Hunting and Gathering (51 page)

“Hey, what's the matter?”

“No, it's nothing. It's just because I'm about to get my period. It's always the same. It gets me down and the littlest thing makes me cry.”

She smiled beneath her runny nose:

“You see I'm no angel.”

88

THEY'D been in the dark for a long time, uncomfortable and entwined, when Franck suddenly blurted out, “There's something that's been bugging me.”

“What?”

“You have a sister, right?”

“Yes ...”

“Why don't you see her?”

“I don't know.”

“That's lame. You have to see her.”

“Why?”

“Because! It's great to have a sister. I would have given anything to have a brother. Anything! Even my bike. Even my most secret fishing holes. Even my extra balls at pinball. Like that song by Maxime Le Forestier, you know. The one about the brother he never had . . .”

“I know. I thought about trying to see her at one point but then I didn't dare.”

“Why?”

“Because of my mother, maybe.”

“Stop going on about your mother. She's done nothing but hurt you. Don't be masochistic. You don't owe her a thing, you know.”

“But I do.”

“No, you don't. You're not obliged to love your parents when they behave badly.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Why?”

“Precisely because they're your parents.”

He gave a sigh of disgust. “It's not hard to become a parent, all you have to do is fuck. It's afterwards that it gets complicated. In my case, for example, I'm not about to love a woman just because she got laid in a parking lot. I can't do anything about that.”

“But it's not the same for me.”

“No, it's worse. I can see the state you're in every time you come back from a meeting with your mother. It's horrible. Your face is all—”

“Stop. I don't feel like talking about it.”

“Okay, okay. Just one last thing. You're not obliged to love her. That's all I have to say. And you'll say that I'm like this because of all the bad stuff I'm carting around and yeah, you're right. But it's precisely because I've been down this road myself that I'm showing you where to go: you're not obliged to love your parents when they behave like big fucks, that's all.”

Camille didn't respond.

“Are you mad at me?”

“No.”

“Forgive me.”

She was silent.

“You're right. It's not the same for you. She always took care of you, after all. But she mustn't stop you from seeing your sister if you have one. Frankly, she's not worth that sacrifice.”

“No . . .”

“No.”

89

THE next day, Camille set to work in the garden, following Paulette's instructions. Philibert settled at the bottom of the garden to write, and Franck prepared a delicious salad.

After coffee, it was Franck who fell asleep on the chaise longue. God, what a backache he had . . .

He was going to order a mattress for next time. He couldn't spend another two nights like that. No way. Life was a good lay but there was no point in being in pain. No way.

 
They came back every weekend. With or without Philibert. Usually with.

 
Camille—and she had always known she would—was becoming a regular pro at gardening.

Paulette tried to temper her enthusiasm: “No. We can't plant that! Bear in mind that we're only coming once a week. We need sturdy, hardy plants. Lupin if you like, phlox, cosmos . . . Cosmos are really pretty. So light. You'd like them, I think.”

 
And Franck, through the brother-in-law of Fat Titi's sister's coworker, dug up an ageing motorbike he could use to go to the market or to drop in on René.

He'd lasted thirty-two days without a bike and he was still wondering how he'd managed.

It was an old, ugly bike, but the noise it made when it revved was magnificent.

“Listen to that,” he shouted to them from the lean-to where he hung out when he was not in the kitchen. “Listen to this baby!”

They all raised their heads halfheartedly from their seeds or their book.

“Pttttttt . . . pet pet pet pet.”

“Well? Amazing, no? It sounds like a Harley!”

Yeah, whatever . . . They went back to their individual occupations without a word of encouragement.

Franck breathed a sigh of disappointment. “You just don't get it.”

“Who is Carly, anyway?” Paulette asked Camille.

“Carly Davidson . . . A fantastic singer.”

“Don't know her.”

 
Philibert invented a game for the trip. Each of them had to teach something to the three others in order to pass on some form of knowledge.

Philibert would have been a great teacher.

 
One day, Paulette told them how to catch cockchafers:

“In the morning, when they're still numb from the nighttime chill and they're not moving on their leaves, you shake the trees where they're hiding, stir the branches with a pole and then gather them onto a canvas sheet. You pound them, cover them with lime and put them in a ditch; it makes very good nitrogen compost. And don't forget to cover your head!”

 
One day, Franck carved up a calf for them:

“Prime cuts to start with: eye, leg, rump, loin, filet mignon, rib rack—that's the first five ribs and the three secondary ribs—and the shoulder. Second category: breast,
tendrons
and flank. Finally the third category: knuckle, shank and . . . Shit, I'm missing one.”

As for Philibert, he tutored these miscreants who knew nothing about Henri IV—apart from the story of the chicken in the pot—his assassin Ravaillac, and his famous penis, which
he did not know was not a bone
. . .

 
“Henri IV was born in Pau in 1553 and died in Paris in 1610. He was the son of Antoine de Bourbon and Jeanne d'Albret. One of my distant cousins, let it be said in passing. In 1572 he married the daughter of Henri II, Marguerite de Valois, one of my mother's cousins, actually. Head of the Calvinist party, he abjured Protestantism to escape the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre. In 1594 he was consecrated in Chartres and entered Paris. With the Edict of Nantes in 1598 he reestablished religious peace. He was very popular. I won't go into all his battles, I expect you're not really interested. But it is important to remember that his entourage included, among others, two great individuals: Maximilien de Béthune, the Duke of Sully, who cleaned up the country's finances, and Olivier de Serres, who was a blessing for the agriculture of the era.”

 
Camille didn't feel like telling any stories.

“I don't know anything,” she said, “and I'm not sure what I believe.”

“Talk to us about art!” the others urged. “Movements, periods, famous paintings or even your painting supplies if you want!”

“No, I wouldn't know how to talk about all that . . . I'm afraid I'd give you the wrong information.”

“What's your favorite period?”

“The Renaissance.”

“Why?”

“Because. I don't know . . . Everything is beautiful. Everywhere. Everything.”

“Every what?”

“Everything.”

“Come on,” joked Philibert, “can't get much more precise than that! For those who would like to know more, I refer them to Élie Faure's
History of Art
, which is located in our bathroom behind the special issue of Enduro 2003.”

“And tell us who you like,” added Paulette.

“Painters?”

“Yes.”

“Well . . . In no particular order, then . . . Rembrandt, Dürer, Leonardo, Mantegna, Tintoretto, La Tour, Turner, Bonington, Delacroix, Gauguin, Vallotton, Corot, Bonnard, Cézanne, Chardin, Degas, Bosch, Velasquez, Goya, Lotto, Hiroshige, Piero della Francesca, Van Eyck, the two Holbeins, Bellini, Tiepolo, Poussin, Monet, Zhu Da, Manet, Constable, Ziem, Vuillard and . . . it's awful, I must be forgetting loads.”

“And can't you tell us something about one of them?”

“No.”

“At random—Bellini. Why do you like him?”

“Because of his portrait of the Doge Leonardo Loredan.”

“Why?”

“I don't know . . . you have to go to London, to the National Gallery if I remember right, and look at the painting and you know for sure that it is—it is . . . No. I'm no good at this.”

“Okay,” they said, resigned, “it's just a game, after all. We can't force you.”

“Ah! I know what I forgot!” said Franck, exultantly. “The neck, of course! That goes in the blanquette . . .”

 
Camille felt her two selves at odds with each other again there, no doubt about it.

 
One Monday evening, however, in the traffic jam after the toll at Saint-Arnoult, when they were all tired and a bit grumpy, she suddenly declared, “I've got it!”

“Sorry?”

“My knowledge! The only knowledge I have! Something I've known by heart for years!”

“Go on, we're listening.”

“It's Hokusai, an artist I adore . . . You know? The wave? And the views of Mount Fiji? Come ooonn, you know. The turquoise wave edged with foam? Well, he's just marvelous. If you knew all he's done—you just can't imagine.”

 
“Is that it? Other than ‘just marvelous,' do you have anything else to add?”

“Yes, wait, I'm concentrating.”

 
So there in the twilight of that predictable suburb, between a factory outlet to the left and a huge home decoration store to the right, amidst urban gloom and the animosity of the flock returning to the fold, Camille slowly uttered these words:

 
“ ‘At the age of six, I was seized by the mania of drawing the shape of objects.

“ ‘By the age of fifty, I had published an infinite number of drawings, but everything produced before the age of seventy is not worthy of consideration.

“ ‘It was at the age of sixty-three that I gradually began to understand the structure of true nature, of animals, trees, birds and insects.

“ ‘As a result, by the age of eighty, I will have made still greater progress; at ninety I will penetrate into the mystery of things; at one hundred I will have attained a degree of wonder and by the time I am one hundred and ten, whether I create a point or a line, everything will be alive.

“ ‘I ask those who live as long as I do to see if I keep my word.

“ ‘Written at the age of seventy-five by me, Hokusai, the old man mad about painting.'

 
“ ‘Whether I create a point or a line, everything will be alive,' ” she repeated.

 
As each of them had probably found grist for their own poor mill, the rest of the journey continued in silence.

90

THEY were invited to the château for Easter.

Philibert was nervous.

He was afraid of losing some of his prestige.

 
He said
vous
to his parents, his parents said
vous
to him and to each other.

“Hello, Father.”

“Ah, there you are, my son. Isabelle, kindly go inform your mother. Marie-Laurence, do you know where the bottle of whisky is kept? I cannot seem to find it . . .”

“Pray to Saint Anthony, my friend!”

At the beginning, such formality seemed strange to them but after a while they ceased to notice.

 
The dinner was laborious. The Marquis and Marquise asked them a host of questions but did not wait for their replies to judge them. Moreover, some of the questions were rather awkward, such as:

“And what does your father do?”

“He's dead.”

“Ah, forgive me.”

“Don't worry about it.”

“Oh . . . and yours?”

“I didn't know him.”

“Ah, I see. You—would you like a bit more fruit salad, perhaps?”

“No, thank you.”

A sudden hush fell over the paneled dining room.

“And so you—are a chef, isn't that right?”

“Uh, yes.”

“And you?”

Camille turned to Philibert.

“She's an artist,” he answered for her.

“An artist? How quaint! And are you able to live from your art?”

“Yes. Well, I think so.”

“So very quaint. And you live in the same building, is that correct?”

“Yes. Just above.”

“Just above, just above.”

He made a mental search on the hard drive of his society directory.

“. . . So you must be a little Roulier de Mortemart!”

Camille panicked.

“Uh, my name is Camille Fauque.”

And she brought out the full artillery:

“Camille Marie Elisabeth Fauque.”

“Fauque? How quaint. I used to know a chap named Fauque . . . A fine man, I do recall. Charles, I believe it was. A relation of yours, perhaps?”

“Uh, no.”

 
Paulette did not open her mouth all evening. For over forty years she had been in service to people of this mold and she was too ill at ease to put her two cents' worth on their embroidered tablecloth.

 
Even the coffee was laborious.

This time, it was Philou who was targeted:

“Well, son? Still in postcards?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Fascinating, isn't it?”

“You said it!”

“Do not be ironic, I beg you. Irony is the defense of dunces, and it is not for lack of having repeated this to you, I believe.”