Soft in the Head (13 page)

I
CALLED
ROUND
to see Youss’.

It came to me on the spur of the moment, off the cuff. I showed up at about eight p.m., it’s the best time to catch him at home.

He opened the door. I said:

“Have you lost your mind or what?”

He said:

“Hey, want some tea? Come on in.”

I sat on a pouffe just to be civil and all, though I really hate them—I never know where to put my legs and I end up with cramp.

Youssef said:

“You seem a bit wound up.”

I didn’t beat around the bush.

“What the hell is going on with you and Stéphanie? Is it true you’re together?”

“Yeah. Mint tea or ordinary?”

And at this point I realized I was evolving as a species, because instead of giving him practical advice, you know, like: Good for you, she’s really hot. Go for it! I said:

“So what about Francine?”

Youssef shrugged.

“I don’t really know, you know? I’m in two minds.”

“Have you got feelings for her, for Stéphanie?”

“I don’t really know. I think I just got carried away, she was always hanging around, and she’s crazy hot…”

I couldn’t exactly prove the opposite. She’s got a pair of tits on her, I swear, one look and you’re hard enough to drill through concrete.

“She’s a bit young, though…”

“Yeah, and Francine’s not young any more, that’s the problem. But I still feel good when I’m with her. That’s what’s bugging me. I don’t know who to pick.”

He seemed in a real state. I’m kind of like a father to Youssef, I talk to him like he was my son.

“Aren’t you worried about getting your cock caught between two stools with all this dicking around?” I said.

“What would you do if you were me?”

“Wha?… well, um… I’m not you. It’s bad enough being me, so excuse me but—”

“How is she coping, Francine?”

“How do you expect? She spends all day crying.”

“Shit.”

“Exactly. Listen, do you mind if I sit on a stool, ’cause this big bloody cushion wrecks my knees.”

“Come into the kitchen. I’ve made
chorba
, you want some?”

We talked about Francine, about Annette, about our mothers—particularly about his, who died when he was nine. Not everyone can be so lucky.

Youssef told me that what bugs him most about Francine is that she’s past her sell-by date when it comes to giving
him kids. And Youss’ is crazy about kids, he brought up his five sisters. Especially Fatia, the youngest, who’s seventeen now and mad as a fish in a raincoat but she’s stunning and she’s got the whole world wrapped around her finger, the little Klingon.

So Youss’ can’t imagine life without bottles and nappies, something I would have thought was completely twisted in a guy not long ago. But the strange thing was that, just listening to him, I kind of understood where he was coming from.

“Are you sure Francine can’t give you a baby?”

“I don’t know, she’s forty-six, so…”

“Well, why don’t you adopt, then? Maybe she can’t make kids, but she’d know how to bring one up. Miserable kids aren’t exactly thin on the ground, you know.”

“You think so?” he said.

“I don’t think so, I know so.”

“Yeah, but there’s sixteen years between us…”

“So much the better: with the time difference, you’ll both croak round about the same time rather than her ending up a widow, which is what usually happens. Honestly, you’re worrying about nothing.”

“Maybe you’re right,” he said.

We left it at that, and as I walked home I realized all we’d talked about was women. And that I was missing Annette, and not just her body either.

So I went round to her place.

I
’
VE THOUGHT ABOUT IT
.

And I’ve come to the conclusion that if Annette can read books to me, the least I can do is try to read a couple by myself. All the way through. If I can do it, then maybe I can read to Margueritte when she’s not able to see any more.

This is what I thought.

I went to the library, because Annette mentioned it, and because of Monsieur Bâ talking about old people dying. It’s really good, it’s free admission.

Inside, there were books, truckloads of them. It was enough to put you off reading because, like Landremont says, too much choice is no choice at all.

I stood there like a lemon, not knowing how to make up my mind, and after a few minutes the woman behind the desk said:

“Are you looking for something in particular?”

And I said:

“A book.”

“You’ve come to the right place. If I can be of any help…”

“That would be good, thanks,” I said.

“Do you know the title? The author?”

Pff, what the hell did I know?

She seemed to be waiting for me to say something.

I thought, If I carry on like this, she’s going to figure out that someone like me has no business being here and throw me out. So I said:

“Actually, I don’t want
a
book… I want a book to read, that’s all.”

She said:

“All right, good, I understand…”

And she gave me the kind of smile you get from sales reps:

“Documentary, essays, fiction?”

“No, nothing like that, a book that tells a story, you know?”

“So, fiction, then. Any particular kind?”

“Short,” I said.

“Perhaps an anthology?”

“No, nothing about science. A made-up story.”

“You mean a novel?”

“Yeah, a novel would be all right. As long as it’s short.”

She got up and went over to the shelves, muttering to herself:

“A short novel… a short novel…”

“An easy-to-read one, if you’ve got it.”

She stopped and said, Ah? Then she said:

“For a child of what age?”

She was starting to seriously wind me up.

“It’s for my grandmother,” I said.

At that point some guy came in with two kids and waved to her.

The lady walked off and said to me, I’ll be right back, have a look, the adult section is over there.

She pointed to six bookcases measuring about three metres by one metre eighty high in polished beechwood veneer with chamfered uprights and dovetailed joints. I wandered between them for a while, taking out a book here, a book there.

But there were too many of them, and they all looked the same, or nearly the same, and that put me off. And then I saw a little boy over in the children’s section. He was looking at the titles and frowning, he would pick out a book, read what was on the back cover and then put it back. A bit farther along, he would take out another book, and start all over again.

I thought to myself, Hey, that’s not a bad idea, I’ll read what they say about the story and that might help me choose.

It didn’t help at all.

I have to say, when you look at what they put on the back of novels, it makes you wonder if they really want you to read them. It’s not aimed at me, I can tell you that. A whole string of convoluted words:
inexorable, fecund, exemplary concision, polyphony
…—not a single book where they just write: this is an adventure story or a love story—or a book about Indians. Zilch.

I was thinking: If you can’t even understand the summary, how are you going to understand the book, you fathead.

Me and books were off to a bad start.

That’s when the woman came back and asked me:

“Did you manage to find what you were looking for?”

I didn’t know how to say no, so I showed her a little book I’d just picked out at random and said, Yes, it’s fine, I’ll take this one.

She looked surprised. I felt miserable. But I thought, oh well, once a moron always a moron.

“Do you think my grandmother will like it?”

She smiled.

“Oh, yes! Absolutely. I’m just surprised because you said you weren’t looking for short stories but… no, it’s a very good choice. It’s a beautiful book, particularly the fable that gives the anthology its name. Poetic, deeply moving… I’m sure she will love it.”

Then she filled out a form for me and said:

“You can keep books for two weeks, and borrow up to three books at a time.”

I said yes, thank you and goodbye.

As I left, I looked at the title:
Child of the High Seas.

I wondered what it would be about.

I
DIDN’T OPEN IT
straight away. I waited a couple of days. Sometimes, I’d pick it up and look at it. I’d open the cover a crack, like a dirty old man looking up some girl’s skirt, then quickly close it and head off to Chez Francine, or to work in my garden.

And then I heard my inner voice saying:
What are you pissing about for, Germain? Scared of a little book? Have you even thought about Margueritte?

Then I thought, Right, I’ll give it a go, but if I don’t understand
all
the words—or most of them—on the first page, I’ll give it up as a bad job.

So I started reading.

How did it come to be built, this floating street?

So far, so good. It didn’t mean anything, but at least I understood the words.

What sailors, with the help of what architects, had built it in the high Atlantic on the surface of the ocean, above a chasm six thousand metres deep?
Six thousand metres, take away three zeros, that makes sixty—no, that makes six kilometres.

A chasm six kilometres deep? Shit, that’s really deep! Six kilometres.

Wow.

This winding street… these slate roofs
… I still had no trouble understanding.

…
these humble immutable shops?

Ah, shit! I thought, Here we go! Im-mu-ta-ble. Right…

A, B, C, D…G, H,
I.

Ic, Id, Il,
Im, got it.

Im-a, Im-b, Im-i,
Im-m…

Imma, Imme, Immi, Immo,
Immu… OK.

Immutable—
that which forever remains the same, that which cannot be changed.
So, shops that don’t change. Like Moredon, on the rue Paille who’s so tight-fisted he probably hasn’t repainted the front of his bakery in twenty years, and he really should because it’s starting to look scuzzy.

I carried on to the bottom of page one, which ended:
How did it remain standing, without being tossed about by the waves?

There.

I had read the whole page without too much trouble, and I don’t want to blow my own trombone but I’d managed to understand every word except one.

I didn’t really know where the story was headed, but I turned the page.

And on the next page there was a little girl, twelve years old, walking alone on this liquid street—which I had a bit of trouble imagining at first, but in the end I figured it probably looked like the ones in Venice. A little girl who fell asleep whenever boats appeared on the ocean. And when she fell asleep, the village disappeared beneath the swell—
see also: wave, breaker, roller
—with her.

And no one knew that this little girl existed. No one.

There was always food in the cupboards and fresh bread in the bakery. Whenever she opened a jar of jam,
it remained
 
utterly
intact.
She should have patented this thing, because that would have been really interesting to community associations, especially for school dinners and meals on wheels for senior citizens.

She spent her time looking through old photo albums. She pretended to go to school. Morning and evening, she would open and close the windows.
At night, she lit candles, or she sewed by the light of a lamp.
And me—and I know this is dumb—but I felt sad, thinking of her, the poor kid, lost in the middle of nowhere. Never in my whole life—not even in a book—had I met anyone so alone, so completely at sea.

I got to the end pretty quickly, it only took me three days—because it’s not just one story, this anthology thing, it’s a lot of short stories one after the other.

I read the last section again, the one that starts
Sailors who dream upon the high seas
… to make sure I’d understood. Then I started at the beginning again. And again.

I could see her sitting alone in a classroom pretending to listen to a teacher. And then doing her homework like a good girl. I thought, I bet she sticks out her tongue a bit when she writes, and she gets ink on her fingers, she probably crosses things out—I made loads of mistakes when I was her age.

But she was a whole lot neater than me, the copybooks were perfect.

She would look at herself in the mirror, and she was slow to grow up.

And I could really understand that, because when you’re a kid, the only thing you really want is for it to start. Life. You only do stupid things to kill time.

You spend years dreaming of being a grown-up, only to end up missing what it was like to be a kid.

Anyway, that’s just an aside—which means an incidental remark not intended to be heard by everyone.

When the
little freighter belching steam
came through the village, I thought the little girl was going to be saved. But no. And when a wave comes looking for her,
a colossal wave,
with
two eyes perfectly simulated in foam,
to try and help her die, and it doesn’t work, it completely freaks you out, let me tell you—at least it did me.

But the weirdest thing about the story is that, the more I read it, the older this kid got inside my head. The more she seemed like Margueritte, actually. She became an old shrivelled little girl, tiny as a sparrow, with the eyes of Margueritte and her blue-rinse hairdo.

And the more like Margueritte she seemed, the more choked up I got when I reread the end, when it talks about a creature
that cannot live, nor die, nor love, and yet suffers as though it were living, loving and constantly on the point of dying, a creature utterly dispossessed amid the watery wastes.

I couldn’t tell you why, but I felt that somewhere inside Margueritte was that sad little girl, waiting for the wave that never came.

The things you imagine sometimes.