Jeanne’s tights were rolled down to the middle of her thighs. A tuft of hair was just visible between her buttocks. A trickle of sperm ran from one to the other. The underside of the coffee table looked like the ceiling of a cottage for dwarves. Olivier poked his head out, leaning on his elbows. The coir rug had left patterns on his knees. His swollen penis rested against his left thigh. He could have drunk the ocean and all its fish. The warm, flat dregs of champagne barely lifted his tongue off his palate. He could feel something crawling along his leg, then over his stomach, up his back, neck, cheeks … It was ants, hundreds of microscopic ants.
‘Filthy pieces of shit!’
He leapt up, knocking over the table and the champagne glasses on top of it. The trousers around his ankles prevented him from running. No matter how he slapped and scratched himself, more kept coming, columns of ants taking over his body. Jeanne propped herself up on one elbow.
‘What are you doing? What’s the matter?’
‘Stand up, for God’s sake! There are ants everywhere! Get up!’
Olivier hurried into the bathroom, tore off his clothes and turned the shower on, not caring whether the water was hot or cold. The insects slid off his skin by the dozen and swirled down the plughole. When he had got rid of them all, Olivier turned off the water and rubbed himself with his towel until he drew blood. Jeanne was leaning on the sink watching him.
‘Filthy disgusting pieces of shit! Did you see? We need to buy a spray or something … Can you check my back, make sure they’re all gone.’
‘You’re fine, there’s not one left.’
‘Aren’t there any on you?’
‘No.’
‘That’s weird … You saw them though, didn’t you? You did see?’
‘Yes, but they’re gone now.’
‘We should still give it a vacuum.’
‘I’ll do it. You get yourself dressed.’
‘Have a good look all over because they’re tiny; they’ll end up getting in through the pores of your skin and poisoning your blood. I should know.’
‘Jeanne, there’s nothing left to drink. You don’t fancy going down to the old lady, do you?’
So Jeanne went down and bought any old thing, since they were on bottle number forty-something. Twice, sometimes three times a day, for the last week. Olivier no longer wanted to go out, no longer could. She felt as if she was living with two different Oliviers: the one who studied the map of Mauritius in the atlas with her, describing in detail the smells of Goodlands market, the colour of the parrotfish on the boats at Grand Gaube, the quality of the shade around Trou-aux-Biches; and another who kept half an eye trained on the alcohol stocks, constantly looked for ants and made himself bleed scratching himself, who fell asleep mid-sentence and snored with his mouth wide open. It was impossible to predict at what point he would switch from one to the other. They hadn’t made love since the ant invasion. When he was calm, he stroked her hair, kissed the sides of her head, lightly brushed her lips, no more, like a shy child. The rest of the time, he was too pissed to manage anything. He would get annoyed, turning his back to her and masturbating so hard he put his shoulder out, but to no avail. The truth was she couldn’t care less; the caresses and butterfly kisses were enough for her. Olivier was what he was, but he was here, and that was all she asked for. Rodolphe had gone to join her father, mother and two brothers in the family vault. A few neighbours and local people intrigued by the unusual manner of his death had come to see him off. Sitting in the front row was the ubiquitous Madeleine.
‘Well, you know, he might be better off up there! He wasn’t happy here with us. It has to be said, being in the dark the whole time … well, it would send me mad! Some get used to it, others never do. Oh, I meant to ask, is he still there?’
‘Who?’
‘The other one, your neighbour opposite, your friend whose mother died.’
‘I think so.’
‘It’s odd because I never see him any more. I’ve knocked on his door a few times but he never answers. He drinks a lot, you know. You don’t think he might have done something stupid too? Ought we perhaps to tell someone?’
‘That would be a bit much for one floor, Madame Lasson. I saw him going out yesterday. He must be busy sorting out his mother’s affairs.’
‘Oh right. That’s us oldies for you, worrying about nothing. Actually, if you see him again, would you tell him I need to speak to him. His poor mother promised to pass on a couple of things should anything happen to her. Oh, nothing of much worth, it’s more sentimental than anything.’
‘I’ll tell him.’
Olivier couldn’t give a shit; the stupid old bitch could take whatever she wanted, as long as he didn’t have to see her. He couldn’t face dealing with it all anyway. All he wanted was to drink and sleep between these four walls, with the curtains hermetically sealed. There was no day or night. New Year’s Eve came and went unnoticed despite the shouting and popping of corks. Clinging to one another, they stopped up the hourglass; time had come to a standstill above their heads. The walls of the bedroom were papered with gaudy images of palm-fringed beaches, turquoise water and brightly coloured flowers from the brochures Jeanne picked up in travel agents’ on her rare trips out of the flat. Olivier gave an ever more frenzied commentary on them, telling the same anecdote ten times, diving onto the bed, swimming between the sheets until he fell back, pointing at the wall and delivering one last piece of advice.
‘Past the coral reef, there are sharks. You must never go there, ever!’
Jeanne never tired of listening to him, nibbling on dried fruit or biscuits. That was all they fed themselves on now. She watched him sleep, lying diagonally across the unmade bed, so pale, his hair stuck to his brow, like a sailor washed up on the shore after a shipwreck. He was the master of the island, this island that did not exist on any map but which he brought into being every day, just for her. Only he knew the way. No one else had ever taken her so far, in all her life. There was as much difference between him and the best of the rest as between an illusionist and a magician. The first knew how to manipulate, the second how to create, to give himself entirely at the risk of reducing himself to ashes. That’s why it was up to her to mark out the territory, to ensure nothing could stall their progress.
The holidays were nearing their end. The school had granted her request for indefinite leave without question. The circumstances of her brother’s death could not be argued with. She had also convinced Olivier to send a note to his wife to the effect that he had taken his mother’s death worse than he had first thought and was going to spend some time with friends in the country, step back a bit. And of course, she mustn’t worry.
None of this solved anything, it just bought them some time, but that was all they needed, for time to stand still.
Besides the bedroom and bathroom, they had stopped using the rest of the flat, which was becoming cloaked in dust. Olivier would no longer set foot in it, because of the ants. Some of them still managed to sneak into the bedroom, but the majority of the colony were gathered in there, under the coffee table. In any case, they didn’t know what to do with all the space. They didn’t need it. Sometimes even the bedroom felt too big. When that happened, they would retreat to the bed and allow it to drift until the walls disappeared completely. Bottles, biscuit wrappers, dried-fruit packets and other detritus gathered around the edges of the room, softening the corners of the walls. The jumbled laundry towered high in the bathroom, so they lived in their dressing gowns. Jeanne had set aside one outfit for her excursions, which she referred to as her wetsuit. This was exactly how it felt going out onto the street, a sea bed crisscrossed by shoals of passers-by, or deserted, totally still but for the rippling of the trees. Everything seemed to move incredibly slowly, every sound appeared muffled. It wasn’t unpleasant, it was just another world, and she was only passing through. She sometimes told Olivier about it when she got home.
‘Everyone looks sad and gloomy. They’re taking the
lights down. It’s the first week of the sales, all the bedding’s reduced.’
He went ‘Ah’, poking his nose into the carrier bags she had brought back with her, taking out a bottle and setting sail for Pamplemousses Botanical Gardens. Beyond what could be eaten or drunk, everything that came from outside was akin to pollution. He had unplugged the phone and nailed down the curtains so no light or sound could get in. The stench of dustbins, tobacco and ant-killer, which he used in abundance, made the atmosphere almost solid. They didn’t mind it. It was their smell, the scent of their island.
Madeleine had come knocking again two days after Rodolphe’s funeral. Jeanne fobbed her off by telling her Olivier had gone but had left her his keys, and Madeleine was welcome to take anything she liked.
‘Anything! … Say what you like, but he’s a bit of an oddball that one. Off he goes without a word of goodbye … Well, I’m not complaining; in any case it’s what his poor mother wanted. You wouldn’t know anyone who could help me get the fridge down, would you?’
Since then, they hadn’t seen anybody. Soon they would be forgotten completely, lost at sea without a trace. There was no need to make plans, they just lay back and let the current take them.
A few had managed to get into his anus and start munching on him from the inside. Classic ant tactic. He had been shitting blood for several days. The only way to treat it was to knock back a large glass of Ricard on an empty stomach and spew it straight up again. Sucked into the digestive maelstrom, the bastards came out through his mouth and disappeared into the toilet bowl. Afterwards, he took a shower and scrubbed himself with an exfoliating glove.
He was drying his hair when Jeanne stuck her head round the door.
‘I’m off. I’m going all the way to Monoprix; we’re out of everything.’
‘Don’t forget the Raid, the last can’s almost empty. I threw up five of them this morning.’
‘I won’t. See you later.’
He didn’t like it when she went out. She always brought a bit of the outside in with her in the folds of her clothes and her hair, and it reawakened bad thoughts. Memories from his life before rose back up to the surface and he no longer knew which world he belonged to. He felt trapped, his path peppered with mines whichever way he turned. He didn’t dare make the slightest move, and felt himself tumbling into a narrowing crater. He began to doubt everything, even Jeanne. Of course someone had to do the shopping, but was that all she was doing? What if Rodolphe wasn’t dead after all? What if Madeleine and Odile and the rest of their petty little world had joined forces to set the ants on him? Why would they? There were any number of reasons, but it all came down to the same thing: to blame him for all their crimes. Deep down, everyone had something to feel bad about, so just think: an alcoholic who can’t remember anything, how’s that for a scapegoat?
He pulled a bottle of rum out from under the bed and filled the tooth glass. It was all becoming clear, perfectly logical. Logic was his lifeline: it came with the first drink, drawing all the inconsistencies of his existence together in one reassuringly balanced mosaic. While operating in the realm of logic, he displayed Machiavellian wile. He found reasons for everything and made acrobatic connections between the most contradictory elements of his situation until he had formed a convoluted web of certainty which echoed the complex patterns of his mother’s doilies. He understood everything, not just about his own life; he was party to the secrets of the entire universe: the workings of the planets, gas engines, squaring the circle, the fluctuations of the stock market, the best way to make mayonnaise, everything. It all held together, it all came from him. And then … one of Jeanne’s hairs on a comb was enough to bring the monumental structure crashing down in an instant.
‘What the hell am I going on about? I haven’t just got ants in the arse, they’re getting into my brain too! Forgive me, Jeanne! You shouldn’t leave me on my own …’
In a split second, he went from the role of victim of a universal conspiracy to that of the most abject of traitors. The alcohol he was absorbing was immediately shed again as hot tears. He chucked the bottle across the bedroom and bolted into the bathroom.
‘Forgive me, Jeanne, forgive me … You’ll see, everything’s going to change. I’m going to stop drinking, we’ll get the hell out of here and go to a nice clean island. I’ll shave, get dressed …’
His reflection in the mirror of the bathroom cabinet terrified him. Pale, almost green skin with a straggly beard and unkempt hair, the whites of his eyes pastis-yellow and bloodshot. With his hands shaking uncontrollably, he grabbed the shaving foam and razor.
He did his hair as if preparing for the school photo, slicked over to one side. His face was red raw with cuts all over his skin. The ‘after’ picture was not much of an improvement on the ‘before’. The sides of the sink looked like the dregs of a raspberry sundae, froth and blood. Jeanne’s perfume, which he slapped all over himself, set fire to his cheeks. Then he put on the freshest clothes he could find and sat on the edge of the bed, stunned at the amount of energy he had just expended. Why wasn’t Jeanne home? She should have been there to witness his metamorphosis. He needed to see her, right now this instant. Rodolphe’s videos! There were dozens of tapes of Jeanne.
Olivier sprayed an entire can of Raid under the coffee table before settling down in front of the VCR. He chose a tape at random and inserted it into the machine. On the screen, he saw a glass salad bowl in pieces on the kitchen floor accompanied by the sound of swearing and Rodolphe laughing: ‘Newsflash!’ Afterwards, the camera swung in figures of eight following the broom as it swept the shards of glass into a dustpan. The only bit of Jeanne on show was her yellow rubber-gloved hands. In the background, water was running.
She must have been in the middle of doing the washing-up. The dustpan was emptied into the bin and the lens abruptly moved up to frame Jeanne’s face with her tongue sticking out. Her hair was shorter, her cheeks more rounded. Then she turned her back to the camera and it cut to another sequence. Jeanne reading, Jeanne smoking, Jeanne sewing a button back on, Jeanne marking homework, Jeanne angry, Jeanne smiling, in winter, in summer, by night, by day, in the lounge, on a path in the park. And often Jeanne sleeping, a book lying open in her hand, lips parted, a strand of hair falling over her eyes.
Tape after tape, Jeanne’s life was piling up at Olivier’s feet. Every so often he stopped on a frame and if he could place it to a particular date or time of year, he tried to remember what he had been doing at the same time. All the years he had spent without her, now he could see them through the eyes of a blind man. It was Rodolphe’s memories scrolling in front of him and yet he was sure he would have filmed exactly the same things.
Olivier ejected the tape that had just ended and replaced it with another. This must be more recent; he recognised the clothes Jeanne was wearing. She was watching television. She seemed annoyed.
‘Rodolphe, will you stop that?’
‘What’s the matter, don’t want anyone to see you sulking?’
‘I’m not sulking. You’re annoying me with the camcorder. Stop it, please.’
Next there was a close-up of a cheese rind and a crust of bread on a plate. When he heard the key in the lock, Olivier put the TV on mute and went to the front door. He felt the need to hold her tightly in his arms.
Jeanne met Inspector Luneau just outside the building. He had crossed from the opposite pavement.
‘Hello, I was in the area so I thought I’d drop by. I tried to call you but I couldn’t get through. Is it OK if I come up for a minute? We’ve got some new information on the man found in the woods. It won’t take long.’
‘Um … yes.’
‘Allow me.’
Luneau took the shopping bags out of her hands and stepped back to let her go ahead. As she climbed the stairs, Jeanne felt a growing sense of dread, like that feeling when you’re sure you have forgotten something, but you don’t know what. However, the inspector had given no cause for alarm; he didn’t seem t
o have come bearing bad news. Once he reached the landing, Luneau put the bags down, gasping for breath.
‘Blimey, this must be your monthly shop!’
Jeanne’s little laugh was cut dead when she opened the door and came face to face with Olivier standing in the doorway as stiff as a statue, arms outstretched, a fixed smile on his face, hair neatly combed as if on his way to first communion, skin ripped to pieces as if he had just fought off a wild cat. He looked like a waxwork. Jeanne had to collect herself before making the introductions.
‘Inspector Luneau, this is my friend Olivier Verdier.’
Olivier gave his clammy hand to the police officer and moved aside to let him pass. Jeanne gave him a look of reassurance. Olivier picked up the shopping and took it into the kitchen while Jeanne and Luneau sat down in the living room. Soundless images were dancing about on the TV screen. Jeanne got up to turn it off, but the inspector stopped her.
‘Leave it on, it doesn’t bother me. The kids have it on twenty-four hours a day at home, and that’s with the sound on! Anyway, do you know this man?’
The photo he was holding up to her was of an ageless man with thinning brown hair and a moustache.
‘No, never seen him. He looks like any other man in the street.’
‘It’s funny you should say that. We picked him up in Viroflay in possession of documents belonging to the man found strangled in Fausses-Reposes. He admits finding the body on the morning of the 24th and taking the money and ID, but surprise surprise, he denies having killed him. He’s homeless, a total alcoholic. He keeps changing his story. Luc Gaignon – doesn’t ring any bells?’
‘None. So where does this leave my brother?’
The Islanders Page 11