The Incorrigible Optimists Club

by Jean-Michel Guenassia

  ‘Goodness gracious me, I can’t believe how good this crêpe is!’

  ‘Have you tried this one, my boy?’

  ‘You’re pied noir, you are’ observed the woman who ran the crêperie, who wore her Bigouden headgear in the shape of a sugarloaf.

  ‘Yes, Madame, and we’re proud of it!’

  They gave her a snapshot of herself. She reckoned there was no stopping progress. At Paimpol, on one occasion, I don’t know what came over them, but it may have been due to the dry cider, they started singing: ‘We are Africans and we’ve come from afar…’

  *

  The prospect of returning to school had made me feel unusually excited and enthusiastic. But on the first day of term, the sky had fallen in. Nicolas had vanished. My oldest friend. My chosen pal, with whom I shared everything or almost everything. Who was invited home for birthday parties. Whose father had told me, one Thursday evening, to cheer me up, that I was part of the family and that I should consider myself at home in his house. With whom I worked in harmony and mutual respect. Disappeared. Taken flight. Melted away. I had been promoted from the C stream to the A stream. He should have been in a different form to me, but no one had had any news of him. I went to their flat in the Maubert district. They had moved out at the end of July. The concierge didn’t know where they had gone. They had left without warning. I didn’t believe her. I rushed into the nearest bar. I bought a token for the payphone. I dialled his number. A female voice replied: ‘The number you have dialled has not been recognized. Please check in the directory or with the information service.’

  It made me shake with anger. A week before I went away on holiday, we had recorded a Little Richard album and another by Jerry Lee Lewis. I had saved him a fortune and he thanked me by ditching me, without telling me he was leaving. Especially since I had lent him a Fats Domino record from Pierre’s collection. An imported disc you couldn’t find anywhere. He used to spend his holidays with his grandparents in a godforsaken hole in the Deux-Sèvres, renowned for being deadly boring and for days that never ended. He was hoping to benefit from the complete silence to achieve a perfect recording. He had made a subtle threat, full of innuendo:

  ‘Next year, if we’re still together, I won’t be able to let you go on cribbing during maths tests. With Shrivel-face, it was easy. With Peretti, it’ll be another matter. He’s a swine. He never stops walking up and down the aisles. He knows all the tricks.’

  It was the sort of argument that makes you think. I gave in. I lent him Blueberry Hill. There was a strange little smile on his face when I gave it to him.

  ‘You can trust me.’

  I lost my Fats Domino. He knew he would be leaving Paris. No goodbye. No regrets. Not the least sadness. As though I were a stranger. I would never have believed it possible. Not with Nicolas. I felt as though my years of friendship had been stolen from me. He had no right to do that. One day we would see each other again and he had another thing coming. I’d smash him in the face. Worst of all was that I now found myself sitting next to Bertrand Cléry, who was frightened of his own shadow, would raise his left hand to conceal his precious work from me and, when that wasn’t enough, he would create a barrier with his shoulder. Each time I sat down, I would take the opportunity to nudge him with my elbow or else tread on his foot. I don’t know whether it was Peretti’s influence, whether the standard had dropped, or whether it was a stroke of luck, but I found myself slightly above the average and, for once, was no longer the butt of everyone’s jokes.

  At Henri-IV, I derived a certain satisfaction from steering clear of my colleagues. Each morning, I gave myself an objective. Not to say good morning to anyone. Not to open my mouth all day. Not to reply to a single question. Not to shake anyone’s hand. To try to be an invisible man. The result surpassed my expectations. Nobody spoke to me at school apart from Sherlock, whom I was duty bound to acknowledge. I was alone at last. I could read without being disturbed. Cléry had the good sense to move to the front row. Nicolas’s place was empty. My mood swung between anger and resentment. After a week, I reckoned the time had come to meet my real friends. I went back to the Balto.

  Igor and Leonid were playing baby-foot, whirling the rods around like a couple of chumps. They roared with laughter whenever the ball went into the goal.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Hello, stranger, we thought you’d moved,’ said Igor, keeping his eye on the game.

  ‘We’re taking a bit of exercise,’ Leonid continued.

  ‘Teach us to play,’ Igor asked.

  ‘You’re too old. You’ve got to start young.’

  ‘You little devil, I can run faster than you!’ said Leonid.

  ‘We gave you lessons in chess and that wasn’t much fun for us.’

  That was how I came to give them their first lesson in baby-foot. They loved it. It became their favourite pastime. Every evening, before playing chess, they would have two or three games. You can play baby-foot at any age. Within a few weeks, they had formed a partnership known as the ‘Bolchos’, and became famous for their dishonesty and their endless challenges. Igor, playing at the back, became a decent goalkeeper, and Leonid was the attacker, even though they found it hard to abide by certain rules such as being forbidden from talking in Russian in order to distract the opponent, or knocking the ball about endlessly before shooting. Occasionally, Leonid made loud protests. When he was told he was not allowed to do this, he started to sneeze violently and would then shoot while he was doing so. It was unsporting behaviour, but you couldn’t stop them: they pretended they didn’t understand French.

  ‘You’re looking a bit out of sorts,’ Igor remarked.

  ‘I’ve got an issue with my best friend. He’s cleared off without saying anything.’

  ‘And is that why you’ve got such a gloomy expression?’ said Leonid. ‘Come on, let’s have a drink.’

  I told them about Nicolas’s betrayal. They knew him by sight.

  ‘What your Nicolas has done, that’s nothing. I’ve done far worse,’ Leonid explained, filling his glass. ‘I deserted my best friend, Dimitri Rovine. An outstanding doctor, who saved my life. He was arrested. His mother begged me to intervene, to use my connections to lessen his sentence. I could have tried to save him, but I told myself that it wasn’t worth it, that I risked compromising myself. I left him to his fate.’

  ‘Who knows, it may have been pointless and you would have taken an unnecessary risk,’ Igor said.

  ‘What would you have done, Igor Emilievitch?’

  ‘It was a time when people were disappearing without anyone knowing why. It was like a kind of epidemic, but one you felt ashamed to talk about. I did what the others did, Leonid, I looked the other way. You mustn’t worry. At worst, he spent a few years in jail and was freed in 1953, after Stalin’s death. Today, he’s practising as a doctor in a hospital in Leningrad or somewhere else and he’s no longer thinking of you.’

  Leonid poured himself some more Côtes-du-Rhône. His hand was shaking. The neck of the bottle was tapping on the rim of the glass. He grabbed me by the shoulders.

  ‘Do you know why he was arrested, Michel?’

  ‘How could I know?’

  ‘Stop it, Leonid Mikhaïlovitch!’ Igor cried. ‘There’s no point!’

  ‘He was accused of selling drugs on the black market.’

  He took a small brown flask from his pocket and put it on the counter.

  ‘Do you know why I take ten drops of this stuff morning and night?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Because it stinks! It stinks everywhere. Dimitri felt sorry for me. He wanted to help me. That’s whiy he was arrested. I’ll tell you something and don’t you forget it: the only friends who don’t let you down are those who are dead.’

  He drained his glass, put the flask back in his pocket, tossed a note on the counter and then walked towards the door.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Igor asked.

  ‘I’m off to work.’


  Igor smiled at me sadly.

  ‘He’s a real bore once he gets started. There’s nothing one can do. He can’t stop himself harping on about it. Well what do you know: Leonid has left without finishing the bottle.’

  He poured out the rest of the wine equally. We clinked glasses.

  ‘Here’s to us.’

  ‘Igor, when you talk with your double-barrelled names, it’s as if we were in a Dostoevsky novel.’

  ‘In Russia, you don’t call someone Monsieur or Madame. In order to show your respect or friendship, you use the patronymic, never the surname. Gregorios would tell you that “patronymic” comes from “father”. You take your father’s first name and you add ovitch for men and ovna for women. If I ever meet Khrushchev, which is unlikely, I would never say Monsieur Khrushchev, but Nikita Sergeievitch, because his father’s name was Sergei. My father’s name was Emile. My official Russian name is Igor Emilievitch Markish. You were talking about Dostoevsky. His father’s name was Mikhail. His full name in Russian is Fyodor Mikhaïlovitch Dostoevsky. What’s your father’s first name?’

  ‘Paul.’

  ‘In Russia, you’d be called: Mikhaïl Pavlovitch Marini.’

  ‘That’s far classier.’

  3

  In Fotorama’s window, there were photographs of the bridges of Paris at night. My own photos had disappeared. Even though I tried to peer through the glass, I could not spot them on the walls. Sacha was in conversation with a young couple who were choosing photographs from among the dozens scattered over the counter. I waited until he was alone and I went in. His face looked drawn and weary.

  ‘Hello, Sacha. I wanted to know if you’d sold any other photos.’

  ‘At the moment, we’re not selling anything.’

  ‘Don’t you think that if they were in the window they could be seen better?’

  ‘I can’t leave the same photos there. After a while people get used to them. I change them every month. Don’t worry, Michel, I’ve kept a good space for you.’

  On the back wall, my five photographs, enlarged into 20 x 30 glossy prints, were placed in a row alongside twenty or so others. In the wooden display cases, there were hundreds of photos waiting for a collector to discover them.

  ‘The boss displays them for love of the art. Photography isn’t appreciated in Paris and a photographer finds it hard to make a living. Without first communions and weddings, we’d have to close down.’

  ‘I left some photos at your place.’

  ‘I asked you to bring me some fine photos and you’ve just given me stuff from your bottom drawer.’

  ‘I haven’t any others.’

  ‘Take some. Get to work.’

  ‘I’ve got a second-rate camera and no money to buy another one. And anyway, I don’t want to. I don’t want to do anything.’

  ‘What’s the matter, Michel? Do you have a problem?’

  ‘If there was just one, it would be wonderful. Everything feels pointless.’

  ‘Come with me, I’ve got a lot on my plate. We had a big wedding at Saint-Sulpice. Twelve photos in leather albums for their two hundred and twenty guests. They want quality and they don’t care what it costs. They don’t make families like that any more.’

  He put up a sign on the front door saying: ‘We’re working for you. Press the bell for a long time and be patient’. I followed him into the back of the shop, into a darkroom where he printed the photos with an enormous enlarger that he controlled with precise movements. He inserted a negative into the slide-changer, placed a sheet of paper beneath a feeder, adjusted the blades, fine-tuned the lens with a focusing wheel, opened the diaphragm for fifteen seconds and repeated the operation.

  I told him about the business with Nicolas and about Leonid’s reaction. He was absorbed in what he was doing. I didn’t know whether he was listening to me.

  ‘It’s not Nicolas’s fault,’ he said eventually, without looking away from his worktop. ‘You’re the one who’s to blame.’

  ‘How can you say something like that? It’s nothing to do with me!’

  ‘You reckon that Nicolas behaved like a little shit.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘If he had thought of you as his friend, he wouldn’t have reacted like that. So he wasn’t your friend. The blame really does lie with you for accepting just anyone as your friend. You’ve got to know how to distinguish between real friends and false friends. With friends, we often indulge in wishful thinking. You’ve been a bit thoughtless in your choice. Leonid, on the other hand, has reasons for blaming himself. He knows or suspects the truth.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I believe Dimitri Rovine is dead.’

  ‘Igor said that he had been freed and must have gone back to his job as a doctor.’

  ‘Igor’s a real friend to Leonid. He cheers him up as best he can. It was a rotten time. They shot people for the slightest thing. Dimitri was probably shot a few days after his arrest. It happened frequently.’

  ‘Leonid seemed to be being genuine.’

  ‘Pretending to hope means not being a total bastard. Deep down, he knows the truth. The KGB didn’t announce the executions for two reasons: first, they were sticklers for etiquette. Only a court could sentence someone to death. So they killed and they kept quiet, because then no one could blame them for anything. But very soon, they realized there was a problem with those who were still alive. They had to be prevented from rallying round relatives who had been arrested, had to be prevented from causing problems. Stating that someone had been sentenced to forced labour by implementation of Article 58 meant: he is alive, even though you might never hear of him again. The relatives preserved some minute hope. That was the important thing, being able to cling to the tiniest hope. So they killed two birds with one stone: they got rid of whomever they wanted and their families stopped pestering them.’

  He went on with his work, extracting the prints like a robot.

  ‘If they had told the truth, their families would have resigned themselves.’

  ‘For political police, that’s of no consequence. Leonid is right to feel bad. The mistake Dimitri made was not a very important one. Buying and selling on the black market was less serious than being an opponent of the regime. Leonid knew Stalin and the people’s commissars. He was a Hero of the Soviet Union. Had he asked for this favour, it’s likely that Dimitri would have been released. He let his best friend down, a guy who really did save his life.’

  ‘And what would you have done in his position?’

  ‘Leonid was right. He got away. He’s the one who’s alive.’

  ‘I haven’t asked you, Sacha, what’s your patronymic?’

  In the half-light, I saw him shrugging his shoulders.

  ‘It’s such a long time ago since I heard it that I’ve forgotten it. In France, it’s useless.’

  Sacha looked at his delicate white hands. Beneath the feeble orange lamp, he turned them one way and then the other. He wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve and sighed deeply.

  ‘These society weddings are really tedious. They’re deadly boring. You wonder what she sees in him. They’re hideous, aren’t they?’

  I looked at the faded image projected onto the paper. It was the moment they said yes in the town hall.

  ‘They don’t suit one another.’

  ‘He’s a banker.’

  ‘If you like, I’ll take you to the Cinémathèque. They’re showing The Music Room.’

  ‘I’d happily have seen it again, but I can’t. I’ve a pile of work to do. Preparing the developing baths, doing the drying. I’ll be up all night.’

  ‘It’s in Bengali with English subtitles.’

  ‘It’s an excellent thing to do and it fills several hours of lessons.’

  ‘I’m going to wait. They’re showing it again next week. I don’t like going to the cinema on my own.’

  ‘You’ve got no excuse for missing this film. Let me know what you think of it. I don’t want to influence you.
You can take me another time. And I promise you that if an American happens to come into this shop, I’ll force him to buy your photos.’

  I went on my own. It was a very beautiful film even if I didn’t understand all of it. And it was when I was coming out that… That’s how meetings happen. All because of a fancy, flashy wedding. If Sacha had said yes, if his professional conscience had not exceeded his love of cinema, he would have come with me, and nothing would have happened. He had work to do. That changed everything.

  4

  This country had a population of forty-eight million. To simplify the calculation, let’s say that there were as many women as there were men. There was thus a one in twenty-four million chance that I would meet her. I was more likely to win the jackpot in the World War I Veterans lottery than to bump into her again. She had been there right in front of me. We had spoken to one another. We had been close, and I had allowed her to vanish. When I had asked Igor for his opinion, he had explained to me that he was not an authority on meeting people and he advised me to ask Leonid, who was an expert.

  ‘You really are an idiot. I didn’t think you were so silly.’

  ‘He’s young,’ Igor pleaded.

  ‘In my day, it was very different,’ Leonid went on. ‘This new generation is depressing. It’s hard enough when you know their surname, their first name, what they like and where they live. Next time, you’ll know better.’

  ‘I want to find her again.’

  ‘But didn’t I speak to you about Milène? What lesson did you draw from that?’

  ‘That you were unlucky.’

  ‘I’m speaking about a moral, as in a La Fontaine fable.’

  ‘That you shouldn’t dream, or confuse your illusions with reality?’

  ‘That’s better. I’ll tell you one thing that you must never forget. Life is like the Russian mountains,’ Leonid declared in a moralistic tone. ‘You descend very quickly, you remain at the bottom for a long time, and you find it very hard to climb up again.’