Consequences (10 page)

When suddenly, as the eggs sizzled in the pan, Myriam loomed up before him, on the other side of the window, like a jack-in-the-box devil.

After a second of hesitation, he turned off the gas and signaled to her that he was coming. As he went toward her, a mild case of pins and needles ran through his entire body, and his mouth became dry—just as had happened at the end of the sixties when he'd take acid. No student affected him that way. He never knew where he was headed when it came to her. It was as simple as that. Toward dry land, even inhabited land? How could he know? What were the ground rules? What parts of it were comparable? He and his sister hadn't had a great deal of experience in the world around them, he admitted, but had anyone ever heard him claiming they had?

She was waiting near her car. He was holding a still-frozen croissant, he suddenly realized, but since it was too late to get rid of it discreetly, he didn't and could feel his fingers numbing as she headed resolutely toward him.

The words began rushing to his lips as he watched her approach, bolting toward him, even, when she was only a few feet away. Then he was pinned against the wall, with Myriam's lips glued to his, their tongues penetrating each other's mouths, their bodies tightly melded, before he'd had the time to say
whew
. And the dog in the distance kept howling—there'd been an increase in the number of stray dogs as the price of dog food went up and real estate went down.

Sensational. There wasn't any other word. Absolutely sensational, this kiss she was treating him to on the doorstep, without having said a single word. Undeniably delightful. He threw the croissant into the bushes and pressed her to him, closing his eyes.

When he opened them again, feeling totally dazed, ecstatic, his hands empty and his breath short, his back pressed firmly to the wall, he saw her climbing back into her car, with still no explanation, starting the motor, and disappearing as quickly as she'd come.

He stayed there unmoving for a few minutes, close to panting, as the sound of the motor was gradually lost in the morning mist. The wisteria framing the entranceway filled the air with its strong fragrance. He went back to eat his eggs, but there was no reason any longer to hurry for things like that.

There was no doubt about it; her rhythms were going to drive him out of his mind, he told himself, offering a vague smile to the entranceway mirror.

This time, he would have liked to talk it all over with Marianne. He'd never felt the need before. He would have been interested in her interpretation of the strangely intense kiss he'd just received, what meaning it could have, what she thought of it,
what she thought he should do about it, etc.—even her advice would have been welcome. Unfortunately, it was impossible, he had to give up that idea. His sister wasn't ready.

“What happened?” she said. “I heard some noise.”

She looked disheveled, barely awake. He stirred the eggs he'd put back on the stove, but which he didn't feel like having anymore. “No, you dreamed it,” he replied. “Must have been the radio. Have a seat. I made some eggs for you. You dreamed it all.”

She snickered, but had no proof of what she was about to put forward. “And how is it that you're already up?” she muttered, frowning. She studied him for a moment and then opened her mouth, but no sound came out. He shrugged to express his helplessness, to tell her that there were certain things you were never even close to getting over.

At the end of the
morning he'd asked his students to write one page about the things that went through their minds during the next half hour. As a whole, the results weren't very spectacular. Such slim pickings left him perplexed. The forces of creativity certainly weren't in evidence that morning; many students hadn't even woken up, or felt abused by such a totally impromptu exercise, which seemed especially stressful the day after a weekend. As he was leaving class and closing his briefcase, a pencil still stuck between his teeth, he was pulled aside by their union representative—known for the courses he gave on universities of the late Middle Ages—and told what had been brewing behind his back. The man had been following all these developments with a magnifying glass and since spring 2007 had had nothing to report but bad news.

Putting it simply, his writing workshop was finished. They were putting an end to the post. Those of two other teachers as well. New economical measures would be put in place continually, in one way or another. We need to hold up in the face of all opposition, the representative would drone, nodding his head all the while, without anyone really understanding what he was talking about. “In my entire working career, I've never seen such a shambles,” the union man went on. “We need to face it head on. It's a question of survival.”

Marc made a vague gesture of agreement and took the cigarette offered by the union guy, who let out a soul-rending sigh and added, “Go ahead. Take two.”

Once he was alone, he went and sat on a bench next to the red-brick buildings that contained the library on one side and the administration on the other, which was where Marianne worked. Maybe he didn't want to speak to her right away, but he felt better knowing she was nearby if he needed to. He wasn't the only person who'd been undermined by losing a job, and he wasn't so sure he'd react more intelligently to such a situation than any of them had.

There still are some people who smoke those filthy Marlboros
, he thought, lighting the one he'd tucked behind his ear as he was finding out he'd been given the boot, realizing that Richard and Martinelli had finally agreed to can him, kick him out without any consideration, apart from that for the school system.

Did it mean that Marianne had given in to Richard Olso's sexual cravings? Had the bastard tricked her to such an extent? That simple thought gave him a migraine. It was sunny today, but not too hot. In his current state, with his brain boiling, too big a dose of sun would have laid him flat on the spot.

How could she have been stupid enough to trust such a shyster? What was she hoping for when she did?

“Didn't I tell you? I certainly told you it was a mistake.”

She'd sat down next to him on the bench right after getting his message. Her neck had sunk between her shoulders, and on both sides her hands gripped the bench, her eyes staring straight ahead. “That-god-damn-cre-tin,” he said, without raising his voice, enunciating each syllable as he shook his head resignedly. He slapped his thighs. “I hope you gave him the reward he deserved.”

Night was beginning to fall. The few hours since he'd been fired had gone by in the blink of an eye. He hadn't even been aware of it.

“What is it you want to say, exactly?” she answered, her tone dismal.

There was a sandwich in front of him. He hadn't eaten anything since morning. He shrugged. “It's not important, is it? What's done is done.”

Her head turned away toward the setting sun, as its last gleams touched the stained-glass windows in the library. “I didn't sleep with him,” she declared.

He leaped to his feet. “Oh, please! Spare me the details!” he exploded, striding back and forth, his fists stuck in his pockets. “Keep them to yourself, will you? Do me the favor. But he certainly did fuck with you, your little boyfriend, he really took you for a ride, as they say.”

Once again, she stopped speaking
to him for several days, and as a result the house was turned into a cold, silent tomb. He
took advantage of it to think about his current situation and to watch a few movies in the living room as soon as she left to go to work—and she never opened her mouth.

When she came home in the evening, she denied him the slightest glance and completely ignored him as she went from room to room taking care of things. She had a nasty temper that wasn't about to improve. Aging was starting to get scary, when you thought about it.

“I don't need your gratitude,” she wrote to him on a measly scrap of paper. He'd been to see Martinelli in person, and that asshole of a president had announced in a jolly tone—almost getting a kick out of the joke—that he'd been granted a stay of execution. It was because most of the teachers had gotten emotional about it, especially Richard Olso, who'd become his most fervent defender. Pure magic. His darling sister. He wanted to thank her for the trouble she'd gone to yet again, tell her that he hadn't been taken in by this sudden reversal credited to Richard. However, given the atmosphere that her loathsome silence had established, he'd have to put off his overtures of friendship until later, when she'd be able to listen to them.

How did she do it? What potion was she using? How was she managing to get what she wanted? If she wasn't sleeping with him, how was she rewarding him? This simple question made him shudder. Not that he thought that she hadn't been involved with anyone all these years, that she was some kind of virgin who'd gotten a little nutty after fifty years of abstinence. But with Richard Olso, the context, the mode, were different. This wasn't a man she'd met in a bar or ran into at a party. It was the man who'd swiped the keys to the literature department from him. The guy who knew almost nothing, had practically
no ear, found no thrill in the magic of balance; a type from another age. He was a worshipper of a few old Goncourt authors nobody remembered, some starchy poets and atrocious new talents; a miserable reader, in any case, somebody who never had a clue and was always on the wrong track. How could anyone be that blind to the light, so impoverished inside? It was staggering. Absolutely staggering.

Thinking of the various attentions that Richard Olso had managed to get from Marianne, even if she didn't call it “sleeping with him,” disturbed him, hurt him deeply for all these reasons—and being the cause of it didn't help matters.

Whatever the case, he'd now been spared from giving up his office, and that was something. The coming chaos he'd been dreading, the thought of total disorder that turned him pale in advance, the disruption of his 100-square-foot space—not to mention his view of the lake through eucalyptus trees and a part of the faraway snow-covered Alps that he'd almost come to believe as belonging to him—fortunately hadn't happened. The alert had been lifted. He sent an e-mail to his students to inform them that their venerable university had reinstated him and asked them to dive into Nabokov and study each page carefully without being given any other explanation, unless they had doubts about the notion of precision, the mechanics of clock-making. Then he gave himself a few extra days off to make up for the stress caused by his loss of employment.

In the mornings, as soon as the sun rose, the temperature climbed, and you could be outdoors with a sweater and a good scarf.

Thinking of Myriam set off a kind of pang that could go on for a good part of the day. Deciding to watch a Ben Stiller
movie promised to bring some respite. Until he started trying to find it and lost interest in the idea. It had been about a week since their kiss, but every moment since had lasted an eternity.

He went back to his classes, then slipped away at the end of the afternoon to go directly to her place.

H
e smoked a cigarette on
the sidewalk opposite. Later he smoked another lying next to her in the darkness of the bedroom; this didn't bother her. She herself smoked in bed sometimes, she said. He touched her temple, to which perspiration had glued some locks of her hair. She was slender, almost scrawny, but it excited him. Firm, pointed breasts, white and pink.

He rose without a word, got dressed in a kind of trance. The day was starting to filter through the drawn curtains. She opened her eyes but didn't move, studied the way he carefully restyled his hair, put on his undershorts, stretched his neck—a total zombie. In the doorway he turned around and gestured to her, but God knew what he was really looking at. The eyes were empty.

Back on the street he still felt drowsy, calm. When he looked up, he noticed something behind her window—a statue of the Virgin illuminated with a candle, scarily beautiful. He hurried.

The girl in the cafeteria let him in. He offered her a cigarette. There were no customers yet. On the terrace outside, the tables were covered with dew, their umbrellas glistening. The sky was turning blue. Newspapers were spread across the counter of
the bar—the end of the world was close—something nobody doubted anymore with all the proofs accumulating, so much inevitability already established. Anyway, his horoscope was favorable, indicating an upswing. An encounter wasn't impossible. Open your eyes. Usually, he avoided pastries and sugary tarts, but he needed to get his strength back while his eggs were sizzling in the kitchen and the bread was toasting. He reached for the croissants while still bent over an article about the basic precautions to take in case of a nuclear attack, based on the premise of the local plant or even an army laboratory exploding into smithereens. Stay shut up at home. Don't move. Wait for help to come. Don't take any initiative. Dial 112, the emergency telephone number, etc.

Instead of closing on a croissant, which was probably just the right temperature this time, it was another hand, some fingers, belonging to the detective investigating Barbara's disappearance. The same one, he realized, raising his eyes to the young guy, who stunk of aftershave and confidently offered him (in spite of the forced, artificial quality of the result) his most charming, taken-aback smile.

Both of them politely apologized for their mutual blunder; according to the detective, he'd been distracted by reading his text messages.

They agreed that it was going to be a lovely day. He'd served himself first, figuring that because he was older he had the right of way; and at present he was dunking the end of his croissant in his coffee, wondering whether he'd be able to leave the counter to sit down at a table and eat breakfast in peace. But you had to keep in mind that this guy was a police officer, and nobody wanted the complications of irking one, today more than ever,
with all the flouting of civil rights; not to mention all the people you had to deal with, all of them so touchy and quick to take offense, completely ready to throw you into the back of some cell on the slightest pretext.