by Anna Gavalda
“Yes,” I said again, “that’s the image that haunts me. That vision of him, at dawn . . . So handsome, yet ravaged by the night, by illness, by solitude, by . . . I don’t know.”
“It sounds like Paul Morand calling out to Proust . . . ”
I didn’t react. I would rather be taken for a pedant than for an idiot.
There was no fooling her. She looked me straight in the eye for a long time, long enough to make me understand that I was, alas—no doubt about it, the proof being this long pause—a pedant of the worst kind: an idiot of a pedant. Then, once this had been made perfectly clear, she moved her face closer to mine and in her lovely, deep voice she added:
“Proust . . . What sort of soirée do you go to at night to come home with eyes so weary and lucid? And what fright, forbidden to us, did you have, to come back so indulgent and so kind?”
Silence.
Her: There was a bit of that, no?
Me: (Silence.)
Her: You have nothing to say?
I said nothing.
She looked at me for a moment longer, stood up, motioned to me to do the same, and walked me to the door.
“Let the receptionist know if you want to schedule another appointment or not, but in the meantime, allow me to say one important thing.”
I wasn’t listening anymore.
“Are you listening?” she said.
“Sorry. Yes.”
“People live, have lived, and die, that’s the way it is, and you . . . Are you still listening?”
“Yes.”
“People live, and the only thing we remember after they have died, the only thing that matters, that stays with us, is their kindness.”
I said nothing.
“Don’t you agree?”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Rather than brooding over what that man didn’t give you, talk about his kindness.”
“Talk to who? To you?”
“To me, if you come back here, to him if you don’t.”
“But he’s dead.”
“He’s dead?”
I didn’t answer.
“No. Of course he isn’t. If he were dead you would have buried him already.”
“He knew how kind he was.”
“He knew? Are you sure?”
Silence.
“I don’t know how to write.”
“I didn’t tell you to write, I told you to talk about him. The way you did just now, but addressing him instead. As if he were sitting there across from you. No need to take it any further than that: just talk to him.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Talk to him and say goodbye.”
I was silent.
“I am not being as authoritarian as usual, but now I know you won’t come back here and I don’t want to send you back to the enemy—to yourself, in other words—without a laissez-passer in your pocket.”
What did she mean?
“Tell him everything you have on your mind and then let him go.”
“This all seems very esoteric to me,” I said, defensively, not managing a smile, “are you really a doctor?”
“No, but—”with a frank smile—“don’t tell anyone, will you? Let’s just say I’m making an effort to adapt and you, dear case number 1714, you have no business in a psychiatric service, you just need to express yourself.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“You’re trying too hard, Paul. You’re only making things worse. Stop it. Keep things simple. Say it like it is. OK, I have to go. I’ve got work.”
I never went back.
* * *
I’ve just been informed that the driver is waiting downstairs. I have to get dressed. I have to go.
Louis,
You see? I’m back on my feet.
They told me you were dead. They asked me to bury you. I myself said just now that I would toss ashes on the embers before striking camp and . . .
But I won’t. I won’t strike camp. I have no desire to bury you. None at all.
No kisses goodbye, no hugs; I don’t dare. I just—
Enough. Time to go.
A BOY
1
I was so out of it, leaving Saint-Jean-de-Luz, I almost missed the damn thing, took forever to reach my compartment, and when at last, after slowly and painfully making my way along the steep corridor, I managed to find my seat (when we reached Biarritz, roughly), I realized I was going to have to spend over five hours stuck in this fucking little cage and I wasn’t even facing the engine.
Never mind.
I clung to my headrest for a long while.
I clung to it just to hang on, to keep from vomiting, to crouch down and think and chew over the pros and cons of such a disgrace.
(Round peg in a square hole, fuck.) (A square family.) (Window seat on top of it.) (Miles away from the bar.) (Straitjacket, in other words.) (The sobering up cell.) (The clink.)
Oh Jesus Mary and Joseph. Oh pigheaded idiot.
Where was I? Oh, yes, I was crouched over the carpet, ruminating, when someone tried to walk on my head with a suitcase with wheels.
Ouch.
There I was, drunk, wasted, hurting all over, I moaned and went to slump two seats further over.
This fucking grandma kicked me out in no time.
So I crawled over to the one opposite, and at the next station (Bayonne) (or maybe it was Dax), an unidentified voice asked me, vaguely confused, if I wasn’t in the wrong seat. By any chance.
What a calamity. I hadn’t slept in three days, I’d been living it up, surfing, swimming, bachelor party with a buddy, then married him off to one of my exes, I’d been singing, dancing, laughing, drinking, smoking, jeering, I took stuff, turned on, got high, perched up there and pedaled through the Milky Way, rolled a spliff with Espelette pepper, lost my teeth, came back down, sinned, slept on the wharf, drank one last glass with my cousin at the station buffet, validated her pussy as I was getting up from my chair, apologized, jumped in the first railroad car I found, I was disorientated, stewed, brewing, fermenting, something was brewing, I was coming down with myxomatosis, I counted my teeth again and tried desperately to remember where I’d left my canine, my hair, my belt, the keys to my scooter, my watch, and my dignity. I had a conference call with my evil twin so he’d fix things for me, reception was poor and I really did not feel AT ALL like being roused from my alcoholic coma for a third time. So I went back to my basket, I mean my seat, without asking for my due.
I pissed off the three other passengers, treading on their feet and half collapsing in their laps as I made my way to my own wee little seat.
I snuggled against the armrest and put my forehead against the nice soft and sticky window.
Mmmm.
How good that felt.
Go to yer basky-wasket and curl up your pitty-paws, as my grandma used to say.
Because I’d just got woken up by this strange creature who got on in Bayonne (or Dax), I closed my eyes, but I didn’t get back to sleep right away.
I was drowsing. Daydreaming. I tried to zone out, on the sly, on the up and up, not counting too heavily on the sheep. I felt good, purring, my head wobbling, lulled by the clackety-clack of the rails.
For three days I’d been blasted and blitzed and now I was on the mine train roller coaster. I was puffing out my firedamp and chug-chugging along nice and quiet.
And in the distance, on another planet, out of sync and through a kind of grimy headset I could hear the real sounds of the real life of real people.
I’d been a DJ in my salad days and I was mixing my lullaby. I sampled all the sounds in car number 12 and distilled a real Zen sort of elevator Muzak using paracetamol and digestive tablets.
Tee-jee-vee’s lounge.
2
&n
bsp; I was settled in my seat, hugging myself, and rewinding the best moments of the weekend.
For three days I’d given my all because I was too old for all that stuff and I often got the sneaking suspicion that I was attending my own bachelor party, for the end of my youth . . . (too chubby for my old wetsuit) (too heavy for my old surfboard) (too rusty for those huge waves) (too stiff for those little wipeouts) (too young to die) (too old to be of interest to the hotties in the Bikini Contest) (too exhausted to hold my alcohol) (too full of alcohol to keep my distances) (too fat to play the Chippendale) (too lightweight for the father of the bride to have any regrets) (too slow for Basque pelota) (too wretched to pellet anyone at all) (too tired to get my rocks off) (too much of a sad sack to laugh about it) (too nothing) (too everything) (too nothing about everything), yes, I often had the suspicion that the jackoff’s last hour had come. I was old.
Old, gray, sad, polluted.
Paris had gotten the better of me.
I was thirty-three, the same age as that guy with a bigger beard and more hair than me and who had given it all he’d got, far more than I ever would, and it was time, Lord Jesus, for me to take my destiny in hand and perform a few miracles, otherwise, at this rate, what I was attending wouldn’t be a bachelor party but my own wake.
As I was saying, I was daydreaming and I smiled as I replayed those trailers in my mind.
. . . The way down in Nathan’s car . . . The two guys we got matched with on BlaBlaCar to pay for our gas. One called Patrice (Patoche) we picked up at the Porte d’Orléans and the other, Momo (Mohammed) in Poitiers.
So, we gave Patoche a “Perfect” for his soundtrack (good music on his phone), (Motown, full blast), “Very good” for conversation (he kept his mouth shut), “Good” for conviviality (he paid for our coffees), “Disappointing” for driving (he’d used up all his points), and “To be avoided” for his look (short pants that ended halfway up his calf with an integrated zipper so they could be transformed into shorts in hot weather); and as for Momo, we rated him “Perfect” for everything (he slept like a log from pickup to drop-off) but “Disappointing” as a backing vocalist (The Supremes couldn’t take his snoring).
Their heart can’t take it no more.
. . . Arthur’s bachelor party . . . Dinner for suave young men at the Grand Hôtel in Biarritz. We were all decked out like lords, then we took a ride along the corniche and the beer flowed freely at the Pandora club where a lissome young lady in a short dress undid our ties at the end then bound us all together again in her own way . . .
I was chuckling in the middle of my reverie.
. . . Then Camille arrived. My Camille, the Camille I had loved so, on her daddy’s arm in the village church where we’d spent our first vacation, in love. The room her mum had prepared for us with very heavy sheets smelling of lavender, and roses on the night table. My lovely Camille. Camille, so pretty. My ravishing Camille, to the sound of the organ.
My Camille getting married in white but no longer a virgin, naughty girl. I knew this and her mum suspected as much, I think. She didn’t say a word to her at breakfast.
. . . The pretty smile she sent me over the shoulder of her soon-to-be husband when she got close to the altar.
Tender. Radiant. Cruel.
The dance she honoured me with at the end of the ball and the smiles I elicited from her only-just-turned husband, from the hairpins in her chignon . . . which was already coming apart, sort of. A bit loose.
Tender. Radiant. Cruel.
. . . Days on the beach. Sun, waves, friends. Some from the time we were kids. From the era of shrimping nets and the Little Shrimp Club.
Swimming, skylarking, blabbing, barbecues, our toasts to the local ham, to the Ossau-Iraty cheese, the rosé, love, the bride and groom, the cuckolds, and life.
Paddling out, more or less in line to attack the waves head-on, then returning like wet dogs. Vanquished, worn out, sheepish. Our tails in a twist and our wetsuits hanging limply between our legs.
. . . Our last fishing party, off our childhood jetty, and our last diving contest among the rocks, how it drove our mothers frantic.
. . . Our mums who were no longer there to box our ears after our exploits when we came home shivering with joy and terror. Our mums who used to drain the blue from our lips by rubbing our ears. Arthur’s mum, who went back to the rented manor house because she was at loggerheads with the caterer (some sordid business about missing crates of champagne) (uh-huh, uh-huh) and my own mother who didn’t come to scold us that afternoon because a C-word (of the medical variety) had borne her away to other shores during the winter.
. . . My mum who’d been a schoolteacher, and if it hadn’t been for her, said the groom again while slicing the cake, making us all weep, the ass, if it hadn’t been for her he could never have written such a long and lovely speech.
. . . The last waffle with Arthur and his roommate before I left, where we stood licking our fingers very slowly and conscientiously while eyeing a school of young Spanish sardines out for a good time.
Our fingers covered with whipped cream and sea salt.
. . . Our . . .
Momo and the Supremes, my mistake, I think it was my own snoring that woke me up.
I could no longer hear myself dream.
My eyelids were all sticky, I ran my hand over my face to wipe off the cobwebs, and from the gob in my palm, I felt that I must have been drooling a fair amount between two borborygmi and three drunken burps.
Hey. Classy Joe.
I opened my eyes and immediately closed them again.
Idiot.
There were two girls seated across from me. One ugly one who instantly looked down, chuckling to herself, and one hottie who glared at me before screwing in her earbuds with a sigh of exasperation.
Idiot.
I didn’t care about the ugly one, but the pretty one, that was too much.
I managed to catch a few more winks, just so I could piece together a more or less decent killer look and then I rejoined the game, my cards well in hand.
I sat up straight, tidied myself, tucked my shirt into my trousers, straightened my collar, combed my hair (gel made of zombie drool, guaranteed to hold), smoothed my eyebrows, ran my tongue over my lips that were dry from the booze and the salt spray, and set myself back in hunter-gatherer mode.
Hands back in my lap, a touch of disdain to mark a pause, eyes taking aim and smile running straight through.
I’m referring to the knockout, obviously. There was nothing to poach as far as the other girl was concerned, and besides, she had already been ambushed by her book.
The problem was that I was dying of thirst and desperate for a piss, but I didn’t dare draw any more attention to myself with my secretions.
So I kept an eye on all that, wholeheartedly, but my heart wasn’t in it. My heart was in my bladder.
Not focused, boy. Not at all focused. Or focused but bad: couldn’t care less about the plain Jane, and the looker wasn’t looking (at me).
Good, bad, okay. It happens.
Bad, but not only. There was something else bugging me.
My mum, as I said earlier when they were cutting the cake, had been a schoolteacher.
A super-Instructor, if you like, with a capital I, as in Illumination Intelligence, and Imagination, of which she had been the Inexhaustible Instigator her whole life long.
Books meant something in our house. A lot, even. And even today books mean a lot to me, in my life.
In the shabby hovel, where my old, immature, and tattered soul resides, most of the time, books and culture clean things out, prop them up, and even construct supporting walls, as they have done for as long as I can remember.
But here was something off balance: the pretty girl (superb skin, suntanned, eyes like agates, perfect nose, adorable mouth, hair begging to be ca
ressed, breasts to die for, cheeks for kisses, lips for kisses, arms for kisses, body to, uh, be blessed) was reading crap (I’ll let you imagine the worst) (no, no, even worse than that) (sort of pseudo-novel by a pseudo self-help guru for your genuine, suffering inner ninny) and the ugly girl (flat-chested, pale, emaciated, badly dressed, greenish hair, chewed-on lips, rough hands, nails in mourning, pierced eyebrow, pierced nose, wrists with tattoos, ears with studs, body worth defrocking) was reading the Journal of Eugène Delacroix.
Oh Cupid! Oh, naughty boy!
What a tease you are, with your little round buttocks!
What a tease, and how you play with the nerves of your poor, defenseless quarry . . .
The pretty girl was working on helping herself, checking the screen of her smartphone at every line break in her reading, while the ugly girl chewed on her right thumbnail (black), levitating in the pages of her book, oblivious of the outside world.