My stunt in the playground had given me a certain status at school. It’s not every day you see a person defending his honour by taking a chunk out of someone’s ear. Luckily, it wasn’t too serious – just a matter of sewing the bully’s dangling earlobe back on. Since his ear had to be protected for the next two weeks with a big bandage, I took to calling him Van Gogh. Even the teachers seemed to be taking me more seriously and seeing me in a different way: perhaps from slightly less high up and more on the same plane.
Now, of course, as far as the whole school was concerned, Marie and I were married, with a big house, two cars and three children. People knew I was a bit touchy about it, and because they didn’t want to lose their ears, they didn’t dare tease us too much about our relationship. One day, when I was in the lodge with Haisam, he said something that pleased me, and should have intrigued me too.
“You have to admit, it’s pretty impressive, what she’s done…” Then he added, “Marie’s discovered the secret to making you more alive.”
But he was a hopeless case: he just couldn’t take his eyes off the chessboard.
“Hmm, that’s odd…” he murmured, absent-mindedly.
“What’s odd this time?”
“Well, you remember the 1922 Rubinstein-Tarrasch endgame – from the Dutch Defence?”
“Of course I remember,” I said, just to play along.
“I’d never noticed that by playing h8 on his twenty-sixth move, Rubinstein won a piece with Qe7. Stupid of me, huh?”
“How will you ever forgive yourself?”
His eyes smiled at me behind his big spectacles. He looked enormous in the little lodge: he made me think of a mythical creature. Perhaps he’d take over from his father and stay there all his life. After all, Dad had taken El Dorado over from his father. And maybe I’d follow the same pattern. I suddenly thought of Haisam’s symbolic drawing, the one I’d found in my rucksack on the first day of school: an apple tree with big red apples lying all around the trunk. When he’d given it to me, he’d said, “The apple never falls very far from the tree.”
“What does that mean?” I’d asked.
“It’s a parable. One day you’ll understand.”
“One of those big umbrellas? Are you kidding me?”
“No, you dope, that’s a parasol. Look it up in the dictionary.”
That evening, I’d followed his advice.
Parable a simple story or statement designed to illustrate a puzzling moral or spiritual lesson.
I could see it was puzzling, that’s for sure, but apart from that I had absolutely no idea what my dear Egyptian was going on about with his apple tree and his apples.
Haisam was always finding really deep ideas in totally unexpected places. And then he’d come up with exactly the right words to express their deepness. When he’d said, “Marie’s discovered the secret to making you more alive,” that was just what I felt myself. I hadn’t become “more intellectual” as Dad had put it – and as I’d thought too – but “more alive”. And that’s something much more important. Sometimes, it seemed to me that my eyes had never been fully open before. I felt I could now focus on things and on the world in general, as though all through my life I’d been looking through a fuzzy lens.
And so, after a while, I began to feel really confident in some subjects. I even participated in class and contributed knowledgeable comments to the lessons. Usually, these were suggestions that Marie had made while we were working together, but I think it was only my friend Haisam who guessed.
But it was the approaching Christmas fair and The Rattletraps’ concert that was really stressing me out. Luckily, Etienne and Marcel wanted to keep the musicians’ identity a secret. Being masters in the art of cheesy ideas, they’d cobbled together a poster showing the silhouettes of three musicians with question marks instead of heads. They were stuck up all over the school. One day, when Marie and I were walking past a row of these posters, she asked me, “Do you know what kind of music they’re going to play?”
“Rock, I should think, or something of the sort…”
“You’ll probably laugh at me, but listening to stuff like that is absolute torture for my ears. I can’t bear it, just like I can’t bear liver. What about you, do you like that kind of thing?”
“Liver or rock bands?”
“Both.”
I nearly spilled the beans and told her that she was looking at the founder of The Rattletraps, and what’s more I played guitar and sang for them, but in the end I chickened out.
“I’ve never tasted liver,” I replied. “As for rock musicians, they’re just a bunch of jokers. As far as I’m concerned, playing music without being able to read the notes, well, I just don’t get it. It’s like swimming without water, for goodness’ sake! Or French skipping without the skip!”
I should have taken the opportunity to own up to everything. She probably would have teased me a bit, or maybe not, but in any case it wouldn’t have been much worse than that.
This business about the concert that Etienne and Marcel had organized was seriously beginning to worry me. They wanted us to come onstage dressed as Zorro and throw our masks into the audience during the first chords of a song called “Hittin’ the Wall” – words and music by me. They thought this was a phenomenal idea, but I couldn’t help feeling slightly ashamed at the prospect of connecting everything up to 220 volts and flailing around as though we had batteries up our bums, when for centuries there’d been geniuses – including deaf and blind ones – who’d dedicated their whole lives to coming up with sounds that actually hung together.
I was thinking about all this during sport on Friday afternoon. I had plenty of time, because we were supposed to be long-distance running, and distances offer an excellent opportunity to mull things over. I’d decided to stop hiding behind the plane trees like I used to do in the old days, even though I found it hard. From time to time I looked back to see if my dear Haisam was keeping up. There he was, struggling along, sweating heavily and wheezing. He looked enormous in the middle of the track and his little eyes were screwed up behind his steamed-up spectacles. I felt bad for him, but he was still smiling broadly. He raised his big paw when I turned round, as though to signal that despite this ordeal, everything was OK, and we’d soon be back together.
I was about to zoom around the last bend when I saw Marie walking in the opposite direction, on the grass at the edge of the track. I waved at her, but got no reaction at all. Yet I was sure she was looking straight at me. I wondered whether I’d offended her, or whether she’d found out about my involvement in the concert, or even if Van Gogh had been bad-mouthing me – I wouldn’t have put it past him. If that was the case, I’d take a chunk out of his other ear, and that would be the end of it. When the sports lesson was over, I got changed as quickly as possible and dashed off. I finally caught up with Marie when she was almost home.
“Are you angry?” I asked her.
“Of course not, why should I be?”
“Because earlier you walked right past me and I waved to you and … it was as though you didn’t recognize me!”
There was a strange look in her eyes: they seemed both transparent and cloudy at the same time and made me think of the eyes of the stuffed animals I’d seen in the Natural History Museum. She pulled a small gift-wrapped parcel out of her pocket.
“Here, this is for your birthday! See, I’m not angry at all.”
Strangely enough, that had completely slipped my mind. I felt choked. I tried to think of a historical quote or something a bit intellectual to say, but I couldn’t think of anything at all.
“Open it.”
It was a model replica of a 1954 Panhard Dyna. It had everything: the three-spoked steering wheel, the elaborate enamelled Dyna logo on the bonnet, the curving rear axle joined to the Silentbloc shock absorbers, the long parallel stitched seams on the bench seat. I looked at Marie and thought I might start blubbing, right there and then.
“Do you like it?”
She was going to have to stop, or I wouldn’t be able to hold it together. All I wanted to do was head straight to my bedroom and get over my agitation in my own good time, with the Dyna pressed to my heart and only Dad to see me, because with him it was different.
“I can’t think of anything I’ve ever liked so much!” I managed to stammer. “Do you know the engineers made a mistake on this Dyna? The chrome ashtray … see, there, on the right-hand side of the dashboard … well, it reflected on the windscreen in an annoying way. So no one bought it.”
“Just because of that? Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you my parents have invited you to lunch tomorrow.”
“That wasn’t the only thing wrong with it…” said Dad that evening. “For a start it was advertised as having six seats, whereas in fact it could fit four comfortably, possibly five, but no more than that…”
He was holding the little Dyna in the palm of his hand, gently turning it around.
“And also,” he went on, “the gearbox wasn’t brilliant, you had to be very precise about the gear changes and avoid revving the engine too much. The steering was a bit off on tight bends, and when you braked the whole thing shuddered. But it’s a nice model you’ve got there. It’s very accurate… Look, they’ve even reproduced the lighting under the bonnet. I wonder where on earth your friend got hold of it. It’s a collector’s item!”
I really thought I was going to explode with pride. I had steam coming out of every pore and sirens sounded with each beat of my heart.
“Anyway, I’ve got a present for you too. Maybe not quite such a beauty as the Dyna, but still, a present.”
He held out a paper bag.
“Sorry, gift-wrapping isn’t my strong point… Go on, open it!”
It was an old-style chrome shaving set, with a razor, a shaving brush and a bottle of aftershave. I was a bit surprised.
“Thanks, Dad – it’s a really nice present.”
“Do you like it?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Go and try it out now, if you like. Lots of men shave in the evening… Especially when they’re planning a nocturnal excursion…”
I realized the moment had finally arrived: he was going to take me with him in the Panhard to help with his deliveries.
So, I tried to shave off what there was, which was nothing at all really. But nothing will turn into something, I said to myself. I rubbed in some aftershave, just for the sake of it, and came out of the bathroom with my face all shiny. A man who’s had a shave, that’s quite something. My father looked at me very seriously.
“You know that Jews believe you become a man at thirteen?”
“But we’re not Jewish, Dad.”
He seemed to give this some thought, as though he had questions in his mind.
“Anyway, thirteen is a good age to become a man, Jewish or not,” he said.
“Definitely.”
“Shall we go?”
“Yes, Dad.”
He picked up his address book and we set off in the Panhard. It felt like embarking on a long voyage on an ocean liner. We drove north through the night. Past deserted districts with clusters of tower blocks scattered here and there … sprawling wastelands and empty warehouses … suburban towns passing by one after the other. Gradually, Paris began to take shape around us. Buildings, allotments, a big hospital rearing up out of the darkness. All of a sudden we were in the city, which I thought of as a red heart, beating wearily. From that moment on, I lost track of where we were, and even who we were, to be honest, to say nothing of the time and the date… My father was jabbing at the gear lever. He looked like he knew where we were going, yet I couldn’t help feeling that we’d lost our way and were going round in circles.
Now and again I thought about the meal at Marie’s house and I sensed I was going to be tested. Red traffic lights in the darkness … empty roads … it was as though we were driving through an abandoned city. Occasionally we saw groups of people leaving cafés and restaurants and heard their shrill laughter fading into the night. Then, Dad brought the big car to a halt. We got out and walked along side by side for a few minutes, our footsteps ringing on the pavement. All at once he stopped, nudged me with his elbow and pointed out the street name: Rue de l’Echiquier. It was here that Dad’s father had set up the legendary establishment known as El Dorado.
“Why is it called that, Dad?”
He explained to me that El Dorado was a mythical city of gold and great riches, thought to be hidden somewhere deep in South America. Dad stopped in front of an imposing metal shutter, then bent down to try and raise it. Nothing, it was jammed. Dad began to struggle with it, pulling with all his might, and that was when it occurred to me that one day he would leave me and I’d find myself standing all alone in front of a metal wall. But you have to keep going, even when you’re carrying all these memories inside. The present is mostly about laying down memories, and there’s something melancholy about that.
“Can I help you, Dad?”
He was still bending over, puffed out. He turned round and gave me a funny look. I couldn’t tell if he was touched and looking at me with great fondness, or whether on the contrary he was cross that I’d suggested it.
“If you want… Hold on here and pull at the same time as me… One… Two—”
On the count of three the shutter shot right up, as if it weighed no more than a feather. Dad smiled at me but it gave me a strange feeling. To tell the truth, I’d have preferred it if he’d managed to raise it on his own. Sometimes it’s hard to make sense of things.
“Well done! You see: you’re a man now!”
He was giving me the thumbs-up, which is what he always did when he wanted to be super encouraging.
I smiled, in a lopsided sort of way.
The room inside was long and quite narrow. There were shelves running along the walls with crates of all sizes piled up on them. We were in El Dorado! At the back there was a spiral staircase leading up from the warehouse floor to the “admin office”, as my father called it.
The office consisted of a wooden table and two dilapidated armchairs in a kind of corridor, with a few books on a little shelf and a huge map of Paris pinned to the wall. Dad sat down in one of the armchairs and suggested I sit opposite him. He crossed his legs and explained, with a serious look on his face, that he loved this place and it made him feel safe. It was here that his father had ended up hiding from the Germans during the war. He’d made a bad mistake thinking his worries would be over in France. At that time, the warehouse was a shop owned by a butcher who was also a collector and had acquired lots of rare pieces from him. He took my grandfather in when the Nasties were at his heels.
The strangest thing is that this butcher was Jewish, but he’d been very clever and specialized in making sausage and black pudding so no one had ever questioned him. And after the war, out of eternal gratitude, my grandfather had bought the shop from him and turned it into El Dorado, so that his friend could take early retirement from the butchery business.
Dad liked to come to his office and think things over, reflecting on life’s problems and on decisions that needed to be made. He was in his element here. A coloured light blinked outside in the street and shone intermittently into the room. In the flickering shadows, the map was reflected onto my father’s face, so that the streets and avenues actually seemed to become his veins.
I looked out of the window. The Panhard was waiting for us down below. A dusty rain was falling and the pavements had a glossy shine. I thought about Marie, and about that moment in the afternoon when she hadn’t seemed to recognize me. I touched the Dyna 54 model car in my pocket. It felt as though the two of us, Marie and I, were joined together by a thin thread that evening.
“Dad?”
“Yes.”
He was looking through copies of his magazine and planning the evening’s itinerary. I could barely see him in the darkness.
“What does it feel like to be in love with someone?”
He looked up and cleared his throat. He was probably feeling like a wounded animal again.
“It feels like … wait while I try and remember… It’s like the end of exile.”
“Exile – is that when you’re far away from your country?”
“From your country, and from yourself as well. Does that make any sense to you?”
“Of course it does. Do you take me for a fool? But the thing that’s bothering me is, when you’re in love, does it feel the same whatever age you are?”
“Exactly the same. It’s always the same old atomic bomb in a strawberry field. And you’re the strawberry!”
“My friend Haisam thinks that if you never read any love stories you’ll never fall in love.”
“Tell him he knows nothing about it.”
“I wouldn’t dare, Dad … but it doesn’t matter, I’ve got plenty of time to form my own opinions. What are these books?”
I’d picked one out at random. Dad came up to me and looked over my shoulder.
“Oh, it’s just an old story about a family… Nobody would read that nowadays … about a father and son… No one’s interested in that kind of thing any more… It’s very badly written anyway…”
“Not like Alexandre Dumas.”
“No, not like Alexandre Dumas. Shall we go?”
“Yes, Dad.”
He showed me our itinerary on the big map. He mentioned place names that he seemed to know well, though they meant nothing to me at all. We went back down to El Dorado. A small light bulb cast a weak, yellowish light over the long narrow space, giving it a slightly dirty, tacky glow. My father gave me a long list of all the things we had to deliver. I had to read it out loud so that he could select the items from the shelves. It was funny to be walking together in the footsteps of my grandfather.
“An early edition of Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne for the Blanchard brothers?”
“Done!”
I ticked the relevant item on my list.
“Ten copies of the guide to Versailles for Madame Michel?”
“OK, good!”
“A wooden leg that supposedly belonged to the actress Sarah Bernhardt, for Major General Rostand?”
“Got it!”
“A handwritten letter from Napoleon’s regimental surgeon, for Doctor Marat?”
“Sorted!”
We loaded the packages into the Panhard.
“Do you think we make a good team, Dad?” I asked.
“Yes, we do make a good team,” he replied, and I could hear the smile in his voice.
We set off again into the night. The Panhard was stuffed with parcels, like Father Christmas’ sleigh. We wound our way around the town, backwards and forwards, in long complicated trails like strands of spaghetti. Again, I had the impression we were completely lost and would drive round and round for hours, as if the car was a wind-up toy. Dad talked to me about his magazine and his clients, extremely sensitive types who needed to be handled as carefully as dynamite, but his voice came to me from very far away. Sometimes I almost nodded off. Dad would leave me in the car and I’d watch him disappear through the entrance to a building carrying a big parcel. Once, in the middle of the night, I saw him come running out of a block of flats. From a balcony, a man in a dressing-gown was hurling insults at Dad, who threw himself at the Panhard like Noah rushing to get into the ark.
“What’s his problem?” I asked.
Dad wiped his face with his big handkerchief.
“I don’t know. It’s always the same. When I leave him at the top everything’s fine, he seems happy, and then everything must go haywire as I’m coming down the stairs. He can’t help himself, he just has to insult me when I come out into the street.”
We drove alongside the Botanic Gardens, all peaceful in the night, and then past the Lutetia Hotel.
“Do you remember the programme we watched the other evening about the concentration camps?” Dad asked.
“Yes, I remember – where they put the Jews…”
“Other people as well, but mostly Jews … well, when they came back from the camps – those that survived, that is – they ended up in this hotel…”
“It’s a nice hotel … they must have been pleased! Were there enough rooms for everyone?”
“They weren’t there on holiday, you little numbskull, they were gathered together there so that they could be reunited with their families, or so that they could be found somewhere to live.”
“Like a kind of sorting station?”
“Perhaps.”
“I talked to Haisam about that programme, because, you know, he’s a sort of Egyptian Turkish Jew…”
“All those things at once?”
“Yes, all of them. It’s because he’s so intelligent, he doesn’t need to respect normal boundaries. Although to be honest, I’ve never really understood how it works… He’s not the talkative type… Anyway, when I told him about the programme, he said he knew all about it and the Nasties…”
“The Nasties?”
“Yes, you know, the German soldiers, if you prefer…”
“The Nazis.”
“Yes, OK, the Nazis … anyway, Haisam told me they made lampshades with the Jews’ skin, and also stuffed pillows with their hair. I know Haisam is really intelligent and knows about almost everything, but this I didn’t believe.”
“You were wrong, because it’s true.”
“Oh, really?”
“Are you sure?” said Marie for the umpteenth time.
I was trying to be clever, reeling off the Dyna 54’s technical data, which I’d got from my father. But she obviously wasn’t interested in me blathering on. I thought again about the time she’d walked past me without giving any sign that she recognized me, as if I didn’t exist. She was probably fed up with me trailing around after her. Even I thought I was a bit pathetic, especially when I caught myself trying out complicated musical terms to impress her.
I was holding the bunch of flowers I’d got for her mother firmly in front of me. I’d hidden it in my bag, folded in four. It had been a good idea to choose artificial flowers. They’re more expensive, but they last longer and at the end of the day they’re equally elegant. And they give just as much pleasure, in my opinion. We were walking down the path towards the village. Stalls were being set up in a little square.
“Look,” I said, “there’s going to be a funfair.”
Marie shrugged her shoulders. She seemed to be hiding under her mop of hair, which shone in the sunshine.
“What’s the matter? It looks like you’ve got tears in your eyes.”
“No, it’s just pollen.”
“Pollen? At Christmas?”
She smiled. But it was a wobbly smile.
“If you want,” she said, “we could play Helen Keller.”
Playing Helen Keller meant pretending to be blind and walking with your eyes shut while the other person told you where to go.
She began to walk forwards, her arms stretched out, like a sleepwalker. I ran behind her.
“Watch out for the postbox. Hard left … that’s it … now straight ahead … take a big step over the dog poo— Too late… Never mind, keep going…”
We stopped when we got to a bench near some men playing boules. The sky had turned grey and dull, as though it was about to snow.
“I’ve had enough of that stupid game,” she said. “And anyway there’s something I’ve got to tell you.”
“I knew it.”
“You knew what?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking that you’ve probably had enough of me trailing along after you. You play the cello, you’ve read everything…”
“And…?”
“Me, you see… Before I knew you, I couldn’t even tell the difference between a cello and a violin. I even thought there was an instrument called a violent cello!”
“I don’t see why that’s relevant.”
“It isn’t. And, you see, I’ve only read the beginning of The Three Musketeers, and even then I skipped the descriptions. I need a ghost reader, not a ghostwriter! There’s no need to giggle like that… Look, even the lousy flowers I’m giving to your mother, I don’t know what kind they are. I only know they’re made of fabric.”
“You just find theoretical things difficult, that’s all. It’s always the same with ultra sensitive types like you.”
“Really?”
“Yes, you lack the emotional detachment that would help you to see things objectively.”
In front of us, one of the boules players had knocked away his opponent’s ball and murmurs of admiration rolled towards us in a sort of wave. I almost decided to come clean about everything and tell her about The Rattletraps’ concert, but I still had a shred of dignity left.
“You know all about Panhard cars,” she said, “I’m sure no one else at school knows anything about them.”
“That’s of no use to anyone. They no longer exist, those cars. You never see them any more. And anyway, it’s Dad who’s the real expert. It was my uncle Zak who introduced him to them ages ago. Haisam, he’s an expert in chess and emotional detachment. As for you, you know everything about everything. And I know nothing about anything. It’s frustrating.”
“Well, you’re going to have an opportunity to feel useful, believe me. Because after what I’m about to tell you… Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, I’m listening.”
I could sense that this was a serious moment, a bit like when Dad told me to go and have a shave. I felt I ought to look the part so I checked that my flies weren’t undone. She was looking straight into my eyes, as though she wanted to nail me to the sky.
“OK, so here’s the thing. Do you remember when I was away from school for a few days last month? I told you I’d been to visit an old aunt who was ill.”
I didn’t remember, but it didn’t matter, it was no big deal.
“Yes, of course I remember. So it wasn’t true?”
“No. The truth is that I was in hospital, in Paris. In a department that specializes in eyes.”
I thought for a moment about the time when she passed me on the running track.
“Why? Have you got problems with your eyes?”
“Yes,” she said simply.
“Like Johann Sebastian?”
I couldn’t tell whether I’d been quite clever or utterly stupid to come up with this gem. In the square, the boules players were picking up their metal balls with a magnet on the end of a piece of string, so they didn’t have to bend down. How lazy is that! I thought.
“I’ve got a disease which means that my sight is gradually getting worse. It’s been going on for several years and now it’s getting near the end. Already there are times when I can’t see anything at all.”
I was finding it more and more difficult to swallow my saliva, as if my mouth was filled with all the dust in the square.
“Yesterday, at the running track…”
“Yes, that’s what it was. But I can sense that before long I’ll be in darkness all the time.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say, and the more I tried to think of something, the harder it was.
“You’re the only person I can tell,” she said.
“Why? Your parents must be aware of it.”
“They know about the disease of course. But it’s still quite rare and no one has any idea – except me – when night will fall. Everyone thinks I’ve still got years to go.”
“Surely something can be done… In Johann Sebastian’s time, people went blind for no good reason … but it’s different now… There must be some solution, there must be specialists. For all I know, there are even different specialists for the right and left eyes.” Like for chicken breasts, I wanted to add.
“No. Believe me, I’ve studied the subject. I’ve even been to conferences about it. Nothing can be done, nothing at all… The thing is … I can’t say anything to my parents … because if I do I’ll have to leave school before the end of the school year… I’ll be sent to a specialist college and I won’t be able to go to the music school…”
I didn’t really understand, probably because, as she’d just told me, I lacked emotional detachment, which allows you to see and understand things clearly and objectively.
“Why would your parents stop you going to your music school? Don’t they know that you’re preparing for this audition?”
“Of course they do. They still hope I’ll keep my sight, at least for many years yet. If they discover I’m blind they’ll want to put me in this exclusive college that was created on purpose, after lots of research, to give disabled people like me the same chances as everyone else. Oh, of course they’ll let me play on special occasions, but I heard them talking about it: if I lose my sight they’ll put me where I’ll be safe and they’ll stop me from pinning all my hopes on a future in music.”
“This situation is totally incendiary!” I murmured, scratching the back of my head.
“It’s my only hope, you see. Getting to the month of June and passing the audition, whatever it takes. And once I’ve passed and the music school’s given me a place, my parents won’t be able to stop me… Don’t you think?”
“Yes, definitely.”
I don’t know why, but I thought of Lucky Luke and his obsession with cycling.
“So basically we’ve broken away from the pack and we need to keep the lead until the end of the stage?” I said.
“That’s it exactly.”
“Well, it’s going to be an exceptionally tricky mountain stage, we’ll have to be prepared for that!”
Then I thought of my blackbird in his box full of cotton wool, with his little yellow beak half-open and his heavy, beating heart clinging on to life.
The square was now completely empty. The boules players had gathered in a little smoky café and were chatting with the fairground people. Their life seemed simple and untroubled.
“But still, you know, it’s going to be a challenge to pretend there’s nothing the matter…”
As I said this, something occurred to me.
“So in that case,” I said, “when you gave me the maths answers at the beginning of term, you were already thinking … I mean, it was so that I would help you when you couldn’t see any more?”
“Not to start with. I gave you the answers because there was something about you that amused me, something a bit old-fashioned. You remind me a bit of—”
“Clark Gable, I know. I’ve got the vintage touch. And then what happened?”
“Stop looking at me like that, for heaven’s sake… What happened then was that I realized you were resourceful. And generous. And sensitive. And I felt sure that you would help me and not let me down. Then I fell in love with you and stopped thinking about anything at all.”
I wondered if I’d heard right and if this was the end of exile. I nearly asked her to repeat it, but since she was blushing a bit, it seemed best to say nothing. I stared at the bunch of flowers, wondering what their names were, with my heart exploding into little pieces. For no particular reason, I began to count the petals. Then we looked at the clouds for a while. All I wanted to do was to run away as fast as possible without looking back. I don’t know why, but I found myself remembering the TV programme about concentration camps that I’d watched with Dad.
Marie’s determined voice broke into my thoughts.
“OK, let’s sum up the situation. Firstly, in a few days’ time, or at the latest after the Christmas holidays, it’s going to be curtains…”
“Like Helen Keller?” I butted in, wanting to make a cultural reference.
“Like Helen Keller, exactly. Although I can still hear. Secondly, I need your help to stop anyone noticing at school. My marks mustn’t drop, because the music school only accepts brainy people. But I can’t do it on my own, so you’ll have to be like Ariadne’s thread and lead me through the labyrinth. Thirdly, why don’t we go to the funfair together tomorrow? Now let’s go and have lunch. Mum’s made lasagne and an awesome dessert.”
Marie showed me into a huge living room, flooded with light from tall bay windows. Her mother came in and I held out my bouquet. She buried her nose in it.
“There’s no point in doing that, Madame, they’re made from fabric. I thought they would last longer. And also that they would be more elegant.”
“You were quite right,” she said, ushering us towards a table laden with lots of appetizing little nibbles.
Marie’s father joined us at the table. He was dressed like a duke and he crossed his legs in a very posh way.
“So, Victor, you’re in the same class as Marie, I believe?”
“Yes, that’s right, in the same class though not in the same league.”
They smiled and that was a good start. I bit into something small and round. It was very hard.
“Excuse me, Victor, I think you need to take it out of the shell first,” explained Marie’s mother, very kindly, handing me some special tweezers.
“Do you enjoy your schoolwork?” Marie’s father asked me.
I thought for a moment. Marie’s parents were smiling at me in a very friendly way. I noticed that Marie’s lips were just like her mother’s.
“I’ve got nothing against it, if you know what I mean. It’s schoolwork that’s got something against me.”
“Did you know that Einstein only began speaking when he was five and before then everyone thought he had learning difficulties?”
“He was lucky. In my case, that was just the age that I began to have difficulties. Before then, everyone left me in peace.”
Marie’s mother went back and forth to the kitchen. She walked in a graceful, refined way. What a supersonically stylish environment. If you could see me now, Dad, I said to myself, you wouldn’t believe it!
“Are you a musician too, perhaps?” asked Marie’s father.
“Not at all, Monsieur. I’ve never been able to tell the difference between a symphony and a car crash. My father paid for me to have piano lessons when I was younger, and frankly, if you want my opinion, it was money down the drain.”
“Victor says that, but actually…” Marie interrupted.
My ears began to ring. She was looking at me. I shut my eyes and held my breath, as if I was facing a firing squad.
“… He’s a real music lover. He knows how to listen properly and he makes very sensitive judgements.”
I turned scarlet, partly because of my secret about The Rattletraps, but mostly because of the compliment.
“Do you know that at the end of the year our daughter’s going to audition for a very prestigious music school? We’re very happy for her, it’s going to be a turning point in her life, isn’t that so, Marie?”
She smiled at her father and then looked straight at me. It was as though we were bound together by the secret we shared.
“It’ll be ready in five minutes,” said Marie’s mother, sitting back down again.
Just as well, I thought. The lasagne would give me confidence. I always need to fill my belly before I can relax.
On the table, around the plates, there was so much cutlery that it looked as though the knives and forks had been busy making babies. There were pink napkins in the glasses, folded in the shape of birds with their wings spread open. I was impressed by how elegant it all was.
I didn’t want them to think me a slob, so I didn’t ask about the array of cutlery. Frankly, just one fork would have been more than enough for me. So while trying to follow the conversation, I kept a watchful eye on Marie and attempted to use the cutlery like she did, in the same order. It was a bit complicated, especially for the starter, which was a kind of wobbly savoury mousse that you had to pick up with a big spoon, helped along by a smaller spoon, and then grab with a sort of tapered spatula. I found it as difficult as managing my compass in maths: it always slid away at the last moment too. Marie’s mother put the dish of lasagne down on the table.
“And what’s your favourite subject at school?” she asked, as she took my plate.
“Oh, you know … it depends!”
“What does it depend on?” she wanted to know as she handed me back my plate, which now looked as though it had the whole of Italy piled on it.
“On which day it is. Yes, it depends on which day it is. On the whole, I like art best.”
This came to me out of the blue, like a brainwave, because of the room’s artistic decor.
“Abstract art?”
I’ve never really understood this word. Precisely because it’s too abstract.
“Of course,” I said. “It’s the most beautiful kind.”
Then I was able to relax for a few moments, because they began to talk to each other about modern art exhibitions taking place in London and Paris. I wondered what Dad was doing, and I imagined him with his nose under the Panhard’s bonnet and his hands all oily. He was probably balancing his sandwich on the carburettor so as not to waste any time. Then I tried to get a handle on the conversation again. I no longer had any idea what they were on about and it reminded me of the way I dipped in and out of some lessons at school.
Then, while waiting for dessert, we settled down on a sofa and leafed through some exhibition catalogues, showing paintings covered in multi-coloured crosses. After looking at them for a while, I actually began to find them quite interesting.
“All things considered,” I observed, “I find that if you look at something long enough it becomes interesting.”
“Hah! Flaubert!” said Marie’s father, absent-mindedly.
“What?”
“It was Flaubert, the writer, who said that. About a tree, I think.”
I’d always thought that Flaubert was a journalist. I couldn’t get it out of my head, since it was my dear uncle Zak who once told me so.
Still, it’s funny to think that it’s possible to have the same ideas as people who are famous for being seriously brainy. It’s an odd thing: it’s hard to tell if it makes you feel bigger or them seem smaller. But I was beginning to feel confident now, so I carried on sharing my views on aesthetics.
“It’s true, you know. See these little crosses. Well, if you look at them long enough, they make a picture of a woman in the bath.”
“Do you think so?” said Marie’s father, who was now really interested. “A woman in the bath … really?”
He started turning the book round and round.
“Yes! Look, you can see the arms and the neck clearly here, and there are the boo— you know, the whatsits … the things for feeding babies… There’s the edge of the bath… You can even see the soap… See? It’s as clear as anything!”
All three of them looked at me as though I was some sort of weird insect.
“What about the title?” asked Marie.
“The title? What title?”
“Here, look: Monochrome Factory.”
I sighed. I wasn’t going to make an issue about the word “monochrome”, because vocabulary like that is just way out of reach.
“It’s only a very small title. And anyway a title doesn’t mean much. Think of The Three Musketeers, well, there were four of them! So, yeah. And that’s not even modern art. So it goes to show, with what’s produced these days, nobody’s going to give a stuff about titles…”
“Mind you, he’s got a point,” said Marie’s mother. “It’s the same sort of thing with music. In the old days you used to get the ‘Seventh Symphony’, which tells you exactly what it means: after the Sixth and before the Eighth. Whereas nowadays…”
Encouraged by this, I thought I’d throw in a comparison between modern painting and the Asterix books, but it was obvious they hadn’t read any of them, even if they did try to cover it up.
The conversation rolled on pleasantly for a while. My confidence kept growing. I felt good and I began to see that Panhard cars might not be the only interesting things in the world. It went a bit pear-shaped in the end because I lacked relevant facts. Marie’s father suddenly asked me, “Do you like Pollock?”
Pollock – why was he talking about fish? At first, I wondered whether he was making fun of me because of my limitations, but I often get that impression, so maybe not… Then I came to the conclusion that he must have a second job as a fishmonger. Being the ear of an auction perhaps didn’t bring enough in, financially speaking.
As I hesitated, he told me that the previous week he’d sold a whole load of Pollocks and he’d felt sickened by it. I couldn’t see why: it wasn’t as though he’d had to eat them.
“Can you believe it, one went to Berlin for three million.”
A pollock for three million! Was that some kind of a boast?
“Was it a whopper?” I asked tentatively.
It seemed a ridiculous price. Marie was frowning. She appeared to be mesmerized. And then all of a sudden she burst out laughing. I wiped my sleeve across my moustache, just in case…
“No, not at all, no more than thirty centimetres by thirty! It was just a small Pollock!” said her father.
A square pollock for three million, this was beginning to seem a little fishy to me. Marie was still laughing. I discreetly checked my flies, but no, they weren’t undone.
“Personally, I like the black and white Pollocks best,” said Marie’s father.
“That’s a variety I’ve never tried! Do you cook them the same way?”
Marie leant towards me and whispered in my ear. I pretended to take no notice.
How could I have known that Pollock, first name Jackson, was a painter? What kind of a name is that? Mr Pollock… I wanted to laugh, but I managed to keep a straight face. At last Marie’s mother ceremoniously brought in the dessert, in a big bowl. It was another Italian dish, and it deserved a compliment.
“Wow! Kamasutra! Thank you, that’s one of my favourite desserts!”
I held out my plate, with a massive smile of appreciation.
They were totally bewildered. There was no doubt about that: I was watching them out of the corner of my eye.
“Ka— what did you say?” asked Marie, speaking slowly and clearly.
“You know, kamasutra, the Italian dessert, of course. Are we going to eat it or send it off to a museum?”
“OK, I’ve got it,” said Marie’s father. “Do you mean tiramisu?”
“Exactly,” I confirmed. “Tiramisu.”
There was a pause for reflection. The atmosphere was exceptionally exquisite.
On the whole, I think I made an excellent impression.
All the same, my night ended with a really toxic nightmare. I was fishing in a very calm river. Suddenly, there was something pulling on the end of my line. So I reeled it in as hard as I could and at last I hauled a sort of floppy, slimy catfish out of the water and onto the vivid green grass. It had a menacing expression that left me with an uncomfortable feeling when I woke up. Yet there wasn’t anything particularly to fear about the day ahead: I was going to meet Marie at the funfair in front of the ticket booth for the Haunted House, and later the Metro were coming for a rehearsal, to put the final touches to the concert they refused to give up on. Dad was a bit disappointed because the day before he’d fine-tuned the Panhard to within an inch of its life, so that he could take part in a meet for cars that are on the verge of extinction. He’d been hoping to take me along, but he understood that for once I had other priorities. So he advised me to go and have a shave.
As I made my way to the fair, I thought about how I could possibly get out of the concert. Of course, I was still a fan of rock music, with its hyperactive freaks thrashing around and blasting out their massive decibels. But it was difficult to ignore the fact that it was not in the same league as the delicate, purposeful music that Marie played, reading the notes better than I could read words.
When I saw Marie in front of the Haunted House, I thought I’d better stop thinking about all this before it ruined my afternoon. Anyway, when you’re thirteen, things tend to sort themselves out in the end.
We wandered around the stalls and without thinking I suggested sharing a toffee apple. As soon as I’d said it I turned as red as the apple itself. She gave me a funny look and then our noses touched as we each took a bite into opposite sides.
“You’ve got a red moustache,” she said.
“So have you.”
We burst out laughing and went into a big glass maze, still with our moustaches. You had to be really careful, or you banged your nose against the transparent panels. There were some kids bawling because they’d lost their parents: they could see them but couldn’t find a way of getting to them. It was as though they were learning about exile for the first time. Perhaps it wasn’t that different from life: there you are, endlessly tormented as you circle around each other, trying to touch without ever getting close. Marie and I concentrated hard as we weaved around the maze together. But there came a point when I looked back and realized she was no longer following me. There was nothing but emptiness, which is a disorientating feeling.
Marie was actually a few metres behind me, helping a little kid to get up. She was wiping his nose with a tissue all splattered with blood. I was reminded of my blackbird. Then the mother turned up and took the kid away in her arms, sounding off about the maze being a load of rubbish and whose idea was it to invent something so stupid? After that, Marie and I tried to get back together, but we made the mistake of both moving at the same time, so that we kept going past each other. It really felt like we were getting close, and then at the last moment we’d find ourselves separated by an invisible wall. At first, it made us laugh, but after a while not so much – in fact we started to panic. I tried to keep still and guide her from a distance, and then we tried it the other way round, but nothing was working. We couldn’t find a way of reaching each other. It was as though we’d lost every possibility of guiding, helping or even understanding one another. We ended up in a blind alley, separated by a plexiglass panel. There was a wide, desperate sort of smile on Marie’s face. Was this real or was I dreaming? I couldn’t tell any more. She put her hands on the panel with her fingers spread out, and I put mine against hers. It was as though we’d both been pinned there, face to face, on either side of the glass. We stayed like that for some time gazing at each other: we found it impossible to draw apart, as though we were looking at ourselves in a mirror. Eventually we got back together outside. The sun was shining and you could smell the candyfloss. We went on the bumper cars and Marie wanted to drive.
“You see, this could be the last time I’m able to do anything like this…”
Everyone seemed to be watching us and I was happy because I thought our car had more style than any of the others. Several minutes went by before I realized that Marie was driving with her eyes closed. It really wasn’t going to be easy getting her to the end of the year without anyone noticing something was wrong. I almost brought the subject up, but then I chickened out.
Afterwards we walked through the fair, still unsteady on our feet from the ride. The lights from the carousels merged with the Christmas fairy lights. It was cold, and our breath came out in little frosty clouds. Suddenly, Marie stopped dead and squeezed my arm hard.
“Why don’t we go on the ghost train!”
She really seemed to enjoy the idea that we’d be scared together. I didn’t have the heart to refuse and I tried to look very chilled about it, but the truth is I couldn’t shake off sad thoughts that troubled me far more than all the ghosts in the world. I kept imagining Marie left all alone with her little suitcase in a specialist college for the blind – waving goodbye with no one there. I absolutely had to ask Haisam for advice: he was the only one who could help me see the whole thing more clearly. Then I stopped turning all this around in my mind, because the fluorescent skeletons were rearing up in front of us, wailing so alarmingly that Marie squeezed tightly up against me. I could feel her hair tickling my cheek. It was a good thing I’d remembered to shave. Then our car stopped for quite a long time. We could hear mournful sounds in the dark.
“I’m frightened of ghosts!” whispered Marie.
I had no time to answer because I could feel her mouth against mine. And she pressed so hard it felt like being gagged. I could feel her tongue swivelling about in all directions like a crank handle. I wanted to explode with laughter, but it seemed best to hold back. Just then, our car set off again and it was goodbye to the ghosts. We moved apart and went out into the light. We both felt slightly awkward, for obvious reasons. She was very pensive: I was sure she must be regretting it.
“You seem sad,” I said.
“No, not at all. It’s just that I wonder if we did it quite right. Last week, at the dentist, I read the instructions in a magazine, and I’m pretty sure it was right. But you know how it is with instruction manuals, everything always ends up back to front…”
“No. That was definitely the right way. In theory, at any rate.”
“And in practice?”
“I’ve no idea, I only knew the theory.”
We hurried off in different directions, because Marie had to practise her cello and I was already late for the rehearsal with Etienne and Marcel. It was funny, because we said goodbye quite formally. Intimacy is a complicated business. I didn’t mind leaving her when things had gone so well between us: in a way I was anxious to think it all over. And that’s something you can only do on your own, as Dad has often told me.
No one was at home, neither Dad nor Etienne and Marcel. Nor the Panhard. The place was deserted. I went up to my room under the roof and sat down at my desk. I was in the mood for meditation, which is the action of reflecting deeply and at length upon a subject. It’s something that never does any harm, in my opinion. My dear Egyptian was often a “Nile crocodile” and the meditative approach seemed to work pretty well for him, so it felt reassuring to follow his example. My first concern was how to get out of The Rattletraps’ concert without looking like a quitter and without wounding the Metro’s pride, and my second was whether I was up to helping Marie. Two big problems.
I heard the Panhard engine and then voices in the yard. Through the window I saw that Etienne and Marcel had come back with Dad, who’d taken them for a spin. I went down to join them. I could see straight away that something wasn’t right. Etienne gave me the news.
“It sucks at home!”
“Why?”
“It’s divorce.”
I looked puzzled, so Marcel explained, “He means our parents are divorcing. They’ve been yelling at each other all day long. I thought they were going to tear each others’ guts out. They can’t agree on what should happen. They’re going to court about our custody.”
“They can’t cut you in half. It’s impossible to cut a Metro station in half. There was a king like that once, who wanted to cut children in half and divvy them up, but I can’t remember his name.”
“It’s funny, though,” said Etienne. “I’d never have thought it was something they’d fight so hard about!”
He seemed deep in thought.
“It’s to be expected,” I pointed out. “All parents fight to keep their children with them. Well, almost all…”
The memory of my mother flitted across my mind. They stared at me wide-eyed.
“No, that’s not it at all. It’s the other way round. They’re so fed up with us that neither of them wants to keep us. So Mum’s taking Dad to court to make him take us, and Dad’s doing the opposite. They both want to prove that the other one would take better care of us. Dad’s bound to tell the judge that he beats us and Mum will probably say she makes us cook and clean while she has a wild time out clubbing.”
“That’s unusual,” I said. “Dad and I watched a TV programme about divorce the other day, but they didn’t mention that scenario.”
They seemed distracted – they weren’t themselves at all. It wasn’t a good day to talk to them about my decision regarding the concert. We began to play. I scratched at my guitar and shouted into the mike, but without much conviction:
“Don’t drive us crazy
This work it just ain’t easy
We feel like being lazy
Don’t drive us crazy
To hell with being busy
We’re so mad it makes us dizzy.”
“Your lyrics are really cool, especially the rhymes,” said Etienne, as if he was the expert.
He was just flattering me. I’d written the words when I was a revolutionary, and revolution sometimes makes you do or think things that later on mean nothing to you at all.
Marcel went one further.
“You should show them to the English teacher. I’m sure she’d read them out loud to the whole class.It’s like … you know who I mean…”
He wanted to compare me to a writer we’d studied in English.
“It’s like William Worthwords, that’s what it is.”
So then I said, “Don’t you think it’s really just a racket, our music?”
I realized straight away that I’d gone too far. They looked at each other and I thought they were going to vaporize. So I back-pedalled and as per usual I said the first thing that came into my head.
“No, I was joking! Anyway, having an instinct for it is all that counts!”
“What instinct?” asked Marcel, who understood nothing about symbolic imagery.
“It’s an expression,” said Etienne. “He means poetic instinct: when you have a passion for music, who gives a monkey’s about reading the notes! Isn’t that right?”
The great thing about saying any old rubbish to worm your way out of trouble is that there’s always someone around who’ll get the wrong end of the stick.
“Yes, that’s it!” I said, to put an end to it.
Compassion is a real pain, because it makes you talk nonsense. I thought about Marie, who would be having her music lesson, and all the years it took her to learn to play her instrument. Poetic and musical passion mostly come from hard graft, but how could I have explained that to Etienne and Marcel? Then we changed the subject, because Etienne had been to see the careers advisor about a new professional direction he wanted to take. He’d explained to her that he’d given up on the idea of being a chicken breast cutter and now wanted to be a proctologist. But she didn’t know what that was, so he’d explained that it was a doctor specializing in the anus. Well, of course, she thought he was making a fool out of her, so she blew her top. Then she wound up Lucky Luke, who gave him hours of detention and threatened to cancel the concert.
“Personally,” said Etienne, “I think that sort of attitude doesn’t encourage professional development.”
In the evening, I was puzzling over the word, so I looked it up in my dictionary:
Proctologist specialist in proctology.
Since that didn’t get me very far, I looked up “proctology”.
Proctology the branch of medicine that deals with diseases of the anus and rectum.
A job like that was bound to need many years of study, a bit like a dentist. Well, now I knew. I went downstairs to see Dad, who’d turned on the TV and was watching a film called Paris in the Month of August, with Charles Aznavour in the lead role. I really liked it, the plot was very entertaining. It was about an ordinary, unremarkable man, who worked in the fishing equipment section of a department store. While his wife was away on holiday, he fell in love with a very beautiful young English model who was working in Paris. He wanted to spend as much time with her as possible and take advantage of the way moral standards were becoming more relaxed. So in order to get sick leave from work, he had the bright idea of sticking a fish hook deep into his hand. Problem solved, just like that. An excellent film all round, in fact, and very moving too.
Dad was fascinated by the film. I don’t know if it was the empty city flooded in sunlight or the love story between the man and the model that enthralled him, but he seemed to be trying to hypnotize the television: he was almost licking the screen. Anyway, the film gave me an idea and although it was slightly hazy at first, I’d got it all worked out by the next morning. At dawn, I was down in the cellar hunting around for Dad’s fishing equipment. The size twelve hook looked enormous to me, plus it was covered in rust. I made myself think of Paris in the Month of August and Aznavour with the fish hook stuck in his hand. It was in a good cause: I was really doing this for Marie, so that she wouldn’t have to hear me braying at the concert and wouldn’t be disappointed in me. It’s all very well to be a figure of fun, but once you’ve learnt to see things in a slightly more dignified and high-minded way, you get fed up with it, that’s all I can say.
I closed my eyes and stuck the hook into my left hand. I screamed out loud, my eyes dimmed and luckily Dad turned up just in time to catch me before I crashed to the floor. He wrapped my hand in a big cloth that kept getting redder and redder as we drove in the Panhard to the hospital. There were Christmas decorations in the A&E department and a big Father Christmas who seemed to be watching over the patients.
While we were waiting, Dad said, “I still can’t work out what you were doing trying to fish for your own hand in the cellar at dawn…”
To shut him up, I gave a couple of extra groans.
“Now you remind me of that big pike I caught in the Loire twenty years ago,” he said.
“Dad,” I said, “Don’t worry, Dad, I did it for love, which is the end of being exiled from oneself…”
I felt his hand on my head, and I knew he understood. And then I passed out.