by Dan Rhodes
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘He went straight to the bodily secretions aspect, and when he started talking about earwax I went like this . . .’ He pulled a face. ‘. . . and said I wasn’t sure about the idea. And off he went, and I hadn’t seen him since. Anyway, after a while we stopped apologising to one another, and he told me all about Life. He spoke about it properly this time. He told me why he does what he does. It was almost as if he was in confession. He said he was glad of the opportunity to talk to me about it after our disastrous previous meeting. It was the first time he’d spoken about it in such detail to anyone except . . .’ He stopped himself.
Except his main girlfriend, thought Aurélie.
‘As you know I’m old and sentimental, and after what he told me, Life really tugged at my heartstrings.’
‘So what’s it all about then?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you. He swore me to secrecy.’
‘You can tell me. I can keep a secret.’
Professor Papavoine shook his head. ‘I promised. I think he’s doing the right thing keeping his motivations under wraps. There are far too many words in the art world, anyway; all they do is create an unnecessary fog.’
‘So you think people shouldn’t talk about art?’
‘No, if people stop talking about it we’ll be in big trouble. We need to keep critics in business for a start. What if they all lost their jobs and had to work elsewhere? It would be chaos. Would you feel safe travelling in a train driven by a redundant arts correspondent?’
Aurélie laughed. Professor Papavoine had a knack for snapping her out of a bad mood.
‘It’s the artists themselves who need to learn to keep their mouths shut and leave all the chatter to everyone else. Léandre and I are in total agreement about that. From now on Professor Boucher and I are going to give a big talk to every new intake: we shall make it clear from day one that while we appreciate a modest degree of intelligent discourse, we have a low tolerance threshold for what Boucher so charmingly calls wank talk. It’s such a shame that we’ve allowed things to get to the point where the students think that we want them, or even expect them, to use this kind of language. Artists need to stop using words. They shouldn’t explain why they do what they do, and they definitely shouldn’t use them as part of their work. Even giving something a title is pushing it. If we carry on going down this route we’ll end up as bad as the British. I was in Scotland for an exhibition a couple of years ago, and the artist hadn’t even bothered making anything, he’d just stencilled a load of wank talk all over the walls. In English, of course, just to make sure I was as alienated as I could possibly be. And as we went in we were all handed a sheet of paper explaining why he’d written all the wank talk all over the walls. It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of crap in my lifetime. If it hadn’t been in such a nice building I’d have been tempted to burn the place down. Now that would have been art.’
‘It sounds horrendous,’ said Aurélie. ‘All things like that do is give ammunition to the kind of people who dismiss all contemporary art. Anyone trying anything different or new is always bracketed alongside pointless shit like that. It’s a load of bollocks,’ she said. ‘We’ve been swearing a lot, haven’t we?’
‘Yes, we had better stop that now.’
They sat in silence, and Aurélie reflected upon how she shouldn’t become too indignant, because in the scheme of things it was probably better for artists to talk shit than to throw stones at babies.
The taxi reached the Papavoines’ street, and as the professor and Aurélie got out they were so deep in conversation that they failed to notice the small black motorcycle that had pulled up fifty metres behind them. The rider was dressed from head to toe in black leather. Their visor was down, so it wasn’t possible to tell whether their eyes were following them as they opened the door and walked inside.
Aurélie and Professor Papavoine were greeted by a delirious Liliane.
‘Quick,’ she said. ‘Come and look.’ She ushered them through to the living room, and there on the floor, on his belly, was Herbert. He looked up at them and grinned, his brilliant white teeth shining. ‘OK, Herbert,’ she said, ‘away you go.’
As if obeying the instruction, Herbert stopped smiling, and very seriously began a commando crawl across the parquet. He went about two metres before stopping to examine a piece of fluff he had found.
Aurélie felt so proud she could weep. And then it all came bubbling up. A tear ran down her face, and she wiped it away. She crouched beside Herbert, and gave his back a rub. ‘Well done, Herbert,’ she said.
‘Open a bottle, Papavoine,’ said Liliane, joining Aurélie and putting an arm around her. Professor Papavoine did as he was told, and while he was out of the room, Aurélie and Liliane sat side-by-side, watching in wonder as the baby put down the piece of fluff and resumed his journey across the floor.
When Herbert was in bed, the Papavoines and Aurélie sat drinking wine. Liliane left the room for a while, and when she came back she was wielding a bleeping mobile phone. ‘Papavoine,’ she said, ‘shut this thing up.’ She threw it to him. ‘What was it doing behind the microwave, anyway?’
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I was wondering where this had got to. Well, in fact I wasn’t wondering at all, but now I know I should have been. So, what’s going on?’ He squinted at the small screen. ‘A message. How unusual! And it’s from . . . hmmm . . .’ He read it, then looked up at Aurélie. ‘Our friend Le Machine has got in touch.’
‘What? How?’
‘Listen to this.’ He read the message. ‘Le Machine’s doctor here. Top secret message from him to Prof Pap. Le M says hello to you and Aur. Prof Pap please tell everything to Aur. Hope she will understand, and remember Thursday and forget Friday and wait for me.’
‘So,’ Aurélie smiled, ‘I’m being let in on the big secret.’
‘It seems you are. And what’s all this about Thursday and Friday? Is there something we should know about?’
‘We met on Thursday. He was the one who rescued Herbert from the old woman. It was the best day of my life, and on Friday we had our second date and it was a disaster.’
‘Lunch, right?’
‘Er . . . yes.’
‘And you ran off and hid behind a policeman.’
‘Were you following us?’
‘He told me all about it. He likes you, you know. He really likes you. He was feeling terrible about how he’d scared you off. He was kicking himself for being so nervous. I think he was having difficulty finding a way to tell you what he was about to do without you running for the hills. In his defence, it is a pretty unusual situation. I think that’s partly why he got so confessional; he was telling me everything he wished he had told you.’
‘And now I finally get to hear it.’
‘Welcome to the inner sanctum. Now, make yourself comfortable and let Prof Pap refill your glass . . .’
Aurélie always called her dad on a Sunday night, and she wasn’t going to let Le Machine, Herbert or anyone else stop her. It was later than usual when she got around to it, but she knew he would still be up, and he was as glad as ever to hear from her. She asked after her brother, and about what they had been up to, and when he asked her how she was doing she told him that she was busy with her project. She didn’t burden him with too many details, particularly not about how she had commandeered a stranger’s baby. Then she told him she thought she might have a new boyfriend.
‘Will I approve of him?’
‘I think you will.’ She decided that this was not the time to tell her father that her new boyfriend’s job involved him taking his clothes off and going to the toilet in front of strangers who had paid to watch. And she didn’t tell him that this was an artistic tribute to his friend, Dominique Gravoir, who had been in a coma since the age of eight, when the boys had failed to beat a cormorant in a breath-holding contest. One day she would, though, and she would tell him about the h
ours her new boyfriend had spent by his friend’s bedside, helping his mother to take care of him: feeding him, shaving him and cleaning up after him, and becoming fascinated by the sights and sounds, even the smells, of his body as it worked on in spite of his apparent absence. From an early age Léandre Martin had had a heightened awareness of the cells he carried with him everywhere he went, and the chemical and mechanical processes that were happening inside him every moment of every day, and he had always wanted to convey his sense of wonder at this to other people. Neither did she tell her father that his friend’s mother was becoming increasingly frail, and that in a frank conversation with her he had pledged to take over his care, should her son outlive her, or if she got to the point where she could no longer cope. He had told her that her son would always be welcome to live with him, and he was going to put most of the money he made from his show into a fund that would ensure he would always be well looked after, no matter what. And when the show was over, he was finally going to paint him, as he had meant to all those years ago, with wasted limbs, and his eyes open and unseeing in the half-light.
‘So when will I get to meet this boyfriend character?’
‘Let’s wait and see if it works out. If we’re still together in three months I’ll bring him home.’
After her phone call she went back to the living room, where the Papavoines were watching the late news summary. President Bruni-Sarkozy was being interviewed about his chances of remaining in power. Of course people will vote for me, he laughed, pointing a thumb at himself. I’m the one who kicked out all the gypsies. His wife was by his side, perfectly angled for the cameras. They were indoors, but her hair was fluttering in a breeze, almost as if a wind machine had been placed there for just that purpose.
Once again, the final item was devoted to Le Machine. They told their viewers that his long-awaited bowel movement had finally happened, and went into some detail about the difficulty he had had in passing the stool, and how he appeared to be momentarily interrupted by a member of the audience shouting something out. But, they reassured the viewers, it had all been fine in the end, and after a few early expulsions that appeared to resemble owl pellets, he had laid a conventional-looking cable. They were also able to confirm that no wee had come out at the same time. Following a visit from his doctor, which had seemed to reassure Le Machine that everything was functioning as it should have been, Life had returned to its expected pattern. He had ordered sushi and a half-bottle of whisky. The newsreader wrapped up his report in the tone of voice he usually reserved for updates on serial snipers who had been terrorising communities and were expected to strike again at any moment. So, he said, Le Machine has done numbers one and two. How much longer will we have to wait before he does number three?
Aurélie turned to Professor Papavoine. ‘Did he . . . talk to you about that?’
‘Apparently up until now it’s all been rather agricultural. He’s used some kind of apparatus adapted from the equipment they use on rams when they’re artificially inseminating sheep. It was all done very quickly and clinically, and it left the audience quite disappointed. He’s had a bit of criticism about it not being quite true to the spirit of the show, though, and he’s accepted that. So, for this run, he tells me, it’s all going to be a little more traditional.’
‘Oh . . .’ she said, ‘. . . good?’ She wasn’t quite sure what to think. She didn’t really have a reference point for it; even Sylvie would never have had a boyfriend who got up to things like that.
LUNDI
XXX
The Papavoines had to go back to work. Herbert was sleeping in his folding cot at the end of Aurélie’s bed, and by the time he woke her with a protracted gurgle, they had already left. She knew that once she and Herbert had some breakfast inside them the time would have come for her to make some solid progress on her project. They were going to stay out of trouble for an entire day.
The morning passed productively. As the baby crawled around and made his way through the hamper of toys, she made a series of sketches of him, and took a few photographs for reference later on. His bruise was still there, but it had become so faint that it had almost faded into insignificance. The main project would continue long after she had handed him back to his mother, and she didn’t yet know if he would be available for future sittings. She really hoped he would be; she had grown so fond of him, and she tried not to think about how likely it was that after Wednesday morning she would never see him again.
After lunch she started to worry that he might be feeling cooped up indoors, and it was a sunny day so she took him out for some fresh air to the park a few streets away from the Papavoines’ apartment. She wrapped him up, and off they went.
As she sat on a bench, with Herbert facing her in his buggy, she felt a presence by her side. She didn’t even have to look to know that it was an old woman, and that she had come to talk about the baby. As much as she would miss Herbert, she would not miss this.
‘What a handsome boy,’ said the old woman.
‘Yes, he is.’ At least the old woman was able to work out his gender.
‘I hope you don’t mind me saying,’ she said, ‘but his shoes are on the wrong feet.’
Aurélie winced to find that she had done it again. But this time she wasn’t going to let the old woman win. ‘He’s pigeon-toed,’ she lied. ‘The doctor says it’ll help his condit ion if he wears his shoes the wrong way round.’
‘I see. I’m sorry. I was interfering, wasn’t I?’
‘Yes, a little bit.’ Aurélie looked at the old woman. She was different from the usual ones. She was younger for a start, maybe only in her early sixties, but, when it came down to it she was the same as all the rest, a nosey old woman bugging her about Herbert.
‘He reminds me so much of my grandson,’ she said.
Aurélie had heard this several times. Sometimes the old woman would proceed to pull out a photograph and expect her to be dazzled by the similarity between Herbert and a baby who looked absolutely nothing like him. They would both have heads, and arms, and all that sort of thing, but apart from that they might as well have been from different species. And because the children in the photographs were never as cute as Herbert, she always felt insulted by the suggestion that he was in any way comparable to an inferior child.
‘I saw him from across the park, and couldn’t resist coming over for a closer look. I’ll show you a picture of my grandson.’
Great, thought Aurélie, I can’t wait.
The old woman pulled out her purse, and tucked among her shopping receipts was a photograph. ‘He’s called Olivier.’
Aurélie wondered why Herbert couldn’t have been called Olivier. It would have saved her a lot of trouble. The old woman handed her the picture, and she was surprised to find herself agreeing; the baby did look quite a lot like Herbert, only not quite as cute or intelligent-looking. He was sitting on the knee of a woman in a green velvet jacket, with long blonde hair tied back in a ponytail.
‘There he is,’ said the old woman. ‘And that’s my daughter Aimée.’
Aimée’s hair was so blonde that it made Aurélie feel mousy again.
The old woman held the photograph beside Herbert’s face. ‘If it wasn’t for your little one’s pigeon toes it would be hard to tell them apart.’
Aurélie smiled politely, but with a lack of enthusiasm. ‘I don’t really see it,’ she said. ‘It’s my mother’s eye. No other baby looks quite like my own, and this one’s definitely mine. I remember the day he was born – he came out of . . .’ She stopped herself before she started pointing at inappropriate places again. She was ready to accept that the child in the photograph was better than most, but he still wasn’t in Herbert’s league; he lacked his je ne sais quoi.
‘Oh no,’ said the old woman, with a look of horror. She slipped the picture back into her bag, and put her hand to her mouth.
‘What is it?’ Aurélie hoped she wasn’t having a seizure. She had too much going on in her life
to have to deal with convulsing strangers.
‘I’ve just realised something. I’ve realised what I’ve become – I’m an old woman who hangs around in parks harassing young mothers who are only looking for a moment’s peace.’
‘Well,’ said Aurélie, ‘at least you realise it. That’s the first step; maybe you’ll be able to nip this affliction in the bud. I’m sure you’ll be able to get help – there are probably support groups, and if you can’t find any then you should start one yourself.’ Aurélie suddenly saw herself as a catalyst for social change; not for nothing would she have spent a week with a baby she had never met before. ‘It has to stop. Mothers of young babies must be able to go to the park and travel on public transport in peace. Go now and start that group, and may it be the first of many the world over.’
The old woman zipped up her bag and stood up. ‘I shall. I’m so sorry,’ she said. She really did seem to be embarrassed. ‘I can only pray that it will never happen again.’
‘I wish you every success,’ said Aurélie. ‘And say hi to Olivier from us. He really is cute, you don’t have to worry about that. Some of the photos I’ve been shown . . .’ She pulled a face.
The old woman walked away. ‘Maybe there is hope for humanity after all,’ said Aurélie to Herbert. There was peace at last, and she lit a cigarette. After a few more minutes on the bench, when she was sure the old woman was gone, she put his shoes on the right feet. Then she got up and pushed the buggy around the park.
She didn’t notice that someone was lurking in the bushes, dressed only in black leather. And nor did she hear the click click click of a camera’s shutter.