The Confidant. Helene Gremillon

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      ‘Please don’t bother, it’s fine like this.’

      ‘I insist.’

      I wasn’t one to insist so I went back upstairs. She could not be expected to know that I didn’t have a single clean jumper in my wardrobe, that in fact I had nothing at all in my wardrobe, that all my clothes were on the floor and I walked all over them without caring. Just like Papa, I thought to myself, the moment I felt a bit of cloth underfoot: ‘Pick them up, pick them up, please, you always pick up Papa’s clothes, pick up mine, too!’ But Maman did not pick them up. I managed to find one jacket that did not stink of cigarettes – it really was time to quit smoking.

      Madame Merleau waved goodbye to me from the window. As the curtain fluttered closed I thought of how the last survivor of a family never receives any letters of condolence. With all that, I had completely forgotten to tell her that I was moving, but at least we didn’t talk about Maman. Madame Merleau did not seem to be any more at ease in the realm of mourning than I was; so much the better.

      That evening, when I came home, I was surprised not to find any letters in my box: the end of the letters of condolence already. Meagre takings, Maman. When I opened the door to my flat the smell of cleaning seized me by the throat: everything had been put away, the dishes I had not had the strength to wash for several days were now done, my laundry had been washed and ironed, and my sheets had been changed. A blinking light came from the door to the sitting room. Perhaps Maman’s white ghost would smile at me the moment I entered the room.

      The television had been left on, without the sound. Madame Merleau. Hanging in plain view from the wardrobe handle was my jumper, and she had left my letters on the table. A mixture of disappointment and gratitude overwhelmed me, and no doubt tears would have taken over, had my attention not been drawn to a letter that was bigger and thicker than the others. I opened it. Just as I thought. Him again. Louis was continuing his story where he had left off.

      Annie and I attended the same school. Our institution was in a single building, but despite this apparent permissiveness, honour was intact, and the rules governing the division of the sexes were well and truly respected. The girls were on the ground floor, and the boys were upstairs. As a result of this chaste state of affairs, several days could drag by without my catching a glimpse of Annie, during which I was reduced simply to imagining her curling her eyelashes with her studious index finger, or to trying to guess which footsteps were hers when pupils went up to the blackboard, then moments of sudden delight when I recognised her cough.

      I hated those two storeys. I hated them all the more given the fact that the arrangement had not always been like this. In the old days the girls used to be upstairs. My cousin Georges, for example, could still see the girls’ panties as they came down the stairs four at a time – white ones, pink ones, blue ones, he filled his head with them as he gazed through the gaps in the stairway, all the better to admire the rainbow unfurling miraculously before him come rain or shine. But there we are; as is often the case, my generation had been sacrificed because of the idiocy of the previous one. Their lecherous ogling had not gone unobserved by Mademoiselle E., the headmistress, so the boys ended up on the upper floor, and without our shoes, which we had to take off so as not to make any noise. There we were for the girls to spy on in turn and make fun of the holes in our socks as we came down the stairs, shoving each other savagely to be the first out of doors. Because whoever was first out of doors was the winner; of course there was no reward, but at that age, the challenge itself was enough, particularly when the girls were watching. The number of bruises and falls that ensued must have worried Mademoiselle E., but she never went back on her decision, and morality continued to prevail over safety.

      Until the blessed day when this despised arrangement ended up working in my favour. And why not, I too wanted to be the first out the door. It was a completely pointless resolution of mine, which landed me with a fractured shinbone and kept me immobilised for several weeks. But all was not lost and the point was revealed soon enough: the very next evening, Annie came to the door of my room. Given that she joined her mother at the haberdashery almost every evening anyway, Annie had volunteered to bring me my homework. She stood up, braving the sarcasm of the classroom and the idiotic guffaws that would designate her as the very girl I wanted her to be, ‘my sweetheart’. She left me my lessons every day. Never before had I seen so much of her, and there I was, dazed, my leg stiff along with all the rest. I had to keep her there, longer than those few minutes she spent not knowing where to sit, and I not knowing where to look. We had both reached the age when our bodies had become important: hers was on display, and I could fantasise about it.

      I was afraid that she might grow weary of this dull mission, that she might delegate someone else to perform it in her place. So under the pretext of an ordinary homework assignment, I asked my mother to borrow some books about painting from the library, and as I waited impatiently for Annie to make her appearance – fearing all the while that someone else would come – I immersed myself in reading. I hoped that by speaking to her of her passion I might, in turn, become an object of passion myself.

      And that is how women painters became my new porcelain dolls, my new go-betweens in a love story for which I had not yet found the words. I told her about their lives in the most minute detail, and Annie listened attentively, without ever seeming surprised that I knew so much. I had succeeded: our minutes of conversation turned into hours.

      That year, Tina Rossi sang ‘Marinella’, which I chanted alone in my room, as I staggered round on my broken leg. ‘Annieeeella!’ We were not the only ones putting on a show. In Germany, Hitler launched the Volkswagen ‘Beetle’ and violated the military clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. But as he could not be in two places at once, at the Berlin Olympic Games a black American was awarded four gold medals. In Spain, the civil war broke out, and at home in France, the Popular Front won the elections hands down.

      I couldn’t believe it, the correspondent still had it wrong. I had to find this guy and tell him he had the wrong addressee. But I had no way of tracing him, I couldn’t send his letters back to him, there was no return address on the envelope. There wasn’t even a signature; he did mention this ‘Louis’, granted, but ‘Louis’ who?

      And were they even letters? They hardly looked like letters: no ‘Mademoiselle’ or ‘Dear Camille’ to start with. No indication of place or date on the letterhead. And to top it all off, the ‘Louis’ in question didn’t even seem to be addressing anyone in particular.

      I was startled by the sudden ringing of the phone. Who could be calling me in the middle of the night?

      It was Pierre.

      I hardly recognised my brother behind that faint, reedy voice asking me whether I realised we were now orphans? That word swept everything away. He couldn’t sleep. I’d be right over. Could I stop and get him a pack of cigarettes? Of course.

      This was not the time to lecture him. Besides, I felt like smoking, too, and I had thrown out what was to have been my last pack that very morning.

      It is not other people who inflict the worst disappointments, but the shock between reality and the extravagance of our imagination.

      Annie and I always walked together from school to the haberdashery. We never left at the same time, but the distance between us gradually shrank along the way. Whoever was walking in front would slow down, while the one behind picked up speed, until the two of us were walking side by side.

      But years later, when we met again – on 4 October 1943, in Paris – Annie laughed and said I was the one who played both parts: either I caught up with her, or I let her catch up with me, but as far as she was concerned she swore she had never adjusted her speed. I did not seek to deny it; it was true that I wouldn’t have missed those СКАЧАТЬ