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

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СКАЧАТЬ a resemblance to Cruella De Vil, who would soon be making her annual onscreen appearance as the Christmas holidays loomed. She was not troubled by the likeness to a baddie. In fact she felt a certain degree of pride in belonging to the family of reprobates denounced in films and novels. They alone carried the misery of the world on their shoulders, and in her eyes they were a hundred times more worthy of respect than the fresh-faced heroes who moulded God in their own image. She, however, was not cruel. Her pupils judged her strict but fair, and her colleagues courteous but cold.

      She had gone from being slim to skinny, as others went from chubby to fat. And yet she denied herself nothing, had a healthy appetite and was rarely ill – the odd cold, nothing serious. Food just went straight through her. She asked herself how long it had been since she last had sex, but could not answer. Years … Sometimes in dreams. Her belly had always been flat and would remain so, her bony hips sticking out either side. People said men preferred women with a bit of meat on them. That was rubbish; they liked whatever they could get. She didn’t hold it against them, not that she had been with many: three, including a teenager and a woman she spent almost a year with. Fanchon was headmistress of the secondary school in Melun, the man a BNP bank clerk in the same town, and the teenager, the first …

      The hairbrush fell out of her hands. The stale whiff of the past wafted back to her only very rarely. She made do with living in an eternal present, odourless, colourless and tasteless. The hairdryer put her thoughts back in order, a great gust of wind blasting through her head.

      ‘A drowned rat’, that was how the twins used to describe her. They had no more weight on them than she did; lean and tough, like their father – and their mother. Rodolphe was the odd one out. He had gone from being a fat baby to a fat little boy and grew up to become obese. Was it linked to his blindness? That was a mystery to chew over. Like all children, he first started exploring the world with his mouth, and had never stopped. As soon as he was introduced to someone, he would smack his flabby, sugar-coated lips against their cheek like a suction cup, hoovering them into his wide-open mouth. Children were afraid of him. But Rodolphe was not an intrinsically bad person. It was only repeated rejection that had made him that way. Sometimes she wished he would die, for his own good. Unlike her, he could not bear the solitude nature had inflicted on him. But despite the layer of fat strangling it, his heart carried on mercilessly beating.

      Jeanne had just put on a jumper and a pair of black trousers when the doorbell rang.

      ‘Hi, I’m your neighbour, or rather, your neighbour’s son, and I …’

      Olivier shrank back. The black pupils in the eyes of the woman who had just opened the door to him looked like two great lead wrecking balls. An entire wall of his past went crashing to the ground, leaving nothing behind it.

      ‘Have we met?’

      No matter how prepared you are, there are some things you cannot see coming. Jeanne was face to face with Olivier. An Olivier disguised as a respectable gentleman with salt and pepper hair, dressed in a suit and tie, but Olivier all the same. She could not speak or make a sound, but two beads of salt water began welling beneath her eyelids. The man standing before her wobbled as if gripped with vertigo.

      ‘I don’t believe it … Jeanne?’

      ‘Come in.’

      This was not real life in the everyday world where you could come and go as you pleased; Olivier knew what a massive step he was taking. This was not a matter of chance. What it was a matter of, he did not know. He had set foot on a slippery slope and he was sliding, yes, sliding. He had come round to ask his neighbour for the phone book and found himself face to face with his past, with Jeanne, his Jeanne, the Jeanne of his youth, with whom his life had turned upside down, and again he felt knocked off balance. It was scary and wonderful all at once.

      ‘Sit down.’

      Olivier fell back onto a sofa. He couldn’t take anything in. The smell of soap and shampoo wafted from Jeanne, who had hardly changed after all these years. He felt the urge to laugh; the whole thing was so unlikely, it was as if he had dreamed it.

      ‘I … I don’t know what to say.’

      ‘Don’t say anything.’

      There he was, in front of her. He was there. He wasn’t dead. He was crossing and uncrossing his legs. He had wrinkles, white hair, a tic that made the corner of his mouth twitch, but he was there. The past lay ahead of her, opening its closets to reveal the resident skeletons …

      ‘Do you want something to drink?’

      ‘No, thank you. It’s so … What are you doing here?’

      ‘What are you doing here?’

      He could have told her his mother had died and he had come up for the funeral, but he settled for raising his eyebrows as if to say, ‘Beats me.’ There clearly was a reason for his being here, but putting it into words was beyond him. It was the same for Jeanne: the whys and wherefores seemed superfluous, they were there, after …

      ‘How long has it been?’

      ‘A long time.’

      Jeanne had settled into an armchair opposite Olivier and sat facing him, hugging her knees. They stayed looking at one another like two mirrors eternally returning the other’s reflection.

      They had overcome their initial shock. Now they were facing reality. The child was still intact in both of them, dazzling like a pure diamond. Time had stood still and they were holding their breath as if underwater. Olivier felt his heart implode. He closed his eyes and threw his head back, clutching his brow.

      ‘Fuck! … Fuck me!’

      They were not so much words as a sort of rattle.

      ‘I’ll make some coffee.’

      Jeanne was no longer sitting in the armchair but he could hear her moving utensils about in the kitchen. She would soon return to sit in front of him. What would he say to her? ‘So, what do you do these days? … You haven’t changed a bit … Can you believe this cold? … What’s for dinner? … Did you see whatsit’s last film? … Oh yes please, I will have a bit more mash …’ Maybe not, but he was going to have to say something. The room looked like any other lounge: sofa, armchair, table, chairs, rug and lamp. No mirror. It was all a bit dull and unimaginative, clean and functional, just what was needed and no more. Only a print of The Raft of the Medusa on one wall. The curtains were drawn. The room probably didn’t see daylight very often. Jeanne must have inherited the furniture; it wasn’t what you would choose. She returned carrying a tray.

      ‘You live on your own?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Ah …’

      ‘I live with Rodolphe.’

      ‘Your brother?’

      ‘Yes. My mother and the twins died in a car accident. Rodolphe can’t manage on his own. Do you take sugar?’

      ‘No, thanks. My mother has just died, that’s why I’m here.’

      ‘The old lady across the hall?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘That’s funny, I’d noticed her surname on the letter box but I thought it must СКАЧАТЬ