When he got out of school, he needed air, needed to stretch his legs. He couldn’t go straight home. That was too risky.
After twenty minutes the feeling of drunkenness had worn off. His breath made a little vapor cloud in the cold air. The alcohol was evaporating.
Just before seven, he opened the apartment door and checked that the coast was clear. For a few months, his mother had been doing an exercise class at the end of the day on Friday. This spared them both the tense moment of parting, with all the things that couldn’t be said and unspoken advice. Generally he sends her a message a bit later to let her know he’s arrived safely. She settles for an “OK” in reply.
Then the connection is broken for a week. Over and out.
He’s looked everywhere for his coat but hasn’t found it. He looked in the hamper and checked that it wasn’t drying.
In a few minutes Théo has gathered together the rest of his things for the week. He’s turned off all the lights and locked the door behind him.
He takes the metro to the place d’Italie.
He gets to his father’s building.
He would like to have hung on to a vague feeling of drunkenness in some distant corner of his brain so that he could now regain access to it. He searches within himself for a trace of intoxication. He’d like to recover alcohol’s influence over his movements—a slowness, a drowsiness, however tiny—but it’s all gone. He’s lost his carapace. He’s burned it all up in the winter air. He’s become the child he hates again, who feels fear in his stomach as he presses the elevator button. The fear emerges from a numb sleep whose golden taste has vanished. It spreads through his whole body and increases his heart rate.
When Théo rings the bell, it takes his father several minutes to open the door. The last time he waited for almost half an hour. He could hear him inside, or at least sense his presence, a breathing or a scraping, but his father wasn’t ready to open the door, to welcome him, as though the increasing amount of time he needed to come to the door would enable him to become human again. That’s what Théo reckons today as he waits on the doormat, that his father needs all this time to be able to face him. He has the key for downstairs but not the one for this lock, which his father turns when he wants to be sure he won’t be disturbed. So Théo eventually sits on the top step and waits. And every eighty seconds he gets up to press the light timer switch.
When his father appears at last, even if Théo has spent all day preparing himself for this image, even if he has mentally pictured it dozens of times to get himself used to it, even if he has known for several months that he’ll find him in this state, he finds it hard to conceal the recoil movement that his body makes in spite of himself. Recoil and revulsion, because every time it’s worse than the last, as though it’s possible to keep sinking deeper into self-neglect. In a fraction of a second, Théo registers everything: the pajamas, the egg or urine stain around the crotch, the beard, the smell, the bare feet in flip-flops, the nails that are too long, the dilated pupils trying to adjust to the presence of another human being.
And then his father smiles at him, with a sort of sad-looking grimace.
His father used to pull him toward him and give him a hug, but he no longer dares. He smells bad and he knows it.
Next he goes back to bed or sits at his desk in front of the computer. He makes a superhuman effort to ask some questions. Théo could describe every little detail of the slow progress of this effort, its cogs and gears, whose unbearable rusty creaking he thinks he can almost hear. The time his father takes to think up his questions and then ask them. In a sort of failed ritual, he asks for news about school, the handball team (which Théo quit almost a year ago), but he’s incapable of concentrating on his answers. Théo always ends up getting irritated because his father asks him the same question twice or because he only pretends to listen. Sometimes he tries to confuse him, to catch him not paying attention; he suddenly asks him to repeat what he just said and then lets him get tangled up in some words that his brain has superficially retained in a vain attempt to put them together again. Actually, his father doesn’t do too badly. Then Théo can’t stop himself from smiling at him; he says, “It’s OK, don’t worry, I’ll tell you another time.”
Later, he’ll sort through the leftovers in the refrigerator, throwing out what’s rotten or moldy, checking the sell-by dates. He’ll strip his father’s bed and open the windows to air the rooms. If there’s any detergent left, he’ll put the machine on. He’ll run the dishwasher. Or he’ll let the plates soak because of the food, which is sometimes so dry it seems encrusted on.
Then he’ll go back downstairs with his father’s ATM card and go to the cash machine. First he’ll try to get €50. If the machine refuses, he’ll start again and try for €20. It doesn’t give out tens.
He’ll go to the supermarket.
When he gets back, he’ll try to convince his father to get up, wash and get dressed. He’ll raise the electric blinds and go and talk to him in his room. He’ll try to drag him outside, at least for a bit of a walk. He’ll call to him from the living room several times to come and watch a film or a television show together.
Or maybe he won’t do any of that.
This time he may no longer have the strength. Perhaps he’ll just let things go, without trying to repair them, to put them in order. Perhaps he’ll simply sit in the dark, letting his legs swing between the legs of the chair, because he no longer knows what to say or do, because he knows all this is too much for him, that he isn’t strong enough.
He doesn’t remember how long it’s been since his father stopped working. Two years? Three? He knows that one evening he promised to keep quiet about it. Because if his mother finds out that his father is no longer working, she’ll go to court to seek sole custody. That’s what his father said.
He promised not to mention it, which is why he didn’t say anything to his grandmother, or to his father’s sister, who sometimes called.
Before, his father used to work too much. He got back late from the office, spent the evening in front of the computer, stayed up late. One day he got suspended by his company. Théo has never forgotten that word: suspended. He immediately imagined his father hoisted off the ground, kept there helpless, at the whim of some supervisor as a sign of victory and domination. What it really meant was that his father was no longer allowed to return to work, have access to his files or his computer. Had he done something wrong? Made a serious mistake? Théo had been too young for his father to explain to him what happened, but he had retained this image of the terrible humiliation that had destroyed him.
His father had spent a few months looking for a job. He’d taken a course to broaden his skills, had gone back to English classes. He’d gone to meetings, had interviews.
And then gradually the contacts his father maintained with the outside world became fewer and fewer. And then everything that sustained his connection with others, every cause for hope that he would one day start a new job, everything that made him leave the apartment, broke. Théo didn’t realize at once, because this rupture happened without drama or fireworks—unlike the rupture between his parents, which had made them tear each other to pieces for months in a relentless struggle, with lawyers as their intermediaries and him as the witness condemned to silence. At first his father had started hanging around at home a bit more, in the morning or the afternoon. Théo loved spending time with him. They’d go for a drive; his father would drive with one hand, relaxed, and say, “This is good, isn’t it, just us two?” He was planning to take him to London or Berlin when he had refilled the coffers. And then he stopped driving because there was no gas in the car. And then he stopped leaving the apartment. And then he sold the car. And then he limited the time he spent away from his bed or the living-room sofa as much as possible. Now he rents out his parking space to a neighbor for €100 a month and this money represents a significant proportion of his income.
Théo doesn’t know how long it’s been since they went out together, played cards or Sorry!, or how long since his father made dinner, turned on the oven, how long since he raised the blinds for himself, put in a wash, emptied the trash.
Nor does he know how long it’s been since his grandmother, grandfather, uncle and aunt visited, how long his father has been on medication, has spent all day dozing, hardly ever washing, how long there have been weeks when they have to feed themselves on €20.