Most of the time—except when he was doing his best to wind me up—pépé sat in silence, staring into space, head nodding vaguely.
Out of the blue he would start reciting verse, in a booming, dramatic voice, never faltering over a comma, and punctuating the end of his alexandrines by pounding the armrest with his fist.
*
When as, with his children clothed in hides to keep warm,
Frantic and ashen through the menacing storm,
Cain took to flight from the presence of Jove…
Dah-dah-dah, dah-dah-dah, dah-dah-dah, dah-dah-dah…
We would wait for the eruption to subside; my parents fatalistic, me resigned. I already knew that once the poem had been declaimed, he would bombard me with questions I would be unable to answer. I could never remember the name of a writer, much less that of a poem. My sense of culture was a little limited, I thought Stendhal was a painter and Voltaire was a kind of sofa. But there was no getting out of it, at the end of the recitation pépé Jean would take a deep breath and let slip the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question:
“So Pie-ierrot? Who’s it by?”
I would hazard a guess.
“… Maurice Carême?”
He would roll his eyes and snicker. I hated his guts.
I could have played the senile old git at his own game, I could have shut him up by reciting some real poetry: test the bastard’s exhaustive knowledge of Johnny Hallyday songs.
For a long time I thought he hated me. From what my father told me some years later, I was wrong. Pépé was very fond of me. He thought I had character. But he was one of those people whose throat would have been scalded by a kind word or a compliment.
My father tried to put it down to his generation.
“That’s how things were back in his day. People were reserved. They didn’t go around hugging and kissing each other.”
Yeah, right.
Pépé was a cantankerous old bastard, a moaner. I must have inherited the gene.
I’m like him; I suffer from constipation of the heart.
TEN O’CLOCK in the morning, and the little bitch is back.
She is a constant scourge: every day she shows up at my door at some point and waddles like a plump little duckling over to my chair.
There she slumps—because she doesn’t sit, she slumps—she chews away at her bubble gum, her mouth wide open, so I’m treated to surround sound and Technicolor vision.
I do my level best to be cold and distant with her, and I don’t like to boast, but when it comes to things like that my level best is nothing short of stupendous.
It doesn’t even register with the Plague of Egypt.
Worse, I think she’s actually starting to like me.
More often than not, she simply waits, hulking, placid, for me to give her the laptop. It is impossible to ignore her, to pretend she is not there.
When Myriam passes in the corridor she gives us a little wave.
Last night she said, “She’s funny, that girl, the way she comes down to keep you company. It’s like she’s stuck on you.”
*
“Stuck on you” makes me think of rice stuck to the bottom of a pan. Thick, glutinous, difficult to scrape off.
Oh yes, there’s no doubt she’s stuck on me.
I DON’T KNOW what it’s like for other authors. Me, I’m new to this writing lark so I find it takes a lot of time, and forces you to think.
Is it the fact that I’m stuck in this dreary room, where every second counts twice over, and feels twice as futile, that has made me realize only now the scale of the con?
The sheer waste of time, that’s what pains me most. Not just the time I’m wasting being here, but all the time I’ve wasted since I was born. Not the hours blissfully spent doing fuck all, face pressed into a pillow or between the breasts of some girlfriend, no, the whole days wasted.
In life, time wasted is like dark matter, an omnipresent nothing, a vast nothingness that occupies all space, or almost. When my story is compacted and all the air sucked out, my sixty-seven years would fit in a Kleenex.
It is the principle of expansion, the soil dug out of a trench takes up more space on the side of the road than it did in the trench, just like the leaves of an artichoke take up more space on a plate after you’ve eaten it.
At twenty, at thirty, I thought I had all the time in the world, a reserve as vast and inexhaustible as the treasures of an African potentate or a corrupt tyrant.
Now I find myself with a piggy bank that’s all but empty. An ugly, shabby porcelain pig rattling with three small inedible chocolate coins.
If I were suddenly to get back all the time I squandered waiting for time to pass, if I were repaid all the aimless minutes, how much I would have in the bank? Months? Years?
Decades, probably, allowing for interest rates.
Life is a shameless con-job: if you’re not careful, it will fleece you rotten and send you packing with nothing in your pockets, like a big-time gambler stumbling bankrupt out of a casino.
ANNIE WAS THE ONE who paid for my professional choices, something I only realized when it was too late.
I chose to work abroad. It was a personal choice, but I managed to convince myself that it would be better for both of us: I would earn more money, we would be better able to enjoy life.
Enjoy life? But when?
She quickly gave up on the idea of travelling with me.
The poetry of cargo ports was lost on her, I think. The seagulls’ droppings, the cockroaches on the quayside, the foghorns and the smell of sleet were not enough to spark her dreams. Women are difficult.
I wanted to work abroad because it had its advantages, but mostly because, in a foreign country, I felt I was somewhere else. Coming from a line of fiercely sedentary men clinging to their roots and welded to their railways, I was the first to cross frontiers, to set foot in countries that I had spent hours daydreaming about, gazing at the huge Vidal de La Blache maps pinned on the walls of my classroom.
In the early days, I think that Annie found it hard being away from me so much of the time. Later, she got used to my absence. And in time, solitude was more bearable than the time I spent at home. You like to think you’re independent, you end up becoming superfluous.
In the early days, when I came home, she would ask if I had behaved myself, with the worried yet confident smile of a lover.
One day, she stopped asking the question. Not that I cheated on her very often, though “not very often” is still far too much. Twice in our marriage I had a bit on the side, including once when I was drunk, and can only remember that she was a bottle-blonde.
Two slip-ups in thirty years is a terrible tally. It’s too pathetic to be classed as a Casanova, but too high for me to be one of the good guys.
The first girl, the blonde, was one night after a business dinner. The weather was hot, she was hot, the band were pretty good, I’d had a little too much to drink, I’d been away from my wife for three months, the reptilian brain was in control of the beast… I woke up next morning with a hangover and my hand on a breast too big for me to cup.
The second time came much later, she was a Chinese girl, her name was Jiao, which means “beautiful”, and it suited her. We slept with each other on and off for three or four years, two fixed contracts, three ports of call.
I didn’t exactly show great courage.
Deep down, I’m a one-woman man. Not just because I’m faithful by nature. Part of it is selfish. I find that lovemaking is better when people know each other well. Besides, I don’t like hassle.
I’m no saint, I sowed my share of wild oats when I was young. And there were some late plantings too. But it’s the aggravation that comes from furtive fumblings that puts me off. Lies and pox and illegitimate kids wheel around clandestine affaires like vultures over an open grave.
Given my line of work, a lot of the guys couldn’t understand why I wasn’t a skirt-chaser when I was overseas. It’s true that in some p
arts of the world it’s easy pickings. I’ve seen a lot of guys hook up with girls who are barely overage—to avoid problems. And if they’re not quite the right age, most of the time a few notes or a carton of cigarettes is enough for them to forget all about it. If not, they kick up a fuss, claim the girl lied about her age, stumble out of the police station with their honour intact and their wallet emptied, and laugh about it as they get in the drinks because, after all, what can you do, that’s just how it is.
You don’t get to choose what gets you hard…
I’d like to have a debauched retirement, I’d have my pick of destinations. For twenty euros a month, I could have fresh meat to warm my bed with cooking and cleaning thrown in for free. One of those poor little working girls with dark eyes and bare bellies traipsing barefoot through the puddles and touting for clients outside the bars. And there is no shortage of clients, no fear that sleazy bastards are in decline, they flock to places of abject poverty. Always respectable, always drunk, bags under their eyes, red as lobsters. They disgust me. They’re old, they’re ugly. They’re like me: decrepit, past their use-by date. But that doesn’t stop them rubbing their fat paunches, their limp dicks, their sweaty skin up against girls young enough to be their granddaughters.
I know their dirty jokes and their sleazy justifications. “It’s different here, it’s part of the culture, what do you expect, they need the money, actually you’re helping them to survive.”
Sad fuckers practically have themselves convinced they’re philanthropists.
AFTER ANNIE’S DEATH, I met Clotilde, and a bit later Béatrice.
Clotilde was soft-hearted. She liked to mother me and I was happy to let her, but that’s not the basis for a real relationship. We quickly got bored.
If Béatrice had a heart it was anything but soft. No small-talk, no foreplay, no pointless billing and cooing. Nothing but sex and jogging. Sex every morning, jogging every Sunday.
As soon as I’d done the business, she’d leap out of bed and rush to the kitchen to make coffee. She made good coffee.
She dumped me three years ago without a word of explanation to go shack up with a retired PE teacher. I never saw it coming.
Since then, I’ve been on my own, I’ve pretty much given up hope, but I’m making great strides towards achieving inner peace.
I drink a lot less coffee.
THE PHYSIO thinks I’m in “great shape”. According to him, I’m recovering “remarkably quickly for a man of my age”. I suspect he says the same to every other patient on this floor. I’m guessing it’s something that’s drummed into them during training: fifty-per-cent-of-recovery-is-down-to-the-patient’s-morale.
And they’ve got a point, morale is important. I would never have believed it could be so difficult to learn to walk again. Giving up using the Zimmer frame scares me a damn sight more than taking the training wheels of my bicycle. It has to be said that the last time I learnt to walk I was thirteen or fourteen months old, the ground didn’t seem so far away, at least I assume it didn’t.
It’s all a long time ago, I don’t really remember.
Four or five days ago, the little madam spotted me taking my daily exercise.
She showed up unannounced, didn’t even bother to ask whether she was disturbing me. Why change the habits of a lifetime? It seems to be an acknowledged fact that she is at home everywhere, which is mostly in my room.
I was slowly trudging up and down in front of the window, taking nervous little steps, one hand clinging to the tripod walking stick, leaning heavily on the physiotherapist.
She watched for a while. Nodded her head and said:
“That’s cool.”
Buoyed up by this succinct compliment, I would have given her a thumbs up but that would have meant letting go of the walking stick, and that seemed a little premature.
I’ve made a lot of progress since then.
I wouldn’t exactly say I’m making great strides, but I feel as though I am regaining control over this aching body, which will soon, I hope, be autonomous.
Among the trivial little private pleasures I’ve rediscovered, I can now go for a piss all by myself.
I know it doesn’t sound like much, but right now these are the little things by which I measure the fine line that separates a normal life from a life in the shitter, no pun intended.
MAXIME COUGHS.
“… Um… I’ve been meaning to say…”
He stops. It’s amazing, this mania people have of going quiet when they’ve said they have something to tell you.
“I’m all ears, my young friend.”
I can tell he’s trying to decide how best to tackle the problem.
“Uh… well… OK… the thing is…”
“Yes?”
“You must be wondering why I’ve been coming to see you…”
“Let’s see… My cheerful conversation, my extraordinarily exuberant character, the litheness and grace of my every gesture?…”
He laughs.
“Eh… no.”
“No? Well, in that case, I admit, I’m baffled.”
He flashes me a half-smile, then—a little more seriously—he stares at me with the eyes of a kid who has been punished for no reason.
“You remind me of my father.”
Wow!
I wait for him to continue.
“Actually… you looked so much like him, that first time I saw you.”
“When I was in resus?” I can’t hide my surprise.
“Yes… yes, exactly. Look, I don’t really know how to explain it, but the first time I saw you…”
He takes a breath.
“… you looked just like my father the last time I saw him.”
I can’t say I’m exactly flattered, but I’m guessing this is not the moment to open up.
He goes on:
“That’s why I came back to see you, at first… because the investigation, well, it’s a routine traffic accident, so…”
“So you’re saying my case isn’t exactly thrilling?”
He dodges the question. He rests his arms on the bed-frame, leans towards me and takes the plunge. At least I’ll be able to boast that I persuaded a cop to confess.
His father died of a heart attack four years ago in this very hospital. Maxime didn’t get the news until late in the day, he was out of the office working on an investigation. By the time he got to the hospital that night, his father was in a coma. He never saw him alive again.
“When I saw you in intensive care, it was a shock, because physically you look a lot like him. And what with the oxygen mask and the tubes…”
I nod. I can imagine the terrible flashback. Now I understand the look he gave me when I first came round. That worried, troubled look of his.
“That’s the reason why I kept coming at first. Do you understand?”
“To see me, so you didn’t have to keep seeing him. To exchange your last image of your father for an image of me, an old wreck…”
“Yes, I think that’s part of it. Do you find that weird?”
“What I find weird is that you didn’t correct me when I called myself an old wreck…”
He bursts out laughing.
If the lad weren’t so young, we’d be old friends by now.
I DIDN’T SEE my father die.
I didn’t see my mother die.
I wasn’t there for Annie.
What is there to add to that?
I’M NOT contemplative by nature. I hate doing nothing. I’ve always been that way.
I need to move, to do things, to fill up all the little drawers of minutes and hours like a squirrel making provision for the winter.
I traipse back and forth, from the bed to the window, from the window to the door, from the door to the little waiting room, from the waiting room to the nurses’ station, where they give a running commentary on my arrival.
“Well, look who it is! Are we taking a little walk?”
“We’re making excellent progress
!”
“Hello, hello, my little turtledoves…”
Myriam giggles, her colleague laughs too.
I head back, taking baby steps, trying to hold in my stomach, to keep my back straight.
I’m playing the ladykiller. I’m just an old clown doing his party piece.
EVERY DAY, or almost every day, it’s the same ritual: I refuse to give her my laptop, she accepts my refusal with remarkable stoicism, then she sits without a word and waits until I’ve finished using it. Thanks to her, I finally understand the law of inertia.
“Is there no one else who could lend you a computer?”
“Dunno. But you’ve got yours, so it’s all good.”
I must have “moron” written across the front of my rapidly balding head.
When I finally give in—and I always give in, it’s a nightmare—she seizes the spoils and goes to sit at the little table by the wall opposite the bed.
I have forbidden her from taking it out of the room. She is allowed exactly half an hour, during which I do my best not to fall asleep in case she does a runner with the laptop.
I try to read a little and ignore her presence. It’s impossible. She sucks on her chewing gum, whistles under her breath and, for the past few days, she has been sighing every time she moves, like an arthritic old crone.
Obviously, it has occurred to me to do a little investigating, find out who she is, what’s wrong with her, but I’m afraid of finding out something horrible, a terminal illness, something eating away at her. Although I wish she were dead every time I set eyes on her, it’s only a virtual death, a theoretical demise. I don’t actually want to kill her. Not yet.
Get Well Soon Page 9