The A26: Shocking, hilarious and poignant noir. Pascal Garnier

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СКАЧАТЬ like the one on a pirate flag or the labels of particular bottles at the pharmacy, with two crossbones behind. So what if it was ugly here, it was still the richest landscape on earth. You could make a life here. It was all there ahead of him, rails leading to more rails, on and on to infinity. François was right, he would take some leave. Actually, he would leave. Like old Fernand the year before. But he’d been retiring. He was old. He had gone off with a fishing rod under his arm, a cuckoo clock and a return ticket to Arcachon, first class. Bernard would never go to Arcachon. To tell the truth, he didn’t give two hoots about Arcachon, there were so many places in the world where one would never set foot. What was there over there, anyway? A dune, a big Dune of Pilat which looked just like the desert, they said. It was people who’d never been there who said that. Everything looked like everything else, people couldn’t help comparing the things they knew to the things they didn’t know, so they could say they did know, that they’d been round the world without leaving their own fireside. Six of one and half a dozen of the other, no cause for regrets. No gifts for sick employees, they’d prefer them just to clear off, preferably without a trace. Illness really annoyed them, it was bad for business, and they took a dim view of it. It lowered the troops’ morale.

      ‘Oh my poor Bonnet, and with your poor sister too! How much time off do you want?’

      Taking his cap between thumb and forefinger, Bernard sent it flying somewhere over the containers, like a Frisbee. He had another one in the locker room. No harm done. The wind caressed his baldness. In the early days, when Yolande’s hair had begun to grow back he’d loved running his hand over her head. All the little hairs standing upright had given him a feeling like electricity in his palm. Her hair had grown back pure white. Yet she was only twenty. The shock of it, no doubt. Before that it was blonde, red blonde, Titian she used to call it.

      ‘WITH SEVEN CENTIMETRES OF HAIR’

      ‘I have already told you how hard-working the Germans are. They make clothes and chocolate out of wood, and make lots of things from all sorts of materials which have not been used until now. They have now discovered it is possible to make felt hats out of the hair cut off by the hairdresser. It is likewise possible to make rugs from these hair clippings. Since hair has to be a certain length for this, however, people are forbidden to cut hair before it has reached this length. If the hairdressers are diligent and collect up the hair carefully, in one year almost 300,000 kilos of hair will be obtained. That sounds like a lot of hats and quite a few rugs.’

      There it was in black and white, in the bound volume of La Semaine de Suzette, under the heading ‘Suzette across the world’, an old collection from 1932, worn shiny, stained and yellowing, like everything from that era. Despite knowing it by heart, Yolande loved to spend hours leafing through it. She had done all the crosswords, every rebus and sewn the entire wardrobe for Bleuette (a 29-centimetre doll, real curled hair, eyes that shut, and unbreakable posable head). She loved the smell it gave off when the pages were opened, a musty smell of old biscuits. The Germans would be back. She wasn’t especially waiting for them but she knew they’d be back.

      It was the drop of water falling on her newly shaven head which had hurt her the most, a deafening sound like the stroke of a gong which had stayed in her head ever since. As for everything else, she had let them get on with it, like a sheep, there was nothing else to be done with idiots. For as long as they kept her in the café, amidst their yelling, she had been outside her body. She was a past master at switching off, what with her lunatic of a father who would bawl her out for the slightest thing. She’d had enough time to practise. But on leaving the Café de la Gare, after they’d let her go, a large drop, plop! filled with all the absurdities of the past four years. You’d have thought that ever since they’d dragged her out of her house, the sky had been holding itself back so as to descend on her with all its might in that drop.

      Yolande didn’t even remember the Boche’s name. To tell the truth, it wasn’t so much for what she’d done with him that they’d shaved her head, more for what she’d refused to do with some of her ‘barbers’.

      What did it matter anyway? She had never liked them, they had never liked her. It had let her get shot of all those bastards for good and all. Besides, they must all be dead by now. But what had he been playing at in the lav for the past hour?

      ‘Bernard, what are you doing in there?’

      ‘Trying to unblock the toilet. How many times have I told you not to use newspaper!’

      ‘I didn’t have anything else. You forgot to get toilet paper when you were at Auchan.’

      ‘There’s tissues.’

      ‘They’re no use to me, there’s nothing to read on them.’

      The sound of the flush drowned out Bernard’s reply. He emerged from the toilet, wiping his hands. He was wearing a white shirt, the collar gaping wide round his thin neck.

      ‘What are you dressed up like that for? Are you going to a wedding?’

      ‘No, it’s Jacqueline’s nephew’s First Communion. I told you that last night.’

      ‘You didn’t tell me a thing. You’re always up to something behind my back.’

      ‘For one thing, I did tell you, and for another, I’m not up to anything. I’m going to the Communion, and that’s all.’

      ‘So basically you’re going to get yourself filled full of liquor by that cuckold she calls a husband.’

      ‘Yoyo, that’s enough. I won’t be staying long. I’m done in but I’ve got no choice. I won’t be late back. The toilet’s unblocked and I’m begging you, please don’t put any more newspaper in there.’

      Yolande shrugged and buried herself in La Semaine de Suzette again. Bernard rolled down his sleeves, slipped on his jacket and planted a kiss on his sister’s neck.

      ‘Come on now, don’t sulk – I’ve got a present for you.’

      The pendant on its gilt chain was dangling over the book like a pendulum. Catlike, Yolande caught at it.

      ‘What does that mean, “More than yesterday and much less than tomorrow”? Is it about the blocked toilet?’

      ‘No, it means I love you more than yesterday and much less than tomorrow.’

      ‘You’re going to love me less tomorrow?’

      ‘No, it’s the other way round.’

      ‘It’s beyond me. Can you put it on for me?’

      Bernard’s fingers had a little difficulty in doing up the clasp. Strange, the skin on Yolande’s neck wasn’t an old lady’s but a baby’s, all soft, warm little folds.

      ‘You’re very beautiful.’

      Yolande put the pendant into her mouth.

      ‘I used to have one with the Virgin Mary, a blue one, it tasted of electric wire. At school when you went for an X-ray, you had to put it in your mouth so you wouldn’t see right through to the Virgin’s bones. This one doesn’t taste of anything.’

      ‘See you later, Yolande.’

      The countryside, accustomed to low skies and drizzle, looked ill at ease done up in its Sunday best in the sunlight. The bricks were too red, the sky too blue, the grass too green. It was as if Nature felt embarrassed СКАЧАТЬ