Villa Bunker (French Literature) (11 page)

115.
She said to him (in a voice that seemed to her shallow and lacking in seriousness): I’m going to get some clothes, don’t move, I’ll be back in a minute. And right away, she’d felt relieved by this detached, almost forced tone. Hearing it, she felt that she was taking control of the situation, so to speak. She pushed the door shut when she left, as a precaution, without fully closing it, however, as if to show the occupant that he wasn’t a prisoner, and then she carefully proceeded to the living room. And once she was alone again, she tried to continue their conversation in her head, consciously pushing aside the idea that, thus far, he hadn’t said a word, and that strictly speaking they hadn’t communicated at all. All that mattered in her eyes was that they’d met, and neither one had been afraid, nor had tried to run away. And since he’d seemed to her like a child (at least at certain moments), she more or less decided that she would be a sort of mother to him, full of concern, because he was, perhaps, an orphan—traumatized.

116.
She could always take him straight to the hospital, in that case she would get him dressed and fill a bag with clothes that might fit him, and she would drop him off at the door, explaining that she’d found him walking on the side of the road, that he was unable to say where he was going. She wouldn’t say a word about the villa, the strange noises, the bedroom in which she’d found him, almost naked; she didn’t want to go into details, she knew that recounting the details would only make her look suspicious, and perhaps they would ask questions, questions that would only make her uncomfortable and drag her still further into the matter, so that in the end they would open an investigation, suspecting that she’d kidnapped the child and held him captive—who knows, maybe all of this would land her in jail. One thing was certain, she was thinking, he seems to have ended up where he wanted to, he wasn’t there by chance. But, then again, she could only imagine his will as being like an ensemble of small, imperfect movements, whose combination somehow produced a concrete result, almost in spite of itself. Something completely devoid of intention, that is, thus incapable of duplicity. No, she wouldn’t end up opting for any of those solutions.

117.
Upon her return, he’d disappeared. She thought she’d entered the wrong bedroom by mistake, she inspected all the rooms on the floor to no avail. When she got back to the room, which she didn’t recognize now that he was gone (but perhaps she just hadn’t paid attention the first time), she went ahead and left the clothes on the bed.

118.
Now that she was alone again, she went over everything that had happened since moving into the villa, and already another story was beginning to form in her head, a story with a tightly wound plot, full of uncertainty, where much is left unsaid, and in which she was playing the leading role. He’d managed to get into the villa, and he’d been happy there—but for how long had he really been there, and why had he chosen the villa and not some other house in the surrounding area? And even if he did break into the villa by chance, he must have felt a little at home, for he was still there, he’d stayed put, as though his presence was somehow necessary. She was trying to understand, in hopes this would lend a precise meaning to the fact that he was there in the villa and not somewhere else, she was trying to assign a seemingly mundane explanation to his enigmatic presence. And her sense that he too had no idea what he was doing there only complicated matters further; or, if he did know, it was only within the bounds of his diminished capacity. She was trying to recall what she’d been doing these past few days, what she’d been feeling, thinking, but the effort seemed enormous, out of proportion to the task, insane. Everything was happening as if to someone else, and she was now beginning to realize that her memory was filled with false information. She felt almost as though she were digging a hole whose walls were collapsing with each new effort to sharpen the outlines of a given memory.

119.
And then she had to go and start talking about him as though he lived with them, as though he’d been on her mind since the day she and my father first moved in. It was only mid-morning, she would perhaps never see him again, yet she felt he’d been there for a long time, as though she and my father had inadvertently adopted him without realizing it, and even though she had yet to hear the sound of his voice, he didn’t feel strange to her; for some reason, she was sure he would turn up again and eventually talk, his words would throw a new light on their time in the villa. But then again, she was thinking, he would probably never speak to her directly, and she was going to have to live with the fact that she wouldn’t understand everything he’d nevertheless be saying to her.

120.
She was thinking it would be best to not tell my father. She was afraid the little being would flee, unable to take the shock of the encounter, should my father confront him, but above all she was trying to convince herself that she was completely alone with him, that no one else was aware of his existence, that no one else could care for him, get through to him, as she was sure she soon would, one way or another. She couldn’t predict my father’s reaction and, not being certain of him, she wasn’t about to do anything hasty.

121.
She saw him again, the child, the next morning, standing in the frame of the door leading to the ballroom. He was radiant. He was wearing the clothes she’d given him the day before, taking her completely by surprise. Had she already forgotten about him, had a good night’s sleep been enough to erase the time they’d spent together the day before? The child was bigger than she’d thought when he was sitting on the bed. The pants and sweater were too small for him, she would have to find clothes that fit him, this time in matching colors, she thought, and he’ll look even more normal, and she won’t think he broke into the villa anymore, and she won’t dream of contacting any asylums. All the same, it’s not like he looked ridiculous. He was staring at her, or let’s say it looked like he was staring at her, but it probably wasn’t the case. She started thinking about the unreachable boy he’d probably always been, a little out of place in this world, the kind of child you can’t send to school, and whose parents don’t know what to do with anymore, or even know how to love him, mother and father at their wit’s end, unsure if they should hate him or hate themselves, and maybe some brothers and sisters too, a big family, or rather a tribe with strange customs, customs that seem almost repugnant to the outside observer, a tribe living in a camper van, with grimy and taciturn children who have never once uttered the words mommy and daddy, and who seem like adults next to children their own age.

122.
The idea of the tape recorder had come to her while she was looking for more clothes for him. She said to him: Follow me, in a firm voice that she hoped would be reassuring. She’d quickly gotten used to constructing her sentences carefully, so as to express herself as simply as possible, as though speaking to a foreign child learning her language. She’d realized that the possibilities were endless for expressing the most insignificant banalities, and she was always searching for the plainest way to say something. At the same time, she was forcing herself to pronounce each word—this had seemed to alter her voice, its tone, and even its texture. She’d shown him the tape recorder, explaining to him how the machine works by pushing each button several times in a row and repeating the same explanation. She’d shown him the little red light, explaining to him that whenever it was lit, the machine was recording what they were saying. And she’d given a little demonstration, which he’d followed attentively. He was apparently able to understand everything, now that she wasn’t trying to get close to him.

123.
As a general rule, she was aware that people felt uncomfortable as soon as they knew their words were being recorded. Everything recorded might one day or another be held against you. But for him, she thought, it was quite the opposite. She wasn’t going to keep the tapes and use them for some malign purpose. She’d only thought it would be infinitely less difficult for him to speak into a tape recorder than to a person. Was that her only motive? In any case, she was determined to communicate with him, she was ready to try anything, as long as it might help her discover what the child was looking for there.

124.
Did he have a name? Was it possible to grow up without having a name? Each morning, she’d told him her own name, and she would explain that they’d been living there, she and her husband, for the past few months. They’d bought the villa, but for the time being they were having trouble living in it normally, they were going to have work done on it, after they’d thought a bit about what they could do with it. This was liable to take months, she wasn’t sure how much longer it would be before they were out of the woods. It was taking longer than they’d anticipated at first. And all that was based on the assumption, for one, that they even knew what their dream house was supposed to look like. Her husband, she’d explained, pointing to the ceiling, was even now thinking about the renovations they could make; he was likely designing the layout of the interior of the refurbished villa as they spoke. It wasn’t possible to see him just now (and she again made her fleeting gesture toward the ceiling), she hadn’t seen much of him lately—she was telling herself it was a good sign. She was thinking it wouldn’t be long now before the renovations started.

125.
The sound of the cassette tape running offered another form of silence. The child still wasn’t saying anything, but she was convinced he would start speaking at any moment. And given that she didn’t mind the machine recording her own monologues, she was still speaking to him simply, with a kind of sincerity. He listened to her attentively for hours. It was possible that he was elsewhere, in reality she had no way of knowing if he understood her. She was never sure if she was expressing herself as simply as she would have liked.

126.
Still this tormented face, slightly sad, at once frightened and frightening, as though given to expressing the entire continuum of anxiety. He looks a little like you, my mother will write.

127.
They had a child too, my mother had explained, a boy who had become a man, and who was living far away, and whom they hadn’t seen in years. For weeks she’d wondered what it meant “to have a child.”To look at him, touch him, soothe him, whisper sweet words to him? Didn’t she need him to be there next to her, in the same room, in order to “have” him? Wasn’t a mother supposed to be forever making sure she still had her child, turning that contingent little being, as weak as he was, into an unwavering conviction? And ever since he’d left home, she was still without a reply. She was only too aware of his fragility, she used to think he could die at any moment. He’d needed to be alone and so, in order to guard his loneliness, he’d decided to live far away, without letting us know how he was doing. She’d told the child the clothes she’d given him were her son’s. She’d kept her son’s clothes, without knowing what she would do with them, and now, thanks to him, she could tell herself she’d been right to pack away his clothes. These clothes were still his, in a certain sense, but she was sure he wouldn’t have minded lending his clothes to the child. He’d always been so generous, he used to throw around the pittance he would make working odd jobs—one day he would perhaps write a book, she explained. As she was folding and putting away her son’s clothes in boxes, she’d felt depressed, for she was convinced she was performing a final and absurd act. She’d told herself that these clothes would never do anyone any good, and that it would’ve been better to give them away. She’d closed the boxes, wrapping them in adhesive tape; she’d figured she would never again need to open them to inspect their contents. She’d thought that inevitably someone would later (after she was dead) appropriate or destroy all these clothes to which not a single memory would then be attached. All of that, she’d thought, would take place in an uncertain future, so far away she was unable to really give it any thought. They’d managed not to get along with their son, she’d continued. They’d managed to not understand him. But it was probably too late to make up for any of that now.

128.
Each morning, she would talk to him in the small, sun-filled room, recording their conversations. He wasn’t really saying anything, but it didn’t feel as though she was the only one talking, like she was talking to herself. On the contrary, she was content to prattle on, stopping at certain moments, and during these moments it was as though he was replying. Particles of dust were whirling like galaxies in front of the window. The room wasn’t heated, but it was a sunny enough place to sit comfortably for an hour or two in the morning. The tape recorder would be placed on a small coffee table, plain as day. Next to the tape recorder, a carton of orange juice, their two glasses. She’d chosen a different room from the one where she’d found him. That room on the third floor—she’d felt they couldn’t stand each other in it, and she wasn’t sure if he’d ever gone back there, in fact, after the day she’d found him (and she wasn’t exactly eager to find out either).

129.
One morning when she was too tired to improvise a conversation, she’d gotten out a photo album. She grabbed the album at random, without really knowing what she could do with it; that is, she could tell him about it, but was the child capable of focusing on images, was his brain able to make a connection between the information contained in the photo and the world to which these people, these landscapes, pointed? Every photo is a window, but that doesn’t mean you always see something through it, sometimes you see nothing but vacant forms, without meaning. A photo can also be a boarded-up window. Since she’d turned the pages of this album so many times (a long time ago, now, it’s true), these images were no more than allusions to a far-distant world, for her, neither present nor even past, but rather suspended between two abysses, like two fragments of time impossible to join together. She no longer believed these images were reproducing anything, and as she was looking at them, she wasn’t sure anymore to which present she now belonged. But he’d started to fidget as soon as he saw the album. He was waiting for her on the threshold, like every morning, at first as quiet as a mouse, then suddenly on the alert, dimly concerned about something that he didn’t quite understand. She couldn’t see what was drawing his attention. They sat down, as was their habit, in the little luminous room. She poured the orange juice into glasses, in silence, careful to respect the ritual. He was waiting patiently, but she could tell he was trying to hide his extreme excitement; she was receiving the signs of his struggle as through a filter, or veil. She acknowledged the wait, its momentum, as if one’s existence were sliding toward the coming moment. She put the album down on the small table and said to him: Look, turn the pages if you like. He leaned forward, rested the album on his knees, and as he began to turn the pages, carefully lifting the sheets of parchment paper, he was almost solemn, and he seemed to be really looking at the pictures, without however lingering on any one in particular. Deckle-edged photos that were supposed to represent a foreign world in his eyes. And then he’d started talking, without her having to prod him with questions. He would close his eyes, a finger placed on a photo. She recognized the sound of his voice immediately. It wasn’t exactly an imitation, but she could make out elements in his voice, his elocution, his tone, without understanding the words or grasping the meaning from the units of sound, as they flowed inside an incomprehensible monologue. She recognized this crystalline voice, at once sharp and annoying, and yet she’d never heard it before. She thought of this voice as being already dead, an unknown force having pulled it from oblivion so it could tell her certain things. All the same, she had to be thinking that her senses were perhaps playing tricks on her. She said: Pardon me? Knowing full well he wasn’t listening to her. He was actually too unsettled to listen to her. He continued to speak, without appearing to care if she understood him, in his strange language. Her comprehension was not required for him to continue.