The Incorrigible Optimists Club

by Jean-Michel Guenassia

  ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘That’s a good sign.’

  She devoured two croissants in no time at all and asked for another café au lait. She wanted to say something, and then hesitated.

  ‘… Can I trust you, Michel?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Nothing happened to me. Do you understand? Nothing at all. We’ll never speak about it again. We’ll behave as if it never happened.

  ‘… If you want.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise.’

  She noticed my awkward silence and pursed lips.

  ‘Nothing has happened! To anybody. Franck mustn’t know.’

  ‘I can’t not tell him. If he found out one day, he would kill me.’

  ‘If you don’t tell him, if I don’t tell him, he’ll never know. In any case, it doesn’t matter any more. We’re no longer together.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘It’s over between us.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘I don’t know. We don’t see each other any more. He’s… vanished.’

  ‘At home too, he’s disappeared.’

  ‘When you are with someone, you don’t leave them without any news for weeks unless there’s a good reason. I’ve called him hundreds of times. I’ve spoken to your father, your mother, you and your sister. I don’t know how many times I’ve left the same message, but he’s never called me back. The only time I managed to catch him on the phone, it lasted thirty seconds. He was on the doorstep, in a hurry. He was going to ring me in the evening. Three weeks went by. Generally, when a man behaves like that with a woman, when he is… elusive, it means he’s met another woman and he doesn’t dare tell her about it.’

  ‘That’s impossible. Not Franck.’

  ‘Do you swear you don’t know anything?’

  ‘I swear.’

  ‘Can you think of an explanation for his disappearance?’

  ‘There must be one. I know he loves you.’

  ‘Did he tell you?’

  ‘He’s given me to understand he does.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘We were at your place.’

  ‘I’m sure there’s another woman in his life.’

  I was no great expert in love affairs. My only experience came from my reading. I could see no reason for his constant absence. Ever since he returned from Germany, he had slept no more than three or four nights at the flat. I was careful not to talk to him about it.

  ‘If he did that, he’s a real bastard.’

  She shrugged her shoulders and tried to smile. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were red. She bit her lip, sniffed and caught her breath, and choked back her sorrow.

  ‘You’ve got to be bloody stupid to try to kill yourself for a guy! Now, it’s over. I’ve got to be stronger.’

  ‘I just can’t believe it. It’s not possible.’

  ‘That’s the way life is. Yet I could have sworn that… I’m going home.’

  The waiter brought us the bill. Cécile hadn’t a penny on her and I was two francs sixty short. I didn’t know where to put myself. The waiter was a decent fellow.

  ‘It’s not a small amount. Bring it to me. I’ll trust you. It’s just that I have to pay the boss cash.’

  ‘I’ll bring it tomorrow, without fail,’ I promised.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she asked him, ‘you wouldn’t have a cigarette?’

  He gave her a Gitane. He struck a match. She puffed at it with infinite pleasure.

  ‘I don’t know whether that’s a very good idea.’

  ‘Listen, Michel, get out of this habit of telling me what I ought to do.’

  I accompanied her back home. We didn’t feel like talking. She stopped twice, tired by the walk.

  ‘Perhaps it would be best for you to go back to the hospital?’

  ‘Michel, I’m telling you again, I don’t need a nursemaid.’

  I managed to go up the stairs ahead of her. I removed the little note I’d slipped under the door without her seeing me. I retrieved my bunch of keys from under the doormat. She went inside. I stayed on the landing.

  ‘Don’t worry. It’ll be all right.’

  ‘Do you want me to give you back your keys?’

  ‘No, keep them. Unless you don’t want to come any more.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  She kissed me on the cheek.

  ‘Thank you, little bro’. Thank you for everything.’

  ‘I’ll come by tomorrow maybe.’

  ‘Whenever you like.’

  Once again, I did the round of the bars, in search of Franck this time. Nobody had seen him. Two people made fun of me: ‘Maybe your brother’s with Cécile?’

  ‘If I do find Cécile, I’m not going to tell your brother.’

  I took no notice. Everywhere, I left the same message: ‘If you see him, tell him to get in touch with his brother. It’s urgent.’

  I called on Richard, his best friend, who lived behind the mosque. They were members of the same cell and sold the Sunday edition of L’Humanité together in the market on rue Mouffetard. He seemed confused to see me. He had had a crew cut.

  ‘Did you have a problem?’

  ‘What with?’

  ‘Your hair?’

  ‘Michel, I’m busy, what is it you want?’

  ‘I was hoping that Franck was at your place.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him for some time. Did he tell you he was sleeping here?’

  ‘He has done occasionally. I thought—’

  ‘He must be at Cécile’s.’

  ‘If you see him, tell him to get in touch with me. It’s important.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  We stood there confronting one another for two seconds too long. Richard, normally so warm and spontaneous, was on his guard. He was doing his best to keep his composure. There was an unpleasant stiffness in his manner. Good liars keep their heads held high. They fear nothing. Bad ones look away, as if to protect themselves. It’s something I must remember.

  ‘That hairstyle doesn’t suit you. You looked better before.’

  To put my mind at rest, I called on two other friends of Franck’s. They didn’t know where he was and promised to give him the message when they next saw him.

  During dinner, my mother asked me: ‘How was it at school today?’

  ‘Same as usual.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘In our English lesson, we continued with Shakespeare, and in French, we started Racine’s Les Plaideurs.’

  ‘Are you ready for your maths test?’

  ‘I’ve worked with Nicolas a lot.’

  ‘It’s a pity we don’t see him any more,’ my father continued. ‘You should invite him one Sunday.’

  I spent part of the night devising a list of reasonable excuses to give Sherlock without him over-reacting, being doubtful in any way or needing to check up, but feared I wouldn’t be able to slip through his net. I slept badly. In the morning, I was resigned to a trip to the doghouse when, in my jacket pocket, I found the hospital admittance form that the nurse had asked me to fill in when Cécile was being admitted to casualty. I saw it as a sign of fate. A sort of delay of execution. It could succeed because it was far-fetched. I hesitated about tampering with this document, but I had no alternative solution. I took a black ballpoint pen and I filled it in with my name. I used a minimum of detail. In the space for ‘wounds’, I put ‘minor bruising’. For ‘cause of accident’, I put ‘knocked down by a cyclist’. I made sure I wrote in small, illegible letters like a doctor. I signed with a scrawl. My heart was thumping as I handed him this note of apology. He examined it without casting doubts on its authenticity and enquired about my health.

  ‘Nowadays, you have to be careful of everything: cars, buses and cyclists. It’s a good lesson.’

  I felt I had to add: ‘And he didn’t even stop!’

  ‘It’s disgraceful. What century are we living in?’

  ‘It’s not serious,
you know. As the doctor said, I was more shaken than hurt.’

  Thanks to Nicolas, the maths test went well. He was not obliged to help me, but he allowed me to copy, as he always had done. What with all this business, I had rather neglected him. He bore no grudges. In order to say sorry, I suggested we play baby-foot. We went to Maubert. I had not been near the game for three months, but baby-foot’s rather like riding a bike, it’s not something you forget.

  19

  After having left the dying man with the duty houseman, who was snowed under and didn’t know which part of the wretched man he should examine, Igor and Victor set off to the Canon d’Austerlitz to get to know one another. Very soon, the stocks of vodka were exhausted.

  ‘Have you drunk whisky before, Igor Emilievitch?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘It’s got a strange taste, but you quickly get used to it.’

  ‘I’m not very keen on anything American.’

  ‘Be careful, real whisky is Scottish.’

  Igor drank his first glass of whisky in the Russian way. Not as pleasant as vodka, but not bad even so. The two men swore eternal brotherhood, vowed never to part and recounted the stories of their lives to one another. Victor was cunning. He knew that a fellow-countryman would soon uncover his fibs. He told the truth. Quite simply. He knew that after the euphoria of their reunion would come the moment of suspicion about the historical enemy. Like all liars, Victor could not believe that people told the truth, and he did not believe Igor: ‘No, you’re not a doctor. I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I swear to you. I graduated from the Leningrad Medical Institute. The degree isn’t recognized in France. I specialised in cardiology. I practised for fifteen years. I held a consultancy at the Tarnovsky Hospital in Leningrad. During the war, I was a military doctor in Zhukov’s army with the rank of lieutenant. I was a good doctor. My patients adored me.’

  ‘You’re talking nonsense. You’re a porter! You know a bit about medicine through seeing sick people and listening to doctors. No one fools father Victor. We’re alike, you and I. Clever guys can diddle both the ignorant and the stupid. Stop taking the piss, comrade.’

  Igor found himself confronted by an insoluble problem. How could he prove that he had been a doctor? His attempts at explanations and corroboration, and his sketches, were all met by a wall of incredulity. Victor wanted real proof. On embossed paper, with official rubber stamps in colour, on headed paper and with ministerial signatures. The degree certificate was still in Leningrad. Victor smiled.

  ‘You’re no more a doctor than I’m Prince Yusupov’s cousin!’

  ‘You… Prince Yusupov’s cousin!’

  ‘I tell the tourists that for fun. I have to admit you’ve got the knack. The important thing is to look the part. I know grand dukes and counts who look like housekeepers or cobblers. When they let it be known that they’re from the nobility, they’re treated as liars. In my case, everyone believes me.’

  Igor no longer had a combative nature. His flight from the USSR and his wanderings had led him to see notions such as truth or lying from a different viewpoint. At present, he was unsure about anything apart from the fact that he was alive. For him, it was the one and only truth on this earth: you were either alive or you were dead. The rest was nothing but belief or hypothesis.

  ‘Believe whatever you like, it’s all the same to me. You’re right, here I’m not a doctor, I’m a porter.’

  Victor took this rapid renunciation as proof that Igor was a downright liar and that he would therefore make a good taxi driver.

  ‘How much do you earn on this job?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Would you like to earn a decent living, pay yourself whatever you want and be free?’

  ‘Who would say no to such an offer? If it’s honest, I accept.’

  ‘Are you insulting me or joking? I’m a former officer in the army of the Tsar, and don’t forget it. I hope you’re not Jewish?’

  ‘I’m alive, isn’t that enough for you? I agree to work for you on one condition: that I work at night. I only sleep during the daytime.’

  ‘It’s not that simple. Driving at night requires special skills.’

  ‘Take it or leave it, Victor Anatolievitch.’

  ‘My wife will be grateful. The guy who works for me during the daytime rips me off. With you, I won’t have to worry. The one good thing about Commies is that they’re honest. What should I take to get to sleep at night?’

  ‘I’m not familiar with French medicaments. I refuse to take sleeping pills. How long have you had insomnia?’

  ‘I haven’t slept since I first arrived in Paris. In my youth, I was scrawny and slept like a log. You’re one hell of a liar, if you were a doctor you’d know how to cure insomnia.’

  Igor became a taxi driver and worked for Victor, who had a flexible notion of honesty and paid scant attention to his customers, especially the foreigners.

  ‘You’re wrong to bother about these minor details, Igor Emilievitch. You know me, I’m a believer and I respect the commandments. If God created mugs, it’s in order that they should be ripped off.’

  Igor took some time to become a real Parisian taxi driver. Paris was a vast city, Parisian men were stark raving mad, Parisian women were hotheads, the suburbs were snarled up and those who lived there were skinflints. But thanks to his doctor’s memory, he eventually came to know the street map by heart. The traffic jams were inescapable, though.

  ‘In the old days, the traffic moved. At the time of the Liberation, it was perfect. After that, the 2CVs came and wrecked our lives and ever since Renault invented the Dauphine for these ladies it’s been a shambles.’

  Victor taught him the various ways of making a little extra on the side that had enabled him to afford the white house he was so proud of on the heights of L’Haÿ-les-Roses from where he had a view over Paris, the Eiffel Tower and the Sacré Coeur. Up until Victor’s death twelve years later, during the événements of May 1968 – caused by a heart attack in a gigantic traffic jam on the Nationale 7 near Orly, when he was driving a Texan who was yelling because he had been caught up for two hours in the southern suburbs – he was convinced that Igor was an inveterate liar and had never been a doctor in his life. After making him swear on the Novodievichny icon not to tell anyone, not even his confessor, he revealed to him the art of distracting the customer’s attention and turning full circle while appearing to drive straight ahead; how to lengthen the journey by catching the red traffic lights; which streets were used by the dustbin lorries so that you could get delayed behind them; the route followed three times a week by the horses of the Republican guards; the advantages of taking the avenues in which there were roadworks rather than those which were free of traffic; how to get yourself stuck behind a delivery or removal lorry without the customer suspecting, and the thousand and one ruses that allowed you to buy yourself a fine detached house in the course of twenty years of honest labour. He also taught him how to avoid like the plague those sadistic taxi policemen whom the Préfecture despatched in pursuit of cab drivers so as to harass them under any pretext – taught him how to recognize them and how to come to an agreement with them when you could not do otherwise.

  ‘There’s a flawless way of spotting them: they only drive around in black 403s. As soon as you have one on your tail, turn your sign back on. You’re lucky, they don’t often work at night.’

  Igor and Victor hadn’t any need to sign a contract. They had done a deal and they’d embraced. Igor grumbled that he was being exploited by Victor, but he continued to work for him. He never followed any of his advice, and he took his passengers on the most direct and economical route. He could have worked for himself, but in effect he was his own boss and he made his living without any worries. That was what mattered to him. Unlike Victor, who used it to blow his own trumpet, he never told any of his customers that he was Russian. Sometimes he drove Soviet Communist Party dignitaries, who loved the Russian cabarets in Paris. He overheard secret c
onversations murmured in the back of his taxi. Thus was how he was able to inform us four days beforehand that Nikita Khrushchev was about to be dismissed and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev and that, during his visits to Paris, the unremovable and Buster Keaton-like Andrey Gromyko took the opportunity to call on a very dear ladyfriend whose name was Martine.

  20

  Franck was leaning against a wall at the church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont and smoking a cigarette. He was waiting for the classes at Henri-IV to come out. He had been at school there himself, and seven years later I encountered the same teachers, who examined me doubtfully.

  ‘Are you related to Franck Marini?’

  ‘Yes, Madame, he’s my brother.’

  ‘He was more talented than you are.’

  Ten days previously, he had left the flat, slamming the door behind him. I crossed over the road to join him and instead of shaking hands he kissed me on the cheek. I put that down to emotion.

  ‘I got your message. Supposing we go for a drink? Have you got time?’

  We crossed back over rue Clovis. We bumped into Sherlock who, as a good supervisor should, was presiding over the pupils leaving school. He came over to us and shook hands with Franck in a friendly way.

  ‘How are you, Marini?’

  ‘Very well, Monsieur Masson. And how’s Michel getting on?’

  ‘His accident has had no repercussions, thank God.’

  ‘You had an accident?’ exclaimed Franck.

  My legs began to wobble. I came out in goose pimples. I managed to stammer out: ‘It… it’s nothing. I’ll explain to you.’

  ‘You’ve got to be vigilant, Michel,’ said Sherlock. ‘I was observing you when you crossed the road with your brother. You didn’t look.’

  ‘I swear to you that I’ll be careful, Monsieur.’

  ‘It’s incredible, he’s taller than you, Franck, but he’s not in the least like you. He does the basic minimum. The average is good enough for him.’