On Leave (11 page)

These thoughts occurred to Lachaume in snatches while they all drank their predinner drinks around the low table, by the window. At the same time, he continued to be surprised and, up to a point, fascinated by Luc Giraud.

What he said was banal (at least, for Lachaume): that the winter, though it had begun mildly, would be harsh; that the Seine was rising. But every word he spoke in his ponderous manner seemed laden with deep meaning, to judge by the reaction it aroused from Colette—as with the bottle of wine, but more mysteriously. At first Lachaume felt, with some irritation, that Colette was just licking the man's boots; something about her whole way of reacting in her shimmering blouse reminded him of the sweaty obsequiousness of a student gazing at her favorite teacher. But that view wouldn't hold once Lachaume saw how engaged each was with the other, and when he saw that all his observations of Colette's behavior with Luc Giraud applied equally to Mme Valette and, to a lesser degree, to the twelve-year-old Danielle, he had to admit that these people were using ordinary words right under his nose to speak a language that came from another world.

Luc Giraud said it for a second time, pronouncing each word separately:

“I'm saying the winter will be harsh, and that our brothers will wake on the last day. I'm saying there's some as what won't wake up at all. And there's some as will wake up in the spring when winter's past. That winter will go by with them having their eyes closed. And I'm saying that's a bad thing.”

It was a blend of rural and biblical diction. Lachaume grasped that, for the three women, each word had deep and coded meaning; for them, winter meant something other than cold, mud, and woollies.

“Let's drop the subject,” Luc Giraud said with a sigh.

It was obvious that they were leaving their other world because “the two of them” were in the room. Jean Valette himself didn't seem to be fully initiated in it. It made Lachaume feel vaguely relieved, as if the fact that there were two of them improved the odds.

The odds on what, though? He left the issue in suspense. It was quite enough already to confess to himself that he'd come all the way out here with a bouquet to try his luck. Quite enough, not in terms of his self-esteem, but because it meant he risked losing for the last time.

They took their seats at the dining table as instructed by Mme Valette, who had the sole right to speak during a long silence, like the croupier at some mysterious gambling den. Lachaume was placed between Mme Valette on his left and Jean Valette on the right; sitting opposite were, in order, M. Valette (half-hidden by the mimosa), Luc Giraud, and Colette; Danielle and Granny sat opposite each other at the end of the table nearest the door to the kitchen.

Nothing was said for a while once they were all seated in their “right” places. Lachaume had another odd feeling. He put his unsteady hands on the table, but slid his thumbs beneath the tablecloth so as to “touch wood.” Luc Giraud was watching him across the table with a faint smile and with his left eye half-closed, as if it were weighed down by his damaged eyebrow.

“Come on. Tuck in!” Madame Valette said.

There were oysters, cold cuts, and hard-boiled eggs in mayonnaise. But once again nobody took a helping. An absurd and anxious silence persisted.

Lachaume eyed an oyster on the dish placed between himself and Colette. If she takes that one, he said to himself, everything will turn out all right. His rational mind rebelled against the powerful dark force that made him stick to his stupid wager.

His pulse raced as he watched a pallid hand hover over the strangely glinting shellfish. Long supple fingers made as if to touch, then retracted, then stretched out again, then vanished, and returned to almost touch, then tightened, and Lachaume's eyes slid up the arm to Colette's shoulder trembling beneath the puckered and knotted silk, and sought in her eyes a gleam of affection that wasn't to be found.

The meal began. Oysters were put onto his plate, wine was poured into his glass. Already, faint shadows heralding sunset spread across the sky, which he gazed at every time he looked up.

“Did you know, sir,” Luc Giraud said, pronouncing each word separately, “did you know that the area we are in presently is called ‘Little U.S.S.R.'?”

“No, I didn't,” Lachaume replied.

“Well, it is!…” Luc Giraud said again. “This neighborhood is called ‘Little U.S.S.R.'”

“In a manner of speaking,” M. Valette added.

“What do you mean by that?” Luc Giraud said, interrupting his meal. “What do you mean?”

“He means it's not its real name,” Jean Valette said.

“If that's what you mean…” Luc Giraud began to say as he turned toward M. Valette, who confirmed his son's words with a nod of his head. “If that is what you mean,” he resumed, stressing each word, “well, no!… You are wrong.”

“What do
you
mean by that?” Colette asked.

“Wait a minute … You'll see. What's the biggest public space in Paris? The place where the heart of Paris beats when the Party summons the masses? Which is it?”

“The Vél' d'hiv!” Colette answered.

“So you see! Your own words!” Luc Giraud raised his forefinger with a smile. “Your very own words. It's the Vél' d'hiv. And what is the real name of the place? Is it the Vé-lo-drome d'Hi-ver or the Vél' d'hiv?

“That's what I meant to say,” he resumed in his slow way. “Do you understand, Colette?”

“Yes,” she answered, with her eyes down.

“Excuse me!” Lachaume intervened, almost in spite of himself. “Your example doesn't go very far. Vél' d'hiv is just an abbreviation.”

Luc Giraud stared at him with a faint smile, as if to encourage him to speak up. “Can you explain that to me?” he asked slowly. “Can you explain?…” He put his elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand. His posture obliged Lachaume not only to answer but to say more.

Did anybody have time for this? You're just a pernickety intellectual! he told himself angrily. As soon as I open my mouth, I have to give him a lecture. As Luc Giraud went on smiling affably, Lachaume was in a quandary, but having decided it was a device to get him into a proper conversation, he answered briefly:

“If I understood you right, ‘Little U.S.S.R.' isn't a popular abbreviation of, let's say, the official name of this neighborhood. But even if it were, it would still depend on the meaning you give to the word ‘real.' For example, most people call the newspaper
L'Huma
, yet the editors still have
L'Humanité
printed in full at the top of the front page.”

“If you will allow me,” Luc Giraud said, almost parodying Lachaume's manner of expression. “I'm not looking at this from a formal or grammatical point of view but from an objective, concrete position. When I say that the real name of this neighborhood is ‘Little U.S.S.R.,' what I'm saying is that the ordinary people who live around here have seized on the name and given it a content and a concrete, objective value. As for your comparison with
L'Huma
, it's false. For a Marxist, anyway. How can you compare things that are so different?”

He uttered each word separately, and his left eye was half-closed, as if creased up with pleasure. He'd pushed his plate to the middle of the table so he could lean on his elbow and used his hands to shape a globe, which he shook cautiously at each important word.

“That's idealism,” he said slowly. “Isn't all idealist philosophy based on the principle of identity, which consists of comparing incomparable entities? But as Marxists we reject outright such a mistaken principle. In our view nothing is static. Everything changes dialectically. And that,” he said, shaking his globe, “is why nothing can be compared to anything else. Especially in politics. Of course, what I've just said could be much better put. I'm saying it in my own words, as a worker. You have to forgive me!” he concluded with obvious irony.

Lachaume could not have been more surprised, especially as he'd been paying more attention to the sound of the words than to their meaning. He didn't take the argument seriously, it was just a pretext.

“A couple more oysters, M. Lachaume?” Mme Valette asked. “And for you?”

“No, thanks,” Luc Giraud mumbled, with an unthinking tug on the lapel of his blue corduroy jacket. “Not in top form, you know…” He'd suddenly gone pale, and drips of sweat ran down the side of his head. “Have you got something for indigestion?” he asked Colette, who got up straightaway.

Everyone stopped eating, except Granny, who seemed to be living in another world.

“It's nothing, it'll pass,” Luc Giraud said, with a sad smile. “It comes from stuffing myself…”

Colette gave him a glass of bicarbonate, which he drank in one gulp, with his eyes closed, then he wiped his brow with a clean handkerchief and lit a cigarette, with an apologetic wave of his hand.

The meal had come to a halt.

Granny was given to understand that the interruption didn't mean she could go on to the next course. The remaining oysters, cold cuts, and hard-boiled eggs stayed on the table, stranded.

The sky had turned from light gray to gray. The wall above and below the window was already in dark shadow.

“Jean tells me you're from Arras,” M. Valette whispered. “I know Arras, I lived there for over a year.”

“Really? Jean never said…”

“He didn't know! It was a long time ago!” M. Valette said, casting a vague but presumably affectionate glance at his son. “At the time there wasn't any Jean—nor you, either…”

“That depends,” Lachaume said. “I'm six years older.”

“You've lost that one,” M. Valette said, with a shake of his head. “I'm talking about '25. I did the last year of my military service in Arras, in the 104th Infantry regiment. At the Francustin Barracks, you know where I mean?”

“Yes,” Lachaume said. “It's not in use anymore.”

“Well, well … so much the better!” M. Valette said.

Then he stopped smiling all of a sudden.

“That's just a manner of speaking,” he said. “I'd prefer to know you were in Arras … You and Jean,” he added, to include his son with affection in the “you.” “You and Jean and everyone else,” he said, with a nod of his head.

There was a pause. Mme Valette, Colette, and Danielle were busy looking after Luc Giraud, who was reclining on the sofa. The only ones left at table were Valette, his son, and Lachaume, with Granny at the other end, out of touch with the world.

“Please eat! Do eat!” Madame Valette said from time to time. The three men picked at an oyster or a slice of egg blindly, then stopped again.

“It wasn't funny in 1925, either,” M. Valette droned on. “The Rif War doesn't mean much to young folk nowadays. That's comprehensible. Yours is a worse business than ours was … I just wanted to say that we also had to face something almost like it.”

“You weren't in the Rif, were you?” Jean Valette asked.

“No, Jean,” he replied with muted affection. “No, I wasn't … But it was a big thing for our crowd when I was your age. For a lot of young workers. And the going got very rough.”

“What about Algeria?” Lachaume said as naturally as possible.

“Algeria…” he said softly, hesitantly, “Algeria is a quagmire. We're stuck in it on all sides, over there and over here. I don't know how to put it … It's hard to explain. We want to have our cake and eat it, too, so nobody knows what to do. But it's going to change, you'll see. Things are on the move already…”

“Yes, yes,” Jean Valette said.

Luc Giraud came back to table, and took his place opposite Lachaume, who smiled at him sincerely, as he was glad to see that strong, stable look he found calming.

“What were we talking about?” Luc Giraud asked as he stubbed out his cigarette. He seemed to be over the worst of his cramp.

They gradually resumed the meal.

Mme Valette insisted that at least the oysters should be finished. She passed the plate around and gave it last to her son, saying sweetly, “Jean, my darling Jean, have the rest…” But Jean Valette suddenly pushed the plate away and looked down, muttering that “she could keep them” (presumably, the oysters) in a gruff tone that for a moment you could have mistaken for his father's.

Lachaume saw he'd clenched his fists, and that on his lowered face there was the same sulky and moody expression he'd had when he first came in: but now Lachaume grasped that it had its roots in family tensions. The polite discretion shown by everybody, including Luc Giraud, made him feel uneasy at being the only one who did not know what was really going on before his eyes, in parallel with the conversation on the surface of things.

“But do you know why this part of town is called ‘Little U.S.S.R.'?” Luc Giraud was saying, stressing each word.

“No, I don't,” Lachaume replied.

“Well then, let me tell you,” Luc Giraud responded, looking around slowly. “This area is called ‘Little U.S.S.R.' because around here ninety-two percent of voters vote for the French Communist Party!”

“Point three,” Colette added, turning her quivering face toward Lachaume. “Ninety-two point three percent,” she repeated, with a faint smile.

“That's a lot,” Lachaume said.

“You think so?” Luc Giraud said. “You think it's a lot? You think it's odd?”

“Well…”

“Well, no!… It's not odd. It is normal. And why is it normal?”

“I really don't know,” Lachaume said.

“Well, then let me tell you,” Luc Giraud said one more time, once again looking all around the room in his ponderous fashion. “It's normal because the ordinary people in this neighborhood have seen what Communists can do.”

The parents nodded their approval, but Jean, who'd put his elbows on the table, kept his eyes on the horizon, through the window.