There are times when life can be really tough. It didn’t take long for me to figure that out. It’s responsibility that causes the most trouble and anxiety. There are no two ways about it, when other people’s problems become your own, well, that’s when your life changes completely, because you’ve got someone who needs rescuing and you have to make a go of it. It’s kind of the same with animals. For example, my poor mangled blackbird didn’t weigh much, but he was a heavy responsibility, and even though he was getting his strength back I still felt anxious about him. When you’re dealing with a human being it’s even worse!
The most difficult thing was the handwriting, because mine was all convoluted and corkscrewed while Marie’s was like her socks, without a wrinkle or a crease. She gave me some examples and I practised copying them in the evenings. Afterwards my wrist hurt as much as if I’d been playing tennis in the French Open. When we got back from school, we would get straight down to our homework. I would read out the questions and she would come up with the answers, which I had to write down in her exercise book. She was the brains and I was the brawn. While she was thinking, I gazed around her room, which was white and yellow, and very bright. All around there was silence, and outside the windows you could see the big trees in the garden swaying gently in the breeze.
After a moment or two Marie would tell me the answer in a whisper, as though she didn’t want to wake me. And I would start writing. Sometimes there was a book we had to read, and then of course I had to read it to her. In the past I’d always hated reading. Everyone told me that literature could teach you loads of things, but frankly what was there to learn from these made-up stories? You could hardly tell one from another. I’d always felt that books were a bit like loaded pistols and needed to be handled with caution. Now, with Marie, things were obviously different. I don’t know how to explain it, but there was something more to it: the words went in with much less trouble and when they came out again they’d somehow been transformed, for Marie. I realized that the characters in the books were her, were me, were us. In understanding their lives and their feelings, I began to understand my own life and my own feelings. So I worked my way through The Lost Estate, a strange novel full of mists and ponds, followed by a seventeenth-century play (acting out all the characters, including a betrayed husband and his wife Angelica, who wasn’t exactly angelic). Then we read a medieval story about a knight who fights against other knights as well as a serpent and a monster, and goes completely off his head.
One day when we’d just finished one of these books, I said to Marie, “It’s not so bad, literature, after all. As something to pass the time, I mean. But I find it weird that you’re supposed to study it. To be honest, I can’t see what there is to study in it, really I can’t.”
“But you know what? There are people who spend years and years writing big books called theses about the books we’ve read.”
“And who’s interested in them?”
“No one. Well, almost no one. But that’s not the point, these are very clever people. They’re called Doctors of Philosophy.”
Well, I was learning something new every day. Even if the enterprise didn’t do me any good, it wouldn’t do me any harm either: everyone’s entitled to choose how they spend their time. It was similar with Dad and Panhard cars. They were cars that no one bought any more. But they’d been successful in their time: Monsieur Panhard had been a pioneer of French car manufacturing at the beginning of the twentieth century. I think that’s what Dad liked about them – the fact that they were on their way out and it was essential to save as many as possible so that they wouldn’t be forgotten. Because the most important responsibility for human beings is to remember.
The thing we feared above all, in this business with Marie, was having to do a written assessment. Then I was in a cold sweat for three days beforehand. On the day of the damn test, I had to work really quickly, because I needed to make time to copy out my answers, imitating Marie’s shipshape handwriting. I’d really made progress as a result of taking on this job, and I was even able to slip some mistakes into my work so that it wouldn’t attract attention. I could see that the maths teacher was observing my improvement with a mixture of admiration, suspicion and amusement. She often smiled at me, and I smiled back. One day, after the lesson, she gave me a funny look and said, “You’re changing, Victor, you’re changing…”
Without missing a beat, I replied, “You too, Miss, you’re changing too. I’ve noticed, you have thingies in your hair, which you never had before, and your eyes are underlined in blue.”
Her blushes could have generated enough heat to save the school’s energy bills for at least a year. It was obvious that her romantic reactor was in meltdown. I didn’t dare mention it, but I’d also spotted her limping less. It wasn’t that noticeable yet, but my observation skills are second to none. I was pleased to see she was getting back on form. On TV I’d seen an oil spill that was threatening all kinds of animals and I’d told Dad that the maths teacher reminded me of those creatures stuck in the slick: she needed to be put in a de-oiling machine and then perhaps she would come out and take flight again, like the birds. He must have thought I wasn’t well, because he said, “You’re working too hard, I think. You’re overheating.”
The teacher had gone on to say that she was glad to see me doing well, and that friendship was a great support, not only at school but in life in general. Of course, she didn’t know how close she was to hitting the nail on the head.
“You’re right,” I told her. “I’m really lucky to have a friend like Marie. Although it’s also annoying, her being so good at everything, because of the humidity.”
“The humidity?”
“Yes, you know, when you feel really small next to someone who’s head and shoulders above you…”
“You mean humility.”
Humility the quality or state of being humble; having a low opinion of one’s own importance; meekness and lack of vanity.
“Yes, that’s it. Because you know, it isn’t only music she’s interested in. When she has time, she reads philosophy. Before I became friends with her, I wasn’t even aware such a thing existed. Did you know that the word philosophy means ‘love of wisdom’?”
“No, I didn’t know. You see, now you’ve taught me something.”
Ever since Marie could no longer read, once we’d finished our homework and planned for any hazards that might crop up the next day, she would ask me to get a philosophy book from her bookcase. Mostly they had completely baffling titles. She explained that I’d need to know about philosophy later on, and that she probably would have decided to specialize in it herself if she hadn’t chosen music instead. But anyway there wasn’t any choice in the matter now.
One day, wanting to impress her, I looked up some facts about the greatest philosophers. I made some notes about Plato and Aristotle and the allegory of the cave, which is a story about prisoners tied to the wall of a cave all their lives. They can only see the shadows of things moving outside and they think they’re real. It’s meant to tell you that knowledge isn’t only about what you can see. The next day, I brought the conversation round to the subject. I wanted to trot out what I’d learnt to show her that I wasn’t a buffoon, or at least not only a buffoon. But when I opened my mouth I said that in my opinion the two greatest philosophers were Arilato and Pistotle … so then I gave up on the idea. Marie burst out laughing and said I was a genius, a real genius. I didn’t know whether to be flattered or put out.
There were many things that surprised me about Marie and filled me with admiration. We were both very worried that a teacher might ask her to read something out loud. To try and avoid that, I always put up my hand to volunteer for any reading. The others could think what they liked about me, I didn’t care. So I kept sticking my hand up as though my life depended on it, which it almost did. But one day the teacher wanted us to read a really difficult poem by a very young poet called Rimbaud who kept running away from home and then suddenly stopped writing and went to some place in Africa to be an arms dealer. He ended up back in France and had a leg amputated. Not the sort of thing that makes a career as a poet seem very appealing…
Anyway, to cut a long story short, the teacher asked Marie to read the poem. Disaster. It would all be over. I felt so dreadful that I could feel myself going as white as the sheet of paper on my desk, with its margins, lines, ring holes and all. What could I do? I got ready to create a diversion by falling off my chair and rolling around on the floor, throwing my dignity to the wind. But I didn’t need to, because straight away, without turning a hair, Marie began to reel off the poem without tripping up once. Yet again I wondered whether she’d been making a complete fool of me right from the start. How else could she have rattled off all those mystifying verses, without missing a beat, like a recording? Marie was brilliant at cello and loved wisdom, but surely even she couldn’t do everything.
Later, in the playground, while we were waiting for lunch, I asked her if her sight was improving.
“Are you asking me that because of the poem? That’s way off the mark. For a start, Arthur Rimbaud is my favourite poet. And secondly, I know hundreds of poems by heart. I was just lucky, that’s all.”
“But honestly, dear Marie, how on earth can you cram so much stuff inside your brain? It’s ridiculous!”
She gave me a gentle smile. I think it was because of the “dear Marie”. It just came out, I hadn’t given it any thought. It almost felt as momentous as a marriage proposal.
“A few years ago I was ill for several months,” she said. “It was when my eyes started to go wrong. I couldn’t go to school, so I was able to learn lots of things. I learnt the piano too, to pass the time.”
“All on your own?”
“It’s not that difficult. You just have to put your fingers in the right places, that’s all. And anyway, the piano is only a hobby. I don’t take it seriously.”
“I tell you what, I’m beginning to understand why you’ve gone blind. It’s like in a Formula One motor race: when a champion is so good that it spoils the excitement, well, they give him a handicap. So God has given you a handicap to make it fairer on other people.”
“So you believe in God now, do you?”
“It’s just a manner of speaking. Fate, then, if you prefer. Do you remember what the teacher said about Rimbaud being such a gifted poet? And his gangrene and his amputated leg? Well, I think that’s another example of handicap. The more gifted you are, the more you pay for it. I’m not at any great risk myself, but I’m very worried about you and Haisam.”
She looked at me, so to speak, with a strange expression. I could see that sometimes I said things which made her think deeply, and I found that flattering. In life, it’s important to have self-esteem.
The bell rang for lunch and we headed to the canteen. It was always a tricky moment. For a start there was invariably a terrible crush on the staircase, which was dangerous for Marie. I bared my teeth and lashed out with my fists, twisting in all directions to create a protection zone around her – a kind of nature reserve for the preservation of rare species. Since everyone remembered the episode with Van Gogh, nobody tried to trespass in our territorial waters.
When we got to the counter we had to choose our meals and the pantomime that ensued was beyond a joke. It was the luck of the draw: Marie went in front of me and I watched her pile her tray high with prize-winning combinations like paté + egg mayonnaise + stew + sauerkraut. Or it was the opposite and you’d think from her selections that she was fasting as penance for something.
Sometimes she groped around, hesitated and ended up sticking her finger into a serving dish of stewed fruit, mashed potato or custard. When she got to the end of the line she looked as though she’d painted her fingers.
“Is this some special diet you’re on, young lady?” teased Didier, the cook, with a smile. He watched over his canteen like an air traffic controller.
“Studying gives you an appetite,” Marie said simply.
It was up to me to compensate and to restore a nutritional balance. So I adjusted my choices accordingly and my tray would either be a carbohydrate overload with mountains of mashed potato bristling with sausages or a crash diet with nothing but green, pale and stringy things. The great Didier ribbed me in his gentle way.
“So you’re turning into a vegetarian?” he would ask, his hands on his hips. “You’re just eating seeds and leaves these days?”
“Green things free your spirit, with all due respect.”
The great Didier didn’t try too hard to understand. Really he just wanted us to be well fed, however chaotically, because it was in his nature to look out for young people and see that their dietary needs were met. He was a stickler for nutrition and personally made sure we all cleared our plates. If you didn’t, you got detention and had to come back after school and finish what you hadn’t eaten.
When we sat down, we began trading.
“I’ll swap your sauerkraut for my grated carrot, but I’m not having your veal casserole.”
“Sold! as my father would say. But what’s this, on this plate here in the middle?”
“Beef stew. You’ll just have to do your best.”
It felt like we were feeding each other, and I thought about the toffee apple we’d eaten together at the fair. Sharing food is the most intimate thing of all. The others watched, fascinated, as our forks danced from tray to tray – but they resisted any urge to comment as soon as they saw my sulphuric smile.
All the same, these sumo wrestler’s meals were getting a bit much. So I took a strategic initiative and began to make loud comments as we queued up with our trays.
“Oh, what lovely beetroot! There, right in front of me, it looks absolutely delicious.”
People on either side smirked a bit. But I redoubled my efforts, so that Marie would understand me.
“I didn’t know carrots were in season! Did you?” I said, turning towards the people around me. “Look, I can see a tub of them just there on the right!”
Clever, huh? It was as though I was guiding Marie’s hand by remote control, and the feeling it gave me made it worth being taken for a complete nutcase by the other kids. Sometimes I spoke directly to the dinner ladies, and I was impressed with my own subtle cunning.
“So, ladies,” I’d bellow, “would you recommend the fish and green beans on the right or the chicken and chips on the left? Hmm? Fish on the right … or chicken on the left?”
They stared at me open-mouthed, their eyes popping.
“It’s difficult … fish on the right … chicken on the left… I can’t make up my mind…”
One day I saw one of the ladies tapping her forehead with her finger, tap tap, as she moved away and at that point I began to question my strategy.
But the canteen was nothing compared to the horrors of sport. We only had to hold out for a couple more months, and luckily for us in the spring term the boys and girls always did sport together. To be honest, I’ve never had anything against sport, but I’ve never had anything for it either.
When we were running round the sports ground to warm up, Marie tended to veer towards the left and off the track, and once I found her jogging along aimlessly in the middle of the football pitch. No matter how much I tried to stick close to her, she always ended up in a jam. Volleyball was even worse. She would gamely hold up her arms to show she was ready, but any ball coming towards her landed on her head, or she tried to hit it when it was already grounded. It was obvious she was totally out of sync with what was going on. It broke my heart to see her randomly hitting at thin air like that. She seemed to be battling against destiny, which never ends up exactly where you think it will either.
The worst time was when I insisted she played in goal during a game of handball. Being goalkeeper is always quite a cushy number, I thought: most of the time you don’t need to do anything. I was in the middle of the court, with one eye on Marie and the other on the attackers in the opposing team, when I noticed that she was turning sideways, as though she was about to start a conversation with the goalpost. Then she turned to face in completely the opposite direction. Finally she bent her knees like a keen goalkeeper, with her hands slightly outstretched as though ready to receive the ball. She had her back to the court and was facing the net and the wall of the gym, with her bum pointing towards us. This time it seemed like we were definitely done for, so I threw everything at it. I collapsed on the ground, squealing like a piglet and holding my ankle, which caused just enough confusion to create a diversion. A little way off, Van Gogh was looking livid, bouncing the ball in a total fury. I got the feeling we were being watched very closely indeed.
At last the time came for the school trip to the Louvre Museum. Marie and I had been in training for the whole of the previous week, but I still didn’t feel prepared. Marie had told me about the most famous paintings – those they might ask us to copy – and she’d given me an encyclopaedia of painting.
“You might as well tie a paintbrush to a donkey’s tail!” I wailed in total despair.
“Funny you should say that,” she replied. “Listen to this…”
Then she told me a story she’d heard from her father. In Paris, at the end of the nineteenth century, some artists who were fond of a drink or two had tied a paintbrush to the tail of a donkey and put a canvas behind it. And it began to paint like crazy. They put the painting into an exhibition and some very knowledgeable art critics said it was the work of a genius: they were amazed by the confident line, the original choice of colours and the sensitive execution. They thought they could picture a forest in fog or a stormy sea in the painting.
“So you see, you’ve got every chance of success!” said Marie.
In the museum, it was really weird to see her stand in front of paintings that none of us knew and discuss them confidently, after getting me to whisper the title to her. Anyone would have thought she could see them clearly. I had to walk right in front of her, as though we were joined invisibly by Ariadne’s thread, because the Louvre is like a huge labyrinth. Since Marie had told me the story, I often thought about the myth of Ariadne. At first, I thought it was something to do with the European space launch programme, Ariane, so I didn’t get the connection. But in fact that wasn’t it at all: Ariadne was a young woman who fell in love with Theseus, Prince of Athens. She saved his life by giving him a ball of thread to help him find his way out of the labyrinth, the home of the terrifying Minotaur that Theseus had come to kill. I always find stories from ancient mythology reveal a lot about modern life, like a huge dictionary. It’s as though everything’s happened before in rough draft, to give us an idea of what to expect.
After a while, the teacher told us to sit down in a semi-circle in front of a painting and we started sketching on our drawing paper.
“What’s the title, Victor? The title? How will I manage if I don’t know it?” whispered Marie.
“It’s too small. I can’t read it.”
“Right, we’ll have to improvise. Describe it to me.”
The teacher wandered amongst us, stroking his little goatee beard. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Marie concentrating hard, with the end of her pink tongue sticking out. I gave her a few clues, when I could do so without being caught talking.
“On the right, there are some trees and some strangely dressed people walking about on a rock.”
“And in the background?”
“In the background … a sort of river with greenery on its banks.”
“And on the left?”
“Another bunch of people. The women are wearing gigantic hats. And it looks as though there’s a kite floating around in the sky.”
“What about the colours?”
“The sky, at the back, is almost white, apart from that it’s greys and browns. And some green. I’d say it’s meant to be a scout expedition. It looks as though they could be getting into boats.”
“It must be The Embarkation for Cythera, an eighteenth-century painting.”
“Did they have scouts in those days?”
“Give it a rest with your scouts!”
“And I don’t see a cinema anywhere.”
“Cythera, not cinema. This isn’t the movies.”
I got the sense that the painting must mean something, but whatever it was, it was beyond me.
I glanced at Marie’s paper and it was all over the place – a real disaster. It made my heart ache to see her raising her head now and again, pretending to look at the painting. Then the teacher stopped beside her and peered at her paper. Marie must have recognized him from his footsteps, or his squeaky shoes, or perhaps from the intuition that comes with being blind.
“It’s a cubist interpretation of the painting, see?” she said. “As Picasso might have done it.”
The teacher scratched his chin, leaning forward slightly.
“Yes… I was just thinking to myself that I could see a hint of Picasso in your work…”
Marie and I looked at each other, well, that is, you know what I mean. I admired her nerve. In life, it’s always worth giving the impression you’re very sure of yourself. When you’re self-confident, people tend to leave you in peace. Whereas as soon as there’s the slightest crack in your confidence, it’s an invitation for malice and unpleasantness of all sorts to pour in. With modern art, Marie explained on the way back, you can easily avoid the cracks. Ever since a urinal was shown in an art gallery, well, anything goes. If I’d had more facts I might have understood her point better.
When we got out of the coach that had brought us back from the museum, we all went our separate ways. Marie’s father had come to fetch her and was waiting in the driving seat of a huge BMW. I thought it was second-rate compared with Dad’s Panhard. It was a mild, heady spring evening and lacy clouds floated across the sky. I felt, that evening, as though I could see through time, yet life remained as mysterious as ever.
On my way home, I heard someone running after me. It was Charlotte, a girl in Year Nine who was often hanging around Van Gogh. I was pretty surprised that she was trying so hard to catch up with me. She held out an invitation to her birthday party. I asked her if Van Gogh was going to be there and if I needed to get ready to bite off his other ear.
“No, I haven’t invited him. And anyway, that ear business put him in his place. So, you’ll definitely come?”
“OK.”
She turned on her heels and went back the way she’d come. What was I to make of this invitation? It seemed a bit fishy to me: up until then we’d never had much to do with each other. On the other hand, I have to say that over the last few months I’d become something of a star at school, a sort of educational miracle. It was as though the guardian angel of school students had smiled upon me. So, actually, I was quite tempted to go to this party. I felt the need to see other people, to enjoy myself, to take my mind off things, because being with Marie and having all that responsibility for her was a constant worry. I was at an age when you should be able to have a good time without thinking about anything else. Yet, I couldn’t help feeling a bit guilty. However much I tried to justify it to myself, I felt like a traitor to our cause. This girl, Charlotte, was not the type who’d be interested in Johann Sebastian, or the love of wisdom, or any of those high-flown things that Marie had introduced me to. But there was something in me – a sort of demon – that told me it would perhaps be fun to go and roll in a muddy ditch, because on the high peaks where my irreplaceable friend had brought me, sometimes you could feel a lack of oxygen.
I got home and Dad was watching TV. It was a history programme about the 1917 Russian Revolution.
“Did you see the Mona Lisa?” he asked, without taking his eyes off the screen.
“Yes, Dad.”
“Did her eyes follow you around the room?”
“Yes, Dad, her eyes followed me around the room. She is true to her legend.”
“That’s good. Go and see what’s in the fridge. My eyes will be following you too.”
I had a snack on the corner of the table and went up to my room while the Russians were having it out with the Tsar. I stretched out on my bed and tried to imagine what Marie was doing. She must be back from her music lesson by now and was probably about to have supper. I wondered if she ever felt tempted to tell her parents everything. Then my thoughts turned towards the party the following evening. Which of the girls would be there? Adolescence, Dad had explained, is mostly a question of hormones, so I’d looked them up in my dictionary.
Hormone a chemical substance that controls and regulates the activity of specific cells or organs.
Well. In my case the hormones were definitely controlling a very specific organ.
It turned out that the party was taking place in a garage, and although there was rather a peculiar atmosphere – what with the oil and the exhaust fumes – it had a certain charm. To begin with I felt uncomfortable, because I didn’t know many people, but the more I was asked about my progress at school, the more at ease I felt. I relaxed and began to talk about any old thing, for instance that I’d become a fan of philosophy, which I explained means “love of wisdom”. I really looked the business, because I was dressed from head to toe in a velvet suit that Dad had given me. He’d found it at the bottom of an old trunk and had been really keen to see me wear it that evening.
He’d also said, “You should go and shave.”
It was the fourth time in six months, which I thought was a bit over the top, but it meant a lot to him and it didn’t do me any harm.
A little entourage formed around me. I even managed to drop the names of Plato and Aristotle. One of the girls said she knew about that and I thought everything would go pear-shaped, so I breathed a sigh of relief when she said she’d seen it at the cinema and it was a really good war film.
“No, no, you’re getting muddled with Platoon. The Plato I’m talking about lived in Greece in ancient times.”
They wanted to know more, so I added, “He used to discuss things with Socrates in the marketplace. But eventually they had an argument so Socrates ended his life in a cave, though Plato did his best to get him out of there with some candles and shadows that made reflections on the wall.”
Later, I drank some beer, because that’s less complicated than philosophy. They put on some music. Some girls arrived, but the outfits they were wearing, jeez. Those girls were definitely the real thing, no way were they shadows or reflections.
Things started to go wrong when it came to the dancing. I’d just knocked back another beer when the girl who’d invited me came over and said that one of her friends really fancied me – she was keen on philosophers wearing velvet. Caught between my chemical substances and the pain in my heart when I thought of Marie, I was at a loss to know what to do. I remembered Plato and his pal Socrates. It would have been good to react like a real philosopher, in a dignified and noble manner, saying something like, “You carry on enjoying yourselves without me, I need to reflect on existential matters”. And then go home to be with Dad. But it would have looked as though I was chickening out.
Once Dad and I had watched a TV programme that dealt with this very subject. It said that nowadays people have trouble separating matters of the heart from the facts of life. In the past it was much simpler, and it’s the reason why couples these days can’t stand the sight of each other after just a few years and split up in a storm of insults. At the time I hadn’t really understood what it was all about, but now it was becoming very clear to me. So when I began to dance with the girl in question, to a very smoochy song they’d put on deliberately, I saw the problem straight away: in theory your heart and soul might be dedicated to lofty ideals, but in practice you’re still pinned to the ground. This wasn’t at all the end of exile, as Dad had described it, but the beginning of torment. Everything began to spin round, turning into a rush of chemical substances and specific organs and a soup of tongues.
And then there was a flash. I sprang away quickly because I immediately realized that I’d fallen into a trap. It was obvious that my dance partner had lost interest, so I tried to find out who’d taken the photograph. I asked around, but everyone looked at me as though I’d gone mad. Nobody dared say anything to my face, because people were nervous of me since I’d de-eared Van Gogh, but I did hear someone whisper, “If that’s what philosophy leads to, no thanks! Leave me out of it!”
I was really worried about the photograph and thought it best to disappear as quickly as possible. Either I was going to be blackmailed, or the combination of stress and moral enlightenment would send me mad. Sometimes you can become unhinged by emotions that are too powerful.
When I got home, the Panhard seemed like a reassuring animal, sleeping with just one eye closed, and Dad was already snoring. I turned on the TV to take my mind off things, but all I could find to watch were more tragic events in history. When I’m in a normal frame of mind, I really like documentaries that teach you loads of things about what human beings are capable of. I find it instructive. I think it’s good to know the worst that can happen, because then there’s a better chance of nice surprises when you grow up. But that evening I was too preoccupied to concentrate on programmes like that. Then I couldn’t get to sleep because I felt really guilty about Marie, and desperately anxious that my tongue kiss might make headline news.
Even without the tongue it would have been a problem, but it wouldn’t have been quite as bad. How was I going to explain myself? It’s a classic scenario, I’d seen it dozens of times in films: the man gets a smack on the nose because he’s been unfaithful, lied and humiliated his girl. It would be a good idea to talk to Haisam about it. As a strategic specialist, he would be able to consider it clearly and objectively. He would surely be able to advise me.
One by one the hours ticked past until Monday inevitably came around. It was one of the worst days of my life. Worse than the day when my brand-new red racing bike that Dad had brought home on the roof of the Panhard, got stolen. Worse than the days when we had courgettes for lunch at primary school. Worse than the day when I saw a completely withered plant and Dad explained that it was the same for human beings: there comes a time when there’s nothing more you can do for them.
I set off early for school and waited for Haisam in the lodge. His father had once confided in me that he didn’t know when his son slept. Sometimes, he would conduct an experiment: he’d put conkers in Haisam’s bed and he’d find them in the same place several mornings in a row. He thought that being an insomniac was really lucky and might lead to his son becoming someone important. He used the term “majestic” to describe Haisam’s abilities. “It was a majestic win,” he’d said, talking about a chess game that had sealed Haisam’s victory in the regional championships. That morning, Haisam’s father was busy dusting the portraits of the eighteen Sultans who’d ruled the Ottoman Empire up until the eighteenth century. After that, he’d explained, Europe had carved up the Empire bit by bit, just like hunters agreeing how to divvy up their exhausted prey. And now all that remained were the leftovers.
When Haisam arrived, he looked fatter than ever. That was probably his handicap. He put the book on the hypermodern revolution in chess that his father had given him down on the table. He offered me a bowl full of Turkish delight and I watched him for a while as he chewed slowly, lost in thoughts of the Nimzo-Indian Defence and the Bayonet Attack. How on earth could I explain the situation to him? It was complicated. His father gave us a sort of very thick coffee in cups as small as thimbles. It tasted like drinking molten rubber, but I felt deeply honoured. Haisam sipped at the strange drink without ever taking his eyes off the chessboard that occupied the middle of the tiny lodge, like a centre of gravity.
“You look a bit out of sorts,” he said, all of a sudden.
He must have guessed everything. You really couldn’t hide anything from him: he’d probably developed intuition along with his chess skills. Just then his father gave him a bag of food for lunch.
“Hey,” I said, “aren’t you having lunch in the canteen?”
“No, because it’s pork chops today,” replied my Honourable Egyptian.
“But you had sausages last week.”
“That’s just how I am. Sometimes I eat kosher, sometimes I don’t.”
“Because sometimes you’re Jewish and sometimes you’re not?” I asked.
“Exactly. You’ve got it. Now all you need to do is learn to play chess and then you’ll be really quite respectable.”
I smiled. There’s a certain pleasure in feeling less important than people you love and admire a lot. Just then, there was a hubbub in the playground and the sound of a murmur going through the crowd. I left Haisam because I had a nasty feeling about it, and headed towards the students’ noticeboard. There was a big group of kids huddling around it.
The photos of the tongue soup from the other evening were pinned up, enlarged out of all proportion. It was Van Gogh who’d rounded everyone up. I thought the earth would swallow me, and actually that wouldn’t have been a bad end right then: goodbye, world, you’ll have to get along without me! Luckily, I was still concealed by the crowd and no one had noticed me. I put the collar of my jacket up as I waited to see what would happen next, scanning the faces for Marie. I had to find her before some well-intentioned person brought her up to speed. I felt a sort of groundswell behind me: it was Haisam. Perhaps not everything was lost after all.
“This is going to hit the fan!” I said, from deep down inside my jacket. The collar was pulled up to my ears.
He put his great paw on my shoulder, in that comforting way of his.
“It does you good to feel shame once in a while.”
I came across it later in the dictionary:
Shame humiliation caused by the consciousness of dishonourable behaviour. See abjection, unworthiness, disgrace, ignominy.
Judging by the number of synonyms, it must be quite a common experience.
“Maybe it will do me good one day, but for the moment it’s checkmate, over and done with.”
He smiled. I think he still had a piece of Turkish delight in his mouth.
“Not yet. The Nimzo-Indian Defence is exceptionally versatile. It’s useful for undermining your opponent’s strategy. The defence consists of rigorously demonstrating to your opponent that you have a full grasp of the complexity of your situation, which outweighs any traps that may have been set for you.”
From the depths of my jacket, as if from the depths of Plato’s cave, I wondered whether he was going mad, with his mania for impenetrable language. Much later – really a long time later, once he’d become a great chess champion, and I was watching him on TV, about a thousand moves ahead of everyone else – I often thought that he still had that same air of madness about him.
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“I know what I mean. So do you. The difference is that you haven’t realized it yet.”
His big face, puffed up like popcorn, split into a wide smile. It gave me confidence.
But I didn’t have time to think about all that, because all of a sudden I saw the mop of Marie’s hair go by. Her empty eyes were fixed on the noticeboard. Thank goodness she couldn’t see it. People were crowding around it, laughing and joking. Just then the bell rang, and they all started drifting off towards their classes. I let myself be carried along by the crowd, doing my best not to be noticed. I watched Marie counting the steps to the staircase, concentrating hard. Meanwhile I was counting on my fingers. We just had to hold out for five more weeks. I realized she was confused by the scrum, which was jostling her around like a spinning top. I hurried over to her, hoping I wasn’t lining myself up for a public slapping.
“Careful,” I whispered, “the staircase is in the opposite direction!”
“Your voice sounds odd. What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I’ve got a sore throat, so I’ve wrapped myself up in my jacket like an Egyptian mummy.”
“Did you do the geometry?”
“Yes. I’ve got two copies. I’ll keep the one with a mistake in it. Here you are.”
“What’s all this business about photos pinned on the noticeboard?” she asked as we were heading upstairs. “I can’t work out what’s going on. Everyone’s laughing all around me and I’d like to share the joke!”
So then I really did say the first thing that came into my head.
“Oh, it’s just some nonsense… Van Gogh took a picture of the biology teacher kissing the music teacher in the lab…”
“Hmm, that’s odd, I wouldn’t have thought they’d make a good couple.”
Just then I got recognized in the corridor. But my enemies confined themselves to muttered comments, since they wanted to remain attached to their ears, and the others eyed me with respect, knowing the speed of my fists. Shame wasn’t doing me any good at all just then. The maths teacher opened the door for us and gave me a wry look. She’d put some new thingies in her hair that made a big difference, even better than a facelift. I smiled vaguely at her.
At the end of the lesson I dawdled a bit, because I felt safest in the classroom. The teacher put away her things and since I still hadn’t left she began to wipe the board.
“Anything wrong, Victor?”
“No, no, everything’s just fine. Someone takes my picture and then I get dragged through the mud in front of hundreds of people. Otherwise everything’s fine. But I’m told it does you good to feel ashamed once in a while…”
“I saw the photos. She’s a very pretty girl. You should probably feel flattered, all things considered.”
I frowned. Obviously, I wasn’t going to go into all the details concerning Marie.
“She might be a pretty girl, but she’s not my type. It was just a dirty trick my hormones played on me.”
She smiled.
“By the way, since we’re sharing confidences,” I said, “I’ve noticed that these days your dead baby doesn’t seem to weigh you down so much.”
“That’s right, Victor. He’s gone back into my heart.”
“That’s good news.”
After that neither of us dared say anything else, for fear of disrupting the delicate balance of our intimacy.
The day dragged on like a stretchy old snake. I avoided Marie because I was worried stiff that she’d want to know more about the photos. Between lessons, I saw Etienne waiting outside Lucky Luke’s office, which was not a good sign. He told me he had big problems. When he’d gone into class, the pupils were already there but not the teacher, so he’d had the bright idea of yelling out, “So then, any sex going on in here?” It was his bad luck that the teacher was in the little storeroom that opened onto the classroom. It was even worse luck that she was with the head teacher. Result: he’d been given a serious roasting.
“Then the head asked me what job I wanted to do later on,” Etienne added. “So obviously I said I wanted to be a proctologist. She asked me what it involved, so I told her it meant taking care of anuses. So that’s how I’ve ended up outside Lucky Luke’s office.”
“You’re asking for trouble with that choice of profession.”
“I really don’t see what everyone’s got against it as a specialism. It’s no more disgusting than dentistry, maybe even less so. It’s just the other end, that’s all.”
At last it was the end of the day. I’d tried so hard to avoid Marie, but now I was getting the feeling that it was she who was trying to avoid me. I could see Haisam settling into a game of chess with his father in the lodge, as if they were in a goldfish bowl. I waved and he gave me a firm little nod, as though to boost my morale. One day he was going to stop talking altogether, but it wouldn’t matter because some people don’t need words to communicate. Just like others don’t need eyes to see.
I started strolling home. Strangely, I no longer felt any hatred for Van Gogh. Haisam had explained that in the Nimzo-Indian Defence a full understanding of your situation is more powerful than your opponent’s attack. Or something like that. I tried again to make sense of it all, but my brain worked too slowly.
Once my Honourable Egyptian had said, “I’m no more intelligent than you are, it’s just that my brain works much faster.”
It was a big difference, all the same. Imagine a champion cyclist winning the Tour de France and saying, “I’m not a better cyclist than you, I just pedal faster.” These thoughts were going through my mind when my world fell apart. There she was, just in front of the church, in the square where we’d seen the boules players and where the fair had taken place. The look on her face was exactly the expression I imagined Jupiter would have worn when he was raging against his fellow gods. The only things missing were the thunderbolts and lightning. If it wasn’t for the fact that I still had a shred of dignity, I’d have hurtled straight into the church like a torpedo. I’d have prayed in whatever way I could, on my knees, flat on my stomach or standing on my head. I’d have begged forgiveness from everyone, even Jupiter, because you never know.
Marie must have recognized my footsteps. She began to speak in a very low voice, even lower than usual, and that made it still worse – I’d have preferred her to shout at me.
“I know about the photos.”
I tried to say something, but no sound came out. I must have looked like a fish without its fins.
“You could have told me,” she said. “Because obviously, I can’t see anything, as you know.”
I was still unable to speak. I thought about the old films I used to watch on TV with Dad, in which the unmasked villain always copped a slap on the face.
“I felt a bit ridiculous when they told me who you were with in the photos. Not so much because of what the others would think – I don’t really care about them – but still, it hurt my feelings.”
“Feelings?” I asked, with a slight delay, as though we were in different time zones.
“Yes, feelings … you know what I mean…”
“Yes, I know. ‘Feelings: the ability to feel; to have an appreciative awareness. A complex emotional state involving susceptibility to impressions. See emotion, passion.’ I came across it yesterday in the dictionary.”
Great idea to bring the dictionary into it! But sometimes it works, changing the subject… I felt like sharing with her my theory that defining things makes them less frightening… She stood stiffly in front of me, as though standing to attention… For example, if you look up “cancer” in the dictionary you’ll see that it comes from a Latin word meaning “crab” and that cuts it down to size a bit… She was frowning… Personally, I think that dictionaries were invented to make life feel less tragic. I wasn’t surprised to learn that they were even written in Ancient Rome.
Suddenly, she seemed to freeze and I thought, Well, that’s great, she’s going to have a fit. But instead her eyes started welling up with tears. It was strange because as they ran down her face I wasn’t sure whether they made her eyes look more alive or even more dead. I found an almost clean tissue in my pocket and she blew her nose, which turned red. As red as my heart, which was wrung out like an old floor-cloth. I didn’t dare make a move.
“Do you want to sit down?” I asked, feeling choked-up.
“Sit down?”
“Yes, on our bench.”
Immediately she stiffened again. I saw the slap coming. But it was too easy: I took a step to one side and of course she missed me. She spun around, lost her balance and fell to the ground. Her knees were skinned and bleeding a bit. This time there was absolutely no room for doubt: I was pathetic. Truly pathetic. I didn’t even let her slap me, when it was the least I could have done. And she’d gone whirling through the air and collapsed into the dust, in front of the watching boules players. She struggled to get up, like a newborn foal that’s unsteady on its feet. I held out a hand, forgetting she couldn’t see it.
“Go away,” she said quietly. “Go away, please. I don’t want to see you any more.”
I would feel terrible for days and days afterwards about that slap that didn’t reach its target.
I ran home fast enough to beat the hundred metres record. My guilt had turned my heart to jelly. At home, Dad was writing a reply to some clients who’d put an advertisement in the Journal. A black fly had landed on the top of his head.
“You look rough. Has there been an earthquake? A tidal wave? Is it the plague? A hostile army at the gates of Paris?”
If only that was all it was. It would take too long to explain. And anyway, Marie had made me promise not to say anything, not even to the Honourable Egyptian, not even to Dad. I wasn’t going to betray her again.
In the night it felt like there was a procession of tanks in my head, with nuclear submarines and battleships bringing up the rear.
The next day I got up and looked out into the yard. The Panhard had gone, leaving an empty space, a dry rectangle on the wet paving stones. When Dad’s not here any more, I thought, that’ll be an empty space too: another square hole with straight lines and no rough edges. I drank my hot chocolate and thought of Marie. She must be really mad at me; she’d probably never think of me in the same way again. The truth is, I’d lost a reason to feel proud, and life doesn’t offer up many of those. What I’d liked, with Marie, was the feeling of being indispensible. Now I just felt like a piece of straw being swept along by the wind.
Before leaving for school, I turned my attention to wildlife conservation and the protection of birds in distress. It was actually a comfort, because I could see that my blackbird’s wings were all shiny, as though they’d been varnished. I took him in the palm of my hand and his little feet scratched at me gently. At some point he would leave, which made me think that life is nothing but a stream of separations.
Heartsick, I limped through two more weeks. Spring had burst majestically into life like a flower, but the bud of my heart was withering, as if it had been scorched by a late frost. I stopped making an effort at school, because I wasn’t doing it for anyone any more, so of course it was much less interesting. You need motivation to work, and my motivation was doing everything she could to avoid me. I watched her counting her steps at school: I was the only one to notice and I wondered why no one else did. I tried to go up to her a couple of times, but it was as though negative vibes enabled her to spot me approaching. What surprised me most was the casual, natural way she moved to a different desk. She really was extraordinarily gifted when it came to managing her life in darkness. Sometimes she brought her cello into class, because she had to have a music lesson straight after school. I heard her say that she’d asked her cello teacher to give her double lessons in the lead-up to the audition. I must say, I admired her deeply on the days she came in carrying that great big instrument.
During those two weeks of exile, I often remembered the times I’d listened to her playing the cello and the strange feeling I’d had of being nothing and everything at the same time. You can say what you like, but there’s nothing more wonderful than being the only one to share a secret with someone you admire.
Dad thought I looked peaky. I think he suspected my exiled state, but didn’t like to ask about it, because it’s not always easy for fathers and sons to open up to each other. Some nights I took my place next to him in the Panhard, on the meandering journey through small towns and suburbs, drifting together towards Paris until it swallowed us up. Every single time I wondered if we would ever get out of the city again. I remember driving up wide avenues, no one but us, as if the city was deserted after an air raid. Disused train tracks … an old railway bridge… On the windscreen, I imagined I could see a reflection of the Paris map pinned up in Dad’s office. I wondered how Dad had got to know all these bizarre people who wanted us to stay and listen to stories of their long-distant pasts. I always ended up falling asleep in the car and it felt like a miracle to wake up outside our ramshackle house. I’d go and see my blackbird, who was getting fatter, filling more and more of the shoebox, and scratching around in the yard with his beady little eyes darting everywhere. Maybe his troubles were over. At school, mine were very far from over. I had a go at trying to make Marie laugh, with a return to the wit that had once made me legendary. For example, one day someone asked what a stereotype was, so I said, “Someone who likes listening to loud music!”
But my heart wasn’t in it and everyone had got out of the habit. No one laughed, least of all Marie.
One day, when I was wandering the corridors looking for the register for the maths teacher, I bumped into Lucky Luke. He came up to me, carrying a big book under his arm.
“Don’t tell anyone… I’m going to hide in the gym to read for a while… If anyone’s looking for me, you haven’t seen me. I’ll owe you one…”
“What’s the book?”
“Don Quixote. I’ve finished The Three Musketeers, you see. I should think Don Quixote is roughly the same sort of thing. Have you read it?”
“I know there are windmills in it, but that’s all.”
“Windmills? Are you sure? I thought it was about battles and horses. And knights.”
He looked disappointed.
“Anyway,” I said, “it must be a very famous book, since even I’ve heard of it. How’s the cycling going?”
“I came third last Sunday. Because I was completely worn out from reading too late the night before. It’s crazy how tiring a big book is! Like climbing the Alps. Literature is hard work.”
“Maybe I’ll come and watch you race next Sunday… I’m quite bored at the moment. I need something to do. Perhaps I could sell chips to the spectators…”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t want to offend you, but you wouldn’t understand…”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Quite sure. You don’t know the facts.”
“Is it something to do with those photos the other day?”
“Not exactly the photos themselves, but the consequences. Van Gogh really got one over on me, with that stunt. Checkmate. Ah well, I’ll see what can be done with a Nimzo-Indian Defence.”
I waited to see what effect my words would have. Lucky Luke seemed to be mulling them over.
“The what defence? Is that karate?”
“No, of course not. It’s a chess term. A Nimzo-Indian Defence consists in showing your opponent that your understanding of the situation is greater than the dangers presented by the situation.”
I hoped he wouldn’t ask any more questions, because then I’d have been stuck. I’d told him everything I knew about the subject, and I still didn’t get exactly what it meant. But now and then the mist cleared a bit: I was beginning to think that perhaps one day I would understand and that I should trust my Honourable Egyptian.
“Well, anyway, I’ll leave you to get on with your Chinese Defence,” said Lucky Luke.
“Indian, sir, Indian…”
“Whatever.”
At the end of that day, I went to see Haisam in the lodge. He’d missed all the afternoon’s lessons because he and his father had to finish the Moscow 1963 tournament. No one minded, because in any event he already knew everything there was to know. I arrived in the middle of the third game.
“Good timing,” said the Honourable Egyptian, without looking up. “Look at this: Botvinnik proposes exchanging queens on the thirteenth move. A work of art or what?”
“Magnificent,” I said, to avoid upsetting him.
I watched them play for a while. Now and then Haisam would pass me the bowl of sweets. Afterwards I went home to Dad, my spirits sagging softly, just like Turkish delight.