The Incorrigible Optimists Club

  I had only seen Victor Volodine once, two years previously. It was a rainy Sunday. Igor and Vladimir were involved in a closely fought return match. Several of us were gathered round the board, following the game. Sacha was standing in the background. At that time, I hadn’t yet met him. Suddenly, the door opened, and Victor Volodine appeared, soaking wet and in an excited state. He spoke in Russian.

  ‘Victor Anatolievitch, we speak in French here. For politeness’ sake,’ said Igor.

  ‘I’ve got to talk to you. It’s urgent. Let’s get into my car.’

  ‘Have you seen the weather?’

  Victor was red in the face and continued speaking in Russian. Vladimir addressed Igor in French: ‘Tell your boss that he’s just spilled water over the chessboard and that if he continues to drench me, I’ll take great pleasure in removing the old fart with a kick in the arse.’

  ‘Did you hear what my friend Vladimir Tikhonovitch Gorenko said? We’ll see each other tomorrow.’

  ‘Fuck you, fuck him, and all the communists on earth! I’m warning you, Igor Emilievitch, if you don’t come, I’ll sack you!’

  ‘I couldn’t give a damn. You can find yourself another driver to exploit. I’m leaving France. In Portugal, my medical degree is recognized!’

  We looked at one another in surprise.

  ‘You’re not leaving?’ Vladimir asked.

  ‘I’ve started the process of obtaining an equivalent rating. It’s not ready yet. Where paperwork’s concerned, there’s no one to beat them.’

  ‘You don’t speak Portuguese,’ Leonid remarked.

  ‘I’ll learn. It can’t be very complicated. I’m a doctor, not a taxi driver. I’ll be able to practise my profession there. It’s important to me.’

  ‘Tell me, Monsieur Volodine,’ asked Imré, ‘you appear to have shrunk. You’re ten centimetres shorter.’

  ‘It’s the taxi drivers’ disease. Because we spend our time in cars, we put on weight and we shrink. I’ve got a major problem, Igor. You’ve got to help me. Come outside so that I can explain. I’ve always been good to you. You can’t refuse to help me.’

  ‘I’m involved in a fierce contest, Victor. If you’ve something to tell me, you can speak openly, they’re friends.’

  Victor pulled up a chair. He mopped his brow and no one knew whether it was rain or sweat. Leonid picked up his bottle of Côtes-du-Rhône, filled his glass to the brim and handed it to Victor who knocked it back in one gulp.

  ‘Thanks, Leonid Mikhailovitch. I’m finished,’ he said in a hollow and desperate voice.

  ‘Are you unwell, Victor Anatolievitch?’

  ‘I would prefer to… I was summoned to report to the police station. I went along. I thought it was a problem to do with taxis. It’s a disaster.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Igor.

  ‘You know me. I’ve done nothing but good in my life. Except during the civil war. But that was for God and the Tsar.’

  ‘If you’ve nothing on your conscience, you’ve got nothing to worry about,’ Leonid concluded.

  ‘It’s because of Rasputin’s dagger.’

  ‘You’re still selling them!’ Igor exclaimed.

  ‘Very few. And they’re not expensive.’

  ‘I thought that was over.’

  ‘I’d never sold one to a Canadian. I said to myself … if that makes him happy.’

  ‘Where’s the problem?’

  ‘Given the price that he paid, he must have thought it was real.’

  ‘How much did you sell it to him for?’

  ‘… Two thousand, five hundred dollars.’

  ‘You’re crazy!’

  ‘They were Canadian dollars. They had Queen Elizabeth on them. He was a lawyer from Toronto. A decent fellow. To begin with, I played the part of the guy who refused to sell and who regarded his moving and historical trophy as the apple of his eye. For an hour and twenty minutes, with the meter running, he persisted. I gave in. He’ll put it in his display cabinet, I thought. He’ll show it to his friends. The usual thing. This damn fool wanted to show off. He donated it to the Toronto Museum. They realized that the Metropolitan in New York had the same one. The Canadian was not amused. He filed a complaint. So did both museums.’

  ‘Did the police question you?’

  ‘I denied it. I told them that it couldn’t be me, given that the original was in the Russian Museum in St Petersburg.’

  ‘The name of the city is Leningrad!’ objected Igor.

  ‘Never! It shall always be called St Petersburg! It was the Tsars who built it, not the commies!’

  ‘We’re not going to argue about that again!’ Leonid interrupted.

  ‘Your pal the police inspector, he’s been promoted. Couldn’t he look into the matter and sort it out?’

  ‘Daniel Mahaut?’ said Igor. ‘Don’t depend on it.’

  ‘Be careful, if I get into trouble and they take away my licence, it will affect you.’

  ‘Igor, I can’t afford to lose my job!’ said Leonid.

  ‘Victor Anatolievitch, if I intervene, it’s not because of you. I warn you, this is the last time. You’re lying through your teeth. You’re abusing your customers’ trust. I don’t want to be your accomplice.’

  ‘My dear Igor, you’ve understood nothing about life. Coming from a materialist, that doesn’t surprise me. It’s like St Anthony’s relics, Corot’s paintings or Napoleon’s hats. What the hell does the truth matter? The important thing is to dream. There’s more to life than money!’

  I don’t know what Igor did, but the matter went no further and we never heard about it again. The museums withdrew their complaints. According to Pavel, they realized it would have a negative effect on donations. In the United States and Canada apparently ridicule is fatal. Victor stopped selling people the daggers that assassinated Rasputin. Apart from to a Congolese minister, a fellow from Zurich, a Brazilian Miss Universe and a Greek arms dealer.

  Two months later, Igor received a positive response. His degree was recognized and valid. He stood a round of drinks to celebrate the news. Our smiles and encouragement were strained. He set off for Portugal to go through the formalities. We were sad to think we wouldn’t see him again, but we didn’t show it. The thought that he would be practising his profession in Lisbon made him happy. He invited us to come and see him whenever we wanted. Three day later, he was back again. He had the gloomy look of a man of whom it is best not to ask questions. In actual fact, the Portuguese authorities were taking him on as a military doctor to look after the colonial troops in the war in Angola. He had refused. Werner told us that he had lost his temper and insulted an army colonel who was a doctor. He took up his job as a taxi driver once more and continued his search to find a country that would accept his degree.

  During the past two years, Victor Volodine had put on weight and developed a double chin. He ate a great deal, did no exercise, and made it a matter of principle to spend his money on lavish meals with plenty to drink, made-to-measure houndstooth suits with waistcoats, American braces and crocodile skin boots. Since the episode of the Rasputin daggers, we had not seen him at the Club. His company owned several taxi licences. He could have stopped work and taken life as it comes, but he refused to retire and continued to clock up eleven hours a day. Igor and Leonid worked for him and did not complain. Victor had a poor opinion of Igor, who followed none of his recommendations. Leonid had taken advantage of his advice and had realized that being a taxi driver was not synonymous with public service. Their preferred target was foreign tourists, ideally those who spoke no French, whom they picked up near the big hotels around the Opéra and the Champs-Elysées and drove around Paris, on the most congested routes. Victor explained the scheme he had worked out with Leonid to me. He was going to arrange for bets on our game of chess. Nobody would risk a centime on me, but he would place a bet on me at ten to one. They were going to earn a lot of money and I would have my share.

  ‘It’s a rip-off!’

  ‘You mustn’t ex
aggerate. We’re going to extract a bit of cash from people who don’t need it and who must not suspect that they’re going to be hoodwinked. As I always say: if God, in his infinite mercy has created mugs, it’s in order that they should be taken for a ride. Had he, for whom all is possible, not wished for this, he would have made them less stupid. What would you like, my boy?’

  He had put me on the spot.

  ‘An hour with some brazen little hussy? How would you like that? At your age, they couldn’t stop me. I know two or three who aren’t shy. You could choose: a blonde, a black girl? How do you like them? How about both, young fellow?’

  Overcome by panic and confusion, I blushed and stammered. This podgy fellow revolted me with his impudence and self-importance. I searched for something I might say that would be like a slap in the face; that would express my anger, my contempt, my revulsion, my indignation, my loathing. Something that would be cutting and scornful, that would make him feel ashamed throughout his life; that would remind him of his despicable behaviour, his mediocrity and his vile remarks. I wanted to yell at him that I was different; that I would not betray my friends; that I had nothing in common with a grasping reactionary like him; that his whole being disgusted me; that only pity and his one hundred and twenty kilos prevented me from spitting in his face.

  ‘I want a Circuit 24.’

  10

  Many bad things are said about the excessive number of postal workers and clerks in the City of Paris. These comments are unfair. In my neighbourhood, there was one area in which they were beyond reproach: punctuality. For many years, the postman deposited the mail for the building on the concierges’ doormat between 7.38 and 7.40 in the morning. Old Bardon left at 7.45 for his job as usher at the Paris city hall where he started work at 8.15. He would open the door of his porters’ lodge, scoop up the pile of letters and newspapers, put them inside and, having taken leave of old mother Bardon with a ‘See you this evening, my sweet’, he would set off. This endearment must have had its origins in some distant past when she was not shaped like a beer barrel and did not have arms like those of a removal man. She would reply: ‘Have a lovely day, little goat’, though no one who had encountered this embittered and vindictive nutcase would venture to compare him to a kid goat. I had a five-minute window. I left the flat at 7.30 in order to arrive at school by 7.59. I sat on the staircase, with the lights out, huddled up on the first-floor landing and pressed against the inner courtyard window so that I could read in peace, waiting for the postman to throw the mail on the doormat and leave. I hurried down on tiptoes. In a flash, I spotted the letter marked Lycée Henri-IV on the envelope, snapped it up and slipped it into my pocket. The end-of-term reports with their ‘Could do better if he wished but he doesn’t want to’, ‘Constant in his inconstancy’, and other cynical and unpleasant comments, as well as the endless regulations, warnings and boring letters, never reached my parents. From the start of the school year, I had been forging my father’s signature. I had no trouble imitating his scrawl. I allowed letters to go through when there wasn’t any risk. It was the only way I had found of achieving total peace. My parents never suspected a thing. That’s where my fondness for postmen comes from.

  Lessons were deadly boring. The weather was fine. Stuck in the back of the class, by the window, I could see the grey dome of the Panthéon. Why is there never an earthquake in Paris? I wanted to be outside. I looked at my watch. Every minute of this afternoon seemed to go on for ever. Sitting beside me, Nicolas was swotting. He was faithfully writing everything down, and underlining it with his ruler and four-colour ballpoint pen. He was a sight to behold, totally enthralled, rather like some unknown species of insect discovered by a scientist. He was keen to learn and eagerly absorbed these tiresome litanies. I couldn’t care less about my notes, about being promoted to the higher class or about the future that beckoned. I continued reading, with my book on my lap and my satchel open beneath it so that I could let the book drop into it in the rare event of the teacher coming to stretch his legs in the aisle. I was having difficulties with Kazantzakis. It was impossible to concentrate on Freedom or Death. My mind wandered. I thought of Cécile. Where was she? What was she doing? Was she still angry with me? When would I see her again? I wondered how you could find someone who has disappeared when you’re not a family member. Perhaps Sacha would have some idea? There were two knocks on the door. The English master paused. The school porter came in.

  ‘Marini,’ he announced. ‘You are summoned to M. Masson’s office.’

  I got to my feet. Kazantzakis fell into the satchel. Nicolas stood up to let me pass. He gave me a pat on the back to spur me on. I followed the porter.

  ‘What does he want me for?’ I asked.

  ‘When he summons someone in the middle of a lesson, it’s not a good sign,’ he replied.

  Walking along the endless corridor, I realized what had happened. It was the postman, the post office or my mother. Or the neighbour from the fifth floor, whom I hadn’t heard coming and who had caught me unaware, sitting on the stairs, last week and had not understood my muddled explanation. They had discovered my secret. I was going to have a difficult time. It was going to be hard to deny it or pretend that the post had got lost. This was known as: misappropriation of correspondence by a halfwit hoist on his own petard. It was bound to mean the disciplinary committee and expulsion. Shame and degradation, the path to the guillotine. I searched for attenuating circumstances. Perhaps if I cried, and pleaded utter idiocy and family trauma, the sentence would be restricted to a three-day expulsion. I had an irresistible longing to have a pee. And to escape. If I ran, no one would catch me. Where would I go? The drawback about running away is that it doesn’t take you far from where you started. It’s like a boomerang. You have to face up to things. Going down the main staircase, I thought of Isabel Archer and of Alexis Zorba. Could the difference between men and women possibly be that women tackle their problems courageously, whereas men always find a bad reason for putting up with them? We had reached the supervisor’s office. The porter knocked twice. ‘Come in,’ we heard. He opened the door. I closed my eyes. Like the man about to be shot who hears the word: ‘Fire!’

  ‘What’s the matter, Michel?’

  Sherlock was standing in front of me in the doorway, smiling. Was he a sadist? Did he want to seem all matey and lay a trap for me so that I would confess?

  ‘I think you know why you’re here?’ he said in a solemn tone.

  I searched through an endless list. If I opened my mouth, I risked confessing to something that had not been discovered. It was like chess. When you don’t know your opponent, you play a tentative move to allow him to reveal himself. Adopting a contrite expression, I nodded.

  ‘I think so, Monsieur.’

  ‘I don’t imagine it’s easy for you. If you would like to talk about it, I’m always available, and you won’t ever be disturbing me.’

  He clutched my shoulders in both his arms and then went out. There was my father sitting on the other side of his desk.

  ‘I’ll leave you,’ Sherlock had said.

  He had closed the door behind him.

  ‘What on earth are you doing there?’

  He came towards me.

  ‘I didn’t know what time you came out. Nor whether you had classes. So I made enquiries.’

  ‘You gave me the fright of my life!’

  ‘Michel, I’m sorry, I ought to have warned you.’

  It took me a few seconds to realize that we were talking at cross purposes. Where is anger hidden? In what recess of our brain does it lie festering? Why do we enjoy wounding those we love? Was it the strain accumulated over weeks or the terrible fright I had just had? Or was there another reason, deeper and more personal, that I did not wish to own up to?

  ‘I’m talking about the fact that you’ve forgotten us! You couldn’t give a damn about us! I would never have imagined that you’d be capable of doing something like that to us. You’ve deserted us!’

&n
bsp; ‘Don’t say that. Please. I found myself in an impossible situation.’

  ‘It’s your fault. Mama’s right.’

  ‘I didn’t want it to happen like this.’

  ‘How could you let six weeks go by without letting us know whether you were alive? Do you think that’s normal?’

  ‘It’s more complicated than I thought.’

  ‘A phone call, that’s all we wanted. Just to say you were well and that you’d see us next week.’

  ‘You’re right, I should have called. Did your mother not say anything to you?’

  ‘We say hello in the morning, good evening when she gets back from the shop, and good night.’

  ‘It’s not easy for her either. I need to talk to you. The thing is… I’m living in Bar-le-Duc.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘In the East. It’s the principal town of the Meuse.’

  ‘What are you doing in Bar-le-Duc?’

  ‘I’m in the process of starting a business. I’ve found a partner. I wanted to move to Versailles. That’s where he’s from. He reckons that if it takes off in Bar-le-Duc, it’ll succeed everywhere.’

  ‘Haven’t they got a telephone in that dump?’

  ‘I’ve got a crazy amount of work. You can’t imagine.’