Xavier used to call his brother Houdini and his parents could not help but smile. My brother is Houdini, when Nicolas managed to escape from his bedroom on the sixth floor, bypassing the locked door, and taking with him two gold bracelets that had been hidden in a safe and which he sold to pay for his next fix. My brother is Houdini.
They buried Nicolas and the sickly young man faded from his mother’s memory. She remembered the little boy. So belligerent that she was known to every head teacher in every school where he was enrolled. He loved Candlemas crêpes, the old westerns he watched with his father, climbing on top of the wardrobe in his bedroom and pretending to be Goldorak, he collected Rahan comics and loved to make spaceships out of cardboard boxes. He also liked to grab his brother by the hair and drag him across the garden on his back.
Sophie lives with that little boy. She talks to him, she goes back into the past every day to tell him she has not forgotten him.
After his death, everything imploded. At first, the protagonists remained standing. Dried husks filled with ashes. Things crumbled slowly. Her marriage. Xavier’s cheerful temperament. Her job. Sophie despised the pain that was etched into the faces of her family. She is not one of the elite who are ennobled by suffering. She did not wish other people to be happy. She was astounded by how faint the echo of her catastrophe was in the outside world, dumbfounded to see that, for other people, life goes on as though nothing has happened. She gritted her teeth when she saw beaming mothers gazing lovingly at their children, clenched her fist when she encountered happy people in the supermarket. She wanted each of them to go through what her family had gone through, she wanted everyone to experience a world divided in two. Before the loss, and after. She wished she could believe in God so that she could ask: why them?
Everything in the house fell into one of two categories: things that were there when Nicolas was alive and those they had acquired since. Every lightbulb changed was another handful of earth tossed onto the coffin of her son. She dissolved into tears when the coffee machine stopped working. This machine that he had touched. A cup that broke as it was being rinsed tugged at her insides. This cup that he had rinsed so often after he’d had his morning coffee.
Her husband left. At first the tragedy brought them together, like Siamese twins joined by a burn scar. Later, he could no longer bear it. He had the courage to admit as much. He could not stand it anymore. The atmosphere in the house. The furious guilt mingled with denial. He started a new relationship, with a woman who was not damaged. He left her there. He literally fled. She never heard from him again.
She is convinced that Xavier still sees his father. But he does not want to talk to her about it. The break-up is something else that she never got over. She does not count herself among the strong. In the faces of people she knows, she can see the impatience – still suffering, after all this time, is that really normal? She wishes each and every one of them might live through what she has.
It is out of the question that she will ever recover. She does not want to. This is probably why Marie-Ange does not want her little girl spending time alone with her grandmother. The old bat is crazy. She is still in mourning.
She could have done more to take care of Xavier. She senses his hostility, she knows he bears the guilt of having been the favourite son, and the guilt of having survived, and she knows she did not do enough. She was unable to protect him from the chill that swept over the house, after. Now he is a grown man. She is shocked by each new wrinkle she sees on his face. They no longer have much to say to each other. These Sunday lunches are a chore for all concerned. Chinese food does not agree with Sophie. She makes up a dentist’s appointment so that she can leave early. Marie-Ange, who believes that these few hours with her family are the old woman’s only happiness, is surprised – a dentist, on a Sunday? – her eyebrow arching into a circumflex. Xavier understands. As always, he prevaricates. Sophie insists – yes, the dentist is a friend, he is happy to see me at weekends.
She has no desire to go back to their place, to watch the child play without being allowed to go near her. Marie-Ange is wary of her mother-in-law, she thinks the old woman is morbid and half-mad. She may well be right. If she were allowed to have a closer relationship with her granddaughter, the little girl would not warm her heart, she would poison the child’s. Has she become toxic? Was she always this way? Is she to blame for everything that happened? Does she contaminate those close to her? Perhaps.
It is a day of radiant sunshine, such as February affords from time to time. It is bitterly cold but the light is dazzling. She has a beer on the terrace at Rosa Bonheur. In the daytime, even old ladies can sit on the terrace without being stared at. Paris is wonderful in this respect. She drinks too much, she drinks like an alcoholic – starting early in the morning, small doses, in secret. Gently. Her face bears the marks of the booze. Another expression of defeat. Her son pretends not to notice. He is afraid of her. He is afraid he might have to listen to her talk about something other than her lung X-rays or delays in the Métro. Besides, she bores him.
She usually avoids the parks, because of the children. It has never faded. He is there. He is always there. Climbing the wrong way up the slide, clinging like a demon to the sides, and arriving at the top, he gives a vicious kick in the solar plexus to the boy climbing up the right way. The boy was like a thing possessed, he could not be let loose among other children without making several of them cry. His eyes crackled with mischievous malice. His mother would call his name and he would turn away. God, she did so much running. If she had known, she would have relished every one of his stupidities. Nicolas is still here, the past is frozen, her two sons are playing on the slide, she is worried that they might hurt themselves, might hurt another child. It is here forever, the noise of their squabbles, of their laughter – in her life she had a moment of joy, it is still intact. Nothing happened. She is insane. It is easier to get used to than you might imagine.
But this afternoon, she wants to see the trees in Paris, to have a beer on a terrace far from the roar of traffic. She forces herself to go into the park. She passed the slumped figure of a homeless man on the first bench. She pays him no heed. She thinks of Prévert’s poem: “Despair is sitting on a park bench.” Like so many city dwellers she is immune, accustomed to the hardship of others, yet still ashamed to turn away. She takes a few steps, unable to dismiss the image from her mind. Poor lad, he is young, and judging from his appearance he has not been on the streets long, though he is clearly homeless. And so she slows her pace. She knows that face. She cannot place him. She hesitates. It is preposterous. Impossible. She retraces her steps.
“Vernon? Is that you? Don’t you remember me? I’m Xavier’s mother. You remember? I used to iron your frilly shirts when you slept over at our house.”
She should not have stopped. The sadness now cleaving her chest is worse than all the rage she has accumulated. My boy, my little boy. My darling, my treasure. Poor child. He too has grown up to be a man. She would not dare take him in her arms. As if the ravages of time were not enough. Your little face. His eyes are just as beautiful as ever. His cheeks are hollow. My little boy. She often thinks about it, Nicolas would be a middle-aged man now, his face lined, his body already sapped. Sophie sits down next to Vernon, who says:
“Of course I remember you. You haven’t changed a bit.”
She smiles. He always was a charmer. Even before he turned twenty, there was something chivalrous about his manner. A real little gentleman. She had been so happy that Xavier had a friend he brought round to the house. Vernon’s family lived in the provinces, she treated him like a second child. He would bring her flowers when he came to dinner. It was some time before Sophie realised that it was not at his parents’ insistence; he bought the flowers himself, with his pocket money. He would help her clear the table and force Xavier to do the dishes. He lit up the house. She used to check his pupils, the way she checked the pupils of all the young people she met. He was fond of his beer,
but he was not into hard drugs. She approved of his influence on Xavier, the snatches of excited conversation, the whispers, the squabbles and the laughter of young boys roughhousing in the bedroom as they listened to endless records. The sounds of a normal house, a house that has not been ravaged.
“I saw Xavier just a little while ago. Are the two of you still in touch?”
“Of course. I looked after Colette not long ago . . . he didn’t mention it?”
“No. He must have forgotten . . . the little dog died, didn’t you hear? He was devastated . . . I was sorry to see him in such a state.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. She was a lovely dog. I’m really sorry.”
“Cancer. He was very upset. What about you, Vernon, what have you been up to?”
He does not really want to talk to her. She thinks she knows how he feels. When you find yourselves among the plague victims, there is a clear divide between you and those who have been spared. You do not want charity or empathy. Deep down, you would rather be spared all human contact. There are barriers on every side, words no longer have the same meaning.
His hands are red and chapped from the cold. He is hunched. His clothes are in good condition. He is clean. She cannot leave him here.
“What’s happened to you?”
“I’ve been going through a rough patch. But you don’t need to worry about me, honestly . . . you might think, seeing me like this . . . but it’s just temporary, it’s only a matter of days . . .”
“Why don’t you come back to my place? I have a spare room, you wouldn’t be putting me out . . . and if, as you say, it’s only for a couple of days, that’s all the more reason. And I’m used to living alone so don’t worry, I won’t insist on making conversation all evening.”
“That’s very kind of you. But I’m not actually living on the streets . . . last night was, well, it was complicated, I live way out in the suburbs and I didn’t manage to get home and today . . . well, it’s a long story. I don’t want to bore you. But I’m fine, don’t be upset by how I look, I’m fine, honestly.”
Some men do not really change past the age of fifteen. She recognises this curious little habit men have of telling foolish, barefaced lies, probably based on the principle that women are too half-witted to distinguish between a plausible assertion and a story that does not make sense. Vernon lies the way he did when he was fifteen when the bedroom reeked of stale tobacco in the morning and he and Xavier would claim the smell was coming from outside and refuse to budge an inch. When it came to twisting the truth, Nicolas had inherited all the family flair. Xavier had always been a terrible liar.
Vernon is lying to her, she can tell from the state of his shoes, from the smell when she first sat down, from the rucksack on the bench, from the haggard look he cannot quite mask, even as he tries to reassure her. He is hungry.
“I look like death warmed up today, but you really don’t need to be concerned about me . . . Give my regards to Xavier, tell him I was really sorry to hear about Colette. Don’t worry.”
*
What can have happened for a boy like him to end up in such a tragic situation? When people see a homeless person, they always say there but for the grace of God, that could be me, that could be my son, but Sophie realises that they never truly believe it. They think there must be something, a mental health problem, some explanation. God knows she is better placed than most to know it is a lottery. She is still an expert at examining someone’s pupils, this boy does not have a drug problem.
She rummages in her purse, slips Vernon the only twenty-euro note she finds – forces him to take it and when he shies away, firmly stuffs it in his pocket. She finds herself treating him the way she did when he was just a young man who brought a little healthy excitement into her son’s life.
“I won’t miss it. Please, take it. It’s nothing, it’s all I’ve got on me. Stop lying to me. Would you like to come and have something to eat with me? I was just about to get a little snack . . . my treat?”
“No, madame, it’s really sweet of you. I don’t have time.”
“Vernon, listen to me: if you want to come back to my place for a few days and you don’t want Xavier to know, I’ll be silent as the grave. I’ll ask you no questions.”
Seeing that he will not be persuaded, she makes him promise to wait. She dashes to the Société Générale outside the park gates and takes out a hundred euros. It is all she has until the beginning of next month. She will make do. She does not want to spend tonight wondering whether he is sleeping rough, what with the weather being so cold. She wishes she could find the words to convince him to go with her, to let her take care of him. She remembers this feeling – wanting to help someone who turns away.
But already she can imagine redoing the little room where she does the ironing, so that he could move in and she could help him with the official red tape. She is not afraid of queuing in offices, of filling in forms. She can do something for him. She needs this as much as he does. To be useful for something.
When she comes back, the bench is empty. She is distraught. She wanders the park looking for him. She encounters people out walking who stare at her in alarm. She knows that she looks like a madwoman. She is used to it.
SITTING AT EYE-LEVEL WITH THE BAGS AND THE SHOES, VERNON is forced to look up to see faces. He is sick of watching a parade of arses. There is a constant flow of people waddling past his stretch of the pavement. Time was, he was careful always to look homeless people in the eye, to say I see you you are there I am aware. What he did not know is that, once you are sitting on the pavement you don’t give a flying fuck whether passers-by look at you. Do they put their hand in their pocket, that is the only thing that matters. Awareness can’t be eaten, it doesn’t keep you warm, so they can keep it.
It has taken him three days to resign himself to sit down and beg. He spent the first day entombed in the Métro. Riding the lines from one end to the other. He rode them all. He dozed, he read the newspapers people left behind when they got off, he watched the stations flash past, he made connections, he listened to buskers. He got off at a random station, let several trains pass, then got on again and rode all the way to the terminus. To throw people off the scent. Not that anyone noticed what he was doing.
He came up to the surface when the Métro gates closed. He was somewhere near Passy. He spent his first night sleeping rough sheltering in an A.T.M. booth. The weirdest thing was finding himself scouring the darkness for cardboard boxes to insulate him from the cold floor. It felt oddly as though he were playing a role. He could not quite believe what was happening. Taking advantage of a drunk from the sixteenth arrondissement staggering up to the A.T.M., he stepped in behind, pretending to wait his turn, cool, laid-back, three cardboard boxes tucked under his arm. Then he nipped inside, settled himself on the ground, head propped on his rucksack, and waited for dawn to break and the Métro to reopen. A blanket wouldn’t have gone amiss. He is still not properly equipped. The following morning at five, he was waiting for the Métro to open, he had a nap on Ligne 8 then got off at République, still determined to pretend he was a guy who was going somewhere. He sat for a few hours – or a few minutes, time had lost all meaning – on uncomfortable benches staring at the wall opposite like someone preoccupied by minor everyday concerns. This time spent moving from station to station had left him covered with a film of black grime. Needing to get some air, he had come up to the surface. He walked for a long time, looking into shop windows like any other pedestrian. When he reached Opéra, he went into the Apple Store to get warm. The staff in their blue T-shirts didn’t notice him, there were too many people clamour-ing for their attention. He logged in to Facebook to see whether Marcia had left him a message. He saw that she hadn’t and closed the page. He tried to read the news but had a hard time finding a story that interested him, he watched a few videos with girls in them. Then he went on his way. He walked as far as Pigalle and then went down into the Métro where he stayed until evening.
He doesn’t feel sad, or desperate. What he feels is different, a mood he doesn’t recognise. White noise. The static of a T.V. screen at night when he was young. A blizzard of tiny dots, a soft hiss. On the third day, he walked all the way to Père Lachaise before going into the Métro, ducking through the turnstile behind an elderly woman who glared at him when he pressed against her. He followed the crowd heading for the platform for a few steps, then he slowed, stunned to realise that his legs would no longer hold him up. Hunger gnawed at his stomach. He sat on the platform. Perhaps he blacked out, perhaps he dozed. Someone came and sat next to him. A young guy with a protruding chin, his face deeply lined, his fingernails black with grime, filthy with a dirt ingrained by years, almost a tattoo. He was clutching a beer in one hand and a fur-lined jacket that was clean and in good condition. His shoes, on the other hand, had had their day and should have been replaced long ago.
Vernon Subutex One Page 25