Underground Time (5 page)

Outside her place he turned off the engine. Lila woke up. He leaned over to kiss her. He slid his tongue into her mouth. One last time. He laid his hand on her breast, the fingers outstretched. He stroked her skin in the place he loved so much and then he said: ‘I want us to stop seeing each other. I can’t go on like this, Lila, I can’t. I’m tired.’

The words were unbearably banal. Clichés that added insult to injury. But they were all he had.

Lila got up and opened the door. She went round the back of the car to the boot and then came back, with her bag over her shoulder. She leaned down and said, ‘Thanks.’

And then after a moment, ‘Thanks for everything.’

There was neither pain nor relief in her expression. She went into her building without looking back.

He had done it.

He let Rose know that he was on call and she gave him his first address over the phone: high fever, flu symptoms. She called back a few minutes later to ask if he could handle sector six in addition to four. Frazera had broken his wrist the previous night and the fracture was displaced. The controller hadn’t yet found a doctor to replace him.

Thibault said yes.

He’s just parked in an unloading bay outside a building where he’s expected. He looks at his phone. He knows what he’s hoping for. He knows that all day he’s going to be looking at his mobile, waiting for the SMS symbol. His appointments used to be managed by radio. Now, for reasons of confidentiality, the emergency services have a set of mobile phones and a speed-dialling system. Every time the base sends him a new address he can’t help hoping to see Lila’s name. For weeks, that sound is going to torment him.

He hopes she’ll miss him, just like that, all of a sudden. A dizzying void that she can’t ignore. He hopes that as the hours go by she’ll be overtaken by doubts, that little by little she’ll come to realise what his absence means. He wants her to realise that no one will ever love her as he does, beyond the limits she imposes through her fundamental solitude, which she erects against everything around her but never mentions out loud.

It’s ridiculous.
He
’s ridiculous. Grotesque. Who does he think he is? What makes him think he’s exceptional and superior?

Lila won’t come back. She’ll accept what he said. Right now she’ll be celebrating this outcome: nice and easy, served up on a plate. She knows that people who love you more than you can love them back end up being a burden.

He’s going to see his first patient. He leaves Lila’s perfume still floating in the air, the car windows half open.

‘You have to pull out the drip,’ Frazera told him one evening. He’s a specialist in breaks, and not just of the wrist. They’d got together for a drink after a long weekend when they’d both been on call. Helped by the warm wave of vodka spreading through his veins, Thibault had talked to him about Lila: his feeling of embracing something insubstantial that crumbled away. That feeling of closing his arms on emptiness, a dead gesture.

Frazera told him he should get out right away, make a strategic withdrawal. And with a faraway look at the bottom of his glass he concluded: ‘In every passionate relationship there is a kind of savagery that’s in-built and inexhaustible.’

Thibault’s in his car outside a nondescript apartment building. He looks at his phone one last time in case he missed the beep.

He’s done it. He’s done it at last: pulled out the drip.

He’s done it and he can be proud of himself.

She smiled. As though she was expecting it. As if she’d had ages to get used to the idea.

She said thanks. Thanks for everything.

Is it possible to be so blind to someone else’s despair?

As the door closes behind her, Mathilde reaches into her bag until her hand touches metal. She’s always afraid that she’s forgotten something – her keys, her phone, her purse, her travelcard.

She wasn’t like that before. Then she was never afraid. Then she felt light, she didn’t need to check. Objects didn’t escape her attention. They possessed coordinated motion, natural and fluid. Back then, objects didn’t slide off the furniture, didn’t get knocked over, didn’t get in her way.

She didn’t make the call. Since her GP retired, she hasn’t had a family doctor. Just as she was on the point of calling the number she found on the Internet it seemed to her that it was pointless. She isn’t ill. She’s tired. Like hundreds of people she passes every day. So by what right, on what pretext, could she call out someone she doesn’t know? She wouldn’t have known how to tell him. To say simply: I can’t go on. And shut her eyes.

She takes the stairs. On the staircase she passes Mr Delebarre, her downstairs neighbour who comes up twice a week to complain the boys are making too much noise. Even when they’re not there. Mr Delebarre puts on his exhausted look and gives her a feeble greeting. Mathilde doesn’t stop. Her hand slides down the banister, her feet are silent on the plush carpet. Today she doesn’t want to spend a few minutes being pleasant, keeping up a conversation. She doesn’t want to remember that Mr Delebarre is widowed and alone and ill, that all he’s got to do is listen to the noise coming from upstairs, exaggerating or even inventing it. She doesn’t want to imagine Mr Delebarre adrift in the silence of his big apartment.

She knows herself. She knows where that will lead. She always has to look for excuses, explanations, reasons to be indulgent towards other people. She always ends up finding that people have good reasons for being the way they are. But not today. Oh no. Today she would like to be able to tell herself that Mr Delebarre is an idiot. Because today is 20 May. Because something is going to happen. Because things can’t go on as they are. The price is too high. The price to be paid for having a swipe card for clocking in, a card for the canteen, an insurance card, a three-zone metro card, the price to be paid for taking part in the onward rush of life.

In the cool morning air, Mathilde walks along the side of the garden in the middle of the square. At this hour of the day the streets seem washed clean, renewed. In the distance she can hear a dustcart. Mathilde looks at her watch and hurries up; her heels click on the pavement.

As soon as she gets to the metro platform she notices it’s unusually crowded. People are standing bunched together, but without crossing the rubber strip that marks the limit beyond which it is dangerous to go. The few seats provided are taken, there’s something both gloomy and febrile in the air. Mathilde looks up at the digital display. The waiting times for the next trains have been replaced by two bright lines. The sound of a female voice suddenly invades the platform: ‘Due to a technical fault, the Mairie de Montreuil service is seriously delayed.’

Anyone who uses public transport regularly masters its peculiar language – its subtleties, its idioms and its grammar. Mathilde knows the different scenarios and their probable impact on her journey time. A ‘technical failure’, a ‘signalling problem’, a ‘timetable adjustment’ mean moderate delays. More worryingly, a ‘passenger taken ill’ means that someone somewhere in another station has fainted, pulled the emergency alarm or has had to be evacuated. A passenger taken ill can seriously affect the flow of trains. And much more worryingly, a ‘serious passenger incident’, a term commonly reckoned to indicate a suicide, can paralyse traffic for several hours. People need to be evacuated.

Every four days in Paris a man or woman jumps in front of a train. Mathilde read it in the paper. The authorities are discreet about the exact figures, but there have long been psychological support services for drivers who are affected. Some of them never get over it. They are declared unfit for work, reassigned to ticket counters or the back office. On average, a driver encounters a suicide attempt at least once in his career. Do people in cities commit suicide more than elsewhere? She’s often wondered about that, without going to the trouble of finding out the answer.

For the past few months, when Mathilde is on her way home from work, she has found herself watching the tracks, fixing her gaze on them, staring at the stones that cover the ground, the depth of the hole. Sometimes she feels her body inclining forward, almost imperceptibly, her exhausted body seeking rest.

Then she thinks of Théo, Maxime and Simon, their images superimposed on top of all the others, bright and moving, and Mathilde steps back, moves away from the edge.

She tries to carve out a space for herself amid the crowd. You have to earn your place, your territory. You have to respect the order of arrival and observe the minimum distance between people, which shrinks as the platform fills up.

There’s no train announced.

She’ll miss the 8.45, and the 9.00, and even the 9.15. She’s going to be late. And by complete chance, Jacques will be standing in front of the lift when she gets out or waiting at her office door. He will have been looking for her everywhere and won’t have kept quiet about it – even though he hasn’t said a word to her for three weeks – he’ll be looking at his watch, with a frown and a doubtful expression. Because Jacques watches her timekeeping closely, her absences, he’s on the lookout for slip-ups. Because he lives a five-minute drive from the office and couldn’t give a damn about the journey she makes every day like most of the employees on site, nor the number of external factors that could prevent her from being on time.

For the moment, her aim is to stay in the right place on the platform: not to let herself be dragged to the back, to hold her position. When the train comes, it’ll be packed full of irascible people. She’s going to have to fight. According to an unwritten law, a form of underground legal precedent that has applied for decades, those who are first remain first. Anyone who tries to flout this law finds himself being heckled. In the distance there’s a grumbling, a vibration that sounds like the long-awaited train. But the tunnel remains dark and empty. The electronic display still gives nothing away. The female announcer is silent. It’s hot. Mathilde looks at the others, men and women, their clothes, their shoes, their hair, the shape of their buttocks. She looks at them from the back, from the front and in profile. You’ve got to do something. When she catches someone’s eye, she looks away. Even when it’s busy, there remains on public transport both a certain intimacy and a sense of reserve; limits imposed on the eye since they can’t be imposed on the body. So Mathilde looks at the platform opposite. It’s almost empty.

On the other side the trains are running normally, one after another in their regular rhythm. There’s no point trying to find an explanation. In the opposite direction people are getting on the metro and arriving at work on time.

Finally Mathilde is aware of a rumbling sound to her left that grows ever louder. Heads turn expectantly, impatiently. At last! It’s time to take a deep breath, flatten your bag against your hip and check that it’s closed properly. The train slows and stops. It’s here. It disgorges, regurgitates, releases its flood. Someone shouts: ‘Let people off.’ There’s shoving, trampling. It’s war. Every man for himself. Suddenly it’s a matter of life or death, getting on this one and not having to wait for the next one, which may never come, not risking getting to work even later. ‘For fuck’s sake! Let people off!’ The crowd parts grudgingly. You mustn’t lose sight of the door, you have to stay near it, not let yourself get dragged back by the sheer number of people. You have to position yourself to one side, close to the door. Suddenly the horde surges forward, getting ahead of her, she’s not going to make it. The carriage is already full, there’s not a square inch left. However, she knows that she can get in. She’ll have to force her way. She’ll have to stretch her arm out, grab the pole in the middle, ignoring the cries and protests, and hold tight and pull. Pull with all her might to propel her body inside. They’ll just have to budge up. In the face of her determination, they yield.

The signal indicating that the doors are about to close sounds. Apart from her right arm, which is sticking out, she’s almost there. The door judders shut, indifferent to the groans and protestations.

Mathilde gains an inch or so with her left foot, pushes one last time and she’s in.

On the platform the female voice is announcing that trains are running normally again on line 9.

It’s all a matter of perspective.

At the following stations, Mathilde gets deeper into the carriage, gains a few extra inches, hangs on so as not to have to get off.

You mustn’t give an inch.

The air is heavy. Bodies have fused together in a single compacted, harassed mass. Remarks have given way to silence, everyone is silently resigned to their fate, chins raised to the open windows, hands seeking support.

Then Mathilde thinks that this too is how 20 May begins, with this miserable, absurd struggle. Nine stations to get through, nine suffocating stations, torn from the fever of a morning of crowds, nine stations of struggling for air surrounded by people who only use a bar and a half of soap a year.

Suddenly a woman starts making strange sounds, high-pitched and progressively more drawn out. It’s not a cry nor a groan, more like a wail. She is holding on to the central pole, pressed between a generous bust and a rucksack. The sound that is coming from the woman’s mouth is unbearable. People turn round, observing her. They exchange perplexed glances. The woman is looking for someone who can help her. Mathilde manages to extricate her hand and put it on her arm. They look at each other. She smiles at her.