The jukebox had been delivered that very morning. Twelve 78s. Twenty-four red buttons with the song titles beside them.
There had been quite a crowd in that day. The customers were all fascinated by the way the contraption worked. Rows of flashing lights appeared on both sides when it was activated. So this was progress! You just had to press a number, from 1 to 24, to select a song. Even Claude and Lucien had abandoned the bar to join the customers and admire the choreography of the records.
It’s Lucien who had ordered the jukebox. To surprise Hélène. She hadn’t been able to read the song titles typed on the labels. But she’d made a discreet marker for herself near the button of song 8, “Petite Fleur” by Sydney Bechet.
Claude had squandered his entire month’s tips on the jukebox in a single day. The machine had thrown the café into cheerful chaos because he’d stopped serving. As soon as silence fell, he would run over to put another coin in the slot, and stare, mesmerized, at the record turning inside the cabinet.
By late afternoon, Baudelaire and Claude had almost come to blows because Baudelaire only wanted to hear Tino Rossi’s “Maman, la plus belle du monde,” and Claude only Luis Mariano’s “C’est magnifique.” Hélène had resolved it by pressing button 8.
As for Lucien, he couldn’t wait for everyone to leave, to be alone with Hélène and his jukebox. Since that first night when she’d got undressed, he was now impatient for just one thing from the moment he woke in the morning: being back in the closed café and seeing her undress by candlelight. Because she’d done so every evening since. And Lucien had watched her shedding her clothes without once touching her. They never crossed the invisible line still separating them.
This evening, he would put on the B side of the Georges Brassens record, “Les Sabots d’Hélène,” and invite her to dance. This was the first time he was planning ahead since the Gare de l’Est. At first he had just hoped, and now he was planning ahead.
It was strange, living under the same roof as a woman without ever touching her. Hearing the customers and storekeepers calling her “your wife” or “your lady” when mentioning her to him. It was strange having no memories to share with her, having nothing in common but the present, and yet still feeling what she was feeling, knowing what she liked, anticipating her reactions, reading her mind. It was as if some buried emotional layer of his brain had remembered her. Like on the day she’d come to Brittany to bring him the blue suitcase. He hadn’t recognized her, but he could recite her off by heart. Yes. That’s what Hélène was. A poem learned off by heart, of which he could recall only some rhymes.
The customers almost had to be thrown out that evening. And even Claude, who couldn’t tear himself away from the jukebox, cleaning it as if it were a thoroughbred the night before the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.
Now that the café was closed, they’d had supper, and Rose was sleeping, Lucien pressed button 19, again and again. He was singing. It was the first time Hélène had heard him sing. He was out of tune, but he was singing. She lit the candle, started to undress, but Lucien stopped her. This evening, he would undress her. But first, they were going to dance.
He popped another coin in the jukebox:
Hélène’s clogs
Were all muddy,
Three captains, they say,
Called her ugly,
And poor Hélène
Was a soul in pain.
Look no more for a fountain,
If you need water, look no more:
With Hélène’s tears
Just fill your pail.
It was on the day of the jukebox that they picked up their thread.