The Incorrigible Optimists Club

by Jean-Michel Guenassia

  ‘They’re yours.’

  It wasn’t a question. She walked towards the five photographs of the Médicis fountain. She studied them carefully.

  ‘They’re wonderful, Michel.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Really. Only you could have taken these photos. If I had the money, I’d buy them.’

  ‘There’s no point, Mademoiselle.’

  Sacha appeared, wearing his grey overall. He had the drawn features and bloodshot eyes of a man who hasn’t slept.

  ‘I’ve got a spare set. I’m giving them to you.’

  ‘I feel embarrassed.’

  ‘Don’t you like these photos?’

  ‘They’re magnificent.’

  ‘We’ll take advantage of the photographer’s presence. He’s going to sign them. Do you agree, Michel?’

  He didn’t wait for my answer. He went behind the desk and pulled a white envelope out of a drawer. He brought out the five prints and spread them on the counter. I wrote ‘For Camille’ and signed each of them in the white border.

  ‘Take great care of them. In twenty or thirty years’ time, they’ll be worth a fortune.’

  ‘That wouldn’t surprise me,’ she replied. ‘You know, Michel is a real artist. He’s also written some wonderful poems.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me about them,’ he exclaimed with a half-smile. ‘I’d really like to read them one day.’

  ‘That’s not possible,’ she went on. ‘Michel refuses to write them down. He recites them to me.’

  ‘He’s right. It’s much better when one listens.’

  He put the signed photographs in the envelope and handed it to Camille.

  ‘With the firm’s compliments.’

  ‘Thank you very much. I’m very touched by the present. Michel told me that you were interested in Le Matin des magiciens.’

  ‘He told you that?’

  I didn’t know where to put myself. I gestured to him and shook my head.

  ‘I’ve never read anything like it!’ he said.

  ‘Nor have I. But Michel still hasn’t read it.’

  ‘I told you, Camille, I read things that are useful for the bac. During the holidays, I’ll have time.’

  ‘Tell him it’s fascinating.’

  ‘What’s interesting about this book,’ Sacha explained, ‘even when you don’t agree with them, is their non-conformism, the way they put the cat among the pigeons.’

  ‘Ah, you see!’

  ‘We’re not going to take up any more of your time,’ I interrupted. ‘You have work to do.’

  ‘Michel, Camille would make a lovely subject to photograph. What are you waiting for?’

  ‘She doesn’t like having her photo taken.’

  ‘Camille, may I call you Camille?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Suggest a swap to him. A photograph of you in return for a poem by him. You wouldn’t be losing out, would you?’

  ‘I don’t know whether he’d want to.’

  ‘Michel, do you agree to this deal?’

  If she had not been there, I think I would have kissed him.

  That was how I came to take my first photos of Camille. To begin with, she wanted me to write down the poems. I transcribed them all without changing a line. But I didn’t have an unlimited number and the moment soon came when I had no more to offer in exchange. Sacha supplied me with them sparingly and he developed the photos of Camille. He printed them in large format, with a strong, grainy contrast. He refused to let me pay for them. One day, when I was telling him that it embarrassed me to accept his poems and to be incapable of writing any, he replied that the poems belonged to those who liked them and that he was happy because he knew why he was giving them to me and this was what they should be used for.

  Camille thought that I took too many photos and did not write enough poems. I explained to her that it took time and that a poem was worth several photos.

  … Death believes she has killed me

  But my body does not exist

  I am within three notes of music

  A half-starved smile

  A weary memory

  And paths on the horizon

  Forgotten by this freakish wind

  I am in these immutable lines

  Anchored in memories

  Murmured and hidden

  Resumed and transported

  My torments like farandoles…

  ‘Michel, it’s marvellous.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Your poems are sad.’

  ‘For this poem, I want a photograph. Just one.’

  13

  In the current circumstances, with the bailiff’s affidavit drawn up following Mr Marini’s departure from the marital home, the latest attestations emanating from your employees and your relatives seem to me to be sufficient to obtain a favourable decision from the court. At the present moment, the opposing solicitor has not communicated a single exhibit to the proceedings. The absence of testimony in favour of your husband will be a determining factor in obtaining a divorce on the grounds that the blame lies exclusively with him. It is of the utmost importance that we should arrive at the hearing with our evidence…

  The letter had been sent by Maître Fournier, the family lawyer. I came across it while sorting through the post on the concierges’ doormat. I was expecting a detention from Henri-IV for having smoked inside school, and had spotted his logo. It was not the first time he had written to our home. I don’t know why I took the letter that particular morning, and opened it. Because of the silence perhaps. For months, we had been living in a muted atmosphere, as if there were no problem. My mother answered me quite naturally and in a voice that was as collected and persuasive as her smile: ‘Nothing’s going on, my darling. Everything’s fine. Don’t worry.’

  My father telephoned on Sunday evenings. Juliette and I spoke to him in turn, while my mother sat in the armchair with her nose buried in Paris-Match.

  ‘How are things at school?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘How about you?’

  ‘Business is tough. You have to have your wits about you.’

  To begin with, we used to ask what the weather was like in Bar-le-Duc, and he replied either: ‘It’s damned cold’, or else ‘It’s filthy weather.’ The conversations were short and ended with ‘Take care, darling. See you next week.’

  He came on flying visits to Paris to see suppliers. He came on the first train and went back on the last to avoid paying for a hotel. He used to arrange to meet me in a café and would arrive an hour late. On one occasion, we missed one another, each of us sitting in a different café on place de la République. Afterwards I would accompany him on the métro to Gare de l’Est. For a long time he had hopes that it was not all over and that there was a slim chance of keeping the family together. When a couple is not getting on, the best solution, apparently, is to separate in order to take stock of things.

  ‘It’s like the weather, do you see? You let the storm pass, and afterwards the sky is blue.’

  Given the result, this can’t have been the right method.

  One day, a strange and unpleasant feeling came over me. He had arrived, out of breath, moaning about the dreadful traffic, the stink of exhaust fumes and the filthy streets.

  ‘It’s sheer madness. I wonder how I put up with this city for so many years. I can’t breathe any more.’

  I looked at him as though he were a stranger.

  When I read the letter, my heart skipped a beat. I almost went back upstairs to tell my mother what I thought of her attitude. I would have to warn my father about the plot that was being hatched against him, so that he could do something and defend himself. I managed to get through to him at his shop: ‘There’s a problem, Papa. We have to see each other urgently.’

  ‘Tell me what it’s about.’

  ‘I can’t speak on the phone. It’s very serious.’

  ‘Have you done something foolish?’r />
  ‘It’s not me. It’s to do with Mama.’

  He said he would find a way of coming to Paris. He would take the opportunity to see a new supplier in Boulogne. We met in a packed brasserie opposite Gare de l’Est. He arrived with a pile of catalogues from Italian lighting dealers. He gave me one so that I could see the quality for myself. He had arranged to represent them in Lorraine.

  ‘What do you think of them?’

  ‘I don’t know much about lights.’

  ‘They’re twenty years ahead of us. I’m going to make a killing with these. Not a word to your mother, whatever you do. Do you smoke these days?’

  ‘I’ve done so for a while, Papa.’

  ‘I’ll have one.’

  I gave him my pack of Gauloises and the book of matches.

  ‘So, what’s going on?’

  I handed him the letter from the lawyer. He read it without batting an eyelid.

  ‘When I think of all the money I gave this bastard.’

  ‘They haven’t won yet. Are you going to defend yourself?’

  He shrugged his shoulders and reflected for a moment.

  ‘I’d need to make up false witness statements. I’m not like that. I can’t imagine asking people I haven’t seen for years to say nasty things about your mother.’

  ‘That’s what she’s doing.’

  ‘It’s my fault, Michel. I left the marital home. After that, it was a mess. We had a lovely family and then it all collapsed. I thought that we were going through a difficult patch, the kind that happens in every family. When I realized, it was too late.’

  ‘Was it because of Franck?’

  ‘The truth is that we weren’t from the same background. It’s something you can’t put right. Some manage to. We didn’t know how.’

  ‘You could share the blame.’

  ‘How? She has ten people to testify against me and the bailiff’s affidavit. We’d be tearing each other apart for no reason. Are you able to keep a secret?’

  ‘You’re not going to start all that again.’

  ‘I could have made things awkward for your mother socially. But we came to an understanding.’

  ‘What understanding?’

  ‘We decided to leave you both out of all this business. I want your word of honour.’

  There was no way out. I promised.

  ‘We agreed that I should take the entire blame and won’t provide any further information to the proceedings. I’ll retain parental authority along with her. She’ll have custody and I’ll have every other weekend when I can, and half of the holidays. She’ll get a small maintenance allowance for both of you and will pay me financial compensation for the business.’

  ‘How is that possible? You’ve deserted us just for money!’

  ‘Michel, don’t talk such crap! We’d have been at each other’s throats otherwise and I don’t have the means!’

  ‘You had no right! You should have fought for yourself!’

  ‘That’s the way life is, my boy, and that’s the way it’s always been.’

  ‘In the end, you came out of it quite well.’

  I got to my feet. I picked up my fags. I walked away. I came back.

  ‘Tell me where Franck is.’

  ‘You don’t need to know.’

  I left the letter from the lawyer on the table in the front hall. My mother was surprised. I told her that I had opened it by mistake. On Sunday evening, when my father phoned, Juliette answered and spoke to him for five minutes. She wanted to pass him over to me and held out the phone.

  ‘Just tell him that I’m not here.’

  He couldn’t not have heard. My mother looked up from Paris-Match. She said nothing, smiled and went on reading. On the other Sundays, I refused to speak to him. This went on for a long time. It’s still how things are between us to this day.

  I never spoke to Camille about my family, nor did I tell her about Franck and Cécile, their disappearance, the family breakdown and my father’s exile in a distant province, though I thought of them every day. They say that time heals wounds. If you are going to wipe out of your memory those who have gone away you ought not to love them too much. My predominant emotion was anger, and that urge to cry out that suffocates you because you are holding it back and because you are powerless. A sort of hatred had taken root in me. For whatever reason, Camille refused to talk about her family. We were all square. We shared the peace of orphans.

  14

  I thought I’d get away with it, but I had overrated my powers. I held out to the very limits of what was possible. But there comes a point beyond which no man can go. Our will is ineffectual in the face of the laws that govern the world. My fate was sealed somewhere in the remotest corner of the universe, near the galaxy of Andromeda, between Orion and Aldebaran. Camille wanted to draw up my astral chart and needed the exact time of my birth. I thought this request was ridiculous, but I couldn’t tell her so to her face. She believed in astrology utterly and she was very touchy about such matters. I came up with the excuse that pain had caused my mother to lose all memory of my birth, that she was alone, in a deserted hospital, abandoned by her family and her husband.

  ‘You were born in the Port-Royal hospital, right in the centre of Paris!’

  Because of the break-up, the matter was not resolved. Divorce, as is well known, harms the memory. Without the exact time, it was impossible to establish the map of the sky at the moment of my birth, so no horoscope, no lunar node, no chart of the Houses nor associated signs. I thought I would be rid of her ridiculous questions.

  My relationship with my mother improved spectacularly from one day to the next. We discovered an equilibrium. I observed three rules, a sort of legal minimum: I had to look after my appearance, achieve average marks at school and be present at family meals, especially Sunday lunch with the entire Delaunay family, at Grandfather Philippe’s home. In return, she would not bother me about anything else. It was after attending the course ‘Negotiate successfully using win-win solutions’ that this unexpected change occurred. My father should have gone with her to these training courses that he made such fun of. It might perhaps have avoided the present Berezina disaster. One evening, during dinner, I got an unpleasant surprise.

  ‘By the way, Camille telephoned,’ said my mother as she passed me the grated carrots.

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘She’s a nice girl. Do bring her home, if you want to, I’d be delighted to meet her.’

  ‘I left her ten minutes ago. Why did she ring?’

  ‘She wanted to know the time of your birth.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘Five thirty in the afternoon precisely. I didn’t understand what she was talking about. There were no problems with the birth. With your sister, it was ghastly. Girls do more harm to their mothers. I’d like her to draw up my astral chart. I was born on 28 January at ten past four in the morning.’

  ‘And what about me, what time was I born?’ asked Juliette.

  Camille may have had a few faults, but she did not bear grudges. She was not angry with me for lying, for she was excited that she would soon have my birth chart. A friend of her mother’s ran a fortune telling service in a flat overlooking Montsouris park. She was going to compare our horoscopes and we would then be able to decide on our future.

  ‘Don’t you believe in it? I’m going to convince you.’

  ‘Camille, we can’t foresee what’s going to happen. It would be too easy.’

  ‘There are people who know, who are initiated and who can guide us.’

  ‘Personally, I’d prefer not to know.’

  A few days later, she informed me that there was an unexpected hitch that was preventing my chart from being set up. Materializing suddenly out of space after a journey of millions of kilometres, Holmes’s comet had just appeared between the constellations of Cancer and Taurus, a tiny, brilliant splash with a fan-like tail, and as long as it remained visible, certain lives would be drastically affected because o
f it.

  ‘She says it’s the comet of people who love one another and find each other again because of it.’

  ‘Camille, you can’t really believe in this nonsense?’

  ‘She says that you are going to be affected.’

  ‘We haven’t lost one another. Can your friend, the seer, not tell us if we’re going to pass our bac?’

  ‘She determines the trajectories. Not the episodes along the way. Soon, you’ll have proof.’

  She displayed not the slightest doubt or hesitation. Her enthusiasm swept away my certainties. Cartesian folk are boring. Her fantasy was beautiful.

  We very rarely saw each other on Sundays. She had family commitments that she could not get out of. When I asked her why, she replied: ‘Don’t ask me why! If I could, we’d see each other. I can’t.’

  I spent my Sunday afternoons at the Club. Some new faces were appearing, from the USSR, from the Baltic countries, from Yugoslavia and Romania, with their rolling accents, their pre-war clothes, their features furrowed by mistrust and anxiety. The carry-on about papers and files was beginning all over again; the need for proof that you were a fugitive and that you had escaped urgently and in a great hurry so as to avoid arrest and imprisonment. The older ones took care of these people, gave them shelter and put them in touch with the suppliers of authentic-looking false documents. These were expensive and they had to moonlight in restaurants and building sites to pay for them. Several of them had used an emigration network to go to Canada, which was more welcoming than France. On Sundays the Club was crowded. The Club room was no longer large enough and, gradually, the adjoining restaurant had been colonized. The obligatory rule of speaking French had been forgotten, and almost every language could be heard. Maybe it was because they had spoken in hushed voices for so long, but they certainly let their hair down now. There was just as much of a din as there was in the rest of the Balto, and those who wanted peace and quiet sighed as they remembered the good old days, when the members of the Club could be counted on the fingers of two hands.