The Islanders

by Pascal Garnier

  ‘Ah, you’re home! So you haven’t heard?’

  ‘Heard what? What is it?’

  ‘Your neighbours across the hall, your friends …’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘The gentleman, the blind one, well, he’s thrown himself out of the window!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I saw the whole thing! I saw him falling right before my eyes, plain as I see you now! Bam! Like a stone!’

  ‘Is he … is he dead?’

  ‘Near enough! It’s not a pretty sight, blood all over the pavement.’

  ‘He’s not dead? Are you sure?’

  ‘He was still moving, but … what a question.’

  ‘I’m just surprised, from this height …’

  ‘You’ve been drinking again, haven’t you? I heard all about it from your poor maman. She thought you’d given up.’

  ‘I had. What about Jeanne – I mean his sister?’

  ‘Well, she’s at the hospital, of course!’

  ‘Yes, of course. Thanks, Madeleine, thank you.’

  ‘Thanks for what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t need anything?’

  ‘No, nothing. Goodbye.’

  The old lady stared open-mouthed at the closed door before making up her mind to go home.

  ‘They drink, they lark about, they throw themselves out of windows … What’s the world coming to?’

  It was a question of minutes, maybe hours if the heart held out, but beyond that there was no hope. She could stay if she wanted, but she was better off going home; they would call her when the time came. One of the laces on the junior doctor’s trainers was undone. Jeanne was about to point this out to him when two stretcher-bearers came rushing through the waiting area of the emergency ward. A pale hand stuck out from under a sheet along with two feet in odd socks, one grey and the other with red and black stripes. A woman with a blue rinse who was there with her husband, whose hand was wrapped in a big bloodied bandage, muttered, ‘That’s a car crash, if ever I saw one.’

  ‘And how would you know?’

  ‘I just do.’

  ‘Think you’re so clever, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, if you’d only listened to me instead of carrying on with that electric carving knife, we wouldn’t be here, would we?’

  ‘Oh, is that right?’

  Of course there was no point staying, with her bottom squeezed into this moulded plastic chair, watching the nurses’ Scholl clogs dancing in front of her, but Jeanne wanted to be certain Rodolphe was dead. He was capable of anything, even coming back to life. She would not breathe freely until her brother had breathed his last. She wasn’t worried about anything else. The police would pay her a visit tomorrow, that was obvious, but so what? She would just repeat everything the officer had seen with his own eyes. If necessary, she would call in Rodolphe’s psychiatrist. As for the guy they had found in the woods, she knew nothing about it. All of this seemed so clear and logical it didn’t even feel like lying. Destiny could get it wrong, and it was perfectly reasonable to rewrite the script if the scene wasn’t up to scratch. She hadn’t doubted Olivier for a moment. In spite of his fears and failings, he had risen to the task, and she thought all the better of him for it. Though he had been battered and wounded along the way, he had lost none of the fighting spirit that made them plough through life together like a horse and cart. Nobody, nothing could stand in their way.

  Rodolphe was her brother, but Rodolphe had lost. Or perhaps he had won. He had never enjoyed life; it caused him too much pain. He always knew he wasn’t cut out for it. He didn’t have the knack. He couldn’t bear the keen ones at the Institute for the Blind who were self-sufficient, excelled at everything, accomplished all kinds of feats without the aid of white sticks or dogs! He had made minimal effort, ensuring he remained as dependent as possible. Everyone had to know what a terrible handicap it was to be blind.

  Jeanne fully understood and respected Rodolphe’s point of view. He had never tried to be like other people; he shouted from the rooftops that he was different. It was the best strategy to adopt. One way or another, he was always going to lose. Even if Olivier had left, his victory would have killed him, and he knew it. Something had snapped between him and his sister, like an overstretched elastic band. Things could never go back to the way they were.

  A homeless man was brought in, blind drunk and covered in bruises. His clothes, skin and hair were the colour of the streets, greenish, brown-black, grey. He smelt like it too, everything from petrol to urine. He kept falling over. Was his fate really more enviable than Rodolphe’s?

  At 21.37, the junior doctor informed her that her brother had succumbed to his injuries.

  *

  Olivier realised he had nothing left to drink just before eight o’clock.

  He hurtled downstairs at breakneck speed but it was when he reached the shop that he came a cropper: the metal shutter was down. There was a trickle of yellow light coming out from underneath it. The old woman must still be inside. He knocked three times, then harder three times more, until the shutter came halfway up and the shopkeeper poked her head out.

  ‘What are you banging on the shutter like that for? What do you want?’

  ‘It’s very good of you to open up for me. There are more of us than I was expecting this evening, and I’m a bit short on whisky …’

  ‘The same one as this morning?’

  ‘Er … yes.’

  ‘Stay there.’

  He couldn’t help justifying himself, telling a fib before buying every bottle. It was pointless since the shopkeeper knew perfectly well he was a drunk and couldn’t have cared less. And he knew that she knew. But that didn’t matter, it was all part of the game, like hiding the bottles even when he was by himself. With the whisky safely in his pocket, he felt reassured, equipped for anything. He had no desire to go back up. There was no way Jeanne would be home from the hospital yet. He headed towards Le Départ, the café at Gare Rive Gauche. As a youngster, he never came here. People said it attracted the wrong sort of crowd. Instead he would meet his friends at L’Arrivée, in Gare Rive Droite. Sons of surgeons and lawyers with aristocratic names like de Beauvaroc, de Clérice, d’Alban-Michau. They probably still met up there – them, or their children. People like that had it made from birth. For a while, he had been proud to be admitted into their circle despite the fact his father was a lowly public servant. It was Jeanne who opened his eyes with a single word:

  ‘Those guys? Cocky dodos.’

  That was exactly what they were, the last survivors of their race who were inflated with pride but would never take off. L’Arrivée or Le Départ, that was the choice you had to make in Versailles. He himself had never known anything but departures. The few times he felt he had arrived corresponded with periods of total lethargy when he had no desire to go anywhere, like with Odile.

  What about Rodolphe? How could he not have arrived yet? After a fall like that, he should have turned into an omelette on the pavement. What if he didn’t die? What if he was only paralysed? Paralysed and mute was OK; they could stick him in a corner somewhere, but if he talked … Olivier ducked into a doorway and opened his bottle. He needed a pick-me-up before entering the café, like people who take a little nap before going to bed.

  Those drinking in the café had nothing to do at home: bachelors, widowers, drunks, all on their own, except for one couple snuggled up in a corner of a banquette at the back of the room. Olivier copied the man at the next table and ordered a Ricard. Since Rodolphe wasn’t dead, he would have to kill him a second time. This didn’t seem an insurmountable task. It was just a pain in the arse, like having to redo your homework. One day, when he was little, he had gone fishing for frogs. In order to slay them, you had to grab them by their back legs and whack their heads against a stone. The one which took Olivier’s bait stubbornly refused to die. He had had to crush the creature between two slabs to finish it off. Only afterwards
did someone point out it was a toad. The two lovebirds stood up. The girl had tears in her eyes and the boy was holding a suitcase. The other customers watched them go, some nursing a half-pint, some a Ricard, some – the most hopeless cases – a small café crème, all expecting the words ‘THE END’ to appear traced on the bistro’s steamed-up window.

  ‘Are you married?’

  ‘Yes … no.’

  The man at the neighbouring table wasn’t surprised by this response. He wasn’t seeking any response at all; Olivier was merely a pretext for him to begin talking to himself, as often happens in café-bars after a certain time of night.

  ‘In twenty-five years of marriage, my wife and I never left one another’s side. We did everything together – the shopping, the dishes, the housework, even nothing. We sometimes went whole days without saying a word to one another, doing nothing at all, but always together.’

  ‘Is she dead, your wife?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why are you talking about her in the past tense?’

  ‘One day she decided to take up crochet, starting with doilies, then tablecloths, curtains, bedcovers … bigger and bigger things. She hasn’t stopped. She’s like an insect weaving a thick cocoon around herself. It’s weird, you know, living with an insect. They don’t think the same way as us, they see things geometrically, always building things, piling them higher with one aim: to keep making ghastly little white rosettes, on and on to infinity. It’s unbelievable!’

  ‘They say insects can resist anything, even nuclear fallout.’

  ‘That’s exactly it, she’s resisting! She won’t take things as they are.’

  ‘My mother used to make doilies, head rests and things. She’s dead now though.’

  ‘Of course she is … it’s never a good sign when they start to crochet.’

  *

  They had said everything there was to say to one another. The man went back into his shell and Olivier stood up to leave.

  Outside, the sky looked like a wall of shitters covered in graffiti and mottled with rust. Its reflection in the gutter was prettier, iridescent with oil patches like the northern lights in miniature. He stood on the edge of the pavement for a while, staring up at the liquid sky like the fool in a tarot game, one foot on the edge of the cliff, the other stepping into the void, with a bundle on a stick over his shoulder and dogs nipping at his heels. Someone had once told him you became an adult the day you started avoiding puddles. He jumped in with both feet.

  It took him a long time to find his road. It had been shuffled together with dozens of other roads that all looked the same. He couldn’t even ask one of the few passers-by because he had forgotten what it was called. It had a corner shop on it – that was all he knew. He eventually stumbled on it when he had given up hope and resigned himself to wandering the dark maze of streets until the end of time. There was a light on at Jeanne’s.

  ‘He died around nine thirty. Nine thirty-seven, to be precise. Aren’t you going to take off your coat?’

  ‘What? … No, I’m fine.’

  Olivier had slumped into Rodolphe’s armchair without even undoing his overcoat. He could not yet distinguish between inside and out. Jeanne was nibbling a slice of ham.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?’

  ‘No. So he’s really dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So everything’s all right …’

  ‘For now, anyway. The police are bound to come tomorrow. They’ll have to conclude it was suicide.’

  ‘Yes … Aren’t you tired?’

  ‘No, no more than usual.’

  ‘I am. I mean, just my body. Part of me, the energy I used pushing Rodolphe, went out of the window with him. With little Luc, there were two of us, and it was an accident. Roland – well, beats me, but with Rodolphe I knew exactly what I was doing. It’s a whole different ball game.’

  ‘Are you feeling guilty? Do you regret it?’

  ‘No! Not at all. That’s probably what surprises me most, the fact it’s so easy, that it takes so little out of you, other than this tiredness …’

  ‘On the island, we’ll have all the time in the world to relax and recharge our batteries.’

  ‘Oh yes, the island …!’

  Olivier looked down at his hands. The lines on his palms formed a muddled network of roads.

  ‘Don’t you believe in it any more?’

  ‘Yes, I just can’t see it.’

  ‘Maybe because we’re already there.’

  Jeanne swept knife and fork, crumbs and yogurt pot onto her tray and stood up. Olivier followed her into the kitchen. On the way, he picked up Rodolphe’s crystal ball from a shelf and rolled it in his hands.

  ‘What are we going to do with all this freedom?’

  ‘We’ll learn.’

  ‘It’ll take time.’

  ‘Well, freedom is time.’

  The tap swirl didn’t work very well. The water sprayed out in a fan shape like a cat’s whiskers, splattering the entire sink. Jeanne was wearing yellow rubber gloves. Olivier perched on the corner of the table. There was no future in the ball, only his grotesque face with a huge misshapen nose.

  ‘Where am I sleeping tonight?’

  ‘Across the hall. I think it’s best for the next few days.’

  ‘I like watching you do things, everyday, humdrum stuff.’

  Jeanne pulled off her gloves, removed her apron and came to nestle against Olivier.

  ‘We’ll have days and days and days together.’

  Olivier let go of the ball, which smashed on the tiled floor. Neither of them took this as a bad sign. At worst it might mean they cut themselves treading barefoot on a shard.

  The man who introduced himself as Inspector Luneau didn’t really fit the part. He looked more like a teacher, a primary-school head at a push, with a chinstrap beard, a pipe, a burgundy polo-neck jumper, and a notebook and pen. Jeanne was pouring him the coffee he had initially turned down.

  ‘So you didn’t know your brother had been called in for questioning today?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you don’t know why either?’

  ‘No. He didn’t say anything. He seemed a bit on edge all day, but that wasn’t unusual for him. I didn’t think anything of it. What was he supposed to be questioned about?’

  The inspector put three sugars in his coffee and slowly stirred it with a teaspoon.

  ‘Did he spend the evening of the 22nd with you?’

  ‘The 22nd … Yes, he came home around six or seven. He had had quite a bit to drink. He was saying what a gift to humanity he was … he was pissed. I decided to take a tray of food and have dinner in my room. A bit later, I heard the door slam. I read for a while and then I went to sleep.’

  ‘So you can’t say for certain that he spent the night here?’

  ‘No. Rodolphe was very independent. He had his own life.’

  Luneau pulled out a photo from his pocket. Roland looked as if he was asleep.

  ‘Did you ever see this man with your brother?’

  ‘No. He’s not familiar. To tell the truth, I never had a clue who his friends were. I don’t think he had many. He met people in passing, in bars …’

  ‘Did he drink a lot?’

  ‘Quite a bit, and he took prescription drugs too, Moclamine, Equanil … He was seeing a psychiatrist up until last year. The doctor could tell you more about that than I can.’

  They were interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell.

  ‘Will you excuse me?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  Olivier was leaning against the doorframe, dishevelled and poorly shaven with a bottle of champagne in his hand.

  ‘All right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are they here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shit, I wanted to drink champagne with you.’

  ‘Now’s perhaps not the time. Come back later.’

  ‘Can I see them?’

  ‘Best not. Go h
ome. I’ll let you know when they’ve gone.’

  ‘OK … OK. But I would have liked to see them. Will you tell me what happens?’

  ‘Of course, now go on, go.’

  The inspector was jotting things in his notebook when Jeanne returned.

  ‘One of my neighbours.’

  ‘I see. Would you be able to give me the address of the psychiatrist your brother was treated by?’

  ‘Of course. But you haven’t told me what all this is about, the man, the photo, Rodolphe being called in …’

  ‘This guy was found strangled in Fausses-Reposes forest and several witnesses claim to have seen your brother with him during the day on the 22nd. That’s all we know.’

  ‘And you think Rodolphe …’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think anything at all! I’m just gathering the facts. That’s everything then. I’ll leave you in peace. Thanks for the coffee.’

  The champagne bubbles were fizzing under Olivier’s nose, right up to the brim of his glass.

  ‘Is that it? That’s how you left it, a coffee and the bill please?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Easy as that.’

  Olivier sat down at Jeanne’s feet and leant his head back between her knees. She was wearing black woollen tights and a green skirt. He tore off the end of one foot of her tights with his teeth and, using his fingers, widened the hole to let her toes out.

  ‘Fucking tights and socks, I can’t stand all these extra layers of skin.’

  ‘We won’t wear them on the island.’

  ‘No, they’ll be banned. Anyone with socks on will have his legs chopped off.’

  Fragments of pink rubber were dangling from the trees all around. He didn’t know what had burst but he knew it was his fault. The sun’s reddish rays set a brass band playing inside his head. The sand was scorching and soft, up to his ankles as he tried to run away. It was hard going; the beach was sloped, as was the horizon. His calves hardened like marble as he went. The sweat dripping into his eyes blurred the yellow and blue. Everything was turning green and from green to violet, purple, burning bright …