The Incorrigible Optimists Club (15 page)

‘I don't know whether you'll pass your taxi exam. If you fail, you can join the RATP.'

She was not impervious to his charm; she started to ask him about his life and suggested they visit the city together on Sunday. But he soon put an end to her attempts to ingratiate herself. He told her he was married and had numerous children. Suzanne was upset and stormed off. On the nights that followed, she ignored him, scarcely addressing a word to him. He continued to spend his mornings and evenings there. He liked the hospital atmosphere – the way it smelt of bleach and ether, the way it buzzed with activity. Luxury, profusion and modernity abounded here. And yet the staff and patients both whinged and grumbled. They should have done a course at the Tarnovsky, which was not the worst of Russian hospitals, and they would have discovered what poverty and despair really meant and stopped complaining. People did not realize how lucky they were, least of all the patients.

‘You shouldn't be allowed to moan when you're fortunate; it's an insult to those who have nothing.'

‘Don't forget, Igor,' Mazerin retorted, ‘that the French are congenital moaners.'

Igor passed his exam at the first attempt and began his life as a Parisian taxi driver. Victor lent him the Simca Régence at nights. They would meet in the evenings at Nation, and Igor would return the car to him in the morning, along with a cut of the takings.

The weeks went by. Hope that the man would regain consciousness had become infinitesimal. Suzanne had resigned herself and was now talking to him again. To her mind, he was wasting his time. The man would not wake up. He would get worse, complications would accumulate and he would suffer a cardiac arrest. But Igor refused to give in to fatalism. He had witnessed inexplicable miracles on the front line. He had seen operations that were doomed beforehand turn out well, hearts that started to beat again, and dead men crawling out of the burial pit. He no longer came across Mazerin, nor any of the doctors. He didn't give up; he sat down beside the wounded man, took his left hand and told him about
his night's work in detail. Sometimes, he had the impression that the man was reacting. Sometimes, Igor nodded off without realizing and spoke in Russian before pulling himself together. Eventually, he would fall asleep. Irène, the day nurse, woke him when she came on duty.

On the fifty-ninth day, the stranger emerged from his coma. Igor had just arrived and he was telling him about a road accident involving three cars that he had witnessed at the Étoile roundabout when he felt pressure on his hand. The man was stirring. He called Irène. The man had opened his eyes and was gazing vacantly at them. Igor did not return to his hotel that day. They asked the man questions. He remained prostrate. For Mazerin, this aphasia was disturbing. If he did not recover his speech within twenty-four hours, it would mean that there were irreversible injuries to the brain.

After a week, the injured man had still not said a word. Management was considering admitting him to a care home. But Igor observed some improvements. The man was raising both hands and was moving his legs. He could drink from a glass of water on his own. He had smiled at Igor on several occasions. Igor massaged him vigorously. His muscles had disappeared. Each of them holding one of his arms, he and Irène had succeeded in making him take three or four steps. Every day, they walked a yard further.

One evening, Igor was reading
Le Monde
when the man sneezed.

‘Bless you,' Igor said automatically.

‘Thank you,' the other man answered.

Igor jumped.

‘You… you've just spoken.'

‘Where am I?'

‘You're in the Charcot wing, at La Pitié Hospital.'

Igor dashed on to the ward.

‘He's talking!'

Irène came back to the room with him and questioned the man: ‘Who are you, Monsieur? What is your name?'

‘I don't know,' he replied.

The nurse looked at him suspiciously.

‘Don't you think he's got a funny accent?' she asked Igor.

‘I didn't notice anything.'

‘What's your name, Monsieur? Do you remember your first name?'

‘My name? My first name? I don't remember. I don't remember anything,' said the man, with a strong German accent.

‘Shit, he's a Boche!' Irène exclaimed.

22

C
écile had decided to change. We often wish that our lives could be different. We dream of something else, but nothing materializes. We make promises to ourselves. We progress through life with ifs and buts. We wait, we put off the moment when our existence will improve, and the days and the years go by with our pledges replaced or faded away. Cécile no longer made any plans. On the landing, I heard the sound of a truck. With my ear glued to the door, I tried to discover where this din came from. I put the keys back in my pocket. I rang the bell and drummed on the door. The engine noise stopped. Cécile appeared, black as a chimney sweep, her hair awry, dressed in one of Pierre's shirts that came half way down her thighs, and clutching a duster.

‘What are you doing?'

She gazed at me, frowning, and with a solemn expression.

‘I've had a major spring-clean in my life and I'm having a major spring-clean in my flat.'

She stood aside to let me pass and I found myself in an unfamiliar room. It was tidy and neatly arranged, as if a good genie had come out of an oil lamp and, with a stroke of a magic wand, had transformed this place where hitherto only disorder reigned, where no duster had touched any furniture for years, where piles of dirty plates from past parties had still been stacked up amid overflowing ashtrays, empty beer and spirits bottles; where newspapers were piled up on top of lecture notes, beside unpacked boxes, half-opened letters, crumpled leaflets, 33 and 45 rpm records whose sleeves were scattered everywhere, and vases filled with dead flowers. The sofa had been well and truly flayed. The cushions had been stripped. The stained and torn covers lay on the floor waiting for the upholsterer. There was a smell of fresh wax. The room sparkled and shone like those advertisements at an Ideal Home exhibition extolling the happiness of the modern woman.

‘What do you reckon?'

‘Incredible.'

‘It's spotless, you mean. I spent a day and night doing it. I threw out ten sacks of rubbish from the sitting room alone. The things you cling onto become oppressive. I can breathe. Can't you? I'm worn out.'

I walked round the sitting room, where every object was back in its original place. The bookshelves, which covered two walls from floor to ceiling, used to be invisible beneath the books, papers and magazines that were stacked up on them. Now everything was neatly arranged. A dozen piles of books were waiting in the hall to be taken to the dustbin.

‘You're not going to throw away books!'

‘If I keep the ones I love and Pierre's, I don't know where to put them. I'm not touching his records, they're sacred. As for the rest, he agrees, be ruthless.'

‘Did you get a letter? How is he?'

‘He asks whether the little bugger has made any progress in maths.'

‘Did… did you tell him about Franck?'

‘I told him everything.'

‘What did he say?'

She took the letter from her pocket, unfolded it, and searched through it: ‘“… we must discard things that clutter us up. Spring-clean. Get rid of what is useless…”'

She crumpled up the letter and tossed it in the waste-paper basket.

‘If there are any books that interest you, take them. Otherwise, we'll chuck them out.'

‘That's crazy. We can take them to Gibert's. They take second-hand books.'

‘I'll give them to you, if you want. Sell them. And, in future, don't talk to me any more about Franck! Is that clear?'

I came to a sudden halt in front of a machine a metre high, with a headlight on its front and a bulky red bag hanging from an enormous chrome frame.

‘What on earth is that?'

‘It's a vacuum cleaner. A Hoover. My father bought it in the United
States before the war. I came across it by chance in the bottom of a cupboard. I plugged it in. It started straight away. He hadn't used it for over ten years. It's noisy, but efficient.'

‘You can't keep it. It sounds like a pneumatic drill.'

‘It was a present from my father to my mother.'

I bent down to examine the machine. It was a collector's piece that belonged in a museum.

‘Anyway, the neighbours can get stuffed. Fancy a café au lait?'

She had not touched the kitchen, which was hard to get in to. She removed two bowls from the pile of crockery overflowing from the sink and washed them. We waited for the coffee to percolate and, as usual, I made a bit of room for myself by pushing away the plates and bottles. Cécile grabbed a dustbin bag and threw endless packages and boxes into it. That made space on the table.

‘I can't go on like this.'

‘I have to admit it's a bit cluttered.'

‘We'll get rid of the packaging.'

‘I'll take it down.'

‘Can you do me a favour?'

‘With pleasure.'

‘Would you give me a hand cleaning the flat?'

I hesitated for half a second. Time to reflect on the mountain of work in store.

‘Do you want to clean the whole flat from top to bottom? It's going to take… months. There are parts of it that are dreadful. You should treat yourself to a cleaning lady.'

‘I want to do it myself. I want it to be as it once was. Afterwards, when everything's clean, I'll ask the housekeeper to look after it.'

‘The job's going to kill us.'

‘Look, Michel, I've been thinking. I've taken a wrong turning. I'm starting again from scratch. I've let things get on top of me. It's over. I'm starting a new life. I'm tidying the flat. I'm finishing my thesis… or else I'll do psychology. And… I'm taking up sport.'

‘You?'

‘I've begun. One hour's gymnastics each morning, windows open.'

‘I don't believe you.'

‘We'll do it together.'

‘Me? I loathe it.'

‘If you go on like that, in twenty years' time you'll have a pot belly. We're too concerned with our heads.'

‘I'm excused from gym.'

She gave me a sharp little punch in the tummy, which made me double-up.

‘You've got no stomach muscles. You're a softy. Bloody hell, Michel, you've got to do something!'

‘So what sport should we do?'

‘Skating. In the open air, at Molitor. In winter, we'll go to swim at the Lutetia pool, and in summer, at Deligny.'

‘Cécile, skating's dangerous.'

‘Stop talking nonsense. We're going to come alive again.'

23

S
ince Igor was the only one to show him a little kindness and care, the man awaited his arrival impatiently. His memories only went back to the moment he awoke. What preceded this had vanished, the blackboard of his memory erased by an unknown hand. Nothing remained, or very little – just tiny fragments of a vast jigsaw puzzle, like those ghostly frescoes on the walls of churches where only shadowy figures and vague outlines remain. Igor did not ask any direct questions. He tried to stir up images and associations of ideas. He had bought a card game for children aged three to five, and showed him pictures of animals and objects to name, in the hope of triggering a cerebral reaction. The stranger paused, screwed up his eyes, searched the back of his mind, braced his neck and probed until he began to shake. Igor had the feeling that he was close to succeeding, that it required very little for him to pierce through the darkness into light, that a connection was being made, like a spring ready to burst forth. But then his face and his shoulders slumped and he fell back into his vacuum. In spite of his efforts, he was not making any progress. Vague, scattered snatches of speech, illogical and incoherent, were emitted. There was nothing to do but wait and hope, find the key that would open the mysterious door. He was a German or an Austrian and he remembered nothing. The little he did manage to convey was spoken in the coarse, abrasive accent which aroused bleak memories. They had considered other nationalities, but each time they arrived at the same conclusion. In those years, it did not do to be a German in France. Too much bitterness, too much resentment. Every week there was a film shown that stigmatized Nazi barbarities and informed the French of the heroism of the Resistance, and those who had had so little courage soon convinced themselves that they had all been heroes. All the more reason to settle scores with anyone you could lay hands on. This man, who was about forty-five and must have been born between 1910 and 1920, was bound to have served in the German army.

‘We had them for four years, we managed to get rid of them, and we don't want to see them over here any more.'

The nurses who were so adorable, the theatre attendants who were so devoted, the doctors who were so kindly, harped on, without exception, in the same way: out with him, and the sooner the better. It was unanimous. Sitting in an armchair all day and left on his own, the man was unaware of the uneasy atmosphere he created. When Igor arrived in the evening, he had to wash him and feed him like a child. No nurse wanted to tend to him. Igor was unable to curb the wave of hatred. He did his best to prevail upon them but came up against a brick wall.

‘It may well be that he's a Swiss German.'

‘He's a Boche!' Mazerin fulminated. ‘You know that as well as I do.'

‘You haven't the right to throw out a sick man!'

‘Physically, this fellow's as fit as a fiddle. We don't know how to treat amnesia. It can last ten years or for ever. This is a hospital, not a hospice. I'll give you twenty-four hours. After that, I'm kicking him out. I don't want to find myself with a strike on my hands because of this guy.'

He went out, slamming the door. The stranger smiled. Hard to make him understand that they hated him because of what happened more than ten years ago, when all he could remember were the last five days.

‘Where to begin? How can I explain the war to you?'

Someone knocked at the door. A black man with an athletic build came in and showed his police card.

‘Inspector Daniel Mahaut. Gobelins Police Station.'

The policeman had come to question the injured man about the attack on him. He had asked to be informed before the man left the hospital. Igor told him about the general anger and the thoughtless deportation. The inspector leant over towards the seated man.

‘I'm from the police. We're making investigations. Do you wish to bring proceedings?… Do you remember the assault on you, Monsieur?… Do you know who did this to you?'

The man stared at him before replying, a faint smile on his face.

‘An assault, you say? I don't remember.'

‘These people will never change!' moaned the inspector. ‘If his memory
does come back, he can drop by at the station. We're behind the town hall of the thirteenth arrondissement.'

A little later, Mazerin came by to tell him that he needed the bed and that he would have the patient thrown out the following morning. He would not countenance any delay and he turned round and walked away. The man said nothing. He stared at Igor with a trusting expression.

‘I earn barely enough to pay for my small hotel room. I won't be able to look after you. Maybe you're an absolute bastard, but that doesn't matter any more. Don't worry, I'm not going to desert you. You can move in with me. We'll manage, and if the boss doesn't like it, we'll go somewhere else.'