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

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      What he meant was that it wasn’t proper, that it would attract vermin, that sort of thing. He was clearly uncomfortable with the situation, but what else could he do?

      ‘Help me carry all this into the sacristy.’

      ‘Can’t, M’sieur, can’t move.’

      The priest muttered something that sounded awfully like a profanity, put down his packages and opened the door.

      ‘Come, my child. Come in.’

      Roland slowly followed him inside. The warmth melted him. It was green and smelt of incense and old cardboard, like Aunt Margot’s house in Rouen.

      ‘Sit yourself down. I’ll make you a coffee.’

      Why the obsession with giving coffee to the poor, the drowned, the suicides …

      The priest asked him if he was Christian, if he had read the Bible, in short, if his papers were in order. Roland said yes to everything, nodding his head like an ass for convenience. All he wanted was to lie down and go to sleep – for ever, if possible.

      ‘Right, OK, well, you can stay the night, but that’s all. Theoretically …’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Tomorrow I’ll give you some addresses, some names of people who can help you.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘You’re lucky I came by with my … Can I trust you?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Good. Well, good night then.’

      ‘Yes.’

      There is such a thing as a full ‘yes’, like full nudity. The night was full too, dreamless, heavy, leaden, like nights of old.

      Someone entered the church. The sound of footsteps preceded by a tap-tap. Someone with a stick.

       The Islanders

      That old fossil Madeleine was right. The burial could not take place before the 27th; the undertaker had just told him so. The dead just kept coming and the ground was rock-hard.

      ‘What if we had her cremated?’

      ‘Monsieur! We must respect the deceased’s last wishes. Your mother had planned for everything.’

      ‘Except dying at Christmas. So there’s nothing we can do?’

      ‘I’m afraid not.’

      However careful the undertaker was to disguise his true feelings, Olivier was sure that he too took him for an ungrateful child. He followed the man to the coffin in which his mother lay, as woefully small and insignificant in death as she had been in life, clothed in a violet dress and plastered in ridiculous make-up with a fixed smile, a fungal tangle of white hair on her scalp and bony hands crossed over her belly as though trying to abort herself.

      He went straight from the undertaker’s to the train station to check the timetable. He was prepared to leave and come back again two days later, anything to avoid hanging around in this shithole. There was an unusual amount of kerfuffle, people gesticulating at ticket counters or spinning disoriented on the spot like mechanical toys. He was told there were no trains running on any of the main lines because of the icy conditions, and he had no chance of catching a plane either.

      ‘So I have to wait until it thaws?’

      ‘That’s right.’

      For a brief moment he felt like hanging himself. The whole thing was so absurd, trapped in the ice fields of Versailles! He didn’t know where to start: phone Odile to pass on all this good news? Make an appointment with the lawyer? With Emmaus?

      What was the point? He was sure whatever he did would end in disaster.

      On Rue Carnot a bulb had blown on one of the stars in the Christmas lights, making it appear to be squinting. People emerged from shops transformed into porters carrying trees, bags, enormous boxes tied with string, gift-wrapped parcels with ribbon around them which would be clogging up dustbins within days, the contents tumbling noisily down the rubbish chute. Freshly trussed turkeys, bloodstained boar’s legs, fat geese, pyramids of snails and monstrous turds of white pudding came spewing out of butchers and charcuteries – the sight of it was enough to give you indigestion. People bought any old rubbish at any old price, committing a kind of budgetary suicide with the most tenuous of links to the birth of the baby Jesus. There was a general desire to end it all, drowning in bad champagne and foie gras from Monoprix.

      Olivier let himself be jostled this way and that, feeling dazed and detached from his body. During the festive season, Versailles sparkled with inevitability. On Avenue de Saint-Cloud the crowd began to thin out. Unconsciously, his feet were leading him towards Lycée Hoche where he had gone to school between the ages of eleven and fourteen. As he got closer, he tried to recall the names of his teachers and classmates. Some of them came back to him: Monsieur Mauduit, Madame Le Breton, Vidal, Joly, Langlois … He saw himself too, satchel bulging with heavy textbooks, exercise books and gym kit, waiting for bus B … His mind was warming up but he felt as if he was delving into someone else’s memories.

      His first death had come the year he turned fourteen and he had not stopped dying and being reborn ever since. Amazing – only in Versailles could you see the words ‘Long Live the King!’ graffitied on the school walls. The front gates were locked but he could see through them to the dome of the chapel across the main courtyard, where pupils and teachers gathered to lift the flag every 11 November. The cassowary feathers of the Saint-Cyrien cadets hung limply in the inevitable rain. He was sorry not to feel anything at all. Funny the lengths the brain goes to in order to protect the body.

      He began walking back into town by way of Rue de la Paroisse and stopped to warm up in a café on Place du Marché. Since giving up drink, he never knew what to order. He didn’t feel like a coffee, and couldn’t make up his mind between a Viandox and a tomato juice. With a dash of Tabasco, tomato juice was the beverage that most resembled alcohol. For the first time in ages, he really fancied a drink. He put too much Tabasco in and made himself choke. All around him, people were talking too loudly, laughing annoyingly. Since his teens, he had never loved anyone. Since then, he had never been anything but a pleasant yet indifferent passenger through life. Odile didn’t ask for more, which explained why they got on so well. In conversation, he played his cards close to his chest. People either took him for a snob or a harmless idiot, or both. It was all the same to him.

      Was it the incongruity of the situation, or had he spent too long outside Lycée Hoche? He felt ill at ease, on edge, as if haunted by something he could not control. He struggled to get a grip on himself. The transition from the arctic conditions outside to the warmth of the café had been abrupt … Was he coming down with a fever? That was all he needed. He gritted his teeth, mentally shook himself and left the café.

      Jeanne had spent all day lying around in her dressing gown and slippers with a cigarette hanging from her mouth, grazing on fruit, keeping one eye on the TV and the other on a trashy detective novel. She loved duvet days. Rodolphe had left early that morning and not been back since. СКАЧАТЬ