The Cracks in Our Armor

by Anna Gavalda

  Because her lips were turning black, too, I figured it wasn’t dirt she had under her nails but ink. India ink, probably. Yes, India ink. She had a huge spiral notebook on her lap as a tray, and a disgusting pouch was gaping open by the window. In the middle of so much disharmony, this made sense. This girl, at least, had found a suitable guru.

  Right.

  Time for that piss.

  I disturbed all my fellow travelers and went to relieve myself.

  As I emerged from my ablutions, hands and trousers equally damp (the place is so cramped and poorly maintained) wouldn’t you know I went and slammed the door right into my explosive bombshell’s hip.

  Classy Joe is back.

  I apologized, she ignored me and headed straight toward the lounge car.

  I followed.

  3

  She may have been reading trash but she was really luscious, so I pulled out all the stops.

  And all the stops with a nice boy like me who’s been brought up by a feminine mom and a feminist dad, who knows how to recognize a Dior perfume, his faults, and an accent from Nice, and who was on his way home after three days by the seaside, believe me when I tell you it means pulling the pin on the explosive device in no time flat.

  Well, no time, maybe not quite. Let’s be honest. I had to pay a lot, from my own pocket (and anyone who knows the price of a drink on board the TGV will sympathize), and my person (more sympathy, please). Yes, more sympathy, because it was a real war dance. Here I go, I will flatter you and talk to you about your crap book and listen to your confessions about the suffering of your inner child whom you have to console if you want to stop being the ideal prey for manipulators and enpies—

  “Enpies?”

  “Narcissistic perverts.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  . . . and your inner kiddiwink always goes for the most expensive cookies, and I don’t dare get out my restaurant coupons, not to look like a dork, and I will pay you compliments, and make you laugh and giggle, and jerk your tears as well (yes, my mom died at Christmas and I went home so I could go and pray at her grave . . . yes, it’s sad . . . yes, I put lilies . . . she loved them . . . yes, they wither all too quickly but it’s the thought that counts . . . and yes, you are really so stupid but so good, and yes, I am really very stupid but so so good), and I will touch your arm, and tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, and I will seem as if I’m really under your spell, and look I’m even stammering from the emotion, do you realize? But . . . But who’s manipulating who here? Hang on a minute, I’m completely entranced . . . Say, will you lend me your book, to help me learn to cope? Go on . . . Go on. If we get married someday, you’ll put it in your trousseau, okay? You’re so lovely. What’s your name? Justine? Like in the Marquis de Sade? No. Nothing. You are beautiful, Justine. Are you coming? Shall we go? No, not to my place, not just yet, to our seats.

  And why aren’t you coming?

  Oh? You have a call to make? To whom? The bridal shop? Ah, no, your boyfriend.

  Oh?

  Your boyfriend.

  Oh, I see. Okay, well then, I’ll be off. Will you give me your number anyway, princess? We could . . . we could be friends.

  Merde.

  I went back to my seat like yesterday at low tide: soaked, dazed, shaken by the waves; my old age under my arm and my tail between my legs.

  Shit. She really was a stunner.

  And I was in a hell of a mood for a cuddle.

  Especially tonight.

  I’d just seen my fiancée get married to another guy, for fuck’s sake.

  My Delacroix pieta was asleep now.

  I sat down across from her and observed her against the light.

  She reminded me of Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo.

  She was messed up big-time with all her hardware and Goth-Punk regalia, but asleep, she looked like a fragile little girl.

  A little sleeping doll. Any enpie’s dream.

  I tried to retouch her, mentally. Removed her makeup, unstudded her, unpierced her, undyed her, cut her hair, undressed her, redressed her, unneedled her tattoos, and rubbed her hands with cream.

  I prepared the stretcher, fixed the canvas, and licked the hairs of my paintbrush before dipping them in the pot.

  I was repenting, big-time.

  Oh, dearie me . . . What rubbish.

  And her slut-face companion still hadn’t shown up. Was she telling her boyfriend all about me or what.

  Rat-a-tat-tat! Classy Joe, take your revenge!

  You know, sweetie, I’ve just met someone and we really have to talk because my inner little baby-waby is really really afraid of losing her pacifier, now . . .

  Or maybe she was telling one of her girlfriends in Nice all about me. Yes I swear! Just like that, in the lounge car. Yes right next to the place where they keep the defibrillator on the wall. Yeah, really, like . . . Yeah, just like I said . . . A really drop-dead gorgeous guy from Paris. Visa Gold card, white shirt, all suntanned. And an orphan on top of it, can you imagine? Hey, like . . . The guy was so hot he was, like, dripping with juice . . . Sounds good, right? Ha ha ha. What? Did I give him my number? Are you crazy or what? Those Parisians, they’re like chickpea socca, you have to eat them with your tips of your fingers . . . Ha ha ha.

  Ha ha ha. Lulled by the ebb and flow of my stupidity, I went back to sleep.

  4

  Sah! Sah! You gotta leave now! You gotta get out dis train. Else you gonna end up at de depot in Garonor, y’know.”

  A Senegalese infantryman (no, take that back, a Black in a brown uniform with a red cap, a cleaner, but I don’t know how to refer to him without making myself look like a little white racist) (a cousin of lovely Lily who was Somali) (that’s not much more politically correct, either, but it allows me to slip in a reference to a song by Pierre Perret that my mother really liked, and which she passed on to generations of children back in the days when the teacher was always right and you learned everything by heart).

  So. I’ll start over.

  “Sir, sir . . . wake up. We’re in Paris.”

  Man did I feel bad. Did I feel cold. Man, was it dark out there. And man, I was alone on earth in this ghostly compartment.

  The sound of vacuum cleaners was piercing my eardrums, I made a face, sighed, pulled on my sandpaper cheeks, shook myself, and was about to leave this cursed place when I noticed a sheet of paper on the shelf by the window.

  It was a page torn from a notebook. A drawing. Of me.

  Me, smiling in my sleep.

  Me thanking Nathan, Patoche, Momo, Arthur, Camille, and all my friends for still being alive.

  Still being alive.

  And how handsome I was . . . Sorry, the portrait was handsome. So handsome I almost didn’t recognize myself.

  But yes. It was me. A happy me. A me I hadn’t seen in ages. A me that wasn’t actually all that old. Or stupid. Or merely a copy. A real me. A nice me. A freehand me. A me who had been liked, a little, but sincerely, in the time it took to sketch me.

  And beneath the India ink wash drawing, in very pretty handwriting, very elegant and harmonious, I was captioned, thus:

  We live one life, we dream of another, but the one we dream of is our true life.

  I don’t know why, but I sobered right up just then. A cloak of sadness fell over me. I don’t know why. Maybe the sight of my stupid self in the mirror did it.

  I took my present and left the train.

  5

  The platform stretched endlessly before me, night had fallen, I was already homesick, and no one was waiting for me, anywhere.

  I walked for a long time into the bleary light of the Gare Montparnasse, patting all my pockets as I hunted for my fucking key-ring.

  I thought I’d burst into tears.

  The aftereffects, had to be.

  Aft
ereffects. Fatigue.

  I still couldn’t see anything, these eyes of mine, always losing everything, the eyes of an invalid, my eyes stinging.

  I swallowed.

  I always swallow.

  The famous technique used by divers who have a cold.

  6

  Are these yours, by any chance?”

  All the way at the end of the platform, where it opened out into the station, one of the girls from my compartment had her arm outstretched, my keys jangling in her hand.

  Which one?

  Take your pick, my friends!

  Spirit of Henri, thank you.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  While working as a high-school French teacher, Anna Gavalda published her first work in 1999, the critically acclaimed collection of short stories I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere, which sold over half a million copies in her native France and was published in the US by Penguin in 2003. Gavalda has since published three novels, all of which have become best-sellers across Europe. Her first novel, Someone I Loved, was adapted to film in 2009 and her novel Hunting and Gathering was made into a film starring Audrey Tautou and Daniel Auteuil. Gavalda’s novels and short stories have been translated into over forty languages. She lives in Paris.