The Incorrigible Optimists Club (12 page)

Igor looked aggrieved and shook his head.

‘You're nothing but an ass. And that's not fair on asses, they're intelligent animals. Not like you. You don't listen. You ought to take notes.'

To improve, he told me, I needed to follow games, copy out each player's moves and replay them on a pocket chess-set. From time to time, Igor dived into his little notebook. He managed to reconstruct games just from his notes, and a string of moves such as: 1.e4 c5 2.Knf3 e6 3.g3; 3…d5 4.exd5 exd5 5.Bg2 Qe7 6.Kf1; 6… Knc6 7.d4 Knf6 8.Knc3 Be6 caused him to say things like: ‘He hasn't improved at all, Vladimir. Still just as over-elaborate.'

‘He won.'

‘It's Pavel who lost. If you want to get better, watch Leonid. He's the best. Simple and effective.'

For two years, he was my one and only partner. Those who knew how to play or thought they did had no wish to waste their time with
a beginner. When I suggested a game, they replied: ‘We'll play with you when you know how to play.'

They accepted me because Igor had accepted me. Anyone who wanted to could come in and play at the Club, but it was he or Werner who decided who should be a member. There was no other criterion apart from their good will. When an unsuitable person sought to join, they knew how to dissuade him or get rid of him tactfully: ‘It's a private club. We're not taking any more members. You'll have to go on the waiting list.'

After two years, we played a game which reached a stalemate. It was a draw. There was neither a winner nor a loser. For me, it was a victory. Igor sensed this.

‘Another two or three years, my lad, and you'll manage to win a game.'

It took me a year to beat him. He had an excuse. It was a day when he was doubled up with sciatica. He found it hard to sit in his chair. When he arrived in France, Igor had tried to establish himself as a doctor. He had been turned down because his degree was not recognized in France and there was no way of obtaining an equivalent one. He had left Leningrad in a hurry, without any official papers or documents, with nothing that could prove his assertions. His service during the war as a military doctor and his medals were of no use. The only solution, as a member of the medical association had amiably suggested, was to start at the beginning. But it's not easy to start studying for seven years when you are aged fifty. As well as being penniless, Igor had to endure a dreadful problem: he had been an insomniac ever since his flight from the USSR in March 1952. When he arrived in Helsinki, he went eleven days without sleeping, hoping that he would eventually collapse from exhaustion and be able to break this curse. His body had resisted beyond what is possible. He continued to be wide awake, with a wild look in his eyes, and his head in a fog. He began having attacks of delirium in the middle of the traffic, walking around bare-chested in temperatures of minus ten, and singing at the top of his voice. He had been injected with a sedative. When he woke up, he had refused to take the sleeping tablets he had been prescribed, until a doctor who had himself suffered from interminable insomnia gave him the solution: ‘If you're not able to sleep at night, it's because your
biological clock has been reversed. The reason? We don't know, but we have our suspicions. How can you start sleeping again? No idea. Go back to Leningrad perhaps? The cure is likely to be worse than the disease. Do as I do. Sleep during the day. Work at night.'

Igor had followed his advice and rediscovered a regular pattern of life. When he arrived in Paris the following month, he had worked as a packer at Les Halles for a fruit and vegetable firm, while awaiting a reply from the medical association. Then, because his back hurt him, he had found a job as a nightwatchman at a hotel near the Madeleine. He was bored to death. For two years after that he had been a night porter at La Pitié Hospital. He was wondering what terrible sin he could have committed to deserve this fate when, that very night, he met the two men who were to change his life.

Count Victor Anatolievitch Volodine was driving his gleaming Simca Vedette Régence like an aristocrat and exercising the noble profession of chauffeur, second-class – which is to say he was a qualified taxi driver. On rue de Tolbiac, he had picked up a blood-stained vagrant who had been beaten up and left for dead. He had almost run over his body, but had braked in the nick of time. During the civil war, Victor had had occasion to see many wounded people and corpses. He had cut off the nose and ears of several Reds. He knew about such things. This dying man looked pretty bad. People could say what they wanted about Victor Volodine, that he was a prig, a rascal and a liar, that he had never been a count, nor had he served the Tsar of Holy Russia, and nor was he the cousin and close friend of Felix Yussupov, Rasputin's murderer, as he related with such conviction and force to his astonished customers. His yarns explain the errors in certain books by historians of repute who had taken his flagrant lies at face value. Victor had merely had the opportunity to be the prince's driver when he was in Paris. Yussupov refused to give his views about Russia, but he agreed to speak Russian with a compatriot, convinced that the conversation would be about the inevitable and speedy collapse of the communist regime and of their own triumphant return to their homeland. Victor Volodine had just been a simple soldier in the Tsar's army and Staff Sergeant in the White army under that idiot Denikin
and then under Wrangel, who was no softy. Then, in the middle of the night, he had dropped off the two passengers whom he had collected from the Folies-Bergère in Pigalle and picked up the future corpse in order to deposit it at the nearest hospital.

At twenty-five past one, Igor, the porter, was helping him carry the wounded man out of his taxi when he heard Victor let out an expletive on discovering that the white seat of his car was spattered with blood. Even if you have lived in France for thirty-three years and speak the language like a Parisian, when you hit the roof and let out a stream of abuse, you do so in your native tongue. And when two fellow countrymen who have been thrown out of their native land meet in a foreign country, they are happy to get together and the past is no longer of any importance. Igor and Victor were programmed to loathe and destroy one another, but they fell into each other's arms. It was good to hear one's patronymic. In France, people just used the first name. Suddenly, it was as if a little of the smell, the music and the light of their homeland had returned, even though one was a White Russian, a practising Orthodox, an anti-Semite and a misogynist, who hated the Bolshies, and the other the former enemy, a keen, committed and enthusiastic Red, who had been involved in establishing communism. These sorts of differences that made you tear out one another's throats at home vanished here. Especially where two Russian insomniacs were concerned.

18

F
or the first time in my life, I skipped school. The idea would never have occurred to me before. Even when lessons were deadly boring, I endured them resignedly. But there was no question of leaving Cécile on her own. I left the flat as though nothing were the matter and set off to the Cochin Hospital. Anyone can just walk in. There were only three patients in her ward. I asked the nurse which department she had been transferred to. She looked at me as if she did not understand and hurried off into the ward. She looked dumbfounded as she stood there in front of the deserted bed and the empty cupboard.

‘She's gone!'

She grabbed the telephone and, in a panic, notified security of Cécile's disappearance. She gave a brief description. Nobody had seen her. A professor arrived with a group of students who followed him like his shadow. With a crestfallen expression, she told him the bad news. A quarter of an hour earlier, she had been passing through the ward, she was still asleep and then… She did not finish her sentence. The professor called her every name under the sun and was unbelievably aggressive, insulting her without her reacting. He turned towards the students and yelled at them: ‘What the fuck are you doing here, you bunch of idiots, eh? When are you going to get a move on?'

The professor went into a room, slamming the door behind him, without even glancing at me. The students and the nurse dispersed like a flock of sparrows. They questioned visitors and patients, but Cécile had vanished into thin air. I left the hospital. I searched for her in the cafés opposite. I asked the waiters, nobody had seen her. I walked down rue Saint-Jacques as far as the Seine, peering inside the bistros. No sign of Cécile. I had the insane hope that I might bump into her. I went to her home, on quai des Grands-Augustins. The apartment was in the same state as the previous night, after the emergency services had arrived. I felt
ill at ease, rather like a novice burglar. I waited a long time for her, walking round in circles. Surely she would not be long. In an alcove, there was a Franche-Comté type of clock. I told myself ‘She'll be here at ten o'clock.'

When the chimes struck, I turned towards the entrance hall, convinced she was about to appear, as though by a wave of a magic wand. Nothing happened. Through the window, I searched for her among the crowd. At half past ten, the grandfather clock caught me off guard, with my nose glued to the window-pane. ‘She'll be here at eleven o'clock. She can't not come.'

On the eleventh stroke, my hope vanished. She wouldn't come. I had been foolish to believe she would. I left the flat, placing my bunch of keys under the doormat. I had the unpleasant, gnawing feeling that she would not be coming back here. If she did anything foolish again, I wouldn't know. On a piece of paper that I slipped beneath the door, I'd scribbled: ‘If anything happens, inform me: Michel Marini', and I gave my telephone number. I scoured the neighbourhood, the cafés and shops she used to go to, rue Saint-André-des-Arts and the area around Saint-Sulpice. Nobody had seen her. Head down, I skirted the railings of the Luxembourg. Back to square one. I turned in the direction of Henri-IV. There was nothing to feel cheerful about. I searched for an excuse to give Sherlock. Something indisputable, cast-iron, which would be the spitting image of a genuine one, and which no head supervisor, even a crafty one like him, would think of questioning or checking up on. In this eternal game of cat and mouse, I was a small, panic-stricken creature with a pitiful imagination. For every cause of absence I dreamed up, it would only take a second for the old tomcat to catch me out on. I was getting ready to be crucified when I arrived at the park gates near the Odéon theatre. I was a few yards away from the Médicis fountain. I risked missing the two o'clock bell. I continued on my route. I stopped. ‘If she is not there, I shall never see her again.'

I turned around. Another five minutes won't make much difference. I ran towards the fountain. All I saw were readers and the usual pairs of peaceful lovers. No Cécile. Suddenly, I noticed two patches, green and white, like a casket, in the midst of the fountain. Without being able to
say how or why, I found myself entranced too. I couldn't take my eyes off Polyphemus, so fine and so monstrous, so pitiful when he surprises Galatea and Acis and is about to kill the shepherd. An obligatory yet pointless crime. As I arrived at the edge of the pond, I was full of compassion for this poor, desperate and despised one-eyed man. Then I spotted Cécile, in a secluded corner. She was asleep in a chair, her head tilted back and her arms dangling. She looked extremely pale, her cheeks were hollow, and her skin was waxy. No breath stirred in her chest. I placed the palm of my hand on her forehead. I felt her warmth. I covered her with my jacket and sat down beside her. Cécile opened her eyes. She wasn't surprised to see me, she gave me a shy smile and held out her hand to me. I took it and clasped it in mine.

‘You took your time,' she murmured.

‘I looked for you everywhere.'

‘I was frightened you wouldn't come.'

‘I'm here.'

‘Please don't leave me.'

‘Don't worry. Do you want to go home?'

She shook her head. We stayed sitting beside the fountain. I did not know whether she was sleeping or resting. I stared at Galatea, draped over Acis, alone in the world and blissfully happy. Cécile watched me carefully.

‘They're beautiful, aren't they?'

‘They're unaware of the danger that threatens them.'

‘They're happy to be alive. They love one another. Nothing else is important. Danger doesn't exist for them. They will remain in love for eternity. Have you any money?'

‘A little.'

‘Will you buy me a coffee?'

She got to her feet with difficulty. She moved forward in small steps and leant on me. After twenty yards, she no longer needed my support. We went and had a café au lait at the Petit-Suisse, the bistro opposite. We sat at an outside table.

‘I'm hungry.'

‘That's a good sign.'

She devoured two croissants in no time at all and asked for another café au lait. She wanted to say something, and then hesitated.

‘… Can I trust you, Michel?'

‘Of course.'

‘Nothing happened to me. Do you understand? Nothing at all. We'll never speak about it again. We'll behave as if it never happened.

‘… If you want.'

‘Promise?'

‘Promise.'

She noticed my awkward silence and pursed lips.

‘Nothing has happened! To anybody. Franck mustn't know.'

‘I can't not tell him. If he found out one day, he would kill me.'

‘If you don't tell him, if I don't tell him, he'll never know. In any case, it doesn't matter any more. We're no longer together.'

‘What!'

‘It's over between us.'

‘Since when?'

‘I don't know. We don't see each other any more. He's… vanished.'

‘At home too, he's disappeared.'

‘When you are with someone, you don't leave them without any news for weeks unless there's a good reason. I've called him hundreds of times. I've spoken to your father, your mother, you and your sister. I don't know how many times I've left the same message, but he's never called me back. The only time I managed to catch him on the phone, it lasted thirty seconds. He was on the doorstep, in a hurry. He was going to ring me in the evening. Three weeks went by. Generally, when a man behaves like that with a woman, when he is… elusive, it means he's met another woman and he doesn't dare tell her about it.'

‘That's impossible. Not Franck.'

‘Do you swear you don't know anything?'

‘I swear.'

‘Can you think of an explanation for his disappearance?'

‘There must be one. I know he loves you.'

‘Did he tell you?'

‘He's given me to understand he does.'

‘When was that?'

‘We were at your place.'

‘I'm sure there's another woman in his life.'

I was no great expert in love affairs. My only experience came from my reading. I could see no reason for his constant absence. Ever since he returned from Germany, he had slept no more than three or four nights at the flat. I was careful not to talk to him about it.

‘If he did that, he's a real bastard.'

She shrugged her shoulders and tried to smile. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were red. She bit her lip, sniffed and caught her breath, and choked back her sorrow.

‘You've got to be bloody stupid to try to kill yourself for a guy! Now, it's over. I've got to be stronger.'

‘I just can't believe it. It's not possible.'

‘That's the way life is. Yet I could have sworn that… I'm going home.'

The waiter brought us the bill. Cécile hadn't a penny on her and I was two francs sixty short. I didn't know where to put myself. The waiter was a decent fellow.

‘It's not a small amount. Bring it to me. I'll trust you. It's just that I have to pay the boss cash.'

‘I'll bring it tomorrow, without fail,' I promised.

‘Excuse me,' she asked him, ‘you wouldn't have a cigarette?'

He gave her a Gitane. He struck a match. She puffed at it with infinite pleasure.

‘I don't know whether that's a very good idea.'

‘Listen, Michel, get out of this habit of telling me what I ought to do.'

I accompanied her back home. We didn't feel like talking. She stopped twice, tired by the walk.

‘Perhaps it would be best for you to go back to the hospital?'

‘Michel, I'm telling you again, I don't need a nursemaid.'

I managed to go up the stairs ahead of her. I removed the little note I'd slipped under the door without her seeing me. I retrieved my bunch of keys from under the doormat. She went inside. I stayed on the landing.

‘Don't worry. It'll be all right.'

‘Do you want me to give you back your keys?'

‘No, keep them. Unless you don't want to come any more.'

‘That's not what I meant.'

She kissed me on the cheek.

‘Thank you, little bro'. Thank you for everything.'

‘I'll come by tomorrow maybe.'

‘Whenever you like.'

Once again, I did the round of the bars, in search of Franck this time. Nobody had seen him. Two people made fun of me: ‘Maybe your brother's with Cécile?'

‘If I do find Cécile, I'm not going to tell your brother.'

I took no notice. Everywhere, I left the same message: ‘If you see him, tell him to get in touch with his brother. It's urgent.'

I called on Richard, his best friend, who lived behind the mosque. They were members of the same cell and sold the Sunday edition of
L'Humanité
together in the market on rue Mouffetard. He seemed confused to see me. He had had a crew cut.

‘Did you have a problem?'

‘What with?'

‘Your hair?'

‘Michel, I'm busy, what is it you want?'

‘I was hoping that Franck was at your place.'

‘I haven't seen him for some time. Did he tell you he was sleeping here?'

‘He has done occasionally. I thought—'

‘He must be at Cécile's.'

‘If you see him, tell him to get in touch with me. It's important.'

‘Definitely.'

We stood there confronting one another for two seconds too long. Richard, normally so warm and spontaneous, was on his guard. He was doing his best to keep his composure. There was an unpleasant stiffness in his manner. Good liars keep their heads held high. They fear nothing. Bad ones look away, as if to protect themselves. It's something I must remember.

‘That hairstyle doesn't suit you. You looked better before.'

To put my mind at rest, I called on two other friends of Franck's. They didn't know where he was and promised to give him the message when they next saw him.

During dinner, my mother asked me: ‘How was it at school today?'

‘Same as usual.'

‘What did you do?'

‘In our English lesson, we continued with Shakespeare, and in French, we started Racine's
Les Plaideurs
.'

‘Are you ready for your maths test?'

‘I've worked with Nicolas a lot.'

‘It's a pity we don't see him any more,' my father continued. ‘You should invite him one Sunday.'

I spent part of the night devising a list of reasonable excuses to give Sherlock without him over-reacting, being doubtful in any way or needing to check up, but feared I wouldn't be able to slip through his net. I slept badly. In the morning, I was resigned to a trip to the doghouse when, in my jacket pocket, I found the hospital admittance form that the nurse had asked me to fill in when Cécile was being admitted to casualty. I saw it as a sign of fate. A sort of delay of execution. It could succeed because it was far-fetched. I hesitated about tampering with this document, but I had no alternative solution. I took a black ballpoint pen and I filled it in with my name. I used a minimum of detail. In the space for ‘wounds', I put ‘minor bruising'. For ‘cause of accident', I put ‘knocked down by a cyclist'. I made sure I wrote in small, illegible letters like a doctor. I signed with a scrawl. My heart was thumping as I handed him this note of apology. He examined it without casting doubts on its authenticity and enquired about my health.

‘Nowadays, you have to be careful of everything: cars, buses and cyclists. It's a good lesson.'

I felt I had to add: ‘And he didn't even stop!'

‘It's disgraceful. What century are we living in?'

‘It's not serious, you know. As the doctor said, I was more shaken than hurt.'

Thanks to Nicolas, the maths test went well. He was not obliged to help me, but he allowed me to copy, as he always had done. What with all this business, I had rather neglected him. He bore no grudges. In order to say sorry, I suggested we play baby-foot. We went to Maubert. I had not been near the game for three months, but baby-foot's rather like riding a bike, it's not something you forget.