Out of Sorts (8 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Like a Ton of Bricks

There are days when nothing happens normally. Ferdinand will never forget that particular Friday.

Arm in a sling, and in spite of the formal ban on seeing that “sexual maniac” again, Juliette shows up at Ferdinand’s door at 8:00 a.m., before going to school. On the doorstep, the little girl explains she had a fight with a boy in her class, Matteo Balard.

This “little nobody,” as she calls him, dared to tell her that a woman’s role is to be at home, waiting for her husband and catering to her children’s every whim. According to him, only bad mothers work, the ones who don’t love their children, and they usually end up running away from home. His father, Commissioner Balard, told him so, and the commissioner is always right. So a woman reporter, like Juliette’s mother, boggles Matteo’s mind. She must have problems at home to prefer going off to the other side of the world, to those war-torn countries. Not to mention her children, who must hate her. And the lovers she must have in every foreign city. A real slut, probably!

So Juliette had shoved Matteo and demanded he take back what he’d just said. The kid then spat in her face, grabbed her by the arm, and twisted it with all his might, until Juliette found herself on the ground, hunched in pain.

When Juliette finishes her story, the old man already knows he won’t be able to let this stand.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Blowing a Gasket

Juliette has been at school for twenty minutes when Ferdinand hears the usual Friday morning grumbling of Mrs. Suarez, who is trying to carry the new vacuum cleaner—bagless but twice as heavy—to the top floor. Friday is sacred: dust must be eradicated before the weekend family visits. Mrs. Suarez loves to show off the perfectly maintained complex. Ferdinand, wanting to score some points before the next inspection, decides to lend a hand.

“Hello, Mrs. Suarez, you’re looking lovely today. Is your skirt made of real crocodile?”

“Stand back. Can’t you see you’re in the way? This vacuum is heavy and I still have one more floor to go. Also, I can smell your cigar in the carpet fibers again. Are you doing it on purpose or what?”

“Let me help you, Mrs. Suarez. I can take a load off you and carry it to the top floor. It’s no trouble. Give it here, you’re going to break your back.”

“Let go of that! Stop pulling . . . You’re hurting me. I don’t want your help, or your hypocrisy. I can’t take any more of you! What would really take a load off me is seeing you leave. Fortunately, we’ll soon be rid of you. For good!”

“With all due respect, Mrs. Suarez, don’t get your hopes up. My daughter is a very wise woman. She asked me to make an effort, I have done so, and will continue to do so. Then she’ll leave me alone about that retirement home. She keeps her word. She’s a diplomat!”

“Poor old man, you understand nothing. You think you have control over your fate, but it escaped you months ago, while you still desperately cling to your pathetic little life. But it’s over. This is the end for you!”

“You think you can scare me with so much hot air. Marion is a smart girl. She gets that from her father, you know!”

“Smart, maybe, but gullible, and easily manipulated. I can assure you! The poor little thing, so far away, and so worried. It’s a good thing she has
me
to tell her the truth.”

“What truth?”

“That you’re making absolutely
no
effort! Your dental hygiene is deplorable—your toothbrush is at least ten years old. Your apartment is a dump and smells musty. Your food is worse than in the third world. I saw all the expired cans of preserves you ate and threw in the trash. With regard to friendliness, try again. You made Christine leave and have already insulted the new neighbor. As for your desire to live, pardon me, but setting fire to the trash area is too much! If you want to die, so be it, but leave the rest of us in peace!”

“Well, Mrs. Suarez, it’s not at all what you think. The fire was to create a diversion because I wasn’t ready to receive you that day. It wasn’t to burn everything down, otherwise I would have turned on the gas!”

“You are a very sick man, Mr. Brun! Even worse than I thought. You don’t even recognize the absurdity and danger of your actions. You need to get treatment. And what’s more, I don’t like you. You frighten me. You’ve already threatened me by telling me you’d cut me into pieces and toss them down the garbage chute. I could turn you in to the police, you know!”

“Just when I was starting to appreciate you and tell you things about my Pierre Bellemare books.”

“Well, you have a funny way of showing people you appreciate them! Your place is not in this building—
my
building—but with the other old nutcases in the retirement home. And I’m going to see to it personally.”

“Marion will never let that happen.”

“You are so naïve, poor man! How do you think she found a place in a retirement home so quickly? I was the one who found the establishment—they owed me.”

“Marion will never trust you when I tell her that.”

“Marion
already
trusts me, and has for years. How do you like that, eh? She trusts me so much that she accepted my offer to do weekly reports on your movements. For free, too. Well, I didn’t refuse the flat-screen TV she sent me for Christmas. The image quality is much better. Those Chinese are good at electronics!”

“This is too much. Too much! You won’t get away with this, mark my words.”

“It’s too late, Mr. Brun. They’re coming Monday. I’ve already called them. And it’ll be just a formality with Marion. None of this would have happened if you’d known how to train your dog. My poor canaries . . . May they rest in peace.”

“Leave Daisy alone. She never touched any of your damned birds.”

“Well, she certainly touched that car. It didn’t take long for her to pounce on the piece of steak I threw her. What a glutton! Beef back was her favorite cut, was it not?”

“What did you say? No, you didn’t do that . . . Not to my Daisy! It was an accident, tell me it was an accident . . .”

Mrs. Suarez cackles like a hyena, another notorious scavenger.

“You deserve to die like your canaries . . . You old bitch!”

“Name-calling, that hardly surprises me about you, Mr. Brun. Shall I trot out ‘old fossil’ or ‘born loser’? By the way, can we rent out your apartment during your prolonged absence? I have a good friend who would love to live in my complex. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to do the stairwell.”

Eyes bulging, hands ready to strangle, Ferdinand freezes, as if in a trance. When he comes to, he’s alone, at home, wondering if the exchange really happened.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Over the Edge

If there’s one thing Ferdinand can’t stand, it’s spinelessness. Attacking the weak is worst of all. First, Juliette, and on a whole other level, Daisy. The scum have no limits. He paces around his apartment, from one room to another, like a lion readying himself to encounter a new rival.

Ferdinand seeks revenge on Mrs. Suarez, but he hasn’t devised the perfect plan yet. He dismisses his first ideas—pour rat poison through a funnel to stuff the silly old goose full, or grind her up in the garbage truck. But he risks getting caught and living out his days in prison, which is not the end he envisions for himself.

He has to get rid of her. He can no longer cross paths with her and listen to her honeyed, hypocritical voice without feeling like killing her, tearing out both her eyes, cutting out her lying viper’s tongue. On further reflection, he may not have to attack her directly. Her husband? No, she doesn’t give a rat’s ass about him. But Rocco . . . In his younger days, Ferdinand learned how to butcher rabbits. It shouldn’t be all that different for a Chihuahua. And it would please Mrs. Suarez so much to have a little souvenir, since she can’t go out without her fur coat.

Given all these macabre ideas, Ferdinand knows there can’t be a shared future in this complex. One of them has to go.

The old man is afraid to even leave his apartment. He’s not sure what he’s capable of should he come face-to-face with the concierge. The minimum would be spitting in her face before pushing her down the stairs. With a bit of luck, she’d snap her neck, and it could be passed off as an accident. Unless someone found his DNA on her face . . .

What if
he
turned
her
in to the police? Unfortunately, he has no proof, now that his dog has been reduced to ashes. And the silly old goose would deny everything or somehow turn the situation to her advantage and get him sent to jail.

Realizing he won’t find any solutions within these walls, Ferdinand leaves, resigned to letting his impulses do the talking if he comes across the murderess. The concierge has finished with the vacuum and isn’t in her loge.
She’s hiding
, thinks Ferdinand.
Or else she’s off stocking up at the butcher for her next massacre
. Ferdinand waits for her next to the trash bins.

Across from the complex is Juliette’s elementary school. The poor child, with her arm in a sling . . . It must be difficult to do her writing assignments and multiplication tables.

12:15 p.m. The school bell rings. Ferdinand doesn’t have time to register the meaning before a tide of book bags, each heavier than the last, tumbles out. It runs, it jostles; the gangs of boys don’t pay any attention, shouldering past daydreaming girls who aren’t moving fast enough. Ferdinand is dumbstruck by the sight of these larval human beings behaving like bullies. Especially those three guys, a short redhead and two big ones, two heads taller than he is. After insulting a group of older teenagers, they attack a lone girl in a skirt, the kind that flares when you twirl. The good-for-nothings try to lift it up. She begs, crying, “Stop it, Matteo, stop it! Tell your friends to let me go!”

Is there no one to defend this poor girl? Where are the teachers, the monitors? Ferdinand has never witnessed such a cruel spectacle between children. So he does what anyone else would do in his place: he looks elsewhere, pretending to be busy with something. Still no Mrs. Suarez on the horizon. Suddenly, shrill cries attract his attention. The three rascals are now forming a circle around their prey, who no longer knows where to turn. One of them grabs hold of the handle on her book bag and sends her flying two yards away. She skins her knee, bleeds, and starts sobbing. That’s enough for today!

Ferdinand crosses the street in giant strides, seizes the lead brat by the collar, lifts him eight inches off the ground, crosses back to the complex, and stuffs his head in the nearest trash bin. The compost one.

“That’s where you belong, you brat! I advise you never to pick on a girl again, or you’ll have to deal with me. Ferdinand. And be careful, because I live here, across the street from your school, and I’ll be watching you!”

The octogenarian looks up. The little girl has disappeared, while the two large boys lurk in a corner. Ferdinand has nothing left to do here. The morning’s tension has fallen like a soufflé. He goes back to his apartment, where Juliette waits for him on the doormat. With this new twist in the Daisy affair, he forgot about their lunch, and with her father’s prohibition, he thought she wouldn’t come over anymore.

Juliette seems exhausted by her morning at school. She collapses onto the table, head resting heavily on her good elbow.

“Everything OK?” Ferdinand inquires.

Juliette replies with a weary groan. “No, it’s that jerk Matteo again. He tore up the math lesson I’d just rewritten, which took me two hours with my left hand! I don’t know what’s keeping me from stabbing him in the hand with my compass so he gets the message.”

Ferdinand sits down beside her and tells her, “Never answer violence with violence. You’re smart, you’ll always find something cleverer to bother him about. Above all, you must not get caught. We can think about it together if you want. For example, what’s the thing he cares about most?”

Juliette scratches her head. “His grandmother, I think.”

Mrs. Suarez is returning from her shopping when she discovers a pair of legs in her trash bins.

“What are you doing there, you scamp? Oh, heavens! Matteo, my darling! What happened to you? Tell Grandma . . .” She extracts the boy, muddy from the bin, and turns to a schoolgirl heading toward them. “And you, little girl, don’t you know how to read? Your newspaper doesn’t go in the compost bin. What are your glasses for? Paper goes in the yellow bin! No education these days, I’m telling you! Come along, Matteo, come here, my chick. We’re going to clean you up.”

It doesn’t take Mrs. Suarez long to identify the lout who attacked her favorite grandson. “I’m calling your father, Matteo. He must be informed. You can’t just attack a defenseless child with impunity! Not
my
grandson!”

Chapter Twenty-Six

The Last Straw

“All right, two across, six letters,
Greek tunic
. . . What’s there already? I have
H
,
T
,
N
. . .” Beatrice pushes the plaid blanket away from her lap and stretches out her legs. Her fitness class at the gym the day before left her stiff. She turns to the pedestal table to the right of her armchair and grabs the thesaurus, her best friend for the
Figaro
crossword puzzles. “No, come on . . . Chiton! Of course, I should have thought of that! Where was my head? OK, now what’s left?” While pondering, Beatrice taps her pencil, following the rapid tempo of
The Barber of Seville
.

The telephone rings, though she’s not expecting any calls. It’s 12:45 p.m. Who can it be? “Hello. Yes, this is she. No, you’re not disturbing me. Shutters? It’s nice of you to offer, but you see, I just had mine redone. Yes, throughout the apartment. Maybe even with your company, I don’t recall anymore . . . Which company did you say you worked for? Yes, maybe it was them. Do you want me to check? Very well, as you wish. And a very nice day to you, too, sir.”

Beatrice then remembers she was supposed to call Nespresso customer service back. She has visitors coming this weekend, and her coffeemaker is acting up. She retrieves her notepad and dials the number.

“Nespresso After-Sales Service, hello. How may I help you?”

“Hello, sir. My Nespresso machine is blinking and I can’t make coffee anymore. It’s quite annoying!”

“The three buttons on the machine are blinking? At the same time?”

“Yes.”

“Well, ma’am, your problem is very common and quite simple to resolve. May I ask you to go stand next to your machine? Once you’re there, press all three buttons at once, holding them down until you hear a very distinct ‘click.’ Go on, I’ll wait.”

Beatrice, doubtful, does so. She presses very hard for about twenty seconds, and there . . . Click!

“OK, ma’am, did you hear the noise?”

“I did.”

“Very good. Now you can drain it and make coffee normally. Do you know how to drain the machine?”

“I do, yes.”

“I’ll wait while you check.”

Beatrice performs the action, and brownish water flows out. It’s a good sign. Once the capsule is engaged, steaming coffee flows like magic from the device. Perfect.

“Sir? Everything is working like before. You’re effective over there at Nespresso. It’s a surprising repair technique, pushing three buttons at once, but as long as it works and it’s simple, it’s fine with me. Thank you for your patience, sir. Have a lovely day.”

Beatrice pours a cup of lukewarm coffee. She doesn’t feel like drinking it before lunch, but it mustn’t be wasted. She gulps down the espresso, then realizes she could have heated it in the microwave after her meal. Oh, well.

With coffee-stained teeth and a pasty tongue, Beatrice gets back to her crossword. She spends a quarter of an hour looking for a synonym for her second-to-last word, when the telephone rings again.

“Hello? Yes, this is she. A bathtub? No, thank you. Yes, I know they can be dangerous past a certain age. That’s why I have side handles installed along mine. Yes, I have all I need. No, don’t bother offering me another discount. Good-bye, ma’am. Have a nice day.”

Beatrice is tired of these daily calls coming in one after the other. But at the same time, it’s unthinkable for her not to answer. What if it were an emergency?

Beatrice decides to fix herself a good, simple meal consisting of a raw zucchini salad with balsamic vinaigrette, lemon cod with basmati rice, and for dessert, her guilty pleasure: a chocolate éclair! She’s preparing the fish, when the telephone rings again. She hesitates, then heaves a big sigh and picks up the receiver.

“Yes? No. My Internet connection works very well, ma’am. Yes, I’m very satisfied with it. No, there’s no reason to change it today. No, I’m not interested in your offer. I’m sorry. I have to go, ma’am. Good day to you, too.”

What irritates her the most is that now her fish is cold, and if she reheats it, it will be overdone, like it always is at restaurants. She returns to the kitchen and heats up a lemon sauce, then coats the fish with it. It’s saved! The cod is delicious.
I won’t have any need for sea bream anymore. I’ll praise the fishmonger for his advice.

The old lady glances at the clock. 1:45 p.m.
Quick, it’s about to start.
She takes her dessert and goes into the living room. TNT is so convenient; she can watch old episodes of
Agatha Christie
,
Murder, She Wrote
, or
Columbo
. With relish, Beatrice devours her dessert without missing a second of the detective story.

After reading thirty pages of the book selected by Mrs. Granger for their book club, which, as always, is turning out to be torture, Beatrice takes care of her little chores. Thus begins the auditing of her accounts, documenting every expenditure and every bill received. Next, Beatrice consults her bank account online to verify the debits have been subtracted. For more than seventy years, Beatrice has balanced her checkbook daily, and in seventy years, only twice has she found errors—errors that were, both times, in her favor!

By reading her account books, one could follow her life like a personal diary. Her spending on food at the market or the wine expo, her purchases of flowers for her weekly visits to retirement homes or burials, her checks written for birthday gifts for her grandchildren, her outings to the theater, to the movies, to the museum. And especially her travels all over the world. There is no continent Beatrice hasn’t seen, no major church in a capital city she hasn’t admired, seemingly no train station or airport in which she hasn’t had a layover. She is fully informed on Middle Eastern geopolitics, Asian funeral traditions, African tribal history, South American culinary specialties, and even sub-Arctic fauna. Beatrice always has extraordinary stories to tell about her journeys. Bus trips through war-torn countries; river crossings that resulted in emergency evacuations to lifeboats; perilous flights on the first recreational aircraft—attempting to land on runways that five minutes earlier had been fruit and vegetable markets. Beatrice enjoyed sushi, enchiladas, and pizza well before anyone else did. She’s even met the pope twice—well, two different pontiffs.

Yes, Beatrice has been lucky. She’s made wonderful memories, though it’s true she’s started to forget them little by little, to mix them up. So she’s taken to labeling each object with a number that refers to a detailed explanation in a little notebook: date, place, travel companions, context, and anecdote. Every day, she travels through time to a distant country, searching the depths of her memory for the extraordinary stories she can pass on. When she hosts her grandchildren, it’s with pleasure that she relates one of the journeys, often with wide eyes and laughter.

Beatrice says that when she’s finished her labeling, she’ll start on the family’s Super 8 movies. Certain films from the period between the wars have even been used in documentaries.

But Beatrice’s life hasn’t always been rosy. She’s the last surviving sibling among seven, and the surviving member of the happy couple she once formed with Georges, taken much too soon, more than fifty years ago. Beatrice raised her children by herself, learned how to rustle up the money she needed, how to cope with the growing solitude as her nearest and dearest disappeared. To counter the devastating effects of time, Beatrice strives to infuse her days with new blood, and, if possible, young blood. She tries to make herself as useful as possible—to the parish, to her neighbors, to her family. She wants to help those around her before she goes.

Careful to make her letters round and clear, Beatrice spends hours bent over her notebook choosing the right words, remembering the story exactly. On this particular day, she’s recording some memories of the immense, dark painting over the mantel, which depicts the portrait of a marshal of the Empire, a family ancestor. It’s a strange story of the forefather being condemned and pardoned, and the painting being stolen, then lost, and finally bought back.

In the growing shadows, she suddenly realizes it’s already 6:10 p.m. Good God! The show! She drops everything and runs to her armchair. Julien appears on the screen. She grumbles, realizing she’s missed the beginning of
Questions for a Champion
. She turns up the volume and leans forward to better hear the questions. She generally gets the answers before the contestants, whom she then berates with insulting names.

Beatrice has gotten four answers in a row when she turns, hackles up, eyes fixed on the phone, which is ringing. During
Questions for a Champion
! In one leap, Beatrice jumps up, picks up the receiver, and slams it back down. Then she takes the telephone off the hook.

“Honestly! During
my
show. Now I’ve seen everything! People are really inconsiderate. Well, that’s nice, I missed the last qualifier!”

Across the landing, behind Ferdinand’s door, the same frenzy prevails. On the upper floors, as well. All of a sudden, the volume on all the televisions in the building is turned up by at least ten clicks. It’s time for “Four in a Row.” You could shout, scream, wail . . . no one would hear anything. Say, isn’t that Mrs. Suarez hollering from the trash area, calling for help with all her strength?

The contestant has just gotten four points in a row! Everyone shouts with joy—Julien Lepers, the contestant, Ferdinand, and all the grandmothers at their posts.