“He wanted to take me to Spain with him. By the sea, near Valencia. He wanted me to leave Bordeaux. He said I didn’t belong here, that I deserved more than this.”
“And you believed him?”
“You have to believe in something.”
She sits up on the bed and her knee brushes against Darlac’s. They are still about forty centimeters apart. Darlac watches her. He sees her as a lost child who has cried a lot and whose tears will dry up until she is merely a robot body with a heart of stone. But the touch of her leg against his leaves a tactile print, a feeling of pins and needles that doesn’t go away even after he rubs it with his hand. His head is spinning so he stands up suddenly, knocking his chair to the floor, and the girl looks up, frightened, then curls up on her bed, against the wall, arms wrapped around her legs.
“Am I going to stay here a long time?”
She says this in a single breath. He remains standing in the darkness, arms hanging at his sides, and the girl looks for his eyes, finding only two dark hollows without a hint of sparkle.
“Don’t you like it here? Odette and Emile treat you well, don’t they?”
She shrugs, then picks up her coat and pulls it over her.
“I should take you back to your parents. You’re a runaway, and in the eyes of the law you should be living with them. How old are you really? Sixteen? Eighteen?”
The girl curls up in an even tighter ball. Covered by her coat like that, she looks like an unformed creature that cannot extricate itself from the darkness. Small. On the verge of disappearing.
“Seventeen and a half.”
“And already working for six months . . . How do you . . .”
“It was that or have my father on top of me. At least all these other bastards, I don’t know them. They do what they want and they go away and I scrub myself with soap afterwards.”
She says this very quietly, very fast, eyes staring at the wall in front of her.
Darlac watches her. He sees the back of her neck, the top of a shoulder, pale curves in this dark corner. He picks up his overcoat and puts it on without taking his eyes off the girl.
“I’ll come and get you in two or three days. I know someone who can get you earning cash, and you won’t need to get screwed in an attic. In ten years you can retire or you can buy a bar or a clothes shop or something, it’s up to you. Or I can take you to the police station and we’ll let a judge decide.”
“Yeah, that’d be great. So he can lock me up in a boarding school with a bunch of bloody nuns or dyke warders. Thanks a lot.”
She lifts her black, shiny, staring eyes to his. For the first time since he entered the room.
“Alright then. As you please.”
Silently he closes the door behind him while the kid lies down in the fetal position, then he walks downstairs, touching his penis through the cloth of his trousers, which has gone stiff from being close to that beauty so plain and unembellished, that body so young and slender, and he doesn’t know what’s come over him.
Back in the empty room, amid the stench of cold tobacco, he leans on the bar and Emile walks up to serve him another glass. Darlac waves it away.
He lights a cigarette.
Emile, looking pensive, wipes glasses. The commissaire busies himself examining part of the wall that is covered with labels, full of prestigious names and long-ago vintages.
“I’ll come and get her in three or four days,” he says, stubbing out his cigarette in an ashtray. “Take good care of her. And feed her, for God’s sake. She looks like a ghost.”
Emile tidies away the clean glasses and pours himself a Lillet. He lifts his glass to the cop and drinks half of it before sighing loudly.
“Only because it’s you,” he says. “I don’t know where you got this girl from. Maybe there are guys looking for her, and I wouldn’t want them to find her here. That’s not on, you know, stealing other people’s girls.”
Darlac shrugs. Plays with his lighter. Flicks it on and then blows it out again several times.
“Course it is. Happens all the time. You don’t know what it’s like in the jungle.”
He heads towards the exit, then changes his mind and turns back to the landlord.
“Alright, I’m sorry. I was a bit harsh. I had a shitty day and I took it out on you.”
Emile shrugs. Doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it. He’s used to it. Maybe he even likes it.
Out on the sidewalk, in spite of the shock of the drizzle in his face, Darlac starts laughing loudly, alone on the street. He laughs so hard it makes him stagger like a drunkard as he walks towards his car.
3Music-hall show with powerful singers and half-naked female dancers that was staged in Bordeaux, at the Alhambra Theater, during the New Year holidays.
4Francs-tireurs et Partisans was the name of the French internal Resistance movement founded in 1941 by the leaders of the French Communist Party.
5Pierre Napoléon Poinsot: commissaire divisionnaire, head of the S.A.P. (Political Affairs Section) in Bordeaux until January 1944, at which date he was appointed to run a subdirectorate of the French police’s intelligence services in Vichy. A notably zealous and efficient auxiliary to the Gestapo. When the German army retreated, he took refuge in Constance. Arrested during an attempt to flee into Switzerland, he was put on trial by a special court in Riom and executed on July 1, 1945. His department, in the offices of the Gironde prefecture, specialized in tracking down Resistance members, particularly communists, whom he hated, and it systematically used torture in interrogations. It is estimated that close to a thousand people were shot or deported on his orders.
6French Forces of the Interior—the name given, in the later stages of the war, to the French Resistance movement.
7
Daniel helped the boss with the hoist so he could lift up the dead Traction engine, the pistons rusted in place. They had to clean off the cobwebs that covered it, not to mention the bloodless, curled-up spiders that turned to dust between their fingers. Afterwards, they each went back to their separate tasks. Repairing the ignition on a 4C.V., then the brakes on an Aronde. The boss kept the Traction’s engine for himself. Right now, Daniel can hear him unblocking the nuts with the aid of a hammer, breathing loudly and grunting over his workbench.
He doesn’t talk much, the old man. His name is Claude Mesplet. He’s a stocky fellow, black-haired, with dark, almost grey skin. Thick arms. Legs like tree trunks. Never smiles. Or only with his eyes. A brighter gleam, a few deepened wrinkles. Only laughs when he’s drunk. He has to drink a lot for that to happen, and it’s quite impressive. Daniel has seen this several times, at New Year’s Eve parties, when they were kids, him and Irène, with Roselyne and Maurice. Times like that he would drink while he was talking, while he was cutting meat, pouring wine, serious and thoughtful, his smile constantly lighting up the corners of his eyes, being tender with Marguerite, his wife, whom everyone called Margot, and especially with their son, Joseph, who watched the table from his wheelchair, drool dribbling down his chin, hitting the table sometimes with his claw-like hands and grimacing smiles at anyone who turned to look at him. Smashed up before he was even born, his mother kicked repeatedly in the belly, in ’43, during four days of interrogation with Poinsot.
Just before midnight, it would happen, suddenly. Claude would begin to laugh. You couldn’t tell that he was rat-assed. He wasn’t the type who forgot how to walk after a few drinks. No hesitation in his movements. Even pissed, he could screw in platinum screws, dead straight, without a wall plug, with his eyes closed. He’d just begin to make a sort of convulsive squeaking noise, as if to himself, that he would try to suppress to start with, drowning it with another mouthful of booze. Then anything might set him off. A cork popping, a glass knocked over. One of Maurice’s cruel jokes. Roselyne telling a story about the factory. A kid looking at him. And then a
cascade would pour over the table. The kind of sound that swept everyone along in its torrent. And Joseph would laugh with them too. He laughed just like they did, until he was in tears. It was a joyful way to start the year, when they hugged each other tight and wished each other the best in life.
He always has that serious, preoccupied expression on his face, Claude. Daniel calls him that, by this first name, even though he addresses him as vous. And Claude talks to him always in that calm voice, never shouting, even when a big diesel is running or when Norbert is straightening sheet metal with a sledgehammer. He speaks in a deep, husky voice that can somehow be heard through any racket. Within six months, Daniel knew the job. Claude had entrusted him with its secrets like a magician teaching his apprentice. In a quiet voice, often late at night or early in the morning before the garage opened. To start with, the technical terms, pronounced in an undertone over an engine whose occult workings and diabolical traps they described, sounded like a wizard’s incantation. Then, little by little, Daniel had taken up this chant, with snatches of it sometimes strangely illuminating the dark mysteries of grease and metal.
For the moment, the two of them have their heads inside the bonnet and the clanking of their tools does the talking for them. The cold is on their backs like a factory foreman railing at them to work faster. If they keep moving, at least they can shake those huge icy hands off their shoulders for a few seconds; if they keep busy, they can avoid thinking about it, can pretend they don’t care about that haunting presence. Then there’s something with the connecting rods, a problem that’s causing everything to short-circuit. It requires a certain patience, but it’s also intriguing. You wonder how you’re going to repair it or come up with some ingenious solution that won’t cost the client a fortune. You wipe your dirty hands and you put your gray matter to work. Thinking warms you up.
Norbert has gone to buy bread for their snack. Apparently he scared the woman at the bakery yesterday, with his bloody eye and his face marbled with bruises, and she felt so bad she gave him a pain au chocolat.
Claude always pays for the bread. Often he brings some pâté or the remains of a veal blanquette that the three of them share. He shares everything, the old man. A rare species, one of a dying breed. Daniel is well aware of this. He often talks about him to his friends, who sneer: “A boss is a boss, and that’s all. He’ll fuck you over eventually.” He has trouble contradicting them. There’s no shortage of examples. Everywhere he goes, he hears talk of this daily battle in the workshops, against the management minions, engineers, middle men, little Hitlers let loose among the machines, sniffing out workers who turn up late, barking about productivity, teeth bared, and how the men often feel like giving those sneaky, yapping little mutts a good kick in the teeth. “We’re going to make those bastards pay soon, believe me. We’ll shove it down their throats.” That was what Herrero, a loudmouthed Party member, said to him one day. “Thorez7 is showing them the way, and eventually the people will see the light and follow him.”
Funny that he is thinking about that now, as he grapples with a nut, trying to fix a starter. The way? What way? Last night he dreamed that he was following a narrow path through a steep-sided rocky valley. He knew there were other men with him, but he couldn’t see them. Suddenly, someone jumped him and cut his throat with a knife. He woke up clutching his neck, feeling for the wound with his fingers. Algeria. It’s the first dream of this kind he’s had. He puts it down to the news report they saw the other day at the cinema, showing a patrol advancing carefully under a burning sun. It should also be said that, every evening, when he gets home, he goes to look at the kitchen table to see if the papers from the army have arrived, summoning him to the slaughter. And every evening, Roselyne says to him: “No, don’t worry, there’s nothing there.” Except he does worry, because one of these days, inevitably, there will be something waiting for him on the table. And when that happens, maybe Roselyne won’t dare say anything at all.
Around ten o’clock, they eat their snack. Canned meat, saucisson. The fresh bread smells good and crunches softly when they cut it, making them salivate. They don’t speak. They just reach out to the desired object, pass it on to whoever asks: knife, pâté, bottle of water. No alcohol here. Never. No wine, no beer.
According to the boss, booze is—after the bourgeoisie—the worker’s worst enemy. His beloved poison. One of those opiates that keep the people stupefied in poverty. Daniel thinks he’s exaggerating a bit, but he doesn’t really care because, apart from the occasional beer, he doesn’t drink anyway. He hates wine, says it smells too strong. The odors of cheap wine and cork that he sniffs sometimes rising from the wine cellars in the Chartrons district, as he cycles through, have put him off for good. He hates drunkards, and he thinks if they love their poverty, then let them wallow in it like they do in their vomit. He doesn’t really understand what the boss means when he talks about the opium of the people. Take Norbert’s father, for instance. No-one makes him drink until he can’t stand up every day; no-one makes him get so drunk that he terrorizes his wife and kids. The booze will kill him one day, and the sooner the better, before his son sticks a carving knife in his gut. His head smashed open on a sidewalk somewhere, or flattened under a truck’s wheels, his bicycle wrapped around him, the handlebars buried in his guts.
There are people who love their misery, who cultivate it, while others, who only ever wanted to live happy and peaceful little lives, are thrown into hell.
Something happens to interrupt his thoughts, as he lies under a sump filled with oil. At first he doesn’t understand what it is, and then he notices that the boss has stopped working at the bench and he sees his feet moving towards the door that opens on to the street. Someone is waiting at the threshold. Against the light, Daniel can make out the legs of two men facing each other. As Norbert is in the back of the garage, using a hammer to straighten out a bumper, he can’t hear what they’re saying, so he gets to his feet and recognizes the man the boss is talking to: the man who left his motorbike here the day before yesterday. Dressed the same way, hands in the pockets of his sheepskin coat, the lower part of his face covered by his scarf. Staring with the same intense yet absent gaze. His eyes like chasms. He gestures with his chin at the motorbike standing further off on its kickstand, and Daniel can tell that he is speaking almost without opening his mouth. The old man replies, waving his hands around, shrugging, probably explaining that they have a lot of work and that he won’t be able to fix his bike for several days yet. The man nods and his gaze flickers momentarily over the boss’ shoulder, searching the garage, and Daniel crouches down to avoid being seen. He can’t bear the thought of meeting those eyes, in which everything seems to be absorbed and to be lost, can’t even bear the feel of their gaze upon him.
Norbert stops hammering and Daniel shrinks even further, as if the silence has suddenly exposed him, and he watches all this through the windows of a Simca. He hears, “Sorry, that’s the best I can do,” and the stranger nods thoughtfully. The two men don’t say anything else. They look at each other and their breaths mingle in the cold air in fleeting little clouds. Mesplet shakes his head then pulls it back between his broad shoulders, arms hanging at his sides. Norbert starts making a din again and Daniel wants to wrench that damn hammer out of his hands so he can try to hear any other scraps of conversation that the two men might share. For now, they look like two statues, frozen in place by ice. The stranger doesn’t blink; he is absolutely still. Only the steam issuing from his mouth proves he is still alive. The boss stamps his feet, presumably growing impatient. Suddenly, without a word, the man turns on his heel and leaves. Daniel goes out onto the sidewalk and lights a cigarette, watching him walk away like he did the other day, the man’s tall, thin figure, his stiff-legged stride.
“Who’s that? What did he want?”
The boss does not reply. He stares unwaveringly at the long silhouette.
“Nothing,” he says finally. “He
just wanted to know if we’d fixed his bike. Guy’s a pain in the ass.”
He scans the end of the street, where the man disappeared, as if fearing that he will reappear at any moment.
“He looked annoyed. Do you know him?”
“I told you, forget it. Anyway, since when do I have to tell you what I say to clients or what they say to me? Don’t you have any bloody work to do? Oh, you do? Well, do it then, and keep your mouth shut. I’m not paying you to stand out here and chat.”
Daniel gets the message. He signals to Norbert to make sure he doesn’t rub the boss up the wrong way with his sometimes depressing questions or his corny puns about dirty screws and not being able to fit his nozzle in the tank. All three of them work alone all morning, taking no notice of each other.
And then, around noon, the boss suddenly drops what he’s doing with the Traction, washes his hands, changes his clothes and announces that he has some shopping to do and he might be gone all afternoon. He tells Daniel to close the shop before six, there’s no point working overtime, they’re not in any hurry, tomorrow is another day, etc. There’s just old Mr. Gomez who’s coming to pick up his 2C.V., and it’s ready, the invoice is on the desk.
As soon as he’s gone, they close the big door and sit close to the stove. Norbert’s mother couldn’t make his lunch today, so they share Daniel’s. A dish of mutton and flageolet beans that they warm up. And, as Roselyne always makes too much, there’s plenty for both of them, taking turns to dig in with a spoon and then soaking up the last of the sauce with bread.
“What’s up with the boss?” Norbert asks, mouth full.
“If anyone asks, just say that you have no idea.”
The boy swallows greedily. As always, he hardly chews his food at all, as if afraid that someone will steal it from his mouth.
“You don’t have any idea either. Was it the guy who brought the bike?”
After the War Page 8
