Chez Moi

by Agnes Desarthe

  I stroke the extraordinarily soft white ball and let its encrypted message travel up through my fingers. Ali puts his hand on mine. I look at the perfect graduation from his brown skin to my pale skin on the white surface. I dare not look up. I would like the soft opaque crystal of this magic fungus to take us far away from here, to a place where the meaning of life comes down to the bland urge to live it.

  ‘Shall we go?’ he asks.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  I let Barbara know I’m leaving.

  ‘I’ll be back in a couple of days.’

  She will have to say goodbye to the guests for me, apologize for me, explain to Ben. I gabble away and she listens kindly, reassures me.

  ‘It’s not a problem, they’re all completely pissed anyway.’

  I leave Chez moi by the side door with a full moon under my arm. Once out on the street I succumb to a mental inventory: seventy chairs, two banquettes, twenty tables, six hobs, two fridges… I want to know what I’m leaving behind. I lean on this reassuring itemization because my body can barely take a step forward. It’s beating far too fast in there. The blood’s boiling. It’s trembling. It’s scattering. I’m so frightened. Frightened like never before. I want to lose everything. Shake it all off. Have nothing left so that I’ll stop worrying about being ransacked and robbed because suddenly everything seems precious. Every memory is moaning softly inside me. Don’t leave me, begs the past. Don’t abandon us, weep the images. Time itself is talking to me, admonishing me. I draw up my legacy against its inexorable tide. After the lists of things come the lists of people. Faces tumble and clink like coins in a slot-machine, the tinkle of cheeks against noses and ears. Don’t leave us, scream the mouths before falling into oblivion. I haven’t forgotten you, I tell them. I haven’t forgotten anything. I’m counting you and gathering you together, sorting you out the better to see you. Nothing sinister, a statement of account with no conclusion. An escalation. To see whether, if I pile you up, if I lay you one on top of the other like bricks, I’ll be able to climb up, to build the enormous staircase I need to go and hang this moon up in my sky. I tell the people they will be the framework, and the things the substance. I need to build it straight away. I have to be up to the task. But how? Tipping over all the rubbish bins of my existence, mixing up the rubbish with my most recent and most expensive acquisitions, and carrying on climbing when in my veins there isn’t a single drop of blood left, beneath my skin not a single drop of sweat. I’ve gone and evaporated. Only the menacing pendulum is left, its expressionless copper face travelling from right to left, and left to right, the tiny distance of every second, which tells me it is time.

  The blue van speeds through the night. A vertiginous fall away from the city, far from the lights, into the silent darkness of the countryside. But my eyes and ears soon get used to it. Once I have my feet in the grass, when the engine has been switched off and the headlights have stopped projecting their halo, I can see and hear. The curtain is raised on a nocturnal scene, revealing little winter stars and scarves of cloud stretching, grey or perhaps blue, from one constellation to another. Evergreen foliage emerges against the sky. I can make out thickets shaped like giant bears; the outline of a forest, slightly to our left, sketches the silhouette of a dinosaur sleeping on the hillside. Between the fallen branches there is a rustling, a teeming, then nothing. A smell of moss, strangled by the cold, reaches me, almost spent. A bird calls. Nothing. A bird answers. Nothing. Two arms wrap round my shoulders, then my waist, then my hips, then my knees. His hands around my ankles. They come back up and rest on my thighs, my stomach, my breasts, my eyes, my ears. The mouth that I know by heart, the one that belongs to the man who will never make me cry, the man standing behind me holding me fast, encircling me, bites the skin on my neck. And that’s it. The man who was never meant to make me cry, who had promised he wouldn’t, makes the tears stream down my cheeks, over my armpits and down my legs. I won’t hold the lie against him. The strong grip of this betrayal is better than anything. I want him to lie to me, go back on his word and contradict himself. He thinks he knows but he knows nothing. And I don’t know anything about him and long to know everything. The clothes thrown to the ground around us depict continents, ridged with mountain ranges, harbouring rivers of dew. We make love in the woods. Burn all the beds, sheets and pillows. No more blankets, no more bedsprings. A huge fire - its flames licking at furniture and consuming it, consuming the comfort of roofs over heads and the cushioned softness of eiderdowns - explodes into the night. I can hear it crackling as my body spreads from one valley to another. An elbow on the hill, a toe at the foot of the cliff, the nape of my neck on the rocks by the waterfall, my shoulder blade rolling on the beaten earth of a track, my index finger straight up against the trunk of an oak, the small of my back rubbing on a bed of lichen, my kneecap pressing against the sheer side of a plateau, my head moulding into the silt beside the sea, my hair saltier than kelp as it wafts through the waves. I cry out. I call to the atoms of my skin one by one, collecting them together at last, and shrink back to size. When the cold starts to needle us, we crawl to the house which is only a few metres away, leaving our clothes to rest beneath the stars.

  When I open my eyes I am saddened by the drab whiteness of the morning. I would have liked sunshine, but no. The sky is indistinct, muted. I’m alone in an unknown bed. I screw up the thick cotton sheet and stuff it into my mouth. I feel the bottomless loneliness of a child waking in a strange house. He was brought there in his sleep. He doesn’t know whose arms laid him down during the night, or whose smile will greet him on waking, he is unfamiliar with the customs of the household and dare not get up for fear of disturbing the others. He is afraid that no one in this new place will know how to make the hot chocolate which is the only thing that could reassure him.

  I raise my head shyly and look at the square of garden visible through the window. The van with its scowling snout is parked a few metres away. I sit up further so that I can see the ground, looking for the clothes I took off the night before. They have disappeared. Ali must have got up at dawn to pick them up, harvesting the evidence. What would Mme Dubrême, the witch opposite, have said seeing jumpers, socks, underwear and trousers immortalized by a light glazing of white frost?

  I wonder what would be the right thing to do now. I don’t want to be here. I’m frightened of morning-after conversations and perhaps, even more, of the eye contact. I want to get back to my world, where every object is familiar, where ordinariness reigns, where I don’t have to think. I try to envisage what will happen next. I imagine a smell of coffee wafting under the door, breakfast in bed - I’ve always refused to eat lying down, it’s bad for digestion and afterwards you go back to sleep in all the crumbs. In another version I get up, wrapping myself in a toga of sheets as they do in films, and I go and sit in the kitchen where a blue and white china bowl is waiting for me. I dare not say I prefer drinking from a cup. We share embarrassed laughter and unfortunate words. We are drowned out by shame and awkwardness, and confront them with a pitiful dam of buttered bread - when I actually like mine with just cheese. Next I picture a little note left on the table: ‘The station is three kilometres away, you can take the bike from behind the house. It was really great. See you soon.’

  These various hypotheses paralyse me. I can’t see how to cope with what will happen next. I would like to simplify the encounter, to hand over a video of my past and say: there you are. That’s what I’ve been up to till now. Watch it and then we’ll talk. I feel too old to talk about my childhood, my parents, my marriage and the rest, but I don’t believe in new beginnings. What’s he going to do with me? I’m angry with Ali. I hate him for not knowing me sooner. I resent him for needing to have everything explained. I succumb to the lethargy of a demoralized teacher confronted with a stupid pupil. No question of him getting any ideas. I’ve got to disappear as quickly as possible. I’ll walk to the main road and then hitch a lift. I’ll make it clear that I don’t want to see him
again. No more deliveries. He reeled me in with his organic vegetables. It’s high time I got to know the wholesalers at Rungis. I’ve made a mistake but I’m used to that, it was small fry for a delinquent like me. I leap out of bed, determined to escape as quickly as possible.

  On a chair, properly folded, I find my clothes. So the cinematographic toga won’t be necessary. I throw them all on in a frenzy. My jumper is inside out. The sleeves of my T-shirt are twisted over my elbows and stopping my circulation. I pinch the skin on my stomach with the zip of my jeans. It makes me choke with rage. I throw the door open like a hurricane ready to ravage the house. Where’s the fucking kitchen? This house is huge. There are bedrooms all over the place. Is this a hotel or something? I walk heavily, kicking out at door frames, alerting the population. But no one answers. This place is empty. The bathroom is tiled with silver mosaic. It isn’t a hotel it’s a Turkish brothel! ‘Fucking Turkish brothel!’ I cry. As I run along the corridor a mirror throws back the image of a madwoman whose make-up has run. Her hair has formed a halo round her forehead. I stop abruptly, take a few steps back and study my reflection. I don’t know this face. Beneath the trails of mascara my cheeks are pink. No sign of bags under my eyes. I’m pretty. I go back to my searching rather more calmly and eventually come to a small room on the ground floor, lit by three windows and dominated by a reassuring range cooker. Someone has lit a fire in the stove. It’s warm. No steaming coffee, no bowl on the waxed blue cloth. A grey and white cat sitting on the window ledge casts a friendly eye over me. I get the feeling he’s smiling at me.

  Through the window I can see Ali, with his back to me, strolling through the garden. I wait for him to turn round. When he sees me he gives a whistle. I automatically wipe the traces of make-up from my face and smooth my hair. He nods. He utters a few inaudible words. I answer, although no sound comes from my mouth. He waves me over. I wave him in.

  I stroke the grey and white cat who almost closes his eyes.

  Ali is walking away with his hands in his pockets. He is disappearing to the right, round the corner of the house. I wait for him to come back, my heart burning in my chest.

  The next few hours I spend in his arms, on his back: he carries me. He loves it, throwing me from one shoulder to the other like a bundle. At nightfall we are very hungry and I decide to make a dish which takes three hours to cook. Ali agrees. While we wait patiently we try to remember everything we learned in our school gym classes; demonstrations are compulsory and follow swiftly on from an announcement of each exploit. ‘Forward roll?’ - ‘Yup.’ We do it. Backward roll landing with legs apart. Harder. Long jump. High jump. Shot put. Triple jump. Balancing. ‘Walking on your hands!’ I cry, caught up in the competitive spirit. Now I have to do it. Night fell long ago in the garden which is acting as the arena for our private Olympics. I take a long slow breath and with almost no run up, thinking this is really only walking - what difference does it make if it’s upside down? - I tip myself up and move forward, agile as an insect. The strength in my own arms amazes me. It’s not tiring at all. It’s like walking on your feet.

  Back at the restaurant I keep making mistakes. I put my hand up to take coffee from the shelf above when it’s in the cupboard below. I confuse the drawer of utensils with the one for cutlery, reach for the fridge handle on the right when it’s on the left. My body has secretly made the absurd decision to integrate the geography of Ali’s kitchen perfectly. In two days, during which I haven’t prepared more than three meals, my hands have recorded a useless new set of information and ousted the old one which is so essential. My efficiency is under threat. I’m slow, I’m clumsy, I laugh idiotically. Barbara wonders whether my neck is sore because I keep bringing my hand up to it gently.

  Ben is sulking.

  ‘A girl came,’ he tells me icily.

  ‘And?’

  ‘She wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  ‘Didn’t you ask her?’

  ‘She showed me a picture in the paper. She wanted to check it was you.’

  ‘A picture?’

  Ben hands me a free paper they give out at the Métro station. He has opened it on the restaurants page. In the section for the Eleventh Arrondissement the only establishment mentioned is Chez moi: there’s an article which I don’t manage to read and a rather hazy photograph. I study the picture, my hands shaking.

  ‘It’s not very clear because it was taken through the window,’ Ben points out.

  ‘I’m going to sue.’

  He bursts out laughing.

  ‘Who do you think you are, Britney Spears?’

  ‘Myriam welcomes you…’ I re-read the beginning of the sentence a dozen times and feel ashamed. ‘… into the cheerful shambles…’. What do they mean cheerful? What do they mean shambles?

  ‘Do you think this place is shambolic?’ I ask indignantly.

  ‘This is very good news for us. For you,’ Ben corrects himself, pointing at the three stars the journalist has honoured us with.

  ‘Did you do this?’ I ask him.

  ‘No. I don’t have any contacts in the Press,’ he replies in a perfectly neutral voice. ‘But if I did, I wouldn’t have hesitated for a minute. It’s a very good paper. They even mention the take-away service and the children’s canteen. All our inventions…’

  He’s enthused. He wants me to read the article.

  ‘That’s it,’ I say. ‘It’s over.’

  I’m not looking at Ben, I’m talking to my picture, my picture in the paper.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asks Ben.

  ‘We’re closing,’ I say. ‘I’ve had it. We’re closing.’

  ‘Stop being ridiculous,’ he interrupts. ‘You can’t have a nervous breakdown because of a picture in the paper.’

  I can’t find anything to say in reply. I’m genuinely convinced that we need to stop everything, although I can’t explain why. I recognize the sign of decadence all too clearly. I don’t want to go through another downfall. I couldn’t cope with the comedown. I can only go up.

  ‘She was very pretty, this girl,’ says Ben.

  ‘Which girl?’

  ‘The one who wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Eighteen, twenty.’

  ‘Everyone’s pretty at eighteen-twenty,’ I snap. ‘I was pretty at eighteen-twenty too.’

  Ben is exasperated.

  ‘Is it because you’re in love that you’re such a pain in the arse?’ he asks.

  And I know that everything in that sentence is difficult for him: the cloying noun ‘love’, the vulgar extravagance of ‘pain in the arse’.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, biting my lip. ‘It’s just it all seems so real, so definitive.’

  ‘She said she’d come back,’ he mumbles, taking the newspaper from me.

  He bundles it into his bag, afraid I might use it to wrap the potato peelings.

  ‘When?’

  ‘She didn’t give a time. I said you were coming back today.’

  A horrible feeling of foreboding takes hold of me. Danger never comes from where we expect it. I suspect this could be a health and safety inspection. Nothing here is up to standard. I dread being questioned, judged and punished by a woman younger than me. She won’t have any qualms. The merciless blade of immaturity is terrifying: expert eye and suspicious nostrils, she won’t miss a thing.

  And then what? She’ll file her report, we won’t be able to pay the astronomical fine and I’ll go bankrupt. Actually, this is a good thing. We’re closing. We’re stopping everything. Blessings never come from where we expect them. I accept condemnation in advance. I can’t wait to be accused and dispossessed. Then I’ll run away.

  When he took me to the station, Ali said, ‘You’re the wildest person I’ve ever met.’ I thought back to the bed which I had made so carefully, the sauté of veal with lemon and sage which was so tender and so prettily arranged on the dish, the neat swish
of a broom over the floor after the meal. I had settled into his house as if I were going to live there for ever. I had been his perfect wife. My brows furrowed.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘A wild farmer is just what’s needed. I was worried you would be a townie but you’re not in fact.’

  He started to laugh and hugged me to him. He didn’t tell me to come back. He didn’t ask me to stay. He stroked my head the way he would a rabbit’s, a tom-cat’s, a heifer’s or a chicken’s before killing them, but not necessarily, also because he loved them. Then he heaved a deep sigh and, still laughing, said something I didn’t hear because the train came into the station with a screech of rails.

  I learned this at school. We humans are on the fringes of the food chain. We don’t really play the game. A fly is eaten by a frog and he is gobbled up by a heron who, in turn, is gobbled up by… or there’s the worm who’s eaten by the bird who gets ripped apart by the cat… you can also start with a fish.

  There are of course big predators, animals which aren’t sandwiched between those they eat and those that eat them. No one eats the big predators. But they are killed. Humans kill them sometimes.

  I should also mention minor prey, the sort of creatures who - rather like the big predators - miss out on the sandwich and only ever get to see a single slice of bread: something eats them but they, the minor prey, don’t eat anything, or at least nothing animate, nothing that suffers, nothing that bleeds.

  We humans stand alone. One notch above the big predators. Pariahs to this wonderful system. Occasionally an animal can eat one of us, but we still know it’s a non-chain incident.

  I do wonder whether this isolation is our greatest misfortune. It is thanks to this, this tiny breach, that life loses its meaning, like a tyre losing air. As nothing does us any harm, it falls to us to invent our own adversity.

  I contemplate organizing a sort of council of big predators (how many of us would have a legitimate claim to attend?). Lions, crocodiles, killer whales, tigers, bears… I’m not well up on animal behaviour, so I could be getting things wrong. What I’m interested in is the principle. We would meet every year to debate a variety of subjects such as ‘Danger as a necessity’, ‘The mechanism of fear’ and ‘Passions and their management in non-threatened species’. Humans would be honorary members of this glorious commission. Coming together with the elite assassins would help us feel less isolated. Of course his majesty the herbivorous pachyderm, Professor Elephant, would also be there to mediate the symposium.