‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Oh no? Well then try me,’ she fumed, ‘just try. You tell me, since I’m so stupid.’
Charles hesitated. There was indeed a word which – but he didn’t dare say it.
Not because of her. Because of Anouk. A word he’d never been sure about. A word that had been stuck in the gears all these years and which had ended up ruining the fine machinery.
So he chose another one instead. Less definitive, more cowardly.
‘Tenderness.’
‘I didn’t realize we were at that point,’ she rejoined.
‘Oh? You’re lucky.’
She was silent.
‘Laurence . . .’
But she’d already turned around and started back up the stairs.
For a split second he thought about catching up with her, but then he heard her humming God bless you please, Mrs Robinson, na na nani nana nana na and he realized that she hadn’t understood a thing.
That she would never even want to understand.
Holding on to the banister, he continued down the stairs.
*
Why not, after all. May God bless her.
That would be the least He could do, after having put her through the mill like that.
Laurence’s car was parked a few metres farther along. He walked by it, stopped, came back, scribbled a few words on a sheet from his notebook and slid it under one of the windscreen wipers.
What did he put? Remorse? Second thoughts? A declaration? A farewell?
No. He put . . .
‘Mathilde told me to tell you that it was okay for Saturday.’
That was him.
All over.
Charles Balanda. Our man. About to turn forty-seven years old, in a week, a cuckolded partner with no rights over the child he’d raised, and that he knew. No rights, but a great deal more than that. His insurance, that little note torn out in haste, or the proof that the machinery wasn’t completely wrecked. As for Mathilde, she’d make it all right.
He walked on, feeling his pockets for a tissue.
Wrong, yet again.
He hadn’t let it all out in the plane.
6
HE GREETED THEM briefly. He went back to his worn armrests. He had trouble concentrating. He began by milking the computer: 58 messages. Sigh. He separated the wheat from the bullshit with a few abrupt shakes of his head to clear it of his domestic woes. By error he opened a spam which said: greeting charles. balanda did you ever ask yourself is my penis big enough? He gave a forced smile, listened to everyone’s grievances, handed out advice and encouragement, checked on young Favre’s work, frowned, took his pad and blackened it with unbelievable speed, changed screens, thought, thought for a long time, chased L.’s face away, tried to understand, refused several calls so he wouldn’t lose his train of thought, corrected a few errors, made others, checked his notes, leafed through his bibles, worked, thought some more, sent something to the printer and stood up with a stretch.
He realized it was already three o’clock, waited a long time next to the printer, finally twigged and looked in vain for a ream of paper.
And flew into an inordinate rage.
He struck the machine, bent one of the paper trays out of shape by giving it a kick, cursed, bellowed, rained insults upon poor Marc who had the misguided idea of coming to help out, and made all of them suffer the absurdity of these last months and the weight of his cuckold’s horns.
‘Paper! Paper!’ he said, over and over like a madman.
He refused to go and have some lunch. He went down to the courtyard to have a smoke and bumped into the downstairs neighbour who began to tell him about his problems with leaks.
‘Why are you telling me all this? Do you think I’m a plumber or something?’
He mumbled some apologies that no one heard. He almost blew his fuse for the second time when he saw the ‘expenses’ folder from the PRAT site in Valenciennes, but thought better of it and went back to his desk full of experience and wisdom, to spend the rest of his life among his blueprints.
At the end of the afternoon, he had his lawyer on the telephone.
‘I’ve come with news of your lawsuits!’ joked the man.
‘Have mercy, no!’ replied Charles, using the same tone, ‘I pay you a fortune precisely so that you won’t give me any news.’
And after a conversation which lasted over an hour during which the other man’s meter never stopped running, Charles said these words which he immediately regretted: ‘And do . . . do you also do family law?’
‘Heavens, no! Why do you ask?’
‘No, nothing. Right. Back to my duties . . . Time to create other opportunities for you to fleece me.’
‘I’ve already told you, Balanda, one’s duties are the corollary of professional competence.’
‘Listen . . . I have a confession to make . . . Find something else to say next time, because I cannot stand that sentence any more . . .’
‘Ha, ha! I haven’t forgotten that I owe you a lunch at L’Ambroisie, if I’m not mistaken?’
‘Quite . . . If I haven’t been locked up by then.’
‘Oh, but I can’t imagine anything better for our Republic, my friend! To give someone like you the opportunity to show an interest in our prisons . . .’
Charles looked at his hand on the receiver for a long time.
Why do you ask? the man had said.
Why, indeed? It was ridiculous. He obviously didn’t have a family.
*
A rare occurrence, he was not the last one to leave the agency, and he decided to go to the Pavillon de l’Arsenal on foot.
On the Place de la Bastille he listened to his messages.
‘We have to talk,’ said the machine.
Talk.
What a strange idea . . .
It was not so much how far apart the river banks were that puzzled him, but rather their . . . friability.
And yet . . . Perhaps. If he cancelled a few appointments, went far away, drew the curtains on a hotel room in broad daylight, if . . . But whatever Charles might have been fantasizing as he walked along Boulevard Bourdon, the architect in him demolished it right away: the terrain, wherever you looked, had become far too unstable, and it was time to accept that that particular future could not be built.
The edifice had withstood eleven years.
And it was the architect who was sniggering as he crossed the street. This was one instance where no one could come pestering him about his ten-year buildings liability.
He did what was expected of him, shook the right hands, and sent his regards to the right people. At eleven o’clock, standing in the night in front of that statue of Rimbaud that he despised, and hesitating a moment, he took the wrong direction.
Or the right one, as it happened.
7
‘AND WHAT TIME d’you call this?’ she said, mock-aggressively, with her fist bunched on her hip.
He pretended to shove her against the wall and headed for the kitchen.
‘Hey, you’ve got a nerve . . . Why didn’t you ring? What if I’d been here with some gallant company?’
He took a look at her pouting face and began to laugh.
‘Right, okay, I said “what if”, didn’t I? What if . . .’
He gave her a kiss.
‘Go on then, make yourself at home,’ she said, ‘besides you are at home, in fact . . . Welcome home, darling, what brings you here? Have you come to raise my rent? Uh-oh, something’s wrong, isn’t it? Is it those Russians making your life miserable again?’
He didn’t know where to begin, or even whether he’d have the courage to find the words, so he opted for the simplest formula: ‘I’m cold, and hungry, and I want some love.’
‘Oh, fuck . . . You’re in a bad way, aren’t you. C’mon, follow me. I can make you an omelette with some eggs that aren’t fresh and some rancid butter, how does that sound?’
She watched him eat, opened a beer for th
e two of them, pulled off her patch and pinched a cigarette from him.
He pushed back his plate and looked at her in silence.
She stood up, lit the small light above the stove, switched off all the other lights and came back, moving her stool so that she could lean against the wall.
‘Where shall we begin?’ she murmured.
He closed his eyes.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Of course you do, you know . . . You always know everything.’
‘No. Not any more.’
‘Do you . . .’
‘Do I what?’
‘Did you find out how Anouk died?’
‘No.’
‘You didn’t call Alexis?’
‘I did, but I forgot to ask him.’
‘Oh?’
‘He pissed me off and I hung up.’
‘I see . . . Want some dessert?’
‘No.’
‘Good, because I haven’t got any. Would you like –’
‘Laurence is cheating on me,’ he interrupted.
‘Well, what do you know,’ she scoffed. ‘Oh, sorry –’
‘Was it that obvious?’
‘Noooo, course not, I was just joking . . . Want a coffee?’
‘So it was that obvious.’
‘I also have some “flat stomach” herbal tea, if you prefer.’
‘Am I the one who’s changed, Claire?’
‘Or “Sleepytime” . . . that’s a nice one, too . . . It relaxes you . . . You were saying?’
‘I can’t hack it any more. I just can’t hack it.’
‘Hey . . . you wouldn’t be warming up for a little mid-life crisis, would you?’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Well, it looks that way to me . . .’
‘God, how dreadful. I would have liked to be a bit more original. I think I’m disappointing myself,’ he managed to joke.
‘It’s not as bad as all that, is it?’
‘Getting old?’
‘No, Laurence . . . For her, it’s just like a trip to the Spa . . . It’s . . . I don’t know . . . some sort of beauty mask . . . Little bit on the side, discreetly, it’s surely less dangerous than Botox . . .’
Charles didn’t know what to say.
‘And besides . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘You’re never there. You work like an idiot, you’re always worrying about something, try to put yourself in her shoes . . .’
‘You’re right.’
‘Of course I’m right! And you know why? Because I’m the same. I use my profession so that I won’t have to think. The more shit cases I get, the more I rub my hands. Brilliant, I go, look at all these hours I’ve saved and . . . And you know why I work?’
‘Why?’
‘To forget that my butter dish stinks.’
Charles was silent.
‘How do you expect anyone to remain faithful to people like us? Faithful to what, to who? How could they be faithful . . . But . . . You like your profession, don’t you?’
‘I’m not sure any more.’
‘Yes, you like it. And don’t you go getting picky about it. That’s a privilege we can’t afford . . . And then you’ve got Mathilde.’
‘I had Mathilde.’
Silence.
‘Stop it,’ she said, irritated now, ‘you cannot make that kid part of your post-nuptial property in common or something . . . And besides, you haven’t left.’
He said nothing.
‘Have you left?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘No. Don’t leave.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s too hard to live alone.’
‘You manage quite well.’
She got up, opened all her cupboards and the door to the refrigerator – wasteland – and looked him straight in the eye.
‘You call this living?’
He handed her his plate.
‘I have no rights over her, do I? From a legal standpoint, I mean.’
‘Of course you do. The law has changed. You can very well put a case together, provide affidavits and . . . But you don’t need to do that, you know that perfectly well.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because she loves you, you fool. Right,’ she said, stretching, ‘you’re not going to believe me but I have work to do now . . .’
‘Can I stay?’
‘As long as you like. It’s still the same old pre-war sofa bed, should bring back a few memories . . .’
She moved her mountains of junk and handed him a set of clean sheets.
As in their heyday, they took turns in the tiny bathroom, and shared the same toothbrush, but . . . the atmosphere was gone.
So many years had passed, and the only important promises that they’d made to each other had not been kept. The only difference was that both of them now paid ten times, a hundred times more in taxes.
He stretched, complaining about his back, and lapsed into the sound that had so often provided the background rhythm to his sleepless nights as a student: the elevated railway.
He could not help but smile at the thought of it.
‘Charles?’
Her figure appeared, a shadow puppet against the wall.
‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘You don’t need to. Of course I’ll leave again, you needn’t worry.’
‘No. It wasn’t that.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘You and Anouk?’
‘Yes?’ he went, changing position.
‘You . . . No. Forget it.’
‘We what?’
She said nothing.
‘You want to know whether we ever slept together?’
‘No. Well, no, that isn’t what I wanted to know. My question was less . . . more sentimental, I think.’
Charles didn’t know what to say.
‘Sorry.’
She had turned away.
‘Good night,’ she added.
‘Claire?’
‘Forget I ever said anything. Go to sleep.’
And in the dark came this confession: ‘No.’
She held the door handle and put her palm flat against the door to close it as discreetly as possible.
But after the fifth noisy passage of the number 6 line, he re-adjusted his reply: ‘Yes.’
And later still, contributed to the racket as he threw down his weapons: ‘No.’
*
‘White dress, hair pulled back, the exact same smile as on the first photograph, beneath the cherry –’
White dress. Hair pulled back. The exact same smile.
A huge reception. They’d been celebrating everything, that night: Mado and Henri’s thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, Claire’s first year at law school, Edith’s engagement, and Charles’s successful results.
Which results? He couldn’t remember. Some major exam . . . And for the first time, he’d brought a ‘girlfriend’ to his parents’ place. Who was it? He could try and remember, but it was of no importance. A young woman who was like him . . . Serious, from a good family, nice-looking, ankles somewhat thick . . . A first year student; he must have initiated her in the room next door, in fact . . .
Come on, Charles . . . You’ve accustomed us to something a bit classier than that . . . She must have had a first name, that girl . . .
Laure, I think. Yes, that’s it, Laure. She wasn’t much fun underneath her fringe, she always wanted the room to be dark, and chatted about kinetic energy after making love. Laure Dippel . . .
He held her round the waist, spoke in a loud voice, raised his glass, said stupid things, said he had not seen daylight in days, let off steam, and trampled on his own hard-earned laurels by dancing like a crazy thing.
He was already three sheets to the wind when Anouk put in her appearance.
‘Will you introduce us?’ she smiled, glancing quickly at the other woman’s revealing top.
Charles did as she requested, and used it as an excuse to
extricate himself.
‘Who’s that?’ asked the little genius, still under observation.
‘The next door neighbour . . .’
‘And why is her hair wet?’
(That was exactly the type of question this girl could not refrain from asking.)
‘Why? How the hell should I know? Because she just had a shower, I suppose.’
‘And why did she only get here now?’
(See . . . She must have two columns’ worth in the Who’s Who by now . . .)
‘Because she was at work.’
‘What –’
‘She’s a nurse,’ he interrupted, ‘a nurse. And if you want to know where and in which ward and how long she’s been there and her hip measurements and how much she’s got put aside for her retirement, you’ll have to ask her yourself.’
She made a face; he walked away.
‘Well, young man? Are you ready to devote yourself to the cause of giving old age pensioners a whirl on the dance floor?’ he heard behind him, as he was trying to fish his lighter from the bottom of a huge bowl of punch.
His smile turned around before he did.
‘Go and put your cane down, Grandma. I’m all yours.’
White dress, funny, beautiful, and devilishly kinetic.
Which means, resulting from motion.
Unleashed in the arms of her prize-winning graduate. She’d had a rough day, had struggled against opportunistic infections and lost. She was always losing, these days. She wanted to dance.
Dance, and touch him, with his millions of white blood cells and his oh so very efficient immune system. He was so modest, he was so careful to keep a safe distance from her dress, she pulled him closer with a laugh. Who gives a fuck, Charles, who gives a fuck, growled her expression. We’re alive, you understand? A-live.
And he let her do as she liked, beneath the appalled gaze of his girlfriend. But in the end he was reasonable, oh yes, such a reasonable sort, alas, and eventually he gave her back her arm and the energy proportionate to her mass, before going outside to get some fresh air under the stars.
‘Hey, she’s hot, your neighbour.’
Shut up.
‘Nah, I just mean for her age . . .’