“For fuck’s sake, yeah, just go and warm up the coffee.”
Norbert marches off and fiddles around in front of the camping stove.
“All the same, he’s a strange-looking guy. I saw him earlier. He gives me the creeps. Don’t you find him scary?”
Daniel feels a shiver run through him. “No, why?”
Fear? No. It’s more like he’s going to faint. A sort of dizziness.
Fear is what he felt grip his throat at six years old, on a rooftop, sitting against a chimney, in the cold wind of a night that never ended. Fear is why he pissed himself when he heard the stampede of cops on the stairs, yelling out orders and hammering on doors, and when his mother held him close to her, moaning, telling him to be a good boy, wetting his face and neck with her tears and whispering words that he now can’t remember, just before his father hoisted him through a fanlight onto the roof and handed him a bit of bread in a paper bag and told him to wait there until someone came to get him.
The fear of feeling the house collapse beneath him. Or of falling off the roof as he leaned over to see if someone was coming. The fear of seeing night fall in silence as the birds fell asleep before Papa and Maman came back to take him in their arms and put him in bed, rock-a-bye baby, on a rooftop . . .
The fear that they will not come back.
He’s not afraid anymore.
So this man with his wrinkled, tormented face, with his eyes that search you or that seem always to be trying to see through you to something unattainable, he senses that he has come much further than all those sailors you see on the docks, shoulders and feet rolling, the great swell of the ocean still in their legs, because the ground is moving too much and can only be brought under control, the floor moored safely to the walls, by a few beers and a bottle of Scotch.
But him: stiff and thin and sharp-edged, like a statue made of sheet metal or glass. And those eyes, absent or hollow, that seem to want to pull you down into the depths of his whirlwind. Daniel met his gaze for only a few moments, but he cannot rid himself of that sensation of vertigo.
They go out on the sidewalk to drink their coffee and breathe the fresh air, almost mild as it blows in off the ocean before the rain arrives, and they smoke their cigarettes leaning against the iron door, feeling at peace and watching people walk past: workers going to the station warehouses, a few women weighed down by shopping bags. They hear a hooting train, the brakes of another train squealing. This din is carried on the wind from the south, along with metallic noises that they normally don’t hear.
While they talk, Daniel watches the end of the street because it seems to him that the man will reappear and walk straight towards him, staring into his eyes the whole time and forcing Daniel to follow him. This is exactly how he feels and when a figure turns that corner his heart shivers.
All afternoon, he is startled each time someone passes the door, whenever a faint shadow crosses the threshold of the garage. So he dives inside bonnets, he crawls under chassis, he bangs scrap metal sticky with black oil, he tries to wear himself out so he won’t think about it anymore, but nothing works. It is Norbert, at quarter to six, who yells out that they should call it a day, that he’s had enough. Besides, they can barely see what they’re doing by the feeble light of the bulbs hanging from the girders. Without inspection lamps, they have to grope around just to find an engine. So they push shut the big iron door, yelling in accompaniment to the awful grating noise it makes.
The rain is falling now, in a cold dust over the city, and Daniel takes a roundabout route through the drizzle of lights absorbed by the night, almost crashing a dozen times on the slippery cobblestones or getting knocked over by trucks whose drivers don’t see him. As soon as he can, after the cours du Médoc, he gets his head down and rides fast, maybe hoping to cleave through this wet fog and see it part before him like the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments, which he and Irène went to see on Sunday afternoon, dubbed in French in the large screening room with its columns and gilt decorations. But no miracle occurs and he arrives at the house swaddled in cold and damp.
And Irène is there, as it happens, and she enfolds him with her huge green eyes and takes him in her arms in spite of the rainwater seeping and dripping from him. And he regrets that he cannot feel the shape or the warmth of her body because of his icy wrapping.
On the table, leaning against a glass, there is an envelope with red, white and blue bordering. Roselyne, standing in front of the sink, does not dare turn around.
After the meal, they talk about it in hushed voices, sitting in front of their empty plates. Normally Roselyne would clear the table as soon as dinner was over, but tonight she leaves everything where it is. Maurice has taken out a bottle of Armagnac and pours some into his own glass before offering it to Daniel, who watched him do it. It was good, the smell and the taste of the alcohol mixed with the remains of the coffee. The fire in his mouth was gently doused before descending in a blaze through his oesophagus and into his stomach. Then the flame began purring like a fire in a stove and the warmth rose up to his face.
He glides into intoxication and listens as they talk but says little himself because he feels as if he no longer knows what to say or think or do. In a few weeks, he will be at war. He has seen epics, marching columns, ambushes, heroic charges, men running low on ammo but not giving up, hand-to-hand fighting with knives or bayonets or rifle butts, lost patrols, battles in the jungle, faces glowing with sweat or covered with mud. Men cut down amid roaring gunfire and yowling bullets, scarlet-painted corpses thrown back into the arms of their friends, men who ignore their fear or cowards who redeem themselves at the end through self-sacrifice, loyal officers, generals who speak to the men like their sons and pinch their cheeks, I know you’re suffering, lads, but back home everyone is proud of you, and you have my trust because I know you will give everything, won’t you? Thank you, general, you can count on us, and the commander pretending to be friendly with his clear gaze and his greying temples. He’s seen it all in films, running all over Bordeaux since he was fourteen years old, and when he came out of the cinema he always felt bigger, his shoulders broader, and he took on the nonchalant and totally relaxed look of someone who’s seen it all and seems to trail bravery and horror in his wake.
In a few weeks, he will be at war. He might kill, he might die. This is the most important thing that has happened to him since. Since when? In fact, he doesn’t know if anything has ever happened to him before. He knows he is missing something and he feels it there, deep in his guts, between his sternum and his stomach. Like a hole. A ball of nothingness. Sometimes it hurts, twists in knots, it’s bitter and he spits it out or pukes up a few gobs of phlegm. War. Suddenly he is scared. But he wants to go and find out what he is scared of, despite everything that sickens him.
A bit like when children dare their friends to do things: walk as far as possible along the edge of a sidewalk, blindfolded. Smoke cigarettes from the wrong end. Ride down a flight of steps on a bike without braking. Put your hand in a fire.
Of course, Maurice has told him stories about his own war, in ’39, the waiting period in the Ardennes, cleaning machine guns, exercising, drills, and that bastard of a cabot-chef who yelled all the time and made them crawl in the dirt or run through the rain for the slightest misdemeanor. And then the first bombardments, in the distance, that approaching rumble, and staying up for nights on end, on patrol with fear in their guts, holding those old rifles from the first war that jammed so easily, and the first stiffs they’d found, two kilometers from there, four men all collapsed in a heap, blood and innards mixed, already stinking, he told Daniel all this, once only, on a night like this in fact, his voice trembling and his body utterly still while he spoke except for his fingers as they held his glass, his eyes wandering to the three of them sitting around the table, perhaps not even seeing them because it was all coming back to him, descending over his head like a mourning veil as behind
each word poured images, smells and screams.
He described the winter, terrible, the frostbite, men huddled in holes around fire pits, the east wind that flushed them out of their shelters, roaring and biting, then blew on their green-wood fires turning them to smoke, the snow that fell for days on end, so thick and dense that they didn’t even see when a regiment of German tanks came upon them.
He didn’t fire a shot except for hunting, because for a long time the only warnings they got were those given by sentries who were sleep-dazed or drunk on hooch when they opened fire on deer who came early in the morning to break the crust of ice in the hope of finding grass.
The war approached them: they heard the rumble of artillery fire, felt it shake the earth sometimes with its heavy tread; they saw trucks full of corpses driving past, battalions retreating; they dived to the ground as German fighter planes flew overhead, seeming not even to notice them or perhaps simply ignoring this superfluous rank and file, already beaten. And then one day a colonel had given them the order to withdraw, to run away even, otherwise two Panzer regiments would roll right over them the next day, so they left and found themselves on sun-blasted roads, dying in their winter coats, pursued by columns of smoke that rose in the east. They were told to hand over their weapons and their kits and not to hang around but to go home because there was nothing more they could do here, that they would be demobilized later.
Bogged down in the melting snow, it took Maurice two weeks to get home. He helped bury people machine-gunned by Stukas by the side of the road, he pushed carts, he helped a bourgeois family by fixing their broken-down car in return for a lift—a hundred kilometers at an average of ten an hour through the crowds, sitting crushed in the back seat against an old granny in a state of shock, distraught and delirious, or sitting on the roof, his bloody feet macerating in his grunt’s boots.
He arrived at the house one morning and Roselyne screamed with terror and hid in a cupboard because she didn’t know it was him, bearded, stinking, covered in grime and blood, eyes crazed with weariness, because this creature could not be him, would never again be him, just some stranger that resembled him, returned from who knew where and capable of who knew what. He talked to her, leaning against the wobbly door, whispered sweet nothings to her, their secret words, like a code. He pronounced this open-sesame in a breathless voice, on the verge of fainting. Then he said, almost in a moan, that life would go on, because nothing was over, not the war or any other battle, not even a scrap of happiness torn from the brambles that had overrun everything, and so she opened the door and fell into his arms, unconscious and heavy, and him with no strength left, carried her, staggering, over to the bed.
Daniel listens to them as they advise him to try to land a cushy job somewhere, maybe in an office, or in Logistics, Maurice suggests, with your job you should hide out in a truck engine, like that you won’t have to walk into the wolf’s mouth. And there are people who like war, you know, so just leave it to them. Especially when it’s a war against the Algerian people, Irène adds. Most of the conscripts don’t know what they’ll be doing there or why they’re being sent. This isn’t your war, Daniel. It’s not our war.
Yeah, of course, he mutters, stunned by the chaos in his head. He would like to pour himself another Armagnac to send himself even further into the cotton-wool torpor that is muffling his brain, but he doesn’t dare, and anyway he dislikes drunkenness: he always feels sick, during and afterwards, tortured by the feeling that he is going to die, to puke up his heart and soul.
Bang, bang, bang. Someone at the door. They all jump. The sound echoes in the hallway. At this time of night? In weather like this? They look at each other.
“It must be Alain,” says Irène.
Daniel turns to her. Why Alain? Roselyne lowers her eyes.
He stands up and rushes into the hallway, grabbing his sheep-skin as he goes. Behind him, he hears Roselyne asking:
“Where are you going? Have you seen the weather?”
Alain is on the sidewalk, his cap pulled down over his eyes. Daniel closes the door softly behind him.
“Got any cash?”
“I got paid yesterday. What about you?”
“I’m O.K.”
They walk for a while without speaking. The last bus goes past just before the swing bridge and they watch its red tail lights fade into the distance along with the blurred glow through its steamed-up windows. A few street lamps shine weakly on the docks, and a few lit-up portholes are visible between the warehouses. The wind pushes them, bowing their necks. North-west. Daniel glances up at Alain, cigarette in his mouth, face shadowed by the visor of his cap.
“So?”
Alain shrugs. Sighs. Takes a drag on his cigarette and blows smoke out in front of him. It vanishes quickly.
“So I’ll get pissed . . .”
He shakes his head, as if to rid himself of the thoughts inside.
“Fuck. Shit,” he adds. “I won’t go.”
“How will you manage that? You’d be a deserter.”
They fall silent. Each lost in his own thoughts.
After the dockers’ employment offices, they make out a few luminous signs. They continue at the same pace, their shoulders bumping occasionally as they walk unsteadily over the slanting cobblestones. Outside a bar called Le Havre, they wait while two men emerge, laughing and speaking in a foreign language, then walk away hesitantly, heads bowed, clapping each other on the back and spitting on the ground.
“I’m going to find a ship,” Alain says suddenly.
“You’re mad. It’ll never work.”
“We’ll go to the Escale. My uncle told me I could find a guy he knows there. He used to go there pretty often when he was sailing. I’ve told you about him, haven’t I?”
Of course Daniel had heard all about Uncle Auguste, the family hero, the globetrotter with clothes and scars from all over the world who had weathered every storm, unfrozen the Baltic, drunk every bar dry before destroying it, knocked men out like a kid sending skittles tumbling at a funfair, visited every brothel between Copenhagen and Dakar, fucked all night long with ugly bloaters and beautiful women, spraying his dick with Polish vodka or Russian champagne to cool it down . . . Everyone in the neighborhood knew the stories about him. Back when he would still leave his house, tall and straight-backed and handsome, in spite of his scars—glassed in a brawl in Liverpool or Tangiers or Rotterdam, he couldn’t remember, and it changed all the time anyway—and sometimes he would sit at the bar in Mauricette’s, on rue Achard, at six in the morning, his worn-out woollen hat on his head, and recount his own legends to anyone who’d listen. There was always some guy to get him started on his drunken epics, and he would be off. But the poor sod knew how to tell a story—his dramatic timing had improved as his memory had faded—and the evenings when he turned up, the men who hung around there after eight o’clock, instead of going home and dozing off in a chair as they listened to the radio, preferred instead to let this woollen-hatted liar, who had, all the same, seen places they had never even dreamed of going, sweep them away on his words, and they sat silent and motionless over their drinks, by turns sneering and impressed.
He’s renting some hovel in the Cité Pourmann now, Auguste, where he lives as a hermit surrounded by African masks, the walls lined with magic necklaces and amulets brought back from his travels. He’s been there ever since a half-whore kid emptied his bank account and his heart and left him there, in the middle of his exotic museum, so she could get screwed by some little thug from the Saint-Pierre neighborhood.
Alain pushes Daniel by the shoulder and they enter the thick, dark warmth of a bar, peopled by shadows and voices and rugged faces around formica tables under red or black lampshades, and they walk up to the counter where they climb onto bar stools. The woman standing behind the counter is a Jayne Mansfield-style blonde in skintight black jodhpurs and a mauve sweater sparkling with a fe
w silver threads. She watches the two boys sit down at the bar but doesn’t move, just continues smoking a cigarette, elbows on the bar, chatting with a small, thin, black-haired, shifty-looking man who keeps shooting sideways glances to spy on and weigh up everything that breathes in his vicinity. The two of them smile like wolves, teeth bared but eyes impassive. When the woman isn’t talking, her mouth subsides, pulling her face down, bitter little creases at the corners of her lips.
At the other end of the bar, two girls perched on stools talk with a bearded colossus who leans towards them because he can’t understand what they’re saying and they laugh as they repeat things into his ear and the man shakes his head and laughs in turn, taking advantage of the situation to put a hand behind their back, which they gently push away.
Alain has turned around to have a look at the roomful of customers, chatting and sometimes laughing.
“There’s a table free over there.”
“Why did we come here?”
Daniel examines the labels on the countless bottles ranged on shelves, amazed by the apparently infinite variety of drinks for pissheads.
“You think we’re supposed to serve ourselves?” Alain asks out loud.
“Just try it and see what happens,” hisses the blonde, her cigarette between her teeth.
The short-ass she’s talking with turns his dark, dangerous gaze on Alain.
“What’s up with him? Does he want some?”
“Forget it,” mutters Daniel. “We’ll go somewhere else. This place is full of assholes. Come on . . .”
He has already hopped off his stool when he sees the little big shot from the bar moving towards them. He’s got a crooked smile and you can tell he’s a nasty piece of work, a Rottweiler of a man, full of dirty tricks. Suddenly an empty bottle appears in his right hand.
Alain does not retreat. Daniel puts a hand on his shoulder and the two of them face up to him.
“What can I serve you, gentlemen?”
After the War Page 9
