Consolation (2 page)

‘Russia.’

‘Hey! It’s cold there, isn’t it?’

‘Very.’

Among sheep from the same flock, I would have
fervently
liked to behave in a more brotherly fashion, but . . . Mea culpa, here I have to beat my breast, and that is something I know how to do, beat my jet propelled breast, because I just can’t.

And that is my great sin.

I’m too jet-lagged, too exhausted, too dirty and too dried out to take communion.

At the next motorway exit ramp:

‘So do you have God in your life?’

Fuck. Jesus. This would have to happen to me . . .

‘No.’

‘You know what? I could tell that right away. A man who leaves his luggage just like that, I said to myself, he doesn’t have God in his life.’

He says it again, hitting the steering wheel.

‘No-God-in-his-life.’

‘Guess not,’ I confess.

‘But He is there all the same! He is there! He is everywhere! He is showing us the w—’

‘No, no,’ I interrupt, ‘the place I’ve just got back from, where I’ve come from . . . He isn’t there. I assure you.’

‘Why not, then?’

‘Poverty . . .’

‘But God
is
in poverty! God performs miracles, don’t you know that?’

I glance quickly at the speedometer, 90, so no way to open the door.

‘Take me, for example . . . Before, I was . . . I was nothing!’ He was getting excited. ‘I was drinking! Gambling! Sleeping with loads of women! I wasn’t a man, you see . . . I was nothing! And the Lord took me. The Lord plucked me like a little flower and He said, “Claudy, you . . .”’

I’ll never find out what sort of pap the Old Man had fed him: I’d fallen asleep.

We were outside the entrance to my building when he squeezed my knee.

On the back of the receipt he’d written the address to paradise:
Aubervilliers Church, 46–48 Rue Saint-Denis. 10.00am to 1.00pm
.

‘You have to come next Sunday, right? You have to say to yourself, If I got into that car, it was not by chance, because chance . . . (great big eyes) doesn’t exist.’

The window of the passenger seat was down so I leaned in to bid farewell to my shepherd, ‘So then . . . um . . . You . . . you don’t sleep with women any more . . . um, not one?’

Big smile.

‘Only the ones the Lord sends my way.’

‘And how do you know which ones they are?’

Very big smile.

‘They’re the most beautiful ones.’

*

We’ve been taught the wrong way round, I reflected, pushing open the front door; as for me, as far as I can recall, the only time when I was sincere was when I would repeat, ‘I am not worthy to receive you.’

At that moment, yes. At that moment I truly believed.

And
you, clap, clap
, as I was climbing,
yes you
, my four flights of stairs, I realized to my horror that I had that bloody refrain stuck in my head,
in a taxi, yes, in a taxi
.

Oh, yeah.

The security lock was on and these ten last centimetres where I found my home resisting me were infuriating. I had come from too far away, I’d seen too much, the plane had arrived too late and God was too tactful. I blew a fuse.

‘It’s me! Open up!’

I was screaming, pounding on the doorframe, ‘Will you bloody open this door!’

Snoopy’s muzzle appeared in the gap.

‘Hey, it’s okay . . . Calm down, all right? Calm down . . .’

Mathilde slid open the bolt, stepped back, and had already turned away from me when I crossed the threshold.

‘Hello!’ I said.

She merely raised her arm, limply wiggling a few fingers.

Enjoy
, commanded the back of her T-shirt. Well now. For a split second there I entertained the notion of grabbing her by the hair and breaking her neck to force her to turn around, and saying it to her again, to her face, those two oh-so outmoded little syllables, Hel-lo. And then, oh . . . I let it go. And anyway, the door to her room had already slammed shut.

I’d been gone a week, I was leaving again in just two days and how . . . how important was all that anyway.

Well? How important? I was just passing through, wasn’t I?

I went into Laurence’s room, which was also my room, as far as I knew. The bed was impeccably made, the duvet was smoothed, the pillows were plumped, paunchy, haughty. Pathetic. I hugged the wall and carefully set my buttocks on the very edge of the mattress so as not to crease anything.

I looked at my shoes. For a fairly long while. I looked out of the window. The roofs just below and the Val-de-Grâce in the distance. And then her clothes on the back of the armchair.

Her books, her water bottle, her address book, her glasses, her earrings . . . It must all mean something, but I could no longer quite grasp what. I . . . I didn’t get it any more.

I toyed with one of the little tubes of tiny round pills that sat on the night table.

Nux Vomica 9CH, difficulties sleeping
.

Yes, that must be it, that’s what this place is about now, I thought with a grimace, and stood up.

Nux Vomica.

It was the same, and it was worse, every time. I was no longer here. The shoreline was receding ever further, and I . . .

Stop it, come on, I castigated myself! You’re tired and you’re winding yourself up. Stop it.

The water was scorching. With my mouth open and my eyelids closed, I waited for it to wash away all my rough scales. From the cold, the snow, the lack of daylight, the hours of traffic jams, my endless discussions with that bastard Pavlovich, all the battles lost from the start and all the faces still haunting me.

The bloke who’d tossed his hard hat in my face the night before. The words I couldn’t understand but which I could easily guess. The building site, which was getting out of control . . . On all sides . . .

What the hell had I been thinking to go and get involved in such a thing, honestly? And now! I couldn’t even find my razor in the midst of all these beauty products! Conceals blemishes, period pains, luminous skin, firm abdomen, seborrhoea, fragile hair.

What the hell did all this crap mean! What the hell was the point?

And for what moments of tenderness?

I cut myself and swept the lot into the wastebasket.

‘You know . . . I think I should make you a coffee, no?’

Mathilde, her arms crossed, stood slouching on one leg in the door to the bathroom.

‘Good idea.’

She was staring at the floor.

‘Oh . . . um . . . I knocked over a few things, you see . . . I’ll . . . don’t worry about it.’

‘Oh, no. I’m not worried. You do this every time.’

‘Oh?’

She shook her head.

‘Have a good week?’ she went on.

I didn’t reply.

‘Right. A coffee, then.’

Mathilde . . . As a little girl she’d been so hard to get close to . . . So hard . . . How she’d grown, good Lord.

Fortunately we still had Snoopy, on her T-shirt.

‘Feeling better now?’

‘Yes,’ I went, blowing into my cup, ‘thanks. I get the feeling I’ve finally landed. No school today?’

‘Nah.’

‘Laurence working all day?’

‘Yes. She’ll meet us at Granny’s. Oh, noooo. Don’t tell me you’d forgotten. You know perfectly well it’s her birthday party tonight.’

I had forgotten. Not that it was Laurence’s birthday the next day, but that we were in for another charming little soirée. A proper family dinner, just the way I liked them. All I needed, truly.

‘I haven’t got a present.’

‘I know. That’s why I didn’t go and sleep over at Lea’s. I knew you’d need me.’

Adolescence . . . What an exhausting yo-yo.

‘You know, Mathilde, you have a way of blowing hot and cold that will never cease to astound me . . .’

I stood up to help myself to more coffee.

‘Well at least I’m astounding someone.’

‘Hey,’ I replied, placing my hand against her back, ‘enjoy.’

She arched her back. Ever so slightly.

The way her mum did.

We decided to go on foot. After a few silent streets, where each of my questions seemed to pain her even more than the previous one, she began to fiddle with her iPod and wiggled the headphones into her ears.

Very well then, looks like I ought to get myself a real dog, no? Someone who’d love me and would literally jump for joy whenever I got back from a trip . . . Even a stuffed one, why not? With big moist eyes and a little motor that would cause his tail to wag when I touched his head.

Oh, I love him already . . .

‘You in a mood, now?’

Because of her gadget she’d said the words more loudly than necessary and the woman on the crossing with us turned round.

Mathilde sighed, closed her eyes, sighed again, removed her left earplug and stuck it into my right ear.

‘Here, I’ve got something for you that’s just your age group, it’ll perk you up.’

And there in the midst of the noise and traffic, on the end of a very short wire that still connected me to a faraway childhood, a few guitar chords.

A few notes and the perfect, hoarse, slightly drawling voice of Leonard Cohen, singing ‘Suzanne’.

‘Better now?’

I nodded my head, just like a moody little boy.

‘Brilliant.’

She was pleased.

Spring was still a long way off but the sun was working on heating things up a bit, stretching lazily over the dome of the Panthéon. My-daughter-who-was-not-my-daughter-but-who-was-nothing-less-either gave me her arm so she wouldn’t lose the sound, and there we were in Paris, the most beautiful city in the world – I’d finally come round to admitting the fact by virtue of leaving it behind so often.

Wandering through this
quartier
I loved so, turning our backs on the Great Men, just the two of us, little mortals who could astound no one, amidst the tranquil weekend crowd. Feeling relaxed, our guard down, to the very rhythm of
for he’s touched
our perfect bodies
with his mind
.

‘This is wild,’ I said, shaking my head, ‘and you still listen to this stuff?’

‘Looks that way . . .’

‘I must have come along this very street humming this, over thirty years ago . . . See that shop, there?’

With my chin I pointed towards the shopfront of Dubois, the art supply place on the Rue Soufflot.

‘If you knew how many hours I spent drooling over their window . . . It all set me dreaming. Everything. The paper, the pens, the tubes of Rembrandt. One day I even saw Prouvé come out of there. Jean Prouvé, can you imagine! And, well, on that particular
day
I must have been waltzing along murmuring that Jesus
was a sailor
and all that stuff, I’ll bet you anything . . . Prouvé . . . when I think back . . .’

‘Who’s Prouvé?’

‘A genius. Well, not even. An inventor, a creator, an incredible bloke . . . you know, the designer and architect; I’ll show you some of the books. But, um, to get back to our cheery lad, there . . . My favourite was
Famous Blue Raincoat
, haven’t you got that one?’

‘No.’

‘Jeez! What are they teaching you at school these days, anyway? I was mad about that song, absolutely crazy. I think I must have worn the cassette right through from rewinding it so many times.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, I don’t remember . . . I’d have to listen to it again, but as I recall, it’s the story of a guy who’s writing to one of his friends, a bloke who’d gone off with his wife at some point, and he was saying that he thought he’d forgiven him. There was something about a lock of hair, I remember, and for someone like me who was incapable of chatting up a single girl, I was such a great lump, awkward and so moody it was pathetic, well, I thought that sort of story was very
very
sexy. As if it were written for me, in a way . . .’

I was laughing.

‘And listen to this. I even pestered my dad so he’d give me his old Burberry, and I tried to dye it blue and screwed up completely and utterly. It went this greenish-yellow colour. So ugly, you can’t begin to imagine.’

She was laughing.

‘But do you think that stopped me? Not likely. I wrapped myself inside the thing, with the collar up and the belt undone, “my fists in my torn pockets” like Rimbaud’s Bohemian, and off I went . . .’

I mimed the loser I must have been. Peter Sellers in his prime.

‘. . . taking these great long strides, right through the crowd, mysterious, elusive, ever so careful to avoid the gaze of all those people who weren’t even looking at me. Oh, he must have laughed, old Leonard off on his promontory among the great Zen masters, let me tell you!’

‘And now?’

‘Well . . . he’s still alive, far as I know.’

‘Nah, the raincoat.’

‘Oh, that! Vanished, along with everything else. But you can ask Claire tonight if she remembers it.’

‘Okay . . . And I’ll download it.’

I frowned.

‘Hey, that’s enough already! You’re not going to do your head in about all that
again
. He’s earned enough as it is.’

‘It’s not a question of money, you know that perfectly well. It’s more serious than that. It’s –’

‘Stop. I know. You’ve told me a million times. The day there are no artists left, we’ll all be dead and blah blah and all that.’

‘Exactly. We’ll still be alive but we’ll all be dead. Hey, look, speaking of which . . .’

We were standing outside Gibert’s books and music store.

‘Come on in. I’ll buy it for you, my lovely sickly green raincoat.’

I stood frowning hesitantly at the till. Three other CDs had miraculously appeared on the counter.

‘Oh, come on!’ she said, as if it were fate, ‘I had been planning on downloading those ones, too.’

I paid and she grazed her cheek against mine. Just a touch.

Once we’d rejoined the flow of people on the Boulevard Saint-Michel, I grew bolder. ‘Mathilde?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I ask you a delicate question?’

‘No.’

Then a few metres farther along, she covered her face with her hands. ‘I’m listening.’

‘Why have things got this way between us? So . . .’

Silence.

‘So what?’ asked her hood.