Soft in the Head

by Marie-Sabine Roger

  This made me think about my own situation and realize that, if I take after my mother, me getting old would be a nightmare for everyone concerned and one I’d be better off avoiding. All because of the bloody genetic traits you can’t help inheriting on account of genealogy. Not to mention all the defects I don’t know about because they’re from the bastard side of my father and his lot.

  By the time I’d stopped thinking, I realized that Margueritte had stopped talking.

  We don’t often look at each other, her and me. That’s normal with a park bench, because you’re sitting next to each other. Usually, we chat away and watch the kids with their pedal cars playing at being Michael Schumacher. Or at the clouds, or the pigeons. The important thing is that we listen to each other, we don’t need to look. But seeing as how she wasn’t saying anything, I gave her a once-over. She looked really down in the dumps. I can’t stand seeing a kid or an old person looking sad. It makes me sad too. And before I could stop myself, I’d put an arm around Margueritte’s shoulders and kissed her on the cheek.

  She gripped my hand—she looked like she was about to shed a little tear—and she said:

  “You are a good man, Germain. Your friends are very fortunate.”

  What are you supposed to say to that? If you say yes, you come across as an arrogant wanker.

  If you say no, you sound like a two-faced bastard.

  I said, “Well…”

  That seemed to be all right.

  Margueritte gave a little cough, she said:

  “Now then, if I’m not mistaken, we said we would do a little more reading together, did we not?”

  “We did.”

  “But we have not done any reading since Promise at Dawn several weeks ago, have we?”

  “Um… no.”

  “We shall have to remedy the situation! What would you like me to read next time?”

  “Well… um…”

  “Is there a subject that particularly interests you?”

  “…”

  “History, for example? Adventure stories? Detective novels? I don’t know, perhaps—”

  “Amazonian Indians!” I butted in.

  And as soon as I said it, I figured it was going to make me seem like a prize idiot.

  But Margueritte said:

  “Ah, the Amazonian Indians, of course… Of course… In that case, without wishing to get carried away, I think I have a novel on my shelves that you will enjoy…”

  I wasn’t even surprised: when you’ve got books about plagues, you’re bound to have something on the Jivaro Indians.

  “Is it by Camus?” I asked.

  “Oh, no, not this time. But it is very good nonetheless, you’ll see.”

  I said OK, and that was the truth.

  THIS IS HOW Margueritte came to read me The Old Man Who Read Love Stories. She showed up one Monday looking very pleased with herself. She took a little book out of her bag and patted it and said:

  “This is the book I mentioned to you the other day.”

  “About the Amazonian Indians?” I said.

  “Yes, among other things,” she said.

  “It’s pretty short,” I said.

  She told me you don’t judge a book by its length.

  “Any more than you can judge a person by their height,” I said. “As long as both feet touch the ground, you’re tall enough, isn’t that right?”

  And straight away I felt terrible and I looked down at her stumpy little legs dangling in the air. When it comes to park benches, she’s not grown-up size.

  She saw where I was looking, shrugged her shoulders and laughed. She said:

  “Shall we begin?”

  “Go for it!” I said.

  So she began:

  “The sky was a donkey’s swollen paunch hanging threateningly low overhead.”

  “That’s a metaphor,” I said.

  Indeed it is, she said, and that made me happy.

  And then she went back to reading and everything else followed.

  I have to tell you: I never knew I could love a story so much.

  I had liked The Plague because it had reminded me of that incident—see also: event, episode—where my neighbour had his head eaten by his dog, and whatever happens people always cling to childhood memories. And besides, I was fascinated by the idea of the teeming rats and all that stuff. The other book, the one by the guy whose mother loved him too much and vice is versa and who’s always looking for springs and wells and never finding them because life doesn’t keep its promises wasn’t bad either, and that one was pretty long.

  But The Old Man Who Read… wow! I couldn’t get enough, even when a cute girl in a tracksuit jogged right past with her breasts bobbing.

  I was hanging on every word like a tick hanging on to a dog.

  First off, I liked it because it was short. Then it killed two birds with one stone because it taught me a whole bunch of stuff about the Jivaro Indians, also known as the Shuar, though it means the same thing. For example, they file their teeth into points and they never get toothache, which is just as well for them because jungle dentists are vicious thugs! You only have to read the start of the book, when all the poor guys from the village come to be butchered by some bastard dentist called Dr Loachamín—who curses and swears as he rips out their teeth and replaces them with second-hand dentures that don’t even fit, to go by what Margueritte read:

  “Now then, how about this set?”

  “It’s too tight. I can’t close my mouth.”

  “Hell, what a delicate bunch we are! Come on, then, try another one.”

  “It’s too loose. It’ll fall out if I sneeze.”

  “Well, don’t catch a cold, you fool. Open your mouth.”

  I could see them as clearly as if I was there. It was even more lifelike than Albert Camus. I felt my feet tingling because it reminded me of when I was a kid, going to our dentist, Dr Tercelin, who used to give me a clout if I moved because he was hurting me.

  “Sometimes a patient let out a scream that frightened the birds, and knocked the forceps away in reaching with a free hand for the handle of his machete.”

  I would have laid into him with the machete, I can tell you. Dr Tercelin was a real bastard, he used to scream at us kids if we came on our own, but when our mothers came with us he was all lollipops and barley sugar. My mother used to dump me there and go off shopping on the pretext that the smell of ether made her stomach heave-ho. When the torture was finished, I would go and wait for her on the front step, with a gum abscess and a nasty taste of cloves in my mouth. I tell you, I could have done with finding a fucking well!…

  I’m remembering all this stuff while I’m listening to Margueritte, and I’m thinking, It’s crazy how a book can dredge up all this stuff from the past.

  Margueritte read me the whole thing, she didn’t skimp:

  “Take it like a man, you ninny. I know it hurts, and I told you whose fault that is. Don’t take it out on me. Sit still and show you’ve got spunk.”

  Just hearing her say the word spunk was worth it.

  On the other hand, when I wanted her to reread a passage I didn’t dare ask her. So I pinned back my ears and tried to remember everything.

  The Jivaro people are no fools, let me tell you. They blacken the blades of their machetes before they go hunting so that monkeys won’t see them glinting in the sunlight. I should do that with my Opinel. They’ve got snakes ten metres long and as thick as my thigh and huge catfish that weigh sixty-two kilos. I’m not likely to catch anything that big down at the lake any time soon.

  But I can just imagine myself, proud as a Jivaro, showing up at Chez Francine with a seventy-kilo catfish. Marco would have a fit, him being champion regional fly-fishing poacher and all.

  He’s a good guy, Marco. Just don’t go wounding his pride.

  I also learned that Amazonia is a shit heap of a place. It’s always bucketing down, it’s full of nothing but mud and scorpions, nothing like I imagined it, and that’s a r
eal disillusion—see also: disenchantment, disappointment. The other disillusion is that Shuar couples never kiss each other on the lips. No pecks, no tongues, nothing.

  On the other hand, when they make love—I prefer to say “make love” these days—the woman squats down over the man, because she finds that this is the ideal position for feeling the love, which I have to say would suit me fine, without wanting to spill the details of my personal private life.

  Anyway, this book I’m talking about is the kind of thing I’ll read again and again in my life if the Good Lord spares me from cataracts and Alzheimer’s, but it’s His call, it’s not up to me to tell Him what to do.

  When all’s said and done, now that I know more about the situation—thanks to Monsieur Sepúlveda—I can see that the Jivaro plan is not a good one. The book my uncle gave me didn’t have all these details, but it was in a bargain bin, and that’s probably why.

  Margueritte gave me this book when we had finished reading, which took about a week. And she said:

  “Germain, I may not be able to read to you for very much longer, I’m afraid…”

  “Why, are you fed up?”

  “No, of course not! It has been a real pleasure. It’s just that I don’t see clearly any more…”

  “Is it cataracts?” (Because I’d been worrying about getting cataracts myself.)

  “No, unfortunately,” she said, “It’s rather more serious.”

  “Glaucoma?” I said, because my mother’s got that and a bunch of other things I’ll probably inherit.

  “No, not that either. It’s something incurable. They call it age-related macular degeneration. It’s a rather pretentious name for an illness, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know, but it sounds complicated. What’s it like?”

  “A blot in the middle of the eye which is already making it difficult for me to read. Very soon, everything directly in front of me will be grey. I will only be able to see at the sides.”

  “Shit!” I said.

  Then I added, Sorry.

  “Oh, please, don’t apologize. I think in certain cases it is perfectly permissible to use the word ‘shit’.”

  “But can you still see me? Now?”

  “Yes, of course. But in a little while, I will not be able to recognize you. I will not be able to see faces, to read, to sew, or to count the pigeons.”

  It felt weird, her telling me this. Especially as she didn’t make a big deal of it, she just quietly explained it.

  I thought to myself, As shitty diseases go, it’s a shitty disease, and may the Good Lord forgive me, since He’s the one to blame for it.

  Margueritte said:

  “What I will miss most of all is reading.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  And you see, that’s something I thought I’d never think. Let alone say.

  I WENT HOME with this thing burrowing into my brain faster than a drill into a lump of balsa wood. Margueritte losing her sight. All the books she wouldn’t be able to read. That she wouldn’t be able to read to me. I heard that voice inside me that’s always making comments when I’m frustrated. For once at least it wasn’t yelling. It was broken, like me, and saying: Germain, do whatever you have to, but you can’t leave the old dear like that.

  “Oh really? And what am I supposed to do? Give her a squirt of Windolene and hope it demists her eyes? What the hell can I do if she’s going blind?”

  Shut up, Germain. For once in your life try thinking before you speak.

  I was thinking: She’s not even going to be able to play the Lotto or Scrabble any more, and she’ll miss that although, personally, I don’t see the point of them.

  I went round and round in circles like a cat when you hide its litter tray. I was thinking, Margueritte is not as strong as she makes out. She’s knee-high to a chickpea, she’s old as Methuselah. A soft breeze and she’d go down with flu. Oh, she puts on a brave face all right. She laughs and she laughs, but what is she going to do all alone, surrounded by grey, without even her books for company? It’s bad enough that she never had kids. I was beating myself up about it, it was like a slap in the face, and that’s when I knew—it was a bit confused, a bit rough around the edges—I couldn’t let Margueritte down. Whatever I did now, it was too late, she already had me with that little laugh, the flowery dress, the blue rinse. Eighty-six years old, and all that to wind up with a white stick? What the bloody hell is the Good Lord up to these days? I thought. I don’t care if He’s pissed off, if He can’t take criticism, He shouldn’t go around creating things.

  I said to myself, Margueritte is going to lose her sight and I’m going to lose Margueritte and our little talks on the park bench and all the My dear Germain, did you know?…

  When she can’t see any more, she won’t be able to come and I’ll have lost everything: the little cheat sheets so I don’t take a wrong turn looking things up in the dictionary. The books. Everything.

  I realized that no matter what I did, I couldn’t change the fate of Margueritte’s destiny. The bloody disease, macular matriculation or whatever it was, would keep going until it had done its job and Margueritte was blind.

  And that thought made me as sad as a lump of lead.

  When you love someone, that one person being unhappy can cause you more pain than all the people you hate put together if they tried to screw up your whole life.

  One day, Margueritte quoted some African writer, a Monsieur Bâ, who said something that’s really simple but really smart: When an old man dies, it is a library burning, or something like that. Well, that’s exactly how I saw the problem now. I felt like best mates with this Monsieur Bâ, even though the two of us have never actually met. Except in this case, just my luck, the library being torched was mine. And the worst thing was it was burning down just when I finally found it on the map.

  And you have to understand that that was unbearable, even for a metaphor.

  Seems like I’d spent my whole life looking for a spring or a well. So if the Almighty was planning to cut off the water supply now, I would howl like a dog too. Because I had to face facts: Margueritte mattered to me. She was like a grandmother, only better, because the only grannies I know are the non-existent one on my father’s side, or the one who shows up once in a while and screams at my mother.

  I think that’s when it came to me. The idea of adopting Margueritte. I know you’re not legally allowed to adopt a grown-up senior citizen. But it’s a bad law, I think you should be able to. If everything had turned out the way it should have, I’ll tell you what would have happened: Margueritte would have had a daughter. Later on, that daughter would turn out to be my mother—not my actual mother, someone different and a lot better—because I would have been the love child of her and my father instead of being born by mistake. We’d all have lived happily ever after like idiots. The end.

  But why would the Good Lord make things simple when He can make them complicated? I’m not criticizing Him or anything, but I’m pretty fucking angry.

  I thought to myself, Margueritte talks to me, she even listens to me. If I ask her questions, she answers them. She’s always teaching me things. When I’m with her, I never think about the gaping hole inside my head waiting to be filled, I just think about all the stuff I already owe her.

  So people can make fun of me until the end of all eternity and treat me like a bonehead, I didn’t care any more: Margueritte was my fairy grandmother. With a wave of her wand, she’d turned me into a flourishing garden. I had been a patch of fallow ground, but now, because of her, I can feel things growing, here are flowers and fruits and leaves and branches, as Landremont says when he’s trying to pick up girls, though I’ve never really understood why he says it.

  Margueritte was my fountain of knowledge. And because of a twist of fate, maybe soon I would be the one complaining that there are no more springs, only mirages, to quote poor Romain Gary.

  I WAS PRETTY BLOODY hacked off with God and this time I wasn’t about to apolo
gize.

  I don’t really care that He doesn’t grant my wishes, that He makes my life shit. I’ve never been a brown-noser, saying my prayers and genuflecting and all that stuff. I know the whole Our Father who art in heaven thing, and a few other bits and pieces, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, Amen, and off you trot. I never set foot in church except for weddings and christenings and funerals.

  I suppose I’m living in sin, if you take the Ten Commandments literally.

  The third commandment, for example, I’ve definitely taken His name in vain, and the fact that I was drunk isn’t really an excuse.

  With the fifth, Honour thy father and thy mother, He’s the one who did a bad job.

  Thy father, I never had. Thy mother, I’ve had it up to here.

  When it comes to Thou shalt not commit adultery, I haven’t really really sinned, it’s just that He’s set the bar a bit high, because if you listen to Him, he says whosoever looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. So that rules me out, because I’m sorry but one look at Julien’s wife or Jacques Devallée’s, and I’ve got a hard-on.

  When it comes to number eight, Thou shalt not steal, I’m not exactly squeaky clean either, what with my penknife and a bunch of other things I’m not going to list—this isn’t a tax return.

  With all that, if the Almighty doesn’t want to have anything to do with me, it’s my own fault.

  But Margueritte?

  She’s kind, she never bothers anyone, she reads like someone on the radio, but she’s the one who gets it in the neck? It’s wrongful injustice! I know loads of people who spend their lives being vicious and spewing bile who’ll wind up, at ninety-five, fit as fiddles, dying peacefully in their own beds. It makes you think that bile pickles bastards the way vinegar pickles onions.

  I was so disgusted, I ended up talking about the whole situation to Annette.

  It wasn’t easy, because when you’re revealing things you never know where it’s going to end.