The Penalty Area

by Alain Gillot

  “Not too good, was it, Barteau?” he said. “I hope things will be better for the match that counts!”

  I could have reassured him. That was all he wanted. “Don’t expect any miracles.”

  “Is it as bad as that?”

  “What do you think? They’re only average players.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “That they don’t have anything that makes them stand out.”

  He looked at me intrigued. Was it a criticism of the way the club was organized, its ability to attract young talents, or just words spoken in the heat of the moment by a somewhat depressed coach? He hesitated to sound me out any further, afraid maybe of where it might lead. His wife was signaling to him from a distance. He’d probably promised to take her to the Brasserie de l’Horloge, which served an excellent choucroute. He beat a retreat.

  I saw my players in the locker room, but spared them the post-match pep talk. I knew perfectly well what I should have told them. Great teams didn’t depend on one player. Nobody was to hide behind the loss of Léonard, and there was only one thing we could do, roll up our sleeves and work twice as hard. Except that I didn’t believe in that argument. And neither did they.

  When I got back home, I was immediately struck by a peculiar smell. The water had spread over the tiled floor of the kitchen and was starting to stagnate. The leak was clearly increasing, and a bucket wasn’t enough to contain it anymore. I switched off the water at the meter, then grabbed a mop and a broom and made an effort to sweep the water out into the backyard. I had to do something about that leak, I knew. All I wanted was a respite. It was then that the doorbell rang. I was barefoot, in order to paddle in the water, and I had the broom in my hand. I opened the door. It was Catherine Vandrecken.

  “I couldn’t get hold of you. I was wondering if there was any problem.”

  She seemed not to notice either how I was dressed or the fact that I was clearly busy.

  “No. Everything’s fine.”

  “What about Léonard?”

  “He’s gone.”

  I could lie to my sister without any problem: she was so used to doing it herself that she’d lost any notion of a distinction between true and false. I could lie to myself up to a point. But I realized from the way Catherine was looking at me that it would be very difficult to lie to her. All the more reason to keep her at a distance.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

  “No. I’m doing the housework, as you can see.”

  “I wanted to invite you to the theater.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re wasting your time.”

  “That’s not the impression I’ve had so far.”

  “Because Léonard was here.”

  “Do you think he was my only reason to see you?”

  “What else?”

  “You’re angry.”

  “My boys lost this afternoon.”

  “Then maybe it’s better if I come back another day?”

  “If you like, but this won’t be the only time they lose.”

  She realized she had a wall in front of her, but the more she tried to break through it, the more bricks and mortar I was going to put between us.

  “See you later, then.”

  “Okay.”

  “You have my number.”

  I closed the door, taking good care to avoid Catherine’s eyes. I stood there in the corridor for a moment, with that vision of her walking away into the darkness, then went back to the kitchen. I gave myself simple objectives: Make something to eat, don’t go to bed too late. I opened the fridge and look for something that could be rustled up quickly, until I realized I couldn’t do it. The mere idea of sitting in front of my plate, alone, in the harsh kitchen light, revolted me.

  26

  The only place in town where a bachelor could eat in peace was the station brasserie. When I first came to Sedan, I’d made it my canteen, then, when the regulars in the place had become a little too familiar to me, I’d preferred to stay at home, even if it meant just having pizzas delivered.

  They’d changed the decor to attract a younger clientele, but apparently it hadn’t worked. There were still the same two or three regulars propping up the bar, the card players, and that old woman who talked to herself, drank only dry white wine, and was constantly rummaging in her bag. I went straight to the back and sat down on a corner banquette. The manager had put in loudspeakers so that music could be heard in the farthest corners of the room, and had connected them to a radio station for teenagers. The place was like a nightclub waiting for customers. There was also a TV set placed high up on a wall, showing a 24-hour news channel with the sound off. Breaking news from all over the world, interspersed with commercials for insurance.

  The waiter was also the same. A short, thin man with sparse hair. He nodded when he saw me, and spoke to me as if I’d been there the day before. He made an allusion to the match as he cleaned my table.

  “So we lost, not a good start. The dish of the day is beef stew.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “And to drink, a draft beer?”

  “Yes.”

  I needed a beef stew. The kind of thing your grandmother made, though I’d never known mine. On my father’s side, it was as if there had been nobody before him, though I’d finally figured out, overhearing a conversation between my parents, that there had been a big quarrel between my father and his father, although I never found out what it was about. On my mother’s side, it was different, but the result was the same: She’d tell us about her mother with emotion in her voice and always promise us to go visit her, in the Vendée, except that the opportunity never arose and the old woman had died, remaining for us just a photograph on the sideboard in the living room. That family isolation had intrigued me, especially when I went to school. I saw my friends going on vacation to their grandparents’ house, playing with their cousins, discovering other horizons, all those things that didn’t exist for us. Why were we so isolated? Why didn’t my parents have any friends? And then one day, I understood. New neighbors had moved in next door, and quite naturally they’d invited us over for drinks to get acquainted. My sister and I had gotten ready, quite excited because we knew they had children—possible friends—but suddenly we heard yelling in the house and realized, even before being told, that those drinks would never happen. My mother had burned my father’s shirt in trying to iron it, the argument between them had become heated, and, in his anger, my father had given a chair in the living room an almighty kick and broken his foot. How could we ever have opened our door to neighbors, let alone cousins, when violence could break out at any moment in our house? From the window of my room, I saw my mother go next door to apologize, and we were told that if anybody in the neighborhood asked why my father was walking with crutches, we should say that he had fallen down the stairs.

  The waiter came back with my beer and lingered to start a conversation. I’d forgotten that he was in the habit of doing that. He started by telling me in detail about his divorce and the lengths to which his ex-wife was going to take the little he owned away from him.

  It was at that moment that I saw the blonde from accounting come into the brasserie. She had two men with her, and I heard her shrill laughter as they sat down at the bar.

  “Nine and a half miles isn’t bad, is it?”

  The waiter was asking me a question, but I’d lost the thread. What was he talking about? Luckily, he didn’t wait for my answer, but launched into a defense of running. The way he told it, it was running that had saved his life after his separation, and his goal now was to take part in the New York Marathon. He spoke about it with stars in his eyes. I was starting to feel hemmed in when the kitchen called him about my food, and he came back across the Atlantic, and again became, at least for the moment, a waite
r in Sedan.

  I thought I’d been saved, but it didn’t last long. The girl from accounting was alone now at the bar. The guys she’d come in with had vanished as if by magic, and she was looking insistently in my direction. What was her name again? Béatrice. Our eyes met and she made a little sign to me, to which I had no choice but to respond. She came straight toward me, and as if that wasn’t enough, the waiter, bringing my food, joined in.

  “Shall I add another setting?” he asked with a knowing air.

  What on earth had possessed me to leave home?

  Béatrice was wearing an excessively open blouse and a very short skirt, but that was nothing compared with her make-up. There was something painful about her desire to seduce. She ordered the same thing as me and started eating and talking. She couldn’t stop, as if silence scared her. The club, the town, the transportation, the weather, she had something to say about everything. And then she mentioned the two men she’d come in with, making it quite clear she hadn’t been interested in them.

  We avoided dessert, got as far as the coffee, and I thought I was over the worst, but it was then that she asked me if I could drive her home, because the neighborhood where she lived was rough. There are some evenings when nothing works for you. And so it was that this Béatrice found herself in my car, where she continued talking, on and on, panting as she did so. She lived in a small development on the edge of town, which seemed quiet enough, though it was true there wasn’t a soul about at this hour, and not much light either. I walked her to the front door of her block. I thought about Meunier, for a brief moment. About his comment, “You’re a strange guy.”

  She was getting ready to key in her code when she turned to me. In spite of her make-up, her would-be sexy outfit, and the mountain of words she’d erected between us, I found the expression on her face at that moment quite touching. She looked so lost. Why couldn’t I simply have a good time with her? Do her some good, and me too? Because Catherine Vandrecken had knocked at my door? But Catherine was an idea, a utopia, like Mila, years earlier. The reality was girls like Béatrice, matches against Valenciennes, Léonards who left as they had come, problems with the plumbing. It was high time I realized it. There was no magic, or else it was temporary, and believing in that illusion was dangerous. Because after a while the show ended, the lights came back on, and you felt like a fool. And that’s why I found myself in Béatrice’s apartment. As if I wanted to put even more distance between the emotions I’d felt over the past few days and my possible life.

  It was a tiny place, and even more alarming in that she’d painted the walls bright red. I sat down on the black imitation-leather couch, which probably unfolded to become her bed, and she offered me a glass of whiskey, then slipped away into the bathroom.

  I downed my whiskey in one go and poured myself another glass. A painting, or rather a lithograph, was hanging on the opposite wall. It showed a white-faced clown, shedding tears the color of blood. I looked around for a stereo, but couldn’t see one, so I sat down again and waited, facing the clown. Béatrice was still in the bathroom. She must have been in there for about fifteen minutes and I was starting to get worried. I went to the door and heard sobs. She was crying without stopping, as if her whole being had been released. What could I do? I hesitated, then made up my mind to open the door cautiously. It was then that she sprang out like a jack in the box and started hitting me with all her might. When I tried to hold her back, she began biting and scratching me and screaming.

  “All you want is to fuck me! What do you take me for? A hooker? I’m not a hooker!”

  I tried to parry that avalanche of blows. Her strength was increased tenfold by her anger. It was really scary. She grabbed hold of a vase and threw it in my direction. It narrowly missed me and literally exploded against the wall.

  “Out! Get out, you bastard!”

  The door was just behind me, and I only had to reach out my hand to open it. Béatrice gave me a last kick before locking herself in. She kept yelling, threatening to call the police, to bring charges, to drag me into court if I kept harassing her.

  I stood for a while in the corridor, motionless, trying to recover. A neighbor came out of his apartment, three doors down. He was a man of about fifty, in his pajamas. He didn’t seem surprised to see me there. He shrugged.

  “You got off easy. She ran after the last one with a knife.”

  27

  Entering the house, I was immediately aware of something abnormal. A muted moaning sound in the darkness. It took me a moment to realize it was the pipes. For some reason, cutting off the water had set off terrible vibrations that spread through the walls. I went down into the basement. I just had to switch the water back on for the vibrations to stop, but in that case, I’d have to get up every two hours to empty the bucket. I preferred to leave the valve closed.

  I retreated to my room. I’d had enough for today. Except that the vibrations in the pipes followed me there. And it was like that throughout the house. Only the two rooms at the back were spared. I tried to settle in the larger one, but I’d forgotten how smashed in the bed was, and so I fell back on the one Léonard had occupied. I really did try to sleep then. But everything was against me. The size of the bed, which forced me to lie across it. That horrible wallpaper, whose image persisted well after I’d closed my eyes. The scratches from that poor girl, which I wasn’t in any mood to treat. I was like a diver who wants to go as deep as possible but keeps coming back to the surface. After several attempts, I gave up. Best to turn on the light, which is what I did.

  I sat up with my back against the wall and pondered in the silence. I remembered Catherine walking away without turning around after I’d rejected her so brusquely. I had the idea of writing her a message to apologize, but I feared the consequences. I’d done the hard part, why go back? Why leave my door open? It led nowhere. It was then that I noticed the exercise book on the windowsill. I stood up and leafed through it. It was the one that Léonard had used to write down soccer tactics, after his precious notes on chess. Had he left it deliberately, or had he forgotten it? After skimming through it at random, I started reading it more carefully, from the beginning.

  As an introduction, Léonard had written some basic thoughts about chess, so obvious and so clear that even I could understand them, then in the following pages, he suggested some elementary combinations with which to start a game. I read these recommendations, all accompanied by sketches, with the greatest attention. It wasn’t so abstract after all, not when explained by a clear-sighted player. Then I remembered the promise I’d made my nephew during the penalty session: to learn this game that seemed so distant from me, from the things I knew, as a response to the challenge he had set himself. I plunged back into reading the exercise book. I forgot the leak. The Valenciennes match. That moment of madness in Béatrice’s apartment. I even forgot about Catherine Vandrecken, and by the time I got to the end of the book, I realized that dawn was breaking. The tension in me had subsided. I fell asleep.

  28

  By the time I woke, it was quite late and I had three messages from Meunier on my phone. He didn’t understand why my players were training on their own.

  I jumped in my car and drove to the stadium on autopilot. Meunier was leaning on the railing, talking on the phone. When he saw me, he hung up. I could have sworn the conversation had been about me.

  “What’s going on with you? I was starting to get worried.” He came a little closer to get a look at my cheek. “What’s that? Have you been fighting?”

  Béatrice’s attack had left its mark on me.

  “It’s nothing. Did you start them running?”

  “Sure.”

  “You did the right thing.”

  I walked away, intending to go onto the field and join the boys.

  “Wait!” Meunier said behind me.

  I stopped and sighed. One of Meunier’s functions was to pass on mess
ages from the club’s management. I had a feeling I already knew what this one was about.

  “There’s something we need to talk about.”

  “Can’t it wait?”

  “It’s important, Vincent.”

  At that moment my phone rang.

  “Monsieur Barteau? This is the teaching hospital in Amiens South. I’m calling about your mother. Gabrielle Barteau.”

  My first thought was that she’d died. I stood there with my mouth open. The boys were starting a new lap and Meunier was watching me.

  “She has to give up her room today,” the voice on the phone continued.

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “Actually, we’ve been trying to reach your sister, Madeleine Barteau, who was due to come and fetch her. But we haven’t heard from her. And since your name is also on the list . . . ”

  “What list?”

  “Of people to contact.”

  Madeleine had given them my number without asking me. This was getting better and better.

  “I can give you the number she left me. It isn’t hers, but they pass messages on.”

  “Can’t you call her yourself? We’re very busy here, you know. And besides your mother is taking up a room we need.”

  “What will happen if nobody comes for her?”

  “We’re entitled to call an ambulance and have her taken home.”

  “Then do it.”

  “Monsieur Barteau, your mother is at the end of her life. She needs 24-hour care, and as I’m sure you understand, it’s up to the family to face up to its responsibilities.”

  I tried to catch my breath, as if I’d been elbowed by an opposing defender just as I was about to receive a corner kick.