What if he turned her in to the police? Unfortunately, he has no proof, now that his dog has been reduced to ashes. And the silly old goose would deny everything or somehow turn the situation to her advantage and get him sent to jail.
Realizing he won’t find any solutions within these walls, Ferdinand leaves, resigned to letting his impulses do the talking if he comes across the murderess. The concierge has finished with the vacuum and isn’t in her loge. She’s hiding, thinks Ferdinand. Or else she’s off stocking up at the butcher for her next massacre. Ferdinand waits for her next to the trash bins.
Across from the complex is Juliette’s elementary school. The poor child, with her arm in a sling . . . It must be difficult to do her writing assignments and multiplication tables.
12:15 p.m. The school bell rings. Ferdinand doesn’t have time to register the meaning before a tide of book bags, each heavier than the last, tumbles out. It runs, it jostles; the gangs of boys don’t pay any attention, shouldering past daydreaming girls who aren’t moving fast enough. Ferdinand is dumbstruck by the sight of these larval human beings behaving like bullies. Especially those three guys, a short redhead and two big ones, two heads taller than he is. After insulting a group of older teenagers, they attack a lone girl in a skirt, the kind that flares when you twirl. The good-for-nothings try to lift it up. She begs, crying, “Stop it, Matteo, stop it! Tell your friends to let me go!”
Is there no one to defend this poor girl? Where are the teachers, the monitors? Ferdinand has never witnessed such a cruel spectacle between children. So he does what anyone else would do in his place: he looks elsewhere, pretending to be busy with something. Still no Mrs. Suarez on the horizon. Suddenly, shrill cries attract his attention. The three rascals are now forming a circle around their prey, who no longer knows where to turn. One of them grabs hold of the handle on her book bag and sends her flying two yards away. She skins her knee, bleeds, and starts sobbing. That’s enough for today!
Ferdinand crosses the street in giant strides, seizes the lead brat by the collar, lifts him eight inches off the ground, crosses back to the complex, and stuffs his head in the nearest trash bin. The compost one.
“That’s where you belong, you brat! I advise you never to pick on a girl again, or you’ll have to deal with me. Ferdinand. And be careful, because I live here, across the street from your school, and I’ll be watching you!”
The octogenarian looks up. The little girl has disappeared, while the two large boys lurk in a corner. Ferdinand has nothing left to do here. The morning’s tension has fallen like a soufflé. He goes back to his apartment, where Juliette waits for him on the doormat. With this new twist in the Daisy affair, he forgot about their lunch, and with her father’s prohibition, he thought she wouldn’t come over anymore.
Juliette seems exhausted by her morning at school. She collapses onto the table, head resting heavily on her good elbow.
“Everything OK?” Ferdinand inquires.
Juliette replies with a weary groan. “No, it’s that jerk Matteo again. He tore up the math lesson I’d just rewritten, which took me two hours with my left hand! I don’t know what’s keeping me from stabbing him in the hand with my compass so he gets the message.”
Ferdinand sits down beside her and tells her, “Never answer violence with violence. You’re smart, you’ll always find something cleverer to bother him about. Above all, you must not get caught. We can think about it together if you want. For example, what’s the thing he cares about most?”
Juliette scratches her head. “His grandmother, I think.”
Mrs. Suarez is returning from her shopping when she discovers a pair of legs in her trash bins.
“What are you doing there, you scamp? Oh, heavens! Matteo, my darling! What happened to you? Tell Grandma . . .” She extracts the boy, muddy from the bin, and turns to a schoolgirl heading toward them. “And you, little girl, don’t you know how to read? Your newspaper doesn’t go in the compost bin. What are your glasses for? Paper goes in the yellow bin! No education these days, I’m telling you! Come along, Matteo, come here, my chick. We’re going to clean you up.”
It doesn’t take Mrs. Suarez long to identify the lout who attacked her favorite grandson. “I’m calling your father, Matteo. He must be informed. You can’t just attack a defenseless child with impunity! Not my grandson!”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Last Straw
“All right, two across, six letters, Greek tunic . . . What’s there already? I have H, T, N . . .” Beatrice pushes the plaid blanket away from her lap and stretches out her legs. Her fitness class at the gym the day before left her stiff. She turns to the pedestal table to the right of her armchair and grabs the thesaurus, her best friend for the Figaro crossword puzzles. “No, come on . . . Chiton! Of course, I should have thought of that! Where was my head? OK, now what’s left?” While pondering, Beatrice taps her pencil, following the rapid tempo of The Barber of Seville.
The telephone rings, though she’s not expecting any calls. It’s 12:45 p.m. Who can it be? “Hello. Yes, this is she. No, you’re not disturbing me. Shutters? It’s nice of you to offer, but you see, I just had mine redone. Yes, throughout the apartment. Maybe even with your company, I don’t recall anymore . . . Which company did you say you worked for? Yes, maybe it was them. Do you want me to check? Very well, as you wish. And a very nice day to you, too, sir.”
Beatrice then remembers she was supposed to call Nespresso customer service back. She has visitors coming this weekend, and her coffeemaker is acting up. She retrieves her notepad and dials the number.
“Nespresso After-Sales Service, hello. How may I help you?”
“Hello, sir. My Nespresso machine is blinking and I can’t make coffee anymore. It’s quite annoying!”
“The three buttons on the machine are blinking? At the same time?”
“Yes.”
“Well, ma’am, your problem is very common and quite simple to resolve. May I ask you to go stand next to your machine? Once you’re there, press all three buttons at once, holding them down until you hear a very distinct ‘click.’ Go on, I’ll wait.”
Beatrice, doubtful, does so. She presses very hard for about twenty seconds, and there . . . Click!
“OK, ma’am, did you hear the noise?”
“I did.”
“Very good. Now you can drain it and make coffee normally. Do you know how to drain the machine?”
“I do, yes.”
“I’ll wait while you check.”
Beatrice performs the action, and brownish water flows out. It’s a good sign. Once the capsule is engaged, steaming coffee flows like magic from the device. Perfect.
“Sir? Everything is working like before. You’re effective over there at Nespresso. It’s a surprising repair technique, pushing three buttons at once, but as long as it works and it’s simple, it’s fine with me. Thank you for your patience, sir. Have a lovely day.”
Beatrice pours a cup of lukewarm coffee. She doesn’t feel like drinking it before lunch, but it mustn’t be wasted. She gulps down the espresso, then realizes she could have heated it in the microwave after her meal. Oh, well.
With coffee-stained teeth and a pasty tongue, Beatrice gets back to her crossword. She spends a quarter of an hour looking for a synonym for her second-to-last word, when the telephone rings again.
“Hello? Yes, this is she. A bathtub? No, thank you. Yes, I know they can be dangerous past a certain age. That’s why I have side handles installed along mine. Yes, I have all I need. No, don’t bother offering me another discount. Good-bye, ma’am. Have a nice day.”
Beatrice is tired of these daily calls coming in one after the other. But at the same time, it’s unthinkable for her not to answer. What if it were an emergency?
Beatrice decides to fix herself a good, simple meal consisting of a raw zucchini salad with balsamic vinaigrette, lemon cod with basmati rice, and for dessert, her guilty pleasure: a chocolate éclair! She’s preparing th
e fish, when the telephone rings again. She hesitates, then heaves a big sigh and picks up the receiver.
“Yes? No. My Internet connection works very well, ma’am. Yes, I’m very satisfied with it. No, there’s no reason to change it today. No, I’m not interested in your offer. I’m sorry. I have to go, ma’am. Good day to you, too.”
What irritates her the most is that now her fish is cold, and if she reheats it, it will be overdone, like it always is at restaurants. She returns to the kitchen and heats up a lemon sauce, then coats the fish with it. It’s saved! The cod is delicious. I won’t have any need for sea bream anymore. I’ll praise the fishmonger for his advice.
The old lady glances at the clock. 1:45 p.m. Quick, it’s about to start. She takes her dessert and goes into the living room. TNT is so convenient; she can watch old episodes of Agatha Christie, Murder, She Wrote, or Columbo. With relish, Beatrice devours her dessert without missing a second of the detective story.
After reading thirty pages of the book selected by Mrs. Granger for their book club, which, as always, is turning out to be torture, Beatrice takes care of her little chores. Thus begins the auditing of her accounts, documenting every expenditure and every bill received. Next, Beatrice consults her bank account online to verify the debits have been subtracted. For more than seventy years, Beatrice has balanced her checkbook daily, and in seventy years, only twice has she found errors—errors that were, both times, in her favor!
By reading her account books, one could follow her life like a personal diary. Her spending on food at the market or the wine expo, her purchases of flowers for her weekly visits to retirement homes or burials, her checks written for birthday gifts for her grandchildren, her outings to the theater, to the movies, to the museum. And especially her travels all over the world. There is no continent Beatrice hasn’t seen, no major church in a capital city she hasn’t admired, seemingly no train station or airport in which she hasn’t had a layover. She is fully informed on Middle Eastern geopolitics, Asian funeral traditions, African tribal history, South American culinary specialties, and even sub-Arctic fauna. Beatrice always has extraordinary stories to tell about her journeys. Bus trips through war-torn countries; river crossings that resulted in emergency evacuations to lifeboats; perilous flights on the first recreational aircraft—attempting to land on runways that five minutes earlier had been fruit and vegetable markets. Beatrice enjoyed sushi, enchiladas, and pizza well before anyone else did. She’s even met the pope twice—well, two different pontiffs.
Yes, Beatrice has been lucky. She’s made wonderful memories, though it’s true she’s started to forget them little by little, to mix them up. So she’s taken to labeling each object with a number that refers to a detailed explanation in a little notebook: date, place, travel companions, context, and anecdote. Every day, she travels through time to a distant country, searching the depths of her memory for the extraordinary stories she can pass on. When she hosts her grandchildren, it’s with pleasure that she relates one of the journeys, often with wide eyes and laughter.
Beatrice says that when she’s finished her labeling, she’ll start on the family’s Super 8 movies. Certain films from the period between the wars have even been used in documentaries.
But Beatrice’s life hasn’t always been rosy. She’s the last surviving sibling among seven, and the surviving member of the happy couple she once formed with Georges, taken much too soon, more than fifty years ago. Beatrice raised her children by herself, learned how to rustle up the money she needed, how to cope with the growing solitude as her nearest and dearest disappeared. To counter the devastating effects of time, Beatrice strives to infuse her days with new blood, and, if possible, young blood. She tries to make herself as useful as possible—to the parish, to her neighbors, to her family. She wants to help those around her before she goes.
Careful to make her letters round and clear, Beatrice spends hours bent over her notebook choosing the right words, remembering the story exactly. On this particular day, she’s recording some memories of the immense, dark painting over the mantel, which depicts the portrait of a marshal of the Empire, a family ancestor. It’s a strange story of the forefather being condemned and pardoned, and the painting being stolen, then lost, and finally bought back.
In the growing shadows, she suddenly realizes it’s already 6:10 p.m. Good God! The show! She drops everything and runs to her armchair. Julien appears on the screen. She grumbles, realizing she’s missed the beginning of Questions for a Champion. She turns up the volume and leans forward to better hear the questions. She generally gets the answers before the contestants, whom she then berates with insulting names.
Beatrice has gotten four answers in a row when she turns, hackles up, eyes fixed on the phone, which is ringing. During Questions for a Champion! In one leap, Beatrice jumps up, picks up the receiver, and slams it back down. Then she takes the telephone off the hook.
“Honestly! During my show. Now I’ve seen everything! People are really inconsiderate. Well, that’s nice, I missed the last qualifier!”
Across the landing, behind Ferdinand’s door, the same frenzy prevails. On the upper floors, as well. All of a sudden, the volume on all the televisions in the building is turned up by at least ten clicks. It’s time for “Four in a Row.” You could shout, scream, wail . . . no one would hear anything. Say, isn’t that Mrs. Suarez hollering from the trash area, calling for help with all her strength?
The contestant has just gotten four points in a row! Everyone shouts with joy—Julien Lepers, the contestant, Ferdinand, and all the grandmothers at their posts.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Each More Than the Last
There are days when everything smiles at you, when the planets align.
While Mrs. Suarez is very ill and very, very far away (that is, at the hospital following a heart attack), Ferdinand discovers among his mail an exquisite invitation to lunch from Mrs. Claudel. She requests that he join her “in all simplicity” to share lunch the next day, a Saturday, to recover together from the emotional past several weeks.
It’s been decades since Ferdinand was invited to lunch. The octogenarian is flattered because he knows how important weekend lunches are to his neighbor. He wonders if he’ll be good company. What does she talk about with her grandchildren? Literature, movies, travel?
Ferdinand panics. He’s already not the talkative type. Mrs. Claudel is the sort to talk enough for two, but she seems to have a high opinion of him, and would expect him to say something, though he has nothing to offer. He’s even lied to her, notably when he asked for help regarding the housekeeper. He’s afraid she’ll discover he’s not interested in much, or at least anything he’d like to share on a first date.
His life stopped when his wife left him. Louise would say it had stopped years earlier, when Marion left, that moment when couples realize they have nothing in common without their child. Plus Ferdinand is about as old as the hills, and Beatrice talks about things on the Internet that he doesn’t understand. In any case, what’s the point of trying? At his age, learning is meaningless. Unless he really does have ten years left to live . . .
Chapter Twenty-Eight
A Real Lady-Killer
The Sunday following lunch with Mrs. Claudel isn’t a day like any other: everything must be perfect. Ferdinand wants to show himself in the best light. He opens his closet and chooses a brown checked shirt, ironed and put away a long, long time ago. He unfolds it. A musty smell wafts up. Isn’t it a bit too large now? A little cologne will take care of the first problem. As for the second, the jacket will hide the turned-up sleeves. The pair of clean, pleat-front pants is all set. The jacket will be his everyday one, because Ferdinand doesn’t have any others. A bow tie will bring the whole look together. But where is that damned tie? He hasn’t used it since . . . his wedding! Fifty-eight years ago? Oh my, not the time to think about that.
Underneath a mountain of clothes—each piece more faded and holey than the last—i
s a brown velvet bow tie, which has been resting in peace for more than half a century. Doubt suddenly strikes him. Will Ferdinand remember how to tie the knot? He stands in front of the mirror, hung by its chain on the window’s espagnolette lock. His eyes have darker circles beneath them than usual; a pink scar sweeps across his right jawline, a souvenir from his bus accident. He looks a fright, but it could be worse. His complexion isn’t as pale as he’s used to. He did well to snag a little of Beatrice’s tanner on the sly.
He ties the velvet bow around his shirt collar and contemplates the result: the monochromatic browns suit him to a T. All that’s missing is a little blue to bring out his eyes. His cloth handkerchief, which is usually lodged in the pocket of his gray sweatpants, takes up residence in the front pocket of his jacket. And voilà! Ferdinand is ready. And stressed out. What if nothing goes as planned? Come on, come on, get a grip, Ferdinand! Now’s not the time to lose your nerve.
Summoning his courage, and holding the roses by their stems, the thorns determined to leave him with an indelible memory of this day, Ferdinand walks the five yards that separate his door from the one he’s so often spied upon. He rings the doorbell. Not a sound from inside. He rings a second time. Nothing. On the fourth ring, the door opens at last, revealing a terribly drowsy Beatrice in a pale pink wool bathrobe. Her eyes, without glasses, open wide upon seeing Ferdinand.
Beatrice has never seen Ferdinand like this, wearing something other than his perpetual shapeless brown pants. She’s never seen a proper shirt on Ferdinand, either, let alone what appears to be a bow tie—not very conventional these days, but it’s the idea that counts.
However, what touches the old lady is the awkwardness and fragility radiating from him. He has an almost stupid expression: smile plastered to his lips, eyes benevolent and soft. But what’s more unexpected is his hair. It’s back to being brown overnight. Out with the Bill Clinton–style white! In with the Silvio Berlusconi brown!
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