12

Hello, Albane.”
“Well, well, Quentin, you’re still alive. I thought you were dead.”

This morning, the parrots were agitated and noisy, screeching like saws attacking hard wood. The low sky, in which a storm was brewing, brought an occasional flight of swallows, eager to land on the square but bouncing back in swarms before they could touch the ground, fearful of the reaction of the cockatoos, although they didn’t resign themselves to leave immediately.

“Can I sit down next to you?”

“The bench doesn’t belong to me.”

“Is that a yes?”

Every now and again, the muffled but fierce beating of wings bore witness to the sexual and territorial wars that were being waged in the branches.

“Please forgive me, Albane.”

“For what?”

“For not coming to see you lately. You got my note, I hope, the one where I said not to worry, that I wasn’t sick, that I’d soon be back?”

“ . . . ”

“Were you . . . Were you here, these last few days?”

“Yes.”

“Waiting for me?”

A parakeet rose angrily into the air and flew around the square crying out his rage.

Albane was hesitating between crying and losing her temper. She opted for a third solution: sarcasm. “You’d have liked it, wouldn’t you, me waiting around like an idiot when you didn’t come?”

“Albane . . . ”

“Well, I did come here, but only because I’m used to it, not for you. Why should I wait for you? We aren’t married. We aren’t engaged. We aren’t even together.”

“We are together. At least, we were . . . ”

“What does that mean to you, being together? Disappearing without letting me know where you are? Coming back like a stranger greeting a stranger? You and I will never understand each other.”

Quentin was surprised. However morose, unfair, touchy, and irritating she was, Albane still attracted him. He should have left, called her a pain in the neck—which she was—especially as he would never get from her what he had gotten from Ève, but there he stayed, awkward, weighed down with his new secrets, hypnotized by that pretty, animated face, knowing that he was going to say the wrong things again and cause further misunderstandings.

Confident that he was listening to her, Albane launched into her lament. “I don’t know who you are, Quentin Dentremont. The other day, your last note said, ‘I’d like to sleep with you,’ and then on Saturday, at Knokke-le-Zoute, you ran away when Servane and I arrived at the party.”

“I didn’t run away because of you.”

“Oh, come on! You were the only reason I went to Knokke. I felt so humiliated! You made me lose face. In Knokke, just like in Brussels, people know we’re together. I was the laughingstock of the party.”

“Albane, I swear I wasn’t trying to avoid you. It was just that . . . I had to be somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“ . . . ”

“Who with?”

“ . . . ”

The parrots fell silent as a huge unidentified bird passed slowly and threateningly over the square with a terrifying drone.

“Don’t you have anything to tell me, Quentin Dentremont?”

“I have nothing against you, Albane, I don’t think anything bad about you. On the contrary.”

The helicopter disappeared westward, behind the rooftops, and the parrots resumed their arguments at a lower volume.

“You have nothing against me? I must be dreaming. You behave like a pig and you tell me you have nothing against me? The world has turned upside down . . . What a nerve!”

Quentin grabbed her by the wrist. “I love you, Albane.”

She felt like crying for help. Now that she was finally receiving the words she had longed to hear, she shook her head, dismissing them. That declaration disgusted her. There was no question of accepting his love. Quentin was bringing her nothing but torment.

“That’s bullshit!”

“I swear it, Albane.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Because, before, I wasn’t mature.”

“What’s matured you since Saturday?” 

“If I told you, you wouldn’t understand.”

“I’m stupid, is that it?”

“No, you’re young and you’re a girl.”

Albane tore herself from his embrace, turned to face him head-on, her brow furrowed, eyes popping out of their sockets. “Oh yes, much better to be sixteen and a boy!”

“No.”

“Frankly, this is an eye-opener. I never knew you were such a pompous male chauvinist.”

“Albane, it’s not what I meant to say!”

“That’s just it! You don’t want to say anything, and when you do say something it’s not what you mean. ‘Pompous male chauvinist,’ no, that’s way off the mark. I should add ‘moron.’”

The angrier Albane became, the calmer Quentin felt. He was so touched by her rage that he felt like laughing. He could feel his heart melt in the face of such fury. His passion was growing.

“Albane, the reason I left . . . was to come back a better person. I know who I am now.”

“You’re making a fool of me!”

“Not at all.”

“You needed to leave in order to come back a better person! And I’m supposed to just accept that? Do I really want a guy who invites me to a party seventy miles from where I live and then runs away when I get there? It’s one thing being in love, but I’m not going to be made a fool of, and I’m not going to be a victim, oh, no!”

Quentin burst out laughing, as if he were watching a comedy act. Sure of himself, certain of his feelings, more in love than ever, he didn’t realize that Albane thought he was just being cynical.

“So now you’re laughing?”

Looking at her tortured face, he laughed even more, laughed until he couldn’t breathe. How cute she looked when she was angry! He was amused by her rage the way we are sometimes amused by a child moaning about something or a household pet unable to comprehend a situation: he was laughing with genuine tenderness.

“You are a real monster!”

When tears welled up in Albane’s eyes, Quentin saw them only as the culmination of the comic scene he had been watching: he had no idea that he was humiliating the girl.

“Goodbye! I never want to see you again!”

With a furious stamping of her feet, she walked off without turning around. Quentin hit himself in the stomach to tone down his hilarity and called after her, “Come back, Albane, I love you!”

“Liar!”

“I’ve never loved you so much!”

“Too late!”

“Albane, I swear I love you!”

“Fuck off, you bastard!

Her last words were like a slap in the face. Albane wasn’t usually vulgar. Shocked, he gave up the idea of running after her and sat for a few moments longer on the bench.

She disappeared from sight.

His laughter returned. Now it was a laugh of relief. What a wonderful thing! How happy he was to discover both Albane’s depth of feeling and the extent of his own affection for her! Since the episode with Ève, he had dreaded the thought of seeing her again; but his reunion with her had confirmed to him that he had matured and that she was dearer to him than anyone else . . . Had this discovery given him such satisfaction that he had disregarded her distress and neglected to see how upset she was?

Three parakeets pursued a cockatoo through the tree trunks, brushing against Quentin as they did so, making him lower his head.

I love you. Too late. Why didn’t you tell me before? The words echoed in his head. Even though he was too happy to dwell at length on the subject, it struck Quentin that in love everybody utters the same phrases, but seldom at the right time. Life is a mediocre writer: the words are there, and so are the feelings, but in the wrong order. Someone ought to write the story and make sure it’s worked out properly. We ought to hear the words “I love you” at the moment we need them, “I want you” should reach ears ready to receive them, deserts should be crossed together, oases discovered simultaneously, instead of expecting what doesn’t come and getting what we weren’t expecting. A harmonious love story is basically a story well told, in which time and circumstances have conspired together to produce the desired effect.

Quentin rubbed his hands, trying to let calm take root in him. True, he had made a hash of his reunion with Albane, but tomorrow was another day. He would make up for it. He would make up with her. Hadn’t they done nothing but quarrel from the start?

From now on, confidence would nourish him, the confidence of a man in love, the confidence of a body that, at last knowing physical love, no longer prevented him from thinking clearly. Quentin counted on time to do the rest.

A limp noise on his left caught him by surprise. A putty-colored lump of bird shit had just landed on his shoulder.

He looked up and yelled, “That’s it, go on, shit on me!”

There was a sniggering sound from the branches.

“Bunch of idiots!”

With the help of a handkerchief, he cleaned the blue threads of his sweater, which had quickly absorbed the dropping.

“A good thing it didn’t happen earlier,” he muttered to himself.

At this thought, he started laughing again.

Perched on a nearby branch, a red macaw, surprised, squawked something at him.

Quentin nodded. “Thanks for waiting, guys. And at least it was me, not her. Because you know something? The girl you saw just now, well, I can tell you this: one day, she’s going to be my wife.”

One leg in the air, the macaw tilted its head to the right, motionless, intrigued.