On the way back down the hall she got lost and thought she’d never find her room again. As she collapsed on the bed it crossed her mind that she ought to call that old cow at All-Kleen, but then she fell asleep at once.
22
“ARE you all right?”
“Is that you, Philibert?”
“Yes.”
“Am I in your bed?”
“My bed? No, but—but. No, please, listen. I would never—”
“Where am I?”
“In the apartments of my aunt Edmée, Auntie Mée to her friends. How are you feeling, my dear?”
“Exhausted. I feel like I’ve been hit by a steamroller.”
“I called a doctor.”
“Oh, no! You shouldn’t have!”
“I shouldn’t have?”
“Oh, well, maybe, yes, I suppose you did the right thing . . . I’ll need sick leave from work in any case.”
“I’m heating up some soup.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You have to force yourself. You need to recoup and rally the troops to drive the enemy virus back beyond the border. Why are you smiling?”
“Because you’re talking as if it were the Hundred Years’ War.”
“Not quite as long, I hope! Oh, listen, that must be the doctor.”
“Philibert?”
“Yes?”
“I have nothing with me, no checkbook, no money, not a thing.”
“Do not worry. We shall figure it out later on . . . once the peace treaty is signed.”
23
“WELL?” asked Philibert anxiously.
“She’s asleep.”
“Oh?”
“Is she a member of your family?”
“A friend.”
“What sort of friend?”
“Well, she’s a, uh, neighbor, a neighbor friend,” mumbled Philibert.
“Do you know her well?”
“No. Not very.”
“Does she live alone?”
“Yes.”
The doctor frowned.
“Is something bothering you?”
“You might put it that way. Do you have a table? Somewhere I can sit down?”
Philibert led him into the kitchen. The doctor pulled out his prescription pad.
“Do you know her name?”
“Fauque, I think.”
“You think or you’re sure?”
“How old is she?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
“Does she work?”
“Yes, for a cleaning outfit.”
“Pardon?”
“She cleans offices.”
“Are we talking about the same person? The young woman who is resting in the big Polish-style bed at the end of the corridor?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know her schedule?”
“She works nights.”
“Nights?”
“Well, in the evening, when the offices are empty.”
“Is something wrong?” Philibert dared to ask.
“Well, yes. Your friend is completely exhausted, she has no strength left. Were you aware of that?”
“No. Well, yes. I thought she looked somewhat under the weather but I . . . Well, I don’t know her all that well, you see, I . . . I just went to check on her last night because she doesn’t have any heating and—”
“Listen, I’ll tell you frankly how things stand: given the state of her anemia, her weight and her blood pressure, I could have her hospitalized right now; only when I mentioned this to her she looked so panicked that . . . Well, I don’t have a medical record for her, I do not know her past or her antecedents, and I don’t want to rush to any conclusions, but once she feels better, she needs to undergo a series of tests, that much is clear.”
Philibert was wringing his hands.
“In the meantime, one thing is for sure: you have to build her up. You really have to get her to eat and sleep, otherwise . . . I’m prescribing ten days’ sick leave for now. Here’s a prescription for acetaminophen and vitamin C, but I can’t emphasize it enough: none of this can possibly replace a good rare steak, a big bowl of pasta, vegetables and fresh fruit, do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Does she have any family in Paris?”
“I don’t know. What about her fever?”
“That’s a simple flu bug. There’s nothing you can do for it, just wait for it to pass. Make sure she doesn’t cover herself too much, keep her out of drafts and make her stay in bed for a few days.”
“Right.”
“Now you look like something’s bothering you. Well, maybe I’ve made things out to be worse than they really are, but not a whole lot, to be honest. You will look out for her, won’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me, is this your place?”
“Uh, yes.”
“How many square feet altogether?”
“A little over thirty-two hundred.”
“Well, I’ll be!” He whistled. “Maybe this is a personal question but do you mind if I ask what you do for a living?”
“Noah’s Ark.”
“Pardon?”
“No, never mind. How much do I owe you?”
24
“CAMILLE, are you asleep?”
“No.”
“Look, I have a surprise for you.”
He opened the door and rolled her fake fireplace into the room.
“I thought you might enjoy it.”
“Oh . . . That’s kind of you, but I’m not going to stay here, you know. I have to go back upstairs tomorrow.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“You will go back up when the barometer does. In the meantime you will stay here and get some rest, that’s what the doctor said. And he has given you ten days off.”
“That much?”
“Yes indeed.”
“I have to send it in.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The doctor’s certificate.”
“I’ll get you an envelope.”
“Wait a minute—no, I don’t want to stay that long, I really don’t.”
“You would rather go to the hospital?”
“Don’t make jokes about that.”
“I am not joking, Camille.”
She began to cry.
“You won’t let them, will you?”
“Do you remember the War of Vendée?”
“Well, not especially, no.”
“I will lend you some books. In the meanwhile just remember you are staying with the Marquet de La Durbellière family, and we have no fear of the Bleus here.”
“The Bleus?”
“The Republic. They want to put you in a public hospital, do they not?”
“Probably.”
“So if you stay here you will have nothing to fear. I will pour boiling oil on the stretcher-bearers from the top of the stairwell!”
“You are completely out to lunch.”
“Aren’t we all, a little? Why did you shave your head, for example?”
“Because I didn’t feel like washing my hair out on the landing.”
“Do you remember what I told you about Diane de Poitiers?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I just came upon something in my library, hang on a sec.”
He came back with a dog-eared paperback, sat on the edge of the bed and cleared his throat:
“ ‘The entire Court, with the exception of Madame d’Étampes, of course’ (I’ll tell you why later on) ’agreed that Diane de Poitiers was simply ravishing. All the ladies copied the way she walked, her gestures, her hairstyles. She served, in fact, to establish the canon of beauty, one which all women for over a hundred years would seek in desperation to emulate:
“ ‘Three white things: skin, teeth and hands.
“ ‘Three black: eyes, eyebrows and eyelids.
“ ‘Three red: lips, cheek
s, nails.
“ ‘Three long: body, hair, hands.
“ ‘Three short: teeth, ears, feet.
“ ‘Three narrow: mouth, waist, toes.
“ ‘Three wide: arms, thighs, calves.
“ ‘Three small: nipples, nose, head.’
“Rather nicely put, don’t you think?”
“And do you think I look like her?”
“Yes, well, according to certain criteria.”
He blushed red as a beet.
“Not—not all, of course, but you—you see, it’s a question of allure, of grace, of, of—”
“Are you the one who took my clothes off?”
His glasses fell onto his knees and he began stu-stuttering as never before.
“I, I, yes, well, very ch-chastely, I p-p-promise you, I c-c-covered you f-f-first, I—”
She handed him his goggles.
“Hey, don’t get so worked up! I just wanted to know, that’s all. Uh, was he here too, the other guy?”
“Wh-who?”
“The cook.”
“No. Of course not. Obviously.”
“That’s better. Oh, my head really aches.”
“I’m going down to the pharmacy. Do you need anything else?”
“No. Thanks.”
“Good. Ah, yes, have to tell you: we do not have a telephone here. But if you need to get in touch with anyone, Franck has a cell phone in his room and—”
“That’s okay, thanks. I have a cell phone too. I just have to get my charger from upstairs.”
“I’ll go if you like.”
“No, no, it can wait.”
“So be it.”
“Philibert?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
“Oh, go on.”
There he stood, with his pants that were too short, his jacket that was too tight, and his arms that were too long.
“This is the first time in a long long time that anyone’s looked after me like this,” said Camille.
“Nonsense.”
“Really, it’s true. I mean . . . without expecting anything in return. Because you, like—you’re not expecting anything, are you?”
He was outraged.
“No, but what . . . what on earth did you think?!” he spluttered.
She had already closed her eyes again.
“I’m not thinking a thing, I’m just telling you: I have nothing to give.”
25
CAMILLE had lost track of the days. Was it Saturday? Sunday? She hadn’t slept like that for years.
Philibert had just looked in to offer her a bowl of soup.
“I’m getting up. I’m going to come and sit in the kitchen with you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course! I’m not made of glass, you know.”
“All right, but don’t come in the kitchen, it’s too cold in there. Wait for me in the little blue salon.”
“Pardon?”
“Oh, of course, that’s right, it’s not really blue anymore since it’s empty. The room that’s by the entrance, you know the one?”
“Where there’s a sofa?”
“Well, a sofa, that’s saying a lot. Franck found it on the sidewalk one evening and he brought it up with one of his friends. It’s very ugly but quite practical, I must admit.”
“Tell me, Philibert, what is this place exactly? Who does it belong to? And why are you living here as if you were squatting?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“As if you were camping?”
“Oh, it’s a sordid story of an inheritance, I’m afraid. The kind you hear every day. Even in the best families, you know . . .”
He seemed truly distressed.
“This was my maternal grandmother’s home, and she died last year. So while we are waiting for the inheritance to be sorted out, my father asked me to come and live here, to keep out the—what did you call them?”
“Squatters?”
“That’s it, squatters. But not those drugged boys with safety pins in their noses, no, I mean people who are much better dressed and much less elegant: our own cousins.”
“Your cousins have designs on the place?”
“I think they’ve already even spent the money they hoped to get out of it, poor things! A family council was held at the lawyers’, the outcome being that I have been designated porter, guard and night watch-man. Of course, there was a bit of intimidating maneuvering in the beginning . . . Moreover, a lot of furniture vanished into thin air as you may have noticed, and I’ve often opened the door to the bailiffs, but everything seems to be back to normal now. Henceforth it’s up to the court to find a solution to this sorry affair.”
“How long will you be here for?”
“I don’t know.”
“And don’t your parents, you know, mind you putting up strangers, like that cook? Or like me?”
“They don’t need to find out about you, I imagine. As for Franck, they were actually rather relieved. They know how clumsy I am. But, well, they haven’t the faintest idea what he’s like, fortunately! They think I met him through the church!”
He laughed.
“You lied to them?”
“Let us just say I was a tad . . . evasive?”
Camille had shrunk so much that she could tuck her shirttails into her jeans without having to unbutton them first.
She looked like a ghost. But as if to prove the opposite, she stared into the big mirror in her room and made a face, then tied her silk scarf around her neck, put on her jacket and ventured off into the incredible Haussmannian labyrinth of the apartment.
Eventually she stumbled upon the horrid sagging sofa and walked around the room, looking out at the ice-covered trees on the Champ-de-Mars.
Just as she was slowly turning around, her mind still in a fog, her hands in her pockets, she gave a start and was unable to restrain an idiotic little cry of shock.
Right behind her, dressed entirely in black leather, with boots and a helmet, stood a tall man.
“Uh, hello,” she finally managed to blurt out.
Saying nothing in reply, the black-leather man turned on his heels.
In the hall he took off his helmet and went into the kitchen, rubbing his hair:
“Hey, Philou, say, man, who is that fag you’ve got in the living room? One of your fellow Boy Scouts or something?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The fairy who’s behind my sofa.”
Philibert, who was already flustered enough as it was by the enormity of his culinary disaster, lost some of his aristocratic nonchalance:
“The fairy, as you call her, is called Camille,” he said flatly. “She is my friend, and I’d ask you to behave like a gentleman because I have every intention of having her here to stay for some time.”
“All right already. Take it easy. She’s a girl, you say? Are we talking about the same character? The skinny guy with no hair?”
“She is indeed a young woman.”
“You sure?”
Philibert closed his eyes.
“You mean he’s your girlfriend? She, that is? Say, what you fixing for her there? Pickled aardvark vomit?”
“It’s soup, actually.”
“That? Soup?”
“Exactly. Potato leek soup from Liebig’s.”
“Their stuff is crap. And you’ve burned it too. It’ll be disgusting. What did you add to it?” he asked as he raised the lid, horrified.
“Uh . . . little cubes of cheese and pieces of brown bread.”
“Why’d you do that?”
“It’s the doctor. He asked me to help her get back on her feet.”
“Well, if she manages to get back on her feet after a meal like this . . . congratulations! In my opinion, you’ll make her fall down dead’s more like it.”
He reached in the fridge for a beer and went off to shut himself into his room.
When Philibert went back to his protégée, she was still somewhat disconcerted
: “Is that him?”
“Yes,” he murmured, lowering the big tray onto a cardboard box.
“Doesn’t he ever take his helmet off?”
“Yes, he does, but when he comes back on Monday evenings he’s always in a foul mood. I generally try to stay out of his way on Mondays.”
“Is it because he has too much work?”
“No, that’s just it, he doesn’t work on Mondays. I don’t know what he does. He leaves early in the morning and always comes back in a stinking mood. Family problems, I think. Here, help yourself while it’s hot.”
“Uh, what is it?”
“Soup.”
“Oh?” said Camille, trying to stir Philibert’s mystery chowder.
“Soup the way I make it. A sort of borscht, if you prefer.”
“Aaah. Perfect,” she said, laughing.
Nervously, again.
PART TWO
26
“HAVE you got a minute? We need to have a talk.”
Philibert always had hot chocolate at breakfast and his special pleasure was to turn off the flame just before the milk boiled over. More than a ritual or a mania, this was his daily little victory. His exploit, his invisible triumph. The milk would subside and the day could begin: Philibert was master of the situation.
But that morning he felt disconcerted, even offended by his roommate’s tone, and he turned the wrong knob. The milk gushed over and an unpleasant smell instantly filled the room.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said, we have to talk.”
“Let’s talk,” answered Philibert, calmly, running water into the pan to soak. “I’m listening.”
“How long is she going to be here?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, c’mon, stop acting clever, okay? Your little mouse? How long is she going to be here?”
“As long as she likes.”
“You’ve got the hots for her, is that it?”
“No.”