Soft in the Head

by Marie-Sabine Roger

  “The Plague. The author’s name is Albert Camus.”

  “My grandfather’s name was Albert too. It’s a weird title, The Plague. What’s it about?”

  “I can lend it to you, if you like…”

  “Oh, you know, me and reading…”

  She closed the book. She seemed to hesitate and then she said:

  “Would you like me to read you a few passages? I enjoy reading aloud and I so rarely have the opportunity. As I’m sure you understand, if I started to read aloud sitting here alone on my bench, I think people might worry about my sanity…”

  I said:

  “You’re absolutely right, they’d take you for a doddery old bat—no offence…”

  She burst out laughing.

  “Ha! Ha! A doddery old bat, that’s precisely it! Which is a colourful way of saying a senile old fool… In any case, I simply wanted to suggest, if you are agreeable, I might read you a few select passages. You would be my pretext, you understand?… But I would not wish to bore you… It goes without saying that I shall read only if you would like me to. So, please, be honest: is it something you might enjoy?”

  I said yes.

  “Enjoy” was probably not exactly the word, but the prospect—see also: eventuality, contingency—was not exactly unpleasant.

  I sometimes listen to stories on the radio, plays and stuff, while I’m whittling sculptures with my Opinel. And it’s true that it keeps your ears busy.

  MARGUERITTE started to read, in her quiet, muffled voice. And then, maybe because she got caught up in the story, she started talking louder, and using different voices to let you know when there were different characters.

  When you hear how brilliantly she does it, it doesn’t matter how unwilling or uninterested you are, it’s too late. You’re trapped. Or at least I was, that first time—I was completely knocked for six.

  She skipped the first two or three pages of the book, explaining:

  “I think we should dive straight into the action, if that’s all right with you.”

  And she added:

  “I’ve always found preambles a little tedious… So… I need to set the scene a little: the story is set in Algeria, in a town called Oran…”

  If she’d just said “in Oran”, I would have had to pretend I knew where it was. But I knew about Algeria: Youss’ had shown it to me on a map, because his parents were born there.

  Anyway, she didn’t even check to see whether I knew about geography or whatever. She calmly started reading, I didn’t have to do anything.

  “On the morning of 16th April, Doctor Bernard Rieux came out of his consulting room and stumbled on a dead rat in the middle of the landing. At the time, he pushed the animal aside without a thought and went down the stairs. But once out on the street, the thought occurred to him that this rat…”

  As soon as she started reading, I knew I was going to like it. I didn’t really know what sort of book it was, a horror story or a thriller, but it had grabbed me by the ears, the way you do with rabbits.

  I could picture it, the dead rat. I could see it!

  And the other one, the one scurrying down the corridor, half dead and spluttering blood. And later on, the doctor’s wife when she’s sick and in bed.

  “… but by this time the townspeople had started to become concerned. Because from the 18th, hundreds of dying rats began to spill from the factories and the warehouses. In some cases, it was necessary to finish the creatures off, to put them out of their misery…”

  Oh my God, it was brilliant! I could picture the dead critters everywhere, the whole town being overrun. It was like a movie, but just for me, inside my head. We were sitting in the middle of the park, the two of us, chilling out in the shade of the linden tree. And all around us, if I closed my eyes—and even if I didn’t—there were huge piles of dead rats, swollen and stinking, their paws stiff. And everywhere there were others dying, whimpering, their pink tails wriggling.

  “From nooks and basements, cellars and sewers, they scrabbled up in long shuddering lines and staggered into the light, there to reel and die…”

  Ugh, it was disgusting, all these vermin! Just thinking about them gave me the shivers. If there’s an animal that really turns my stomach, it’s rats. Rats and cockroaches. Cockroaches make me want to puke.

  Margueritte read a few pages, skipped a passage and carried on. I didn’t say a word. I sat there wondering if the town’s rat extermination service was going to deal with this shit or not. Because when you’ve seen the way they piss around in council offices… Well, in our town, in any case. Maybe things are different in Oran. I hope so, for their sake. Because if it happened round here, no offence, but we’d smother to death under piles of rats. And then, in the book, the concierge gets sick, and his glands are all swollen in his neck. I know all about swollen glands, because once I caught something and the glands in my groin swelled up so I know exactly how he felt. Especially because the bastard doctor pressed down on them hard.

  When Margueritte stopped reading, I would have liked her to carry on. But since we weren’t close friends, I didn’t feel like I could ask. I just said:

  “It’s really interesting, your book.”

  She gave a little nod to let me know she agreed.

  “Yes. Camus is certainly a great author.”

  “His first name is Albert, is that right? Albert Camus?”

  “Indeed it is. Have you never read anything by him? The Outsider? The Fall?”

  “I don’t think so. Not that I remember, anyway.”

  “If you enjoyed my little reading, perhaps we could continue with the book another day if you’re so inclined?”

  I was so inclined I’d happily have carried on right now this minute. At the same time, I wasn’t about to spend my days sitting on park benches having someone read me stories like you do with little kids. Except that with kids, you don’t read them stories about dead rats.

  I said:

  “Perhaps. Why not? I wouldn’t mind.”

  Which is one way of saying yes without sounding too desperate.

  We said goodbye without setting a date.

  I walked with her a little way along the path. She headed for the gate onto the boulevard de la Libération. I prefer to leave by the avenue des Lices, it’s shorter. Well, to get to where I’m going, it’s shorter.

  Everything is relative.

  AS I WALKED, I was thinking about what she had just been reading to me. Apart from the rats, there were other scenes I’d really liked. For example the neighbour who wants to commit suicide and writes in chalk on his door: Come in, I’ve hanged myself.

  Come in, I’ve hanged myself! That just blows me away, you know? What must have been going on in this guy Camus’s head to be able to come up with stuff like this!

  Though I suppose sometimes, in real life… I remember, when I was a kid, one of our neighbours shot himself in the head. Lombard, his name was. He was afraid of his kids finding him when they came back from school, so he left a note on the front door too: Gone shopping. And so the dog wouldn’t run away, he kept it locked inside with him. It was a huge grey-brown mutt, a vicious animal, a cross between a Wolfhound and a Great Dane. When the kids came home from school, they saw the note their dad had left and they heard the dog inside scratching at the door. They wanted to let it out, but the door was locked, so the boy told his sister to stay where she was and be good while he went round to the other side of the house and snuck in through a back window. He didn’t come out again. When the mother came home from work and saw the note, and found her daughter alone on the front step and her son nowhere to be seen, she realized something wasn’t right, the whole situation seemed sketchy.

  She dropped her daughter round at ours and asked my mother to look after her. I remember being hacked off because she cried the whole time.

  At first, we heard nothing. Then we heard the mother scream. Then the ambulance sirens. Then the police sirens. I went outside to find out what was going on, but
I couldn’t see anything much, just a bunch of people on the lawn crowding around a stretcher with a sheet over it.

  Later, Madame Lombard told my mother that when she went into the house, she found her son standing, frozen in the kitchen, staring at the body of his father, which wasn’t a pretty sight. Apparently the dog’s muzzle was smeared with blood up to its ears. On the other hand, the floor was spotless, he’d licked the tiles clean. And his master’s skull while he was about it. There was not a drop of blood, not a sliver of bone, not a lump of brain. It was perfect. Clean as a new pin.

  I think the dog had to be put down or something.

  It sent the wife completely off her rocker. From then on, any time she saw a dog in the street she’d shriek at the kids Get over here! Quick! Quiiiick! scaring them so much they nearly shat themselves.

  Especially seeing as how the son was already pretty messed up by the experience.

  Whereas if the father had simply written: Come in, I’ve shot myself, like Albert Camus, it would have spared the kid a nasty surprise.

  But you can’t always think of everything.

  MARGUERITTE got through reading me The Plague in a couple of days. I mean, not all of it, obviously. Just extracts. And I have to say that mostly it was really good. With characters so completely twisted you had to wonder where Camus came up with them. The guy called Grand, for example, the one who wants to write a novel, except he writes the same sentence over and over, just changing a couple of words. It reminded me of The Shining, you know, the movie with Jack Nicholson, where the character types the same sentence hundreds of times on this battered old typewriter before he starts breaking down doors with an axe. There’s another story that scared me witless. He’s really good at playing psychos, Jack Nicholson.

  Anyway, to get back to the book, one thing is certain, which is that the days Margueritte and I spent reading The Plague, time passed a lot quicker around the bench.

  One day, she said to me:

  “You’re a true reader, Germain, I can tell…”

  At the time, it made me laugh because, me and books, well, you know…

  Thing is, she was serious. She told me that reading starts with listening. Me, I would have thought it started with reading. But she said: No, no, don’t you believe it, Germain. To cultivate a love of reading in children, you have to read to them aloud. And she explained that if you did it properly, they were hooked, like it was a drug. Then, as they grow up, they need books. I was astonished, but, thinking about it I realized it made sense. If someone had read me stories as a kid, I might have spent more time reading books instead of getting myself in trouble because I was bored.

  That’s why the day she gave me the book I was really pleased, even if I was embarrassed too, because in my innermost self—see also: in one’s heart of hearts, deep inside—I knew I would never read it, because it was too long and far too complicated.

  She handed it to me, just like that, as she was getting up to leave, and she said:

  “I’ve marked the passages we read together in pencil. Just as a reminder.”

  I said, OK, thanks. And I said it was kind of her. And told her I was happy.

  She smiled.

  “The pleasure was all mine, Germain, I assure you. Books should not be loved selfishly. Neither books nor anything else, in fact. We are here on this earth merely to pass things on… To learn to share our toys, that is perhaps the most important lesson to remember in this life… In fact, I was intending to introduce you to a number of other books I love, from time to time. Unless of course you are tired of listening to me… Would you like that?”

  There are people you can’t say no to. She was looking at me with her soft eyes, her gentle little wrinkly face, smiling at her own joke, as though she had just rung a doorbell and was about to leg it. I thought to myself that she must have driven quite a few men crazy in her day, just by asking what she’d asked me: “Would you like that?”

  I just nodded. I felt happy but dumb; with me, the two often go together.

  I watched her walk off down the path. I stood frozen, holding my book. It was my first book. I mean, the first book anyone had ever given me.

  Since I didn’t know what to do with it, I put it on top of the television when I got home. But that night, as I was about to turn off the TV and hit the sack, I looked at it. It was like it was waiting for me.

  I heard that voice in my head again.

  It was saying: Oh for God’s sake, Germain, at least make an effort! It’s only a book.

  I picked it up, opened it, flicked past the first pages and looked for an underlined passage, and I found the sentence: On the morning of 16th April, Doctor Bernard Rieux came out of his consulting room and stumbled on a dead rat in the middle of the landing. And when I found it, it was easy enough to read, because I knew it already. To make it stand out better, I went over it with the highlighter pen I use for labelling the vegetables I sell down the market.

  Then, I looked for: Come in, I’ve hanged myself. It took a while, but it was like a game. A treasure hunt. So I highlighted all the passages I really liked. Even today, The Plague is a book where I only read bits of pages. With other books—not counting the dictionary, which I don’t read from cover to cover either—even if it’s hard, even if I find it difficult, I keep going. Or at least I try.

  But this one book… how can I explain it? I’ll never read it all.

  Because the version—see also: interpretation—that I like best is Margueritte’s.

  ONE DAY, not long after I was given The Plague as a present, I was at Chez Francine with Marco and Landremont. We were playing cards and watching the news. At some point, there was a report on some country, I don’t really remember which one. Anyway, someplace where life pretty much sucked, what with wars and suchlike. This time, there had been an earthquake, a proper natural disaster with loads of people dead—according to early estimates by the foreign correspondent.

  Landremont said:

  “Jesus! Some people really have it rough, don’t they? Those poor bastards have enough to deal with already. If it’s not bombs raining from the sky, it’s their roof caving in!”

  Marco joined in:

  “All they need now is a dose of cholera…”

  “Or the plague, like in Oran in the book by Camus!” I said.

  Landremont gave me a funny look. He opened his mouth but nothing came out, he turned to Marco and Julien, then back to me. And then he said, straight out:

  “You’re telling me you’ve read Camus?”

  “Well… The Plague, that’s all…”

  “Really?… You’ve read The Plague, and ‘that’s all’? When did you start reading books?”

  It got on my tits, the way he talked to me. I chugged my beer and, as I got up to leave, I said:

  “I suppose you read a lot, do you?”

  When I got outside, I thought, Next time you pull a stunt like that, you prick, I’ll give you a slap.

  Just to sort out his ideas, as my mother would say. And, seeing as how I was thinking about her, it occurred to me that I should pay her a visit one of these days while she was still alive.

  MY MOTHER lives thirty metres from my place. She lives in the house, I live in the garden. Well, in the caravan. That said, thinking about it, we couldn’t be farther apart.

  I suppose I could have looked for my own place, but what would be the point? I don’t need much space, apart from a bed, a place to sit and somewhere to eat. I take up more than enough space as it is. People say that, given the size of me, a caravan must feel very small. But ever since I was a kid, I’ve always bumped into things, I’ve always been too big for my size. Annette says I’m magnificent. But since when can you trust the word of a woman in love? You know what they’re like: they always think you’re the strongest, the most handsome. Mothers can be a bit like that too, apparently. Those who are the maternal type, at least.

  I stayed here on account of my vegetable garden. I created it all by myself. I turned over
the soil with a spade—and that’s no job for slackers, trust me. I built the fence with the little gate, the tool shed, the greenhouse. It’s like my kid. Maybe that’s a dumb thing to say. I don’t care. Without me, it wouldn’t exist. I grow a bit of everything: carrots, turnips, beetroot, potatoes, leeks. Different types of lettuce: frisée, romaine, some Batavian. Tomatoes too, beefsteak and Black Krim, as well as Marmandes. Anyhow, it depends on the season and on how I feel. And I plant flowers too, just for show. I was young when I started it. I don’t quite remember how old—twelve, maybe thirteen?

  My mother screamed at me like a fishwife, saying I’d turned her lawn into a building site. “Lawn”? You must be kidding. A patch of wilderness, more like.

  These days, she doesn’t say anything. But she comes down and steals my vegetables as soon as my back is turned. In the beginning, I’d bawl her out, but actually, I don’t really care. I’ve got ten times as many vegetables as I can use. Sometimes I even go down the market and sell them. And besides, at least trekking down the garden and back with her basket gives my mother a bit of exercise. She could do with it, she barks like a seal when she breathes, her lungs will be the death of her, or maybe her heart. One or the other. Her mind is gone already. But being brain-dead isn’t fatal: even when your mind is gone, you can live on. Too bad for those around you.

  The day I told my mother I was going to move into the caravan at the bottom of the garden, she looked at me like I was soft in the head. She said:

  “Can’t you think of a better way to make us look bad to the neighbours?”

  I replied, keeping my cool:

  “I don’t give a damn about the neighbours! And I can’t see why they would be bothered. It’s our garden…”

  She collapsed on the sofa. She was panting hard, one hand on her chest.

  “God Almighty, what did I ever do to deserve a son like this?”