the boys. I had to introduce myself. I . . .”
Warren didn’t listen to the rest, his mind was far away, puzzling over questions that had been bothering him ever since the attack. He had made enquiries and gathered information, not so much about the small-time racketeers, but about others, the ones who might help him turn the predator into prey, the executioner into a victim, just as he had seen it done by so many of his uncles and cousins before him. It was in his blood. He had spent the rest of the morning asking innocuous questions about everybody. Who was that one? What was that one called? Which one is his brother? Then he had struck up acquaintances with some of them, obtaining information without them noticing. He had even taken a few notes to remind himself of the picture he was building up. Bit by bit the accumulation of detail was beginning to make some kind of sense, but only to him.
The one with the limp has a father who’s a mechanic, who works in the garage of the father of the one in 3C, who’s about to be chucked out. The captain of the basketball team will do anything to get a better mark in maths, and he’s friends with the big guy in 2A3 who’s in love with the class rep. The class rep is best friends with the motherfucker who took my 10 euros, and his sidekick is scared stiff of the tech teacher, who’s married to the daughter of the owner of the office where his father works. The four guys in Terminale B who always hang out together are organizing the end-of-term show and want the limping guy’s sound stuff, the smallest one is good at maths and is the mortal enemy of the shit who hit me.
The problem had been solved, at least according to his logic, before the pudding came. And Belle hadn’t stopped talking.
*
Still sitting on the terrace, reading the guidebook, Maggie ordered a second cup of coffee.
The tympanum is decorated with paintings of the Virgin Mary and the martyrdom of Saint Cecilia, who was beheaded in Rome in 232 AD. The massive wooden doors are carved with representations of work in the fields in the four seasons. The porch is surmounted by a pinnacled double tower.
She could have simply got up and gone over to the church, all of whose details she now knew, walked into the nave, faced the crucifix, spoken to the figure of Christ. She could have prayed and contemplated in the way she used to before meeting Frederick, in the days when he was still called Giovanni. After marrying him, there was never again any question of raising her eyes before a cross, or even of entering a holy place. By kissing Giovanni on the lips, she had spat in the face of Christ. By agreeing to marry the man of her life, she had insulted her God, and her God had a reputation for never forgetting and for liking to be repaid.
“You know, Giovanni, when it’s very hot in summer, I like to keep a very light blanket over me,” she often used to say to him. “You think you don’t need it, but you do, especially at night. Well, believing in God, for me, was that light blanket, and you’ve taken it away from me.”
Now, twenty years later, she was very rarely tempted to re-engage in any sort of dialogue or negotiation with God. She didn’t quite know if it was her who had changed or God. In the end she had felt that she no longer needed that light blanket.
*
In a concrete shed next to the stadium, the gymnastics teacher, Mme Barbet, searched the games-equipment cupboard for something for the new girl to wear.
“They didn’t tell me I had to bring my gym things.”
“You weren’t to know. Here, try that.”
Belle was given a pair of navy-blue boy’s shorts. She put them on, tightening the cord. She kept her running shoes on, the same sort as she had been used to wearing in Newark, and pulled on a lemon-yellow vest with the number 4 on it.
“It comes down to my knees.”
“I haven’t got anything smaller.”
Despite her efforts, Belle couldn’t prevent her red bra from showing under the vest straps. She hesitated before joining the others.
“It’s only girls,” said Mme Barbet, who didn’t think it was important.
Belle followed her onto the basketball court, where the girls were already practising, looking forward to seeing an American in action. They threw her a ball; she bounced it two or three times on the ground, as she had seen them do, and passed it to the nearest teammate. Belle had never taken any interest in sport, and hardly knew the rules of basketball. So where did it spring from, this grace of a champion, this ease in new situations, this natural gift for hitherto unknown movements? Where did her natural elegance come from? The casual way in which she could put on clothes that didn’t
suit her and then look fantastic in them? The relaxed way she dealt with situations which others would have found stressful? In her absurd, almost ridiculous outfit, Belle looked superb, right at the centre of the game.
The four tennis players in the distance didn’t miss a trick. They stopped their game and came over to grip the netting and gaze at the quivering red bra, which undulated innocently with every one of Belle’s movements.
*
It was nearly four, and there was no longer any point in Frederick getting out of his dressing gown. It was no longer the symbol of his idleness, it was his new work uniform. Now he could exhibit himself with impunity – untidy and unshaven, trailing around in slippers all day – and soon there would be many more little allowances to be made. He took a few steps out into the garden, walking with the demeanour of the Sun King towards the sound of secateurs coming from behind the neighbouring hedge; he could distinguish the shape of a man pruning his roses. They shook hands through the trellis and examined one another for a moment.
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