The Eskimo Solution Read online

  ‘Well, you know, I didn’t really think about it. I’ve got other things on my mind. She’ll stay over and I’ll send her off the next morning. Anyway, there’s nothing to say she won’t change her mind in the meantime.’

  ‘Yes, knowing her … OK, I’d better go. Love you, take care of yourself. Give me a call tonight.’

  How far away she seems … ever further away. I could have been in England with her now; there would have been no Nat, no Christophe, no Vidals. There’s no place to hide.

  16

  Marion lived in an artist’s studio in the eighteenth arrondissement, in an artists’ commune inhabited by people like her who were not artists. Everything in it was white, including the cat. It was the third time since they’d returned from Greece that Louis had come to see her. He already had his allotted place – the right-hand seat of the white fake-leather sofa opposite the window diffusing a light that was … white. It was four o’clock and they were drinking a deliciously cold rosé champagne. The day was heavy, so the air in the studio was stultifying. The rare breaths of air were like blasts from a hairdryer. There were crowds of people in the street, all still in holiday mode. In the bus on the way, girls pulled their skirts up to their thighs and fanned themselves with magazines. They were like ripe figs. The men, with their leaden complexions, their shirts sticking to them and their ties pulled sideways, sat looking vacant, their mouths open. People seemed to pass for no obvious reason from a state of torpor to feverish agitation, akin to hysteria. When he arrived at Marion’s you could have wrung him out, like a mop.

  They were at that delicious stage in their relationship when they told each other everything without ever giving anything away, as you do when you meet a stranger on the train. You allow yourself to lie by adding an element of truth, or tell the truth with a few lies thrown in, lying having the indisputable superiority of being infinitely adaptable.

  ‘You were a teacher? That must have been terrible!’

  ‘It was! Look …’

  Marion put a pair of spectacles on the end of her nose and stared at Louis severely.

  ‘What did you teach the children? Was it things like “I before E except after C”?’

  ‘Yes and worse!’

  ‘It’s criminal to put things like that in children’s heads.’

  ‘We’re there to make them into adults; we wipe out childhood.’

  ‘I never liked school. I always found it humiliating to be made to learn things I didn’t know.’

  Marion took the spectacles off and poured two more glasses of champagne. She was still very tanned. Even in winter she would look as if she were on holiday. Louis tried to imagine her a few years younger. He preferred her as she was, wearing her wrinkles like family jewels.

  ‘Even in glasses, I can’t see you as a schoolteacher.’

  ‘Yet I was one and I didn’t wear glasses then. Does that disappoint you?’

  ‘Is that why you never had any children?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  They drank in silence. The purring of the cat spiralled up and back down again. Louis stood up. ‘Excuse me.’

  The walls of the loo were covered with exotic postcards of the sea, beaches or coconut palms. Louis took one down. On the back: ‘Dear Marion, this is the view from our hotel. Paris is no more than a bad memory. Thinking of you often, lots of love, Chantal and Bob.’

  In a week, or maybe a month, Marion would tell him about Chantal and Bob. He felt as if he’d known them for ever. Inch by inch Louis was installing himself in Marion’s life and felt comfortable there. He wanted to bask in it like the white cat in the pool of light by the window. They hadn’t yet made love. That would come, probably, but for now it was of no importance. And perhaps it never would be.

  What was more certain was that they would sleep in each other’s arms.

  Louis had been evasive about his past, offering snippets about his childhood, crumbs of his existence, peppered with some fairy tales. When Marion wanted to know more, he lied, he made up a life, to please her. He had spent too much time living with women he had not been able to satisfy while he was with them. Now they were financially secure thanks to him, he could retire with no sense of guilt. Marion had a few years on him; she could teach him how to live as a pensioner. He would have moved straight from childhood to retirement without stopping at adulthood, which he was quite proud of. He and Marion would visit little provincial museums, watch daytime television, go on bateaux mouches, have Chantal and Bob over, cure their little colds, their little injuries with little attentions and gifts. That little life was the height of his ambition. Louis had been born for old age, he had always known that.

  In an hour he would be meeting Alice, probably for the last time. She had just returned from Greece where her parents had been buried. She was the one who had called him, she needed to speak to him. He couldn’t see what she had to say to him, unless it was thank you, but obviously she wouldn’t do that because she didn’t know and would never know that she owed her providential inheritance to him. In any case, no one was overjoyed at the death of their parents, at least not immediately, especially when they had been killed in a hideous, inexplicable crime. He would see Alice one last time and Marion would replace Alice, as Alice had replaced Agnès, because everyone was replaceable, discardable, just like him. Louis buttoned himself up and checked to make sure he hadn’t left any drops around the toilet. Everything was so clean here.

  In the main room, Marion was on all fours playing with the cat.

  ‘I have to go out, Marion, I have a meeting at six o’clock. But before I go, I wanted to ask you if you’ll marry me?’

  ‘Marry you? What on earth for?’

  ‘I don’t know, I think it would be good.’

  ‘It’s very unexpected. Do you love me?’

  ‘I could. I’ll call you tomorrow. Would you like to take a trip on a bateau mouche if the weather’s good?’

  He wanted to say to her, ‘Alice! Alice! Look how happy everyone around you is. They’re coming out of the cinema, or else they’re on their way in. They all have parents, maybe are parents themselves. They’re all mortal, but they don’t know it yet, they’re just happy to be here, to laugh while they can. You feel like an orphan now, but you’re finally going to be yourself, without owing anyone anything. Perhaps that’s what you don’t like?’

  Alice was very beautiful, much more beautiful than the last time he’d seen her by the ponds. She was wearing clothes he didn’t recognise, chic, sober and brand new.

  ‘That suit looks really good on you. Very smart.’

  ‘You think so? I didn’t have anything suitable to wear for the funeral.’

  She blushed, instinctively turning to look at her reflection in the café window, one hand ruffling her hair. A quick smile, and then the mask of grief was back in place.

  ‘So, what are you going to do now you are rich?’

  ‘I don’t know … Buy a flat. You say that as if I’d just won the lottery. My parents are dead, for Christ’s sake! Murdered!’

  ‘I’m sorry, I—’

  ‘No, it’s my fault. It’s just this is all so unbelievable; everything’s happening so quickly! But what about you, what have you been up to recently? I tried to call you dozens of times – you were never there … Aren’t you going to ask me for news of the children?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. How are they?’

  ‘You don’t give a stuff … You don’t care about anything; I don’t know who you are any more. Is there still anything between us?’

  Apart from a table and two empty glasses, Louis couldn’t think of a single thing between them. He had never realised before how similar she was to Agnès.

  ‘Have … have you met someone else? That’s it, there’s someone else. Is there someone else?’

  She was like someone knocking on the door of an empty house. Louis shrugged.

  He thought back to that autumn. He had gone to meet Agnès at her dance class. He had known Alice for si
x months. The class was at the youth club in Colombes. He didn’t normally go there, but this once, because it was his birthday and she had prepared a surprise for him, she had insisted that he was not to arrive at the house before her. Fred was a year old; he was staying with his grandparents. It was already dark, quite cold. Colombes station was like a rusty cage. The street that led to the youth club was a gloomy passageway in spite of the shops and neon lights, a Champs-Élysées for dwarfs. He had had to ask the way several times, having got lost in alleyways with ridiculously puffed-up names. But he had still arrived early and been forced to watch the dire dance efforts of Agnès and her friends on their rubber mats. Seeing him leaning against a wall, she gave what was meant to be an elegant little wave, but was actually excruciating. She looked like a seal climbing out of water. The smell of chalk, hot rubber and feet made him feel nauseous. He had turned away. A badly printed poster announced the dates of various events: a singer from Languedoc, the Myrian Pichon ballet dancers, a table-tennis tournament, a production of Ubu roi and a judo competition. He heard the stamping of feet on the floor and the raucous voice of the teacher, ‘Point your toes, point!’

  In the train on the way back, everything seemed tired and poverty-stricken. Sometimes, as if by chance, Agnès’s mouth sought Louis’s, and, as if by chance, he avoided it. Then they were on the metro, the steps of the building, at the front door where Agnès said, ‘Close your eyes! You can open them when I tell you to.’ He would have liked never to open them because he knew what he would see: the kitchen table in the middle of the room, adorned with their sole tablecloth, three or four wilting carnations in a vase, two candles in front of two plates with serviettes, and, under his, a lighter or a pen. Behind his eyelids, all he could see was Alice, with whom he had spent the day. But he’d had to open his eyes and exclaim in delight, ‘Oh! A lighter!’

  As he stood at the window, glass in hand, listening to Agnès busying herself in the kitchen, he spotted that ageless-seeming woman that everyone called Maria on the other side of the courtyard. She had been struck down with an incurable illness; a port-wine stain covered three-quarters of her face, ending in a pool under her chin. It was monstrous. She was brushing her hair, slowly, with coquettish gestures, arranging a curl here and there, carefree and terribly beautiful.

  When Agnès came out of the kitchen, he couldn’t explain why he was crying. The next morning he left.

  17

  ‘But it’s spoken language, Madame Beck! Kids say, “I dunno, I’m gonna, I ain’t” … In the text, maybe, but not in the dialogue … Fine, look, Madame Beck, take them all out. Just send me my cheque, that’s all I ask … That’s right. Now excuse me but I’ve got a whole heap of corpses to get back to … Of course, Madame Beck. Goodbye, Madame Beck.’

  My editor’s whinging voice has left the telephone all sticky. It was coming through the little holes in the handset like meat from a butcher’s mincer. Very unsavoury. Christophe returned from the beach shrouded in mist while Madame Beck was breaking my balls with her idiot grammar. He looked like a baby who’d just had a bath. He brought back a bottle of Burgundy and a good slab of brawn.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Just the editor saying “na-na-na-na-na”. They’re like nits – harmless but irritating. You all right?’

  ‘Yes. The wind outside’s incredible. Makes you want to fly a kite. Fancy a snack?’

  He opens the bottle and we tuck in to the brawn straight from the paper it’s wrapped in, bearing a picture of a jolly little dancing pig in a hat waving a string of sausages: ‘Charcuterie Bénoult, world-champion tripe and black pudding maker’. Still chewing, Christophe starts taking the shells and pebbles he’s collected for the children from his pockets. He spreads them out on the table and puts them in size order. He tells me that when he was little, he used to love playing with his grandmother’s button collection. There were buttons of every type, made of wood, horn, mother-of-pearl, leather, fabric … He would plunge his hands into the box like a pirate revelling in a chest of gold coins. Then he would put them in order, make families or armies of them. He’d spend hours at it. Do I remember his grandmother? Vaguely, built like a tank with a bun on top?

  Yes! And she put loads of butter on our bread? That’s the one! Christ, yes, she slathered it on thick! Fat’s a symbol of wealth, for common people. For instance, she would always ask the butcher for fatty veal for her blanquette, because it had a better flavour. It’s true there’s nothing like a bit of fat in cold weather, and a glass of Burgundy too. The glasses are drained and refilled. Take the Eskimos, for example, they eat nothing but fat; they couldn’t survive otherwise. Not silly, Eskimos.

  The opportunity is too good to pass up – I seize it with both hands. No, the Eskimos are damn well not silly! After all, aren’t they the ones who’ve found the best possible solution for getting their elderly off their hands? Sit them on a chunk of ice, give it a kick and off they go – bon voyage! Christophe thinks for a moment, holding the glass to his lips. He doesn’t seem to entirely approve of my tale of old people drifting off on an ice floe, probably because of his grandma. He prefers the Native American formula whereby granddad leaves the tribe to go and die with dignity beneath a venerable pine tree at the top of a mountain. I point out that if we were to expect the same thing of ours, we’d probably draw a blank as the fucking doctors have made them practically immortal. He admits I’m right, but even so, back in the days we looked after our elderly, they lived with their children until the end. I go ‘Ha ha ha!’ as if I learnt to laugh from a bad book. Their children! They can’t even put up with each other, let alone with the elderly thrown in! No, I’m telling you the Eskimos have the cleanest answer. Also, this Sioux thing you’re talking about, it’s not a million miles from suicide, and that’s frowned upon in our religions; with my system of not-quite-murder, you’re sending them on a fast train to paradise. Am I right or am I right? Christophe shakes his head, looking doubtful. The wine makes me as pig-headed as a missionary. I won’t drop it: Nane’s mother had a place in hell with her name on it, but you sent her to heaven.

  ‘Well, I obviously didn’t put my back into it, since she fell down to earth again immediately.’

  Christophe drains his glass and smiles.

  ‘Wanna know what Grégoire told me the other day, when I picked him up from school? What do you get when a Chinaman jumps off the Eiffel Tower? … A chink in the pavement!’

  I never get jokes, but I can’t seem to resist this one. It feels so good to laugh for the sake of it, a favour we should do ourselves more often. I make a note: ‘Don’t forget to laugh over silly stuff.’ I empty the last of the bottle into our glasses, two purple tears.

  ‘Hey, if we’re going to want another one, we should go now – the shops will soon be shut until four.’

  ‘It’s going to be one of those days then, is it?’

  ‘It may well be.’

  Outside, the wind carries us to Coccinelle so that we barely need to walk. While we’re paying for our two bottles (one would not have sufficed) at the till of the mini-market, I tell Christophe I am determined not to put up with any more crap in my life. Editors, money, girls, winter, sick to death of all of it! Every day could be summer if we wanted it to be – it’s up to us; we could leave, skedaddle, get the hell out!

  On the way home, holding the bottles under my arms, head down against the icy wind, I describe to him in great detail the pleasures of a game of pétanque under the plane trees: the blue shadows, the speckles of light on skin that smells of salt and sun, bare feet in sandals …

  ‘I don’t like sandals. They dig into your feet and make you look like an idiot.’

  ‘OK, fine, no sandals. But think about it – smoking a nice fat spliff leaning against a cypress tree, the peppery smoke from the weed mingling with the fragrance of thyme and lavender …’

  ‘A nice fat spliff – now you’re talking …’

  ‘I know a guy in Rouen. We could go later, if you like.’
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br />   The house smells of wet dog and toilets. It takes a monumental effort to remain standing.

  ‘Shit! Are we really going to wait until our beards have grown down to our knees before we go and find our place in the sun? You have to ride the wave when you catch it. I know a little place in Greece where you can live for nothing; a bit of bread and cheese, a few figs …’

  ‘Is there no way of turning the heating up? Even my teeth are cold.’

  ‘No, it’s on maximum, but don’t worry, Granddad, let’s make ourselves a nice poor man’s soup with what’s left in the house. Pour us a drink, would you.’

  You have to keep your hands busy, get back in touch with your body, to avoid becoming trapped by the ice. I take a stock pot out of the cupboard and throw in everything I can lay my hands on: carrots, lentils, an old yellowed leek, some Gruyère, a handful of pasta. I have ten arms, ten legs; I spread myself star-shaped across all four corners of the kitchen. I’ve put on the uniform of Captain Ahab; the white whale is right here, in a corner of my head. Meanwhile, in Christophe’s head there’s nothing but weariness, with bars across it and little kids passing through oranges. Now’s the time to be an artist, a real one, a shaman, to move aside and make room for him. There is no better way of getting a man to share his troubles than by talking about one’s own. In this case, all I have to do is think about my first wife while peeling an onion.

  ‘Do you remember Odile? Before we broke up, I heard her chatting to her friends on the phone, talking about us as if she was describing an incurable disease: things are going better … things are much the same … things are getting worse … She knew I was listening – our place was so small … Afterwards she would hang up with a sigh, cracking her knuckles because she knew I couldn’t stand it. I’d tell her, “You’re squeaking like a new shoe” … It went on like that for more than a year. We didn’t think we’d ever get over it. I bumped into her six months ago. She was doing fine, and so was I. People are pretty solid, really, aren’t they?’