Consolation (17 page)

My mother wasn’t exactly a little white dove who closed her eyes when you stroked her head. Alexis was still welcome to come over, but I was not allowed to visit at number 20.

I heard new words, words that didn’t seem to be very polite where Nana was concerned. Morality, morals, danger. Words which to me seemed utterly ridiculous. What danger? That I might get
cavities
because he bought us too many sweets? That I might smell like a girl because he gave us too many kisses? That I might not work as hard at school because he kept telling us over and over again that we were princes and that we’d never have to work later in life? But, Maman . . . We didn’t believe him, you know that . . . And in any event, they were all rubbish, his predictions. He had sworn we would win the mini Le Mans sweepstake at the local fête and we didn’t win a thing, so there . . .

No, the reason she finally gave in was because for once I resisted. I went twelve hours without eating, and nine days without speaking a word to her. And then the events of May ’68 finally made her relent somewhat . . . Since the world was going to hell, well then, my son, go ahead. Go and play marbles.

So I was allowed to go back there, but I was not allowed to forget her special concession, and I had all sorts of instructions and a very strict time table. There were warnings, about gestures, my body, his hands, and . . . Sentences I could make neither head nor tail of.

Nowadays, of course, I see things differently. And if I had a child, would I entrust him or her to a babysitter as hybrid as Nana? I don’t know . . . I would probably have a few reservations as well. But in fact . . . we had nothing to fear. In any case, there were never any feelings of unease. How Nana spent his nights was another matter, but with us he was the most modest of men. An angel. A guardian angel who wore
Ô mon amour
scent and left us in peace to play our war games.

And then he became a pretext. It was Anouk who bothered my mother, and that too, I can understand. It was enough to see my father’s distress the other day, which says it all.

I was allowed to go and play marbles, but there came a time when I was not to say her name in the house. Just what had happened, I never knew. Or knew all too well. There wasn’t a man on earth would have wanted to live with her, but they were all prepared to swear the contrary . . .

When she was cheerful, when her dizzy spells left her alone, when she’d let her hair down and go barefoot, when she remembered that her skin was soft and that . . . well, she was like a sun. Wherever she went, whatever she said, heads would turn and everyone wanted a piece of her. Everyone wanted to grab her by
the
arm, even if they hurt her a bit – preferably hurting her a bit – just to stop the jingling of her bracelets for a second. Just a second. The time it took for a grimace or a look. For a silence, a withdrawal, anything from her. Anything at all, really. But just for oneself alone.

Oh yes . . . She must have heard her share of lies, in her time.

Was I jealous? Yes.

No.

I had learned to recognize those looks; how could I not? And I no longer feared them. All I needed was to get older, and I was working hard at it. Day by day. I had faith.

And then everything I knew about her, what she had given me, what belonged to me, is something that they, all the others, could never have. For them she changed her voice, spoke too quickly, laughed too loudly, but with me, no, she was herself.

So, I was the one she loved.

But how old was I to be reasoning like this? Nine? Ten?

And why did I have this crush on her? Because my mother, my sisters, my teachers and cub mistresses and all the other women around me filled me with despair. They were ugly, they didn’t understand a thing, all they cared about was finding out whether I’d learned my tables or had remembered to change my vest.

Of course.

Of course, since I had no other aim than to grow up so I could be rid of them.

Whereas Anouk . . . Precisely because she was ageless, or because I was the only person in the world who would listen to her and who knew when she was lying, she never
leaned towards
me, and she could not stand it when people called me Charley or Charlot, and she said my name was gentle and elegant, and it suited me, and she always asked for my opinion and conceded that I was often right.

And why did I feel so self-assured, looking down my snotty little nose?

Because she’d told me as much, by Jove!

I’d spent the night at their place and, before we’d left for school, she’d slipped our snacks into our schoolbags.

When it was time for the break, we joined the others with our bagfuls of marbles in one hand and our little foil parcels in the other.

‘Oh!’ Alexis exclaimed with enthusiasm when he unwrapped his ‘Talking biscuits!’

I was already kneeling down, clearing a path in the gravel.

‘
You’re on the tip of my tongue
and
You make me laugh
,’ he read out, before scoffing them down.

I was rubbing my palms against my thighs.

‘And what have you got?’

‘Me?’ I said, a bit disappointed to see that I had only one biscuit.

‘Well?’

‘Nothing . . .’

‘There’s nothing written on the biscuit?’

‘No, it says, “Nothing”.’

‘Oh, that’s crummy . . . Well, anyway . . . Whose turn to start?’

‘Go ahead,’ I went, standing up to put the biscuit into my jacket pocket.

We played, and I lost a lot that day . . . All my cat’s eyes . . .

‘Hey! You’re really useless today, y’know that?’

I smiled. First there, in the dust, and then at my desk, inside my pocket, and then in my locker, and finally in my bed, after I’d got back up three times to change the hiding place, I was smiling.

Crazy about you
.

With forty years’ hindsight, Charles could not recall a more direct declaration . . .

The little wafer had crumbled to bits and he’d eventually had to throw it away. He’d grown up, gone away, come back, and she had laughed. And he’d believed her. Then he got older, and put on weight, and . . . and she was dead.

And that’s it.

Go on, Balanda, it was only a biscuit. You know what they call them in retro grocery shops nowadays?
Funny biscuits
. And besides, you were only a kid.

It’s all rather ridiculous, isn’t it?

Ridiculous.

Yes, but . . .

He didn’t have time to plead his case. He’d drifted off.

3

A CHAUFFEUR WAS
waiting for him at the airport with his name on a sign.

A room was waiting for him at the hotel with his name on a television screen.

On the pillow were a piece of chocolate and the weather forecast for the following day.

Cloudy.

Another night was beginning, and he wasn’t sleepy. Here we go, he thought, I’m going to get fucked by jet lag again. In the past, he wouldn’t have given it a thought but today his old bones were grumbling. He felt . . . disheartened. He went down to the bar, ordered a bourbon, read the local papers, and took a moment to realize that the flames in the fireplace were fake.

As was the leather in his armchair. And the flowers. And the paintings. And the woodwork. And the stucco on the ceiling. And the patina on the lamps. And the books on the bookshelves. And the odour of wax polish. And the laugh of the pretty woman at the bar. And the thoughtfulness of the gentleman who stopped her slipping off her bar stool. And the music. And the candlelight. And . . . Everything, absolutely
everything
, was fake. It was Disney World for the rich, and however lucid he might be, he was one of them. All that was missing was a pair of Mickey Mouse ears.

He went out into the cold. Walked for hours. Saw nothing but dull, charmless, utilitarian constructions. Slipped a plastic card into the slot of room 408. Turned off the air conditioning. Switched on the television. Turned off the sound. Turned off the picture. Tried to open a window. Swore. Gave up. Turned around and, for the first time in his life, felt trapped.

Charles took a shower. Ordered a taxi. And went home.

4

NEVER HAD HE
paid so much for a plane ticket, nor wasted so much time. Two entire days. Lost. Irretrievable. Not a file, not a phone call, no decisions to make and no responsibility. At first it seemed utterly absurd to him, and then, terribly exotic.

He bummed around Toronto airport, did the same during the stop in Montreal, bought dozens of newspapers, some trinkets for Mathilde, a carton of cigarettes and two crime novels that he forgot on the counter.

It was eight in the morning when he went to get his car. He rubbed his eyelids, felt the stubble on his cheeks, and crossed his arms over the steering wheel.

Lost in thought.

Since he couldn’t see clearly about anything else, he located himself geographically on the planet, set his sights on the simplest thing, was sorry that he didn’t have something more splendid to hand, then figured that as matters stood, any old stones would be good to touch . . . He had a look at his maps, turned his back on the capital and, with neither pilgrim’s staff nor any purpose other than that of forgetting the ugliness that had been clouding his retinas and clinging to his soles for weeks, set off to visit the abbey at Royaumont.

And while he was winding his way through the succession of zones that were earmarked as urban, industrial, commercial, development, residential, or for even more far-fetched purposes, he remembered the surreal conversation he had had with the taxi driver the morning of the day he learned of her death. Was God in his life? No, obviously not . . . But His architects were, yes. And always had been.

*

Even more than to Anouk’s prayer at the foot of those concrete monstrosities (the one that had helped her to turn her back on her family for good) it was to the Cistercians he owed a large part of his vocation. Something he had read as a teenager, to be exact. He remembered it as if it were yesterday . . . In his little suburban bedroom, beneath the eaves of a house located a stone’s throw from the new ring road, there he was, feverishly devouring that book,
The Stones of the Abbey
, by Fernand Pouillon.

Absorbed in the stories of the convivial monk who struggled against doubt and gangrene with each passing season and each successive hardship, and raised his masterpiece of an abbey from the arid earth. The shock had been so great that Charles had never allowed himself to reread the book. Let one part of him, at least, despite all the disillusions that would follow, remain intact . . .

No, he would not relive the trials and tribulations of master Paul in his desolate quarry, nor the Rule to which the lay workers were subjected, nor the terrible death of the mule, disembowelled beneath his shaft, but he had never forgotten the opening sentences, and from time to time, he still recited them in a quiet voice, to feel again the handles of the tools and the grain of the ochre stone, and all the exultation of being fifteen years old:

Third Sunday of Lent

The rain has soaked our clothing, the frost has hardened the heavy fabric of our cowls, frozen our beards, stiffened our limbs. Our hands, feet and faces are splattered with mud, the wind has covered us with sand. The movement of walking
. . .

‘. . . no longer makes the icy folds sway over our emaciated bodies,’ he intoned very quietly, after rolling down the window to rid himself of the smoke.

Rid himself of smoke . . . What sort of roundabout phrase was this, now? Come now, Charles, didn’t you simply mean, ‘to get some air’?

Yes, he smiled, puffing on his cigarette, exactly. I can’t hide a thing from you, I see . . .

At the very moment he should have been fretting in Uncle Scrooge’s mansion, having to put up with the patter of reinforced concrete vendors, he was, instead, blinking furiously to keep from missing the exit.

He took a breath of fresh air, shook the heavy fabric of his cowl, and drove towards the light.

Towards his broken vows, his naïveté, the rough draught of his youth, or the faint remnant of himself that still pulsed with life.

He shivered. Didn’t try to decide whether it was with pleasure, cold, or panic, he just rolled up the window and began to hunt for a genuine bar where he could drink a real coffee with real odours of stale tobacco, real grimy walls, real tips for the fifth race, real shouting matches, real boozers and a real proprietor in a really bad mood behind his real moustache.

*

The church’s impressive architecture, whose dimensions are comparable to those of the cathedral at Soissons, is the fruit of a compromise between the pomp of the royal abbey and Cistercian austerity
. . .

Charles, lost in thought, raised his head and . . . saw nothing.

. . . but not long after the Revolution
, continued the notice,
the Marquis de Travalet, who had already converted the abbey into a mill, razed it to the ground in order to use the stones for housing for his workers
.

Oh?

What was this? Why hadn’t they chopped his head off along with all the others?

So, there are no monks at the abbey in Royaumont nowadays.

But there are artists in residence.

And a tea room.

Right.

Fortunately, there was the cloister.

He walked through it, his hands behind his back, then leaned against a column and took his time to observe the shape of the swallows’ nests hanging from the ribbed vault.

Now there were some real builders . . .

The place and the moment seemed absolutely perfect for a final curtain call.