At some point during the day, the girl comes to join him, forcing her way through the wire fence he has been carefully stepping over, kicking it down and shamelessly trampling it. She almost seems to take some twisted pleasure in tumbling over it, yelling at the top of her lungs. She’s not the sort to retreat into the background. She is furious at what is happening to her. She has no intention of being forgotten. He watches her, amused. Feeling sorry for her, but thrilled by the chaos she trails in her wake, it highlights just how much effort he has made to go unnoticed. She comes and sits next to him on the bench and immediately goes back to begging him for money. He thinks about the story of Hansel and Gretel. He could walk down the hill with her, lose her in the deep dark city, and come back alone.
When old Charles appears at the far end of the street, he is happy to see him. He does not immediately recognize Laurent, who is walking beside him. Watching them as they approach, Vernon is reminded that he takes damned good care of himself given that he’s homeless. The guy thinks he’s God’s gift, but he’s got every reason. You have to be pretty single-minded and very stubborn to cultivate a look—worker’s boots in good repair, jeans the right size for him, three-day stubble—but it is mostly his bearing that is remarkable. Laurent walks with his back ramrod straight, chest forward, chin up, he has not been bowed or broken by living hand to mouth. Laurent has said to himself so often that he is a dropout, an exception, that he has chosen this life and despises the working classes as much as those who exploit them, that he has ended up believing it: he bears none of the scars that attend his circumstances. They exchange a manly handshake and Vernon winces, his swollen finger sending shooting pains all the way to the small of his back. Laurent gives him a conspiratorial wink: “Well, well, you little bugger … Found yourself a cushy spot here … I don’t know this area…” With a majestic, sweeping wave of his arm, Charles gestures to the view, like a real estate agent: “Boasting a magnificent view of the Sacré-Coeur, if you please … a basilica erected over the mass graves of the communards, like an old whore belching in our face every day: ‘Die, you fucking proles!’” But he does not have time to launch into his solo on this theme before the woman launches herself at him like a starving creature who has stumbled on a banquet: “Monsieur I’ve got AIDS it’s terrible weeks I’ve been sleeping rough there’s no hostel available till Friday I need a hotel I’m so cold I’m sick.” The old man pats her on the shoulder, there is not a flicker of revulsion, a moment of recoil, he rummages in his pocket and takes out a five-euro note and a two-euro piece: “This is all I have, my darling, there’s nothing more I can do, but on the other hand, I have some beer, would you care for a beer? We broke our backs carrying a six-pack up here, so there is more than enough to go around,” and falling to her knees, without a word of thanks for the money she is stuffing into her pocket, the girl wails, “Please I can’t do anything with that, go and get some money from the cash machine.” Vernon spreads his arms in a helpless gesture: “She’s got this thing about cash machines.”
Laurent pays her no heed, he lets her snivel, does not even look at her, but sits on the bench, perching on the backrest, parking his muddy boots where Vernon usually sits. Hands in his pockets, he gazes out. “What a fucking view! You’re really landed on your feet—I’m not surprised we haven’t seen you around…” He hawks a gob of spit so thick it looks like egg white, Vernon stifles the urge to retch and listens to his commentary. “Except that, with your girlfriend here, you’re in deep shit … Women like that, they’re a scourge … They’re worse than illegal immigrants, if you want my opinion. When I was first homeless, people like that were taken in by the hospitals, that’s where they belong, not on the streets … You’ll see plenty like her. There’s nothing you can do. Now, with the Chechens, the Malians, the Africans … at least you agree on the boundaries, come to an arrangement about territory, you can tell them to keep away, and if you’ve got a knife and you know how to use it, there’s a good chance that they’ll understand the language … But people like her … They’ve got a piece missing and every month spent living on the streets grinds them down a little more … it’s the pits, no one wants to deal with them. And there’s no point talking to them, there’s no possible solution … What are we supposed to do? It not like we can burn them, is it?” Vernon nods, agreeing at least with the last statement, perhaps even relieved to know that Laurent does not envisage anything so radical.
Charles talks to the madwoman for five minutes, tries to reason with her—he has a whole list of organizations she can turn to for help—but she refuses to listen, she wants money from the cash machine for her eighty-euro hotel room, full stop. Eventually, the old man loses his patience and changes tactic: “Listen, either you shut your trap or I’ll give you a good thrashing, do you hear me?” Terrified, she scrabbles over the mesh fence that she has all but demolished, cuts her hands in her panic to get away—Vernon can see blood on her palms—and hides in the garden. He is tempted to go after her, her whole attitude completely changed as soon as the old man raised his voice, she was genuinely scared and she scurried away like a frightened animal. Laurent stops him with a click of his tongue. “Don’t even think about trying to comfort her. There’s no point. She will just start talking about the cash machine again. She does it deliberately. Crazy people are very manipulative. Have you got any money for her? No. The phone number of a decent shrink? No. Then leave her be. You don’t have anything she needs. Let her look elsewhere. She’ll bring you nothing but grief and you’ll give her nothing she wants. It’s a lose-lose situation.”
Charles listens to this little right-wing peroration, not taking the trouble to respond, but from the look on his face it is clear that he is not of the same opinion. He stares at the garden, frustrated. The old man is a sensitive soul. Vernon remembers the doddering figure looming over him in the darkness as he lay on the bench delirious with fever, and the old man screaming “Bastard, that’s my place you’re squatting”—then, realizing that Vernon was in no fit state to answer, Charles had become annoyed: “You’re burning up, you little shit, I can’t even give you a kicking in peace—you’re barely fit to push up daisies.” He had wandered off, half yelling, half reeling, and had returned several hours later with a net of oranges he’d tossed onto Vernon’s chest. “You need to eat them, and you need to get yourself indoors. You’re going to die if you stay here…” And Charles had come back again a few days later. Panting for breath—“Those steps will be the death of me. I like coming up here, but God almighty it’s steep. I should check whether there’s a house for sale. I could see myself living here. Piss off the whole neighborhood.” And he chuckled as he opened his bottle of red wine. “Looks like you’re on the mend there, sonny. Though you’re still bogarting my bench, I’ll have you know … Usually, I stick to beer during the day, but I’m making an exception, declaring this a public holiday. So, not dead, I see? All thanks to my oranges, am I right?” And they had chatted as they drained the bottle. The old man was chilled. Ever since, he shows up every other day with the same greeting, “Brought a little bottle of red. Just to toast your health,” to which Vernon quips, “I was just thinking that the sun was over the yardarm so it must be wine o’clock,” and Charles responds, “So, what’s new up on your perch?” and Vernon counters with a joke—common courtesy seems to demand flippancy—“Not great, they still haven’t installed the central heating,” or “I’m still waiting on the bed linens to be delivered…” and they shoot the breeze and drink. Charles plays the grumpy old man but is sensitive as a budding daisy. From the pocket of his raincoat, he takes out a corkscrew, wedges the bottle between his ankles, and screws the worm into the cork. He hands the full bottle to Laurent and, in an affectedly jaunty tone, says to Vernon:
“I suppose you know there’s a tribe of nutjobs down there looking for you?”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a bunch of them. They show up every day asking about you and getting on everyone’s nerves
.”
The blood drains from Vernon’s face but Laurent raises a soothing hand:
“They don’t seem angry. More bewildered, I’d say … unless they’re playing their cards close to their chest, they don’t mean any harm…”
“It’s more a case of them being worried, from what I can tell…”
“No. I had no idea.”
“But you know who they are? They did tell me their names, but I don’t remember a single one…”
“I’ve no idea why anyone would be looking for me … Okay, I did borrow a couple of things … but from that to organizing a painstaking search of the Buttes-Chaumont seems a bit much…”
“Like I said, comrade, they don’t seem to have it in for you.”
“You think they’re hunting me down to give me a hug?’
“Well, maybe … they look like a troop of teddy bears. But anyway, if I were you, I’d go down and clear things up.”
Charles signals that he will be right back and totters off, his body stooped, his shoulders hunched—the old guy doesn’t have problems with his back or his knees, but when he is drunk, he likes to adopt the gait of an invalid. Vernon assumes he is going for a piss, but he carefully steps over the wire fence and, clutching his bottle, sets off in search of the psycho.
Laurent tilts his head back and belches so loudly that it sounds as though he’s got an echo chamber hidden in his chest. They are the result of a lifetime’s work, these spectacular eructations … Satisfied with the effect, he says:
“You should go down and say hello, if only for the sake of politeness. Do you mind if I ask you a question?”
“Ask away.”
“What are you afraid of? Have you done something stupid?”
“You know how it is … little things. At the time, you think you’ll pay them back, make amends … for example, I swiped a laptop from someone and promised to give it back, but in the end I had to ditch it … I certainly don’t want to run into the woman it belonged to … and another time, I borrowed a couple of books and a watch … from the wrong person.”
“It’s important to choose your victims carefully, some are less forgiving than others.”
“Exactly. In my case she was very vindictive. Very.”
“She’s entitled, I suppose.”
“She’s absolutely entitled. And I’m entitled to make sure I don’t bump into her.”
“I can’t imagine eight people ganged up to track you down because you hocked a couple of books and a watch … Not that I agree with what you did—all I’m saying is that they don’t look like a pack of angry villagers pretending to be nice just so they can lynch you for some minor offense.”
“What the hell is Charles up to? Has he gone to talk to the psycho? Just when she’d finally shut up…”
“Don’t worry about that, he’s not the type to…”
“I wasn’t thinking about that.”
“If you’re going to be hanging around with hobos, I’d advise you to think about that … there are some who’ll take advantage and try anything on the pretext that they’re drunk…”
Laurent spreads his arms and yawns, then says:
“But Charles is not the type to go for a girl who can’t defend herself, he likes them surly. Okay, hurry up and we’ll head down. Don’t pretend you’re thinking it over, it’ll still be here, your bench. No one’s going to rip it out overnight … You know that you can sleep on the railway lines? Coco and Pako left their duvets and a couple of places to crash … if you’d like a change of scenery…”
“You sleep on the train tracks?”
“There haven’t been any trains for years now, so you don’t need to worry about the noise … It’s four-star accommodation, a hobo’s palace … Quiet, bucolic, spacious … Obviously, I don’t have a view like yours, but there are lots of wildflowers and you’re not so overlooked.”
“Are there a lot of you down there?”
“I’m offering you a golden opportunity, so don’t go turning your nose up at it … There used to be three of us, but the other two left. They were fed up with the cold winters, they decided to head down to Toulouse. By bus. They managed to save the money for the tickets, but I said to them, boys, I can’t see anyone letting you on a bus in that state, but I assume they caught the bus: they never came back. I’ve got the place to myself at the moment, like a king. I defend my territory. They’re highly coveted, the train tracks. You’re sheltered from the wind.”
Charles comes back to join them, throwing up his hands in a helpless gesture:
“She’s completely off her rocker, that girl … Vernon, I’m sorry to have to inform you that you’ve lost your peace and quiet: she’s made herself at home here. She’s not going to be leaving in a hurry.”
Laurent gets to his feet, zips up his jacket.
“Shall we go? Do you want to fetch your stuff, Vernon?”
“I don’t have any.”
Laurent gives an appreciative whistle:
“Wow, you’re really hard-core … You haven’t got a duvet? Even a toothbrush?”
“Nothing.”
“I bet you stink like a fucking baboon … For their sake, I hope the friends looking for you don’t plan on kissing you … Anyway, shall we?”
Slowly, they descend the steps that lead to the rue Manin. Halfway there, Charles has to stop. He steadies himself against the wall, gasping for breath, brings a hand up to his chest, then sits down on the steps.
“God almighty, we’re high up, my heart is going like crazy. This must be how it feels to be in Bogotá.”
The old man tugs on the thin navy-blue socks that clash horribly with his brand-new Nikes. They are the socks of an office drudge and Vernon wonders from what period of his life they hail. He tries to imagine a clean-cut Charles, hair neatly coiffed, racing for fear of being late for work, briefcase under one arm, but it is difficult to picture him as having once been a model employee. The old man mops his forehead and shakes his head.
“The pair of you have got sturdy sets of pins, you carry on without me,” he says, like a soldier asking to be left to die on the battlefield. Laurent and Vernon say they’ll wait, there’s no hurry, and an exasperated Charles shoos them away as he might a dog:
“Leeches, the pair of you … Go on, leave me to relax in peace.”
Laurent is about to protest, then changes his mind, grips Vernon by the elbow, and firmly steers him down the steps, whispering into his ear, “I’ve just worked out he wants to go back and talk to the crazy girl without us around … he’s like that, is Charles, sometimes he gets a bee in his bonnet.” Vernon nods. He knows Charles. Right now, he is probably buying a bag of oranges for the lunatic. Hopefully she won’t throw them at his face.
* * *
As they cross the rue Manin and go through the park gates, a steady drizzle seeps into their shoulders. Vernon thinks to himself, there’ll be no one there, whoever they are these people will have gone home, they won’t be waiting around for us. The thought is comforting rather than disappointing since he is unsure of the welcome that awaits him. Laurent strides ahead, Vernon follows behind. They walk along a steep lawn—the whole park is laid out in terraces, a confusion of greens and slightly different leaves, the sounds of the city have all but faded. Vernon is surprised by the quiet. His nostrils fill with the smell of damp earth, above his head trees he cannot name stretch out their branches, a reassuring arboreal guard of honor. They pass an artificial waterfall. On a level patch of ground, Chinese people, indifferent to the drizzle, are performing a strange slow-motion choreography—they look as though they are pushing away huge invisible clouds. Without a moment’s hesitation, Laurent steps into a bar, and Vernon warily trails after him. The noise in the enclosed space catches him unawares, as does the heat—a sensation he has completely forgotten. He recognizes some of the faces around the table as they turn to him, surprised, but not at all angry. It is at this point that it happens. Immediate and subtle. A sudden shift. The closest comparison from
his previous life might be a blunt of pure weed smoked on a deserted beach at 10:00 a.m. on an autumn day, after his first cup of coffee—the moment you decide to stand up, legs turn to cotton balls, there is a pleasant dizziness. You are physically present. You walk. Every now and then, your vision fades to black, the sense that reality has been replaced by a film set is palpable, but hangs by a slender thread. You are a helium-filled balloon. It catches him at the worst possible moment, but he has no choice. He barely has time to think—this is why if that crazy bitch hadn’t chased me away and these guys hadn’t come looking, I’d never have come down from the Butte. Up there, these feverish delusions felt like exhilarating swoops in a hang glider—they had no repercussions. He would tune out, happy to take the trip, in private communion with the Sacré Coeur. Here, things are different, his blankness causes concern: they’ll think that he has lost his mind. He can feel their worried glances. He has probably changed physically. Deteriorated in some way he has not yet noticed. All he can do is smile ingenuously as he shakes their hands, allows Émilie to put her arms around him. He clearly remembers all of these people. But he is elsewhere. He watches the scene, plays his part, yet cannot invest it with his actual presence. He hopes that it will pass, he wants to talk to them, he can see they are disappointed, that they are studying him, assuming that this is how he is now, permanently absent. Patrice has the sleeves of his red and black checked shirt rolled up to reveal his tattooed forearms, from his guileless expression, it is clear he is happy to see Vernon. He takes him by the shoulder and gestures to the seat next to him. Pamela Kant is wearing a long black coat, she obviously arrived only moments before they did because it is still soaking wet, her eyes are elegantly outlined with kohl and Vernon wonders what she is doing here. He knows there is something strange about the fact that she seems to know everyone, but he feels himself hurtle backward, like a tape being rewound, he wants to ask questions, but he lacks the coherence. He is incapable of uttering a single word. He lets himself drift away. Lydia Bazooka is watching him out of the corner of her eye, she raises a glass to him, and says a little too loudly: “Jesus, Vernon, it’s good to fucking see you!!!” He would like to talk to her, too, but all he can do is smile, creating an awkward atmosphere around the table. His mouth is full of clouds—he cannot make a sound. Xavier is calm: he places his hand on Vernon’s. He has changed. He has lost a lot of weight and seems overwhelmed by sadness. Vernon can see a grayish veil around him, as though a spider has spun a pale web over his skin. A flicker runs around the table, they look at each other, talk among themselves, leaning together, and Vernon realizes that the faint unease his drifting off has caused is not too serious—it weighs less than their joy at being together.
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