by Anna Gavalda
‘Françoise? Your secretary?’
‘Yes.
‘Her husband had just left her … I didn’t recognise her anymore. She was always so exuberant, so imperious, this little woman who was in control of both herself and the universe – I watched her waste away day after day. In tears, losing weight, stumbling about, suffering. She suffered terribly. She took pills, lost more weight, and took the first sick leave of her career. She cried. She even cried in front of me. And what did I do, upright man that I was? I screwed up my courage and … went along with the crowd. What a bastard, I agreed, what a bastard. How could he do that to his wife? How could he be so selfish, to just close the door and wash his hands of the whole thing? Step out of his life like he was going for a walk? Why … why, that was too easy! Too easy!
‘No, really, what a bastard. What a bastard that man was! No, sir, I’m not like you! I’m not leaving my wife, sir. I’m not leaving my wife, and I despise you … Yes, I despise you from the depths of my soul, sir!
‘That’s what I thought. I was only too happy to get out of it so easily. Only too happy to assuage my conscience and stroke my beard. Oh yes, I supported my Françoise, I spoiled her. Oh yes, I often agreed. Oh no, I kept repeating to her, what bad luck you’ve had. What bad luck …
‘In fact, I secretly had to thank him, this Mr. Jarmet whom I didn’t know from Adam. I was secretly grateful to him. He handed me the solution on a silver platter. Thanks to him, thanks to his disgraceful behaviour, I could return to my comfortable little situation with my head held high. Work, Family, and Country, that was me. Head high and walking tall! I prided myself on it, as you can imagine, you know me … I had arrived at the agreeable conclusion that … I wasn’t like other people. I was a notch above them. Not much, but above. I wouldn’t leave my wife, no, not me …’
‘Was that when you broke it off with Mathilde?’
‘What on earth for? No, not in the least. I continued to see her, but I shelved my escape plans and stopped wasting time looking at horrible little studios. Because you see, as I have just brilliantly demonstrated, that’s not the stuff I was made of: I wasn’t about to stir up a hornet’s nest. That was for irresponsible types, all that. For a husband who cheats with his secretary.’
His voice was filled with sarcasm, and he was trembling with rage.
‘No, I didn’t break it off with her, I continued to tenderly screw her, promising things like always and later.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘You mean like in all those trashy stories?’
‘Yes.’
‘You asked her to be patient, and promised her all kinds of things?’
‘Yes.’
‘How did she stand it?’
‘I don’t know, really. I don’t know …’
‘Maybe because she loved you?’
‘Perhaps.’
He drained his glass.
‘Perhaps, yes … Maybe she did …’
‘And you didn’t leave because of Françoise?’
‘Exactly. Because of Jean-Paul Jarmet, to be precise. Well, that’s what I say now, but if it hadn’t been him, I would have found some other excuse. Two-faced people are good at finding excuses. Very good.’
‘It’s incredible …’
‘What is?’
‘This story … To see what it hinges on. It’s incredible.’
‘No, my dear Chloé, it’s not incredible … it’s not incredible at all. It’s life. It’s what life is like for nearly everyone. We hedge, we make arrangements, we keep our cowardice close to us, like a pet. C’est la vie. There are those who are courageous and those who settle, and it’s so much less tiring to settle … Pass me that bottle.’
‘Are you going to get drunk?’
‘No, I’m not going to get drunk. I’ve never been able to. The more I drink, the more lucid I become …’
‘How awful!’
‘As you say, how awful … Can I offer you some?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Would you like that herbal tea now?’
‘No, no. I’m … I don’t know what I am … dumbstruck, maybe.’
‘Dumbstruck by what?’
‘By you, of course! I’ve never heard you speak more than two sentences at once, you never raise your voice, you never make a scene. Not once, since the first time I saw you play the Grand Inquisitor. I never caught you in the act of being tender or sensitive, and now, all of a sudden, you dump all of this on me without even yelling Timber! …’
‘Do you find it shocking?’
‘No, not at all! That’s not it! On the contrary … On the contrary … But … But how have you managed to play that role all this time?’
‘What role?’
‘That one … the role of the old bastard.’
‘But Chloé, I am an old bastard! I’m an old bastard – this is what I’ve been trying to explain to you this whole time!’
‘But no! If you’re aware of it, it’s because you aren’t one after all. The real ones aren’t aware of anything!’
‘Psshhh, don’t believe that one … It’s just another one of my tricks to get out of this honourably. I’m very talented that way …’
He smiled at me.
‘It’s incredible, just incredible.’
‘What?’
‘All of this. Everything you’ve told me.’
‘No, it’s not incredible. On the contrary, it’s all quite banal.
‘Very, very banal … I’m telling you because it’s you, because it’s here, in this room, in this house, because it’s night, and because Adrien has made you suffer. Because his choice makes me feel both hopeless and reassured. Because I don’t like to see you unhappy. I’ve caused too much suffering myself … And because I would rather see you suffer a lot today rather than suffer a little bit for the rest of your life.
‘I see people suffering a little, only a little, not much at all, just enough to ruin their lives completely … Yes, at my age, I see that a great deal … People who are still together because they’re crushed under the weight of that miserable little thing – their ordinary little life. All those compromises, all of those contradictions … All of that to end up …
‘Bravo! Hurray! We’ve managed to bury it all: our friends, our dreams, our loves, and now, now it’s our turn! Bravo, my friends, bravo!’
He applauded.
‘Retirees, they call them. Retired from everything. How I hate them. I hate them, do you hear me? I hate them because I see myself in them. There they are, wallowing in self-satisfaction. We made it, we made it! they seem to say, without ever really having been there for each other. But my God, at what price? What price?! Regrets, remorse, cracks and compromises that don’t heal over, that never heal. Never! Not even in the Hesperides. Not even posing for the photo with the great-grandchildren. Not even when you both answer the game-show question at the exact same moment.’
He said he’d never been drunk before, but …
He stopped talking and gesticulating. We sat like that for a long moment. In silence. Except for the muted fireworks in the chimney.
• • •
‘I didn’t finish telling you about Françoise …’
He had calmed down, and I had to strain my ears to hear him.
‘A few years ago, it was in ’94, I think, she became seriously ill … Very seriously … A goddamn cancer that was eating away at her abdomen. They started by removing one ovary, then the other, then her uterus … I don’t really know much about it, really; she never confided in me, as you can imagine, but it turned out to be much more serious than they had imagined. Françoise was calculating the time she had left. She wanted to make it to Christmas. Easter was too much to hope for.
‘One day, I called her at the hospital and offered to lay her off with a huge severance package so that she could travel around the world when she got out, so she could go shopping at the top designers, pick out the prettiest dresses, and then sashay along
the deck of a huge ocean liner sipping Pimm’s. Françoise adored Pimm’s …
“Save your money, I’ll drink it with the others at your retirement party!”
‘We chatted. We were good actors – we had a lump in our throats but our exchange was upbeat. The latest prognosis was a disaster. I heard it from her daughter. Christmas looked doubtful.
‘ “Don’t believe everything you hear, you’re still not going to get your chance to replace me with some young thing,” she chided me in a whisper before hanging up. I pretended to grumble and found myself in tears in the middle of the afternoon. I found out how much I cared for her as well. How much I needed her. Seventeen years we had worked together. Always, every day. Seventeen years she put up with me, helped me … She knew about Mathilde and never said a word. Not to me, nor to anyone else. She smiled at me when I was unhappy, and shrugged her shoulders when I was disagreeable. She was barely twenty years old when she came to work for me. She didn’t know how to do anything. She was a graduate of a hotel school, and quit a job because a cook had pinched her bottom. She told me this during our first meeting. She didn’t want anyone pinching her bottom, and she didn’t want to go back to live with her parents in the Creuse. She would only go back when she had her own car, so she could be sure that she could leave! I hired her because of that sentence.
‘She, too, was my princess.’
‘I called from time to time to complain about her substitute.
‘And then, a long time afterwards, I went to see her, when she finally let me. It was in the spring. She had changed hospitals. The treatment was less aggressive and her progress had encouraged her doctors, who stopped by to congratulate her on being good-natured and a real fighter. On the phone, she told me she had started to give advice about everything and to everyone. She had ideas for changing the décor, and she had started a quilting circle. She criticised their foul-ups and poor organisation. She asked to meet with someone from social services to clear up a few simple problems. I teased her, and she defended herself: “But it’s common sense! Just good common sense, you see!” She was back in fighting form, and I drove to the clinic with a happy heart.
‘And yet, seeing her again was a shock. She was no longer my princess; in her place was a jaundiced little bird. Her neck, her cheeks, her hands, her arms – everything had disappeared. Her skin was yellowish and somewhat coarse, and her eyes had doubled in size. What shocked me the most was her wig. She had probably put it on in a hurry, and the parting wasn’t quite in the middle. I tried to fill her in on the news from the office, about Caroline’s baby and the contracts under way, but I was obsessed by that wig. I was afraid it was going to slip.
‘At that moment, a man knocked on the door. “Oops!” he said when he saw me before turning around. Françoise called him back. “Pierre, this is Simon, my friend. I don’t believe you two have ever met …” I got up. No, we had never met. I didn’t even know he existed. We were so discreet, Françoise and I … He shook my hand very firmly and there was all the kindness in the world in his eyes. Two little grey eyes, intelligent, alive, and tender. While I sat back down, he went over to Françoise to kiss her, and then do you know what he did?’
‘No.’
‘He took that little broken doll’s face in his hands as if he wanted to kiss her enthusiastically, and he took advantage of that to straighten her wig. She cursed and told him to be careful, I was her boss after all, and he laughed before he went out, on the pretext of wanting to get the paper.
‘And when he had closed the door, Françoise slowly turned towards me. Her eyes were full of tears. She murmured, “Without him, I would have come to the end by now, you know … If I’m putting up a fight, it’s because there is so much I want to do with him. So many things …”’
‘Her smile was frightful. Her jaw was huge, almost indecent. I had the feeling that her teeth were going to come out. That the skin on her cheeks would split. I was overcome with nausea. And the smell … That smell of drugs and death and Guerlain perfume all mixed together. I could barely stand it, and I had to fight to keep from putting my hand over my mouth. I thought I was going to lose it. My vision blurred. It was hardly noticeable, you know, I pretended to pinch my nose and rub my eyes as if I had a speck of dust in them. When I looked up at her again, forcing myself to smile, she asked, “Are you all right?” “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” I answered. I could feel my mouth curving into a sad child’s frown. “I’m fine, it’s fine … It’s just that … I don’t think you look all that well, Françoise …” She closed her eyes and laid her head on her pillow. “Don’t you worry about me. I’m going to beat this … He needs me too much, that one does …”’
*
‘I left completely broken up. I held myself up on the walls. I took forever to remember where I had parked my car, and I got lost in the damn parking garage. What was happening to me? My God, what was happening to me? Was it seeing her like that? Was it the smell of disinfected death, or just the place itself? That pall of misery, of suffering. And my little Françoise with her ravaged arms, my angel lost in the midst of all those zombies. Lost in her minuscule bed. What had they done to my princess? Why had they mistreated her like that?
‘It took forever to find my car and forever to get it started, then it took me several minutes to put it in first gear. And you know what? Do you know why I was reeling like that? It wasn’t because of her, or her catheters, or her suffering. Of course it wasn’t. It was …’
He lifted his head.
‘It was despair. Yes, the boomerang had come back to hit me in the face …’
Silence.
• • •
I finally said:
‘Pierre?’
‘Yes?’
‘You’re going to think I’m kidding, but I think I’ll have herbal tea now …’
He got up, complaining in order to hide his gratitude.
‘Oh, you women never know what you want; you can be so annoying …’
I followed him into the kitchen and sat down on the other side of the table, while he put a pan of water on the burner. The light from the suspension lamp was harsh. I pulled it down as far as it would go while he rummaged through all the cupboards.
‘CAN I ASK you a question?’
‘If you can tell me where to find what I’m looking for.’
‘Right there, in front of you, in that red box.’
‘That one? We never used to put it there, it seems to me that – Oh sorry, I’m listening.’
‘How many years were you together?’
‘With Mathilde?’
‘Yes.’
‘Between Hong Kong and our final discussion, five years and seven months.’
‘And did you spend a lot of time together?’
‘No, I already told you. A few hours, a few days …’
‘And was that enough?’
He said nothing.
‘Was it enough for you?’
‘No, of course not. Well, yes really, since I never did anything to change the situation. It’s what I told myself afterward. Maybe it suited me. “Suited” – what an ugly word that is. Perhaps it suited me to have a reassuring wife on one side and a thrill on the other. Dinner on the table every night and the feeling that I could sneak off from time to time … A full stomach and all the comforts of home. It was practical, and comfortable.’
‘You called her when you needed her?’
‘Yes, that was more or less the case …’
He set a mug down in front of me.
‘Well, no, actually … It didn’t happen exactly like that … One day, right at the beginning, she wrote me a letter. The only one she ever sent, by the way. It read:
‘I’ve thought about it, I don’t have any illusions, I love you but I don’t trust you. Because what we are living is not real, it’s a game. And because it’s a game, we have to have rules. I don’t want to see you in Paris. Not in Paris or in any other place that makes you afraid. When I’m with you, I want to hol
d your hand in the street and kiss you in restaurants, otherwise I’m not interested. I’m too old to play cat and mouse. Therefore, we will see each other as far away as possible, in other countries. When you know where you will be, you will write to me at this address, it’s my sister’s in London, she’ll know where to forward it. Don’t take the trouble to write a love letter, just the details. Tell me which hotel you’re in and when and where. If I can join you, I’ll come, otherwise too bad. Don’t try to call me, or to find out where I am or how I’m living, this is no longer the issue. I’ve thought it over, I think it’s the best solution: to do the same as you, live my own life, and be fond of you from a distance. I don’t want to wait for your phone calls, I don’t want to keep myself from falling in love, I want to be able to sleep with whom I want, when I want, and with no scruples. Because you’re right, a life without scruples is more … convenient. That’s not the way I see things, but why not? I’ll give it a try. What do I have to lose, after all? A cowardly man? And what do I stand to gain? The pleasure of sleeping in your arms sometimes … I’ve thought about it, I want to give it a try. Take it or leave it …’
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing. It’s amusing to see that you had found an opponent equal to you.’
‘No, unfortunately I hadn’t. She went through the motions and acted like a femme fatale, but she was really soft-hearted. I didn’t know it when I accepted her proposal, I only found out much later. Five years and seven months later …
‘Actually, that’s a lie. I read between the lines, I guessed what those sorts of phrases must have cost her. But I wasn’t going to dwell on it, because these rules suited me fine. They suited me down to the ground. All I had to do was step up the import-export department and get used to take-offs, and that was that. A letter like that is a godsend for men who want to cheat on their wives without complications. Of course, I was bothered by all that talk about sleeping around and falling in love, but we weren’t at that point yet …’
