“Hmm… not exactly an auspicious start to life.”
“No shit Sherlock. Anyway, the police took her back to her mother, but she just kept running away, five or six times she scarpered, eventually they had to put her in a home since she doesn’t have any other family. That’s where she met the boyfriend.”
“Oh, right. So he’s in care too?”
“No, not at all, he’s a cook, works in the kitchens. The social worker says the two of them are genuinely in love. The guy is very responsible. He’s level-headed.”
I crack up laughing.
“You’ve got a very strange concept of what it means to be responsible! A guy pushing twenty who gets a thirteen-year-old pregnant has a long way to go when it comes to being ‘level-headed’, don’t you think?”
Myriam laughs and nods vigorously as she removes the last of the bandages.
“Yeah, but he’s in love. It seems that he’s really happy about the baby. You know, in a situation like this, a lot of lads would be long gone. For a man, a baby is a real commitment, trust me.”
I’m sure this is true, although personally I have no experience.
“IT WASN’T EXACTLY sensible to give him the keys, if you want my opinion.”
“I’m not a suspicious person, my friend.”
“Well I am. Occupational hazard. He seems like a decent guy, I’m not saying otherwise. But the courts and the police stations are full of young thugs with angelic faces.”
“You have a very dim view of lawyers and cops, don’t you?”
Maxime laughs.
“You just can’t turn it off, can you? No, but seriously, you know nothing about this boy, aside from the fact that he turns tricks. It’s hardly a testament to his moral probity.”
“What have I got to lose, apart from a huge TV that’s at least fifteen years old? I’m convinced he’s a decent kid.”
“You’re only saying that because he fished you out of the Seine.”
“Well… the fact that he saved my life is a point in his favour, I can’t deny it.”
“OK, I won’t say any more. In any case, we’ve got his details on file, if there are any problems it won’t be hard to track him down. I just hope you’re not in for a nasty surprise.”
“Let me tell you something: if you spend your life trying to avoid ‘nasty surprises’, you miss out on the good ones too.”
He smiles.
“You’re right. Sometimes, I can be a grumpy old git…”
“Don’t be so presumptuous: I’m the grumpy old git here. You’ll have to make do with being a tetchy young bastard. No need to get ahead of yourself. All things come to those who wait, take my word for it…”
“RIGHT, I’M OUTTA HERE, so I just popped in to say goodbye, yeah?”
She is wearing a denim skirt not much bigger than a belt, a pair of tights that look like the nets from a fishing trawler, and a jumper baggy enough to contain her breasts.
She’s chewing gum, as always, she sways her hips to the boom chaka boom! seeping from her headphones, and maybe it’s her way of putting a brave face on things.
“Is your boyfriend coming to fetch you?”
“Yeah, in about an hour. But don’t get me wrong, he’s not…”
“… your boyfriend, I know.”
She tugs at a lock of hair, rubs her nose with the back of her hand and asks:
“Any chance I can go on Facebook, just for a sec?”
“Be my guest.”
She is shocked. Usually, I say “no”, not that she pays me any mind. Me giving her permission catches her off guard.
“Call it a leaving present,” I say.
She smiles, picks the laptop, sashays over to the little table, slumps into the chair. I can see her tinkering with something.
“What are you up to?”
“I’m just uploading photos for some of my girlfriends.”
Pictures of her love child, I presume.
I make a display of great forbearance, after all she’ll be gone for good by tonight and, besides, I’m reading a Ken Follett that has had me hooked from the first page. I’m grateful to the young cop for lending it to me. I’m lucky enough to be a very slow reader, so a thousand-page book is the equivalent of days of solitary pleasure.
In return, I’ve promised Maxime that as soon as I get out, I’ll take him for dinner to ‘Le Chapon Déluré’, a little restaurant on the banks of the Seine I’m very fond of, where they commit crimes involving duck confit and truffles and foie gras that would lead anyone with taste buds to sell his grandmother.
He said:
“No, no, there’s no need to thank me. When exactly did you have in mind?”
I’m betting that we’ll set a date soon; the consultant no longer comes to bother me, which I have to assume is a good sign.
With two fingers, the little madam types out her memoirs on Facebook. This is her drug.
I set up an account to see what it’s all about. You have to be very young, very lonely, or very, very bored to go around friending people, most of whom you barely know, people you got along happily without before you had a Facebook account, the sort of people you wouldn’t last ten minutes with under normal circumstances.
*
Right, Maëva has finished sharing her photos, she gets up.
“Don’t turn it off, please, I need to check my email.”
“OK, no sweat.”
With all the care of a nanny, she sets the laptop on the nightstand.
“I’ll be leaving after lunch.”
“I suppose you’re happy?”
“Yeah, it’s wicked. I can’t wait…”
“This name you chose, Justin…”
I do my best to pronounce it as she does, with an American accent.
“… you never told me what it means. I assume you know?”
She grins, giving me a clear view of the slobbery chewing gum she has just wedged between two premolars.
“Yeah. It means ‘reasonable’…”
“Let’s hope it suits him, then.”
She laughs.
“Right, well…”
She’s just like my brother.
She squirms, not knowing how to say goodbye to me. Eventually she mutters:
“… I’ll be off, then.”
“You do that. Travel safely. And don’t forget to buy our own laptop.”
She giggles, and wavers for a moment.
“I hope they’ll let you out soon… and that… things will be OK.”
I give her a wink.
“Don’t you worry about me, I’m a hard nut to crack, I’ve seen worse.”
She nods, gives me a little wave, and walks out of the room and out of my life.
Forgetting to close the door.
I’m going to write a little note to Serge, who must be pretty freaked out. It would take a lot less to depress most people.
The little madam has left her Facebook page open. Her “wall”, as the converts to this new sect refer to it. It is filled with asinine messages—so full of mistakes they are almost poetic—and photographs of young people pulling faces, making rabbit ears behind their friends’ heads. Nothing new in the world of drunken teenagers.
Being curious, I take a look at her photographs, since there is no expectation of privacy.
I get to see the father, the famous Lucas who is “nearly twenty”. A chubby lad with a cheerful face, he looks honest, down-to-earth, a simple soul. The sort of person you could look at in his pram and know what he will look like when he is fifty-five. There is a series of photos of him with the little madam as she starts to balloon, at a funfair, in a café, standing on a flight of steps, surrounded by friends. The exhibition is annotated: Doudou and me at the fun fair; Magali’s B-day bash, great laugh; Doudou and me, 1 yr annaversary!
From the way they stand, the way they hold each other, it is obvious that they are in love, even if he is not her boyfriend.
Then there are three photographs taken in this very room.
Two of the ones I took of the new mother and her baba. The caption reads My little bundellof joy. And one of me with the baby in my arms. Me as a grumpy old git, a misanthropic, badly shaven old codger. Me, cradling in my feeble arms, the little madam’s little sprog.
And underneath, the caption: Justin with his granddad Jean-Piere.
Note, she only put one ‘R’ in Pierre.
Though that’s hardly a good enough reason for me to feel so emotional.
I AM IN THE MIDDLE of getting dressed. The door flies open, then the nursing auxiliary knocks.
She scuttles in sideways, like a figure in an Egyptian frieze, still facing out into the corridor as she finishes the sentence addressed to someone else. I hear her colleague laughing.
The nurse coming in calls back “You should have seen the face on him!” then, without pausing for breath, still giggling, she calls to me in a sing-song voice:
“Morrrr-ning! This was left at reception for you!”
I eventually win the battle with my trousers, all the while politely responding to the greetings of everyone passing in the hallway.
In the envelope are my keys.
Camille clearly did not think it necessary to return them personally. I see it as a casual way of saying go to hell. And it makes me livid.
Why do we feel so personally rejected when our gifts are not appreciated? It is as though we spend our whole lives like kids in nursery school, looking into our mothers’ eyes to see her marvel at our pasta necklaces.
*
I immediately come up with reasons why I don’t give a toss: I’ll be happier on my own in the apartment, without having some kid under my feet. He seems nice enough, but you can tell he’s stubborn. He would probably have spent all day listening to rap, and I can’t abide rap.
I offered my help. If he doesn’t want it, the little bastard can go to hell!
I only suggested it as a favour to him.
It’s not as though I need anything, I certainly don’t need any help. I’ll find someone else to do my shopping. I’m old enough and ugly enough to get along by myself.
I’m not completely disabled.
See? I managed to put on my trousers all by myself in less than ten minutes… and I’m as happy as a four-year-old who’s just managed to put his gloves on for the first time.
Sometimes I depress myself.
Head held high, crutch at the ready, I head downstairs to the cafeteria for a little break. In the lift, a woman of a certain age—by which I mean much younger that me—stares at me, at my package, with a tact that does not escape me.
I smile, she turns away. I respect her confusion.
I emerge from the lift, go into the cafeteria, order a coffee and stand, looking out of the picture window, a vague smile playing on my lips.
A passing orderly stops and whispers to me.
“Your flies are undone.”
THE UROLOGIST stops by briefly, running late as always. We haven’t seen each other in a while, him and me.
He takes a last look through my patient file, asks two or three quick questions and, having been assured that I piss just like I used to do, declares in a breezy tone:
“Well, from my point of view, you’re fine!”
The turn of phrase is curious, but logical. Whatever fellow-feeling he may have, he nonetheless sees me within a carefully delimited context: bladder, dick, urethra.
The orthopaedist looks after the woodwork, the neurologist takes care of the wiring.
My urologist deals with the drains.
Never talk to your tiler about plumbing, therein lie the beginnings of wisdom.
Specialists are as short-sighted as moles, they view their patients only in close-up and see them only in terms of what’s right under their nose.
A sad life for a proctologist.
“ARE WE OFF SOON?”
“Yes, and ‘we’ are very happy to be leaving, I can tell you.”
The ward assistant has come to take away the breakfast tray. She stands in front of the bed, hands on the small of her back, and bends backwards—obviously a long-time lumbago sufferer. She sighs and then says cheerfully:
“After all this time, I’m sure there are people pining for you at home, hmm?”
“Not really, I live alone.”
She looks at me sadly. She cannot believe her ears.
“All on your own? No family, no children?”
“Nope. Just me.”
She babbles on, incredulous:
“Not even a dog or a cat?”
I can tell that to her I represent the subterranean depths of human misery.
No children, no dog, no cat.
Oh shit, the cat!
I suddenly remember.
That damned grey moggie with half-chewed ears that moved into my apartment, with its array of irritating habits: purring, head-butting my chin, kneading my belly with its paws. I found it outside the building a couple of months ago, skinny as a rake. I don’t know why I let it follow me upstairs. Maybe something about the way it said Mrrrrraouw? No sooner was in the apartment than it devoured my tinned sardines with gusto and polished off my lamb and bean stew—beans and all, which I found surprising. He made a thoughtful tour of the property. Eventually, he picked on my spot on the sofa and started to throw up, head down, perfectly concentrated.
This set me thinking and I realized I didn’t want to be burdened with looking after a pet—oh, no!—I had gone sixty-seven years without, there was no need to start now. I put my words into action, I opened the apartment door, and hup!
But the cat was not prepared to accept my decision, for two hours he sat on the welcome mat, serenading me with a growl like a tiger. I took him downstairs and put him outside. He waited until one of my neighbours opened the front door then darted upstairs, parked himself outside my door and started yowling again. I gave in.
I kept the beast, I called him Dishrag.
I thought we had a lot in common: forever grumpy, always complaining, never satisfied.
It was because of him I was on the bridge the night of the accident, I remember it now.
*
This moggy was as clingy as a lovelorn teenager, he followed me everywhere, I had to be careful every time I left the apartment to make sure he did not come with me.
That night, I took the bins out at about one o’clock, just before I went to bed. I always forget until the last minute. I didn’t notice he had followed me, and when I finally did notice, it was because he was being attacked by a huge dog. I threw the dustbin at the cur, much to his master’s annoyance; but the damage was done, Dishrag was badly injured.
The dog’s owner was pretty decent. Since he was parked nearby, he offered to drive me to the nearest vet. There are not many duty vets on Sunday and Monday nights. I must have made a dozen phone calls and got eleven answering machines. Eventually, I managed to find one who was not too far from my place—a stroke of luck—though I can’t remember the name or the address. The dog owner took me in his car under the glowering eye of his dog, who would happily have bitten my leg off and then finished off Dishrag, who was already dying from a gaping wound in his belly.
I seem to remember the vet being young, and I have a vague memory of hanging around in the waiting room for hours, then heading home on foot, without my cat.
So, that night, I was coming back from the vet.
If it were not for that bloody cat, I would not have crossed that bridge, or sailed over the parapet, and I would not have been stitched back together like a tattered pair of overalls.
This is what happens when you’re kind to animals.
Mystery solved.
Except for the fact that I don’t know what became of my feline friend.
TONIGHT, there was an email from Nathalie, Serge’s girlfriend.
As promised, she wrote to give me a brief update, the operation was this morning, it went as well as could be expected, but it is still too early to tell.
Serge had put off
going to his doctor. Apparently he had needed the operation for some time. He will need a lot of rest.
She will keep me posted.
Before the operation, he asked her to pass on a message to me, which she copy-pasted at the bottom of her email.
Hello my friend,
A joyous collection of quotes before I head off to be sliced up (tomorrow morning, Jesus I’m scared shitless):
“I’d rather die covered in blood than an old man lying in my own piss.”—Randall Wallace
“To depart is to die a little, but to die is to depart a lot.”—Alphonse Allais
“Medicine makes it possible to die more slowly”—Plutarch
And, for dessert:
“Good health is a precarious state which presages nothing good.”—Jules Romains
We’ll talk about this over a goose confit, but for the time being I remain
Serge
I reply to Nathalie—whom I have never met—and attach a message to pass on to Serge when he is able to read:
Hello my friend,
In response to the final quotation from your optimistic anthology, here is another thought that I find quite uplifting:
“Health is what prevents you from dying every time you are seriously ill.” Georges Perros
Keep well, my friend.
They’re discharging me on Wednesday, I’ll wait to hear from you.
I’m up for the goose confit, but I’ll cook it.
Much love,
Pierrot
“MY YOUNG FRIEND, they are letting me out on Wednesday, I hope you’ve worked up an appetite, we’ll soon be having dinner at ‘Le Chapon Déluré!’”
“I’ve been preparing—I haven’t eaten a thing for three days.”
“I’m afraid that might not be enough. Try to persevere a little longer.”
Get Well Soon Page 12