Gallic Noir. Pascal Garnier

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СКАЧАТЬ silence. It was like being in a glider. Then he would come to himself a little, and for a moment leave behind all the lives he had had. He would dissolve in the pale incandescence of the sky. He lived the life of a cat, with no memory of the previous day and no awareness of the one to come, unable to make any plan at all. On certain days, he might think of Emma, and then he felt a profound guilt, as if by joining the ranks of those accepting the unacceptable, he had killed her with his own hands. In those moments, he would implore her forgiveness with all his heart, but with each passing day her face grew less distinct, becoming blurred as if she wished to be unrecognised in the very depths of his memory. He tried in vain to conjure up a precise recollection of the texture of her skin, her perfume. It was like trying to sculpt smoke, or running water. There is a life after death – other people’s, of course.

      Some might have been astonished by the state in which he was living – vegetative, to put it mildly – but he had no alternative at his disposal. He was quite aware of how precarious his situation was, but what is there that endures if not our incomprehensible, deep-seated need to try to carry on?

      Blanche and he would have lunch together. She made him little dishes with the aid of a cookery book. They weren’t always a success but then the two of them would laugh about it. After the siesta, which he spent alone, they would go out for a walk, or do some shopping. Blanche had developed a passion for superstores. They would come out with trolleys filled with no matter what. Things in boxes. Back at home they would watch TV, squeezed up in front of the tiny screen of Blanche’s television, or read by the fire. They led a family life. Élie came to dinner regularly, once a week, bringing a rabbit, a cabbage, some nuts – the kinds of things people bring to dinner in the countryside. Time, in its monotony, put scars on the wounds.

      As they approached the spring, they emerged from the path bordered by thick bushes, dispersing a host of little birds which flew up in a flurry of feathers in search of higher perches. Blanche began leaping from rock to rock with the ease of a mountain goat.

      ‘Come and see, Brice. This is the bath from when I was a little girl.’

      He was far from being as sure-footed as she was on the slippery rocks. The memory of his fall was still fresh. He advanced cautiously like elderly people do in winter-time, catching scornful cackles from the bubbling waters every time his foot slipped.

      ‘That’s where Papa used to bathe me, you see. Look how smooth the stone is … A bathtub just the right size for me. The waterfall used to come down on my shoulders and make me laugh!’

      The pool was shaped like a large font. The water flowing down from the overhang grew calmer for a moment as it eddied, before pouring out through a sort of spout to continue on its way, lower and still lower, level after level, gathering strength and speed as it went.

      ‘We used to bathe stark naked, like savages, Papa and I. We’d play catch, and splash each other. Afterwards we’d have a picnic over there, under the tall pine tree. Once it’s warmer the two of us ought to come here for a picnic, don’t you think, Brice?’

      ‘That’s an excellent idea.’

      ‘One day, Papa …’

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘No, nothing. Let’s go home.’

      The bathroom was just like a Soviet submarine. As soon as the hot water tap was turned on, the boiler began to splutter and the pipes to shake, loosening a shower of old ivory paint flakes above the washbasin. The showerhead wept a few either icy or scalding tears, because the mixer had not yet invented warm water. Brice was just extracting a blackhead on the side of his nose in front of the mirror when the sound of voices reached him through the air vent. The bathroom was next to Blanche’s room.

      ‘You’re mad, my poor girl!’

      ‘I’m not your poor girl, Élie! Stop speaking to me as if you were my father! I’m thirty-nine years old, a grown woman!’

      ‘A woman! You’re not capable of managing on your own, you know that perfectly well.’

      ‘Exactly. I don’t want to be on my own any more.’

      ‘But I’m here, Blanche. Think about it. Brice could be your father.’

      ‘That’s what I like about him.’

      ‘You don’t know what you’re saying!’

      ‘We’ve got so much in common: things, TV, Viandox. We wouldn’t change anything. We’d go on living here.’

      ‘Then what would you gain by marrying him?’

      ‘I’d be able to sleep with him, like with Papa.’

      ‘You should forget all that, Blanche.’

      ‘But I can’t! My stomach hurts, and my head, and my heart. And I love him, I really do.’

      ‘What about him? He hasn’t finished grieving yet. He doesn’t know how to love any more.’

      Sobbing ensued, muffled no doubt on Élie’s chest. All Brice could see of himself now was a misty man in the steamed-up mirror over the washbasin, with a toothbrush stuck in his mouth.

      Brice managed to slip out on the pretext of an appointment with his insurer in town. Blanche had white-rabbit eyes, and Élie ice cubes in the back of his throat, when he left them after coffee.

      He lingered in the streets and did a bit of desultory windowshopping, his hands deep in his pockets. He visited the small museum which housed a few of a local artist’s daubings, the remains of some Gallo-Roman pottery, a gallery of fossils, shaped flints and arrowheads, and a plethora of stuffed animals in a piteous state in dusty cases: a grey heron, a beaver, a badger, a ferret, a magpie, a rat, the skulls of a bear, horse and rabbit, some frogs, toads and vipers in jars of formalin. The place smelled of wax and dust. He was the only visitor. The floor creaked. Sitting on a cracked leatherette bench, he meditated for a long time in front of the shell of a Polynesian turtle. Polynesia … islands, trade winds, boredom assured, syphilis guaranteed. Like Gauguin …

      Leaving on tiptoe so as not to wake the attendant asleep on a chair, he made straight for the nearest travel agent’s.

      ‘What’s the furthest away thing you’ve got?’

      ‘Furthest away from what?’

      ‘Here, of course!’

      ‘Australia, Tierra del Fuego …’

      ‘Oh yes, that’s good, Tierra del Fuego. How much is that?’

      ‘Well, we have fifteen-day tours.’

      ‘No, just a one-way ticket.’

      ‘I … Hold on, I’ll get you some information.’

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