by Jean Echenoz
As Constance politely nodded, someone grabbed her elbow. She turned around: it was a guy who’d just come out of the van’s passenger-side door and who was now gently holding her arm. He was just as smiley as the man in overalls, but considerably less handsome: tall, bony, scrawny neck, ostrich-like face. You see, the man in overalls went on, it’s ideally adapted to delicate, precise, repetitive work. It’s a screw gun too, you know. Look, I’ll show you. And Constance became aware then that a third man, presumably the van driver, was holding her other arm. He, too, was smiling and not especially attractive: squat, sturdy, red-cheeked, with a face like a sea cow. There was nothing immediately reassuring about this setup, admittedly, but the three men looked so friendly, considerate, attentive: out of a silly kind of mimicry, Constance smiled back at them.
So, said the man in overalls, I’m going to turn it on; watch, and Constance did indeed watch, in total silence, as the drill bit started quickly spinning around while one of the men, without letting go of Constance’s arm, used his other hand to lift the van’s tailgate. Then, when the man in overalls moved the sharp end of the drill toward her lower jaw, like a dentist who doesn’t bother asking you to first open your mouth, she stopped smiling. Ostrich and Sea Cow now had a firm grip on her arms.
All of this happened without witnesses because, although it is close to the main roads, allowing a quick getaway, the corner of Rue Pétrarque and Rue Commandant-Schloesing is also largely free of traffic, ideal for discreetly dealing with a problem. Constance blinked furiously. But obviously I’m not going to do anything like that, the man in overalls reassured her. I just wanted to show you. Anyway, I’m going to leave you in peace now, he announced, indicating the vehicle’s open tailgate, if you wouldn’t mind. And as Constance was turning toward the vehicle, she saw that its inside—separated from the front seat by a metal wall—was occupied by a comfortable-looking armchair whose feet and armrests had the unusual additional features of polypropylene straps with plastic buckles. An elegant black hood was casually folded on the seat back.
Constance hesitated, as any of us would, but—noting that the drill was still spinning—she decided she would rather get in the back of the van than submit, without anesthesia, to an undefined maxillofacial procedure. While Ostrich, as jovial and reassuring as a real dental nurse, secured her firmly in the armchair, she spotted Sea Cow in brief discussion with the other man, who put away his drill before walking off toward Trocadéro without turning back, apparently having fulfilled his task. Before they closed the tailgate on her, Constance watched him go, regretting the turn their encounter had taken. It was a shame, because he really was a very handsome guy, in his neatly ironed overalls. A real shame. Poor Constance: she just can’t stop herself thinking this kind of thing. But, as we have gathered by now, she does not enjoy a satisfying love life.
3
AND NOW, IF it’s okay with you, we are going to take a look at Constance’s husband. This man is currently in the Paris metro, somewhere on Line 2, which crosses the city from west to east, and his name is Lou Tausk. Sounds like a pseudonym, doesn’t it? But let’s not dwell on that for the moment; we’ll return to the matter in good time.
So Lou Tausk, with his bag on his knees, is sitting in the first car of a train that links Porte Dauphine to Nation, transporting him every morning from his home (Villiers station) to his studio (Couronnes station), and vice versa in the evenings. It’s practical, it’s direct, and there’s no need for him to check the name of the station at each stop—no need to look up from his newspaper or his smartphone each time the train slows—because a recorded female voice repeats it twice. When the voice announces Couronnes, Tausk stands up. When the voice repeats Couronnes, Tausk heads for the nearest car door, opposite the platform exit, from where forty-seven steps, divided into three unequal flights, take him up to Boulevard de Belleville.
Not so long ago—and even now, sometimes—this boulevard featured a sort of sparse, unregulated market where, with their goods laid out on the sidewalk, poor people sold all kinds of poor third-hand objects to other poor people: juicers and ice cream makers in broken blister packs; sets of chipped teacups; packs of yogurt that were discreet about their expiration date; toasters without plugs; blenders unconcerned with niceties such as warranties; piles of ancient TV guides with no illusions about their future; old toys; mismatched gloves; worn-out clothes; and many other things that we could go on enumerating.
But first, alerted by local residents who saw this as a nuisance and ended up complaining about it, the forces of law and order cleaned up the area, dispersing these amateur merchants toward the city gates to the north and east of Paris. And what came after that, we would quickly get tired of enumerating.
Around the Couronnes metro station, small streets and alleys pour like tributaries from the northeast into the main stream of the boulevard: Passage de Pékin, Rue du Sénégal, Rue de Pali-Kao. Tausk takes the last of these after walking past a few Chinese stores (furtive effluvia of monosodium glutamate), Tunisian restaurants (subtle fragrances of ras el hanout), two convenience stores, and an electronic discount store, Tout à U1 waging a fierce price war with Tout Mini U. Modest and ugly buildings with poorly rendered façades—crumbling brick or Paris stone—are demolished for reasons of age, hygiene, and speculation, before being replaced by others, no less ugly but more lucrative, until the cycle starts over again.
As Tausk is about to walk up the street to his recording studio, what should he hear bursting from some scaffolding, lustily sung by a demolition worker in his fluorescent vest, but the cheerful melody to “Vamos a la Playa,” an old global hit that Tausk has not heard since 1983. For the rest of the day, that tune will itch inside his head like a mosquito bite.
Shoulder numbed by his shoulder bag, cerebral cortex invaded by “Vamos a la Playa,” Tausk arrives at the studio, a vast subterranean space with no fenestration except for a single basement window, which, left open, lets in a bit of air and sound from Rue de Pali-Kao. The name of this street commemorates a victory by Anglo-French troops during the Second Opium War, and on its sidewalks, not so long ago, you could still buy diverse products derived from that opium, cut to varying degrees with lactose or caffeine or ibuprofen or plaster or strychnine or detergent or other, even worse products that we could, once again, enumerate. But first, alerted by local residents who saw this as a nuisance and ended up complaining about it, etcetera. And what came after that, etcetera.
Two-thirds of the studio is occupied by musical equipment—a dozen keyboards, synthesizers, drum machines, and sound effect makers, all laid out on trestle tables; three computers of decreasing size on the desk—while the remaining third has been arranged to resemble a living room: chairs, couch, coffee table, rows of shelving bowed under the weight of vinyl records, magnetic tapes, and various boxes. On the wall are two illegible trophies, a gold disc in a Plexiglas frame, and a signed photograph of the composer Lalo Schifrin. There is also a small kitchen area where Lou Tausk, after turning on the lamps and the main computer, makes himself an orange juice and a pot of tea, proceeding in an unchanging parallel order as he knows that the time it takes to squeeze two oranges is equal to the time it takes for the water to boil and then that rinsing the juicer equates to the time needed for the tea to brew.
Once this is done, Tausk sits in front of the main computer and studies the file containing his work in progress. He tries to improve it, but only a few minutes pass before this undertaking strikes him as futile. His attempts at composition proving fruitless, he opens an old emergency file containing old ideas—fragments of melodies, experiments in dissonance, potential chord sequences—that he has kept up his sleeve for just such an occasion as this. He strives to adopt these leftovers to his current project, but again, very little time passes before he gives up.
Because while he is, as already indicated, generally successful in his career, it has to be admitted that he is currently stuck in a rut and has been for some time now. In a sign of his helpless
ness, he types up the first two bars of “Vamos a la Playa” before giving himself time to think, puts his computer to sleep, examines his fingernails. Then he notices the small pile of junk mail and letters that the building’s caretaker (who has the keys to the studio) leaves on his table every day.
These documents concern a singles club, an offer of a credit balance transfer, the manifesto of a united far left / far right coalition, and a proposal to substitute your crappy old bathtub—stained, impractical, poorly adapted to your needs and soon to your age—for a high-performance, custom-made, poly-relaxing, chrome multijet hydromassage machine. Tausk studies this one for a bit longer because, well, why not, before scrunching it up like the others and tossing it in the trash can: a full trash can is the sign of an active man. The only real mail is a large beige envelope with an elastic band around it, with a smaller white envelope attached to it by a paper clip.
Tausk must feel some instinctive mistrust of these envelopes because he doesn’t open either of them, postponing the act of reading their contents the way we sometimes postpone reading bank statements. He puts the two envelopes in his bag to be dealt with later, although he does remove the elastic band and the paper clip first. Looking pensive, he stretches the elastic until it snaps, then unbends the paper clip and attempts to twist it into the shape of a human figure. The snapped elastic band, which he has thrown onto his desk, lands in the shape of an ampersand; a quick flick and it is briefly transformed into an at symbol, before ending up as a treble clef.
Lou Tausk might have interpreted this musical sign as an encouragement to start work again, but he then receives three telephone calls. The first two are similar in tone to the junk mail he received: a lady with an Asian accent offers to sell him French doors and Tausk says no; then a second lady with an Alsatian accent wants to know if he is interested in God and Tausk says no to her too. But the third time the phone rings, it is Franck Pélestor, announcing that he will be there in five minutes.
I’m pretty glad to see you, aren’t I? says Pélestor when he arrives. What do you think? This sort of ambiguous phrasing, pronounced in a muffled voice and delivered with a sorry smile, is typical of Franck Pélestor, a slumped, stooping man whose dark eyes tend to stare down at his feet and the floor beneath them, his gaze rarely venturing any higher than the feet of his fellow humans. In all seasons, his clothes are strapped tight and buttoned up: sweater, jacket, coat, scarf, zip-up fur boots. Let the sun blaze down, let the rest of humanity waltz around in T-shirts: Pélestor is always dressed in the same shades of gray. His skin is slightly gray too, as is his daily mood. He’s probably afraid of catching a cold; in fact, he probably already has a cold since he regularly extracts the same flat, stiff, compact Kleenex from his pocket—the much-used tissue shaped like a pumice stone or a sliver of soap—from which he manages to unpeel a translucent fragment that he can touch to his nose.
Up to now (although it is not particularly recent), the partnership of Franck Pélestor and Lou Tausk has brought them success. There have been songs co-written by Tausk-Pélestor and sung by the likes of Gloria Stella, Coco Schmidt, and others, which have done pretty well. “Nuisance” and “Dent de Sagesse” were genuine hits, but, while “Excessif”—that’s the gold disc in the Plexiglas frame—was a global sensation, to which we will return later, the reception granted to the productions that followed it has been increasingly reserved. “N’est-il Pas” sold poorly; then “Te Voici, Me Voilà!”—despite being more accessible—didn’t even make the shortlist for the Eurovision Song Contest. So that is where they are, seeking to bounce back and struggling.
I may as well tell you right away, I haven’t written anything, Pélestor warns his partner, if that’s any reassurance, and Tausk makes a grimace indicating that he hasn’t either. I did have a beginning, Pélestor adds, but you’re not going to like it. Never mind, let’s hear it, Tausk encourages him. It’s not ready, Pélestor sniffs, I need to rework it. Well, tell me when it is, sighs Tausk, handing him a fresh Kleenex. No, thanks, says Pélestor, I’ve got mine. So where are we going to eat lunch? They settle on their usual Chinese restaurant, on Rue d’Eupatoria.
Like most such establishments, the Pensive Mandarin features a large aquarium whose auspicious placement, intended to bring luck to the business, was carefully chosen by a feng shui master. While they eat lunch, Tausk explains to Pélestor that their production of songs—which they have been doing in the same way for fifteen years—is no longer working, that they can’t go on this way, that they need to change direction. And this direction, it seems to him, he says, turning over a pork rib, should be toward a more total kind of work. Oh yeah? says Pélestor, what do you mean by total? Let me explain, says Tausk.
He pauses before replying as he watches the movements of the dozen carp in the aquarium: pastel-colored, almost translucent, a few of them appearing to suffer from some kind of skin disease. They are moving at a distance from an intimidatingly large adult carp that seems to possess all the power: the little ones around it do their best to keep out of its way. A sort of opera, Tausk finally continues, an oratorio if you will. A kind of concept album—you remember concept albums. Based around one woman’s voice, you see. First you have to find it, though, your voice, Pélestor objects. I know, says Tausk, I don’t know, I’m looking for it. Maybe you could look too.
So they look, without speaking anymore, and the waiters come and go around the aquarium, and then, as they are about to leave, they bump into the restaurant owner. That is one fat fish, Tausk says, just for something to say. Oh yeah, agrees the owner, he’s the real boss; the others are scared of him. And what’s his name? Tausk asks, feigning interest. He doesn’t have a name, the owner smiles seriously. Oh right, says Tausk, surprised. So how come? Because he doesn’t have any ears, the owner patiently explains. He can’t hear, so we can’t call him. So there’s really no point in him having a name, you see. It’s very simple—no ears, no name. Oh yeah, says Tausk, of course, I understand. Naturally.
Pélestor goes home. Without any reason to stop by the studio again, Tausk catches the metro at Couronnes and, ten stations later, after the voice utters the name of Villiers, he, too, makes it to his home on Rue Claude-Pouillet. He finds himself without any plans, with nothing much to do, idle. Though barely begun, the afternoon is already taking on the form of a ball that he will have to keep dribbling forward, hour after hour, until it’s time to have a drink, then eat dinner (halftime), before the start of the evening (second half). And he can’t think of anything that will accelerate this game except picking up his shirts from the dry cleaner on Rue Legendre and a pretty nice pair of green pants from the tailor on Rue Gounod, who is adjusting them for him after he bought them in a clearance sale last week. (Who can resist a clearance sale?) It’s not much, admittedly, but it could kill quite a bit of time if he proceeds methodically. Then maybe a little walk around the park in the late afternoon to put off his first drink of the day.
But first Lou Tausk leaves his bag in the entrance hall, goes into the living room, takes off his jacket, and empties his pockets, and then, back in the entrance hall, picks up his bag and takes it into the living room to empty that too. And so it is that he finds himself holding the large envelope and the small envelope that he received at the studio earlier. He is not happy to see them again, he is slow to look for the paper knife, and he is visibly reluctant to open them. And then we understand his suspicious attitude toward the letters that morning. The little one contains a small photograph of Constance, the large one a demand for money.
Constance looks surprised in the photograph: her smile is incongruous, her left eye half-closed. The sum of money demanded by the letter is also incongruous. It is a very large figure, an exorbitant amount. We won’t specify the number of euros, but the startled look on Tausk’s face when he reads it gives us an idea of its size. There is something childlike about the handwritten note that makes this demand. Peppered with vague threats, the block lettering is obviously the work of a right-
hander using his left hand or vice versa, designed to look rough and unsophisticated. After a brief pause to get over the shock, Tausk decides to skip directly to his first drink of the day. “Vamos a la Playa” . . .
4
THE PHOTOGRAPH OF CONSTANCE was taken just after she was injected with propofol, in the back of the repair van, after it had been parked in an underground parking garage on Avenue Foch. The lowering of the left eyelid before the subject loses consciousness is a well-known side effect of this common, short-acting anesthetic, another effect being said subject’s rapid recovery of consciousness. So, conscious again, and cautiously opening that left eyelid—closely followed by the right eyelid—Constance was able to see the place where she was being kept: namely, a long, narrow space, maybe one hundred square feet in total.
The furniture in the room consisted of the bed where she lay, a chest of drawers, and a chair pushed in front of a corner shelf fixed to the wall, all of it made of high-gloss MDF boards. It looked like a cheap hotel room, except that there was no letterhead notepaper in the drawer and no list of rules stuck to the inside of the door. And that door—Constance checked as soon as she got up—was locked from the outside. The floor was marbled linoleum, the walls covered with beige woodchip wallpaper. Pinned to the wall was a violently colored poster of a horse on a beach at dusk, rearing up in the spurting foam, and near that was a metal support for a television, of the kind you also see in hospital rooms, but without a television. There was a shower cubicle in one corner. The absence of a toilet might have made Constance hope for a brief stay, but her capacities for anticipatory reasoning were still too slow to make that leap. The room had no distinguishing features, no detail that might have enabled her to identify the nature of the building, the name of the city, or even on which continent it was located.
