In the morning, the sky was bright blue. The wind had swept everything clean during the night. I walked around the deserted streets looking for a grocery that was open. I bought some cornflakes and orange juice, then made a detour via the bakery to get some brioches. I had everything I wanted.
By the time I got back home, my sister was already up, and was struggling with the coffee machine. Par for the course so far, but what aroused my curiosity was that she’d put on her raincoat and her big bag stood in the middle of the hall.
“What are you doing?”
“Making myself coffee. Trying, anyhow. I don’t think this thing of yours is working.”
“You have to hit it hard to get it started. You look like you’re ready to leave.”
“I have a long drive ahead of me. I’ll drink my coffee and then wake Léonard at the last moment. He can finish sleeping in the car.”
“You mean you’re taking him with you?”
“I think it’s for the best. I came here in a rush. You know me, I’ve always been impulsive. I was in a bit of a panic.”
“And now you’re not?”
“Yes, I am. But I realized it was a bad idea.”
I put everything down on the table. What I wanted more than anything was to keep calm. “Can you tell me why?”
“Why it’s a bad idea?”
“Yes.”
She turned to me and gave a slight smile, as if to conceal her anxiety, but she was so tense that it turned into a grimace. “Why should you burden yourself with a kid, especially your sister’s? You’re tired enough of her already. There’s a reason you live alone, and I swear I understand you where that’s concerned. I’d give a lot to have only myself to take care of.”
The night hadn’t brought her any rest. She had rings under her eyes, and her mouth drooped a little. I remembered her as a teenager, looking at herself in the mirror for hours and miming kisses. She always said her lips were what the boys liked best about her. The best weapon to shoot them down with. In the meantime, she was the one who’d come down to earth.
“I asked you to give me time to think. Why don’t you let me be the judge of what I want or don’t want to do? Please sit down.”
The air she’d kept in her lungs since I’d entered the room escaped in one go. She agreed to take a seat.
“You show up unexpectedly at my door. You give me a problem to solve and then solve it for me. You haven’t changed since you were a kid, you’re still like a tornado.”
“Don’t tell me you were ready to agree.”
“And now you’re doing my thinking for me. Better and better.”
“It’s just that . . . I need time. I was stupid to come here, and now I have to drive five hours back in the opposite direction. And when I get to Paris, I’ll have to start looking again.”
“And why would you find someone now, when you have even less time?”
“I’ll manage.”
“The way you manage with jobs? Or with men?”
“You bastard.”
I sustained her gaze. I knew perfectly well what she was thinking at that moment. That I was really terrible. I shook the coffee machine and it immediately started working again. I filled two cups.
“You came into my territory. You’re asking me to do something for you, so accept responsibility, for God’s sake.”
“What did you mean when you called me a tornado?”
“Don’t you remember? It was your technique. You fooled everyone like that. As soon as you got home, you’d throw our parents a bone, an amusing anecdote or a good grade, which was impossible to check. And by the time they realized, you were gone again.”
All at once, her face lit up. For a few seconds she was fifteen again. She made that pout that meant that she always got by, and then she returned to her body in the present.
“The first thing you noticed was that he didn’t say hello. You won’t be able to stand the fact that he never looks you in the eyes.”
“He also patronizes me, you can add that too.”
“Did he patronize you?”
“Last night, he told me I was afraid of playing chess, but that he could teach me.”
“He spoke to you last night?”
“Yes.”
“He doesn’t usually speak to people so soon.”
“That’s very flattering. But tell him not to force himself. I like silence.”
“Are you telling me you’re going to keep him?”
“Possibly. I don’t give a damn if he won’t look me in the eyes or thinks I’m a fool. I have no intention of becoming friends with him. As long as he listens to me.”
“If you decide on something, he’ll do it, I told you. He doesn’t like conflict.”
“I’ll take him to the field. After all, he’s the same age as my boys.”
“No, that one you can forget.”
“Why?”
“He doesn’t like sports.”
“We’ll see.”
“When he doesn’t like something, he doesn’t usually change his mind. But you can leave him in his room. He never gets bored.”
“Does he play chess all day?”
“He plays, and then he sleeps. Or else he makes notes in his exercise notebooks. He has lots of exercise books where he writes down possible moves.”
“He’s unusual, isn’t he?”
“No more than kids who play video games.”
“Ten days, not a day more. If you don’t keep to the contract, I’ll stick him on a train for Paris and you can figure something out when he gets there.”
She drank her coffee in quick little gulps. She should have been a bit more relaxed by now, but she just couldn’t manage it. She had to plan her day, the route she was going to take, everything that was at stake in her training course, and beyond that the job interviews, all the obstacles she had to get through and the others that were sure to arise. There were two buttons missing on her raincoat. The threads were still hanging. I was sure she hadn’t told me everything about the situation, but at that moment I really didn’t want to know anything more.
“If that’s how it is, I’ll wake him and talk to him.”
We sat there in the kitchen, facing each other. I sensed that this moment would have consequences.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
I didn’t reply. I had no desire to share my thoughts with her. I wondered what our childhood would have been like if we’d lived through even one situation like this, where the distance between people was reduced out of necessity.
“You know, he really won’t be any trouble to you if you leave him at home,” she said.
“I believe you. But I’m taking him to the field anyway.”