‘And what’s he like then, this Octave?’ I asked my son.
‘He’s short. He’s got a pink mouth.’
He couldn’t find anything else to say.
‘Is that all?’
Hugo pursed his lips, he couldn’t think of anything to add. ‘What’s his hair like?’
‘Straight.’
‘What colour?’
‘Beige.’
‘What about his eyes?’
‘Normal.’
‘What colour are they?’
Hugo frowned. He didn’t know. He then confided that he had never noticed people could have different-coloured eyes. ‘I’ll pay more attention to that from now on,’ he assured me in his earnest voice.
I looked away as I always did when he tried to catch my eye. It was an almost involuntary movement, more like a reflex than a reaction. I didn’t even have to think about it. Like the positive poles of magnets which can’t help driving each other away, my eyes were diverted by his. I was probably afraid he would read in them what I pointlessly tried to hide from him. ‘I don’t love you’ was the message encoded in my irises, it was the arrow that my pupils refused to shoot at him. I wanted to protect him, not because he was my flesh, not because he was my blood, simply because this was a higher-order imperative which can only be explained like this: it’s so easy for an adult to hurt a child that we must forbid ourselves doing it at all costs. I defended my son from myself quite rationally with the same degree of duty that impelled me to heal an injured bird, feed a stray cat or not accelerate at a pedestrian crossing.
‘Can I invite him home?’ Hugo asked.
It was the first time he had talked of bringing a friend home.
‘You want to invite Octave home? For tea?’
‘Yes, but I’d like him to stay the night too.’
‘Would his parents agree? I’ll have to ring them. Have you got his phone number?’
‘His parents are fine. Octave does whatever he wants.’
‘How do you know?’
‘He told me.’
‘I’ll still call his mother,’ I said.
I never managed to get hold of his parents. I left messages. No one rang back. I wrote a note to which there was no reply. Octave came with a rucksack in which his carefully folded change of clothes and appropriately provisioned wash-bag proved that a grown-up had supervised his departure. He appeared with Hugo one Tuesday evening at five o’clock. His hair was straight and beige, and his eyes an indefinable colour. He said hello to me and tilted his face for me to kiss him. I leant over and kissed his cheek, instantly giving him something I had always refused Hugo. I flushed and thanked my lucky stars for wintertime which cast the hall in deep shadow from mid-afternoon. I gave the boys tea. Hugo anticipated my every move, opening cupboards, taking out the bread and jams. He was efficient and careful. Octave sat perfectly motionless on his chair waiting to be served. He didn’t dare make the slightest move; I even had to pour milk into his glass and put it right next to him or he wouldn’t have had a drink.
‘Do you like bread and butter?’ I asked him because while Hugo spread Nutella on his bread and golloped it down, Octave hadn’t touched a thing.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I really like it.’
‘Would you like me to spread it for you?’ I asked him.
‘Oh, yes please. Thank you very much!’
He was all effusiveness. There again I did something for him I had never done for my son. Hugo was a champion of autonomy, he made sure he very rarely needed me.
Temptation doesn’t bother with disguises. The snake offers Eve the apple in his usual reptilian attire. There was nothing in the least bit subtle about my meeting Octave, not the least ambiguous either. He systematically asked me for all the things my son had never thought to request; Hugo knew intuitively he would come up against such cruel incompetence that it was out of the question to put it to the test. Would you ask a quadriplegic to run for the bus? Or clear the table? In every area where Hugo excelled, Octave had difficulties. He had trouble reading, mumbling like a five-year-old; he didn’t understand the difference between tens and units, got muddled with past participles - I had tooken, he had eated. His socks were always corkscrewed, his buttons all at sixes and sevens. He couldn’t cut up his meat, had difficulty finding his sleeve when he put his coat on, and didn’t know you had to look before crossing the road. He was so deficient in everything that you couldn’t help helping him, especially as he was so incomprehensibly gracious. He thanked you better than anyone and displayed the most touching gratitude at every opportunity. He also had a precocious sense of the ridiculous, which meant he viewed his improbable collection of shortcomings with considerable humour.
He came for tea. He came for the night. We took him away for weekends. There was talk of taking him on holiday with us.
One night just before I went to sleep I thought to myself that I really loved Octave. It was such a sweet, comforting feeling that, for the first time in ages, I felt I was falling asleep softly and perfectly peacefully. Over a period of seven years I had got into the habit of forcibly burying myself in sleep as if having to bore a tunnel through granite. In order to succumb to sleep I had to wrest my stray mother’s heart to the ground, bury it in the earth, and hush its endless lament by filling its mouth with stones. I stepped into my nights as if into my tomb except in this instance I had to do it again every evening.
The following morning Hugo told me he was no longer friends with Octave.
At first I laughed.
‘What’s happened? Have you had an argument?’
‘No.’
‘What then?’
‘I don’t ever want to see him again. I don’t ever want to ask him here again.’
‘That’s not very nice,’ I told my son, who suddenly seemed like my own torturer.
Why was he taking him away from me? Why did he have to remove Octave? What did he understand of my affection? I never made a show of it. I’m not like those mothers who bang on at their children about their classmates’ exploits. Why aren’t you more like so-and-so? Why aren’t you as polite as such-and-such? Look how much what’s-his-name helps his mother! I was discreet, never making any comment.
‘He’s the one who’s not very nice,’ Hugo retorted. ‘He’s a liar, a dirty liar.’
I’d never seen Hugo so angry.
‘What are you talking about?’
As I asked the question, without realizing it, I looked him right in the eye. The arrow was shot. That look turned him to stone. I saw his lips quiver. His irises danced as if trying to find some way to take cover. He mumbled something, something incomprehensible about entities and secret planets - puerile fantasies. I didn’t understand any of it and didn’t want to understand. I was fascinated by the power of my own loathing. No hope of lowering my eyelids. No hope of looking away. A lava flow streamed from those scalding apertures. The windows of my soul were pulverized by the violence of that torrent.
How can I even remember that scene? How can I go back over it?
Eventually Hugo’s neck drooped, overwhelmed. Very slowly, as if his whole body hurt from the impact, he went back to his room. I didn’t know what border I had just crossed but as soon as my son was out of sight a wave of shame swept over me, unlike anything I had felt before but similar to the one that would ravage me several years later.
The pouting little face of Vincent’s orchid is watching me crying over my onions. I forgot to chop them in advance. It’s usually the first thing I do: I put on my swimming goggles and dive into those pearlescent slices. Ben’s remonstrating distracted me. I dare not put on my goggles in front of customers and, however much I rinse the bulbs in cold water, my eyes are exploding. I feel like one of those dogs with undershot jaws whose eyes pop out of their heads like fat marbles. Vincent kissed my hand before leaving. I can feel the trace of his lips at the root of my fingers. I’m not sure I like it. I’m slightly repelled by his overly pale lips and the inverted commas of saliva on either side
of them. And yet I can’t deny that a minute lasso squeezed my navel in its slip knot. Onion skins - light, translucent, golden - swirl round the chopping board in the draft created by my knife. I think of Ali Slimane’s sublime white onions, as sweet as fruit, like light bulbs because, rather than being reflected in them, the light seemed to emanate from them. I chopped without goggles in those days, but without a tear. ‘You will never cry because of me,’ my supplier announced as he handed me a string of luminescent spheres. ‘These are mild onions. They’ve got just as much flavour as the others but they don’t sting.’ ‘That’s very kind,’ I said. Mr Slimane lowered his eyes and curved his lips inwards modestly, lips which weren’t dilute like Vincent’s but brown, almost purple, like the skin of a fig. The surprise of his rare smiles like opening a fig, too. I always looked at his mouth when he was talking to me because his eyes were too sad for me. I looked at his mouth and learned it by heart as if planning to… What sort of plans would necessitate knowing a mouth so intimately? What plans with a man who would never make me cry?
Simone and Hannah push the door open and come straight over to the kitchen to kiss me hello.
‘What’s the matter?’ they ask, horrified by my tears.
Before I can reply they too are attacked by the pungent onions which make their eyes stream. They wipe the corners of their eyes and announce that they have an impossible essay to do for the next day. Could I help them later? They’ve got an hour’s free study after lunch. They’d like me to explain something to them.
‘I’m rubbish at philosophy,’ I tell them. ‘I’ve always been rubbish at it.’
‘Yes, but you’ve lived,’ they say. ‘You’ve got experience.’
‘What’s it about?’
I can’t see how my experience can help me answer questions which terrified me in the sixth form and still leave me lost for words: ‘Can we understand the past when we don’t know the future?’, ‘Should we strive to demonstrate everything?’, ‘Can the course of history be changed?’, ‘Is man reasonable by nature?’. After reading the question I always felt like answering NO! An energetic and definitive no. Once free of the question I could run away. Except I had to stay sitting at the desk and not saying no, or yes, not actually answering, but constructing sentences which, like the perfect Sunday afternoon walk, took you in a loop, a sort of ellipse in which the going away simply facilitated a return to the point of departure. A succession of questions intended to reformulate the very first one. I found the process exhausting and hypocritical.
‘We should always tell the truth but should the truth always be told?’ Simone and Hannah chorus at me.
‘Is that the question?’
They nod. A colossal NO! rears up inside me.
‘I haven’t a clue, girls,’ I tell them with a shrug as the tears flow all the faster.
They laugh and order two bowls of soup and a knob of cheese.
Ben pins orders to the board as the customers settle and make their decisions. I notice a certain harmony in the meals and silently congratulate my regulars. They’re starting to understand. They’re starting to accept the good I can do them.
Just as I am carving a shoulder of lamb roasted in juniper berries, a strident voice shrieks a loud ‘Hello!’ behind me.
I flatten my hands on the worktop. I don’t want to turn round. I want to rewind and not let this scene happen.
‘Who is it?’ Ben asks me quietly as he picks up a couple of plats du jour.
‘It’s Aunt Emilienne,’ I say in horror.
Aunt Emilienne has got the date wrong. She missed the opening night and is here now, two months too late, to celebrate the opening of Chez moi.
‘I’ll take care of her,’ says Ben, putting a hand on my shoulder.
He doesn’t understand. Taking care of Aunt Emilienne is a full-time job. She’s one of my many aunts, and the most calamitous. She’s obese, bald, disfigured by a badly repaired hare-lip, and wears bottle-thick glasses. She’s a bit deranged, always has been, and shrieks instead of talking because she refuses to acknowledge her deafness by treating it. She’s extremely coquettish and capricious, a princess-and-the-pea type without the figure in the job description. I have always been kind to her - which can’t be said of most members of my family. I treat her well because I admire her vitality, enthusiasm and energy. I don’t know how she carries on without feeling demoralized when she has every excuse to feel sorry for herself. Having so little luck, having such a collection of defects, is worth celebrating; that’s what her permanent good mood seems to proclaim.
I come out from my refuge behind the counter to greet her.
‘You’ve lost weight!’ she shrieks, victoriously, before kissing me.
Her wisps of beard scratch my cheek. I don’t dare check whether the customers are staring at her.
‘The opening night was two months ago,’ I say right in her ear so that I don’t have to raise my voice.
‘The what?’
‘The opening night, when the restaurant opened. You know, I sent you an invitation.’
She says nothing but drops heavily onto one of my wonky chairs. Then she opens her mouth wide, yawns without putting her hand over her mouth and cries, ‘How are you?’ so loudly it makes everyone jump. Some of them, probably thinking the question was addressed to them (when it was intended only for me), feel constrained to reply ‘Very well, thank you, and you?’. Aunt Emilienne couldn’t be less interested in them. She thinks they are mad and gives a haughty smirk, completely unaware of the impression she might have on them. I consider that a blessing.
‘Would you like something to eat?’
‘Is this a restaurant or not?’ she asks, laughing.
Ben steps in. While my back has been turned, he has disguised himself as a waiter. The get-up is simple and convincing: he has put on his black velvet jacket, which he normally leaves on the coat stand, and has folded a clean white cloth in three and laid it over his forearm. He hands her a menu cobbled together quickly on a loose piece of paper slipped into a cardboard mount.
‘Would you like me to read it for you?’ he offers.
She nods. He leans towards her amiably and recites the dishes one at a time. I go back to the kitchen, relieved; he understands perfectly.
A few moments later I see him coming back with the carafe of water he put on her table.
‘What’s going on?’ I ask him.
‘Aunt Emilienne says the water tastes funny,’ he says. ‘She’d like me to change it.’
I hand Ben a half-bottle of Evian.
‘No,’ he says. ‘She doesn’t want mineral water. She just wants tap water.’
He empties the one he had given her and takes her a new one. During the course of the meal he reiterates this operation three times, without complaining, angelically submissive and steadfast. As soon as she has finished her first course, she calls ‘Waiter!’ in a strident authoritative voice. Ben comes running. She mistreats him as much as she can, insisting her cutlery is changed and complaining that there isn’t an embroidered table-cloth. She takes a filthy cotton placemat from her bag and puts it under her plate. Ben congratulates her, saying it looks much better like that.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say to him, not daring to come out of hiding again.
‘Everything’s fine,’ he assures me.
We watch my aunt spitting out bits of meat she deems too tough. She lays them carefully all the way round the table. Little grey balls, duly masticated, punctuate the Formica. A few threads of salad have stuck between her teeth, and she has vinaigrette on her chin and cheeks.
‘It’s kind of her to have come,’ Ben says to comfort me.
He’s right. My aunt is responding to the invitation - it’s touching. Her two-month delay means I can spread out the pleasure. At this point I realize that not one of my first-night guests has come back to taste my cooking since the opening. Not a word from my parents. She’s sorted herself out, with her little dive, they will be thinking. No need to ring her every
couple of days to see if she’s still alive. Nothing from my friends either. Maybe the reunion was a bit sudden. Here I am again, after six years’ absence. They’re relieved to know I still exist, wanted to demonstrate their indulgence. Time has done its work, they told themselves. That’s that dusted under the carpet, now we can all breathe a bit more easily. Now we won’t have to wait for one of those silences that breaks the flow of a conversation to ask, ‘Hey, by the way, what’s Myriam up to?’ I wonder retrospectively how many of them knew the exact nature of the incident. I don’t know how well the secret was guarded. I know I can rely on my husband to have said nothing. The emperor of silence. But my mother, my father? Corinne and Lina, my childhood friends? A scenario constructed around a bout of violent depression circulated round our acquaintances in the weeks following the revelation. ‘Disappear’, was my husband’s advice. ‘I’ve no desire to be dragged through the mud with you.’ Those were his parting words. Such a predictable man.
My husband liked situations to be clear. He appreciated order. The house had to be impeccable, it was his favourite word, ‘impeccable’. He smacked his lips as he said it. He hated confusion and paradox, abhorred sloppiness. He was astonishingly dependable. It was his solidness that attracted me straight away. I don’t really know why the thought of living beside a rock was reassuring. I never suspected how opaque it would be. Or how hard.
My husband always showered after lovemaking, immediately, even in the middle of the night. He would leap out of bed and rush to the bathroom. I thought of Lady Macbeth, frantic to wipe the blood from her hands - ‘Out damned spot, out I say’. Was I already so disgusting? No, surely. Cleanliness was not what this was about. I think what he hoped to find under that stream of water was something else altogether. He wanted to get back to himself. Passion worried him, he felt possessed. My husband had a very particular way of making love. Like a battering ram breaking down the door of a fort. Sometimes I felt as if he wanted to get through me, to fuck the mattress, the ground, the wall. The bones in my hips hurt. He’ll break me one day, I thought. But I was more solid than I thought. And I liked what he did. I was touched by the despair, the spirit that took him over. That anger and vehemence expelled into me alone made me feel quite light-headed. It could be that I was confusing spite with desire. I left the Beatles’ ‘Norwegian Wood’ for quite a different landscape. The new territory of my lovemaking was carved apart by seismic activity. We didn’t love each other by rolling tenderly through mossy undergrowth, but trudged on a forced march towards a back-breaking summit. I was honoured by so much power. He liked sulking with me in the evening, keeping his teeth clenched all through supper, talking only to Hugo. He was preparing for the assault, furbishing his loathing. Once in bed the heat of my body, the smell of it, unleashed his furious passion. He swooped on me and I often thought he wanted to kill. That would have given him more relief than anything else.
Chez Moi Page 11