The Execution. Hugo Wilcken

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СКАЧАТЬ yet and I was still hungry: it was getting on though, and I wondered whether restaurant kitchens would still be open. Then I had another idea. Charlotte lived just around the corner.

      I found the art deco block Charlotte’s flat is in and pressed her button on the intercom: the door buzzed open before I had time to say who I was. I could see her peering down at me as I climbed the stairs, sizing me up like a club bouncer: ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ She’d messily pulled a jumper over her underwear and a television blared in the background.

      Charlotte let me in then disappeared into the bedroom. I poured some wine and helped myself to the cold pasta salad on the dinner table. As I ate, my mind drifted back to the meeting I’d had with the people from Renouveau National. I remembered one of the men smiling at me and saying: ‘Well you know, politics in our country is a dangerous business.’ I’d replied: ‘But what’s at issue is not the death of one man … not one man, do you see?’ It was only now that I realised I’d unconsciously used Christian’s words, from the day his wife had died.

      Charlotte was talking to someone on the phone in the bedroom but I could only catch snippets of what she was saying: ‘… no, really, I’m tired tonight … I wouldn’t be any fun … yeah I’ll see you tomorrow night … you too.’ She threw open the bedroom door. She’d put on some make-up and a pretty pink shirt with a flower pattern: ‘It’s good to see you and everything but don’t ever just turn up here again unannounced. OK?’

      We had some wine and a late supper and chatted idly. After a while we started kissing across the table, then we lay down on the sofa and continued talking, laughing, kissing, joking around. At the same time I was kind of playing with the buttons of her shirt, undoing them slowly, waiting for the conversation to dissolve.

      We’d been talking about our jobs and at one point Charlotte said: ‘What’s your real ambition in life? What’s the one thing you want to do before you die?’

      ‘I’m aiming for immortality.’

      ‘No seriously, what’s your ambition? What do you want to do with your life?’

      I stopped messing about for a moment and sat up. ‘I don’t know … an international posting … the UN, maybe Paris, maybe UNESCO … I want to move on, move up, pretty soon.’

      ‘So does everyone. What I mean is, isn’t there something that engrosses you, something you must achieve?’

      ‘I don’t have that kind of ambition.’ I thought again. ‘There are things … there’s the campaign I told you about …’

      ‘You mean the guy they’re going to execute?’

      ‘Yeah.’

      ‘So it’s your job after all. That’s your real interest, your job.’

      ‘No. I couldn’t give a damn about my job.’

      We were silent for a moment. Somehow the atmosphere had changed.

      Eventually I said: ‘I had this strange encounter just now,’ and then I found myself telling Charlotte about meeting up with Christian.

      When I finished, Charlotte lit a cigarette and said: ‘Let me get this straight. A friend rings you up. He wants to talk to you about his wife’s death, presumably he wants a bit of emotional support. So you end up dumping him in a hotel round the corner?’

      ‘He’s not a friend. He’s just a colleague.’

      ‘So what? He’s a human being, isn’t he?’

      ‘I didn’t want the sordid details. I didn’t want to know about his wife screwing some other guy.’

      ‘Why not? Too close to home?’

      I didn’t say anything for a while. Charlotte stared at me defiantly.

      I said: ‘Why are you seeing me? What’s in it for you?’

      ‘Why am I fucking you, you mean?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Does it matter? I like the way you look. I like your face. I like your body.’

      ‘That’s all there is to it? I’m some kind of sex object?’

      ‘Why not?’

      She looked at me with amusement as she did up the buttons I’d undone on her shirt. I got up off the couch.

      ‘I’ve got to go. Thanks for dinner. Shall I give you a call sometime during the week?’

      ‘Why not?’

      I kissed her on the forehead and she said: ‘Give my regards to Marianne.’ I could hear her switching the TV back on as I walked down the stairs to the main entrance.

      I got a cab home. It was Monday night and apart from a few other cabs there was hardly any traffic on the streets. London looked shabby and beautiful in its enormous emptiness, like a vast illuminated scrubland. I thought about Charlotte then I thought about Christian and his dead hedgehog. A childhood memory returned to me of a summer in the country. My cousin Peter had constructed a crossbow and we’d gone to the nearby woods and killed a rabbit – I can still recall its jerky, struggling death. I hadn’t thought about my childhood for a long time. I had the sensation it was something that had in fact happened to someone else, and not to me at all.

      The bedroom door was shut but the light was still on. I didn’t go in immediately, though. Instead I went to the little room we use as an office, on the other side of the house. We’ve got a filing cabinet in there, for documents to do with the house, tax returns, birth certificates, that kind of stuff. There are also files full of Marianne’s personal stuff, although I’d never looked at them before. That’s what I wanted to look at now. Seeing Christian had given me stupid ideas.

      Everything was arranged tidily: a file for old letters, a file for exhibition programmes, a file for this, a file for that. There were essays she’d written as a student in that typically rounded French handwriting. There were notebooks too, clearly labelled 1998, 1999, 2000, etc. They looked like diaries. I’d never known she’d kept a diary, never seen one about the house. I flicked through the one for last year. Some of the entries were in French, some in English, some a mix of the two. I read a few at random. Mostly they were about her work: ‘Big canvas. Thought I might move on to love but no it seems I’m stuck with this fear.’ There were notes about Jessica’s development: ‘Her linguistic skills different in French and English. English vocabulary wider but grasp of grammatical structure not as good as in French.’ I skimmed through to find any mention of me but in vain. I noticed that she’d marked every third or fourth entry with an asterisk. I wondered what that meant.

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