by Marie Ndiaye
Herman sat hunched on his chair, soaking wet. He was afraid he might not prove worthy of the honor they were paying him, not knowing what article of the code he should rely on here with the merchants—if he was supposed to jump straight into the conversation or wait to be spoken to. A faint whiff of mildew emanated from the woodwork, the old plaster.
“So my wife and son live in those people’s house,” thought Herman, troubled. “But how do they feel about having them there?”
He was sitting across from the shoe sellers. Did they have any idea who he was? Everyone in the village knew, but these two gave no sign that they realized they were sitting across from the closest relative of their eternal and possibly unwelcome guests.
“Are they going to charge me rent?” Herman wondered. “And what made Rose choose their house specifically?”
He looked back and forth from the man to the woman, trying to catch an eye, looking for some sign of complicity, a little nod to say, “Yes, they’re with us, come and see them, come see for yourself that they’re with us and they’re happy, and then why shouldn’t they talk to you, why wouldn’t they say something to you of all people?”
But when their eyes met Herman’s they were lit only by the brief glint of sociable, ritual acknowledgment that people here offered everyone. Sitting down at the table, Herman had given the same glance to each of the guests, along with a nod, even though he couldn’t yet quite see them. The tobacconists were there, and the director of the savings bank, the managers of the Co-op, the café and hotel owners, the two female pharmacists, the woman who ran the driving school, bakers, butchers, etc., and the mayor himself, sitting across the table not far from Herman, rather like him, Herman suddenly realized, in that they were both oddly sallow, slouching, shivering, and their hair was damp, the mayor’s indisputably lighter but of a redder blond, a less extraordinarily pallid blond than everyone else’s. And it struck Herman that like Alfred the mayor might dye his hair. Neither the mayor nor Herman sat up straight on his chair. The cold water hammering the windows seemed to physically lash them, and they were humbly bowing, defeated by the water, by the cold, by the fury of the driving rain. A drip hung perennially from Herman’s nose. Who would ever have thought, seeing the mayor so crumpled and trembling, that he held the administration of the whole village in his hand? His tablemates were sitting up straight and serene, the women bound tight, breasts flattened, shoulders high and padded, the flesh of their arms bulging pink and full from beneath the elastic of their short sleeves. Their brows were pale and shiny. Their tranquil blue-tinged gaze still troubled Herman with its coldness and coquetry.
“How well these people stand up to the weather,” Herman said to himself, gripped with fear and slightly ashamed of his own debilitation. Sitting next to him, the enormous, wan real-estate agent leaned over and whispered in his ear:
“That house of yours on the plateau, I might be able to help you unload it. Why don’t you stop by the agency and see me?”
He smelled of sweat, to Herman’s surprise and admiration, he who never perspired now.
“Yes,” said Herman, “I might want to sell it.”
“Oh, it’s not going to be snapped up just like that, I don’t know what we’ll get for it, could be a pittance,” the other man hastened to add.
But Herman only shrugged; it made no difference to him. Aperitifs had been served, and he realized that the talk had turned to local affairs, which the merchants seemed to consider it their duty to deal with. The baker jotted down the suggested solutions in a notebook. Everyone spoke in calm, quiet tones. Only Herman and the mayor stretched their necks to hear, and even then Herman could make out nothing more than an occasional snippet. They were discussing a family whose three children had to be removed at once from the dangerous influence of their alcoholic, depraved parents. The woman who ran the gift shop earnestly offered her testimony: Those people had bought two pornographic videos from her in two weeks. Worse—added the fishmonger who’d seen this as he passed by their window one evening—they watched them as a family, right in front of the children, all of them sitting around the kitchen table just after dinner, and the parents drank like it was a contest, and the father got so red and so agitated that the worst was to be feared.
“Well,” said the gift shop owner, “I won’t sell to them anymore.”
They didn’t have a car, so they couldn’t go to L. in search of more films. They would simply have to be watched to be sure they didn’t order them through the mail. The postman could be questioned. They turned next to the matter of a banishment from the village. Some young man, renting from the real-estate agent for two thousand francs a month, who’d moved here from a neighboring village to do summer work for the Parisians (gardening, running errands), now found himself without work or money. He’d stopped paying his rent, complaining it was too high. The real-estate agent wanted to be rid of him. After a brief deliberation, it was decided, as Herman understood it, that the young man would be expelled from the village. The owner of the Café du Commerce, the barber, and Charlotte’s father would go wake him at dawn, immobilize him, drive him some twenty kilometers from the village, and forbid him to come back. There had been four such banishments in ten years, all successful, always involving recent arrivals who thought they could dig themselves out of dire financial straits by protesting the prices charged in the village.
“We don’t put up with that here,” said the real-estate agent in Herman’s ear.
He rolled up his shirtsleeves, puffing loudly. Meanwhile, Herman couldn’t get warm. He thought he could feel his waterlogged brain dripping onto the walls of his skull, water trickling all through his body with nowhere to drain. He was comforted to see that the mayor had crossed his arms over his chest in hopes of warming himself a little.
“There’s one more case to settle,” said the baker, who had already filled up several pages in her notebook.
Then:
“This is a delicate matter.”
She’d learned from the social worker that the V. girl, thirteen, was accusing her stepfather of regular, routine violations of her person. He thought he had every right, he scarcely even tried to hide it.
“So you understand, this is about V.,” said the baker woman after a silence.
And Herman had the impression that for some unspoken reason his tablemates were reluctant to take action against this V., whatever misdeeds he might be guilty of. The grocer sighed and promised he’d deal with it; his daughter knew the V. girl well. Relieved, the baker woman closed her notebook. Vol-au-vents and platters of charcuterie were brought in.
“The fire is bright, the flames are leaping, but it only warms the antiquarians’ backs, it’s so cold in here, so damp!” Herman said to himself.
Now he was afraid staying to the end of the meal might take a serious toll on him. His nostrils were stinging from the smell of mildew and must. Suddenly the door opened and someone quietly came in. It was the form, the being who had been peering at Herman since his first day at the Relais; it was Alfred’s vanished wife, now living in the charcutiers’ house. She was wearing an old-fashioned floral print summer dress. Smiling and silent, she glided all around the table, gently passed behind Herman, bowing right and left, infinitely amiable, the little sandals on her feet scarcely touching the ground—they whisked over it like a breeze. Seeing her up close for the first time, Herman thought she looked sad and tired beneath her endless smiles; she seemed old before her time. Troubled, anxious, he realized that no matter what he’d heard about these beings’ ineffable happiness she was a lost soul, and, behind her little window all day long, the very image of boredom and despair.
Every guest gave her a quick nod, then paid her no further attention, though she went right on smiling and curtseying.
“Why,” Herman wondered, bothered by their dismissiveness, “why did she want to stay on here, why didn’t she go home to Paris? They—yes, that’s it exactly—they don’t even care that she’s here, they don’t see an
ything sacred about her, any more than a live-in maid.”
Herman thought he felt the being touch him on the shoulder as she passed by. He didn’t dare smile at her or look at her any longer than the others. But he felt like his heart was seeping and withering. The smell of the room now mingled with his disgust at the very fleshly odor of the real-estate agent, who sweated abundantly as he ate. Someone complained that the Parisians hadn’t brought in as much money this year as the summers before. They hemmed and hawed before they bought anything of any value, the antiquarians groused. Yes, it was the same at the charcuterie, they’d bought far fewer terrines of this or that.
A painful compassion clenched Herman’s throat, and as he looked at the woman he felt certain that the delicate, undulating silhouettes of Rose and the child that he’d glimpsed a week or two before only seemed to be happy, that their pale, serene, detached, smiling faces hid an inconsolable sorrow. Alfred’s wife went on strolling around the table, she couldn’t bring herself to leave. Her smile grew brighter and wider as she inspired ever more indifference among the dinner guests, who at the moment were intently calculating (the baker had gotten out her notebook again) how much pork, how much beef, poultry, and fish the Parisians had ingested this summer compared to last. One thing was certain: they’d eaten less than usual. There was worry in the air—suppose that trend continued?
“Rose wanted to stay,” Herman mused, “she wanted to spend all eternity in the village, but if that turns out to have been a mistake, she still won’t be going home, or me either. This is where we’re from now, but how to get used to the water? The mayor and I are literally liquefying, I can see it, our flesh going spongy, we’ll never have the fine strong build that people have around here, the dry hair, the skin beaded with sweat. And yet I’ve got to stay, I’ve got to make a place for myself here.”
Finally, Alfred’s wife left the room, slowly, backing away, more undulatingly, more desperately generous with her smiles than ever. No one was watching her, only Herman, out of the corner of his eye. They were mulling various strategies to get next summer’s Parisians to consume more than ever before.
5 – Knowing that Charlotte’s mother thought highly of him, Herman resolved to ask her a favor. He wanted, once—just once—to visit the shoe sellers’ house, and he told her in all sincerity that he would never know peace in the village until he could. It was an indelicate thing to do, possibly harmful to his own interests, and he knew it.
“But after that I’ll never ask for anything again,” he promised, “and whatever I can do to be helpful, I’ll do it.”
He simply had to see with his own eyes how Rose and the boy were lodged in their immortal village existence.
Charlotte’s mother asked no questions. She went to see the shoe sellers, and they came to an agreement: On a certain afternoon of a certain day Herman would have a half hour to explore the house as he pleased. In gratitude, Herman bought the most expensive pair of rubber boots in the shop, along with slippers and espadrilles, and simultaneously he abandoned his intention of haggling with Charlotte’s mother when she handed him his bill at the end of the month.
When the day came he entered the shop and headed straight upstairs, as agreed. The owners had gone out so he could look around at his leisure. The house was silent, dark, exceedingly proper and drab. Many doors opening onto little low-ceilinged rooms cluttered with the usual rustic furniture. Numb, trembling with dread, Herman softly called to Rose and the child. To his irritation he saw that his pant cuffs were dripping onto the wood floors. Two flights up, at the end of a hallway, he found a sort of storage room, dusty, furnished with two old straw-seat chairs. The little oval window looked out the back of the house, toward the hills atomized by the mist and the rain.
“This must be the place,” thought Herman, looking at the two chairs side by side before the window.
This room seemed different from the others, with a very particular sort of silence—fuller, thicker—you could almost see it, could almost touch it. Rose’s perfume, the pleasing scent of fresh soap that always emanated from the child’s body, Herman breathed deep and was crushed to find that he couldn’t smell a trace of either one. Another wave of irrational terror ran through him. He wanted to run. But just then they walked in, hand in hand, and sat down in the chairs, never letting go of each other. They’d walked silently straight past Herman in their soaked summer clothes. Rose had smiled at him, very formally, just as she’d done the last time. And now they were looking out at the almost invisible hilltops, sitting very straight in their chairs, motionless, and at the television relay tower whose top sometimes poked through the immovable mass of black clouds.
“So this is what they look at every day,” murmured Herman, his fear subsiding.
He timidly called out to them. But he didn’t dare try to touch them. He felt overwhelmed by a feeling of aloneness, along with a renewed conviction that Rose’s choice to settle forever among these hills would never bring her or him anything like happiness.
“But still, yes, we’ll be glad we exist,” he told himself. “There will be that, though nothing more.”
Then he stopped calling out, realizing they couldn’t hear. Fat drops of water rolled off their hair and onto the floor. The boy looked thinner than he remembered, his neck stiff, still, and cold. They joylessly stared out at the hills, remote and indifferent, and with a twinge of anger Herman found himself thinking he’d often seen them visibly happier than this in Paris. He sighed and walked out. Just then the telephone rang, downstairs. Herman reflexively hurried to answer it. He recognized the principal’s voice.
“I called your hotel, you weren’t there, and they gave me this number, so…”
He must have been calling from the teachers’ lounge, because Herman heard adult voices, laughter, rustling papers, locker doors slamming shut. Here in the shoe sellers’ dark living room, amid the stout, sturdy furniture, the silence was heavy, thick with the village’s wintertime peacefulness. Herman shivered. He found it hard to speak in the same tone as before.
“You’ve been replaced, Monsieur Herman,” the principal was saying, “starting today, that’s what I have to tell you. I believe we gave you as much time as we could, I think you’ll agree, but it’s clear your relocation is now complete. That said, Monsieur Herman, you have all our sympathy, and all our understanding.”
Herman stammered, unable to come up with the words and the phrasing to be used with a superior. He found nothing in his mind but slightly over-colloquial expressions about the rain or the temperature, or “You said it,” or “Well, gotta get going,” which he used freely with Charlotte, but which were no good to him here. He decided to say nothing, punctuating the principal’s explanations with only a few noncommittal mumbles. The restless, garrulous life he could hear going on through the phone had become alien to him, almost frightening. What could he possibly have to say, here in the numbing silence of the shoe sellers’ living room?
“Well, good-bye,” he said when he sensed the principal was finished.
“Good-bye, good-bye, Monsieur Herman, good-bye…”
Now no one had any reason to call him from Paris, he thought as he hung up. He was alone, all alone. The intangible forms upstairs didn’t seem to care that he was here in the village. Deep inside, Herman was hurt that Rose hadn’t chosen a house where she could gaze at him day and night, like Alfred’s wife, that she’d opted for the view of the misty, rain-shrouded hills. It’s true that she would then have seen him in bed with Charlotte or Métilde or perhaps someone else (if that ever came to pass), but still, Herman would have felt less profoundly alone.
6 – Eventually Herman could stall Gilbert no longer. When he came to see Herman one morning and announced that the tennis match with his friend Lemaître was scheduled for that day in L., there was nothing to do but hurry to get ready and climb into the passenger seat of Gilbert’s car. Gilbert was keyed up, anxious and fidgety. He smelled strongly of cologne. Herman thought he’d even put on a touch
of makeup: his pale eyes highlighted by a black line, like an actor’s, his colorless lips discreetly pinker now. He drove out of the village at an excessive speed, then raced along the little road to L., thirty kilometers away, the pavement almost invisible in the murk. Herman couldn’t see the fields or trees on either side of them. They sped through a tunnel of mist now and then pierced by the headlights of the few oncoming, strangely silent cars. Gilbert’s fervor, his odd appearance, the slightly feminine scent he’d doused himself with, all that heightened Herman’s unease, his suspicion that he was running a risk by leaving the village.
“Still, I really do have to take out some money,” he thought to convince himself this trip was necessary.
Alfred had loaned him a sweater and hunting jacket, but he felt as damp as ever. And once they’d passed by the village’s last house, Herman thought himself a man condemned. He’d never been to L., which Gilbert and Métilde inevitably described as the very antithesis of the dreary, pathetic village. But Herman couldn’t help but think that he too was a lost soul now, and lost souls never leave the place they choose or end up in. He tried to laugh all that off, to tell himself he was being stupid, but in his mounting anxiety he was starting to find it hard to breathe. Gilbert wasn’t saying a word, so Herman asked him about his friend Lemaître—and just why was it so vital that Herman partner with Gilbert in this doubles match?
Gilbert let out a glum little laugh and protested that Lemaître wasn’t his friend, that people like Lemaître—a district councilor and a swimming-pool builder—felt nothing but disdain for villagers like Gilbert, even though he was the son of a merchant. The fact was that when you came from the village you couldn’t possibly hope a Lemaître might see you as an equal, however kind and affectionate he was with you. Gilbert knew that to Lemaître (a native of L.) he was simply a hick, too backward even to pass the baccalauréat, but by some miracle endowed with physical attributes (handsomeness, presence, etc.) that made him worth spending time with, eclipsing his deplorable origin just enough to let it be forgotten—even as he treated Gilbert with all the condescension and dismissiveness that went with the degrading nimbus of the village enveloping his agile young body. So no, you couldn’t call Lemaître his friend. But Gilbert had worked his magic on him. The man was seduced, that was certain. And now Lemaître would have no choice but to help him. It was in Lemaître’s power to get him into the First School of Commerce without a degree. It wasn’t exactly kosher, but Lemaître had the means. Except he wasn’t the type to bestow favors purely out of friendship.