Whatever: a novel (8 page)

I really got the feeling the nurses and the other patients were surprised I didn't receive more visits; so I've explained, for their general edification, that I was on a professional visit to Rouen at the moment it all happened; this wasn't my home town, I didn't know a soul. In short, I was there by chance.

Yet wasn't there anybody I wanted to get in touch with, inform about my state? In fact no, there was nobody.

The second week was altogether tougher; I was starting to get better, to manifest the desire to leave. Life was looking up again, as they say. Tisserand was no longer around to bring me pastries; he must have been going through his act for the good people of Dijon.

Listening by chance to the radio Monday morning, I learned that the students had ended their demonstrations, and had of course obtained everything they were asking for. On the other hand an SNCF strike had been called, and had begun in a really tough atmosphere; the trade union officials appeared overwhelmed by the intransigence and violence of the striking railwaymen. Things were proceeding as normal then. The struggle was continuing.

The next morning someone telephoned from my company, asking to speak to me; an executive secretary had been given this difficult mission. She has been perfect, saying all the right things and assuring me that the reestablishment of my health mattered more to them than anything else. She was nevertheless wishing to know if I would be well enough to go to La Roche-sur-Yon, as planned. I replied that I knew nothing for sure, but that this was my most ardent wish. She laughed, somewhat stupidly; but then she's a very stupid young woman, as I'd already remarked.

6

Rouen-Paris

I left the hospital two days later, rather sooner, I believe, than the doctors would really have wished. Usually they try and keep you in for the longest possible time so as to increase their coefficient of occupied beds; but the holiday period has doubtless inclined them towards clemency. Besides, the head doctor had promised me, `You'll be home for Christmas': those had been his very words. Home, I don't know; but somewhere, that's for sure.

I made my farewells to the worker, who'd been operated on that same morning. Everything had gone very well, according to the doctors; be that as it may, he had the look of a man whose time was running out.

His wife absolutely insisted I taste the apple tart her husband didn't have the strength to swallow. I accepted; it was delicious. `Keep your chin up, my son!' he said to me at the moment of leavetaking. I wished him the same. He was right; it's something that can always come in useful, keeping your chin up.

Rouen-Paris. Exactly three weeks before I was making this same journey in the opposite direction. What's changed in the meantime? Small clusters of houses are still smoking down in the valley, with their promise of peace and tranquillity. The grass is green. There's sunshine , with small clouds forming a contrast; the light is more that of spring. But a bit further away the land is flooded; a slight rippling of the water can be made out between the willows; one imagines a sticky, blackish mud into which the feet suddenly sink.

Not far off from me in the carriage a black guy listens to his Walkman while polishing off a bottle of J&B. He struts down the aisle, bottle in hand. An animal, probably dangerous. I try and avoid his gaze, which is, however, relatively friendly.

An executive type, doubtless disturbed by the black man, comes and plonks himself down opposite me. What's he doing here! He should be in first class. You never get any peace.

He has a Rolex watch, a seersucker jacket. On the third finger of his left hand he wears a conventionally narrow gold wedding ring. His face is squarish, frank, rather likeable. He might be around forty. His pale cream shirt has slightly darker raised pinstripes. His tie is of average width, and of course he's reading Les Échos. Not only is he reading them but he's devouring them, as if the meaning of his life might suddenly depend on this reading.

So as not to see him I'm obliged to turn towards the landscape. It's odd, now it seems to me the sun has turned to red, as it was during my trip out. But I don't give much of a damn; there could be five or six red suns out there and it wouldn't make a jot of difference to the course of my meditations.

I don't like this world. I definitely do not like it. The society in which I live disgusts me; advertising sickens me; computers make me puke. My entire work as a computer expert consists of adding to the data, the cross-referencing, the criteria of rational decision-making. It has no meaning. To tell the truth, it is even negative up to a point; a useless encumbering of the neurons. This world has need of many things, bar more information.

The arrival in Paris, as grim as ever. The leprous façades of the Pont Cardinet flats, behind which one invariably imagines retired folk agonizing alongside their cat Poucette which is eating up half their pension with its Friskies. Those weird metal structures that indecently mount each other to form a grid of overhead wires. And the inevitable advertising hoardings flashing by, gaudy and repellent. À gay and changing spectacle on the walls.' Bullshit. Pure fucking bullshit.

7

I got back to my apartment without real enthusiasm; the post consisted of a payment reminder for an erotic phone line (
Natacha, with the hots for you
) and a long letter from the Trois Suisses informing me of the setting up of a telecomputer service for simplified ordering, the Chouchoutel. In my capacity as a special client I could profit from this right away; the entire computer team (inset photos) had worked flat out so that the service would be operative by Christmas; the commercial directrice of the Trois Suisses was pleased to be in the position to personally assign me a Chouchou code.

The call-counter of my answer machine registered the figure 1, which surprised me a bit; must be a wrong number. In response to my message a weary and contemptuous female voice had come out with 'You pathetic creep' before hanging up. In short, there was nothing keeping me in Paris.

In any case I really fancied going to the Vendée. The Vendée brought back lots of holiday memories for me (rather bad ones in fact, but such is life). I’d retraced some of these in the form of an animal story
called Dialogues Between a Dachshund and a
Poodle
, which could be deemed an adolescent self-portrait. In the final chapter of this work one of the dogs is reading aloud, to his companion, a manuscript found in the roll-top desk of his young master:

'Last year, around 23 August, I was walking along the beach at Les Sables d'Olonne, accompanied by my poodle. Whereas my four-legged friend seemed to unconstrainedly enjoy the motions of the sea air and the brightness of the sun (particularly keen and delightful on this late morning), I was unable to prevent the vice of reflection from squeezing my translucid brow, and, crushed by the weight of a too-heavy burden, my head was sinking sadly on my breast.

'On this occasion I stopped before a young girl who may have been fourteen or so. She was playing badminton with her father, or some other game that is played with rackets and a shuttlecock. Her clothing bore evidence of the most candid simplicity, given that she was in a bathing costume, and with naked breasts to boot. Nevertheless, and at this stage one can only bow before such perseverance, her whole attitude manifested the deployment of an ongoing attempt at seduction. The ascending movement of her arms at the moment she missed the projectile, although it had the added advantage of pushing forward the two ochraceous globes constituting an already more than nascent bosom, was principally accompanied by a smile at once amused and disconsolate, ultimately replete with an intense joie de vivre, which she was manifestly directing at all the adolescent males passing within a radius of fifty metres. And this, let it be noted, in the very midst of an activity both eminently sportive and familial in character.

'Her little stratagem was not, moreover, without producing its effect, as I was quick to realize; drawing near to her, the boys were rolling their shoulders, and the cadenced scissoring of their gait was slowing to a noteworthy degree. Turning her head towards them with a lively movement which provoked in her hair a temporary dishevelment not denuded of a saucy grace, she then bestowed upon the most interesting of her victims a fleeting smile immediately contradicted by a no less charming movement aimed this time at hitting the shuttlecock dead centre.

'And so I found myself returning once again to a subject of meditation which for years has not ceased haunting my thoughts: why, having once attained a certain age, do boys and girls reciprocally pass their time in flirting and seducing each other?

'Certain people will say, in a charming voice, "It is the awakening of sexual desire, no more no less, that is all." I understand this point of view; I have myself long shared it. It can pride itself in mobilizing on its side the multiple lineaments of thought which intersect, as translucid jelly, at our ideological horizon as well as in the robust centripetal force of good sense. It might, then, seem audacious, even suicidal, to run smack into its incontrovertible premises. This I shall not do. I am very far, in fact, from seeking to deny the existence and the strength of sexual desire in adolescent humans. Tortoises themselves feel it and do not venture, in these troubled times, to importune their young master. It nonetheless remains a fact that certain grave and concordant indices, like a rosary of strange facts, have progressively led me to suppose the existence of a more profound and more hidden force, a veritable existential nodosity from whence desire would arise. I have not, hitherto, personally informed anyone of this, so as not to dissipate in idle chatter the credit for mental health that men have generally accorded me during the time of our relations. But my conviction has now taken shape, and it is time to speak out.

'Example number 1. Let us consider a group of young people who are together of an evening, or indeed on holiday in Bulgaria. Among these young people there exists a previously formed couple; let us call the boy François and the girl Françoise. We will have before us a concrete, banal and easily observable example.

'Let us abandon these young people to their amusing activities, but before that let us clip from their actual experience a number of aleatory temporal segments which we will film with the aid of a high-speed camera concealed in the environs. It is apparent from a series of measurements that Françoise and François will spend around 37% of their time in kissing and canoodling, in short in bestowing marks of the greatest reciprocal tenderness.

'Let us now repeat the experiment in annulling the aforesaid social environment, which is to say that Françoise and François will be alone. The percentage drops straightaway to 17%.

'Example number 2. I wish to speak to you now of a poor young girl whose name was Brigitte Bardot. Yes, it's true. In my sixth-form class there really was a girl called Bardot, since her father was called thus. I have looked up various information on him: he was a scrap merchant from near Trilport. His wife was not working; she stayed at home. These people hardly ever went to the cinema, I am persuaded they didn't call her by this name deliberately; perhaps for the first few years they were even amused by the coincidence ... It is difficult to say.

'At the time I knew her, in the bloom of her seventeen years, Brigitte Bardot was truly repulsive. First of all she was extremely fat, a porker and even a super-porker, with abundant rolls of fat gracelessly disposed at the intersections of her obese body. Yet had she followed a slimming diet of the most frightening severity for twenty-five years her fate would not have been markedly improved. Because her skin was blotchy, puffy, and acned. And her face was wide, flat and round, with little deep-set eyes, and straggly, lustreless hair. Indeed, the comparison with a sow forced itself on everyone in an inevitable and natural way.

'She had no girlfriends, and obviously no boyfriends. She was therefore completely alone. Nobody addressed a word to her, not even during a physics test; they would always prefer to address themselves to someone else. She came to classes then returned home; never did I hear it said that someone might have seen her other than at school.

'During classes certain people sat next to her; they got used to her massive presence. They didn't notice her and neither did they poke fun at her. She didn't participate in discussions in the philosophy class; she didn't participate in anything at all. She wouldn't have been more tranquil on the planet Mars.

'I suppose her parents must have loved her. What would she do of an evening, after getting home? Because surely she must have had a room, with a bed, and some teddies dating from her childhood. She must have watched the telly with her parents. A dark room, and three beings united by the photonic flux; such is the image I have.

'As for Sundays, I can well imagine the immediate family welcoming her with feigned cordiality. And her cousins, probably pretty. A depressing thought.

'Did she have fantasies, and if so which? Romantic ones à la Barbara Cartland? I find it hard to believe that she might have somehow imagined, be it only in a dream, that a young man of good family pursuing his studies in medicine would one day nourish the prospect of taking her in his open-top car to visit the abbeys of the Normandy coast. Unless, perhaps, she were previously provident with a penitent's hood, so lending a mysterious edge to the adventure.