The Eskimo Solution Read online

  ‘I can’t! I’m scared of heights!’

  The wind bats a few words back to me: ‘Come! … lovely! … sea!’

  ‘No! … you come back! … to leave!’

  He doesn’t want to know. He keeps beckoning to me, with his back to the void. The idiot’s going to hurt himself if he keeps waving his arms about like that. I creep towards him like an animal, screwing up my eyes, the wind grasping my face like the five fingers of an enormous hand.

  ‘Christophe, for fuck’s sake, let’s go!’

  ‘Come on, the sun’s coming up, it’s amazing! Give me your hand.’

  So what? It comes up every fucking day. I’m cold and I’ve got vertigo. My fingernails dig into his wrist. He drags me to the edge, to the place where hope has almost gone, where all that’s left is a sorry tuft of grass to which I cling for dear life.

  ‘Well, isn’t it wonderful?’

  I only open one eye, which is more than enough. Nothing about it looks wonderful to me, only terrifying: rocks like jagged teeth, an inconceivably great drop, a pack of raging waves, pure horror under a scornful sky, vaguely tinted with a milky cloud. Paralysed by fear, I can do nothing but keep staring into the chaos. My brow is drawn downwards as if by a magnet and there below I see my body in pieces, arms and legs strewn about on the rocks. I hear a voice inside me say, ‘You have never been the owner of your body, merely the tenant.’ It’s the voice of a witch offering a shiny red apple. A cry comes back in response, the cry of the beast within me refusing point-blank to heed the call of the abyss. I close my eyes and leap backwards. My hand jerks out of Christophe’s grasp. I seem to hear a sound like the crack of a whip or the whistling of a bullet, something narrowly missing me. I don’t try to work it out, I roll through the grass. The only thought in my head is the need to get away from this hole, as far away as possible. I’ll never be far enough away. Keep rolling, rolling …

  20

  The little girl was sitting on the edge of the white sofa. She’d perched Marion’s glasses on the end of her nose and was holding the Gospel according to St Thomas open at page twenty-five, the page Marion had left it open at. Louis was watching her from the other end of the sofa. She was five years old and she was bored. Her name was Mylène and she was the daughter of Marion’s niece. Marion had left him to look after her for the afternoon while she went shopping. Louis had played with her non-stop and read her three little books, laborious stratagems that had dragged him painfully towards three o’clock in the afternoon. Now they were both as bored as each other and a silence that almost made you want to cry reigned in the big white room. The little girl forgot about Louis. She was playing at being Marion, imitating the way she took her glasses off and put them on again. She was saying in her baby voice, ‘Hasn’t there been a phone call for me today?’

  Louis remembered a day spent with a parrot. He had been at the house of people he hardly knew in Belgium, a huge house stranded in the middle of muddy fields. For a reason he now couldn’t remember he had been left alone in the house with the parrot, a large grey bird with a red tail. He had been immersed in Maeterlinck’s The Life of the Bee when the noise of a cork popping out of a bottle made him jump. Then came the scraping of curtains along a curtain rail and the voice of the master of the house, recognisable by his heavy Flemish accent, then the voice of his wife, high-pitched like clinking ice cubes, and finally the dog barking, all imitated to perfection. It was unbelievably realistic, especially the master and mistress of the house. At first, Louis had been amused but as it went on he became a little uncomfortable. He felt as if he were invisible and eavesdropping on private conversations, and even as if he were witnessing an intimate domestic scene. And all by dribs and drabs, interspersed with the pop! of corks which seemed to indicate that his hosts were fond of a drink. In front of him, they were courteous – a little distant, stiff even – but the parrot, possibly because it thought it was alone (Louis wasn’t moving in his hidden corner of the room), had just given away what went on behind closed doors. It felt indecent to witness. Louis had spent the rest of the day in his bedroom on the first floor.

  He had a similar feeling of indecency as he watched the little girl imitating Marion. And curiously, as with the parrot and his owners, the girl delighted in mimicking Marion’s most ridiculous flaws, tics and obsessions. For a while now he himself had started to see her only as a caricature. He had had to admit to her that he had run out of money. She hadn’t made any comment; in fact she had told him not to worry about it, that she had enough for both of them. But ever since, her behaviour towards him had changed. Not a lot, just enough to nag at Louis like a loose tooth. She sought his opinion less often, telephoned her friends more, imposed her choice of television programme on him. The other day he had groaned when she had asked him whether he would prefer to be buried or cremated. He had replied that he didn’t mind, that death was a story for the living and that he was going to buy the bread.

  The little girl was fed up with playing at being Marion and was beginning to play about a little too close to the crystal carafes and other fragile knick-knacks that Marion had brought back from her interminable trips. The white cat had immediately picked up on the change in the child’s behaviour and had gone to hide under the dresser. Louis was going to have to stir himself into action.

  ‘Mylène, it’s nearly four o’clock. Would you like a cake?’

  It was strange to walk along holding the hand of a little girl, keeping to her pace. He felt awkward, at once proud but shy, vulnerable but powerful. The child was taking advantage of this by wanting everything she saw: a red motorbike, a multicoloured feather, balls, sweets. It was like having a dog on a lead that would suddenly stop in its tracks.

  ‘That! … I want that!’

  Louis felt sick when he saw what the plump little figure was pointing at. He had completely forgotten the fair that had been set up on the other side of the boulevard. Or he would, of course, have taken the other road. For as long as he could remember he had had a horror of fairs, circuses and in general of anything where fun was obligatory. The rare memories he had of fairs comprised nothing but drunken soldiers, obese women, terrifying dwarfs, which automatically triggered a violent feeling of nausea.

  ‘But your cake? Don’t you want it any more?’

  ‘Nooo! Want roundabouts!’

  Two solutions: he could pick Mylène up, kicking and screaming, and force his way through the crowd like a child catcher and attach her to a chair when they got home, or he could give in and let himself be dragged to the fair like a lamb to the slaughter.

  He had to negotiate forcefully with a little red-haired boy for the driving seat of an ambulance. Now Mylène was going round and round, fading and disappearing in a whirlwind of light. Slyly, nausea was taking hold of Louis. He breathed slowly and deeply. He must not look at the roundabout, anything but the roundabout, the sky for example … But his glance fell on the big wheel which, seen from this angle, seemed to be coming straight at him. Everywhere he tried to rest his eyes, it was all rods, gears and pistons coming to crush him. The stale smell of frites, waffles and toffee apples was the final straw. He had to sit down immediately or he would have collapsed in the dust amongst the fag ends, chewing gum, tickets, candyfloss sticks and crushed Coke cans. Over there, between two stalls, he thought he could make out a sort of drum, a red affair about buttock height. In spite of the crowd, he would get to that red thing, he had to. Once he was sitting on it, he closed his eyes. Three seconds more and he would have fallen over. An icy sweat broke out on his forehead and his legs wouldn’t stop trembling.

  ‘Louis?’

  Louis half opened one eye. Agnès’s head appeared in close-up wearing a ridiculous white cap. ‘Agnès?’

  ‘Louis! What are you doing here? Is everything OK? Are you ill?’

  She was wearing a large white apron and Swedish clogs, also white. Even her face was white, as if floured. Perhaps her nurse-like appearance was reassuring because Louis was gradually reco
vering.

  ‘I had a little turn. Fairs and me, you know … But what are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m working! You’ve just had the vapours beside my van!’

  ‘The frites van?’

  ‘Yes! Come and say hello to Jacques. I can’t get over this, it’s been ages … Guess who I saw just now?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your son, our son.’

  ‘Fred?’

  ‘Yes. I haven’t seen him since my parents’ funeral. So much for blood ties!’

  For a fraction of a second, Louis could only see red as if all the other colours had disappeared, as if it was the only colour in the world.

  ‘Come and have a glass of water. You don’t look right.’

  ‘No, no, I’m fine. But I’m with a little girl – she’s over there on the roundabout.’

  ‘Go and get her. I’ll give her a waffle with lots of whipped cream on top.’

  While Mylène was covering herself in cream, Jacques and Agnès insisted on giving Louis the tour of the van, as if it were a gastronomic restaurant. It was a wonderful business! The coast in the summer, the mountains in winter and all the little extras, like here. But how was he doing? Was that his daughter? Had he put on a little weight? But his grey hair suited him. Louis replied with idiotic little laughs, squashed into a corner of the van with Mylène. Jacques and Agnès continued to serve crêpes, gaufres and frites, all the while bombarding him with questions. He felt like a marionette in a cardboard puppet theatre. The people reaching over for their orders looked at him as if he were the bearded lady, just another attraction.

  ‘We’re thinking of expanding; we’d like to get another van, a bigger one like you get in Belgium. Food sells, you know. You can’t go wrong.’

  ‘That’s true. I’m happy for you. Right, I’d better take the little one back to her mother. Mothers worry easily.’

  Agnès rolled her eyes. ‘What, now you’re concerned about mothers? You really have changed. A few years ago, you’d have had to be forced to take your son to the fair.’

  ‘Agnès …’

  ‘Don’t worry, Jacques, Louis doesn’t mind and, anyway, it’s all in the past, isn’t it, Louis? By the way, if you want to see your son, he’s coming here about nine o’clock.’

  Marion was eating an apple and flicking through the television guide. Louis was clearing the table.

  ‘There’s a documentary about Sri Lanka on France 2 at 8.30. My friend Fanchon went there last year; she thought it was amazing. I saw her photos, it—’

  The tap running in the sink muffled Marion’s voice. Louis couldn’t decide – the fair or not the fair? Should he see his son – or not?

  He could go or not go, what did it matter? It was as if there were another question behind that question, but he didn’t know what it was. Since he had come home he had wrestled with that question mark like a trout on a hook, and his indecision was contaminating his every act. ‘Should I do the washing up – or not? Should I take a piss – or not? Should I scratch my nose – or not?’ It was maddening.

  ‘Louis, what are you doing?’

  ‘I’m going to the fair.’

  ‘What?’

  It had just slipped out without him having the time to think about it, as if he were a ventriloquist’s dummy and another voice had spoken for him.

  ‘I’m going to the fair on the boulevard.’

  ‘I thought you hated fairs!’

  ‘I thought that too.’

  ‘But when you went with Mylène this afternoon, you discovered you actually love them?’

  ‘Possibly. It brought back memories.’

  ‘Memories? I didn’t even know you had a past to have memories of – you never talk about it. Do you want me to come with you?’

  ‘I’d prefer to go on my own if you don’t have any objection.’

  ‘Why would I have an objection? It’s just a bit odd. You don’t look like someone who’s going to the fair.’

  ‘What do I look like?’

  ‘Like a kid who’s done something wrong, or who’s about to. But in any case, don’t forget your keys. I’m whacked – I don’t even know if I’ll make it to the end of my programme.’

  ‘I won’t be late.’

  Marion went upstairs. The programme started. Louis put on his coat, hesitated by Marion’s bag, then opened it and took out two 500-franc notes which he crammed into his wallet. The white cat watched him the whole time until he closed the door behind him.

  The night air had the same effect on him as a damp cloth on his forehead. He could breathe again. He remembered his mother’s perfume, Soir de Paris, thick, blue, in a shaped glass bottle, like an enormous precious stone. She would put one drop, no more, behind each ear, when she went out in the evening with her husband. They looked good together, like a married couple in a play. Louis would have liked them to be like that every day. Unfortunately they rarely were – only for a wedding anniversary or when his father received a promotion. The rest of the time they were just ordinary mortals.

  A body was a stupid thing. All it needed was food and sleep, and on it went, just like any vehicle. But who was really driving it? As Louis got nearer to his destination, the music and smells of the fair became more and more invasive, attracting him like an insect caught in the U-bend of a basin. Yet something in him slowed his steps. He had nothing more to say to Jacques and Agnès, and not much more to say to his son. He would slip him two 500-franc notes, that was all. But he could also just give them to Agnès and go home to bed.

  The ephemeral town of lights and giddiness started on the other side of the boulevard. It seemed to take for ever for the lights to turn from green to red. He couldn’t fathom why he was in such a hurry to get across. A group of youths beside him were horsing about hurling insults at each other. He didn’t understand a word they were saying. He crossed the boulevard in their wake as if for protection.

  The fair was not the same at night. Louis didn’t know where he was. He had left the group of young people in front of the big wheel. Some of them wanted to go on it, some of them didn’t. He wandered about looking for Agnès’s van. He was dazzled, his ears assaulted by shouts and the sharp crack of rifle shots. It wasn’t the nausea of this afternoon that now took hold of him, it was more like an inebriation, quite overpowering like his mother’s Soir de Paris. It was only by chance that he stumbled on Agnès’s van. Fred had not arrived yet. He could either wait for him there or have a go on the big wheel; a friend of Agnès’s was running it. You could see the whole of Paris from there – it was fantastic. Well, why not? Normally, Louis would have categorically refused, but normally he wouldn’t even have been here. And the intoxication he still felt seemed to protect him – he wasn’t afraid of anything any more; he was watched over not by a guardian angel but rather by a well-muscled bodyguard. Everything seemed fun, everything sparkled, everything seemed appealing. He felt honoured and behaved accordingly, interested by everything around him. He settled down in the gondola of the big wheel like a king, arms ready to bless the crowd. He rose. The wind was stronger, colder. Soon the fair was nothing but a stream of lava running between the trees. The gondola swayed gently each time the wheel stopped. The sky seemed closer than the ground. ‘I have never been more alone. And curiously, it doesn’t bother me at all. I’m not frightened of solitude any more because I’m the only one who counts, because the others don’t exist, they’re only there for effect.’ In the gondola in front, actually below, the young man had succeeded in kissing the girl. Their kiss must have tasted of soda. They were snuggled into each other. They could have been anywhere. But they were here. A gust of wind blew the girl’s scarf off. She gave a cry, putting her hand on her hair. They both burst out laughing. Everyone on the roundabout watched the zigzagging flight of the red scarf.

  The exit led him down another path, behind the big wheel, opposite a tombola festooned with blue monkey cuddly toys. Louis had an urgent need to piss, which had come over him on the last turn of the wheel.
He had to get behind the stalls in order to find a suitably dark spot. The urgency of the situation made him immediately dart between two stalls. A profound ecstasy spread through him as he relieved himself against the wooden fence. ‘I’m exactly where I should be; I could only be here. I can almost say I recognise this place, as clearly as if someone had described it to me a fraction of a second before I got here. Someone is guiding my actions, imperceptibly anticipating them. I am a proxy for somebody else.’

  A violent shove in the back propelled him against the rough planks he was pissing against. His teeth, lips and nose all split against the wood. Without understanding how, he was on the ground. Blows rained down on his body. He tried to protect himself, one hand on his head, the other on his penis which was still outside his flies. There were several people hitting him. He could only see their legs and feet, which seemed to increase in number as the pain worsened. The toe of a boot sliced off his ear, the music from the nearest merry-go-round rushed into the wound and bored into his brain. Hands were turning him over, rootling in his pockets. No one was watching over him any more. Between half-closed eyes he could make out two figures in a ray of green light.

  ‘A thousand big ones.’

  ‘Toss the wallet.’

  ‘Wait … I want to know what this bastard’s name is …’

  ‘Chuck it, Fred, and let’s get out of here!’