The 6:41 to Paris (9 page)

It still gets to me.

I may claim that it doesn’t. That it’s just some unpleasant memory I can brush aside. That would be true, too. I don’t dwell on it. But there are times when that night comes back to me. I’ll be shaving, looking in the mirror, telling myself I’ve gone downhill, that I look like an obese, wrinkled caricature of Hugh Grant in
Four Weddings and a Funeral
—and my mind wanders
as I pull at my skin, and the razor tries to restore a semblance of youth to my cheeks and my neck. Then all of a sudden, my lips pucker with a bitter taste. I can see myself outside the stadium in Aube, I’m twelve years old, and I’ve just made Karima cry, telling her that I don’t talk to foreigners. Or I’m sixteen and I’ve just told off a classmate because he’s worried about his mother, the chemo
is really rough going, and I shouted at him that he was a pain, couldn’t he stop making such a big deal out of it? I don’t know what came over me. Then I’m twenty, there are two girls in a hotel room, it’s dead quiet, and one of them walks past the other and says, “I’m not his sister, you know.”

What do other people do to forget?

One day I started looking to see if there wasn’t some sort of
group therapy, an Alcoholics Anonymous type meeting, where everyone would sit and hold hands and
say their name—hello, I’m Philippe—and where you could off-load your most shameful memories. I couldn’t find anything. Maybe I didn’t look hard enough. That’s my problem, after all. I don’t look hard enough. I wait for the fruit to fall fully ripened from the tree. Stewed. For a while, it worked. But
now I lack confidence in myself. No, that’s not exactly it, either. I don’t trust myself. That’s why I’m going to see Mathieu at the hospital.

Because Mathieu is at death’s door, and he trusts me. And it feels good.

It’s repugnant.

I could tell her, Cécile, about Mathieu. But she probably doesn’t remember him. They crossed paths only because of me. When I was going out with her, I saw a lot
less of him. She must have met him two or three times at most, at parties, where they hardly spoke. He thought she wasn’t much to look at. He couldn’t understand why I was wasting my time with her. When I came back from London, I simply told him that it was over, he nodded, and we never spoke of it again.

I can’t believe it.

We can’t go our separate ways like this, with me getting to my feet,
and her sitting there, and me saying, “Have a nice time in Paris!” and getting off the train. It’s idiotic, I have to do something, it’s my only chance. If only I had a business card. I’ve always been impressed by business cards. These people you hardly know, and after only a few minutes talking to them they hand you a card
with their name and address, you don’t really know why, what do they expect,
for you to call them? For you to go and have a drink together, and become friends or even more if you get along? And yet the fact remains I wish I had one now.

These days our kids have it easier. Manon and Loïc just tell someone that they’re on Facebook or Twitter, and the other person nods, and that very evening they’re virtual friends, and they know all about each other’s lives, their likes
and interests, their professional situation. I’m not on Facebook. At one point I wanted to sign up—my kids couldn’t believe their ears. I toyed with the idea for a while and then on reflection I wondered who I would contact on a social network. Mathieu’s friends? Forgotten classmates? Colleagues I see every day anyway? It seemed pointless. I abandoned the idea. But now Paris is getting closer, and
on our right you can just see the outline of Sacré-Coeur between two tall buildings, and I’m beginning to feel real panic.

I can’t go on letting things slip away from me. I can see the years ahead—like railroad tracks stretching into the distance, as far as the station. I meet people, and then they’re gone. And all that’s left is the debris they leave behind—remnants of shared lunches, hastily
drunk coffees, snatches of conversation, murmurs.

It hurts.

There, in my chest.

Between my ribs.

I’m not scared. I’m used to it. It’s been waking me up at night for the last few months. I mentioned it to the
doctor, he shrugged, he asked me if there was anything bothering me. It’s nerves, he added. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I’m nervous.

And nothing out of the ordinary.

That night was
probably even more unexceptional than the others. Pathetic. Kathleen didn’t ask a single question after Cécile left. She just wanted to lie down and go to sleep. You could hear the birds in the little park across from the hotel. She got undressed very quickly and lay down on her back. She didn’t seem to care one way or the other about what was about to happen. It was depressing. As for me, I tried
to revive a bit, but it didn’t go very far. By tacit agreement we didn’t take the experiment any further. She fell asleep almost at once. I didn’t. I lay staring at the ceiling—it had recently been repainted, it looked like a rush job. The day that had just gone by flickered past my eyes, but I couldn’t make any sense of it. I just wondered how I had come to this.

Apparently there are people
who, at a certain time in their life, get the impression they’re touching bottom and then mentally, they kick the floor with their heel to go back up. I’ve never believed in that sort of nonsense. Because it’s never happened to me. I didn’t get the feeling I was headed back toward the light, either the next morning, or in the days that followed. I woke up at noon, and Kathleen had left, the room was
paid for two more nights, so I hung around London. I wrote two or three letters, to Cécile, to Mathieu, but I didn’t send
them, I forgot them at the hotel. I must have done that deliberately.

I went back to France.

Life went on.

The defiance only came gradually. I knew I was capable of shabby betrayals, of low-down tricks. Whenever I started going out with a girl who was willing and eager,
I tried to make her understand that I wasn’t worth it. And when we broke up, I would point out that I had warned her. But that never prevented the crying, the tears, the insults—on the contrary, the more they knew I was right, the more they hauled me over the coals.

And then at one point I just gave up.

I was twenty-seven, I was a TV and VCR salesman at a superstore, I was living in a cheap
and reasonably comfortable two-room apartment; one evening, I sat by the window in the kitchen and I said to myself, Okay, I think I’ve had enough. I didn’t feel like meeting anyone—all the hoops you had to jump through, pretending to admire or understand—I would rather just fade into the background and let the world go about its business—it would be easier that way. I was tired. That’s it. Yes. Exhausted,
even. I met my wife six months later. That’s what she liked about me, right from the start, my fatigue. My disillusionment. And consequently, my candor. She took up the challenge. My wife is something of a Pygmalion. She wanted to restore my fighting spirit.

And eventually she gave up.

I understand her oh so well.

But along the way, we did have two children together. That counts for something.
That’s what I keep telling myself, every day. It’s not nothing. I still count for something.

Ouch.

It’s almost as if someone were snipping at my lungs with very fine scissors.

I have to stretch—as a rule, that eases the pain.

Like that, yesss.

Uh-oh. I bumped into Cécile Duffaut.

“Excuse me, I’m sorry.”

“No problem.”

Silence.

Loudspeaker crackling.

Our train will be arriving shortly in Paris, Gare de l’Est, our final station. On behalf of the SNCF, the train manager, and crew hope you have had a pleasant journey.

“I am really sorry.”

“It’s not a problem, really, it was nothing.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is, I’m sorry about everything. About what
happened almost thirty years ago. About London. I am. I’m really sorry.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

At least now it’s done.

I expect it’s something Mathieu would have done, too. That’s how he must be feeling these days, wishing he could ease his conscience. Put an end to all the failures, tie up all the loose ends. When you’re at death’s door, you won’t be in the mood for Impressionists. Vermeer would be more like it.
A View of Delft
, say. Or any seventeenth century Dutch interior. Or why
not Bacon’s screaming popes or decomposing bodies, while you’re at it.

I don’t know how he’s doing.

Yesterday on the phone he was totally delirious. Half in tears over a red bicycle he used to have when he was nine years old, and half elated because he’s convinced that he’ll be going home soon. I’m glad his mother is not altogether lucid anymore. I couldn’t stand seeing any of my children die
before me.

I got hold of the head nurse on the phone. She knows me. She knows I’m a substitute family. I’m everything at once: parents, brother, son, friend. Even though Mathieu and I stopped seeing each other for almost twenty years. It’s pathetic. She told me they’d increased the dose of morphine, and that his delirium might be a consequence of the injections, unless the metastasis has already
reached his brain. They would have to check, with a scan. There was a moment of silence. She murmured, “If it comes to that.” I understood that I had
to get there as fast as I could.

So here I am.

Whatever Cécile Duffaut might think, I’m very loyal. It’s probably my best quality: for anyone I get attached to, or who gets attached to me, I’m like a dog. It’s not a very sexy trait, I’ll grant
you that. It’s not the sort of thing you can let slip in conversation, when you meet someone. “You know, I’m very loyal”: you might as well tell them that you collect ceramic owls or that you spend your Sunday afternoons in front of the TV.

Cécile Duffaut doesn’t give a damn. She doesn’t give a damn about what I just told her.

At the same time, I can hardly say I blame her. It was twenty-seven
years ago. A whole lifetime has gone by since then. There’s no point talking about it anymore. Or apologizing.

Thank God the trip will be over soon.

Sorry.

It was kind of him to say it.

To say he was sorry.

And I said, thank you.

How stupid.

Either you say nothing, and you cloak yourself in your dignity, you cast a scornful look at the odious individual who has dared to speak to you; or you accept the apology and you continue the conversation, Oh, and how are you after all these years, are you married, do you have kids, where do you
work, well, you see, you made your way after all.

But like an imbecile, I dithered, somewhere in between.

I suppose that’s just the way I react to him—I’m indecisive, half stunned, half annoyed, incapable of deciding anything until the facts shove me out the door. Off the train. Out of the hotel room.

Why am I hung up on the past when I should be forging ahead, elated, looking forward to whatever’s
in store? That’s how things were until last year. But now some spring has lost its tension; there’s some mechanism that hasn’t seized up yet, but it’s creaking. It’s harder to stifle those yawns in the morning. Valentine is almost seventeen, and she’s slipping away—and with her, the strongest tie I have with Luc. I wonder what will
be left of our relationship once our daughter has left home. Maybe
we’ll just congratulate each other, with kisses on both cheeks: “You did good with the kid, we can be proud, I’m off now, ciao,” and go our separate ways without any other due process, because for a long time now we haven’t exactly known who we are to each other, what we like, what we want. Or we’ll go on living together, like mussels on a rock, waiting for the next tide.

Balance sheet.

Settling
of accounts.

That’s what I’ve been going over these last few months.

My life, two columns: pluses and minuses.

This I like / this I don’t like.

Make lists of what you like / what bothers you.

I sound like an article in a woman’s magazine.

I hate that sort of thing.

My father was a genealogy fanatic.

It started when he was about forty-five; I was still at the lycée. He would spend his vacations
writing letters, making phone calls, going from one town hall to the next to look at birth registries. I was laughing behind his back. I couldn’t have been happier. While he was busy doing that he was off my case, and I was free to come and go as I pleased. Otherwise he’d spend all day telling me to “go out for some air,” or “do something intelligent.” I still don’t understand what he meant
by that, coming from him, a man who didn’t read or listen
to music and who’d never set foot in a museum. For him intelligent was probably a synonym for useful: housework, mending, shopping.

This lasted until his retirement; I thought he’d have something to keep him busy once he stopped work, that he’d continue to pursue his passion, go all the way back to the sixteenth century, fill in his family
trees. But all of a sudden he lost interest. The family trees must be in some dusty corner of the attic.

I’ve never been like him. I’ve never wanted to pore over registries of births, deaths, and marriages just to find out that one of my ancestors was a blacksmith. I’m much more down to earth than that. Now things have changed somewhat. We have, imperceptibly, grown closer. Just as everything
has begun to take off professionally for me—we’re opening new stores, the business is booming—I’ve begun to feel a sort of weariness. All I want to do, in fact, is sit in a deck chair on an evening in June and start to drop off right there, just as the night is falling, and I’ll be vaguely trying to remember the names of the stars above me. The way he used to. One day, perhaps, we’ll be able to name
them together. At last.

I wonder if Philippe has any aspirations. Probably not. Philippe isn’t the aspiring kind. He seizes the moment and consequences be damned. He must cheat on his wife, and his kids will think he’s a hero, what with the pointless but entertaining conversations I’m sure they have together.

What if I dare to look him right in the face.

My eyes trained right on him.

Deep,
unattractive wrinkles. His hair beginning to thin. And that paunch, above all. I assumed, naïvely, that he would stay slim as he got old. That he’d be one of those crisp fiftysomething men who go running every Sunday and don’t put on an ounce of fat even when they give up smoking. Like Luc. Or like that friend of his, Mathieu Coché. Now there’s a good-looking man. Good-looking, and not such an unpleasant
memory in the end. Maybe I could start with that. A benign conversation, now that the train has stopped for a few minutes before it pulls into the station: we can see Sacré-Coeur on the right, and the Cité des Sciences on the left. An empty conversation of the kind he must enjoy, and which would at least have the advantage of not letting our non-encounter end on the unpleasant note of an
unconfirmed request for forgiveness. Something like, “I saw your friend Mathieu Coché in a magazine the other day.” His eyes would light up. Even if they haven’t seen each other in ages. It’s always nice to have a friend who’s famous. It makes your own star shine a little brighter.

Yes, I could try that. Two minutes exchanging bland information, and we would say good-bye with a smile.

I’ll be
magnanimous.

I need my peace of mind.