Hunting and Gathering (54 page)

 
While people were applauding, Philibert finished getting dressed. He was now wearing a top hat and tails.

“And there we are. I think I've told you everything. I hope I haven't troubled you unduly with these dusty old trinkets of mine. If such were, alas, the case, I beg you to forgive me and to present your grievances to this loyal damsel with the pink hair, for she is the one who compelled me to appear before you this evening. I promise you I will not begin again, but, uh . . .”

He waved his walking stick toward backstage and his page reappeared with a pair of gloves and a bouquet of flowers.

 
“Have you noticed the color?” he asked, slipping on his gloves. “Fresh butter. Dear Lord, I am hopelessly traditional. Now where was I? Oh, yes! Pink hair. I . . . I . . . know that Monsieur et Madame Martin, the parents of the young maiden from Belleville, are in the theater and I—I—I—I . . .”

He went down on one knee: “I—I do stutter a b-b-bit, d-don't I?” Laughter.

“I stutter and it's perfectly normal for once because I am here to ask for the hand of your dau—”

At that moment a cannonball flew across the stage and knocked him over. His face disappeared behind a corolla of tulle and all you could hear was:

“Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, I'm going to be a marquiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiise!”

 
His glasses all askew, Philibert stood up and lifted Suzy in his arms:

“A marvelous conquest, don't you agree?”

He smiled.

“My ancestors can be proud of me.”

94

CAMILLE and Franck did not attend the troupe's year-end party because they couldn't afford to miss the last train at two minutes to midnight.

 
They sat next to each other this time, and were no more talkative than on the way out.

Too many images, too much excitement.

“Do you think he'll come back tonight?” asked Franck.

“Mmm. She doesn't seem to be particularly burdened with a sense of propriety, that girl.”

“It's crazy, isn't it?”

“Completely crazy.”

“Can you imagine the look on Marie-Laurence's face when she sees her future daughter-in-law?”

“If you ask me, it won't be anytime soon.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don't know . . . Female intuition . . . The other day, at the château, when we went for a walk with Paulette after lunch, Philou said—and he was trembling with rage—‘Can you imagine? It's Easter and they didn't even hide any eggs for Blanche . . .' Maybe I'm wrong but I got the impression that that was the straw that cut the apron strings. They made him go through all sorts of stuff and he never took offense, or hardly at all, but this time . . . Not hiding any eggs for the little girl, that was just disgraceful. Pathetic. I got the feeling he was venting his anger and making some dark decisions at the same time. So much the better, you might say. You were right: they don't deserve him.”

 
Franck nodded and they spoke no more of it. Had they pursued the issue, they would have been obliged to speak of the future in the conditional (and what if Philibert and Suzy get married, where will they live? And where will we live?) and they weren't ready for that discussion. It was too treacherous to head down that path.

 
Franck paid Madame Perreira, while Camille broke the news to Paulette; then they had a bite to eat in the sitting room, listening to bearable techno.

“It's not techno, it's electro.”

“Ah, excuse me.”

 
Philibert did indeed not come back that night, and the apartment seemed horribly empty. They were happy for him, and unhappy for themselves. The familiar aftertaste of abandonment welling up in their throats . . .

Philou . . .

 
They didn't need to pour their hearts out to communicate their distress. They really could read each other's thoughts loud and clear. Their friend's marriage became a pretext for opening the strong liquor, and they drank to the health of all the orphans on the planet. There were so many of them that Camille and Franck had to bring the evening to a close by getting utterly and superbly wasted.

Superbly, and bitterly.

95

PHILIBERT Jehan Louis-Marie Georges Marquet de La Durbellière, born September 27, 1967, at La Roche-sur-Yon (Vendée), married Suzy Martin, born February 5, 1980, at Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis) at the town hall of the 20th arrondissement in Paris on the first Monday of the month of June, 2004, beneath the emotional gazes of his witnesses, Franck Germain Maurice Lestafier, born August 8, 1970, in Tours (Indre-et-Loire), and Camille Marie Elisabeth Fauque, born February 11, 1977, in Meudon (Hauts-de-Seine), and in the presence of Paulette Lestafier, who refused to give her age.

 
Also present were the bride's parents and her best friend, a tall boy with yellow hair, scarcely more restrained than Suzy herself . . .

 
Philibert was wearing a suit of magnificent white linen, a pink handkerchief with green polka dots tucked in his pocket.

Suzy was wearing a magnificent pink miniskirt with green polka dots, with a bustle and a train over two meters long. “My dream!” she said over and over, laughing.

She laughed all the time.

Franck wore the same suit as Philibert, of a more caramel hue. Paulette was wearing a hat which Camille had made, a sort of little pillbox nest covered with birds and feathers going in every direction, and Camille wore a white tuxedo shirt that had belonged to Philibert's grandfather and which went down to her knees. She had knotted a tie around her waist, and inaugurated a pair of adorable red sandals. It was the first time she'd put on a skirt since . . . Gosh, longer than that, even.

 
After the ceremony all these lovely people went to have a picnic in the gardens of Buttes-Chaumont. They had the huge La Durbellière wicker basket as their caterer, and they were especially crafty so that the park wardens wouldn't see them picnicking.

 
Philibert moved 1/100,000 of his books into his spouse's tiny two-bedroom apartment; Suzy could not dream even for a second of leaving her beloved neighborhood for a first-class burial on the other side of the Seine.

That just goes to show how disinterested she was, and how truly in love he was . . .

But he kept his room in the old apartment all the same, and they slept there whenever they came for dinner. Philibert used the opportunity to bring some books back and take others home with him, and Camille used the opportunity to continue Suzy's portrait.

She couldn't quite get her: yet another subject who evaded capture. But so it goes; these were the risks of the trade.

 
Philibert no longer stuttered, but he stopped breathing the moment Suzy was out of eyeshot.

And whenever Camille seemed surprised by how quickly they had gotten engaged and married, they gave her a funny look. Why should they wait? Why waste time, where happiness was at stake? What an idiotic thing to say, Camille. She shook her head, doubting and suddenly moved, while Franck gave her a furtive glance.

 
Just drop it, it's not something you could ever understand. You just don't get it. You're all in a knot. Only your drawings are beautiful. You're all shriveled up inside. When I think that I believed that you were alive . . . Shit, I must really have been really under your spell that night to have believed such a thing. I thought you'd come to make love to me, but in fact you were just starving. What an idiot I was, I swear.

Y'know what you need? You need to have your head cleaned out the way you clean out a chicken, scrape all the crap out once and for all. He'll have to be a fucking saint, the guy manages to sort you out. I'm not sure that he even exists. Philou says that it's because you're like this that you draw so well—well, shit, at what a cost . . .

 
“Say, Franck, old boy?” Philibert was shaking him. “You seem all out of sorts just now.”

“Tired.”

“Come on. Vacation time soon.”

“Yeah, really. The whole month of July to get through still. Anyway, I'm going to bed because I have to get up early: I'm taking the ladies out into the countryside for a break.”

 
To spend the summer in the country. It was Camille's idea and Paulette didn't see anything wrong with it. She wasn't any more enthusiastic than that, though, his old grandma. But game. Game for anything as long as she was never forced into it.

 
When Camille announced her plan, Franck finally began to accept the idea.

 
She could live apart from him. She wasn't in love and never would be. And hadn't she warned him, anyway: “Thanks, Franck. Me neither.” After that it was his problem if he thought he was stronger than her, stronger than the whole world. Well, guess what, you're not that strong. And it's not as if people hadn't tried to make you understand, that is it. But you're so stubborn, so full of yourself . . .

 
You weren't even born yet and already your life was halfway up shit creek so why should it change now? What were you thinking? That because you were fucking her with your whole heart in it, and you were nice to her, that happiness would land fully baked onto your plate . . . Poof! What a shame. Just take a look, have you seen the hand you've been dealt? Where did you think you were going with it, tell me? Where were you headed? Honestly?

 
Camille left her bag and Paulette's suitcase by the entrance and went back to join Franck in the kitchen.

“I'm thirsty.”

He didn't respond.

“Are you mad? Does it bother you that we're leaving?”

“Not at all! I'll be able to have some fun!”

She got up and took him by the hand: “Come on.”

“Where?”

“Come to bed.”

“With you?”

“Who else?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I don't feel like it. You turn soft when you've had one drink too many. All you ever do is fuck with me, I'm sick of it.”

“Right.”

“You blow hot and cold. That's an awful way to behave.”

Silence.

“Disgusting.”

“But I like being with you.”

“ ‘But I like being with you,' ” he echoed in a whiny voice. “I don't give a fuck if you like being with me. I wanted you to be with me, period. All the rest, who cares. Your little ways, your artsy-fartsy attitude, the little deals you make with your cunt and your conscience: keep them for some other sucker. This one is all used up. You'll get nothing more from me for the time being so give it up, princess . . .”

“You've fallen in love, is that it?”

“God, you piss me off, Camille! Go on, then. Speak to me as if I were some terminal patient now! Fuck, you've got no modesty! Not a bit of human decency! I don't deserve this, do I? Go on. You're gonna split and it'll be good for me. What the fuck am I doing, anyway, getting myself tangled up with some girl who gets off on the idea of spending two months in the middle of nowhere all alone with an old woman? You're not normal, and if you had one ounce of honesty, you'd get yourself looked at before glomming on to the first mother- fucker who comes your way.”

“Paulette was right. It's incredible how vulgar you can be.”

 
The trip, the following morning, seemed, shall we say, rather long.

 
He left them the car and headed off again on his old motorbike.

“Will you come again next Saturday?”

“To do what?”

“Uh . . . to have a break.”

“We'll see.”

“I was just wondering . . .”

“We'll see.”

“You're not gonna kiss me?”

“Nah. I'll come fuck you next Saturday if I have nothing better to do, but I'm not kissing you.”

“Right.”

Franck went to say good-bye to his grandmother, then disappeared down the end of the lane.

 
Camille went back to her big cans of paint. She was having a go at interior decoration at the moment.

She started thinking, then went: no. Took her brushes out of the white spirit and wiped them for a long time. He was right. They would see.

 
And their little life resumed its course. Like in Paris, yet even slower. And in the sun.

 
Camille met an English couple who were fixing up the house next door. They swapped things, clever ideas, tools, and glasses of gin and tonic just as night fell and the swifts swirled in the sky.

 
They went to the fine-arts museum in Tours. Paulette waited under an immense cedar tree (too many stairs) while Camille discovered the garden, the lovely wife, and the grandson of the painter Edouard Debat-Ponsan. He wasn't in the encyclopedia, that one. As Emmanuel Lansyer wasn't, whose museum they had visited in Loches a few days earlier. Camille really loved these painters who were not in the encyclopedia. These minor masters, as they were known. Regional painters of stopping-off points, whose only glory was to be found in the town which they had made their home. Debat-Ponsan would forever be the grandfather of Olivier Debré, and Lansyer had been Corot's student. What the hell. Unburdened by genius or posterity, their paintings lent themselves more easily to a quiet love. And, perhaps, a more sincere one.

 
Camille was forever asking Paulette whether she didn't need to go to the toilet. It was idiotic, having to cling to this idée fixe about incontinence just to keep her from slipping away. The old lady had let herself go once or twice, and Camille had scolded her profusely: “Oh, no, my dear Paulette, whatever you want, but not this! I'm here just for you, so just tell me when you have to go, all right? Stay with me, Paulette! What are you doing, shitting yourself like that? You're not locked up in some cage.”