The Incorrigible Optimists Club

by Jean-Michel Guenassia

  I dreamed up grandiose plans. Taking into account my various expenses, I still had thirty-five francs, which represented a little less than a tenth of a Circuit 24. My hopes rested on Sacha. Reckoning on a modest and reasonable rate, I would need a good year to put together the necessary funds. I would have to increase my production. I picked out the photographs that seemed worth showing. I withheld seven of them. I called by at Fotorama to get his opinion, but his boss said he would not be seeing him until the weekend. I popped in at his place. He wasn’t there. I slid the photographs under the door with a brief note: ‘Thanks for telling me what you think of them. Michel.’

  At the Balto, there was a party to celebrate Kessel’s award. Igor offered me a glass of champagne. I toasted his election to the Académie française, planned for the following year. He filled it again. Everyone had something to say in tribute and, to great applause and much encouragement, each of them commented on what a great writer and what a kind-hearted man he was and how lucky we were to have him as a friend. We awaited his arrival. We raised our glasses and drank his health. They were looking at me. They were waiting for me to speak next. I found myself standing there like an idiot, with all of them staring at me. I was caught off my guard. I had the choice of repeating what had just been said or trotting out a set of platitudes. I reacted in the worst possible way. I threw caution to the wind. Had I come out with the same commonplaces as Vladimir or Tomasz, no one would have minded. I showed off: ‘In order to speak about Kessel, I would need time, and I prefer to celebrate him in a fitting manner: I’ll pay for my round of drinks in his honour!’

  I had scarcely finished before applause rang out.

  ‘Michel’s paying for a round!’

  ‘We’ve seen it all.’

  Igor leant over and whispered in my ear.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got some money.’

  ‘Champagne or sparkling wine?’ Jacky asked.

  ‘I prefer the sparkling, it’s better.’

  It was a fine party. Vladimir, Leonid and Igor sang Le Chant des partisans in Russian. They sang it in rather a slow way, full of anger and bitterness. On the second verse, the others took it up in French. The two versions coincided exactly. I had goose pimples.

  When my bottle arrived, they touched it to ascertain whether it was a mirage or a miracle. They all wanted to drink some to see what it tasted like. Apparently, it was the best sparkling wine they had ever drunk. In thirty seconds, it had disappeared. Leonid ordered three more bottles immediately and recounted his stories. He was unstoppable.

  ‘When Khrushchev went to New York for the United Nations Assembly, he challenged Kennedy to a bicycle race. In spite of his bad back, Kennedy came in a good first. The front page headline in Pravda ran: “Soviet triumph in New York: Khrushchev second, Kennedy next to last”.’

  We almost died laughing. Pavel choked and Gregorios was thumping him on the back.

  ‘And do you know what a Soviet string quartet is?’

  We all searched for the answer. It was a pointless contest.

  ‘A symphony orchestra back from a tour in the West!’

  Pavel fell to his knees with tears in his eyes. He was groaning and unable to get his breath back.

  ‘Stop, Leonid, you’re going to kill him.’

  Werner threw a jug of water in Pavel’s face. Jacky handed me the bill. I paid twenty-two francs for my first round. If I compare it to those I have paid for since, this was the jolliest. Igor passed a hat round for contributions to the Académie sword. Everyone put his hand inside so that nobody could see what was being given. Out of my previous fortune, ten francs remained. I hesitated for a moment. I kept half of it. A Victor Hugo note struck me as an appropriate amount.

  I was convinced that I had lost my father, that he had gone away for ever to some inaccessible land. We no longer spoke except on the telephone. Marooned as he was in the back of beyond, he hadn’t seen my photos exhibited. He didn’t know about them. Neither did my mother. She didn’t have time. One evening, I covered the walls of my bedroom with my photographs. The good ones, the bad ones and the others. I didn’t count them. There was a packet full of them. I used up two boxes of two hundred gold-coloured drawing pins. It was an exhibition of the Médicis fountain from every angle, like some imperfect, haphazard mosaic. There was also a board with forty-two pictures of Cécile. At her home, in the kitchen, on the balcony, doing the housework, running, reading beside the fountain. I preferred her in these stolen portraits. There was one in particular that I loved. In it her tousled hair and her eyes scarcely protruded above her knees, which she held clenched close to her face. She looked like a film star posing. As though she didn’t want to be seen. I hadn’t given Sacha any photographs of her. He would have liked this one. I didn’t want to show it, or exhibit it or, above all, sell it to anyone. No one would ever see it. I was glad to have found it. We could spend hours side by side once more. I could read sitting beside her. She was with me.

  At twelve o’clock on Saturday morning, I told my mother that I wanted to show her something. She had hardly come through the door when she froze and then exploded. She was furious with me for ‘wrecking’ my bedroom, and ordered me to remove the photos immediately. I refused. Voices became raised. I yelled that I didn’t want to stay in this house any longer, that she was stifling me, that I wanted to go and live with my father. She burst out laughing.

  ‘There’s only one problem. Your father isn’t even able to buy a train ticket to Paris. If you think he can afford to look after you, you’re mistaken. As long as you’re here, you’ll do as I tell you. You’re going to learn to obey! I’m in charge here, whether you like it or not. You’ll take those ghastly things down at once!’

  Since I didn’t react, she began to rip them down one by one. Because she hadn’t removed the drawing pins, she was tearing them. I didn’t want her to touch the ones of Cécile.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ I shouted.

  On our return from holiday in Brittany, I went through a miserable patch. Feeling disorientated, I went to call on Sacha to invite him to the Cinémathèque, but he was weighed down with work so I went on my own. They were showing an Indian film dubbed in English, the story of an elderly, impoverished aristocrat who spends his last penny hiring musicians to put on a private concert for himself. As I left, I had an accident. It was sudden and unexpected. It was unbelievable; my guardian angel must have been protecting me. I had taken a few steps along the pavement of rue d’Ulm. I was searching for the paragraph that I had previously been reading when someone suddenly crashed into me. I found myself on the ground, confused and in pain. I had banged my head. Against what, I didn’t know. I pulled myself together. Then I saw her. Right in front of me. She was rubbing her forehead, which was hidden behind her curly hair. She seemed surprised, almost distraught. We were like two lost travellers who find themselves on a desert island and discover one another. She was wearing jeans and gym shoes. She had been reading Le Matin des magiciens and I, Bonjour tristesse. I didn’t stand a chance.

  SEPTEMBER 1963–JUNE 1964

  1

  Stories have to start somewhere. Ours began like a silent movie. We sat staring at one another for a moment, trying to understand what had just happened to us. Amid the hubbub of a world reduced to ground level, with the audience leaving the Cinémathèque stepping over us. We were still in shock, our hearts still racing. We were in pain and we wanted to laugh. We could have yelled out ‘You idiot!’, or been annoyed, we could have grumbled, been unpleasant, or moaned ‘Can’t you watch where you’re going!’ as people do in the métro a million times a day. A group of people stopped. We could see each other between their legs. We could hear snatches of conversation about the use of music as a constructive element in the dramatic art of the Indian cinema. They were in vehement discussion over whether it should be used in the background or implied. We burst out laughing at the same time. It served as our calling card.

  ‘What ar
e you reading?’

  I showed her the cover.

  ‘Any good?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘My father said it’s corny.’

  ‘Have you seen Carné’s Quai des brumes?’

  ‘On telly.’

  ‘At one moment, Gabin is in some cheap restaurant in the middle of nowhere. He meets a crazy painter played by Le Vigan. He says to him: “I can’t help painting the things that are behind things. For me, a swimmer is already a drowned man.” Do you remember?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Sagan is like that. She describes trivial social things. If you go by appearances, it’s a rather syrupy novel. Except that she’s describing the real things that are hidden behind these things. They’re genuine love stories. It was the librarian who recommended her to me. Normally, it’s not my kind of book. When I discover an author, I begin with the first novel and then I read all of them one after another.’

  ‘That’s funny, so do I. And who have you read?’

  ‘I’m emerging from my Greek period. Kazantzakis, do you know him? He’s extraordinary. That’s why I needed something a bit lighter. What about you, what are you reading?’

  ‘Only American authors, or almost only.’

  She smiled. I’d never seen anyone smile in the way she did. American literature was a corner of the library in which I had not set foot, a mine to be prospected once I had completed the Sagan shelf.

  Overhead, the group was becoming lively. Someone was asserting that in a proper film there was no point in music because there was no music in real life. They moved away, arguing heatedly about the influence of the soundtrack.

  ‘It’s odd what they’re saying,’ she observed.

  ‘At the Cinémathèque, they spend more time discussing films than watching them. It’s when there’s nothing to say about a film that there’s a problem.’

  I was the first to get to my feet. I held out my hand. She took it. I pulled her up. She wasn’t heavy. She was massaging the bone above her eyelid and I was rubbing my nose. I picked up her book as well as mine.

  ‘And what’s Le Matin des magiciens like?’

  ‘Brilliant! It’s revolutionary. You have to read it.’

  ‘I’ve heard of it. They must have it at the library. Did I hurt you?’

  ‘It was my fault. I was reading while walking.’

  ‘So was I. That’s why I didn’t see you. It’s a strange coincidence, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s not a coincidence. It was predictable that we’d meet today.’

  ‘I reckon it’s more of an accident. Neither of us was looking where we were going.’

  ‘There are encounters that are bound to happen and others that never will. What sign are you?’

  ‘I’m Libra.’

  ‘With what in the ascendant?’

  ‘I don’t know. What do you mean?’

  ‘There’s a close relationship between the position of the planets at the time you were born and your place of birth, what you’ll do and what will happen to you.’

  ‘Is that the newspaper horoscope? It’s a joke.’

  ‘I’m talking to you about matters that are serious and have been proved.’

  ‘Do you believe in that?’

  ‘Totally. The stars have a genuine influence on our behaviour.’

  ‘I can’t believe it! There are thousands of influences and circumstances that alter your destiny. Ten minutes ago, I was sitting quietly in the Cinémathèque. I was about to watch a second film, a western with French subtitles. And at the last minute, I changed my mind and said to myself: You’ve been indoors long enough, go and take a walk. I left. And smack! It’s not all written down.’

  ‘The most recent research proves the opposite. Studies carried out on thousands of cases have shown that the position of Mars has an effect on athletes, that Jupiter affects actors, and Saturn, scientists. It’s an inexplicable statistical anomaly. At this quantitative stage, it’s not possible that chance alone should have established this connection. We’re only at the beginning, but if we were able to analyse in depth, we could read our lives beforehand and we would see that it was predicted that you would change your mind and that we would meet at this precise moment and at this particular place on rue d’Ulm.’

  ‘That’s incredible! So someone like me, who’s useless at maths, it could all be due to the stars?’

  ‘You should have your birth chart drawn up. It wouldn’t surprise me.’

  ‘It’s impossible to understand. I’ve slogged away like a maniac. With my brother, with my former best friend, with a girlfriend and even on my own. Result: a disaster. According to this girl, it was psychological. Due to a problem with my father and my mother. I wondered whether it wasn’t just that I was stupid. Now, if there’s an outside influence, it explains everything. It’s even logical. I should have thought about it earlier.’

  We talked for an hour on the pavement, but I can’t remember what about. Everything is muddled up. She spoke with her hands, and I listened to her with conviction. I nodded. She looked at her watch.

  ‘Oh, it’s late, I must go.’

  ‘Bye.’

  She turned round and left. Like the idiot I am, I watched her walk away. I had an excuse. I was suffering from shock at the staggering revelation that my incompetence at maths was due to fate. She disappeared round the corner of the place du Panthéon. I realized I knew nothing about this girl. I hadn’t even thought to ask what her name was. How could I have failed to do that? Not to have asked her where she lived, which school she went to, what she did, whether we could see each other again. Really pathetic.

  I ran. She had gone. I looked in every direction. She had vanished into thin air. How could I find her again when I hadn’t a clue who she was? Had chance brought us together? Or the planets? Fortune only knocks once. If you don’t grasp it, tough. I had wasted a unique opportunity and I could only blame myself. I felt more annoyed with myself than ever before. But if everything was pre-ordained, it may have been decreed that we were bound to bump into one another, that I would let her leave without knowing her first name or her surname and that I would wander around searching for her until the end of time. Perhaps I would meet her again in seventy years’ time. I would be bald, toothless and pot-bellied. She wrinkled and crippled. I would walk with a stick. She would be glad to see me. We would realize that we had spent years combing the neighbourhood looking for one another without success, missing each other by a few seconds. She would have thought about me frequently before marrying out of unrequited love and having six children. We would know each other’s names at last. I would take her frail hand. We would smile tenderly at one another.

  2

  During the summer holidays, I thought I had hit rock bottom. On 3 July, my father had eventually opened his electrical goods business and discovered to his consternation that in the part of the country in which he was living, paid holidays were all the rage. The few curious-minded people who ventured into his empty shop considered it attractive but expensive. Business was tough.

  He wanted to introduce us to Bar-le-Duc. Up until the last moment, I had hoped to escape the cousins. Ever since they had been repatriated to France two years previously, we saw one another frequently. For reasons that were incomprehensible, they never stopped demonstrating their affection and their friendship. I couldn’t bear them. Not just because of their crass ignorance and their loyalty to French Algeria, but also because of their relentless pied noir accent which never left them. I suspected that they made it a point of honour to retain it and cultivate it. To begin with, I made fun of them by adopting it myself. That had them in stitches.

  My father had given up his plan to spend the holidays locally. I had therefore been allowed to spend the period from 15 July until the end of August with the delighted Delaunays at Perros-Guirec, with its freezing waters, its rubbery crêpes, the constant spray from the sea, its cliff path that had been turned into a skating-rink, its endless games of Monopoly and,
worst chore of all, holiday homework. The cousins made between ten and twenty mistakes per page. To everyone’s total lack of interest, I had just passed my mock examinations with a slightly above average mark. Every morning, for the sake of family solidarity, I had to put up with dictation for halfwits. When I pointed out that spelling mistakes could be overcome by daily reading, they looked at me as though I were speaking Chinese. On 30 July, I couldn’t take it any longer. On the menu was ‘a marvellous passage’ by Paul Bourget, or so said Grandfather Philippe, who regarded him as the greatest French writer of the twentieth century and whose Le Disciple was the book he read and re-read. I sent them packing and went out slamming the door. It was the feast of Saint Juliette and she was furious with me for ruining her feast day. She was convinced that I had picked on that day just to annoy her. In spite of my mother ordering me to do so, I refused to admit I had been rude or to apologize and, to make matters worse, I no longer joined in the daily dictations or in purchasing hotels on rue de la Paix.

  One day, my mother asked me why I never took photographs of the family or of Brittany. I didn’t answer.

  ‘I’m sorry I tore your photos. Things had got on my nerves. I was tired.’

  ‘I’ve thrown away my camera!’

  ‘Why? It was given to you for your birthday.’

  ‘It took lousy photos.’

  ‘I’ll buy you another one, if you’d like.’

  ‘You’d be better off buying postcards.’

  She bought a Polaroid. It produced foul-smelling photographs with drab colours that made them hop about with excitement. They spent their time snapping away and roaring with laughter at the images of themselves.

  ‘Hey, Callaghan, why do you sneak off every time we take a family photograph?’ asked Maurice.

  ‘Because I don’t want to be in a photograph next to you.’

  We spent a month mumbling nonsensical words at one another. I wandered about on the heath alone, unable to read because of the gale, and I understood why there were so many roadside crucifixes in Brittany. Every afternoon, there was tea in a crêperie. They consumed tons of pancakes.