The Eskimo Solution Read online

  ‘No, I’m not. I travel all the time, just not from place to place.’

  ‘Don’t you want to see me?’

  ‘Of course I do. That’s got nothing to do with it …’

  After that, I continued to hear her voice but not the words. A bewitching melody was playing through the little holes in the phone in an unfamiliar and sweet-sounding language. I said yes. Then she hung up.

  Now I’m really in the shit. She’s coming to pick me up in two days’ time. Two days is nothing – she may as well have said, ‘I’ll be there in two hours.’ I’m looking at everything around me as if for the last time. I’ll have to speak, and in English to boot! We’ll get lost and have to ask for directions. I can ask for directions in English; I just won’t understand the reply. That’s not going to get me very far! We’ll have to drive on the left, courting death at every crossroads. Hélène’s obsession with avoiding all the places ‘other people’ go will mean she insists on experiencing the dingiest pubs, where I’ll sit wincing while sailors drunk on beer make eyes at her. We’ll have to lug heavy bags from one hotel to another in the pouring rain. I’ll be among people in their natural habitat. Come to think of it, I’m in the same situation as Louis, forced to do things against my will because of the choice a woman has made. Suddenly I’m feeling a lot more warmly towards Louis. Telephone!

  ‘Christophe, how are things?’

  ‘Well, to be honest …’

  ‘Is it Nane? What’s happened?’

  ‘No, she’s fine – well, there’s no change. It’s not that, or not just that. I dunno. The kids, work, money, time passing, a bit of everything. I’ve been thinking of you by the sea, all that fresh air … If I could find the time, I’d really like to come and visit.’

  ‘That would be great, only I’m going away the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, really? Where?’

  ‘To England, with Hélène.’

  ‘Oh, nice! You’ll have to tell me all about it. Right, I’ll let you get on. I’ve got to dash over to Nane’s place, doctor’s coming round. Bon voyage, you jammy git!’

  Hardly! True, next to his problems, mine seem on the mild side. His ex-wife Nane is dying in a studio flat somewhere in the sixteenth arrondissement of Paris. Nane was as beautiful as a Sunday, as a day with no purpose, kind, intelligent, perfect. One morning, she walked out of the door without even saying goodbye, leaving Christophe to bring up two kids on his own. He never tried to understand, but carried on loving her as he always had done, like an ox faithfully pulling its plough. Fifteen years went by with no news of her, and then a year ago he bumped into her by chance. She’s ill – very ill. He’s been looking after her ever since, as Nane’s mother ought to have done if only she wasn’t a self-obsessed monster. All that woman has done for her daughter is allow her to rent one of the studios she owns in Paris – at an extortionate price – purely because it would have been a headache to have left her on the streets. If only Louis existed in real life. But he doesn’t, and Nane is so exhausted that the inheritance would be no use to her anyway. Would he even get there in time?

  I should have suggested Christophe and the kids come and spend a few days here. I thought about it, but I didn’t do it. Faced with such an outpouring of sadness, I backed away. Hélène would call that selfishness. I disagree. I simply have a great deal of respect for other people’s privacy, in good times and bad.

  2

  Just before jumping on the bus, Louis saw a well-known actor in the street, although he couldn’t remember his name. He looked smaller than when he was on screen. Days when things like this happened weren’t like other days. On the bus, he sat opposite a little old couple, both sleepy, one with their head on the other’s shoulder. They were like two little old cigarette butts stubbed out on the seat. They gave off the smell of beef stew and waxed parquet. It was as if they were at home at siesta time. Louis was overwhelmed by a wave of emotion, which almost made him feel sick. It was more than tenderness; he was overcome with love for this adorable couple. It was ridiculous, for two stops he struggled to contain his sobs. Then the man gently shook the woman awake; his wedding ring caught the only ray of sunshine that day. A skinny little man took their place. He was carrying an enormous lampshade that he laid on his knees. Louis could only see his eyes and the top of his bald pate. He looked like a thing, an unusual, detachable object. When he left, two young people took his place. Louis hated them immediately. Especially the man. He looked as boring as all the hardware he had just bought at the DIY store, things for cutting, sanding, screwing, measuring, tightening and loosening. For each item he took out of the plastic bag, he read the instructions all the way through, in a low voice like a depressed vicar. The flat-chested blonde who was with him nodded as she listened, dull-eyed and slack-jawed. Their weekends must be a blast!

  Under the plane trees, dead leaves glued to the pavement by the rain resembled pamphlets warning of the end of the world. Just before he reached Printemps, a knot in the crowd forced him to slow down. There was a figure, just visible between the legs of the passers-by. It was stretched out on the ground. One trouser leg was rucked up, revealing a pale, almost blue calf and a brown sock rolled down at the ankle of a shoeless foot. The shoe, an old one, was a little further along. A corpse! In newspaper photos of crimes or accidents, the victim had always lost a shoe. Instinctively, Louis looked up at the buildings on the street. The sniper had vanished.

  As he pushed open the door of the department store, he was greeted by a gust of warm air and ladies’ perfume which made his head spin. He was instantly horrified at the thought of any physical contact. Feeling bodies brush against his, he had the sensation he was paddling barefoot through slime, sinking into an obscene swarming mass, taking part in a disgusting orgy. He could imagine grubby underwear, soft white flesh, damp body hair, the sickening smell of sweat and saliva.

  He felt a bit better when he reached the dome of Brasserie Printemps. The enormous umbrella of light caught the hubbub of conversation and the clinking of cutlery. He quickly spotted Richard, but didn’t show himself. It was absolutely delicious to watch him playing nervously with his knife while looking at his watch or casting a mournful eye over the menu that was almost entirely composed of salads and desserts. He stood out amongst the prim and proper matrons and their granddaughters daubed with banana split.

  I won’t go and meet him. Anyway, I can’t give him his money back. I have nothing to give him as security except a brilliant horoscope for the coming month. I’ll leave him stewing there.

  A kind of short sigh followed by a thud caused him to turn round. One of the grandmothers at a table near him had just collapsed, her head in her plate of crudités. There was grated carrot in her hair, and a round of cucumber clung to her right cheekbone. By her chair a newspaper with a screaming headline: AGEING SOON TO BE A THING OF THE PAST! No, there certainly wasn’t any sign of the barrel of a rifle with telescopic sight under that shower of fragmented light filtering through the stained-glass panes of the glass roof. The shot could have come from any one of the facets of the giant kaleidoscope.

  Louis ran out of the store and walked straight ahead for a long time. Then he sat on a bench, in a large park, the Tuileries, or maybe it was the Luxembourg Gardens. Out-of-work dads recognised each other from afar. There were dozens of them drifting along the avenues, one child clinging to their back like a wart, another dragging its feet in the dust while holding on to their father’s hand. The dads greeted each other with a weary little conspiratorial smile: ‘Welcome to the club.’

  There was one beside Louis. He had his eye on a little girl who was sticking her fingers into a drain cover. They were still the fingers of a newborn, soft and pink like shelled prawns. She was burbling incomprehensible sounds full of wet syllables: pleu, bleu, mleu. Her brother, barely any older, was pedalling like a demon round and round the bench on a red tricycle. Other Michelin men, bundled up in their winter garments, threw handfuls of gravel, wooden lorries, spades and rake
s at each other. Any object became a projectile in their hands. An hour spent in their company would drive you completely mad. Louis was not unhappy in his state of stupefaction; he was no longer aware of the cold or of the strident cries. Far in the distance gardeners made little piles of leaves, which they then gathered into one large heap. He would like that work, simple and monotonous.

  The little girl nearby began to shriek. One of her fingers was caught in the grille. Things like that were always happening to children – life is full of holes and there are so many little fingers. The father got down on all fours, trying to moisten the child’s finger with his spit, murmuring reassurance to her. The child was screaming so much she was turning blue. Women came over to proffer idiotic advice to the poor father, now red with shame.

  ‘You should have used soap.’

  ‘You think I come to the park with my pockets full of bars of soap?’

  He was envisaging having to pull out the grille and carry it still attached to his daughter’s arm, but the little finger finally came free with a popping sound. The gathering dispersed, disappointed. They had been hoping for the fire brigade. The father stuck a biscuit into his daughter’s dribbling snotty mouth and hastily gathered up the strange assortment of items that children must always have with them – a disgustingly grimy fluffy rabbit, a broken toy car, a retractable transistor aerial, a single roller skate. Had he missed anything? Yes, the little brother, who was pedalling at top speed towards the open gates to the street where huge menacing buses passed, hungry for little boys on red tricycles.

  ‘Quentin! Come back here immediately!’

  We’re all children of children. This unfathomable thought kept Louis going until nightfall, until the time when everyone goes home.

  It’s time to go to the beach, but I’m staying put. My throat’s a bit sore and I’ve a slight temperature – excuse enough to slack off for the rest of the day. Goes without saying it’s this England business that’s knocked me for six. With a bit of effort, it seems to me I could be properly ill by the time Hélène arrives. I open the window, unbutton my shirt collar and fill my lungs with the icy air, heavy with moisture off the sea. There – now all I need to do is slip under the duvet fully dressed and spend the whole day sweating, while dulling my brain with German soap operas and game shows. All being well, I should hit between 38 and 39 by the end of the night.

  Watching Inspector Derrick’s adventures only serves to give me a stiff neck. I’m better off staring at the wallpaper. I lose myself for a good while in the intricate faded flower pattern on the walls, when suddenly I get the strongest sense that Nane has died, right this very moment – puff! – like a light bulb blowing. All at once, the babbling in my head fades, to be replaced by a surprisingly clear memory of Nane’s last birthday. We were celebrating in the ridiculous studio her mother put her in, on the fourth floor of a modern building in the sixteenth arrondissement. The decor and furnishings are all her mother’s doing. The place is dripping with gold fixtures and walls of sky blue and pink. Every room is fitted with carpet, right up to the loo seats. Nane has never been allowed to change a thing. But what does a bit of fussy decor matter to her when she’s dying anyway? She’s made do with pinning a few postcards above her bed and sticking some flowers in a vase – no more than you’d expect to see in a hospital room. She has set up home in her mother’s place the way a hermit crab moves into another mollusc’s shell. A bed with a TV facing it. She lives off her own death, self-sufficient. Just as Hélène feared, Nane had ‘made herself pretty’. Lipstick and eyeliner only emphasised the sorry state of her poor face. There was Hélène, Christophe and me. We’d just had a glass of champagne. Nane was about to blow out the thirty-nine candles on her cake. It was too much for her; she couldn’t breathe so we had to call an ambulance. Lying on the stretcher, her body under the blanket made no more of a mound than a closed umbrella.

  I daren’t call Christophe. I don’t trust this sixth sense of mine. What if it’s just my imagination trying to find an excuse not to go to England? Nane dying would blow the whole idea out of the water. It’s possible to pray for things unconsciously and I wouldn’t put it past myself to do so.

  I’m eating leftovers of leftovers and half listening to the news on the radio when I hear a knock at the door. My first instinct is to find a weapon, but then I get a grip: it’s only ten past seven – no one’s killed at this time of night.

  ‘Evening. I live next door. I’m sorry to—’

  ‘Yes, I recognise you.’

  ‘We don’t like to intrude.’

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Well, see, the thing is … our daughter’s going to be on telly this evening. Going for Gold – you know, the game show …’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Our TV’s just stopped working, so we thought to ourselves, maybe the chap next door might … if we’re not disturbing you … assuming you have a TV, that is?’

  ‘Yes. I understand. Please, come in.’

  ‘Oh, that’s kind of you, ever so kind! … Arlette, come on, he says it’s OK.’

  Monsieur and Madame Vidal have invaded my solitude. We sit smiling idiotically at one another. They look like a pair of shiny new garden gnomes.

  ‘The TV’s upstairs. You’ll have to excuse the mess.’

  ‘Oh, don’t mention it. It’s us who should be apologising, barging in on you while you’re having your supper.’

  ‘No, no, I’d finished. Come on up – it’s the first room on the left.’

  I give the duvet a few whacks and sit my visitors on the edge of the single bed, twenty centimetres from the TV screen; the only way I can watch TV is sprawled on a bed. I feel as if I’m looking after two nicely behaved children.

  ‘Ooh, it’s starting!’

  Since there’s no room to sit next to them, I slide in behind them. Between Monsieur Vidal’s shiny pate and the silver-blue lichen sprouting from his wife’s head, the TV presenter’s unappealing face appears, swiftly followed by those of the contestants wearing nervous or slightly crazed expressions. Among them is Nadine, twenty-seven, a teacher from Rouen, who takes the opportunity to say hello to her students as well as her parents, who have no doubt tuned in to watch her.

  ‘There she is! That’s our daughter. Gosh, doesn’t she look awful!’

  ‘Must be the nerves! You know how shy she is …’

  Arlette’s hand nestles inside her husband’s. I have the curious feeling I must be at their house. I daren’t move, in case they notice me there. I wonder who Nadine takes after most, her father or mother? Nobody or everybody? In fact she most resembles the TV presenter, bloated as if by a phantom pregnancy, with a look on her face that says, ‘I may be ugly, but I’m highly intelligent.’ We’d hate one another at first sight if we were introduced. She looks a nasty piece of work. How could such a lovely pair of people produce someone with such an inflated ego? And lovely people they are, I’d bet my life on it. This is the first time I’ve seen them up close, but I’ve often spotted them coming back from the market or from a walk, arm in arm, never in a hurry, protected, as though living inside a bubble. I’ve so often imagined and envied the admirably empty, clean and tidy little life they lead together, just the two of them. Every time I have a row with Hélène, and we each go home to our separate houses for the sake of preserving our precious independence, I think of them. Tonight they’re in my home, watching my TV; I could touch them; they belong to me and not to the stuck-up little madam on the TV screen. I want them to adopt me, right now this instant! I’d be a very good son to them, and what’s more, I live just next door. I could ask them to talk to Hélène, to stop the trip from going ahead …

  ‘… contains theobromine. Once the seed has been roasted and ground, it is used to make a drink …’

  ‘Cocoa!’

  Father and daughter say the magic word in unison, a split second before the time is up.

  ‘Cocoa! That’s the right answer! And that makes you today’s CHAMPION!’r />
  For a moment the bedroom flutters with the sound of beating wings as my two angels spring to their feet, clapping their hands. Part of me begrudges that stiff little princess her victory, but it has clearly made the two old things very happy.

  ‘It’s not just because she’s our daughter – you have to admit she was the best. Ever since she was little she’s always been able to learn whatever she wanted, and she retains it all, doesn’t she, Arlette?’

  ‘Oh, yes! She’s always been very hard-working as well. It’s not enough to be clever, you have to put the time in too! Besides, they don’t give a teaching degree to just anyone, do they?’

  ‘No, of course not! Right, I think this calls for a drink. You’ll have a glass of something, won’t you? Ah, go on!’

  They won’t stop droning on about their daughter – what about me, huh? We head downstairs. I run three glasses under the tap and open a bottle of Chablis.

  ‘You’ve got a lovely place here. All these pretty things and pictures; it’s very arty. What do you do for a living?’

  ‘It’s not my house. I’m renting it from a friend of mine who’s a painter. I write books.’

  ‘Oh right …!’

  I wait for the ‘Oh right!’ to come back down to earth, having been blown out into the stratosphere to make way for a toast to Nadine’s starry future.

  ‘To Nadine! Yum … Nice wine, isn’t it, Arlette?’

  ‘Very nice! Well, we had you down as being in the film business. We thought we’d seen famous people coming in here. We just happened to notice, you understand! We haven’t been spying on you.’

  ‘Of course not. It’s true, several of my friends are actors.’

  ‘Aha! See, Louis? I was right!’

  ‘Sorry, your name’s Louis?’

  ‘That’s right. Why?’

  ‘No reason. It’s a nice name.’

  ‘Oh, I dunno. Have to be called something, after all. And your name is?’