The Incorrigible Optimists Club (50 page)

‘I didn't know that.'

‘Michel, it's a joke people tell in Moscow. I feel sure that if Prokofiev had thought his death would rid us of Stalin, he would happily have committed suicide.'

We stayed by the boulevard Raspail entrance. We were sitting on the bench, waiting. It was still sunny. The others went home, waving at us, telling us that he wouldn't come and that we'd take root there. Dusk began to fall. We resigned ourselves. We smoked one last cigarette. We spotted Leonid walking along, with a crazed look in his eyes, each of his hands swathed in bandages.

‘Hey there, comrade, here we are!' Igor called out. ‘What's happened?'

Leonid took a moment to recover from his stupor.

‘Did you have an accident?'

‘I'm thirsty.'

We followed him inside. He appeared to be about to faint. His face was contorted and he started to sniffle. With his clumsy, swollen hands he took the small bottle from his pocket, opened it and breathed in several times through each nostril. He ordered a 102, added a few centimetres of water, knocked it back in one gulp and ordered three more from Jacky.

‘I'll have a 51,' I added.

‘You'll never guess what's happened to me,' he said, his voice quivering. ‘I saw her again.'

‘Who was that?'

‘Milène.'

15

‘
I
like working on Sundays,' Leonid began. ‘People are relaxed and the tips are better. I'd picked up a couple of Spaniards at the Ritz. They wanted the grand tour. An entire day. Malmaison, Auvers-sur-Oise and Versailles. A damn good fare. At porte Maillot, in order to avoid a motorcycle, I pull out and get stuck on the pavement. In the ten years I've been driving taxis, it's the first time I've burst a tyre. The very nice Spanish guy says to me: “Doesn't matter, we'll change the wheel and set off again.” Believe it or not, I never managed to take the wheel off. The nuts were really tightly screwed on. I strained like crazy. The Spaniard, who was strong as an ox, tried with all his might. Impossible. It was as if it was soldered on. They took another taxi. I struggled away with the fucking jack. After an hour, I managed to get it off. I was dripping with sweat. The palms of my hands were bleeding. I was grazed and covered in grease. The chemists are closed on Sundays. I'm going home, I said to myself, this is a bad day. A woman with a large suitcase comes up and asks me to take her to Orly. I tell her that I don't want to go there. She was leaving for New York. She asks me to drop her at the Invalides air terminal so that she can take the shuttle. Better than nothing. I had a bit of vodka left. I disinfect my cuts with it. The woman was screaming. It seemed as if it hurt her more than me. I put a handkerchief around each hand and I drove like that. I carried the woman's case to the Air France counter. She gave me a good tip and told me to go to the hospital to be vaccinated against tetanus. I was about to leave when someone called out my first name. A shiver came over me. I turned round. There she was. In front of me. She hadn't changed. She still looks like that American actress who is so beautiful. What's her name, Igor? You know, the one in the film?'

‘Deborah Kerr.'

‘The same eyes. The same hair. A queen. In my mind, it was as though
we had left one another that morning. I don't know how long we stood there face to face.

‘“How are you, Milène?”

‘“Fine.”

‘“You seem to be in good shape.”

‘“So do you.”

‘“You're still just as beautiful.”

‘“Don't go by appearances. The wrinkles are on the inside.”

‘“Don't you work at Orly any longer?”

‘“I was transferred here. It's five minutes away from the flat. I walk here.”

‘“Since when?”

‘“Almost five years.”

‘“That's incredible. I didn't want to accept a fare to Orly in case I bumped into you. I've come here dozens of times and I've never ever seen you.”

‘“We must have just missed one another.”

‘“I must go. The taxi's badly parked. I'm going to get a fine.”

‘“Are you a taxi driver?”

‘“Yes.”

‘“Are you happy?”

‘“I can't complain. Well. See you. Now, I'll have to avoid the Invalides.”

‘I walked away. I was happy. Coming across her was a gift I hadn't dared hope for. I couldn't ask for more. “Leonid…”, I heard. I turned around.

‘“I'm glad to have seen you again.”

‘“So am I.”

‘“I've often wondered what had become of you.”

‘“As you can see, not much. I've still got the watch you gave me.”

‘“So have I…what's the matter with your hands?”

‘The handkerchiefs were red. Blood was pouring everywhere. She arranged for a colleague to take over from her and took me to the air terminal's infirmary. She took out some cotton wool and hydrogen peroxide from the first aid box. She cleaned the wounds. I observed the busy and meticulous way she looked after me. It was bliss. I wasn't in pain. She smelled of that very mild scent. I forget what it's called.

‘“How did you do this?”

‘“I had a problem with… the car.”

‘She put on these bandages for me. We went to the cafeteria at the air terminal. There weren't many people there. We had coffee. We talked, about what I don't know – just as we used to do. Sometimes we were silent. We looked at one another. It's difficult to piece together bits of time you didn't spend together.

‘“Aren't you going to have problems at work?”

‘“On Sundays it's quiet. What about your car?”

‘“I couldn't care less!”

‘“Did you never try to see me again?”

‘“Milène, I'd made a promise. To that guy.”

‘“You're the only man I've ever known who keeps his promises.”

‘“One can't just have faults. I've thought about you every day.”

‘“I've often said to myself: Leonid must have got himself a job as a pilot. Perhaps he's in that plane, up there, in the sky. He's happy. I was sure of that.”

‘“It's true that if I'd been told I'd end up as a taxi driver, I would never have believed it.”

‘“Shall we see each other again?”

‘“I don't know. What about my promise?”

‘“Are you with someone?”

‘“I'm free as a bird. And you?”

‘“Why do you think I'm working on Sundays? Let's have dinner together, if you like.”

‘“On one condition. That I pay.”

‘And that's it. We're meeting tomorrow evening. I'm going to pick her up outside where she lives at eight o'clock. Life is beginning again.'

‘I'm happy for you,' Igor said.

‘I'm like a kid who's feeling nervous about his first date. What do you reckon, Michel?'

‘You'll be able to take fares to Orly again.'

Igor bought a bottle of sparkling wine to celebrate this miraculous meeting.

‘It's not a miracle. It's because of the comet.'

‘That's a load of crap!' Igor exclaimed. ‘It's luck.'

‘This time, it may be different,' said Leonid. ‘I was careful. I said nothing against the Rosenbergs.'

‘Leonid, they were innocent!' I proclaimed.

‘As far as I'm concerned, they were guilty! But from now on I'm keeping my trap shut.'

‘You're right,' Igor concluded. ‘It's the secret of happiness.'

We were in the midst of discussing fate, the turmoil of our feelings, the influence stars have on taxi drivers, and the mystery of our lives, when a courier entered. He had an envelope in his hand, with the proof that Igor had not been bragging. To make amends, Rudolf Nureyev was offering him two seats for
Swan Lake
with Margot Fonteyn, a gala evening at the Opéra de Paris for the unveiling of Chagall's ceiling, in the presence of the artist, of Mongénéral, of Malraux and
le Tout
-
Paris
. Igor was over the moon. Leonid did not drop any hints. Igor understood. With a heavy heart, he gave him the two tickets. Leonid invited Milène. He told her that Nureyev had sent him two invitations. She was impressed. She accepted with pleasure. Leonid had to hire a dinner jacket and buy himself a pair of shiny leather evening shoes. He did not regret it.

16

A
s I left the Balto, I said to myself that if this was the day for encounters, I would meet Cécile again. I'd have liked her to know Camille. I rang home to say what I was doing. My mother asked me not to come back too late. I called by at quai des Grands-Augustins. I hadn't been there for months: I had given up going there. The concierge was not around. There was no post in the letterbox. I walked up the three floors without putting on the lights. I rang the doorbell for a long time. No one answered. I was convinced that our lives would start again from where they had broken off, as though nothing had happened. I heard a noise. I waited, but no one opened the door. The key to her apartment was on my keyring. If she'd wanted to, she would have asked me to return it to her, but she had left it with me. I went in. It was dark inside the flat. Glimmers of light shone through the open shutters. I switched on all the lights. There was the same disarray, with even more dust. In the kitchen, the fridge was empty and had been unplugged. Cécile's bedroom. Pierre's. Everything was motionless. I went back into the drawing room. Nothing had been moved since my previous visit. My attention was drawn to a cardboard box on the table. A photographic frame was propped up on top of it against a pile of paperbacks. It hadn't been there last time. One of my photographs of the Médicis fountain stood prominently on top of the box. One of the five bought at Fotorama. I stood rooted to the spot in front of a close-up of Acis and Galatea. There could be no doubt. To set my mind at rest, I turned the frame over. On the reverse was the Fotorama stamp. The mystery collector was Cécile. No one could have bought these photographs other than her. Why had she left one of them as proof? To show that she had been there and to send me a friendly greeting? To tell me, I haven't forgotten you and I loved your photos, or something else? She knew that I would be coming. She had left the photo propped up against the books, on top of the box in the middle of the table, so as to be certain that I would not
miss them. Perhaps she had left a note for me? I leafed through the books, rummaged through the drawers, went through the piles of documents, newspapers and magazines. I took no precautions. I signalled my arrival like a policeman signing a search warrant. In the waste-paper basket, there were shreds of burnt paper and scraps of charred postcards. I emptied them onto the carpet, but couldn't find anything amongst them.

Pierre's possessions were inside the cardboard box: a bundle of letters from his lovers, several of which had not been opened, his wallet containing an address book and a few banknotes, and inside a flap with a shiny clasp were some coins; a page torn from a spiral notepad, folded in eight, with the recipe for a Molotov cocktail, and, jumbled together, some photographs, his army record, his student cards, some exercise books filled with notes and pasted-in press cuttings, his Algerian notebooks, his letters and Cécile's replies, the first six chapters of her thesis on Aragon, and a dozen or so photographs of her that I had taken in the Luxembourg, with an elastic band around them. I knew her. This was no coincidence. It was deliberately staged. I sat down and lit a cigarette. I tried to decode the message she was sending me. And then, I understood. She was leaving everything to me, letting me have it, giving it to me. It was a present to make up for her silence and her disappearance. Or an exchange. She was telling me that with these photos of the fountain, I had come back to her, and that she was keeping the others as evidence of our pact. I took the box along with its contents. I left the books on the table and, propped up against them, once I had signed it, the picture of the fountain so that she would know that I had called by and that we would see each other again one day. Whenever she decided we should.

Who remembered Pierre nowadays? What remained of him? Of his huge smile, his impassioned ideas, his determination to change the world by killing all the bastards? Did the frail hearts he had conquered still think of the man who rejected them so that they would not become too attached to him? He lay, forgotten, in some provincial cemetery. In my arms I was carrying a box weighing four or five kilos, his life's work, rather like a blackboard rubbed out in a hurry. All of a sudden, I heard his voice: ‘Hey, little bugger!'

It was definitely him. I turned around. I knew there would be no one there, just anonymous passers-by and my battered memory. I put down the box on a car bonnet.

‘You really have become a little bugger! Is that what I taught you? Go on like that and you'll become a little shit like the others. Don't pretend you don't understand. Look at yourself in the mirror and you'll want to be sick. You're not allowed to change like this. Not you. Otherwise, I shall have been of no use at all.'

I didn't need to ask him any questions. I knew. There are some dangerous words in the French language. For example:
méprise
, which means an error or a mistake. A
méprise
is amusing. It's comic. Except when it changes and becomes the verb
mépriser
: to scorn or despise. Pierre was right. I could not lie to Camille any longer and let her think I was a poet and an artist when I was merely an imposter. I had made up my mind to tell her the truth. I would live a life of transparency with her and not a lie, neither error nor scorn. I phoned Camille. It was late. A man with a strong pied noir accent answered.

‘Good evening, I'd like to speak to Camille. It's important.'

There was a groan and a long silence. Down the phone, I heard: ‘Camille, there's someone who wants to talk to you.'

I recognized Camille's voice in the background, asking who it was.

‘I don't know. This is not the time for phone calls, my girl.'

‘Hello?'

‘It's me. I'm ringing you because…'

‘You're crazy! Do you know what time it is?'

‘We must see each other tomorrow.'

‘Tomorrow's Monday. I've classes until six o'clock. I can't.'

‘It's very important, Camille. I'll wait for you.'

She hung up. It was a weight off my shoulders. I went home with Pierre's box. I left it in a corner of my bedroom. On it, I wrote in large letters: ‘Do not open'.

I waited by the fountain. It was half past six. From the Lycée Fénelon to the Luxembourg takes less than ten minutes, without hurrying. She would
not come. She must have had a problem or she had not appreciated my late phone call and was annoyed with me. We might never see each other again. My heart was thumping, I had a lump in my throat and my shoulders sagged. I was gazing at Polyphemus with his raised arm and that restrained motion that broke the perspective. At that very moment, I felt a strange sensation. A sort of cleaving in two, and an unaccustomed lightness, as though there were another person inside me. It took me completely by surprise. I would never have believed that this would ever happen to me. I took out a scrap of paper. I held my breath. I shuddered and out it came. In a burst. Without me pausing for a moment to ask myself what I was doing, I wrote eight verses. At speed. Like Sacha. I didn't have time to read them again. I looked up, my pen in the air. Camille was standing there.

‘I'm sorry. I was kept back by the philosophy teacher.'

I handed her the sheet of paper. She took it and read it.

‘Michel, it's very beautiful.'

‘Do you think so?'

‘I love it. It's not as sad as the others.'

I stood up. I took her in my arms. She closed her eyes. I kissed her. She didn't protest. On the contrary, she clasped me to her tightly. We remained there, intertwined, each of us overwhelmed by the other.

‘Why did you ring yesterday evening?'

I hesitated. Should I reveal the truth? It is quite clear that women love poets. I looked into her eyes and I smiled. In the end, I said nothing.