Consolation (8 page)

Give me some slack, Laurence. Show me something, I beg you.

‘And what was so special about this woman?’ she asked jokingly, ‘was she good at baking cakes?’

He let go of the silk folds.

‘No.’

‘Did she have big breasts? Did she take you on her lap?’

‘No.’

‘She –’

‘Sshhh,’ he interrupted, parting her hair. ‘Sshhh, stop now. Nothing. It was nothing. She’s dead, that’s all.’

Laurence turned round. He was tender, he was attentive, she liked it and it was dreadful.

‘Mmm . . . funerals suit you,’ she eventually sighed, pulling the duvet up.

Her words threw him and for a split second he was sure that – no, it was nothing. He clenched his teeth and banished the thought from his mind before it could even take shape. Stop right there.

She fell asleep. He got up again.

*

As he took his BlackBerry from his briefcase, he saw that Claire had tried to ring him several times. He winced.

He made a coffee and settled in the kitchen.

It took a few clicks and then he found it. Dizzying.

Ten numbers.

Ten numbers were all that separated them, and he had invested so much bitterness, so many days and nights, in widening the gap.

How mischievous life could be . . . ten numbers for a dial tone. And pick up.

Or disconnect.

And like his sister, he was hard on himself. His screen was now displaying all the details of the path that could lead him there. The number of kilometres, the motorway exits, the cost of the tolls, and the name of a village.

Taking this trembling as an excuse, he went to fetch his jacket and, on the pretext that he had it on his shoulders, pulled out his diary. He looked for some useless pages – August, for example – and jotted down the itinerary for an improbable voyage.

Yes . . . In August, perhaps? Perhaps . . . He would see.

Jotted down the contact information in the same way: like a sleepwalker. Perhaps he would send him a word, one evening . . . Or two, or three?

Just as he had done.

To see if the guillotine was still working . . .

But would he have the courage? Would he even feel like it? Or be weak enough? He hoped not.

He closed his diary.

His mobile rang again. He ignored the call, got up, rinsed out his cup, came back, saw that she had left him a message, hesitated, sighed, gave in, listened, groaned, swore, lost his temper, cursed her, switched off the light, took his jacket and went to lie down on the sofa.

‘He would have been nineteen years old, three months from now.’

And the worst of it was that she had said these words quite calmly. Yes, calmly. Just like that, in the middle of the night and after the beep.

How could she say such a thing to a machine?

Or even think it?

And take pleasure in it?

He felt another burst of fury. What was she thinking with this bloody soap opera?

Disconnect, old girl, disconnect.

He called her back to give her a piece of his mind.

She picked up the phone. You’re being ridiculous. I know, she replied.

‘I know.’

And the softness of her voice pulled the rug out from under his feet.

‘Everything you’re about to say to me, Charles, I already know. No need to shake me or laugh in my face, I can do it on my own. But who else can I talk to about all this besides you? If I had a decent girlfriend, I’d wake her up, but . . . you’re my best girlfriend.’

‘You didn’t wake me up.’

Silence.

‘Talk to me,’ she murmured.

‘It’s because it’s night-time,’ he continued, hoarsely. ‘Night fears . . . She used to talk about it really well, do you remember? How people would freak out, just lose it completely and drown themselves in their glass of water while she held their hand . . . Things will be better tomorrow. Time to sleep now.’

Long silence.

‘D’you –’

‘I –’

‘D’you remember what you said to me that day? In that shitty café across from the clinic?’

He didn’t reply.

‘You said, “You’ll have other kids.”’

‘Claire . . .’

‘I’m sorry. I’m going to hang up now.’

He sat up. ‘No! That’s the easy way! I’m not going to let you off so easily. Think about it. Think about yourself for once. No, that’s not something you know how to do . . . Okay, think about yourself as if you were a really complicated lawsuit. Look me in the eyes and tell me straight: do you regret your decision? Do you really regret it? Be honest, my learned friend . . .’

‘I’m going to be for—’

‘Shut up. I don’t care. I just want you to answer yes or no.’

‘—ty-one years old,’ she continued, ‘I loved a man I could have died for, and then I worked hard to forget him and I worked so hard that I lost myself along the way.’

She sniggered.

‘It’s bloody stupid, huh?’

‘He wasn’t a good bloke . . .’

She didn’t say anything.

‘The only time he was ever straight with you was when he told you he wanted nothing to do with the pregnancy . . .’

She remained silent.

‘And I said pregnancy on purpose, Claire, so as not to say . . . Because it was nothing. Nothing. Just –’

‘Shut up,’ she spat, ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Nor do you.’

She hung up.

He would not give up.

Got her voicemail. Tried her landline. At the ninth ring, she gave in.

She’d switched her rifle to the other shoulder. Her voice was cheerful. Something she’d learned in court, no doubt. Dissembling in order to save her defence.

‘Yes, this is SOS Pathos, good eeevening. This is Irma here, may I help you?’

Smiling in the dark.

He loved this woman.

‘Having trouble coping, is that it?’ she continued.

‘That’s right . . .’

‘In the old days, we’d have gone to the
Bistro Chez Louis
with your little classmates and we would have drunk so much that we would never have come out with such utter crap . . . And then, you know what? We would have had a
good
night’s sleep . . . A good, good night’s sleep . . . Until noon at least . . .’

‘Or two . . .’

‘You’re right. Two o’clock, quarter past . . . And then we’d be hungry . . .’

‘And there’d be nothing to eat . . .’

‘Yeah . . . and the worst of it is that there weren’t even any Champion supermarkets back then . . .’ she sighed.

I could picture her in her room with her smile, all crooked, her piles of files at the foot of her bed, her cigarette butts drowning in a last swallow of herbal tea and the dreadful flannelette nightgown she called her old maid’s negligee. What’s more, I could hear her blowing her nose in it . . .

‘It’s really bloody stupid, isn’t it?’

‘Bloody stupid indeed,’ I said.

‘Why am I such an idiot?’ she implored.

‘Blame the genes, I reckon. Your sisters got all the intelligence.’

I could hear her dimples.

‘Right, I’ll hang up now,’ she concluded, ‘but you too, Charles, you’ve got to look after yourself . . .’

‘Oh, I’ll –’ I waved myself away, wearily.

‘Yes, you. You never say a thing. You never confide in anyone and you go off hunting bulldozers as if you were Prince Andrei . . .’

‘Nicely put.’

‘Bah. It’s my job, may I remind you. Right, good night.’

‘Wait, one last thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m not really sure I like being your best girlfriend, but hey, let’s just suppose I am. So I’m going to speak to you like the best of best girlfriends, okay?’

She didn’t reply.

‘Leave him, Claire. Leave that man.’

Silence.

‘You’re too old for this. It’s not Alexis. This isn’t the past. It’s that man. He’s the one who’s hurting you. One day, I remember, we were talking about your work and you said, “It’s impossible to be just, because justice doesn’t exist. But injustice, on the other hand, does exist. Injustice is easy to fight because it stares you in the face and everything becomes crystal clear.” And, well, we’ve reached that point. I don’t give a fuck about that bloke, about who he is or what he’s worth, but what I do know is that
per se
, this is an
unjust
thing in your life. Throw him on the dump.’

Still nothing.

‘Are you there?’

‘You’re right. I’m going to go on a diet and then stop smoking, and after that I’ll get rid of him.’

‘Now you’re talking.’

‘Easy-peasy.’

‘Right, go to bed and dream about a nice boy . . .’

‘Who’ll have a gorgeous SUV,’ she sighed.

‘Humungous!’

‘And a flat screen.’

‘Well, obviously. Right. Hugs and kisses.’

‘Same . . . (sniff ) here.’

‘Christ, you’re a pain. I can hear you, you’re still crying.’

‘Yes, but I’m okay now,’ she sniffled, ‘really I am. It’s a good big fat cry and it’s all because of you, you worm.’

And she hung up again.

He grabbed a cushion and wrapped himself in his jacket.

End of this week’s
Play for Today
.

*

If Charles Balanda – one metre eighty, seventy-eight kilos, barefoot, baggy trousers and belt undone, his arms crossed over his chest and his nose stuffed into that old blue cushion – had finally fallen asleep, the story would have ended there.

He was our hero. He would have turned forty-seven, a few months from then, and he’d had a life, but not much of one. Not much at all . . . He wasn’t very good at it. He must have been telling himself that the best was behind him, and he didn’t dwell on the matter. The best, you said? Best of what? And for whom . . . No, never mind, he was too tired. The words were missing, for him and for me. His case was too heavy, and I didn’t really feel like carrying it for him. I understood him.

I understood him.

But.

There was something she had said . . . Something which kept creeping up on him, to squeeze a sponge soaked in water onto his face, when in fact he was half dead over in his corner.

Dead and already defeated.

Defeated and totally indifferent. The prize too paltry, his gloves too tight, life too predictable.

‘Three months from now.’

That was what she said, wasn’t it?

Those four words seemed more terrible than all the rest. So, she had been keeping track from the beginning? From the first day of the end of her last period? No . . . It wasn’t possible.

And all these ellipses, this pitiful mental calculating, all the weeks and months and years living at a low ebb obliged him to look back.

He was suffocating, in any case.

His eyes are open wide. Because she said, three months from now, he thinks, okay, that means April . . . And the machine starts up again and he too is counting the gap on his fingers.

That makes July, that makes September since it had already been two months. Yes, that’s it, he remembers now . . .

End of summer. He had just finished his internship at Valmer’s and was getting ready to fly to Greece. It was the last evening, they were celebrating his departure. She had stopped by, on the off chance.

It’s lucky you stopped by, he said, pleased, come over here, let me introduce you, and when he turned round to take her by the shoulders, he understood that she . . .

Yes. He remembers. And because he remembers, he is devastated. That
unbearable
message was the poacher’s snare, sprung from a poorly wound ball of wire and, by opening his hand and letting out nine months – twenty years, in other words – in the dark, he had got caught in the trap.

Never mind. Too bad for him. He won’t fall asleep. The story is never-ending. And at least he is still honest enough to admit that those three months were nothing more than a pretext. If she hadn’t said that, he would have found something else. The story is never-ending. The bell has just rung and he has to get back to his feet.

Go back into the ring, get pounded some more.

Anouk was dead, and Claire, that night, had not stopped by on the off chance.

6

HE HAD FOLLOWED
her down the street. It was a beautiful evening, soft, warm, elastic. The asphalt gave off a good Paris smell and the outdoor cafés were packed. Several times he asked her if she wasn’t hungry, but she kept walking ahead of him, the distance between them ever greater.

‘Right,’ he said, getting cross, ‘
I’m
hungry and I’m fed up. I’m stopping here.’

She turned around, took a paper out of her bag and placed it on top of his menu.

‘Tomorrow. Five o’clock.’

An address in the
banlieue
. An utterly improbable place.

‘At five o’clock I’ll be on the plane,’ he said with a smile.

But not for long.

How could you smile at such a face?

*

Later, she had come into that café bent double. As if she were trying to hold back what she had just lost. He had got up, put his hand on the back of her neck, and let her cry her fill. Behind her, the café owner was sending him anxious looks which Charles waved away with his other hand as best he could, flattening the air around them with his palm. Afterwards he had left a big tip, to make up for the embarrassment, and had taken her to see the sea.

It was a crazy idea but what else could he have done?

He closed the door to the toilet and put on a jumper before going back to collapse on the sofa.

What else could he have done?

They had gone on long walks, drunk a great deal, smoked all sorts of amusing grasses and even danced, on occasion. But most of the time they did nothing.

Sat there and observed the light. Charles drew, dreamt, haggled down in the port, and made their meals, while his sister read the first page of her book again and again before closing her eyes.

And yet she never slept. If he had asked her a question, she would have heard and would have responded.

But he didn’t ask.

They had been brought up together, had shared the same tiny flat for almost three years and had both known Alexis for ever. Nothing could resist them.

And there was not a shadow on this steep terrace.

Not a single one.