The Islanders Page 5

  ‘He’s back, Jeanne, he’s back!’

  ‘It was an accident. Just an accident. We wanted to leave …’

  Rodolphe didn’t recognise his sister’s voice. It quivered like the voice of an old lady or a little girl.

  ‘I said, I don’t care! You could have killed half the human race and I still wouldn’t give a shit. Just tell me you don’t feel anything for him, that it’s all over, finished!’

  Little by little, something inside her was righting itself, like those Chinese paper flowers which blossom on contact with water, the first tears shed in so long. Her heart was opening up. At the same time, she was becoming aware of the danger her brother’s distress represented. Rodolphe was not the kind of kid you could smother with a pillow. She took three deep breaths.

  The scent of roast chicken was beginning to fill the air, a reassuring smell.

  ‘Of course it’s over. I’m sorry … Do you remember that line of Lacenaire in Les Enfants du Paradis? “The past that leaps at your face like a rabid cat.” He’s leaving anyway, in three or four days, after his mother’s funeral. He’s married, he lives on the Côte d’Azur. It’s all so far behind us!’

  Rodolphe didn’t reply. He had gone back to fashioning little balls of bread, keeping an ear on his sister as she opened the fridge, took out a lettuce and began separating the leaves, sniffling as she went.

  Liar, filthy fucking liar …

  Hangovers always had the lingering aftertaste of a funfair: lurid wooden horses dancing a merry-go-round inside the head, a sugar-coated palate and tongue, a whiff of stale fat in the nostrils and fluorescent confetti floating before the eyes. Lying tangled in bed sheets steeped in the sour tang of sweat, Olivier felt as if he had been plaited into a rope of marshmallow. He could not even find the strength to hang up, leaving the receiver dangling on the cord and emitting a monotonous beep.

  Odile had found the number on the Minitel. She had been trying to get through until one o’clock the night before. Where had he been? Why had he not called? Why had he started drinking again? Why? Why? Each ‘why’ resounded in his head like the blow of a sledgehammer.

  ‘I dunno, I dunno,’ was all he managed to say in reply. Eventually he mustered the energy to start explaining about the transport problems brought on by the bad weather, but she already knew about them.

  ‘I know, darling, I heard it on the news. It’s unbelievable in this day and age. Maybe that’s why you … you let yourself go. And besides I’m sure your mother’s death has hit you more than you care to admit. Even if you weren’t on the best of terms, she was still your mum. All the memories must be coming back … I understand, my love, but you need to look after yourself. You need to be strong …’

  He let her build up a list of excuses he could never have come up with by himself and then she rang off, promising to call again that evening and sending love and strength at this difficult time.

  It was still dark outside. The chrome lamp in the shape of a giant sprig of lily of the valley lit only one corner of the bedside table and a patch of the rug, which was decorated with swarms of red and green arabesques. Olivier closed his eyes again. For a moment he pictured Odile, immaculately coiffed and made up, emerging from Résidence des Mimosas at the wheel of her black Polo, jumping the stop sign she considered unnecessary before weaving her way through the traffic to reach the shop, where Mireille would be pacing up and down. In a lull between permed customers, Odile would tell her everything.

  How far away she seemed – and not just geographically.

  All he had retained of the previous day’s events was a collection of jumbled, fragmented images in no particular order: Rodolphe circling the table with the camcorder clamped to his dead eye like a monstrous prosthesis, indiscriminately filming the dinner, the ceiling, faces, a spoon falling off the table; Roland perching stiffly on the edge of his seat, constantly offering to wash up before the meal was even over; Jeanne, ghostly pale, chain-smoking cigarettes; and himself chain-drinking without even checking what was in the glass – champagne, wine, brandy, more wine. The room was immersed in gloom like a murky fish tank, with a shiny glint of cutlery or crystal here and there. It was bizarre, extraordinary, and yet Olivier felt as if he was attending a family reunion, his own family reunion. Rodolphe had even called him ‘my brother-in-law’ several times, until his sister told him to pack it in.

  ‘What? We all know how it is with friends’ brothers …! Anyway, it’s all water under the bridge now, isn’t it? Done and dusted, wiped clean, swept under the carpet …’

  It was always hard to tell what Rodolphe was playing at. There were two sides to him: refined one minute and coarse the next. Light and shadow alternated on his moon-shaped face.

  To tell the truth, Olivier didn’t care what Rodolphe was up to. The alcohol had numbed him; he was untouchable. Rodolphe was just a bit-part in this scene, like Roland, who was rushing to clear the table. Olivier only had eyes for Jeanne. He discovered her anew with every little gesture: the way she pushed a stray lock of hair from her forehead or rubbed her nose before snapping at her brother, how she rested her chin in the palm of her hand and glanced at him sidelong. Their gazes would meet in a kind of electric arc, a bridge leading from one to the other. At that moment, everything around them became a blur, all of life’s sounds, words and cries dissolved to nothing and the island, their island, emerged once more. Their lashes stopped blinking, their pupils dilated, they feasted on the sight of one another until tears filled their eyes. Several times at nursery school the teacher had panicked and been forced to shake them out of their growing state of catalepsy. ‘Stop that at once! Look at them, their eyes are all red!’

  From that age, long before they were able to put it into words, they had sworn to one another they would never leave the island.

  Olivier didn’t react until the third ring. He had heard the bell the first two times, but failed to connect it with himself. He almost broke his neck taking his first step out of bed. His foot had landed on an empty bottle of Negrita which was now rolling across the parquet floor, alternately revealing and concealing the dazzling grin of the West Indian woman in her headscarf.

  The bell rang again. It was as if it were directly wired to his nervous system.

  ‘Coming!’

  The clothes he had slept in clung to his skin. Madeleine glared at him with her little porcelain eyes, bundled up to her weaselly nose in her frayed black astrakhan coat, her scarf wrapped three times around her vulturous neck, a shapeless brown woolly hat on her head and spindly legs planted in red fur-lined boots that looked like flower pots.

  ‘Is this a bad time?’

  ‘Um … no. What did you …?’

  She stepped back in disgust, catching a whiff of his foul breath.

  ‘Are you ill? You don’t look very well. Oh, don’t you worry, I know exactly how you feel, you poor thing. So anyway, I’ve come about the wreath.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The wreath, the flowers for your poor maman! Would you like me to take care of it? I’m going into town anyway and I thought to myself maybe you wouldn’t be up to …’

  ‘The wreath … Yes, of course, if you want to, Madeleine.’

  ‘Great, leave it to me. I’ve got very good taste, and I’m a dab hand at this sort of thing. If you only knew how many I’ve seen go before me! What do you want written on it?’

  ‘Written on what?’

  ‘On the wreath! “To my dear maman” … “To my mother”? You need to choose something. I’m going to put: “To my neighbour, sadly missed.” It’s simple, but it gets the message across. I’ll pick up a pot plant, even though nothing will survive in this weather. Well then?’

  It was freezing out on the landing. Olivier rubbed his bare feet together and wrapped his arms around himself, hands tucked under his armpits.

  ‘Whatever you think, Madeleine. You know better than I do about these things.’

  ‘OK, well then, I’ll put: “To my mother, from her lovi
ng son”. That’s got quite a nice ring to it, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Very nice, yes. I’m sure you’ll do a great job, Madeleine. Goodbye, thank you.’

  He was about to close the door, but the old woman edged closer.

  ‘It’s just … about paying for it …’

  ‘Oh, yes, sorry. I’ll sign a cheque and you can write in the amount.’

  ‘You can trust me. I’ll give you the receipt!’

  The sound of Madeleine’s voice was like a fork scraping against a dish. He went back inside the flat to look for his jacket. He eventually found it scrunched up in a corner, and took out the cheque book. The old woman had not moved an inch. She was like a statue, the doormat her plinth.

  ‘Do you have a pen?’

  ‘No, I don’t, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Right, OK, well, how about you pay for it and I’ll pay you back later. Sorry, I’m coming down with a rotten cold; I think I might be ill already.’

  ‘OK then. Is there a maximum you want to spend?’

  ‘I don’t know, Madeleine, whatever you think. See you later, thank you.’

  He slammed the door in her face and slumped back against it. He was dripping with sweat. It was streaming down his back, zigzagging across his forehead. His stomach was seized with a sudden need to vomit. He gulped back his saliva and took several deep breaths. ‘Calm down, no need to panic. You just overdid it a bit last night. You’ll get over it, everything’s fine.’ He incanted these magic words over and over and by the time he got back to sprawl on his bed, he felt much better.

  The distorted reflection of his face in the back of a teaspoon. That was the only image he remembered from the end of the dinner party. Rodolphe had kept topping him up as if trying to drown him, which he succeeded in doing. Jeanne had disappeared, leaving the three men to ramble on around the wreckage of the meal. Roland was giggling for no apparent reason while watching Rodolphe film the dregs on plates, in glasses and at the bottom of wine bottles. ‘The dregs of the dregs!’ as he called them. And then there was him, Olivier, leaning on the table gazing at his own reflection in the convex mirror of a teaspoon. Afterwards? Total blackout. He was now kicking himself. How could he have let himself get into that state when he had Jeanne right there in front of him and should have grabbed her by the hand and taken her away, somewhere far from this seedy, sleazy atmosphere. Alcohol. It was down to the alcohol and Rodolphe, who had immediately identified Olivier’s weak spot. He was disgusted with himself. He felt like banging his head against the wall. He had just been reunited with his one true love and the best he could offer her was the pitiful sight of a raving alcoholic. All things considered, maybe it was better this way. The past was history and they had their own lives to go back to. The emotion of seeing her again had gone to his head. So many years had passed, they were not the people they once were. Those versions of themselves were dead and buried.

  Was Jeanne still Jeanne? Why should life, which spares no one, make an exception for her? The same thing happened every time he drank: he found himself spinning the tiniest incident into an epic novel. No doubt it was because his life was made up of a chain of banal events. The fact of the matter was the island had been submerged. He was now cut off from the beautiful story he preserved in a corner of his heart the way grandmothers keep their wedding tiaras in glass domes. Fate had intervened to take away his one pure place of refuge. He should never have come back to this shithole. Dirty, the whole place was dirty and old, even the daylight beginning to filter through the curtains. He had to do something to lift his mood, take a shower, for example. He threw off the covers, leapt out of bed and charged into the bathroom.

  Roland was kneeling on the tiled floor with his feet turned in and his head and arms dangling into the bathtub, from which an appalling stench of sick was rising.

  ‘Shit! What the fuck’s he doing here?’

  Olivier covered his nose with one hand and shook Roland with the other. The moron wasn’t moving.

  ‘Roland! Shit, Roland, wake up!’

  Still nothing. Olivier grabbed Roland under the arms and pulled him backwards. He screamed and dropped him when he saw his face.

  Roland’s skin was tinged purple, an enormous black tongue lolled between his blue lips and his glassy eyes were bulging out of his head. Olivier’s tie was knotted tightly around his neck.

  ‘No, this isn’t happening … it can’t be.’

  Olivier sprang out of the bathroom. He roamed the flat – for how long, he did not know – with his hands clamped over his mouth and his mind blazing, incapable of the slightest coherent thought. He was like a trapped bird flapping wildly around a room.

  He flung the kitchen window open and received a blast of icy morning air. He closed his eyes and waited for his mind to settle. Even though he knew he had not been hallucinating, he went back to the bathroom to check, peering in from the doorway, too afraid to go in. Roland was still there, his nightmarish head wedged between the bidet and the base of the sink, arms and legs splayed swastika-like, just as Olivier had left him.

  ‘What happened? What the hell happened?’

  No matter how hard he racked his brains, his memory stayed blank; he could not even remember how he had got home. Back when he was an alcoholic, he had often experienced blackouts, sometimes wiping out entire days. He had no idea where he had been or what he had done. People would tell him, ‘I saw you in such and such a place last night; you were wasted!’ and he would go along with it without having a clue what they were referring to. It was quite frightening. He had always worried he might do something really stupid while he was out of it. And now … No, he couldn’t have! Besides, what reason could he have had for killing the poor sod? There was none, they had got on perfectly well … But alcohol has its own reasons, which reason doesn’t come into. What should he do, call the police? It was more than he could manage. Whom could he turn to? Odile?

  He went back into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands, staring at the telephone. ‘Hello, Odile. Guess what? When I got out of bed this morning I found a guy lying dead in the bathroom with my tie around his neck. It might have been me who strangled him, I have no idea.’ It was impossible. They were no longer living on the same planet. Jeanne, then. It had to be Jeanne. He could hardly believe the way the past was boomeranging back to him: they would be partners in crime again. The rusty old machine was cranking back to life, squeaking inside his head like the wheel of little Luc’s pram. Not only had he let her down with his shocking behaviour the previous night, now he was contemplating dragging her into a sordid murder. He couldn’t do it to her. But he couldn’t just sit here either. He felt incapable of making the slightest decision. He needed advice, someone to tell him what to do or at least point him in the right direction.

  He got dressed, shaking all over. It took forever to button up his shirt and even longer to find his keys, which he finally located in his jacket pocket. His hand hovered over the buzzer for a long time before he pressed it. It felt like sticking a finger into an electric socket. His heart sank when Rodolphe’s voice came back through the door asking, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Um … Olivier.’

  He heard a bolt being slid back and then the door opened. Rodolphe was wearing a garnet-red Pyrenean-wool dressing gown and tartan carpet slippers. He seemed in buoyant mood.

  ‘Come in, come in, Olivier. Not too much the worse for wear? You hit it hard last night!’

  ‘I’m sorry, I …’

  ‘Ah, don’t be silly, we’ve all been there. Come on in – the coffee’s still warm, it’ll do you good.’

  There was no trace of the previous night’s battleground on the table; it had all been swept away, scrubbed clean, as if nothing had happened. The room was filled with an aroma of fresh coffee and toast that could make you believe in the possibility of contentment.

  ‘Take a seat. I’ll get you a bowl.’

  Unconsciously, Olivier chose the same place he had occupied the night befo
re, as though trying to take the scene from the top and play it differently this time. Rodolphe returned from the kitchen and set a steaming bowl of coffee down in front of him. Olivier took a sip and almost choked when the blind man asked, ‘Is Roland not up yet?’

  ‘I … I don’t know.’

  ‘He didn’t sleep in his room so I guessed he must have crashed at yours. You left together last night – don’t you remember?’

  ‘Um …’

  ‘Well, you did! You started having a go at him at one point. I can’t remember what it was about … Oh, yes! You told him he didn’t know what love was after he’d made some smutty comment about women. You made up a while later and seeing as we’d finished all the wine, you asked everyone back to yours for a nightcap. Personally, I’d had enough, so I didn’t come. I like a drink too, but as soon as I hit a red light, that’s it! Off goes the engine.’

  Olivier’s head was filled with a thick liquid which sloshed from side to side like the contents of a shaken jar. The smell of coffee was making him queasy.

  ‘Something’s wrong, isn’t it, Olivier? I can tell … Oh, I know what it is! He’s gone, hasn’t he? He’s stolen your wallet and done a runner. The little bastard! You can’t trust these people. Only … it’s weird he left his jacket and bag behind. They were on his bed when I went into his room this morning …’

  Without his dark glasses on, Rodolphe’s cross-eyed gaze was directed towards a point just above Olivier’s head. He was slowly running his fingertips over the oilcloth, pleating the edges between his fingers. Olivier was on the verge of going crazy. He leapt to his feet, knocking over his chair.

  ‘No, dammit! It’s not that … Where’s Jeanne?’