The Incorrigible Optimists Club (58 page)

2

I
t was a rotten summer. A July that was more like November. It rained and we froze.

Igor was not at home. I didn't want to leave a note in his letterbox. I called on Werner in rue Champollion. He was the only one, along with Igor, whom I could trust. He was sitting on the steps of his projection room, sheltering from the rain and smoking a cigarette. He seemed pleased to see me. He was showing
America America
and he invited me in, but I didn't feel like going to the cinema. I told him everything.

‘Nasty business,' he murmured. ‘You're right to tell me about it.'

Werner and Igor took care of everything. It was all settled in three days. From what I understood, Daniel Mahaut stepped in to smooth over the difficulties. The members of the Club banded together to pay for a funeral at Montparnasse cemetery. They might have done better to have offered him their handshakes sooner. But apparently, it's not possible to forgive. Each of them remained caught in his own trap. It functioned very well.

When I woke up, on the morning of the funeral, the rain was still bucketing down. Do they postpone funerals because of downpours? Each crossroads reminded me of a heated discussion, each café of another time in my life. Camille, Cécile, Pierre and Franck resurfaced in my mind, like those disjointed puppets that come to life with jerky movements, those restless dreams which could be nightmares or joys. Things should have lasted for ever between us, for dozens of years, and resulted in affairs and break-ups, entire lifetimes and children. Instead everything had disappeared like a flash in the pan. Even though I was unsure of his whereabouts, I knew that Franck was in a safe place and that sooner or later my father would tell me where he was hiding. As for Cécile, our story could not just stop there. Then I remembered what both Igor and Sacha, each in their separate way, had kept on saying to me: ‘You're alive, don't complain, everything is possible for you.'

We gathered at the funeral parlour on boulevard Edgar-Quinet. All the members of the Club were there for Sacha's burial in the Jewish section. The old-timers and the newcomers. Madeleine came with Jacky and Samy, as well as a few customers. There were also Sacha's neighbours, the concierge, the shopkeepers from rue Monge, the owner of Fotorama and some other people whom I'd not met. I wasn't sure how they had known about it. Even Lognon was there, standing slightly apart as usual. We didn't know whether Big Ears was there on duty or whether he had come because eventually, in spite of himself and in spite of us, he had become a member of this club. They all looked upset. Sacha would never have believed that there would be so many people at his funeral. When it comes to death, people patch up their quarrels because they know that in this respect, they are all equal. Each of us sheltered from the rain as best he could. There was a forest of umbrellas, but they weren't much use. The gusts of wind blew them inside out. The gutters were swollen with raging waters that flooded onto the pavement. We were dripping wet and we squelched about in puddles and mud. The sky was black and we could hear the rumble of thunder. With Igor and Werner at the front, and Imré and Vladimir behind, the coffin was lifted out of the hearse on outstretched arms and placed on the ground. The undertaker's men attached ropes to the handles and lowered it into the grave, which was filled with water. Sacha's coffin disappeared into a muddy morass. Igor came and stood opposite the drowned grave. The wind blew his skullcap off. Werner stood over him with an enormous umbrella. Igor took out a small booklet from his pocket and began to recite a passage in a strange language, stumbling over the words. From all sides, the other members of the Club came and stood in a line and accompanied him.

‘It's the Kaddish. The prayer of the dead,' Gregorios whispered to me.

They proceeded in a solemn, slow, staccato tone, stressing each syllable, without bothering about the rain that was drenching them. It was Sacha's atonement. The forgetting of the past, the hatreds and the misdeeds. It was the assurance that they were reunited and that nothing would ever separate them again. They ended simultaneously, took three steps backwards and bowed. Igor was weeping. Still protected by Werner's umbrella,

he stood on his own in front of the grave to receive our condolences. Everybody stood in single file, shook hands, embraced him and uttered a kind word. I was the last to go past. I didn't embrace him. We stood looking at one another for a few seconds. I had tears in my eyes. I handed him a bag. Inside it were the three ledgers written in Cyrillic characters and the folder of photographs. He flicked through it. He smiled at me sadly, ran his hand through my hair, and murmured a ‘Thank you' that I can still hear. It was the last time that I saw them all together.

After Sacha's burial, the weather turned fine and summer began.

You shall leave everything you love most dearly:
this is the arrow that the bow of exile
shoots first. You are to know the bitter taste
of others' bread, how salt it is, and know
how hard a path it is for one who goes
descending and ascending others' stairs.

D
ANTE
Paradiso
, Canto
XVII
*

 

 

 

 

 

*
From
The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Paradiso
, translated by Allen Mandelbaum