The Penalty Area

by Alain Gillot

  37

  I had mislaid my phone. When I found it again, I discovered that my sister had left a message. She started to say something, then gave up, left a long silence, and finally explained that the number displayed was hers, that she’d bought a cell phone at last. I called her back immediately and got her mailbox. I tried to be clear and concise. Our mother was going to die that night. She’d fallen into a coma so suddenly that I hadn’t been able to tell her earlier.

  Léonard had taken refuge in his room, and Catherine had joined him there. He’d put his head on her chest. She was talking to him softly.

  I went back to my mother. From time to time, her breathing got out of control, then became regular again. I saw that her ring had almost slipped off her finger, and I adjusted it. My father had given it to her on their fifteenth anniversary, accompanying this gift with a whole performance. He’d had the car washed. He took my mother to a posh restaurant, while we stayed at home, left to our own devices. But it was only years later I heard the real story, when I ran into the jeweler who’d sold him that ring. He was retired now, and he recognized me from all the times he’d shooed me away from the doorway of his shop, where I’d stop to eat ice cream I’d bought from the bakery opposite. At the time, he’d accused me of scaring away his customers, but now he didn’t care about any of that. I’d become a valuable witness of the old days when he’d still been active, and he confessed, as he would to a friend, that the famous ring was a fake. And he added that in spite of its modest cost—modest for such an impressive-looking ring—my father had asked if he could pay him in three installments, and that he’d never received the final installment.

  Catherine came into the room and walked up to me. When she saw my hand lying on my mother’s, she left us alone again. I’d listened to Gabrielle under the bare cherry tree, and now I was answering her, although nobody could hear my words.

  I closed the door of the room on the way out and crossed the corridor. Léonard had fallen asleep. I went to the kitchen. I needed wine. The back door was open. I took my glass out with me. Catherine was sitting looking out at the night. On the table, the cakes were still there, my mother’s mille-feuille only just started.

  “Well?”

  “She seems peaceful. And Léonard?”

  “He wanted to know what becomes of bodies after death. What happens to them in cemeteries, if the coffin rots in the ground, if it gets moved, that kind of thing.”

  “I think he also wanted your warmth.”

  I put my legs up on a chair and knocked back my drink in one go. I felt the effect of the liquid throughout my body. An owl could be heard in the distance. On the other side of the fence, there was a row of houses, but after that, open countryside. I’d never realized that before.

  “You’re starting to get a taste for wine.”

  “Yes.”

  “You should try the rum baba. Do you think your sister will come?”

  “That’s up to her. I didn’t go to my father’s funeral, you know. I forgot all about it. What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Are your parents still alive?”

  “No.”

  “Is there a connection with the terrified little girl?”

  “Of course. My mother always went for walks on the banks of the Seine with my little sister Lucie. We lived in the sixteenth arrondissement in Paris, in a nice apartment, a bourgeois apartment, you could call it. My father was a well-known architect, my mother didn’t work but didn’t seem to mind. My father didn’t know what to do to spoil her. Not a day went by that he didn’t buy her a gift. She was always well turned out, always looked wonderful. She threw herself in the Seine, holding my little sister’s hand. Lucie’s body was found three days later, in a lock, my mother’s never was. Had she been planning it for a long time? Or did she act on impulse? Nobody knows. There were no clues. No painful family history, no thwarted ambition. Genetics maybe? My maternal grandfather killed himself with his hunting rifle. My father was someone who believed in logic. He couldn’t bear not knowing the reason for his wife’s suicide. His body gave way, he had leukemia, in six months he was gone. I’d always thought he was indestructible. He’d never had a cold. I clung to my studies, my books, to knowledge, as if was a life raft.”

  “In order to understand.”

  “Yes, or at least to try. You know, for years, an image haunted me. My little sister seeing herself dragged into the water . . . ”

  “They drown themselves. And they try to take us with them.”

  “Who?”

  “Our parents.”

  “When we met, in the hospital . . . I dreamed about you the following night. You were on the riverbank. You took Lucie in your arms. She was saved.”

  “It was just a dream.”

  “It’s possible sometimes, isn’t it?”

  “We have to save ourselves first.”

  “Do you think I’m shameless?”

  “No, I wish I had your courage.”

  “Do I still scare you?”

  “Less than before.”

  38

  Madeleine arrived late. She’d taken the last train from Rheims, and had had to change at Charleville. In Sedan, she’d walked before finding a taxi. Her hair was a mess, and she wasn’t wearing foundation this time, just her real face. She went and kissed Léonard and pulled up his blanket, then went into our mother’s room. I left them both to get on with it. She must have things to say to her, too. By the time I returned, Catherine had put on her coat.

  “Are you leaving?”

  “I have to go to my office.”

  “At this hour?”

  “I dropped everything to come here. I have to sort things out for tomorrow.”

  She came toward me. I thought she was going to kiss me, but she adjusted my shirt collar.

  “And besides, if we become too close, you won’t like it. I prefer to be the one to walk away. I have my pride, you know.

  I went back to the yard to finish clearing up. The temperature had fallen noticeably and the oilcloth glistened with damp and cold. I put the cakes in the fridge. I suddenly thought of the leak. I opened the closet under the sink. The bucket was almost full. I grabbed it to empty it. Just then, my sister came out of the bedroom.

  “What are you doing with that bucket?”

  “I have a leak and I can’t turn off the water at the meter. It starts vibrating and making an incredible racket.”

  “Where’s your boiler?”

  “In the basement.”

  “How do you get there?”

  “The door next to the front door.”

  “You take my place with Ma, I’ll have a look.”

  She was already on the stairs. I went back to my mother. I realized that her wig had slipped slightly to the side of her head. I tried to adjust it, but my hand slipped, and I felt it come away completely. I found myself with that clump of synthetic hair in my hands, and my mother’s head, bare, on the pillow. Going with a friend to maternity, a few years earlier, I’d been struck by how much like old people newborn babies look in the first hours after delivery. This was exactly the opposite: an old person with the head of a baby. I adjusted the wig as best I could. I didn’t touch anything else. From the depths of the house, strange noises reached me, which turned into a disturbing whistle, then all at once silence returned. Soon afterwards, my sister signaled to me to join her in the kitchen. Her hands were black and she was rubbing them vigorously with a brush. I saw that the bucket was next to her. I made to put it back in its place.

  “You don’t need it anymore.”

  “Did you cut off the water?”

  “Better still, I repaired the leak. These miracle glues are a scam. It’s better to simply change the part. Didn’t you see you had a whole stock of them in the basement, elbows, straight pipes, clamps?”

  “No. I neve
r go down there.”

  “And as for the vibrations, I fixed that too. Basically, the faucet that should have been closed was open, and the one that should have been open was closed.”

  She talked about plumbing with amazing naturalness, rather the way Léonard talked about chess.

  “Oh, and by the way, your basement door is terrible. It needs planing.”

  “I hate DIY.”

  “Because of Dad?”

  “It’s nothing to do with Dad.”

  “Oh, yes? I love it. Don’t you remember I used to repair your toy trucks? You’d bring them to me and I had to fix them come what may. You used to call me Reparator.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “When I was fourteen, I wanted to get a qualification as a car mechanic. I made inquiries, they took girls, I loved bodywork.”

  “So why secretarial school?

  “To please Ma. She wanted me to become a private secretary and marry my boss. She was convinced that was my future.”

  “It didn’t quite work out that way.”

  “No. Not quite.”

  She wiped her hands. She was bathed in sweat, but she was twice as strong as when she’d arrived.

  “Why don’t you stay?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing works in this house. You could fix it up. You’d be Reparator. It’d give you time to turn yourself around. To think about what you really want to do.”

  “I don’t want to leach off you.”

  “Who said anything about that? You’ll be doing a job and I’ll pay you. You know, a coach earns quite a bit, and I never spend it on anything.”

  “Certainly not on clothes.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing. It’s kind of you but I have to get back to Rheims, I have to see this thing through.”

  “See what through? Getting screwed over, like Ma?”

  Tears suddenly rose to her eyes. Something in her wanted to believe in another possible life, but she couldn’t.

  “Don’t go thinking it’s for you. It’s an offer that suits me. If I don’t have Léonard in my team, we’ll be wiped out in the championship, but without his mother, it won’t work for long. He’s a genius, but he’s still a kid.”

  “Is he as good as that?”

  “You have no idea.”

  “So you actually have an ulterior motive.”

  “Of course.”

  “You still have a heart of stone.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was afraid you’d changed.”

  It was at that moment that Léonard appeared. We hadn’t heard him coming. He was like a little ghost. His face was impassive, his voice calm. He’d gone to see his grandmother when he woke up.

  “I think she’s stopped breathing,” he said.

  39

  Three days later we buried Gabrielle Barteau, née Lemoine, in the cemetery in Saint-Quentin, where she’d bought a plot on my father’s death. Only my sister and I were there to see the coffin lowered into the hole next to André Abel Barteau. After the slab was closed, Madeleine went to buy a geranium to decorate it a little, and we ate sandwiches, sitting on the grave. I remembered the advice my mother had given her to become a private secretary and marry her boss. I couldn’t believe she could have said that.

  “Basically, she was stupid,” my sister said.

  She raised her hand to her mouth as soon as she’d uttered these sacrilegious words, as if a thunderbolt from heaven would come down and strike us. But there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, it was so sunny you felt like taking your jacket off, and the punishment never came.

  Then I left for Rheims to collect Madeleine’s things from the hotel on Rue des Carterets. We agreed that I’d go alone, in case Patrice was around and turned violent. But when I passed the bar, just to take a look, I saw that the place was sealed up.

  The match with Châteauroux was fast approaching. Léonard found his way to the locker room and I could see from the way his teammates looked at him how relieved they were that he was back. Their dear Martian. During the training session that followed, I was also able to verify the thing that people say about talent, that it spreads. By being absent, Léonard had made the boys think about that extra bit of spirit that was missing from their game, and his return drove them to give more of themselves. Cosmin had always been brilliant, but up until now, he’d never gone out of his comfort zone. He’d make space for himself, monopolize the ball, but when it came down to it he seldom played a key role. I’d abandoned hope, but now, suddenly, I had the feeling his game might develop in a more collective direction. Even Rouverand, who only ever judged a match by the number of opportunities it gave him to score, turned at moments into a center forward worthy of the name. He didn’t just wait for a ball to come into the penalty area, but showed that he was capable of participating in a genuine offensive, one put together by the whole team. All the same, Châteauroux, whom we were due to meet for that inaugural match, was rather a high mountain to climb. Their premier team was in Division 2, with a good chance of promotion to Division 1, and their training center was considered a breeding ground for some of the best talents in the whole of France.

  The great day arrived. The club had given us the Auguste Deylaud stadium, where the field was as smooth as a billiard table. We arrived by minibus and invaded the locker room, which struck us as strangely large in relation to our much reduced group. I’d decided that Cosmin would be captain. It was a gamble, I knew. He could either grow even more given that responsibility, or give in to his demons, precisely because he’d been singled out from his teammates. He and I did a rapid reconnaissance of the ground to see how supple it was and to choose the type of cleat appropriate to it. I looked up at the sky. Heavy clouds were coming in from the east.

  There were lots of spectators in the stands and at the edge of the field. The management of the club had come to see what the future might look like, and most of the parents were there. In less than two hours, all these people would either be carrying me in triumph or demanding my head on a platter.

  Catherine Vandrecken arrived with my sister. She was wearing a raincoat and a cap that gave her a mischievous air. I kept my distance and saw Meunier introduce himself. He didn’t waste any time, I thought. As she spoke to him, Catherine met my eyes and gave me a little sign. I responded with a nod and went into the corridor leading to the locker room. I opted for a very short pep talk. The boys were sufficiently afraid of their opponents to be focused. I insisted on one point, not to play too deep, not to be too defensive, as we had against Valenciennes, but to keep pressing forward, and I also spoke about the weather, which might play a crucial role. I was convinced that the rain would start falling very soon, and I encouraged my players to go all out for the first fifteen minutes, on dry ground, in order to be able to play for time later if the playing conditions became difficult.

  The boys came out of the locker room making a noise with their cleats. Léonard was the last out. I held him back by his shirt. It was his first official match. I insisted on the need to keep his self-control, whatever happened, but I made it clear that my warning wasn’t connected with his Asperger’s, it was just that anyone playing in a tournament for the first time might not necessarily realize the consequences of a rude gesture or one word too many to the referee.

  The players walked onto the pitch. The Châteauroux players were on average four inches taller than mine, with muscles to match. The captains exchanged pennants and the two teams got into position. I passed Madeleine on my way to the touchline. She’d had her hair cut and looked her natural color again.

  “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “You know perfectly well. Catherine. Are you still friends?”

  “More than eve
r.”

  The match started dramatically. Immediately on kick-off, Bensaid passed to Cosmin, who looked for Rouverand and sent the ball flying through the air over the opposing team’s wall of defenders. There was a one-in-ten chance of it working, but the ball ended up just in front of Kevin, who didn’t think twice and sent it zooming straight down the middle, while the Châteauroux goalkeeper was scratching himself, and the poor boy saw the ball brush past his shoulder without reacting. 1–0 to us. A perfect shot. Any other team apart from our opponents would probably have been knocked senseless after a start like that, but in this case it was as if a deadly machine had been set in motion. The power and organization of Châteauroux came into their own, with an onslaught on Léonard’s goal. I thought at that point, and so did everyone on the edge of the field, that our advantage would collapse in an instant. The disparity between our opponents and us, in terms of athletic potential, as well as organization on the field, was too obvious. Except that wasn’t exactly what happened. Châteauroux kept taking chances, but nothing worked. Sometimes the ball grazed the bar, or went just over the head of an unmarked striker but didn’t go into the net. And when finally the goal seemed open, and an equalizer looked inevitable, it was Léonard who intervened, thanks to one of his brilliant anticipatory moves, which were becoming his trademark.

  It had started raining, and you could feel the tension on the field. The delayed goal not only hadn’t thrown Châteauroux, it had given them extra strength. At the same time, the fact that they hadn’t equalized quickly, or even after persistent effort, increased their frustration. A first deadly tackle on Mutu set the tone for a match that had tipped over into excessive aggression. Châteauroux couldn’t lose, but their patience was exhausted, their pride hurt. As they kept pushing forward, the atmosphere became heavier. They were awarded a corner kick. As the ball came down, Léonard was ideally placed, and was getting ready to grab it when a foot hit his face with unprecedented violence. It came from Châteauroux’s center forward, a blond guy who looked like a pitbull, and who’d launched himself into a high-risk attempt to get the ball back, with the evident desire to hurt the player who’d been resisting them for far too long. Léonard collapsed, although without letting go of the ball. I rushed forward. I didn’t think for a second. Had the referee blown the whistle? I didn’t give a damn. I ran as if in slow motion toward my nephew, and entered the penalty area. A fight had started between the center forward and Marfaing. Other players joined in, it was complete chaos. I pushed my way through to reach Léonard. He was trying to get up, but nobody was paying any attention to him, everybody was focused on the fight. There he was, on his knees, swaying a little, but his face was still totally calm, even though it was covered in blood. I tried to get to him, but at that moment I was grabbed firmly by the arm. I broke free angrily to confront whoever was trying to stop me coming to my nephew’s aid and screamed my anger in his face, my fear, too, because of the assault he’d just been subjected to. All the insults I knew came out of my mouth.