A Life on Paper: Stories

by Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud

  With her free hand, she pointed at the slate roofs and the slanting, motionless masts of boats on the beach. Over there, under one of those roofs, she'd had a life, or a childhood, at least. Voices, smells, emotions connected her to one of those houses by a thread perhaps indestructible, or perhaps ready to be severed at last, this time for good.

  "Do you want to go down there?"

  "No. I know there are people I loved down there, but… I no longer know who they are. It's better that way. Walking, feeling the rain and wind on my face-this is enough. Help me."

  She weighed nothing. Her feet barely left prints in the wet sand. We covered about fifty yards. At one point I loosened my grip on her arm for a second, and I thought the wind was about to blow her away.

  "That's enough," she murmured. "That's good. Take me back. Please."

  We turned around. She curled back into the case. I put it in the car, and we went back to the house.

  During lunch, Delia insisted I accompany her that afternoon. She wanted to show me a cross she'd found by the wayside. Delia was interested in crosses, medieval wash houses, ancient sheep barns… As though there were something to see in the world. She implied that if I agreed to go out and catch a cold with her, she'd be grateful.

  She'd hung her raincoat by the door. I'd gulped down my coffee and, as we were about to head out, went up to the bedroom to find mine. I took the chance to check in on Gaud. She gave me one of those pitiful smiles that moved me so much.

  "Nothing can hurt me, you know, but that walk we took did me good," she whispered, as I was worried about how tired she seemed.

  "Rest up," I said.

  "Yes… Leave the lid open a little, please. Sometimes I feel like I'm suffocating."

  I studied her suspiciously.

  "Please! I won't do anything stupid. No more pranks."

  Did I believe her? I gave in to her request. When we got back from our walk, Delia and I found her almost completely consumed in the hearth. All that remained was a trace, in relief, of her body curled up on a bed of embers. I wanted to recover the eyes that divine glassmaker had given her, but I didn't have the heart. Delia took the poker from my hands. Digging through the embers, she found only two shapeless drops of glass she gave up on saving. She picked up a shovel instead and patted the reddish burial mound flat.

  Later, back in Paris, I remembered what the taxidermist had said when he gave me the certificate of authenticity. "Fire, theft, nothing's safe. These days, everything disappears or goes up in smoke. Make sure you're insured!" I'd followed his advice. Now I called in the insurance. I was reimbursed for Gaud in cash, and with that cash I bought our wedding rings: Delia's and my own.

  Lozere, Sept.-Oct. 1995

  Ecorcheville

  hen Orne heard that several automated firing squads had been set up around town, he was unimpressed. Of all the innovations constantly being introduced to the surroundings, how mane turned out to last? Of course certain amenities, like phone or photo booths, had established themselves by proving their usefulness. But how would the use of an automatic firing squad-one that you used yourself-ever catch on? Once the novelty had worn off, such an invention was doomed never to be more than a gimmick. Besides, from just what point would such contraptions break even and ensure returns? How many shootings would it take per month to pay the upkeep alone? Even though it was all in theory automatic and self-cleaning, someone had to pay workers to remove the bodies and gunsmiths to regulate and reload the weaponry. Orne had trouble seeing how an entrepreneur might make back his investment, cover his costs, and show any profit.

  Orne's predictions, pronounced on the terrace of the Cafe du Centre, in no way surprised his listeners. He was a known disbeliever and belittler. Not a bad sort, though, all things considered. The absence of any unforgivable defect in his personality, aside from a tendency to criticize, brought him, on the part of his acquaintances, a measured attachment more lukewarm than loving, but real. In his circle his skepticism was credited to his frustration. He was a man lucky neither in leisure nor love. Leisure-well, that was a manner of speaking. Orne never relaxed: he worked. And despite the lengths to which he went, his business languished. His glove shop had never managed to attract the refined clientele of his dreams. The dandies and damsels of Ecorcheville were faithful to Damien Letoile, perhaps because his competitor came from the class of which they themselves were part. Damien hailed from the very heart of one of Ecorcheville's oldest families, whose prosperity, born of the slave trade, had been further consolidated by the importation of poppies at a time when opium was sold by the seed at every apothecary's. In this gloved, hatted, and cravatted milieu, Damien was related to everyone. The men greeted him with a "Hallo, old sport;" and the women kissed both his cheeks upon entering his boutique. From a much more modest background, Orne did his best to sell gloves and ties to those whose parents had lived bare-handed, with unbuttoned collars, like his own. This accounted for fully half his bitterness.

  The other half had to do with women. He had long believed that what made them keep their distance was his way of being in the world. He was not all of a piece, simple and adaptable, as they expected a man to be. Reticence marked him, reservations plain as the nose on his face. To all appearances, women wanted men who were men the way women were women, with an almost animal innocence and authenticity akin to a gazelle's artlessness, a crocodile's candor. Whereas he had never managed to forget himself enough to feel wholly within his rights, a fact that lent almost all his acts, especially his amorous overtures, hints of haste and hesitation that most often led to disaster.

  The skewed relationship Orne was aware of entertaining with conventional reality wasn't the only cause of his failure. He was also ugly. Large eyes over a large nose that jutted out above a lipless mouth like an open razor wound in winter, the opposite of a lover's mouth, and all of it framed by two oversized, indelicately colored ears. To this was added an extremely elastic expressiveness that led him to underline the slightest proposition with a grimace, as though to reveal bad teeth that no one wanted to see. One wondered how he'd managed to age in such ignorance, but the fact was that after fifty years, Orne was just beginning to suspect he was ugly.

  Around the time the firing-squad machines made their appearance, Orne grew quite enamored of Philippina December. This splendid dollop of womanliness had remained single into her early forties. Nor had she been born to anything. When Orne fantasized about making a decisive connection with her, he considered the modest origins they shared a favorable sign. But although he managed his trade quite poorly, she conducted her career with verve. This pretty beanpole was generally held to be a lady of means. The fortunes of Ecorcheville had few secrets from the woman who saw them file through her office in her position as manager of the region's most prestigious banking institution.

  There they were, then, having an aperitif at the Cafe du Centre, Orne and Philippina and a few members of a small circle of singles, divorcees, and premature widowers. They dubbed themselves the Club of Available Hearts. They applied themselves to the task, in fact, of availing, unavailing, and availing themselves once more of one another in a private ronde as the years grayed the men's temples and altered the ovals of the women's faces. The only strangers to these intricate exchanges were Orne and Philippina: Orne because he no longer managed to couple up even temporarily, and Philippina, who'd only have had to say the word, because she refused to say it. Also present that evening were the speculator Macassar; Ludwig Propinquor, rich like all the Propinquors; the dolceola virtuoso Blandeuil, who'd founded a conservatory devoted to his chosen instrument in Ecorcheville; and for the ladies, Brunehilde Laurencais and Gina Mordor in addition to Philippina. Brunehilde was a beauty-reconditioned but warrantied, according to the somewhat tactless Macassar, who sponged off her between bouts at the Exchange. Gina Mordor, a peach-golden, velvety, perfumed-had occupied Orne's thoughts before Philippina. He'd gotten nothing from her, and was almost certain she'd mocked him behind his back the whole
time he'd wooed her.

  "You'll see: they'll all have forgotten it in a month;" he flung into the conversation after spitting out the stone from the olive in his cocktail. "If it's death you're after, you do it at home, without making a spectacle of yourself."

  "Who said anything about a spectacle?" said Propinquor, up in arms. "The rides are open round the clock. You can go and get yourself shot in the middle of the night, in the wee small hours of the morning… Not so dumb, really, now that I think about it."

  "I agree with Ludwig," Philippina cut in. "The designers of these machines must have been counting on a sudden loss of self-control, anguished midnight urges, early morning suicidal impulses-"

  "Really, Philippina, have you ever entertained such thoughts?" ventured Orne in what he hoped was an affectionate tone.

  "Not personally, no," she retorted, "but it could happen to other people, and such impulses can't always be satisfied when they arise. Even if you don't have a shotgun, a rope, or a sufficient quantity of sleeping pills on hand, you almost always have some cash or a credit card. And these machines take both forms of payment. They fill a real need. With the basics settled, all that's left is adapting to demand: price, availability, selection."

  "Perhaps that's where the shoe pinches-in the, um, yes, what you said! Being shot twelve times is a bit harsh, don't you think?" murmured Gina Mordor, trailing her fingertips over the sensitive skin of her crossed arms.

  "Twelve? Is it really twelve?" asked Blandeuil.

  "It's a la carte," Orne replied. "Like oysters on the half shell: a dozen or half a dozen. There's even a little round of just three. Of course, the price varies accordingly."

  "I hope they haven't forgotten the coup degrdce;" rasped Macassar.

  "Laugh if you want, but according to the piece by Lupus in the Rumor, there is indeed a coup de grdce."

  Propinquor checked his watch with a worried eye. Homini Lupus, Ecorcheville's finest scribe, had promised to join them for dinner. "What's he up to? The owner of the Murky Maw will give our table away if we're too late."

  "He knows where it is," said Macassar.

  He was hungry, and didn't care much for Homini Lupus, whom he suspected of trying to sway Brunehilde into investing in the newspaper.

  The Murky Maw had opened not long ago. It was just as good as, and less expensive than, Chez Pecunious, where its young chef had gotten his start. Orne managed to seat himself next to Philippina. Despite his age, he still never knew whether it was better to sit beside or across from someone you wished well, and from whom you hoped for the same in return. Doubtful that he made for a very inviting sight, he rallied to the solution of sitting at her side. He had reason to congratulate himself on his decision, for dinner went by like a dream in the nearness and immediacy of Philippina's bare shoulders and decollete. Orne was one of those men, to be both greatly pitied and condemned, who couldn't help believing that a woman who smiled while speaking to them was also romantically interested. Philippina didn't ordinarily smile all the time, but that night she was in high spirits, and so she smiled-at Orne, as at the champagne and the lights, the langoustines and the chablis, at the waiter, at Ludwig, at the sweetbread, at Gina, at the profiteroles… Homini Lupus never joined them; Macassar was secretly pleased. He was suffering losses and would have to seduce Brunehilde for the umpteenth time. Was she taken in? It remained a mystery. Gina pined away. She had always dreamed of an affair with a man like Propinquor. Upon his death, her husband had left her with a pretty stipend, but Ludwig was something else entirely: real money, concentrated, enriched the way one spoke of enriched uranium. She would have liked, much as fans stroke a boxer's biceps or a biker's calves, to press herself against that chest and feel his portfolio beating through his vest. Alas! Respectable women bored Ludwig. It was commonly known that he liked easy women. He paid Gina no mind, despite the licentious airs she tried to put on.

  Orne deluded himself with hope. He imagined his dealings were going well because Philippina had smiled at him. He contemplated the best way to bring up, in an aside, the offer of a drink for just the two of them, to finish off the evening. Suddenly, a plump, fortyish stranger, olive-skinned and hook-nosed, with black curly hair and gleam in her eye, appeared at the table. A large gray parrot clung to a wooden perch set in a leather epaulette stitched to her gypsy dress. Frowning, Ludwig Propinquor looked about for the maitre d', but the parrot put his suspicions to rest with an amusing stunt. Not content simply to hail the guests one by one, telling men from women without fail, it called upon the former as witness to the latter's charms. The most marvelous part of the act was the aptness of the bird's compliments: it praised Gina's carnation, Philippina's decolletage, and Brunehilde's tresses. In a matter of moments, it had won over the table.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," said the mistress of their new feathered friend, "my parrot can speak like you and I, but this is not the only gift God has given him."

  She paused. Orne took advantage of the silence to sally forth with a remark he hoped would make Philippina laugh. Oh, Philippina's laugh, that brash workaday guffaw!

  "Let me guess-it reads tarot cards?"

  His neighbor's reaction filled Orne with delight. She opened her mouth, that pink grotto where frolicked the plump manatee of her tongue, and out came the laugh he'd been waiting for.

  "Yes!" The gypsy pointed Orne's way an index finger whose sharp and tapered nail could, he thought, have enucleated rabbit or man with equal ease.

  "Yes!" she repeated. "You've guessed it, sir, except that this bird has no need of cards to tell the future. Have you ever asked yourself how long you've left to live? Legends from my native land have it that our hearts know and sometimes warn us in whispers that our minds refuse to heed. Ask the question and my parrot will read the answer in your eves.

  "Is it expensive?" asked Blandeuil.

  "Next to nothing. Consider that if the date proves distant, this knowledge will either allow you to go on living more peacefully and happily than ever before-or, on the contrary, to take all the necessary measures. And yet such precious information will cost you almost nothing, for you can ask the bird three questions for the modest sum of one hundred francs each time."

  "You mean I'll have to fork over a hundred francs a question?" Macassar asked.

  "Exactly," the gypsy replied. "But whether the first answer frightens, upsets, or fully reassures you, nothing obliges you to go on, and you'll only have paid a hundred francs."

  Ludwig Propinquor had come by the reputation of a freethinker, which he was fond of upholding. He pulled a roll of bills from his pocket and counted three out on the table. "By God, a Propinquor fears neither death nor spending. Here are your three hundred francs, all at once."

  He turned to the parrot. "Well, my little pullet, how much time have I left to live?"

  "Pardon me, sir," said the gypsy, "but that's not how to go about it. You must say, for example, `Handsome bird, have I more than twentyfive years left to live?' And he will answer yes or no. If you want to know more, ask him a second question, framed in the same manner: `Handsome bird, have I more than or just this many years left to live?"'

  "I get it," Propinquor said. "So be it! Let's see: I'm thirty-nine; I belong to a family generally blessed with longevity. `Handsome bird, have I more than fifty years left to live?"' he asked, imitating the voice and burlesque mugging of Louis de Funds.

  Impassive, the parrot waited for the merriment to die down before pronouncing its verdict.

  "Yes!" it said at last, with conviction, before turning its head to preen itself.

  Ludwig beamed at the applause. With a lordly flourish, he proffered the gypsy three bills. "I'm satisfied with my half century; keep the change!"

  "The gentleman knows how to live in style! It's only fair that he should have a long time to do so! Who's next?" asked the woman, tucking the bills away. "Who will delve into Fate's plans?"

  Around the table there were light coughs and sidelong glances. Doubtless some trick allowed t
he gypsy to control the parrot's answers… Ventriloquism, perhaps? Yet the illusion was so convincing it intimidated. There was a moment of uncertainty, almost discomfort. Then in spite of himself-so to speak-Orne jumped in.

  " " Me!

  He dug out his wallet and laid a hundred-franc bill on the table. "I… well… Handsome bird-"

  He would have liked to shine, all the more so because he felt Philippina's gaze upon him, but he knew himself to be pitiful at impressions. If he couldn't be funny, he could at least be nervy or brave-or seem brave, since it was all a trick anyway. Of course the parrot had no connection with the stars above. It was nothing but a gray bird with a big beak and big round eyes. It answered whatever it was ordered to by the device hidden in the perch and shoulder pad, operated by its mistress.

  "Handsome bird, tell me: have I more than a year left to live?"

  No.

  "You're not going to believe that nonsense? It's a trick, of course. That gypsy just wanted to have a laugh at your expense."

  "I'm sure you're right, but it really rattled me. I'm too impressionable, too sensitive… Less than a week, according to that stupid creature. What if it's right?"

  Orne swayed as he spoke. It could hardly have been called a binge, but all the same, it'd taken him several Irish Coffees to recover. The darkness of the street hid Philippina's irritated expression. Leaving the restaurant, she hadn't slipped away quickly enough, and now she could no longer manage to rid herself of him.

  "If it's true," she snapped, "if you die this week, it'll be pure coincidence."

  "You really know how to cheer a guy up!" Orne said.

  "But why did you keep pushing on? From a psychological standpoint, less than a year feels better than less than a week."

  Orne nodded apologetically. To the three questions he'd asked" Have I more than a year, a month, a week left to live?" — the parrot had answered no three times over. The gypsy had pocketed his three hundred francs, then scarpered off with her parrot on her shoulder.