Gallic Noir. Pascal Garnier

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СКАЧАТЬ took him some time to clear up the rubble, and then he didn’t know how to dispose of it. He filled ten bin bags and dotted them around the place like Easter eggs. Then he tried out the hole by going several times from kitchen to dining room and vice versa. It worked perfectly in both directions. Already he felt less guilty. With a little bit of tidying up, it would be a very decent hole. The church clock struck four. Brice had a shower and ripped open a box marked ‘Clothes’ in order to extract something halfway suitable in which to visit Blanche Montéléger.

      Never could Brice have imagined that the walking stick he had borrowed from the pharmacist would afford him so many pleasures. It was a perfectly ordinary one, however, with an ergonomic handle at one end and a rubber tip at the other. It helped him in his limping gait, of course, but in addition to this primary function it lent him the solemn elegance of a monarch who, by pointing the stick this way or that, kept the world at arm’s length. It protected him from being too close to other people. He felt important. With a simple twirl of his stick he consigned this cruel, pathetic world to its humble fate, a billiard ball ricocheting around at the mercy of the void. Even as a child he had been fascinated by prosthetics. He would have liked to wear glasses or false teeth but unfortunately neither his eyes nor his gums had need of them. To make up for such tragic good health he had improvised glass-less frames and stuck chewing gum over his teeth. As he neared thirty he really had needed glasses, and the dissolute life he led, consuming all sorts of illegal substances, got the better of his molars, canines and incisors. They had been replaced by metal, porcelain and resin. His wishes had been granted. Today, just as one is promoted to a higher rank, he had reached the age of the stick, the one before the apogee, the wheelchair. He aspired to this as might a candidate for a seat in the Académie française, a symbol of eternal rest and, heck, glory.

      Even as he asked himself what his motive was for visiting Blanche Montéléger (curiosity? Nothing else to do?), he was amusing himself by trailing the end of his stick along the gates of people’s houses in order to enrage the Alsatians, which would press their noses to the bars, causing a sort of riot as he went by. He loathed dogs, all dogs, for the good reason that they were man’s best friend. In their dark cavernous mouths, foaming, and bristling with yellow fangs, and their eyes, which bulged from the pull of their chains, there was everything he hated in their masters.

      The Montéléger house stood out dark against the sky like a regret. According to the pharmacist, it was the oldest in the village, the one from which all the rest had grown, developing like secondary tumours. It was completely surrounded by a wall built of Rhone pebbles in a chevron design. No light was coming from it. Beside a heavy grey wooden gate there was a battered letter box, above which there hung a sort of lavatory chain which gave a shrill sound when he pulled it. Once, twice, three times. He was about to turn on his heel when he heard footsteps on the other side of the oak panel.

      The gate opened reluctantly, groaning for all it was worth, and Blanche appeared, wrapped in a blanket of indeterminate shade, throwing fearful glances over her shoulder.

      ‘Are you alone?’

      ‘Why … yes.’

      ‘Come in, quickly.’

      She didn’t so much walk as hop like a little mouse across the paved courtyard where a wreck of an ancient Citroën was rusting away. Brice had difficulty keeping up. As he moved forward, the front of the house seemed to lean over him, ready to crush him with the full weight of its shadow. A flight of steps took him to a door which Blanche asked him to come through swiftly. It was even darker and colder inside than out.

      ‘I’m not putting the lights on because of the neighbours. People would talk. Give me your coat. Follow me.’

      She was whispering so quietly he could barely hear her, and yet the slightest squeak of his shoe echoed round the vast hall like a gunshot. He followed her up a stone staircase and found himself in a huge room lit by one miserable bedside lamp on a stool, beside an armchair with a book left lying on it. A portable heater struggled valiantly to warm the atmosphere in front of an immense fireplace as cold as the mouth of a corpse. Contrary to what the splendid moulded ceiling might suggest, the room had the bare minimum of furnishings: a table, four chairs and a nondescript sideboard. No ornaments, no carpet, no paintings, not so much as a humble postcard pinned to the wall. Not a hint of imagination, not an ounce of femininity. Heavy curtains veiled the windows. The idiot of a blacksmith living in the church tower struck his anvil five times.

      ‘You’re on time. That’s good.’

      ‘It’s difficult not to be, here. I admit I’m finding it hard to get used to that bell.’

      ‘The church no longer has a priest; we need at least a bell to replace him. Do sit down.’

      The tea was lukewarm and bitter, served in Duralex glasses, and the muffins that went with it were frankly disgusting.

      ‘Do you like them? I baked them myself.’

      ‘They’re delicious.’

      Blanche never stopped nervously intertwining her fingers. On close inspection she could be no more than thirty-five to forty. It was the way she expressed herself, choosing her words carefully, and the hesitation accompanying her every gesture which made her seem much older or much younger.

      ‘A little more tea?’

      ‘Please.’

      Blanche seized objects as if they might escape her, and gripped them so tightly that her fingers turned white.

      ‘How time passes. Do you think I’ve aged?’

      ‘Er, I don’t know.’

      ‘I’ve aged, I know that. You, on the other hand, seem to have grown younger.’

      ‘Listen, I think you’re mistaken. You must be confusing me with someone else. I’ve only lived here for a month and I’d never been here before.’

      ‘Ah. As you wish. Deep down, what does it matter? I know you, though. I have a very, very good memory. I remember everything!’

      Brice didn’t insist. Blanche seemed so certain that it made him doubt, and he told himself that, after all, the diaphanous little face was not entirely foreign. In the half-light of the room, it appeared to give off a glow like a night-light, the sort you place by the bedside of children afraid of the dark. Was it the lack of a familiar presence, something he suffered from more each day, which suggested this comparison to him? At all events, despite the strangeness of the place and situation, the pale aura emanating from her calmed him. She spoke softly, nibbling away at the silence. It was like the echo of his own solitude.

      ‘When your foot recovers, the two of us will go for walks together.’

      ‘I’d love that; I adore little country byways.’

      ‘No. Along the main road. That’s where you find things.’

      ‘What sort of things?’

      ‘Things. I’ll show you.’

      She disappeared momentarily into a pool of shadow at the back of the room and emerged carrying a heavy box.

      ‘Look!’

      With infinite care she took a pile of rubbish out of the box: assorted soft-drink cans, used tissues, cigarette packets, plastic bottles, tops, old rags, all squashed flat as if they’d been through a rolling mill.

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