Life Embitters (30 page)

After our dinner, as I lit up one of those cheap cigars that are colloquially referred to as “elephants’ legs,” I thought, through the smoke, that Marta’s eyes possessed a brighter glint.

“Your friends,” I said, “must have missed you tonight …”

“My friends? Who are my friends?” she retorted vivaciously. “I sometimes feel I don’t have any … Are you, for example, a friend?”

“Who can say?”

“Bah …! Don’t make me laugh! If I were to believe you were, I’d be unforgivably frivolous.”

“But aren’t the Greek Panaiotis and Mr Thomson friends of yours?”

“Of course they are … But not what you imagine.…”

“No, no, I’m sorry! I’ve very little in the way of imagination. If I’ve spoken perhaps rather equivocally about your friendship with Panaiotis and Thomson it’s because I think they’re boring, however funny they try to be.”

“You’re wrong. You don’t really know them. They’re both very serious, much more than casual acquaintance might suggest.”

“If you say so …”

“It’s not because I say so. Their acts bear …”

“Please, mademoiselle, this M Panaiotis is a tiny restaurant’s third-rate wit. Every barbershop, every meeting place in this country has its joker who simply repeats the cracks from
Le Rire
or
La Vie Parisienne
. Besides, his frogs are insufferable …”

“Nothing much I can do about that. I like frogs …”

“Well, I don’t.”

“That’s not a sin. You must come from a harsh, mountainous country. I’m from a country full of water and canals.”

“Mlle Marta, where might that be, if it’s not a rude question?”

“From Bruges, in Flanders.”

“Do you also think that Thomson is a serious fellow? Frankly, mademoiselle … Mr Thomson lives in my hotel. He’s regarded as a complete idiot. Only three hours ago he told me that he is writing a comprehensive history of firearms …”

“How interesting!” exclaimed Marta, smiling broadly, a smile I’d never seen her make, never ever.

“What can I say? He doesn’t conform to any known type of Englishman. He says he spends most of the year outside his country so he can play roulette, and nobody has even seen him play a hand of
piquet
. He always acts like an eager beaver, as if he was in the fire service, and always seems to
have something on his mind. And if all he does is go from one café to the next … One can’t deny that the English are rather phlegmatic, with their stiff upper lips. Mr Thomson, on the other hand, is always frantic and on edge. This doesn’t mean I don’t think he is highly intelligent. He argues his defense of Rodin’s sculpture extremely well. Now, if you think he’s a serious fellow, you must mean he’s a serious customer.”

“I’ll ignore that last remark,” she said, smiling sadly, “because you’re going to pay for our supper …”

“Marta, I think you are so adorable.”

“Let’s resume our conversation, if you don’t mind. You believe that these two individuals aren’t serious. As you don’t know them, you are speaking out of your hat. I beg you, let’s forget what you said: the human comedy is only the surface of things. A time comes when the comedy ends …”

“But do you know what these gentlemen are like when they’re not play-acting?”

“Of course I do! I know them in a different ambience …”

“A more intimate ambience shall we say?”

“No, monsieur, not more intimate … More passionate, if you prefer …”

Immediately after she’d said that, the situation became one that’s difficult to describe. Through the smoke haze hanging over the place, I saw Marta blanch and start to enter that state of depression and blankness I’d seen at different times. I asked her a few more questions that she answered monosyllabically, as if she were in a dream. I tried to find out whether I’d upset her at some point in the conversation, something I reluctantly had to accept that I must have done. I gave her my apologies that she listened to with a frosty shrug of her shoulders. I ordered more drinks – but she refused to drink a drop more alcohol. At such moments of numbness, her body seemed to lose
volume and height. She stooped her back slightly. Her expression became doggishly forlorn. She fell silent.

With that, after I’d done all I could to return things to the previous situation, failing miserably, I looked up and – surprise, surprise! – I saw Mr Thomson standing on the threshold of the doorway that led from the tavern to the dining room. The Englishman seemed to exude a calm I didn’t recognize in him. He glanced casually across the tables in the restaurant.

“Mr Thomson is here …” I told Marta.

“What?” she asked, losing her cool and turning a bright red.

“No, nothing really, I’m sorry … I just said that Mr Thomson is here, in the restaurant doorway.”

Marta looked up and saw that, in effect, the Englishman was where I’d said. Mr Thomson didn’t make the slightest move. He stood there gawking. The moment she saw him, and as if impelled by a spring, she stood up, gathered up her belongings and shook my hand.

“Are you off?” I asked, quite taken aback.

“
Au revoir, monsieur
 …” she said blankly.

The second she reached the doorstep, she greeted Mr Thomson, albeit with some embarrassment, and they went off together.

Tomorrow was Monday, time to leave. I was intending to cross the Channel in the Bover ferry that departs from Calais when the Paris express arrives at three
P.M.
However, it was a glorious day at the end of July. Besides, life is good in France. France is a country where one can enjoy life. I delayed my departure for a day.

I went to Georges’ restaurant for lunch. Nobody was there. It was such a bright, sunny day that everyone had scattered. I felt it strange to imagine
that people might be in that becalmed sea, clients of that restaurant, fishing perhaps from some boat or other in the generally inhospitable expanses of the English Channel. While I drank my coffee, the owner sat at the next table and, overcoming his immeasurable idleness, he began a game of solitaire on the wine-colored cloth. To be sociable, I told him that I thought Calais was rather dull and boring.

“So you reckon Calais is boring?” he replied, striving to appear shocked.

With that tall Marta made a leisurely entrance in a bright patterned dress.

“Oh, Mademoiselle Marta!” said Georges, as the young woman walked over. “This young man reckons that Calais is boring. You know the town well and could tell him a thing or two.”

“Could I?” Marta responded in an artificial voice, fluttering her eyelashes. “I’d much rather go for a stroll.”

“Have a coffee and then we’ll do that.”

We delayed too long. When we left the restaurant an hour later, the sky had largely clouded over and there was a different light and breeze. The Channel is an area with devilishly unstable weather.

Marta took the path to the port. I was slightly familiar with it. Hardly at all, really.

From the Place d’Armes I think we walked down the Rue de la Mer that brought us out on a broad quay bestrewn with fishing tackle. The town jutted out over the quay and made a good sheltered spot where in sunny weather you could see a row of old sailors soaking it up with their backs to the wall, hanging there like rabbit skins. To the right the quayside led to the port’s main harbor with the ferry station for England. Opposite, impeding a free view of the sea, the outer fortifications of the fortress were low and heavy and looked like monstrous tortoises. To the left was a channel that was separated from the fishermen’s quay by a huge timber sluice. At low
tide, the water in the channel slopped out on the filthy mud of the emptied wharf. The stink of mud made you look round. Sometimes huge quantities of dead fish lay on the dark squelchy slime. A gaggle of wretched women and children, up to their knees in silt, poked and stirred the mud around the boats marooned there.

Leaving the town behind us and crossing the bridge over the sluice, we walked down a promenade with spindly trees between the fortifications to the dark, low, open beach. A gloomy darkness was rapidly descending. It was a classic summer afternoon squall: spectacularly dramatic. The sea flowed across a horizon of dark gray mists. Lightning flashed through leaden clouds to the west. As we trudged over the muddy sand on the beach, the strong, acrid smell of the sea battered us. At first I thought the stench would make me faint … Fortunately, I reacted and in the end I think I was bolstered by an injection of morale. The smell reeked of things that had been churned and splattered, pure germs in ferment, an enervating stench of life and death. The great symphonic ocean creates this muddy odor that is eternally destroyed and eternally alive. If you don’t retch, the stench sinks you, like a globule of mud, into the dark interplay of elements that make up this world.

“What a desolate beach!” said Marta.

“It would have been better a moment ago. The weather has changed … In any case, this country is always the same.”

“Not always.”

“This country’s sad air helps make Calais such a boring town.”

“I heard you say that in the restaurant. True, the landscape is gloomy. All the same, the town is more interesting than you could ever imagine …”

“Tell me more.”

“Calais is very interesting from a human point of view. It is a border town …”

“Frontier towns are sly, mysterious places. True enough. But that’s generally the result of the wariness that smuggling imposes.”

“That’s only part of the explanation. There’s another side to it with great human interest … Calais always has this small underground world that is trying to secretly cross the Channel. It’s a world that is constantly being renewed: one we could dub a world of nostalgia. There are people who’ve been trying to get into England this way, always unsuccessfully.”

“Brits?”

“All nationalities. Calais is a jumping-off point. Some people live here for ages, half clandestinely, probing, doing this and that, and then one day they disappear. Some cross and others don’t … It’s a world that’s constantly changing.”

“And you’re familiar with this world?”

“Of course not! Well, just a tiny bit.”

Quite unconsciously, that evening came to mind in the lighthouse gardens when Marta had been sitting on a bench between two men who were chatting so excitedly. I also felt that might be connected to what I’d said about Marta’s tendency to accost complete strangers, who often seemed quite eccentric too.

“And is this world an interesting one.”

“They are fugitives who are returning. Some have serious business to sort out. Even though what they’re after is usually risky, they do their best to enter … I imagine they feel unbearably nostalgic …”

“Quite, Marta, but what’s your connection to this underground world?”

“On gloomy days like today, I would like to have a cottage in my country, with small red and white curtains, and to watch it rain through the window as I sit and sew. As I can’t own such a cottage, I’ve no choice but to work …”

“Do you really like sewing?”

“If I wasn’t afraid of the rain, I’d sew on the button that has fallen off your jacket. We should go back. In any case, your jacket is missing a button.”

“You’re so kind. You know, I’d never have thought you were such a home-loving creature. It’s very odd. The moment a woman moves on from vague generalities, out steps a person attached to the hearth.”

“I can’t help it. I adore everything about houses. It must be because I don’t have one. I love sewing, for example. Just imagine, when I worked in
Le Tabarin
, in Anvers, with my friend Ginette from Saint-Omer, I used to turn up there with a small cardboard suitcase of my clothes that needed mending. The second I had some free time, I’d thread my needle and wouldn’t stop until they called me back.”

What was odd was that she seemed genuinely to mean what she said. In the eyes of some restaurant goers in the town, Marta was probably regarded as a force for evil, as some sort of perverse tropical typhoon. The young lady, quite unconsciously, had an understated presence and was naturally very pleasant (she possessed that vague demeanor any elegant woman must have); some families in town ensured that their sons didn’t stray out of line. France has undergone many revolutions – the only thing they’ve yet to revolutionize is the institution of marriage based on material concerns.

“So, Marta, what you’d really like would be a cottage with frilly curtains where you could sit quietly and watch the rain fall the other side of the window. Beyond the small kitchen garden, you’d want the vista of a fresh green meadow, fenced in at the bottom by a row of tall trees planted alongside a canal. In any case, the kitchen is also a good place to sew in winter – by the stove, with the aroma from the soup simmering in the pot and a half-asleep contented cat purring drowsily.”

“You’re not from here – how come you are familiar with all this?”

“I use my imagination … I like the north. I’m sure that, if you were in
one of these kitchens with rows of gleaming earthenware pots, you’d mend everything that came your way: your underwear and your outerwear … and other people’s. You’d trim and add buttons, patch, and open countless buttonholes. Your needle would be rough and ready like those young people use, but it would be an honest needle.”

“I’d like to tell you what I think about such things. It’s an ideal, but it’s an ideal that has an advantage – you can touch it with your hand. I’ll only add that I also like to sew in bed …”

While I was thinking how lovely it would be to see her in bed – sometimes these young women have such pink, terse flesh – I took a glance at the weather. The panorama was unpleasantly dramatic. On the horizon, over the English coast, the sky was melding into the sea in a scenario of desolate splendor. In the flickering light of dusk I could see motionless, lost sails, like greasy croquettes. Clouds of smoke appeared for a moment, then vanished into the atmosphere: phantasmagoric, wandering vessels. Sometimes the livid twilight eased and a patch of brightness glinted on the water and a large stain appeared on the sea, light-green like the glass of a soda-water bottle. This light illuminated the passage of the wind over a broad expanse of sea, and the white horses jumping on the back of the waves. But the stencil was short-lived; when the brightness faded, the thick, turbid, muddy color returned to the water, the horizon shut down and re-emerged, an obsessive presence on the solitary sea in the dramatic dying glow of twilight.