The Incorrigible Optimists Club (6 page)

‘What'll you have?'

We found ourselves at the bar. I had a café au lait, like her.

‘You know Pierre has left his records for you. I'm not going to cart them over to your place.'

Even though I protested and came up with a string of excuses, it was to no avail. I promised to come round one Saturday to collect them. As she left, she gave me a kiss on the cheek. I caught the smell of her lemony perfume. That night, I slept badly. Maria told me one should not drink café au lait late in the evening.

7

F
or some time, I kept a low profile. I could sense my mother holding back. The business was going through its tax audit and the inspector was asking awkward questions that she could not answer. Her smile had disappeared. She spent a huge amount of time plugging the holes and she feared a harsh penalty. My father, who worked as a sales director, knew nothing about management. She never missed an opportunity to remind him that she could not rely on him and had to cope with the unrewarding task of managing the business on her own. She spent hours on the telephone to Maurice, who gave her useful advice. For Mother's Day, my father arranged for an enormous bunch of thirty-nine red roses to be delivered, and he booked a table at La Coupole. When my mother returned home in a hurry, shortly before midday, I wished her a happy Mother's Day and showed her the wonderful bouquet. She scarcely glanced at it, she was so preoccupied about getting back to the shop to resolve some details with the chartered accountant before a meeting she was due to have with the inspector the following day. She left us without a word and rushed off without saying thank you for the flowers, which remained on the table. My father behaved as if nothing were the matter and cursed the sadistic officials, who had no consideration for wives and mothers whom they obliged to work on Sundays. He put the flowers in a crystal vase without removing the wrapping. We set off for lunch without her. Her absence ruined our appetites. When she came home in the evening, she never touched the bouquet, which remained in its cellophane paper. After two days the roses withered and Maria threw them away.

For her birthday, I had wanted to tell her about my moving up to the third year, without letting it be known that this had been achieved thanks to Nicolas. I told myself that only the result mattered. But I did not mention it; either then, or on any other day. She never asked me the question. For her, it was a given. My father, on the other hand, who had given up
his studies after taking the school certificate, was proud and happy. He announced the good news to every neighbour he came across with as much delight as if I had been accepted at the Ecole Polytechnique. He invited us to the cinema. Juliette and I wanted to see
Le Voyage en ballon
. He was not keen. He preferred
Ben Hur
. It was sold out. He resigned himself to
Le Voyage
. Outside the cinema, people were queuing round the block. My father tried to jump the queue, but despite his skill at easing himself into the crowd discreetly and without a fuss, he was spotted by some moaners. We strolled along the boulevards. We came to a cinema where
A bout de souffle
was showing. Franck had talked enthusiastically to us about it. No one was waiting. The woman at the box office advised us against it. It was not a film for children. My father thrust us into the auditorium nonetheless. He and Juliette loathed the film. We left before the end.

‘How could Franck have liked such a load of rubbish?' he moaned.

I acted dumb. Deep down, I knew why Franck had liked the film so much. And I loved it for the same reasons.

Once the baccalauréat exams had started, school became less important. Nicolas and I spent our days in the Luxembourg gardens, reading, dawdling or rescuing boats that were stuck in the pond. When evening came, we went to the Balto for our daily game of baby-foot. I still now and then noticed the door with the green velvet curtain at the back of the restaurant, behind the benches where the lovers sat. It was a place one did not enter. Odd-looking men, never women, came to the Balto and simply vanished behind the curtain. I often wondered where the door led. None of my baby-foot friends knew. Old father Marcusot fobbed me off with a ‘You're not old enough', which disheartened me. Jacky used to disappear in there with drinks. When I questioned him, he shrugged his shoulders. Nicolas had brushed me off, saying: ‘What the hell does it matter to you what's behind that door?'

‘Come on now, you donkeys, are you playing or dreaming?' Samy called out, cocksure as ever, and off we went for another game.

8

A
t the end of June, what I had been dreading finally happened. Cécile was walking towards me up the Boulevard Saint-Michel. I could not avoid her. She rushed over to me. She was excited and spoke without finishing her sentences. She talked at the same frenetic speed as her brother. She asked me to come with her to the Sorbonne in a voice that brooked no opposition. Without waiting for an answer, she took me by the arm and dragged me into the university building. I was surprised by the continuous flow of students who walked up and down the stairs, amidst a pandemonium that required you to shout to make yourself heard. She hesitated, looking panic-stricken and ready to run away, then she gripped my hand very tightly. We went up to the first floor. She walked straight ahead, tense, head held high, pale, forcing her way through the dense mass of bodies with difficulty.

‘Michel, go and look over there, please,' she said plaintively.

I turned around and saw a group of students congregated around some noticeboards on which the exam results were displayed. Some of them were cock-a-hoop and were waving their hands in triumph, others had collapsed or were in tears. I shoved my way through and searched for her name among the endless lists. Sudden surges of the crowd moved me several feet away. I used my shoulders and elbows to steady myself with as much determination as if I were the one involved. Her name appeared: ‘Cécile Vermont: pass, with merit'. I struggled to extricate myself. Her eyes were closed. I yelled: ‘Cécile, you've passed!'

I rushed over to her. We fell into each other's arms. She hugged me until I almost suffocated. I could feel her body, her panting breath on my neck, her smell, her shudders of joy. The embrace seemed to last for an eternity. My head was spinning. We remained pressed to one another for a few seconds longer than the mere explosion of delight at the results warranted. She took my face in her hands and murmured: ‘Thanks, little brother, thanks.'

It was the first time she had called me that. This new intimacy agreed with me wonderfully. When she kissed me on the cheek, my heart thumped. We walked back through the university in a jubilant mood. Up on her cloud, Cécile laughed, hopped from one foot to another, hugged everybody and cheered up those who had not got through. As if to emphasize her joy, she introduced me just by my first name. Several students gave me a puzzled look. I could sense them staring behind my back. I felt as light as a sparrow. We found ourselves on the Place de la Sorbonne once more among groups of students discussing their results. Cécile gradually recovered her natural calm. She spotted Franck before he saw her. As soon as he saw her looking so happy, he realized and took her in his arms. He whirled her round. They spent a long time kissing. Franck offered us a drink in a jam-packed café. Cécile began to talk about her exams and the traps she had known how to avoid. It was impossible to interrupt her. We didn't want to. With her short hair and her tomboyish figure, she looked the spitting image of Jean Seberg. Just as beautiful, just as radiant, with the same grace and the same fragile intensity, except that Cécile had dark hair and large brown eyes.

She wanted us to go and pick up the records that Franck had left for me. My protests were useless, as were Franck's. We found ourselves in the huge apartment on the quai des Grands-Augustins, which might have seemed gloomy had it not been for the cheerful amount of clutter everywhere. Cécile had not touched a thing since Pierre's farewell party: the empty bottles of alcohol, the books piled up, the overflowing ashtrays, the dirty plates and the paintings lying all over the floor produced a strange atmosphere in this empty place, which was far too big for her. She cleared away the clothes that were heaped on the sofa and shoved them onto the floor to make room for us to sit down. She went to look for the records. We could hear her rummaging in the cupboards as she moaned about the mess everywhere. She reappeared and then vanished immediately. Franck put his arm around my shoulder.

‘Apparently you didn't care for
A bout de souffle
?'

‘I liked it personally. It was Papa and Juliette who didn't. They couldn't understand why you had liked the film.'

Franck looked thoughtful: ‘I love a girl who's got a very pretty neck, very pretty breasts, a very pretty voice, very pretty wrists, a very pretty head, very pretty knees…'

His eyes were moist and there was a furtive smile on his lips. Cécile entered the room carrying a box of records in her arms. There were far too many. I was embarrassed to take them. Cécile spelled out her broth-er's intentions: ‘Pierre's not giving them to you. He's lending them to you.'

Since I looked doubtful, she grabbed a bundle of envelopes held together by a rubber band and read us his most recent letter:

Dearest Cécile,

The holidays drag on. The weather's perfect. At night, we freeze. We're still at our base camp at Souk-Ahras. Since the Morice line has turned out to be completely useless, they're reinforcing it with the Challe line. This is serious stuff. The fence is electrified all the way along with five thousand volts and at certain points it's over thirty thousand. Best not to touch it. I'm working with a guy from Electricité de France who knows all about high voltage and, what with my military skills, if I don't find a job in management, I could retrain in electricity. As incredible as it may seem, the French army has learnt lessons from past mistakes. The heavy and supposedly impassable Maginot line-style fortifications are no more, the Challe line is a simple cordon used to detect break-ins and, as such, it's pretty diabolical. We have a system that enables us to identify where the line has been cut and we can send out units straight away to step in and prevent people infiltrating from Tunisia. As soon as there's an alert, we fire off star shells. What with surveillance radar and the mined barbed-wire system, the place has become too quiet. For weeks, nothing has happened. You'd think you were a character in The Desert of the Tartars. I think of myself as Lieutenant Drogo. Except I've got nobody here with whom I can discuss anything. Buzzati's book is unrealistic. His fortress has an unbelievable number of intellectuals per square metre. Here, it's real life: nothing but thickos. We look ahead of us. The enemy's over there. We wonder where. There's nothing but
shrubs and scree. Perhaps they're somewhere else. We spend our days waiting for the guys from the ALN and we get bored to death. I spend hours monitoring the echoes on the radar. The only time we got the alert, it was a wild boar that had managed to get itself trapped. This at least improves the rations. Finally, what bugs me most is that I'm starting to alter my views. I was convinced that we were all bastards, that the local inhabitants were against us and wanted independence. Now I realise you shouldn't listen to the pet theories of people miles away/nowhere near the conflict. You have to see what's going on in these places. The army is doing a real job here and you mustn't believe the crap you hear. There are nothing but bad solutions to choose from. Few people can have spoken such crap as I have. Apart from Franck, perhaps. That was in Paris. Here, it's different. We're not in a café chatting, we've got our hands in the shit. I feel as if I'm a windsock. I keep on changing my mind. At times, I ask myself what the hell we're doing here and afterwards I realize that, if we leave, there's going to be a ghastly mess. They're not joking, the guys confronting us. But they're not just coming to pick a quarrel with us, they know that we're well equipped. They never attack from the front.

The Saint-Justisme is taking shape. After some tedious starts, I've filled two exercise books that I found at a nearby school whose pupils were evacuated over a year ago. I am more and more convinced that democracy is nothing but a hoax invented by the bourgeoisie so they can run the system permanently. We're going to have to smash everything, without regard or discussion. Individual freedoms are snares and fantasies. What's the use of being free to say what you think if you have a bloody awful salary and you live like a dog? You express yourself, you enjoy the so-called freedoms of the pseudo-democracy, but your life is rotten. We've had revolutions and wars. We've overthrown governments. Nothing changes. The rich remain rich and the poor just as poor. It's always the same people who are exploited. The only freedom that should be given to citizens is economic freedom. We've got to get back to basics: ‘To each according to his means, to each according to his needs.' More than ever, the only real power is economic and that's what
we have to take back. It won't be by fair means, but by foul. Too bad if, once again, we have to eliminate the supporters of the old order. If we have failed to create a new revolution and not sent to the guillotine those who have usurped economic power, we shall have done nothing but gossip. Elections are merely a sham.

I'm longing to know the results of your exams. I'm not in the least worried – you'll pass with flying colours as usual. You have to learn to have self-confidence. As soon as you've got your results, let me know. Did that little bugger Michel come by to take the records? I don't understand what he's waiting for. If he doesn't make the most of the opportunity, too bad for him. I'm not going to lend them to anyone else, except Franck. It's up to you. I'm not giving them, I'm lending them…

Cécile wanted to reassure me: ‘You know, when Pierre says “little bugger”, he doesn't mean it unkindly.'

I did not want to take the lot. I made my selection. I counted out thirty-nine of them. Cécile refused to make a list.

‘Don't worry, you can return them when he comes home. He's not giving them to you.'

I left twenty behind. They could be swapped if I wanted. True to form, Franck stuck his oar in. Pierre's letter must have made him feel uncomfortable. He put on his bad-tempered expression.

‘You'd be better off swotting up your maths instead of listening to rock. What's happened to your good resolutions? Vanished. Have you given up already? You'll get failed next year and you'll regret it all your life. Pierre's right, you're just a little bugger.'

On the spur of the moment, I thought I was going to grab hold of him. Cécile came to my defence. We had something in common, she said. She was allergic to maths as well. She suffered from a basic incomprehension. Pierre had struggled with it for years. He had tried everything possible to help her improve. He had shouted. He had shaken her like a plum tree. In vain. She had been lucky to get herself out of it by doing a literature degree. Franck didn't miss a trick: ‘Right! Is that what you want to do? A literature degree?'

Cécile gave him a strange look. She was not amused. Because of me, the maths and the literature degree, they started to quarrel. The sound of their voices grew louder and increasingly sharp. Eventually they sounded like two watchdogs barking at one another. He went out, slamming the door. Cécile was annoyed. So was I. We sat on the sofa in silence. We thought Franck would come back. He did not come back.

‘Why do we have this problem?' she murmured.

‘You mustn't be cross with him; he's not very smart at times. He doesn't think about what he's saying.'

‘I'm talking to you about maths, little bro'. We don't understand a thing. It's not normal.'

‘It's in our nature. It's nothing to be ashamed of. In general, maths brains are useless in literary matters and they're proud of it.'

But she was so resistant to my explanations that I gave up. She insisted that we had to resolve this problem. Since it was one we shared, we would join forces. If a guy who was gifted was incapable of teaching maths to an idiot, then perhaps two idiots could manage if they were taught together. She did not want to remain a failure. I was not convinced by her reasoning. If a lame man runs with two crutches, it doesn't make him a sprinter. But I was in no position to refuse. I agreed to her suggestion of our taking maths lessons together in a spirit of hypocrisy.

‘It's a very good idea.'

When I brought the records home, there was a fuss. My mother wanted to know where they came from, who had given them to me and why, on the pretext that she herself had never been given anything, neither records, nor anything else. Franck managed to reassure her. Because of the neighbours, she forced me to play them quietly, which, for rock'n'roll, is an aberration. On several occasions, I lugged the record player and the discs over to Nicolas's place, since he lived in a modern building. We took the opportunity to listen to Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis until our ears were buzzing. Despite his insistent requests, I refused to lend the records to him. Then, our neighbours, who lived above us, moved home and their flat remained empty for several months. I waited until my mother went out
and then I turned up the sound; just before she came home, I lowered it to the approved volume. It was a breath of oxygen in a monastic world. I spent hours on my bed listening to records, and, even though I didn't understand a thing, I knew the words by heart. Maria couldn't have cared less. Juliette felt obliged to make comments. To begin with, being very keen on variety shows, she used to enjoy Gilbert Bécaud. She changed her mind, and eventually came to adore rock. It produced a miraculous effect on her: she kept quiet. We turned up the sound. Up to the normal volume at which you need to listen to rock: as loud as the speaker would allow. There was a ring at the door. I switched off the sound. The woman who lived on the fourth floor wanted to know whether, by any chance, it was from our flat that…

Juliette showed herself in an unexpected new light. She lied better than me, and I was an expert. With her natural ingenuity, she opened her eyes wide, and put on a bemused, open-mouthed expression to protest about this infernal din. Seeing her looking so innocent, no one on this earth would have imagined that anything but the absolute truth could come from the lips of this angelic face. I couldn't resist the pleasure of making fun of a girl who went to mass every Sunday, went to confession on Thursdays and was in the priest's good books: ‘What does Father Strano say? Do you confess your fibs?'