Apocalypse Baby (5 page)

Valentine. The gap left by her absence. The guilty feeling of relief that followed from it. Valentine has never been easy. He has no illusions about that. It doesn't stop him loving her, knowing that she's the woman of his life, the only one he has cherished and protected so much, the only one who's made him laugh such a lot. But it's never been easy. Children are women's work really. He can see that with Claire and her two daughters, quite different. It's all so upfront. Claire's perfectly happy to see to the older girl's dental brace, to check the younger girl's dancing classes, their school grades interest her, she gets on well with their teachers. Even what they have to eat for tea can be a subject of conversation. He loves his daughter. But the high maintenance he's had to do alone
really pisses him off. It gets in the way of writing, going out, listening to a record in peace, reading a book in the morning, having some private time with Claire. Constant annoyance. Children are a rope round your neck, anything else is manageable. And even so, when Valentine was little, it was quite sweet, the Aristocats slippers, showing her Buster Keaton films, getting her a Cosette costume for the school fête. There'd been the odd hassle, but there'd been fun as well. But these last years she's exhausted all the concern of which he was capable. And she knows it. He's had enough of Valentine's escapades. The phone calls from school, when she was caught ‘up to no good' with boys in the toilets. What kind of ‘no good', how many boys, he had taken good care not to find out. Five schools in two years. The same scenario every time. An astronomical sum spent on psychologists who hadn't the slightest idea what was the matter with her. It wasn't rocket science, she just wanted to make as much trouble for him as possible. She wanted him to ditch Claire, like he'd ditched his other women. Valentine's unlucky, she's turned out to look like him. He recognizes himself in her face, her figure. She might have inherited her mother's looks, but the older she gets, the clearer it is that she takes after him. OK in a man. But for a woman… He understands why she's unhappy. When she wears short little dresses like other girls her age, she looks like a rugby player. But that's hardly enough reason to make him suffer as she does. She's full of energy. Naturally, in their teens, they don't tire easily. And she employs it full time to get on his nerves. It's never been easy. When her mother walked out, the little girl was like a poisoned souvenir of how things had been between them. Vanessa. Vanessa had been
called Louisa when he met her. She'd decided to change her name one day. Vanessa liked change. The clear memory of the years spent with her. Fourteen years later, and it seems like yesterday. The cruel illusion, when he wakes up, that she's beside him, still tortures him with piercing sharpness. And Valentine is the living proof of that failure, of his great love story. Having been abandoned by the same woman, they were tied together for ever, and by the same token separated. And Valentine had become the ideal pretext for his mother to invade their lives. Just what he needed. His mother, every day or almost, in the house. His mother who never says anything openly pejorative, never asks indiscreet questions, but who looks disparagingly on everything he does. His mother is too fond of him to admit that he's a failure, living off her money. But at heart that's what she thinks. A silent comparison between his father and himself. The businessman and the writer. For example, his mother cuts out every article she can find about the digital future of the book, brings it to him, and if he doesn't read it at once, summarizes it for him. This is her way of letting him understand he's made a mess of everything in his life. A life dedicated to books, when books will soon have vanished from the face of the earth. The same way she has just hired a private detective to find the child. The point of this is to make him see he hasn't stirred himself enough. As if it isn't obvious where the kid is. What's he supposed to do? Go down there and beg her to come back? What's the point? As if he didn't beg hard enough fourteen years ago?

From the other end of the corridor, the cleaner calls that she's finished the ironing and is going home. He glances at
his watch, twenty to twelve. Of course, she'll count it as a full hour. The timid treasure who came to work for them two years ago has changed a lot. The Italian journalist is late. And already he's not that bothered to meet her. But his books haven't been translated into Italian for a good while now, and a favourable interview for
La Repubblica
might bring him into the public eye. She's developing a project on the French literary landscape, he's flattered that she has contacted him. But it's annoying that she's late. He wonders whether she'll be pretty, her voice on the phone sounded nice, slightly husky. And then there was the Italian accent. Because Italian women don't just know how to dress. Anna used to slide her finger up his ass every time she gave him a blowjob, just the end of her finger and slide it. Without ever referring to it when the sheets were back in place. As soon as he hears that accent, he gets a hard-on. Her sophisticated Italian look when he took her out, her way of wrapping herself up so that you could only see her dark eyes, the curve of a shapely lip. The nonchalant way she let him open doors, or would give him a parcel to carry. Her regal manner, but without the irritating arrogance of Parisian women. Never trying to be a brilliant conversationalist when they were out for the evening, too beautiful for that. And when they broke up, a fury. Magnificently feminine, when she was shouting insults at him and throwing his clothes out of the door. Then she had hammered him with a series of rapid and vicious little blows with her clenched fists, fists so delicate he would have sworn they could do no damage, but when used like that in repeated regular fashion, they had left a constellation of bruises on his chest and back. He had had to resort to various subterfuges for a fortnight so as not
to undress in front of Clothilde, his official wife at the time, with whom he was still living. That was his second marriage. Two divorces, three marriages, a respectable average as he approached fifty. Clothilde had never wished to acknowledge that he was cheating on her. He hadn't bothered to hide it from her any more than from the others. But she chose not to know about it. She had invented an extremely flattering portrait of him, as being not the kind of man to cheat on his wife. She maintained it, come hell or high water. So he could say he was getting back after playing poker with his friends all night, that he was doing research in bars for his novel, that he'd had a late-night discussion with his publisher. He had only to take the trouble to invent an excuse for her to choose to believe it. Her trust had at first bothered him with remorse. A woman so affectionate and upright that she couldn't even imagine he would lie to her. He felt guilty, but unable to stop himself being turned on by a new acquaintance, a presence, a way of moving, of standing in a room, a smile or a voice. He couldn't not do it. He had felt guilty for months, before he realized that Clothilde's lack of jealousy was entirely founded on the deeply condescending idea she had of him. She put up with him because his small-scale fame gave her some kudos, but at heart she found him insignificant, lacking breeding or sophistication, slow-witted and uncharismatic. She viewed him as so far below her that he was reassuring: a little frog like him could only adore a princess like her, and be grateful that she had raised him to her level. It had taken him a while to work out how this functioned, but once he had decoded it, he began to hate her. She had come into his life only a short while after Vanessa had left him. The wound was still too
raw for him to forgive Clothilde for making him feel useless and unimportant all over again. He had left her in the lousiest way possible, taking care to make plans for a holiday with friends before walking out one July morning without a word of explanation, to join another woman. Clothilde had wept for months, telling all their friends about it, exhibiting her pain as proof of his ingratitude and dangerous nature. By so doing, she had rendered him extremely desirable to all her female acquaintances. What a stroke of luck. Clothilde hadn't made him happy, but thanks to her he had felt good, being labelled as a bastard, a seducer and a breaker of hearts. Anything was better than the taste in his mouth of the humiliation that Vanessa had forced on him. A little boy, abused and at risk.

‘So sorry to be late, it was hard to find a parking place.'

Slight disappointment: she must be in her forties. But the excitement comes back once she takes off her coat: she's taken trouble with her outfit, sure of herself, flirtatious without being vulgar, available for games of seduction without looking as if she's already conquered. Better than pretty. ‘Shall we do the photos first? Liam's got another photo-shoot after this.' François agrees with enthusiasm, he too would prefer to be left alone with her. The press agent had warned him there'd be photos, to which he'd replied that he'd prefer to do both together, the interview and the portrait, he's taken care to wash his hair to destroy the ridiculous blow-dry the TV makeup man had inflicted on him the previous day, in spite of his protests. The photographer accompanying the Italian woman is an ape. On the pretext of finding ‘a good spot', with the right light, one that would inspire him, he was preparing to roll around on François's bed, a move from which he had
to be dissuaded practically by force. Occupied in making the acquaintance of the journalist, François has had no time to stop the photographer rushing into his bedroom, ‘to check what it's like'. He keeps flashing around a black box, a light meter, he's here, there and everywhere, standing up against the windows, looking through every room with the air of a madman, muttering comments that are incomprehensible but not necessarily complimentary about the décor. A little ape let loose in the house, you feel like taking him by the scruff of the neck to shake him, as you would a kitten that's peeing everywhere. Photographers are capable of anything. Earlier that week, a young idiot with acne had spent ten minutes insisting François be shouting, with his mouth wide open. Because ‘I only do that kind of shot'. ‘Glad to hear it, but I don't shout on my photographs.' The young man had sulked, apparently convinced that anyone his magazine sent him to photograph was duty-bound to satisfy the slightest wishes of an untalented child. A year or two back, another one had wanted him to jump in the air in front of the Pyramid of the Louvre. ‘We need some movement, you see, otherwise it's too static,' he'd explained in the tone of voice you might use to get a senile old man to go back to his rest home. ‘We need the shot to look interesting, you see. I can't take you sitting in a chair with your chin in your hands, we'd lose all our readers.' François couldn't decently jump about in front of the Louvre, with all the people going past. He usually manages to hold out, but sometimes they cancel the article and his press agent scolds him. ‘It seems you wouldn't play ball when it came to the photos.' He tries to check the lunatic galloping round the house.

‘We usually do the photos in my office or in the library.'

‘Yeah, that's just it,' says the imbecile, as he darts into the kitchen. ‘I'd like to find a fresh angle, more everyday, more human.'

François wants to shout, ‘I write books, you fucking moron, why should I have my picture taken in the kitchen? I'm not going to appear in
La Repubblica
cooking a cassoulet.' The journalist realizes the situation is getting grotesque, so she tries to mediate, succeeding fairly well. She seems taller than she is, just coming up to his shoulder, although she looks long and willowy. She smiles as she tells him about her project, he hardly listens to the list of authors she hopes to include in the series, he presses a cup of coffee on her, unable to concentrate on what she's saying while the photographer is scampering around the 250 square metres of the apartment. He hears him opening the french doors on to the balcony and joins him, feeling infuriated. The idiot is leaning over the guard rail. ‘If you don't mind, I'd prefer we stick to the library. I don't like photo-shoots and I want to get it over with.' The photographer turns round, holding the camera, and twisting himself into a ridiculous attitude, takes a picture, ‘from life', while repeating, ‘Yeah, yeah, super, got it all, the light, need some light, turn your face a bit to the right, chin down a bit, no lower, like that, look at the camera, that's super, face the light, yeah, yeah, got it, perfect, in the can!' All over in a minute, leaving François with the bittersweet impression that he's being treated like some bimbo. ‘What do you mean, it's in the can?' he asks, leaning across to the camera to see the result for himself. It's all very well not liking photo-shoots, he knows from experience that it normally takes longer than
this. The degenerate ape shrugs: ‘I don't do digital, it's all about getting the atmosphere and the definition, sorry, can't show you now, but I've got an eye for it, I felt it here, we've got it.' Conman. Italian. Halfwit. François's sure he'll end up looking like an idiot, surprised by the cretin waving his arms about on the balcony. Well, too bad, after all he isn't there to look like a film star, he'll concentrate on being brilliant in the interview. Just before leaving, the imbecile points to one of his bags. ‘You got WiFi? Can I just check my email before I go?' François can't suppress an irritable sigh. ‘I do have WiFi, but it's a bit of a nuisance to go and look for the code.' ‘No problem, I've got my own dongle, it's just that it's easier here than on my scooter.' François indicates the Mies van der Rohe chair in the vestibule – ‘OK, you can sit here if you like' – and shakes hands, thanking him, in a manner that says don't bother telling me when you've finished. He goes back to join the journalist in his study. She is calm, leaning forward slightly on her chair, with a carefully judged décolletage, just enough to be exciting, but too demure for one not to want to see more. He sits down opposite her. ‘At last we can start.'