Except, I’m not sure I’m going to get very far.
EVER SINCE SERGE and I met up again, yesteryear has started to feel like yesterday.
We quiz each other, what year was this film or that song released? What was the name of that guy, that girl? It forces us to revise, to do our homework, and since we don’t have to worry about getting bad marks, it’s not disagreeable.
When I’m not writing my life, I spent a lot of time on YouTube—thanks to my great-nephew, who showed me how it works—listening to Eddy Mitchell, Johnny Hallyday, Long Chris et les Daltons, Vince Taylor, Elvis the King, Dany Logan and Paul Anka. I close my eyes and dive into the past. Every song reminds me of a hop, an old flame, a slow dance, a French kiss, Put your head on my shoulder, the crushes I had back then, Michèle, Yvette, Anne-Marie, Danielle, the checked shirts and the polka-dot dresses. All those girls who clung to our imaginary washboard abs as they rode on the back of our mopeds—the Solexes, the Mobylettes, the Vespas.
In those blessed days of end-of-dance scuffles, when guys would push and shove each other a couple of times to avoid throwing an actual punch, when the worst injury possible (and the sexiest)—narrowly beating a black eye—was a chipped front tooth.
*
Sometimes, I shed a little tear.
It’s memory-related incontinence, a sort of emotional bed-wetting.
PROMISES ARE made to be kept: the physio came that morning. He drew up an Olympic schedule and, over the past few days, we’ve started my rehabilitation. I say “we” because I feel he’s putting in more effort than I am. I can tell he’s motivated. He’ll be up and about before me.
That said, he’s a decent sort of guy, which is just as well for him, given the insane amount of effort he demands of me. He started out gently, with a simple, duplicitous massage just to lull me into a false sense of security, then he moved on to electrical muscle stimulation. Now, he’s forcing me to raise one leg a few centimetres, then the other. Come on—come on—come on! Hold it—hold it—hold it! And given the pitiful results of my efforts, I can tell I’m not going to be dancing the French cancan anytime soon. Just managing to sit on the edge of my bed is a whole soap opera. I topple backwards like a wounded Weeble with a leg in plaster and a surgical support brace. Every movement has to be thought through, negotiated, and each comes with its own complications, its discomfort, pain and tightness.
I feel like a feeble old codger, which is probably just a foretaste of a not-too-distant future. I thought I could rely on the man I used to be before the accident. Not much of a sportsman, I’ll give you that, but a guy who was in pretty good shape for his age in terms of energy and agility.
Disappointment and disillusion.
My abs are as taut as perished rubber bands, my left leg is nothing more than a bolster encased in cement. My pelvis hurts, my back aches, my arms are feeble, my neck is giving me gyp, and the less said about my morning glory the better—not exactly triumphant—or my general uselessness.
I’m starting to pity myself, it’s almost moving.
A CURT KNOCK and straight away the door opens. Shit, never a minute’s peace!
For once the door was closed and I didn’t even get the pleasure of saying “Come in!” The surgeon is already striding into the room followed by a gaggle of startled interns who have barely flown the nest. I should have realized: it’s Thursday, 11.30 a.m. The guy is a Swiss cuckoo clock.
He greets me with a military: “Monsieur Fabre!”
Then he whips back the sheet—abracadabra!—and two seconds later he is examining me in front of his students.
“Hope you don’t mind,” he adds, brooking no possible objection.
I can tell that if I say, “I do mind,” he’ll likely shatter my leg again.
I resolve myself to kowtow to this mandarin, since there is every reason to think that I will need his services in the days to come.
The consultant itemizes my injuries and the repairs that he has undertaken for the benefit of his students. Only now do I realize just how smashed-up I was.
I have the vague impression that, by his lights, he is doing me an honour in selecting me as the object of today’s lecture: Musculoskeletal injuries in the elderly patient.
By rights, I should thank him for stripping me naked in front of the three lads with bags under their eyes and the two ashen-faced girls who now stare, embarrassed, from the foot of my bed, from where they have a bird’s-eye view of my antiquated plumbing.
I feel about as relaxed as a frog on dissection day.
I’m not particularly prudish, but I prefer to flaunt my athletic physique to a select group of my choosing, one at a time, and all of the fair sex.
On this occasion, I notice that modesty increases with the ravages and flaccidities of age. I feel sure that I would not have felt so self-conscious in the days when I had abs by the six-pack.
Visibly, such considerations do not trouble the specialist, who is prodding me with his calloused fingers, and he continues to recount my case. Technique faultless, respect slapdash, compassion optional. To him, in this precise moment, I am not someone, I am an exemplary piece of work with an excellent prognosis for recovery. There is no point grimacing when he presses too hard, he will not notice; he sees only my scars.
If, one day, I manage to walk properly again, I’ll owe it all to this expert in scalpel-wielding and human relations. I know that. Even so, I can’t help but think he was only doing his job, and he was well paid for it.
Gratitude stems from the compassion people show you, not from their skill. The surgeon has all the warmth of a fridge and inspires about as much affection. But I suspect he does not give a damn, and for that I can hardly blame him.
He finishes his examination and concludes “Perfect!”, absent-mindedly tossing the sheet over me, leaving one leg still exposed to the four winds.
Then he stalks out, followed by his flock, who mutter their timid goodbyes.
They leave the door open.
I try vainly to grab at the sheet.
MY FIRST TIME in custody, I had just turned eight. I had scrawled Laferté is a viscous bastard! in red chalk on a toilet wall. Monsieur Laferté, my teacher, informed by some brown-nosed snitch, caught me in the act as I was adding the final exclamation mark.
I remember crossing the vast playground, dragged by my teacher, who gripped my ear painfully between his bony fingers. I was moving faster than my legs would have liked, headed straight for the headmaster’s office, without a thought for the games of marbles and hopscotch. Like a republican guard of honour, the pupils silently parted to let me pass and I could see the respect in their eyes. I had slagged off my form master, I was fruit for the gallows, I had the makings of a convict, I was a true outlaw, a Mémé Guérini.
There are some moments of glory in life that are incomparable.
My teacher relayed my misdeed to the headmaster, Monsieur Respaud, mopping his damp forehead with a checkered handkerchief. The headmaster eyed me scornfully. Then, rolling his Rs, since he was a native of Foix, he said:
“Are you proud of your actions, boy? Look me in the eyes, sir.”
The headmaster addressing one of us as “sir” filled the air with crystals of ice, turned our bowels to jelly and filled our mouths with cotton wool. If I was determined to prove that I had something in my Y-fronts, it was now or never. Might as well confront the Medusa: a single glance and I was turned to stone.
I was treated to a protracted, purgative harangue about respect, consideration, theft of chalk, defacement of walls, appropriate choice of vocabulary, the Republic and spelling.
“Orthography, lad! Or-tho-gra-phy!”
Arms folded, lips pursed, my form teacher greeted each phrase with a solemn nod.
When the bell rang for the end of break he went back to class, leaving me hostage. Monsieur Respaud had me sit at the dunces’ desk next to the stove.
“Take you your copybook, sir!”
Whatever my punishment, it would be gro
ssly unfair, all I had done was proclaimed the truth to the whole world: Monsieur Laferté was a cockroach in a grey smock who made our lives a living hell and screamed at us for the slightest thing. Everyone hated him, especially since our previous teacher, Monsieur Petitjean, had been the sort of gentle giant of infinite patience we all wished was our father.
The headmaster must have agreed with my assessment, because in the five hundred lines he made me write, there was nothing about the tenor of the insult, merely the distinction Viscous defines a liquid as viscid or sticky; vicious qualifies a person as cruel and mean.
At the time, I remember thinking we were on the same wavelength.
Monsieur Laferté was a bastard, but a vicious, not a viscous one.
If you say so.
They contacted my father at the factory—we had no telephone back then. He collected me at 3 p.m. on the dot, after the lunch break. Everyone else had gone back to class. I was scrawling out lines spattered with ink blots. Through the window, I saw him push open the gate and stride across the deserted playground. I saw his balding head pass beneath the windows of the headmaster’s office. He rapped twice on the glass door and Monsieur Respaud gestured for him to come in. My father greeted him with a booming “Monsieur Respaud!”, though he called him Émile at the local Workers’ Party meetings. But this was no time to blur boundaries.
He listened to the account of my crime without turning a hair, rigid and upstanding as justice, in his shabby overalls and his cap pulled low over his forehead. In his eyes there was no pride and no respect. On the contrary, a storm was brewing. My glory was crumbling, farewell to the gold stars and the laurels. I had arrived a valiant resistant, admired by my peers, I was leaving in disgrace, a shabby little troublemaker, a feeble rebel with a poor grasp of adjectives.
The headmaster gave a detailed description of my inattentiveness, my incompetence and my insolence. Then, shaking my father’s hand, he concluded:
“I regret to inform you that your son is a bad element, Monsieur Fabre.”
Eventually, we crossed the deserted playground. In the infant classroom they were singing ‘Frère Jacques’ out of tune. All the way home my father did not utter a word.
It is a long road that leads to the slaughterhouse.
I remember my mother’s panic when I arrived home with my father in the middle of the afternoon. Was I injured? Sick?
Shamelessly adding dishonesty and cowardice to the list of my misdeeds, I wailed:
“I didn’t do nothing!”
My father gave me a slap, then, in a tone that brooked no argument, he growled.
“Go to your room. I’ll deal with you later.”
There were slammed doors, the scraping of chairs, snatches of muttered conversation, the family council was deciding my case. One ear stuck to the wall more firmly than the suction pads my mother put on my chest when I had bronchitis, I tried to catch a word here and there.
Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
My father sounded furious. My mother’s voice was wheedling as though she was trying to find excuses for my actions.
Suddenly, from the council chamber, I heard pépé Jean roar:
“That La-a-ferté is a vic-cious bastard!”
I felt a sudden wave of relief. More than that, I felt vindicated. I was not responsible for my behaviour, my genes had simply performed their seditious duty.
Like great-grandfather, like great-grandson.
NOW HERE I am in dry dock, an unexpected pit stop in this solo open regatta—pelvis smashed in two, leg shattered like a mosaic—taking my bearings, checking the hull and the sails, poring over the charts plotting a course to the next port.
It is not a pleasant thought: sixty-something, worn down to the threads, or almost. A widower with no children, no dog. The beginnings of a cataract, a slight problem with my hearing, a prostate like a grapefruit, basic run-of-the-mill stuff. Some savings that are no use, an apartment that’s much too big that I’ve been intending to give a lick of paint for nearly twelve years. But why, for what, for whom?
For the past seven years I’ve been retired. Being in a mischievous mood yesterday, I looked up the definition on the Internet. Among other things, I found:
“Retire: (vt) order a military force to retreat following an adverse encounter with the enemy, or to withdraw from a country it can no longer command.”
And the synonyms: “Withdraw, draw back, flee, give ground, beat a hasty retreat…”
Perhaps it is the effect of the morphine or the faint beginnings of serenity, but although I can feel myself beating a hasty retreat, it does not seem to bother me in the least.
I’m getting old, that much is undeniable. I’ve had time to get used to it. I’m quietly tottering towards that fourth age which—unlike the conspicuous consumers and media darlings in the third age—is of no interest to anyone except opticians, dentists and people who sell mattresses that prevent bedsores. Not to mention the florists, those purveyors of deepest sympathies.
And, when the music stops and the ball is over: the undertakers.
HE COMES IN without knocking and barks a “Hello!” like a slap in the face.
I say:
“Hey, Camille! I didn’t think I’d see you again, after my little performance last time…”
“…”
“Come on, spit it out. I won’t hold it against you.”
I can tell he’s pissed off.
“Look, this isn’t easy.”
“Which bit isn’t ‘easy’, kid? Saying what’s on your mind, or being on the game?”
“I swear, you’re a complete… a complete…”
I sigh:
“… arsehole, yes, I know. I won’t argue with you on that score.”
A little practice run is always worthwhile.
“What gives you the right to call me kid?”
“Because I’m an old man. You could be my grandson. But you’re welcome to call me kid if it makes you feel any better.”
“You don’t get to say what I can and can’t do. And I’d hate to have you for a grandfather.”
“If I were your grandfather, you wouldn’t be working the streets, I can promise you that.”
He gives a bitter laugh.
“You can’t stop yourself judging people, can you? You just can’t help yourself. I’m completely disgusted… I dragged you out of the river and I feel, I feel…”
“Fucked?”
Shit, I spoke too quickly. Belatedly, I correct myself:
“I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant to say.”
He shrugs and goes and stands by the window. Unthinkingly, he runs his fingertips over the venetian blinds, the noise is grating.
Finally, in a soft voice, he says:
“I’m not what you think.”
He spins around to face me. I can tell he is fumbling for words. Although he must have practised, rehearsed his monologue before showing up. But now he is standing in front of me, the words won’t come.
I throw him a line:
“So, why do it? Drugs?”
“No, of course not! I’m clean! I don’t touch that stuff.”
“Why, then? For some pimp whose only job is to come by to read the meter? Not that it matters to me, you know, but I’m curious. Maybe someone saving my life has made me curious. I’d like to understand.”
He gives a sardonic pout.
“You’d like to ‘understand’? Oh, it’s not difficult. Do you know how much rents are, how much it costs to buy food, to buy books?”
“Because you’re an avid reader, I suppose?”
“What’s with the hoary old clichés? Why shouldn’t I read? Because I’m young? Because I ‘turn tricks’, as you put it. I’m studying for a degree in maths and physics. I want to work in nuclear medicine. I have an entrance exam in June, and places on the course are very competitive.”
I’m gobsmacked. It must be obvious: for two seconds, his eyes blaze with pride.
That shut the old bastard up.
He makes the most of this to tell me about his life.
Life isn’t exactly a bed of roses for young Camille, to put it mildly.
No one to help out, no scholarship, no job he can find to fit in around his lectures and his studies, except for minimum wage.
“I live in a cupboard ten metres square with rent so high I practically have to sell a kidney every month. The real pimp here is my landlord. So that’s why I… we… you get the picture. I do what I do so I can carry on with my studies, and I hate it. Do you ‘understand’ now?”
“Don’t you have any family?”
“In my family, we don’t like queers… I got the hell out two years ago, I’m sure as hell not going begging to them now.”
His voice cracks a little. He’s had a fucking hard time of it, the little snowflake. He clears his throat and carries on, trying to sound detached:
“Not that it matters, they wouldn’t have the money to help me anyway. I get by, I do what I have to like everyone else.”
“You mean there are other kids who do that?”
“Are you really that stupid? Do you think going to university is free? That every student gets a room on campus? You really need to get out more.”
He is now sitting on the chair, one buttock perched precariously just like last time. Ready to run at the slightest sign. He talks, he talks… he tells me about his fucked-up life. The boyfriend he shared the flat with who unceremoniously dumped him at the start of the academic year; the loneliness, the hardship, being forced to find a studio apartment urgently. But with no money and no one to put up the deposit, you quickly end up in dodgy neighbourhoods and insalubrious rooms.
He is blessed with an unflagging optimism, because he insists that he’s “been lucky”: he has managed to sub-let a studio from a fellow-student who is on an exchange programme abroad for a few weeks.
“It’s not legit, but I don’t care. I’m sorted for the next month at least.”
A month… and then what? He doesn’t want to think about it, cannot even bring himself to formulate the question. He has burnt through all his savings, he looked for jobs to make ends meet, but they all entailed missing lectures and encroached on his revision time. One day, some guy told him that, in order to get by, he was a casual hustler…
Get Well Soon Page 5