Entering the house, I was immediately aware of something abnormal. A muted moaning sound in the darkness. It took me a moment to realize it was the pipes. For some reason, cutting off the water had set off terrible vibrations that spread through the walls. I went down into the basement. I just had to switch the water back on for the vibrations to stop, but in that case, I’d have to get up every two hours to empty the bucket. I preferred to leave the valve closed.
I retreated to my room. I’d had enough for today. Except that the vibrations in the pipes followed me there. And it was like that throughout the house. Only the two rooms at the back were spared. I tried to settle in the larger one, but I’d forgotten how smashed in the bed was, and so I fell back on the one Léonard had occupied. I really did try to sleep then. But everything was against me. The size of the bed, which forced me to lie across it. That horrible wallpaper, whose image persisted well after I’d closed my eyes. The scratches from that poor girl, which I wasn’t in any mood to treat. I was like a diver who wants to go as deep as possible but keeps coming back to the surface. After several attempts, I gave up. Best to turn on the light, which is what I did.
I sat up with my back against the wall and pondered in the silence. I remembered Catherine walking away without turning around after I’d rejected her so brusquely. I had the idea of writing her a message to apologize, but I feared the consequences. I’d done the hard part, why go back? Why leave my door open? It led nowhere. It was then that I noticed the exercise book on the windowsill. I stood up and leafed through it. It was the one that Léonard had used to write down soccer tactics, after his precious notes on chess. Had he left it deliberately, or had he forgotten it? After skimming through it at random, I started reading it more carefully, from the beginning.
As an introduction, Léonard had written some basic thoughts about chess, so obvious and so clear that even I could understand them, then in the following pages, he suggested some elementary combinations with which to start a game. I read these recommendations, all accompanied by sketches, with the greatest attention. It wasn’t so abstract after all, not when explained by a clear-sighted player. Then I remembered the promise I’d made my nephew during the penalty session: to learn this game that seemed so distant from me, from the things I knew, as a response to the challenge he had set himself. I plunged back into reading the exercise book. I forgot the leak. The Valenciennes match. That moment of madness in Béatrice’s apartment. I even forgot about Catherine Vandrecken, and by the time I got to the end of the book, I realized that dawn was breaking. The tension in me had subsided. I fell asleep.