Tell me a story.”
“I thought you didn’t like my old folks’ stories.”
Jules makes a face. Takes a drag and blows smoke rings onto my wallpaper. He’s making me listen to “Subzero” by Ben Klock, resident DJ at Berghain in Berlin, so he tells me. I often feel as if I’m living with an extraterrestrial.
When I found my job at The Hydrangeas, Jules screamed. It was the first time that had happened. At our house, no one ever screamed. Except the TV.
I think what bothered him most was my working five hundred meters from home. For Jules, succeeding in life means leaving Milly. In September, after his baccalauréat, he’ll be off to Paris. That’s all he ever talks about: Paris.
“Open the window. I can’t stand the smell of your tobacco.”
He unfolds his 1.87 meters and half-opens the window in my room. I love him. Even if, occasionally, I suspect him of being ashamed of us, his family, I love him. And whenever he moves, I love him even more. He’s like a dancer with the hands of a pianist. It’s like he fell from the sky and Gramps picked him up in his garden. Like he isn’t from Milly but from a big capital city, where he’d have grown up between an astronomer father and a French-teacher mother. He’s so graceful that it’s objects that dance around him. He’s more than my brother. Maybe because he isn’t my brother. And yet he makes a racket when he walks, puts nothing away, is selfish, moody, pretentious, and has his head in the clouds. And he smokes like a chimney, particularly in my room.
Even if I never had a kid, I don’t think I’d give a damn because I have him. He’s ridiculously handsome. I often tell him that being that good-looking shouldn’t be allowed. I’m forever kissing him. As though making up for all the kisses our grandparents never gave him. At our house, kisses are given reluctantly, in exchange for a gift, on a birthday or at Christmas. Never for free. And all that because of a damn resemblance that never appeared. I also think that Gran and Gramps couldn’t stand Annette, Jules’s mother. Gran doesn’t like blondes; when she sees one on TV, she grimaces. A grimace that’s invisible to the naked eye, but when it comes to this family, my eye is fully clothed.
Jules lost his parents when he was two. He thinks his father was richer than mine, that the studies he’ll do in Paris are thanks to the money Uncle Alain, his imaginary hero, had in his bank account when he died. The truth is that Uncle Alain was broke. And that it’s the money I’ve saved, cent by cent, since working at The Hydrangeas that will pay for his studies. But I’d rather die than let him know that. I earn 1,480 euros a month. A bit more when I’m on call. I put 600 euros into an account every month. I’ve already saved 13,800 euros for him. I give 500 euros to Gran and Gramps to help them out. And my bonus I spend at the Paradise club.
Jules wants to be an architect, and I’m sure that, in time, when he’s building palaces, he won’t visit us anymore. And that, if he does return here once a year, it will be for himself, not for us. I know how he operates off by heart. I could even recite it.
Jules doesn’t get attached because he lives in the present. He couldn’t care less about yesterday. And tomorrow doesn’t yet interest him. As soon as he goes out the door in the morning, off to school, he stops thinking about us. And when he comes home in the evening, he’s happy to see us but hasn’t missed us.
We’ve never known which of our two fathers was driving the car; for the emergency services, the two men were impossible to tell apart. We’ve never known what malfunctioned that Sunday. And since they shared the car, we’ve never known which of our fathers killed the other one.
Jules is sprawled on my bed again and looking at me as if to say: go on, tell the story. So I tell it:
“Madame Epting decided to come to The Hydrangeas the day her little dog died. Because, on that day, she told herself that she’d never be of any use ever again. She told me that she’d experienced all sorts in life. That she’d known war, hardship, the fear of the Boches, and even a broken heart. But the death of her little dog, that was the last straw. He was called Van Gogh because his previous owners had cut off his ear to remove his identification chip.”
“Bastards,” says Jules, lighting a cigarette.
“That’s today’s story.”
“And it’s already finished?” he asks.
“No. It’s not really finished. I then said to her: ‘Will you tell me about your broken heart, Madame Epting?’ She laughed so hard, she had to keep her dentures in with her thumb. ‘He was called Michel.’ ‘Nice name, Michel,’ I said, ‘but I’ve got to go, I’m really pushed.’ She looked at me strangely and said, ‘Really what?’ ‘Really pushed. It means I’m running late this morning, so you can tell me about Michel at the end of the afternoon.’ She nodded, and I left her behind door 45, with her broken heart and her little dog. When I dropped by that evening, her armchair and bed were empty. She’d had a stroke. You see, that’s my daily reality. Listening has to take priority, because silence is never far away.”
“Shit, how depressing.”
“But you know, I still get the giggles almost every day.”
“Between changing diapers and pushing wheelchairs?”
I start laughing. Jules says nothing more. He stands up and, like any self-respecting prince, is unaware that he lives in a principality that’s his alone. He leans out of the window to throw his cigarette into the garden, and I shout at him because it’s freezing outside.