Consolation (12 page)

On the fifth ring he could hear an answerphone click on, and a female voice chirping, ‘Hi, you have reached the home of Corinne and Alexis Le Men, please leave us a message and we will get back to you as soon as . . .’

He cleared his throat, let a few seconds of silence go by for a machine to record his breathing thousands of kilometres away, and hung up.

Alexis . . .

He put on his raincoat.

Married . . .

Slammed the door.

To a woman . . .

Rang for the lift.

A woman called Corinne . . .

Stepped in.

And who lives with him in a house . . .

Went down six flights.

A house with an answerphone . . .

Walked across the lobby.

And . . .

Headed in the direction of the draughts.

And . . . what about his slippers?

‘Please, Sir!’

He turned around. The concierge was shaking something above the counter. He came back, hitting his forehead with his palm, took his set of house keys and handed over the room key in exchange.

Another chauffeur was waiting for him. Far less exotic, this one, and in a French car. The invitation had been nicely put, but Charles had no illusions: the good little soldier was headed back to the front. And when they drove through the Embassy gates, he finally decided to switch off his mobile.

He did not eat much, and this time he did not admire the sublime
bad
taste of the Igumnov mansion, but he answered the questions he was asked and reeled off the anecdotes they wanted to hear. Played his role to perfection, stood up straight, held tight to the handle of his knife and fork, did not hesitate to stick his neck out, responded with jokes and allusions, shrugged his shoulders when it was called for, gave his opinion, and he even laughed on cue – and all the while he was quietly going to pieces, falling apart, cracking up.

He watched his knuckles tightening, going white along the stem of his glass.

Snap the glass, maybe he’d bleed, get up and leave the table . . .

Anouk had come back. Anouk was once more taking her place. Taking up all the space. Like before. Like always.

Wherever she was, wherever she had come from, she was looking at him. Making fun of him, gently, and commenting on his neighbours’ manners, the arrogance of these people, and just look at the jewels on those ladies, and isn’t it all just as it should be, and what was he doing among these people?

‘What are you doing here, Charles my dear?’

‘I’m at work.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Yes.’

Quizzical silence.

‘Anouk . . . please.’

‘So you remember my name?’

‘I remember everything.’

And her face grew darker.

‘No, don’t say that . . . There are certain things, times . . . that I want you to forget.’

‘No. I don’t believe that. But . . .’

‘But?’

‘Maybe we’re not talking about the same . . .’

‘I hope not,’ she smiled.

‘You –’

‘I . . .’

‘You are still just as beautiful.’

‘Shut up, you daft fool. And get up. Look . . . they’re going back into the salon . . .’

‘Anouk?’

‘Yes, kid?’

‘Where were you?’

‘Where was I? But that’s for you to tell me . . . Go on, go and join them. Everyone’s waiting for you.’

‘Is everything all right?’ asked his hostess, pointing to an armchair.

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Just tired . . .’

Well, well.

That’s it, blame fatigue. For how many years had he been using that excuse, tucked snugly in the loose folds of his trousers? Such a respectable smokescreen, and so very very useful . . .

It’s true, fatigue is quite chic when it comes in the wake of a fine career. Flattering, even. A nice medal pinned to an idle, restless heart . . .

He went to bed thinking about her, and he was struck, yet again, by how pertinent certain clichés could be. Well-worn phrases that you pull out once the nails have all been hammered in: ‘I didn’t have time to say goodbye . . .’ or, ‘If I’d known, I would have said goodbye in a better way . . .’ or, ‘I still had so many things to say to her.’

I didn’t even say goodbye to you.

He did not hope for an echo this time round. It was night-time, and at night, she was never around. Either she was at work, or she was telling herself her own story, or her vast battle plans, leaving it to Johnnie Walker and Peter Stuyvesant to turn the pages and to send out the light brigade, until eventually she ended up forgetting, or surrendering, and fell asleep at last.

My Anouk . . .

If there were a heaven, you’d already be vamping St Peter . . . Yes.

I can see you.

I can see you twiddling his beard and taking his keys from his hands, to make them glitter against your hip.

When you were feeling good, nothing could stand in your way, and when we were children you could take us to heaven whenever you felt like it.

How many doors did your smile break down? How many queues did we jump? How many yards did we sneak ahead? How many signs did we overturn, bypass, disobey?

How many times did we give them the old V-sign, all those grumpy old sods; and to hell with all the barriers, and everything forbidden?

‘Give me your hands, guys,’ she’d conspire, ‘and everything will be fine . . .’ And we loved it, the way you’d call us ‘guys’ even though we were still sucking our thumbs, and you would crush our knuckles as we launched the attack. We’d get the jitters, and sometimes it even hurt, but we would have followed you to the ends of the earth.

Your decrepit Fiat was our vessel, our flying carpet, our stagecoach. You’d spur on your little four horsepower steed, swearing like Hank in
Lucky Luke
, Yeah! Giddy-up y’ole nag! Your whip would crack all along the Paris
périphérique
and you’d chew on your cigarette just for the pleasure of startling us when you spat the wad out of the window.

With you, life was exhausting, but the telly remained silent. And everything was possible.

Everything.

Provided we never let go of your hand . . .

You even did it again once the Marlboros had replaced the tubes of Nestlé’s condensed milk, remember? We were on our way back from Caroline’s wedding and we must have been sleeping off the confetti in the rear seat when your anxious cries woke us.

‘Hello, hello, XB 12, do you copy?’

We emerged, grumbling, in the middle of a field; all the headlights were off and you were conversing with the cigarette lighter in the dim glow of the overhead lamp. ‘Do you copy?’ you pleaded, ‘our vessel is stranded, my Jedi are stuck in the mud and I’ve got the Rebel Alliance on my tail . . . What should I do, Obi-Whatsit Kenobi?’

Alexis was despondent and muttered fuck in a thick voice, while a fascinated cow looked him over, but you were laughing too hard to hear him. ‘Why do you take me to see such idiotic films?’ Then we got back on the tracks of hyperspace and I observed your smile in the rear view mirror for a good long while.

I saw the little girl you must have been, or should have been if they had only let you get up to mischief back then . . .

Sitting behind you I looked at your neck and thought, Is it because she had such a rotten childhood that she’s so good at enchanting our own?

And I realized that I was growing older, too . . .

Several times I touched your shoulder to make sure you weren’t falling asleep, and at one point you put your hand on mine. The toll booth took it away from me again, but there were still a lot of stars around our vessel that night, weren’t there?

So many stars . . .

Yes, if there is a paradise, you must be making quite a shambles of it up there . . .

But . . . what could there be?

What could there be after you?

He fell asleep with his hands by his sides. Naked, feeling queasy, and all alone on Ulitsa Smolenskaya, in Moscow, in Russia. On this little planet which had become – and that was his last conscious thought – terribly boring.

9

HE GOT UP,
returned to his quagmire, shut himself inside a smoke-filled hut once again, handed over his papers once again, took the plane, claimed his luggage, climbed into a taxi where the hand of Fatima was dangling from the rear view mirror, came home to a woman who no longer loved him and a young girl who did not yet love herself, gave each of them a kiss, showed up at his appointments, had lunch with Claire, hardly touched his food, assured her that everything was fine, sidestepped the issue when the conversation strayed from classified green light areas and programmed maintenance operations on buildings resulting from decentralization, realized that the deep crevasse was gaining ground when he watched her disappear round the corner and his heart was in his boots, shook his head, tried to dissect his feelings on the Boulevard des Italiens, drilled himself into silence, analyzed the quality of the terrain, concluded that he was dealing with a display of sheer self-indulgence, despised himself, flogged himself, turned on his heel, put one foot in front of the other and started again, changed his currency, began smoking again, was incapable thereafter of swallowing the tiniest drop of alcohol, lost weight, won tenders, shaved less often, felt the skin on his face flaking off in places, stopped scrutinizing the drain plug whenever he washed his hair, became less talkative, parted with Xavier Belloy, made another appointment at the ophthalmologist’s, came home later and later, and often on foot, suffered from insomnia, walked as much as he could, found himself skirting the edge of the pavement, crossed outside the zebra crossing, went over the Seine without looking up, no longer admired Paris, no longer touched Laurence, realized that she was forming a trough in the duvet between their bodies whenever she went to bed before him, began watching television for the first time in his life, was stunned, managed to
give
Mathilde a smile when she told him her mark in physics, no longer reacted when he came upon her doing her shopping on LimeWire, couldn’t give a fuck about the ambient looting, got up in the middle of the night, drank litres of water on the cold kitchen tiles, tried to read, gave up on Kutuzov and his troops at Krasnoye, replied when he was asked a question, answered no when Laurence threatened him with a real conversation, repeated himself when she asked whether it was out of cowardice, tightened his belt, had his Derby shoes resoled, accepted an invitation to travel to Toronto for a conference on environmental issues in the construction industry which left him utterly indifferent, lost his temper with an intern, ended up unplugging the intern’s computer, grabbed a pencil in passing and thrust it in his hands, go on, losing his patience, show me,
you
, show me what I am supposed to see, launched a project for a hotel complex near Nice, made a cigarette hole in the sleeve of his jacket, fell asleep at the cinema, lost his new glasses, found his book on Jean Prouvé, remembered his promise and went to knock on the door to Mathilde’s room one evening and read her this passage out loud, ‘I recall my father saying to me, “You see how the thorn clings to the stem on this rosebush?” And he opened his fist and ran his finger over his palm: “Look . . . Like the thumb on your hand. It’s all well made, it’s all solid, both are shapes with equal resistance, in spite of everything it’s flexible.” I’ve never forgotten. If you look at some of the furniture I’ve made, nearly everywhere you’ll find a design of things that . . .’, realized she couldn’t give a toss, wondered how that could be possible, she used to be so curious about things in the old days, left her room walking backwards, put the book back any old place, leaned against the side of the bookshelf, looked closely at his thumb, closed his fist, sighed, went to bed, got up, went back to his quagmire, shut himself inside a smoke-filled hut once again, handed over his papers once more, took the plane, claimed . . .

It lasted for weeks, and it could have gone on for months or years.

Since it was the braggart, in the end, who’d won the bet.

And it all made sense . . . It’s always the braggarts who win, no?

*

For nearly twenty years he’d lived next door to her, never seeing her, so why should he be so impressed by three little words that hadn’t even had the manners to come forward and introduce themselves? Sure, it was Alexis’s handwriting . . . and so what? Who was that Alexis, anyway?

A thief. A bloke who betrayed his friends and left his girlfriend to have an abortion all alone, as far away as possible.

An ungrateful son. A little whitey. A talented little whitey, perhaps, but so spineless.

It was years ago now, when he had . . . No, when Anouk had . . . No, when life, let’s say, had given up on them, Charles realized – and this was very painful – that he was having great difficulty in reading the specifications for this project that others called life. He didn’t really see how any of it could hold together when the foundations were so shaky, and he even wondered if he hadn’t made a mistake right from the start . . . Charles? This pile of gravel? Build something? That’s a good one. He went along with it because he didn’t have a choice, but God, it was . . . tedious.

And then one morning he stretched and grunted and got his appetite back, took pleasure in pleasure and enjoyed his profession. He was young and gifted, they kept telling him. He was weak enough to believe them once again, he forced himself, and started piling up his bricks like everyone else.

He denied her. Worse still, he belittled her.

Reduced the scale.

Anyway . . . That is what he had cobbled together for himself. Until one Sunday afternoon he happened on a magazine that was lying around at his parents’ . . . He tore the page out and read it over again, as he was standing in the metro, with his doggy bag under his arm.

It was all there, clear as day, between an ad for a health spa and the letters to the editor.

It was more of a relief than a revelation. So, this is what he’d got? Phantom limb syndrome? They’d amputated, but his idiot brain hadn’t followed and still sent him erroneous messages. And even if he had nothing left, because there was nothing there any more – and that he couldn’t deny – he continued to perceive very real sensations.
‘Heat,
cold, stinging, prickling, cramps, even pain, at times,’ said the article.