The Islanders (2 page)

Though he did not speak Italian, he gathered people were talking about food, and a gong sounded from his stomach. He had arranged to meet Jeanne at one o’clock and it was now quarter to. Jeanne was always on time but since he was always early, it was as if she was always late. He was already feeling annoyed with her.

Since that morning, Jeanne had seen three dwarves: the first on her way out of Versailles, on Avenue de Paris, the second while dropping her brother off outside the Louvre and the third, a woman, shopping at La Samaritaine. Some days are like that. Other days, you keep seeing film actors or bumping into people you haven’t seen for a long time, or take the same taxi twice, or nothing happens at all.

She was looking for a gift for Rodolphe but had no idea what to get. She would rather not give him anything, if she was honest. He had been even more odious than normal recently. But it was Christmas, and even naughty children were entitled to a present. She eventually opted for a set of bathroom scales, an unequivocally tasteless object covered in brown velour with a brass rim, Jules Verne style. It was a completely useless gift since Rodolphe didn’t care two hoots about his obesity and would not be able to see the reading anyway. But it was heavy and came in a big box, so it would make a nice present.

Having made her selection, she could not resist a look at
the toy section, in spite of the swarms of harassed parents and overexcited children. All the dolls looked as if they had walked out of horror films, they were so alarmingly lifelike. Some had teeth and spoke inane words with metallic voices. It was terrifying. The dolls of her childhood did not speak, eat, wee or poo. They were either stiff or floppy. The first black doll went on sale when she was twelve. She was sorry not to have had one, but it was too late by then. That was the age she became old overnight. One morning she got up and her toys no longer spoke to her. They had become objects, things. She touched them, turned them over in her hands as though seeing them for the first time, and began to cry. Her childhood had run away during the night.

The pistols, rifles and submachine guns for boys looked more authentic than the real things. The kids were trying them out for size, making them rattle into action with expert ease. A mini Sarajevo. Had a terrorist slipped a real weapon among them, there would have been utter carnage. This was a truly false world. Anything could be forged, everything could be questioned; calves were being cloned and one could not even be sure of remaining the same person from one day to the next. Plagiarism had become the ultimate, fatal art form and illusion the universal religion.

Jeanne couldn’t care less. What was wrong with sending a cloned Jeanne to work and to pick up Rodolphe from the Louvre? What would she do with herself in the meantime? Nothing. She would be dead and thanks to her double, everyone would think she was still alive.

A child came along and threw himself at her legs. He already had the face of an old codger. With twenty years of teaching behind her, nothing surprised Jeanne any more. She had loved kids and then hated them, and now she was as indifferent to them as she was to adults. It was just a case of putting up with them and waving them away like flies from time to time.

As Jeanne left the department store carrying the scales under her arm, the cold air struck her full in the face, in stark contrast to the stifling heat inside La Samaritaine. For a few seconds it took her breath away. She didn’t actually mind this weather – the coldest since the winter of 1917 – any more than she had the heat wave the previous summer. She liked extremes. It was the same with dwarves: they were out of the ordinary.

She arrived in the room containing
The Raft of the Medusa
at exactly one o’clock. Rodolphe looked peeved.

‘It’s me.’

‘Yes, I know it’s you. You should change your perfume, then I could imagine I was meeting someone else.’

‘What difference would it make? You don’t like anybody.’

‘That’s not true. It’s them that don’t like me.’

‘Well, I like you. How about a nice
choucroute
?’

It was all yellow, the yellow of old teeth which would soon turn brown. But it was clean, perfectly maintained by Madeleine, his mother’s cleaning lady. She was the one who had found her a few days earlier, lying in bed with her hands clutching the edge of the sheets and her eyes eternally trained on a crack in the ceiling in the shape of Corsica.

Dead people don’t decorate the way we do. They put crocheted doilies with pineapple or spiral patterns all over the place – on top of the TV, underneath the phone, draped over cushions like spiders’ webs. Olivier was unsure where to put himself in the cramped, overheated flat he was setting foot in for the first time. Certain items of furniture and ornaments were familiar from his childhood, like the little writing desk he used to like to hide under. On its right foot, you could still see the mark where a pedal car had crashed into it. Or the brass lamp shade his father had proudly brought home one night, a gift from a client. These recollections aside, everything was foreign to him.
On her husband’s death, Olivier’s mother had sold the house in Le Chesnay and moved into this small one bedroom flat. ‘Now that I’m
all on my own
’ (and she had really emphasised the ‘all on my own’) ‘it’s plenty big enough for me.’

She would no doubt have liked Olivier to be up in arms at the idea of selling the family home, but in fact he couldn’t care less. He had completely wiped Versailles from the map.

Getting off the train two hours earlier at the gloomy, silent, freezing Gare Rive Droite, he had been surprised to feel nothing at all. It could have been any other provincial town, curled up in its shell, hiding from the cold and dark. He was relieved, because he had been approaching his reunion with the place with a degree of apprehension. It was silly to have worried; after all, it was only stone, cobbles and bricks. And yet nothing had changed. Looking out of the window of the taxi taking him to his mother’s home, he recognised everything, even if a few shops had changed hands. The lead-coloured avenues and boulevards fanning out from Place d’Armes in front of the chateau were still the same. A quilt of snow softened the street corners and padded the pavements. Versailles was wearing a wig. He had been to pick up the keys from Madeleine, whom his mother had often talked about, but whom he had never met.

From the moment they laid eyes on one another, he could see she had hated him for a long time.

‘Oh, Monsieur Olivier, you look so much like her! My sincere condolences, Monsieur Olivier. It’s so sad! Excuse me.’

She plunged her nose (which looked like a rancid hunk of Gruyère) into a handful of tissues, while continuing to give him the evil eye. She was much as he had pictured her, voluntarily enslaved, even more of a Versaillaise than her mistress. A by-product. She had insisted on coming with him to the home of his ‘poor maman’, whom he sadly could not see until the next day because the undertakers had transferred the body to the morgue.
The trouble was, with the weather like this and the Christmas holidays approaching, people were dying in large numbers. The funeral might not be held until the 26th or even 27th.

‘The 27th?’

‘That’s what they told me!’

For a good half-hour she carried on about his poor mother’s poor armchair, his poor mother’s poor mirror, his poor mother’s poor life. All the above swam in a poor whiff of poor leeks.

‘Thanks for everything, Madeleine. If you’ll excuse me, I’m rather tired …’

‘Of course, you poor thing, I understand. I’ll leave you to your memories. If you need anything at all …’

‘That’s very kind of you, Madeleine. Thanks again.’

Everything he touched had been touched by the hand of a dead person and he found the idea vaguely disgusting, even if that person was his mother. He wondered where he was going to sleep. Not in the bed, that was for sure. Tomorrow he would look for a hotel, but he didn’t have the strength to go out again in the bitter cold tonight, roaming this ghost town in search of a place to stay. The sofa, maybe? Curling up like a winkle, he should fit. He plumped up the cushions and removed the ubiquitous lace doilies from the arms. Before anything else, he must call Odile to let her know he had arrived safely and that proceedings might be delayed.

What had the old bat been talking about, having the funeral on the 26th or 27th? It was the 21st today. A whole week to kill here! She must have got her wires crossed. Either she was losing the plot or was saying it to wind him up because she couldn’t bear him. He could just picture his mother leaning on Madeleine’s bony shoulder and pouring her heart out. ‘Ungrateful child … cast me aside like an old apple …’ That was exactly what he should have done instead of having her down on the coast with them for a
fortnight every August. She was never satisfied, always putting Odile down, constantly criticising and complaining – her legs, her shoulders, her head, off with her head … No doubt the two old biddies exchanged notes on everything. He would find out for himself tomorrow.

It was an old telephone with finger-holes, covered in garnet-red velour with an elegant trim of gold braid. The receiver smelt of dried spit.

‘Odile? It’s me.’

‘How are you? Did you get there OK?’

‘Yes, I’m here now. How are you?’

‘I’m OK, but it’s getting a bit much. Have you seen how busy it is everywhere? Mireille came to give me a hand. She said she’d help out until you get back.’

‘About that … the funeral might not happen until the 26th or 27th.’

‘What? What do you mean?’

‘Calm down. It was Madeleine who said it but she’s completely insane; I’m sure she’s got the wrong end of the stick.’

‘I certainly hope so! What am I going to do with the shop? And we said we were going to spend Christmas—’

‘Do you think I want to be stuck here? Listen, don’t worry. Tomorrow I’m going to the undertaker’s, I’ll ring Emmaus to get the flat cleared, I’ll swing by the lawyer and then I’ll be on the first train or plane out of here. I just want to get back. Believe me, this whole thing’s a total pain.’

‘I know, darling. I love you.’

‘I love you too. Right, I’d better see if I can find something to eat.’

‘Will you call me tomorrow?’

‘Of course. Speak then, darling. Love you lots.’

‘You too, speak tomorrow.’

People who love each other always say, ‘You too, speak tomorrow.’

After putting the phone down, he felt terribly lonely. The sound of Odile’s voice floating in his ears underlined the oddness of the situation. It was the first time they had been apart for more than twenty-four hours since they got married. There was something bizarre about parachuting into another life – if you could call this empty flat a life. He had long since scrumpled all family ties into a ball and chucked it over his shoulder. His mother must have made doilies out of hers. He had no memory of them ever having loved one another. It was Odile who had insisted, ‘Olivier, she was still your mother!’ What did ‘still-a-mother’ mean? It was like ‘a-father-after-all’, ‘parents-can’t-live-without-’em’, or ‘a-baby-yes-why-not?’ He had not come up when his father died. A family for a fortnight a year … The hand that feeds you. Hunger forced him to pull himself together.

More than anywhere else in the flat, the kitchen glowed yellowish like the colour of nicotine-stained teeth; even the sink enamel looked like old ivory. The fridge was empty and had been unplugged. All he could find to eat was a bottle of Viandox sauce at the back of a cupboard and half a packet of alphabet pasta for soups. Before he closed the cupboard door, the alluring label of an almost full bottle of Negrita caught his eye. He shrugged and put a saucepan of water on to boil.

‘Rodolphe, will you stop that?’

‘What’s the matter, don’t want anyone to see you sulking?’

‘I’m not sulking. You’re annoying me with the camcorder. Stop it, please.’

Rodolphe put the camera down beside a plate on which a piece of cheese rind and an end crust of bread were languishing. The low-hanging ceiling lamp held the table in a cone of orange light. Jeanne was sitting in one of the two identical armchairs facing the TV. With her back turned to her brother, she was haloed by the bluish rays of the screen. The rest of the room was plunged in darkness.

‘You’ve started getting so high and mighty, making a fuss whenever I try to film you.’

‘Don’t be silly. It’s just irritating to feel someone’s eye on you all the time.’

‘A blind man’s eye!’

‘An eye all the same. It produces images.’

‘But you said you liked my films.’

‘I do, but I’m fed up with being your only star and having to look at myself from every angle.’

‘You’re missing the point. I’m filming the sounds, not you.’

‘I must be making too much noise then. I’m in every shot.’

‘It’s you who puts yourself in every frame. You’ve always been full of yourself.’

‘Will you let me watch the TV?’

‘You see! Self-obsessed, stuck up and snooty.’

‘I’m getting tired of this, Rodolphe.’

‘You’re tireless.’

‘Don’t believe that for a second.’

For a moment the only sound was the humming of the television, a programme presented by media whores who did nothing but talk about themselves with no regard for the people watching. That was fine because neither Jeanne nor Rodolphe nor anyone else in the world was interested in them either. Even though brother and sister had their backs to one another, a sense of an impending face-off filled the room. Rodolphe stretched his hand out above the table, found the bottle of wine and poured himself a glass, stopping as if by miracle just before it overflowed.

‘What does that mean: “Don’t believe that for a second”?’

‘You’ve had enough to drink this evening.’

Rodolphe downed the glass in one. A drip ran down his chin. He wiped it away with his finger.

‘What does that mean: “Don’t believe that for a second”?’

‘It means you’re getting more and more temperamental and demanding, and if you carry on like this, I’m going to leave.’

‘Leave? … Where?’

‘Anywhere, somewhere quiet.’

‘There’s no such place. You’d really drop me, just like that?’

‘Of course. I’d come and see you on Sundays.’

‘Sundays … My whole childhood, I only ever saw you on Sundays.’

‘Well, I was at boarding school, wasn’t I?’

‘You still are. You live in your own little world, filing your little things neatly away. You live life to the minimum, like a prisoner. Maybe I’ve become more of a pain in the arse, but you’ve put up thicker defences. Sometimes I wonder if you’re not … it shocks me to say it … happy!’

‘I’m not unhappy.’

They said nothing more. Rodolphe sat down beside her and immediately dozed off. He slept like a log. The baddie in the TV
series that had come on after the talk show looked a bit like him: a smooth, pink-faced doll at a jumble sale. Rodolphe had become what he had always been, a big whingeing nuisance of a baby. Jeanne was the only one who could put up with him. She put up with everything, a caryatid holding up a sky that constantly threatened to cave in. It was a job like any other; there was no virtue in it, she just got on with it. Rodolphe was right, she was tireless, because she put no value on what she did. She lit a cigarette. She smoked too much, was smoking more and more, a little smoke machine. She looked at her hands in the glow of the Bic lighter and did not recognise them. They picked up the cigarette, brought it to her mouth, rested on her knees, drummed their fingertips. Her hands had a life of their own; they had no need of her. Only Rodolphe needed her, but she needed no one, not Rodolphe, not her hands. Just cigarettes, that was all. She wasn’t unhappy exactly, but she wasn’t happy either.

She was Jeanne, an indestructible block of Jeanne apparently able to last for ever, standing flawlessly alone, her military demeanour no doubt inherited from her father, Colonel Mangin, who had fallen in battle somewhere on the other side of the world. She was twelve when he was killed, and his death made no impact on her. All through her childhood, the man with a constant tan and a crew cut had only hung around long enough to bark a few brief orders before disappearing again once he was satisfied they had been obeyed. One morning, two gendarmes came to the door. Her mother went pale reading the letter. The twins, Xavier and Denis, her eighteen-year-old big brothers, held their mother up and told Jeanne to go and look after Rodolphe. The only thing left of all this was a yellowed photo showing the hard-edged soldier smiling in front of a tank with sand dunes in the distance, in a fake lizard-skin frame in Rodolphe’s bedroom.

‘Look after your brother!’

She had heard the same thing again and again throughout her
childhood, a kind of refrain which was put on pause when the fuss happened and resumed fifteen years later, after boarding school, after the École normale, when her mother and the twins perished in a car accident on the way to Saint-Cyr military academy. She felt nothing then either. Neither the wizened vine stock of a mother nor her two idiot sons with skulls moulded by their army-issue kepis had left any kind of hole in her life.

Propelled by some instinct, she left her job as an English teacher in Melun and came back to Versailles to look after Rodolphe, who was stubbornly refusing to take responsibility for himself. They sold the flat in Le Chesnay and moved close to Gare Rive Gauche, more convenient for getting to Viroflay where she had found work at a private school. She was thirty at the time; she would be forty at the beginning of February, an age when one might wish at last to stand alone in the world. Now there was only emptiness to fill her up.

Everything had begun to go tits up the day he was born, much as it had for the scrawny Christ dying of boredom in the empty church of Notre-Dame de Versailles. Waking him around seven o’clock that morning, the priest had given Roland a bowl of coffee and a limp
tartine
, which he wolfed down, and then asked him to stay put and pray. He would be back with warm clothes, perhaps even a bit of money, but after that Roland really would have to leave. He was still young, he had so much to look forward to, he could build himself a proper life like other people, but he must do it somewhere else. He just had to roll up his sleeves and … Roland did not listen to the rest of this off-the-cuff sermon. The words tinkled under the rib vaults like ice cubes in the bottom of a glass. The priest just wanted to get rid of him. Preparations were afoot for midnight mass and there was no role for him in the Nativity. The scene was coloured khaki, grey, black and brown, with a few hopeful glimmers of gold here and there.

Roland thought the frescos and sculptures representing hell were a hundred times more appealing than the pale, cold depictions of heaven. He had no time for either of them anyway. The only thing he was interested in was how much cash the priest was going to give him. A hundred? He was also wondering what the podgy cherubs flitting above his head would taste like, spit-roasted like suckling pigs. The morning’s lukewarm coffee and soggy bread had filled a hole but left him unsatisfied. Did people imagine the poor could not tell the difference between a shitty
tartine
and a
choucroute garnie
, between a tatty old jumper and a cashmere sweater?

After leaving the station the previous night, he had headed to the church of Notre-Dame on Rue de la Paroisse, which was of course shut. God keeps set hours, after all. He skirted the building before hunkering down outside the presbytery door. It was a good place to die. The road was as empty as a dieting secretary’s fridge. He scrunched himself up like a letter destined for the bin – ‘Dear God, it has come to my attention …’ – and waited for the cold to set in. His brain shrank to a compact block with a vague image of his eight-year-old self suspended in the middle, like those lumps of resin with insects trapped inside that people use as paperweights. Then the priest arrived, red-faced, wrapped up in a bulky sheepskin coat and a woolly hat, his arms laden with packages.

‘What are you doing here, my child?’

Through frozen lips, Roland stuttered something like, ‘I’m dying, Monsieur, I’m dying …’

The priest looked around, as if caught doing something he shouldn’t.

‘This isn’t really the place for it … I mean …’

What he meant was that it wasn’t proper, that it would attract vermin, that sort of thing. He was clearly uncomfortable with the situation, but what else could he do?

‘Help me carry all this into the sacristy.’

‘Can’t, M’sieur, can’t move.’

The priest muttered something that sounded awfully like a profanity, put down his packages and opened the door.

‘Come, my child. Come in.’

Roland slowly followed him inside. The warmth melted him. It was green and smelt of incense and old cardboard, like Aunt Margot’s house in Rouen.

‘Sit yourself down. I’ll make you a coffee.’

Why the obsession with giving coffee to the poor, the drowned, the suicides …

The priest asked him if he was Christian, if he had read the Bible, in short, if his papers were in order. Roland said yes to everything, nodding his head like an ass for convenience. All he wanted was to lie down and go to sleep – for ever, if possible.

‘Right, OK, well, you can stay the night, but that’s all. Theoretically …’

‘Yes.’

‘Tomorrow I’ll give you some addresses, some names of people who can help you.’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re lucky I came by with my … Can I trust you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Well, good night then.’

‘Yes.’

There is such a thing as a full ‘yes’, like full nudity. The night was full too, dreamless, heavy, leaden, like nights of old.

Someone entered the church. The sound of footsteps preceded by a tap-tap. Someone with a stick.