by Marie Ndiaye
“Ha, ha, that’s for sure!” Gilbert laughed, his upper lip now glistening with sweat.
Lemaître liked a little fun, he liked making bets. They’d agreed that if Gilbert won the match Lemaître would pull the necessary strings at the school for Gilbert and never ask anything more of him. If not, Gilbert would have to find some way to purchase his help. That was fair. Because what chance did Gilbert have of getting anywhere without a leg up from Lemaître? He would vegetate in the village, with nothing to do, drifting from internship to internship, at best he would wind up in some lowly, demoralizing little job like janitor at the cider works or asphalt layer, obscure city office worker or summer factotum for the Parisians. He wasn’t going to let that happen, not for anything in the world. Whatever the price to satisfy Lemaître and get his support, Gilbert would pay it; he would never resign himself to letting go and languishing his life away in the village.
“Yes, well, I did tell you I haven’t played tennis for twenty years,” Herman fretted.
He shifted unhappily this way and that in his seat. He was angry at Gilbert for picking him as a partner when he hardly knew how to play, placing the responsibility for an almost certain defeat on his feeble, shivering shoulders.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter that much,” said Gilbert.
But he gunned the engine, sped up even more. His eyelids twitched nervously as he strained to make out the edges of the pavement. Already he had dark makeup smudges at the corners of his eyes. He rolled down his window and took a deep breath. Herman felt as if the water that had replaced the blood in his veins was beginning to freeze, and he knew for certain that nothing would ever warm him again.
“You know, the big thing,” Gilbert explained, “is for him to see that I know someone from Paris, that I’m not so…that I’m even friends with a Parisian, because apparently he knows a ton of them, but he doesn’t play tennis with them or anything, whereas I…he’ll have to admit I’ve got him beaten there…”
And that, he explained, would earn him a glory far more precious than he would ever get from possibly winning the match. Too bad if he then had to sacrifice himself to Lemaître. Besides, he will have brought Herman, so Lemaître would treat him a little more respectfully. Herman still had his magnificent Parisian face that would shut Lemaître up.
“You don’t mind too much, I hope?” Gilbert asked softly.
But Herman couldn’t bring himself to answer. He slumped against the car door and closed his eyes, so furious with himself for leaving the village that he was trembling all over in fear and resentment.
Gilbert parked his car on the main square of L. and walked Herman to the tennis club, where they would all sit down for lunch before the match. Destroyed in the last war, the subprefecture city of L. had been entirely rebuilt in concrete and brick. The town center consisted of three pedestrian streets lined with low apartment buildings, flat-roofed, their balconies fronted with tinted plastic. Herman was a little taken aback: was that really all there was to L.? The streets were almost deserted in the falling rain. The cobblestones were slippery, the flower pots half filled with bottles and wax-paper wrappers.
“Oh, Métilde!” cried Herman, spotting a young woman walking ahead of them, hunched under an umbrella.
But she turned a corner, and the club lay straight ahead. Herman wanted to go after her.
“No time,” said Gilbert.
“She would have saved me,” thought Herman, suddenly resigned. Because he knew Métilde didn’t have a car, and never went to L. It would be another six months before she hoped to be driven there for the exam. So why would she be here, if not, providentially, just for him? To take him back to the village, to help him go home? But she hadn’t seen him, and in his great weakness around Gilbert he’d let her slip away.
And now they were at the tennis club, Gilbert on edge, forcing himself to whistle, slapping his thigh with his racket. He’d recognized Lemaître’s massive 4x4 outside, and now he was peering around for him in the restaurant that overlooked the tennis courts, roofed for the season. Catching him off guard after the dull, empty streets, the tumult in the club filled Herman with anguish. He put his hands over his already aching ears, but the violent music pouring from a dozen speakers in the ceiling, the hubbub of voices in the packed room, and the balls being batted back and forth on the court below had exploded in his skull the moment he came in, and now his head was vibrating, resonating, ringing absurdly. He turned to flee, but Gilbert clasped his elbow and herded him toward Lemaître’s table, just by the balustrade, with a view of the games going on below.
“The other one will be here after lunch,” Gilbert whispered, meaning Lemaître’s partner.
He gave Lemaître a quick embrace and made the introductions.
“Herman’s from Paris,” he launched in. “The fourteenth arrondissement, actually, right, Herman, the Rue des Plantes?”
“Say, I know someone who lives around there, a big deal,” Lemaître shot back.
He was about Herman’s age, but enormously taller and fatter. He was dressed in tight jeans, a floral tie, a striped shirt, his gray-white hair in a ponytail. He looked at Herman with an arrogant, incurious gaze. The whites of his eyes were generously veined with red. Herman felt him studying his narrow shoulders, his spindly arms, observing, perhaps with pleasure, the wetness in him and on him, his master inside and out.
“But in that case why are you still here with us, Monsieur Herman?”
“My wife wanted to stay,” Herman murmured, and Lemaître seemed to understand.
Tortured by the noise, Herman couldn’t repress a grimace. He was deeply ashamed to be there. He was betraying the village.
“We opened this club not six months ago, you won’t find one like it even in Paris—there’s squash, a sauna, a weight room, the works. Two million, it cost,” Lemaître explained. “I brought the club to this city, yes, and it’s changed things around here, believe me.”
Without asking, Lemaître ordered the same meal for everyone. Then Gilbert set about talking up Herman, eager to make clear what an exceptional honor Herman had granted the village and its citizens by taking up residence there, because Herman was a pure Parisian, etc. He punctuated every sentence, recited in a clipped, impassioned voice, with bursts of “Right? Right?” aiming to bring Herman into the conversation. But although he would have liked to oblige Gilbert, Herman didn’t speak, his jaw frozen, unable to open his mouth. He sat slumped in his chair, staring down at the table, paralyzed by dread: the village seemed so far away now… Who would take him back, who would see that he got there safe and sound? Lemaître gave him a sardonic look. Ever more tense and red-faced, Gilbert was now claiming that Herman got phone calls from Paris every day.
“Right?” he threw out in a sharp voice, his eyes ablaze.
He leaned over to shake Herman’s shoulder. Herman nodded. Gilbert shot him a livid look all the same. Lemaître let out a condescending little snicker, then fleetingly caressed Gilbert’s cheek and announced that he’d just sold a horseshoe-shaped swimming pool to so-and-so, the owner of an estate, he went on at great length about those people, they’d become great friends of his.
“Who will take me back, who will pardon me?” thought Herman to the tune of the song blaring from the loudspeakers.
Gilbert drew himself up and announced that he too would like to know people who swim in horseshoe-shaped pools. He was eager to make some connections, he declared. The region was loaded with rich, high-rolling, elegant people—the kind of people who have pieds-à-terre in Paris—if only he could be one of them, someday… Armed with a solid degree in business administration, freed from the grip of the village, he’d have no trouble fitting into that world, a world so perfectly suited to his tastes—and so close, it was all around the village and L., nestled deep in almost inaccessible valleys where unimaginable manor houses and châteaux could be glimpsed (a turret, a dovecote) from the highway.
“Yes, yes,” Lemaître nodded, at once tickled and scornf
ul.
Herman was wondering: “Will the village take me back? Will I ever see it again?”
Then, making a supreme effort, raising his head and squaring his shoulders, he pushed back his chair and barked:
“I’m all out of cash, I’ve got to go withdraw some money!”
He turned his back to Gilbert and Lemaître, uncertainly wended his way between the tables, and, once outside, jumped the three front steps to the sidewalk. He fell and scraped his hands.
“Oh, there you are,” said Métilde, appearing before him.
She helped him up, visibly relieved to have found him at last, then kept her arm clasped around his waist for a few steps, her other hand gripping her big pink umbrella.
“We have to walk faster,” she said. “We don’t want them catching us.”
Herman clung to the belt of Métilde’s raincoat. Her fresh, pale, determined face, her brow slightly tinted by the light filtering through the umbrella, all of it filled him with thirst and temptation. She walked with a vigorous gait, pulling Herman along. Weak in the legs, he let himself be led.
“When I heard you’d left with Gilbert for the great tennis match,” Métilde explained, “I went and stood by the road to hitch a ride. No, I’ve never done that before. I did it for you; I wanted to stop you from playing if there was still time, because you’re in no condition for tennis, you’d pass out, it’s not safe. Yes, I told Gilbert, again and again, but he refused to see the terrible things our climate is doing to you. Your body’s worn down by the cold and the rain, it’s only natural, you’re not from around here, you’re not ready for…”
Suddenly the rain was falling harder, the sky turning black, the wind picking up. The umbrella turned inside out. Métilde pushed Herman under the arcades. He didn’t realize it, but he was still hunching, and stood a head shorter than her.
“So, the storms have come,” said Métilde. “We’re not going to get back today, no car would ever go out on the roads between here and the village. Come on, hurry, let’s get a room at the inn.”
Herman let out a little moan as she dragged him into the street and ordered him to run after her. The rain was falling so hard that it felt like someone was knocking on his head with a stick, his head that still ached from the din at the club. He struggled to follow Métilde as she bounded among the puddles that pocked the dreary pedestrian street, deploying all the strength of her muscular calves. And if he hadn’t bent down and thrown himself forward, the wild wind would have knocked him flat on his face.
“This is horrible, it’s horrible…”
He groaned softly to himself, convinced his final hour had come. Métilde laughed as they entered the inn.
“How we loved the storms when we were little,” she said, gaily tossing her hair.
Exhausted, Herman was about to lean on her shoulder, but he froze when he glanced through the glass door to the sitting room and spotted Rose’s parents, in matching armchairs, holding glasses of water and looking slightly uncomfortable. He jerked away from Métilde. He felt like he was about to drop to the floor, drained by surprise, despair, and exhaustion.
“What on earth is it?” asked Métilde.
“My in-laws.”
“Where?”
“There, in the sitting room,” Herman whispered, not looking at her.
Just then they caught sight of him. The father leaped to his feet, opened the door, and took Herman in his arms. Relieved and ashamed, Herman noticed that Métilde had turned away, giving no sign that she knew him, and was now asking the desk clerk for a single room. Next it was the mother’s turn to embrace him, her eyes brimming with tears.
“It’s so good to see you, my little Herman, it’s so good.”
She held on for a moment longer, her arms around his neck.
“But you don’t look well at all!” the father cried. “You’ve melted, you’ve literally melted!”
“Don’t go nagging him about his appearance,” said the mother.
“But just look at him, it’s like he’s shrunk!”
“It’s this place, this dreadful place,” she answered, stepping back for a better look at Herman.
“Good God,” the father exclaimed in dismay, “the cold, the rain, this sinister town. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s as dark as midnight! Where are Rose and the little one, dear Herman?”
“They stayed behind in the village.”
Herman went into the sitting room and collapsed onto a couch. The parents were still wearing their coats, blowing into their hands, clapping for warmth. They seemed so displeased by what they were finding in L. that their almost virtuous indignation drowned out their disappointment, and they looked around them with outraged, unbelieving glances, full of upright reproof. Rose’s parents lived in the southwest. They were both short, lively, and excitable; their skin was dusky, their speech quick and sharp. They weren’t fond of traveling, which made Herman all the more surprised and befuddled to find them here in L. They sat down close to him, on the very edges of their seats, their feet impatiently tapping the floor, and the mother finally explained what they were doing there, her voice suddenly turning reproachful:
“You understand, we called to ask how the child was getting along in the new school year, we called morning and night, and all we ever got was the answering machine talking about a vacation, but the vacation was supposed to have been over, wasn’t it, we knew the dates, so what were we supposed to think? We were getting worried, it was awful! So, well, one day, I said, ‘All right, if they’re still there, then let’s go pay them a visit out at their vacation house, we can discover the region, it will be an adventure for us, and at the same time we’ll find out why Herman and the boy aren’t at school.’ We took the train, eight hours, and here we are—we got in just this morning. But really now, you could have told us. I mean we’re happy to be here, but still, that wasn’t right of you, yes, Rose is going to hear from me. And then the storm came, we wanted to take a taxi to the village but they told us no one would travel on the roads today, we’d have to wait till tomorrow or the day after. Infuriating! We had to come to the inn, get a room; you can imagine how thrilled we were to be stuck here in L., but evidently there’s no other way. What a place, it’s incredible, it’s appalling…”
Now the mother seemed deeply frightened. She squeezed her jacket collar shut with an anxious hand.
“Herman, you said the sky was always blue here.”
“It is, until the thirty-first of August, but then…”
“How can people live… And this city, Herman, it’s just a lot of hideous apartment buildings, all thrown up any old way.”
“The war,” said Herman.
“Oh yes, the war.”
The father’s demeanor turned grave and pious. An infinite sadness descended over the dimly lit sitting room. The mother cocked her head and seemed to be listening for the sound of the long-ago bombs.
“We never had to go through that back home,” she said. “No, we never lacked for anything, did we?”
“We have no right to complain,” answered the father.
They fell silent, downcast. Herman was afraid the conversation might come back to Rose and the child. And what was he supposed to do with these two old people tomorrow?
“And this weather, these gray skies, is that because of the war too?” the mother asked in a quavering voice, staring into the distance.
Just then Métilde walked past the glass door. Herman didn’t have the courage to stand up and go to her and calmly explain what was happening, but he sensed that by letting Métilde go away hurt and angry he was losing his one chance to get back to the village.
They sat for a long time, all three of them silent and gloomy, as if benumbed by the old, musty smell of the shabbily furnished sitting room, and Herman found himself thinking this was the whole reason the parents were there: to bear witness—with their brightly colored athletic shoes, the cool, dark skin of their faces—to the very singular desolation visited in the fal
l on this once ravaged patch of the provinces. But this is where Herman wanted to stay. Suddenly he couldn’t bear the thought of being away from the village any longer. And, unable to decide if it would be better for the parents to see Rose and the child or not, he told himself he would do everything he could to take them, come what may, and then they could draw whatever conclusions they liked—what could Herman change about what had happened?
“Let’s see if we can go,” he said abruptly. “Yes, let’s try right now.”
“What about the storm?” said the mother, clutching her thin jacket.
“Well, what about it?” the father said irritably, already on his feet. “He’s offering to take you to your daughter. Come on, he knows what he’s doing, we’re strangers here, we don’t know anything, do we?”
At the front desk, Herman asked for a taxi. It was so cold he could hardly move his lips.
“No taxi driver’s going to go out in this weather,” said the woman.
“I’m begging you,” Herman whispered.
He leaned as far over the counter as he could and brought his exhausted but resolute eyes very close to hers.
“Find one. I’m begging you.”
Behind him, Rose’s mother cried, “Yes, yes, let’s get out of this city!” as if, thought Herman, the war was still raging in L.
They went back to wait in the sitting room, the father nervously patting his knees, the mother saying over and over that she wasn’t going to spend a single night in L., her lips going blue from the cold.