“Mommy! Mommy! There’s a man who’s stuck!”
Then a voice of medium pitch:
“Do you hear that, Isaac? Did you hear what your daughter just said? Do something with that thing!”
And finally the deep voice of Papa Bear:
“WOMEN! BLOODY WOMEN! YOU WANT ME TO DIE, IS THAT IT? YOU WANT ME TO BE CRUSHED UNDER THE WEIGHT OF THAT ATROCIOUS THING SO YOU CAN GET MY INHERITANCE? NEVER! NEVER, DO YOU HEAR ME? I’LL NEVER LEAVE YOU GRANDPAPA’S TREASURES!” (Then, in a softer voice for my benefit: “Sorry, neighbor, sorry! Can you get through?”)
I look up and see, above the curve of the fourth-floor railing, a ruddy face framed by a bushy beard and, between the bars, two little Goldilocks looking at me gravely.
“No problem,” I say.
He gives me a wave and I move away, turning my key as delicately as possible so I can overhear the rest of the scene.
“Come on, girls. You’ll catch cold.”
But Mama Bear is having none of it:
“What about Hans?”
“Hans is an ass. We had a difference of opinion right away and he dumped me with this piece of crap on the second floor. There you go, if you want to know everything! There’s the truth for you! HANS-IS-AN-ASS! (pronouncing each syllable distinctly, and loud enough for the whole building to hear). Come on, girls, come in now, or I’ll shut you up in this piece of garbage your mother paid two hundred euros to a bandit for. Vintage, vintage . . . I couldn’t care less about vintage. Hurry up, little chickens! Your lord and master is hungry!”
“Oh ho, let’s be very clear on that score, my friend: as long as my pretty buffet is in the stairwell, you’re not getting any dinner.”
“VERY WELL, LITTLE MADAM! VERY WELL! IN THAT CASE, I’M GOING TO EAT YOUR CHILDREN!”
The man roars like an ogre and a bunch of shrill little shrieks echo off the walls of the stairwell.
I turn around in wonderment, dazzled by the glitters of a magic sparkler.
Their door slams and, go figure, I no longer have any desire to go home.
I’ll go out for a kebab.
* * *
I head back down the stairs, musing.
I’ve passed her once or twice in the mornings, taking her daughters to school. She’s always disheveled, always in a rush, and always polite. Mélanie grumbles because she parks her stroller just anywhere in the lobby, a stroller full of toys, pails, sand, and crumbs. When there are cases of bottled water or milk at the bottom of the stairs I carry them up and put them down on the first steps leading up from our landing, so it’s as if they’ve made a little more than half the journey all by themselves.
Mélanie rolls her eyes: a deliveryman and a demonstrator. It’s too much.
One day, when the mother from the fourth floor thanked me too fervently for these modest little bits of help, I made her feel better by telling her that, in recompense, I’d helped myself to a forgotten Chamonix cookie or two from the bottom of the stroller. I heard her laugh from a few floors away, and the next day there was a whole package of them on my doorstep.
I didn’t tell Mélanie.
This is the first time I’ve seen the father’s face, but I think I can hear his footsteps sometimes, late at night.
I know he has a subscription to La Gazette Drouot, because I see it sticking out of their mailbox, and I also know he drives a Mercedes station wagon, because it has the same newspapers folded up on the dashboard.
One morning I saw him take a parking ticket off his windshield and use it to pick up a pile of dog crap before tossing the whole bundle in the gutter.
That’s all I know about them. We haven’t lived in the building very long, though.
Grandpapa’s treasures. I smiled comfortably.
It was charming, their little scene. They’d shouted at each other like street-theater actors, really. Like something out of an operetta. His voice, booming out rather than yelling: Bloody women! Vintage! Vintage! (pronounced “vaintage”) Very well, little madam!—his part of the libretto was still ringing in my ears.
I smiled as I made my way back down the stairs.
I smiled in the darkness because the timer chose that minute to shut off the lights, and because I was happy, there in the dark, replaying that little gift from heaven in my mind: a tiny taste of Parisian life, in the style of Offenbach.
I hadn’t even put an eyelash out the front door when an icy gust brought me back to the here and now.
God, I’m slow on the uptake. I turned on my heel and hightailed it back up the stairs.
FOUR, THE MARQUISE
It is in your way, isn’t it?”
He wasn’t humming anymore. He was almost as wide as his doorway. He wore a plaid vest, a striped shirt, and a dotted bow tie, with all the colors of the rainbow visible in wool, cotton, and silk. I don’t know if it was because of his shortness, the colorful brocade vest, or the beard, but he reminded me of the boisterous, larger-than-life character Gareth in Four Weddings and a Funeral. His little daughters had already come back out and stared at me with the same anxious faces as before. But it was all an act. I knew these girls had a flair for drama, and that their apparent gravity was all just part of the show. They wanted to keep performing.
“No, no, not at all! I was just wondering if I could help you carry it up to your apartme—”
Without even letting me finish, he turned and thundered:
“Alice! I’ve finally met your lover! He’s a very handsome young man! Well done, my love!”
“Who . . . who are you talking about?” chirped the unfaithful wife.
And Alice came out.
And Alice made her appearance.
I’m not sure which of those two expressions best captures the effect I’m trying to convey. The upstairs neighbor, the maman with the stroller, the disseminator of crumbs and cartons of milk, came nearer. She recognized me and smiled. And if, as she smiled at me like that, looking me straight in the eye, she hadn’t also leaned against her husband’s shoulder (she was much taller than him) and slipped a careless arm around his neck, I would have fallen in love with her right then and there. Now, immediately, and forever. But unfortunately there was that detail—that “careless”—that compromised our chances for bliss. Because that was what made her so beautiful and so sexy. It was that ease, that confidence, that instinctive way she’d leaned against him, even here on their doorstep, with a dish towel in her hand, for no reason at all. Just to ask a question. It was because she adored her little blusterer of a husband (you could feel it), who loved her in return (you could see it), and who must make love to her all the time, that she could allow herself to turn me on that way, with such vulgar guilelessness.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, little mother . . . that was hot.
Of course, at the time, I was too disturbed to analyze everything that was going through my head, and contented myself with repeating my offer to help.
“Oh, thank you! That’s so kind,” she exclaimed, and then she was taking her husband’s jacket off as if it were a satin cape.
Respecting the ceremony, as it were, but shoving him very slightly forward at the same time.
Very Mary Poppins and Rocky Balboa.
He grumbled, undoing his cuff links and handing them to one of his daughters and then removing his bow tie and giving it to the other daughter. Then he pushed up the sleeves of his shirt (it was of very fine cotton and I really wanted to stroke it) and turned to me.
He was perfectly round, like a fireplug or Misha the Olympic bear, and as he descended the stairs with a daughter clinging to each hand I conducted a kind of physical assessment in my head, to figure out if it would be better for him to be in the front or the back of the armoire while we carried it.
The front.
It wasn’t all that heavy, but of course he acted like it weighed several tons, and hi
s groupies were in heaven.
He cursed impressively with each step: “Ah! This would make a preacher swear!” “Jesus Christ on a bicycle!” “Ten thousand thundering typhoons!” “Heavens to Murgatroyd!” “Odds bodkins!” “Good Lord almighty!” “Ay caramba!” “Goddamn this Formica devil!” “Damn it all to kingdom come!” “Great balls of fire!” “Thunderation!”
. . . I could go on.
His daughters grew more and more scandalized at each curse, scolding him and waving their arms at him. “PAPA!”
I brought up the rear, lapping it all up—and bearing all the weight.
What would they have left for later in life, after a childhood like that? I wondered. A life of boredom, or a taste for partying? A timid stomach or a hell of a lot of chutzpah?
God knows I loved my parents, so composed, calm, and discreet, but I would have loved it so much if they’d entrusted me with this secret in addition to their affection. That happiness was found in stairwells, and that you mustn’t be afraid. Afraid of making noise, afraid of being happy, afraid of disturbing the neighbors and swearing at the top of your lungs.
Afraid of life, of the future, of crisis, and of all the made-in-China Pandora’s boxes that old assholes who are even more afraid than we are keep opening to discourage us so they can keep all the booty for themselves.
Yeah, maybe these little girls will become disillusioned someday; maybe they have it too good too soon and it’ll all go by too fast; and maybe pretty soon they’ll start to feel overpowered and weighed down by their all-powerful mini-Papa, but in the meantime . . . in the meantime . . . what wonderful memories they’re storing up.
On the third-floor landing, a curious old biddy has opened her door.
“Madame Bizot! Finally, finally! There you are, Madame Bizot!” he bellows. “Maison Lévitan, delivering you the ‘Marquise d’Azur’ armoire you ordered from us in April 1964! Beautiful, isn’t it? Excuse us, excuse us! Push, Madame Bizot, push! Now, where would you like us to put it?”
She was aghast. I laughed. I laughed, not giving a damn that I was doing all the heavy lifting and bashing a bunch of plaster off the wall while I was at it, because the passage was so narrow and he was so round that I was going to end up flat as a pancake without him even realizing it.
“Let it go,” I eventually ordered, hoisting the thing onto my back. “I’ll take it the rest of the way by myself; it’ll be quicker that way.”
“Oh . . . oh, you scoundrel. You just want to show off for my wife, is that it? Monsieur wants to flirt? The Casanova, the boy toy, the . . . the smooth operator wants his hour of glory, right?”
He didn’t stop for breath until I was at their front door.
FIVE, THE MICROWAVES
I followed his wife’s directions while he got dressed, bow tie included.
“This way, in the kitchen . . . near the window. Oh, it’s so pretty! I love it! It’s straight out of a Martine book, don’t you think? Just like in Martine fait des crêpes. All we’re missing is Patapouf!”
When I stood up, there he was, right behind me, gravely holding out his little hand:
“Isaac. Isaac Moïse. Like the tour operator in Egypt.”
I felt a strong urge to giggle, but he wasn’t laughing at all. Maybe this was his way of marking the start of a possible new era: after the dirty jokes . . . friendship.
“Yann,” I reply, meeting his eyes. “Yann Carcarec.”
“Breton?”
“Breton.”
“Welcome to our home, Yann. What can I offer you to drink, to thank you for making Alice so happy?”
“Oh—thank you, no, I was just going out to see a movie.”
He already had a corkscrew in his hand, and my refusal stupefied him. Worse, it left him speechless.
Alice smiled at me indulgently. She’d forgive me this first faux pas.
The little girls, on the other hand, flashed me their terrified deer-in-headlights expressions again: but . . . but . . . what about the final act?
The microwave clock read 8:37 P.M. If I ran for the metro, I could still make the film. But . . . it was winter. And I was hungry. And tired. Exhausted. And all kinds of other stuff. Could I really allow myself the luxury of flaking out on these people?
My poor little Woof-Woof handler’s brain was spinning. I’d had more fun in the last ten minutes than in the last ten months of my life (and I’m only saying “months” for the sake of my dignity), and the reasons I’d wanted to see this movie again so badly—intelligence, humor, humanity—would, I had a feeling, also be offered to me if I didn’t go to the film.
Yeah, but . . .
“Yann, you shouldn’t think so much, my friend. It’ll make you stupid.”
8:38 P.M. I smiled.
He set down the bottle of red he’d been inspecting with a skeptical frown and we went down to the cellar.
I stopped at my place on the way back upstairs, to change my shirt (Alice), forget my cell phone (Mélanie), and get—for the little girls—two of the most ridiculous samples I had in stock. (A keychain that repeats your name nonstop, louder and louder, when you lose your keys, until you stop it—that is, if no one’s clapped you in a straitjacket in the meantime—by throwing it furiously against a wall when you finally find it.) (That’s called “planned obsolescence.”)
Ha ha. Their papa’s going to love this.
SIX, THE MESS
These are just details,” you’re thinking. Of course they are, yes, but, you know, you don’t need to have gone to design school to understand the importance of details. The most moving things never jump right out at you; it’s the eyes that find them, and the rest . . .
The rest is less interesting.
The almost-nothing that had made me decide to accept my neighbor’s invitation to have a drink with him that night . . . it wasn’t the panache of his prattling, which was absolutely the verbal equivalent of his colorful plumage; it wasn’t the cold outside or the warmth of his handshake; and it wasn’t, I truly believe, the prospect of eating another kebab alone standing in the street, or even the energy-sapping work of my inner demons. No; what made me decide to give myself over to the moment was when he’d said, “What can I offer you to drink, to thank you for making Alice so happy,” rather than “for making my wife so happy.”
After his astonishing old-fashioned/macho/misogynist/Guitry-esque display two minutes earlier in the stairwell, the fact that her first name came more naturally to his lips than a sort of . . . possessive designation . . . had filled me with awe.
It’s a detail, I grant you.
One that, it so happens, I was touched by.
Another:
When I came back, their children were at the table. We were in a kitchen full of sound and fury; it even felt as if I were walking on crunchy pasta shells.
“Have a seat in the living room; it’ll be quieter. I’ll join you as soon as they’ve finished,” suggested the mistress of the house.
“Here,” he said, handing her a glass of wine he’d just aerated, sniffed, and tasted with great care. “It’s the Roussanne Pierrot gave us; tell me what you think. Okay, chickadees, hurry up and finish your dinner, because Mister Yann here told me he had . . . (conspiratorial wink, smiling eyes, loud stage whisper) . . . a little present for you.”
When mice giggle amongst themselves, it must sound pretty much just like that.
We clinked glasses above the heads of the two little busybodies, who had been greatly calmed down by their father’s announcement, even though the gift (big sigh) must be “really very tiny” because I “didn’t have a bag.” (It was the first time I’d been this close to kids, and I didn’t know they had such highly-developed deductive powers.)
Alice, standing at the sink, looked at me, smiling, while her husband, seated on a stool with his back against the wall, peeled clementines for his dau
ghters and asked me question after question about my life.
Half of me fobbed off the questions (“Do you have polka-dotted ones too?” she asked. “Dalmatian Woof-Woofs?”) while the other half, in the background, promised myself: When I have a girlfriend, I’ll be like him. I won’t leave my wife all alone in the kitchen with the children. I won’t be like every other man I know, spending my time in peace in the living room having “guy time.”
That was the second detail.
“What are you thinking about, Yann? You have a dreamy look on your face.”
“No—no, nothing.”
I wasn’t thinking about anything. I’d just remembered that I did have a girlfriend.
* * *
The wine made me tipsy. I hadn’t eaten anything since morning and I was feeling pretty good. Slightly drunk, slightly cheerful, slightly off my head.
I looked and watched, asked questions and learned. For the curious person, the documentary filmmaker, the good-for-nothing dilettante, this was an absolute feast.
. . . the faded red fish, the tired ranunculus, the delicacy of the wineglass I was drinking from, the Napoleon III chairs, the big table salvaged from the refectory of an English boarding school, its dark, almost black wooden surface polished by two centuries of rolling plates and the percussive pounding of tin cutlery all along its length and breadth (a fact attested to by the little dents ringing its circumference); the little girls perched on piles of Arcturial catalogues, the weeping-willow chandeliers dripping with dun-colored wax, the Poul Henningsen ceiling light with its fashionable patina and its broken leaf (shell?), the to-do list, the unframed canvases by forgotten minor masters, the completely failed brioche of a completely failed Chardin and all those abandoned landscapes, forgotten and lost in succession, saved as one lot by Isaac and restored to the light.