I had planned on a brief sail, three hours at most. We’d do a loop, come back, and drop anchor just off the beach. I had no fear of the coast; I knew the sea bottoms in that area by heart. All you had to do was to beware of fishermen, who often go out at night.
I warned Pierre. I told him he had to watch out for lights. He was happy to have some responsibilities. He said, “Yes, Captain Daddy,” and knelt down to keep an eye on the horizon. With a sharp movement of the tiller, I launched the boat into the night.
There was no wind. We moved along lazily; the motor made the hull vibrate. A whole lot of stars dotted the sky; you can see them so much better out there than you can in town.
Pierre didn’t talk—he was staring out to sea. I looked at his back, his little hood falling over his shoulders. The boom creaked as it swung. The compass mounted in the cockpit emitted a soft glow. Northwest. We could stay on that course. Sail straight ahead, without stopping, go somewhere else. It was tempting—to tell the truth, it always is, at least a little. After all, there wasn’t much holding me here. I hadn’t ever really thought about it. Maybe when Lucille died, I don’t remember.
I asked Pierre for his opinion. He was surprised by my question. He concentrated, and in spite of the darkness, I could see him furrow his brow. His fingers were curled against his lips. His mother would sometimes assume the same posture.
Finally, he answered no. He had his school friends, and grandpa and grandma too. He liked it fine here. All the same, he asked me if I’d keep on being a taxi driver if we moved. I laughed. He looked worried, so I promised him that yes, I’d still be a driver. In that case, he concluded, all right, we could go. I laughed again, tousling his hair.
We were far enough from the coast, so I cut the motor. The boat started to drift. It was pleasant, that sudden silence. Just the water sloshing against the hull, our voices, and the halyards striking the mast. I went below in search of a beer, and I also got some fruit juice for Pierre. When I came back up, he was gazing at me proudly. His arm was stretched out, his finger pointing to starboard. “There,” he said. “A light.”
A red glow was visible on the horizon. I smiled at him and handed over the juice. Then I started the motor again and deviated from our course a little to get farther away. The light was big, maybe a passing freighter. We continued to watch it for ten minutes; it didn’t grow any dimmer. On the contrary, I had the impression it was getting closer. The glow it gave off mounted higher and higher. This was some really big vessel.
I veered away at a right angle. Ninety degrees, just to get it over with. Since the light looked red, we had to be on its port side. All we had to do was to let it pass us.
“Daddy, it’s still getting bigger…”
I grumbled a bit. The light still shone red. I continued our rotation; the boat made a U-turn. Still that red. Incomprehensible.
“Daddy…”
“Be quiet, Pierre. Let me concentrate.”
I shoved the throttle forward, giving more gas. I didn’t understand. Some fool who hadn’t equipped his boat correctly? No, it was too big…I squinted. My heart began to beat faster.
Suddenly, a cloud passed in front of the light. I slapped my forehead. “What idiots…it’s the moon, Pierrot!”
“The moon?”
He peered at the light and then turned toward me, looking incredulous. My muscles relaxed. I burst out laughing.
“Daddy—are you sure?”
I signaled to him to come and sit on my lap. “Yes, I’m sure,” I said. “Look how it’s passing behind the clouds.”
“The moon can be red?”
“I guess we have to believe it can. We’ll ask about that tomorrow. For now, we’re going back in.”
The next day, we couldn’t find anyone who could give us an explanation. Years later, when he was in high school, Pierre came home from his classes and talked to me about a phenomenon called a lunar eclipse. I didn’t understand all the details. His eyes shone with excitement.
“I’m sure that’s what it was!”
It touched me to see how well he remembered that moment.
11
The first time, I strolled in on a whim. Ordinarily, I never went into bookstores, but with everything that was going on, what was ordinary had no importance anymore. It was just to get my bearings. I wanted to figure out what my son’s dreams might look like.
There were books everywhere. The silence was impressive—almost religious. I would observe the customers, their ways of examining the volumes: they handled them with respect. I didn’t dare imitate them—I was too afraid of being found out. Me, the know-nothing interloper. But nobody ever said a word to me.
As time passed, I started hanging out among the shelves. On the central table, an oak plank resting on two trestles, there were piles of books. The French ones on one side, the foreign ones on the other. Those must have been the masterpieces, displayed like that.
Sometimes I brushed the covers with my fingers. The boss had attached little notes to some of the volumes: MUST-READ. I thought about my kid. Surely, that was how he imagined his own book. All those pages, and his in the middle. Pierre Marès. Stuck in somewhere among the greats. That would still look pretty cool.
Before leaving, I’d always buy a book. So I could say I had. To give a little consistency to my project. I made no selection; I picked up the first book that lay under my hand. The old fellow at the cash register wasn’t very talkative. He contented himself with scanning the bar code and slipping my purchase into a bag. At bottom, maybe he knew. After all, it must have been plain to see: me and my little game, the perfect imposture.
In the beginning, I thought I’d give them to Pierre. But I didn’t have enough nerve. I always remained clear-headed, I never lost my grip. I never entered the store in the hopes of finding my son’s book there. No, I really didn’t. I never deceived myself. His book didn’t exist. It was a lie, a matter of cowardice and good intentions. Hell and its paving stones. I tried not to think about it too much. It was already everywhere I went. A layer of grime on my skin, impossible to wash off. It burned me every time I went to see Pierre. When he gave me that happy look, I caught fire.
Of course, I hated myself. Even though he was sick, Pierre clung to reality. There were so many people around him. His friends, the nurses, his doctors. Each of them doing what they could to keep him from going under. And me, I was the traitor. The one who was locking him up. Keeping him elsewhere, far from the world, already lost to reality. I’d slammed the door in his face. Farewell to the real world. I was building him a universe of sugar. The way you do for old folks, right before the lights go out. Partly out of pity, mostly because there’s a terror of staying whole all the way to the end. And my son, my own son, I was keeping his head underwater. I was crying out to him, telling him to look at the stars, not to struggle too much. To take advantage of the spectacle. “Stay down there, stay under, Pierre. It’s pretty. Listen to your dad.”
One evening, I was feeling totally emptied out. I went into the bookstore. I hadn’t been able to make Pierre talk. “He’s very tired,” the doctor had told me, confirming what I’d seen. I walked around mechanically, surrounded by books. I couldn’t see anything anymore. I didn’t even know what the hell I was doing there. My head ached so much that I closed my eyes. I felt my legs failing me, and I must have leaned on a stack of books that shifted under my weight. I spotted a stool and collapsed onto it.
That was where I was when I saw him.
Pierre. He was coming into the bookstore. I could read the excitement on his face. He was browsing among the shelves, scrutinizing them. He checked one twice. He was shaking his head. I tried to warn him, I cried out. But he didn’t understand me. “Forgive me,” I yelled. It was too late; my cry resounded in my head. He refused to believe it. He turned his back on me, and I wasn’t able to touch him. I couldn’t even move my head. He started browsin
g again; you could feel his frustration mounting. He picked up all the books, one by one, a process that seemed to take forever. As for me, I was paralyzed. I knew he was going to turn back around. Our eyes would meet, and the prospect terrified me.
“Do you need some information?”
It was the bookseller who snapped me out of it. It took me a little while to emerge. I wondered how long I’d been sitting on that stool. He was observing me with a worried expression. I thanked him and picked up a book at random. Once I was out on the street, I left the book on a bench.
I started to run. The air did me good. I needed to clear my head, to evacuate all the tension. I passed a couple who eyed me suspiciously. I didn’t give a damn about them. Besides, they were right. It was a flight. A fall. I was running too fast and my heart let me know it, crying out inside my chest.
I would have liked to go on, because I wasn’t thinking anymore. It was good to stop thought, to reflect on nothing. The pressure on my lungs, my whole body in service of the machine. There wasn’t the least bit of room left for the rest. I would have liked to keep running and never stop. In the end, it nearly suffocated me. I wobbled a little before I leaned against a wall. Things were coming back to me already.
I walked on. I didn’t want to go home. By turning so often, I’d managed to get lost. I came upon a park whose gate was locked. I climbed up and over it. There was a wooden bench. I lay down on it and closed my eyes.
12
The rain woke me up. The night was dark. I had trouble getting to my feet. It was not so much rain as drizzle, a low-flying cloud trapped in the city. I was drenched. I had no idea of the time. I took a quick look at my wrist, but my watch was gone.
I left the park. It wasn’t cold. I didn’t recognize anything anymore. I rubbed my cheeks; I wasn’t fully conscious yet. A cat passed through the shine of a streetlight. I’ve never liked cats, but maybe it was a dog. I’d only seen a shadow splitting the light. After skirting some buildings, I turned left. I could have turned right. It was a random choice.
The sounds grew progressively louder. First the music, because the bass notes carried farther. Then I heard the noise. A terrible vibration, dozens of voices coming from the same place. I followed the sound the way you go up a creek. I felt hypnotized, drawn on by the roaring tumult ahead of me.
I came out onto a square. The crowd was concentrated on the right-hand side. The epicenter was a bar. I tried to make out its name, but I couldn’t see very well anymore. There were two loudspeakers on the terrace. The decibels were running high; people shouted to make themselves heard. They brought their faces close together. Several were mechanically beating time. There was an air about the gathering: the people seemed more like a group than a bunch of strangers. I wondered if they all knew one another.
I elbowed my way to the bar. I wanted to warm my insides. I ordered rum, which I’d started to drink when I was in high school. On Thursday evenings, we’d go to Marius’s place. Always the same gang. The bar owner was the only one who didn’t give us any shit about our age. He liked to sit with us. I think he got bored during the day.
The bartender shoved a Ti’ Punch under my nose. I would have preferred pure rum, but I didn’t say anything. I hadn’t specified that, and in the end it made no difference. I drained the glass. The fiery liquid went down my throat—like a whiplash all the way to my stomach. Only the first drink is capable of producing such an effect. All the same, I asked for another one and held out a bill.
Toward the end of the fourth one, I felt it coming on. I went onto the terrace, glass in hand. The bass was still pounding, more intensely. The rain had stopped, and the concrete surfaces were already drying. I saw an empty chair and sat on it. The crowd looked even more compact than before. In the midst, people were dancing in little groups. I took the time to observe them all. Smiles everywhere. Frowns, too. Both appropriate. The women closed their eyes; the men, on the other hand, kept theirs fixed on their feet. In the past, I used to like to dance. Sure, I’d never been an ace. But with the help of a little alcohol, you forget your mediocrity. All you have to do is move a bit. “Don’t be so stiff,” Lucille would tell me. When she was in the mood, she was a hotshot dancer. I’d hold her tight against me, and the vibrations of her body would make my head spin.
I wondered how long it had been since then. I couldn’t even count the years. The rum was taking control. I felt it coursing through my veins. A hundred meters, from the stomach to the brain. I tried not to stumble as I steered myself onto the dance floor. I say “dance floor,” but that’s just for the image. It was a circle, an imaginary zone things converged on. Once I reached the center, I tried to shake myself to the beat. It was complicated with a glass in my hand, so I finished my drink in one gulp.
I spotted a girl. A brunette, around forty, light olive skin. She moved well and kept her eyes open. I saw her at once: eyes like I’d never encountered before. Or if I had, then only on a TV screen. She was focusing them on me, letting me admire their blue nuances. The sea was imprinted on her retinas. Gray, green, metallic reflections. I had the impression that she was laughing as she observed me. I’m sure I looked good and bewildered.
She stepped aside to light a cigarette. A smoker, obviously. Such a sensuous girl, it couldn’t have been otherwise. The rum shouted at me to go over and speak to her. I resisted for a second, and then everything exploded. I charged straight at her. She watched me coming as if I was doing the obvious thing.
“Hello.”
Her eyes were even more impressive up close. I made a superhuman effort to keep from falling into them. She grabbed my jacket lapel with her left hand. I think I flinched. She flicked away her cigarette.
“Let’s dance?”
I didn’t really hear her, there was too much noise. I read her lips at a distance of a few centimeters. Let’s dance. I let it happen. All I had to do was follow. She moved close to me. I felt her chest against my torso and closed my eyes. Slowly, I slipped an arm around her hips. Her head dropped onto my shoulder. Her breath scalded my neck. Then the bass got louder, more intense. She backed away slightly and went back into motion. She was a good dancer. I made an effort too. I didn’t want the music to end.
It started raining again; it took me a while to notice. By the time I did, it was coming down hard. People ran for shelter. She stayed where she was, clinging to me, her hair plastered against her face. I pressed my forehead to hers. The rain penetrated everywhere. They didn’t turn off the sound, or maybe they did, but I could still hear it. It came from far off, behind the curtain of water. She stepped back slowly, and I turned around in a circle. I had my eyes closed. The sky burst open again. Water struck the sidewalks violently. The whole world vibrated. I felt the caress of her fingers escaping. I took a few steps, spreading out my arms. I flailed the void.
Fear took hold of me. I wanted to call her, but I didn’t know her name. I started running. Lost again. One street, and then another. Impossible to get back to the square. I tried calling out, but my voice died in my throat. A shadow came up behind me and grew larger. I could feel it closing in. I looked back over my shoulder at the shadow and saw it gaining on me. I had to find the bar, the girl, the music. Hide myself with them. I turned behind a building: nothing there anymore. The shadow was already on my heels.
I heard it gather momentum, and I collapsed on the pavement.
13
I can’t sleep, and I’ve lost my appetite. That’s not very important. I must be a sorry sight—I detect too much pain on other people’s faces. I could puke, if allowed. I’m having a lot of trouble at the hospital. Every time I have to look at my son, it gets harder and harder. My betrayal is in his eyes. Fortunately, it’s not always a question of the book. Sometimes I get a hold of myself and we talk about this and that. As if nothing’s wrong.
Sometimes I feel strong. I have the impression that this could last.
Sometimes I lie to
myself too.
14
This morning I went to see Pierre a little earlier than usual. He was doing better. For a few days now, he’s been sleeping more comfortably and taking proper nourishment. We talked for a while, and then I read to him. He has trouble concentrating, so I don’t know if he grasped everything. All the same, I tried my best, and I think we did all right.
Around eleven o’clock, he started talking about his book. He told me the story for the umpteenth time. He said how happy he was that it was being published and asked if I thought it could be a success. “Will I see it, you think?” I felt my heart cracking, exploding into particles. No words would come out of my mouth. He’d asked his question too naturally. Without emotion.
I wasn’t up to it. He gave me a grim smile and said he was sorry. “Sure I’ll see it,” he said, shutting his eyes. Silence returned. I felt I was suffocating, so I left the room. I didn’t have the strength to kiss him.
I went to the coffee machine. I had to swallow something. To my annoyance, my leg was shaking under my pants. I wanted it to stop, and so I kicked the wall. I don’t know what got into me, but I kicked much too hard. My knee jammed, and pain stabbed me like an electric shock. I think I said, “What an asshole,” before I grabbed my leg and sat down.
“Is everything all right?”
Pierre’s oncologist was bending down and observing me with a surprised look on her face.
“Yes, yes,” I stammered.
“You’re trying to break the wall?” she asked. She seemed amused.
Strangely, the tension diminished. I started breathing again, and since I felt stupid, I smiled too. She placed herself in front of the machine and pressed a button. The LONG button, I think. That reminded me that I wanted coffee too.
She sat down next to me. I hadn’t expected that, but it did me good. I said nothing so as not to spoil the moment.
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