The Life to Come

by Michelle De Kretser

  As a little girl, Djamila had been in the habit of bouncing her ball against a wall in the courtyard. Céleste, going to and from the communal bins, would see her there on the coldest afternoons: jacketless, the wind putting colour into her beige cheeks. Even in summer, the courtyard gave off the chilly, ancient smell of stone. Djamila’s small, round arm swung tirelessly, her unwavering gaze was a glare. Then a man who lived on the first floor complained of the noise. After that the child was confined to the concierge’s lodge.

  When Djamila had left, Céleste checked her phone—nothing—and Sabine’s Facebook page. Then she looked at Bernard’s page, which was protected, so that all she could see was his profile picture and cover photo. The latter had been updated: it showed Bernard and Sabine, his arm around her shoulders, sitting behind glasses of wine. A child’s face was an unfocused smile in one corner.

  Madame Kateb’s latest offering was a slimy sort of soup. Here and there, pieces of zucchini formed a vegetable flotsam. Céleste took the container into her kitchen and saw that rain was flowing from the benchtop to the floor—she had forgotten to close the window. Cursing, moving a cloth in circles over the tiles, Céleste was peering at a terrace in Brittany. Sabine, Bernard, assorted members of Bernard’s family and the children were eating dinner. There was a tureen on the table, and bones. Bernard’s mother had prepared a couscous—the children had left chunks of underdone carrot on their plates. Lit by drunken candles, Sabine was describing a drama that had taken place at work. A gentleman, un monsieur très distingué, not a regular customer, had ordered a funeral tribute, a pillow made up of white roses. He paid cash and said no message was required. A few days later, a woman came to the shop. A floral pillow made up in this very shop—she held out the card that proved it—had been delivered to her husband’s funeral. She wanted the sender’s name. When Sabine said she didn’t know it, the woman cried that she had a right to be informed. To send a pillow—it was blatant! She demanded to know the bitch’s name! Here, Bernard’s mother gave a meaningful cough: Pas devant les enfants. Sabine moved smoothly into a story about her assistant’s new boyfriend. ‘He’s tighter than any Jew. You know what they say about Savoyards, always throwing money through the windows—they throw it inside from out!’ Everyone laughed. They sat back in their chairs, easygoing and full of food. Bernard caught his wife’s eye: later, he would glide about inside her.

  In the early days of their love, Sabine had presented Céleste with a flowering cactus. ‘This is you,’ she announced, handing over the pot with its stiff red bloom. The cactus would have looked well in a domed glass case, the centrepiece of a creepy Victorian collection. Céleste couldn’t bring herself to throw it away, so settled for keeping it on top of a cupboard in the kitchen. Over time she grew used to it. The glowering red flower died and was eventually replaced by another. Céleste addressed it now, addressing her fierce red self: You know you chose this freely. Like so much that is true, it was of no help at all.

  Pippa emailed Céleste from the Jura. She couldn’t get phone coverage and had to pay for wi-fi. It had been raining for three days—now hail was expected. The mountains were invisible, draped in mist. Pippa wrote, ‘I wanted France to be more beautiful than this.’ The weather had cleared briefly one afternoon, and then the mountains were topped with a sinister band of rock. Viewed from the corner of an eye, they seemed to rise and fall as if breathing. The local delicacy was a dish of mushrooms that were out of season. All the food was light brown and drowned in cream. ‘No one’s cooked like this in Australia since the last days of disco. Roger, the chef, expects us to call him Maître. Last night he got pissed and told us that his father is Belgian. His childhood was ruined in the effort to ward off the accent. There’s an ancient American woman here who tells Roger he is terrible—it means she’s in love with him, apparently. Her name is Miss Gertrude Sauer. Her grandparents emigrated from Germany. She wants to learn French cooking because in her family, at the end of a good meal, the old people would say, “We have eaten like God in France.”’ Pippa had added a PS: ‘Miss you!’

  Céleste told herself, That’s what you represent to Pippa: an afterthought.

  Pippa had a new automatic sign-off: ‘I acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of country throughout Australia and their continuing connection to land, culture and community. I pay my respects to Elders, past, present and future. Sent from my iPad.’

  Yvette said, ‘See this: you’ve written, It only has to be expressed to cease to be a secret. So clumsy!’

  ‘It ceases to be a secret as soon as it’s expressed,’ said Céleste, correcting the page.

  ‘Is this really the way you want to spend your life? It’s so second-hand. I really don’t understand why you want to live here. You should have stayed in Australia. You could have been a cleaner in a hospital. A noble life of labour.’

  ‘I’d rather be a cleaner for a mining company. Fly in, fly out. Dom says they clear twenty grand a month.’

  Her mother made that noise with her tongue.

  Pippa had a dinner party to celebrate her birthday. The other guests were an Australian couple who were over from London for a few days. Céleste arrived to find everyone looking at photos of famous French writers in a handsome book that was Pippa’s present from Kirsty and Will. Simone de Beauvoir, with an armful of newspapers, had just stepped out of a car. ‘This one’s my favourite,’ said Pippa, showing Céleste a small woman in a big chair behind a desk—she was laughing, face and body contorted. ‘Marguerite Duras,’ said Pippa, sounding the final ‘s’ in the writer’s name.

  ‘Have you read any Duras, Pip?’ asked Will. He left the last letter silent. ‘Some of it’s quite passable.’

  ‘Oh, is that how you say her name? I’ll never be able to speak French,’ said Pippa.

  ‘You were right, in fact,’ said Céleste. She smiled at Pippa. ‘It’s Duras.’

  Will dug into the white bean dip with a cracker. He studied a photo of Camus.

  Céleste had brought Pippa a vintage scarf patterned with playing cards and dice. ‘I love retro,’ said Pippa, tying the blue silk square around her neck. She was wearing the lampshade dress—how on earth had she squashed it into her suitcase? Her hair had grown and now curled about her ears. Her head no longer looked like a golfball, but nothing could help that dress. I would put her in a dress the colour of eggshells, thought Céleste. Bias cut, close-fitting, three-quarter sleeves—very simple. There would be touches of clear but not hard blue: a belt, perhaps, or a line of piping on the cuffs. She saw Pippa strolling ahead of her in the street: inexplicably, Pippa was now in a silky skirt and long boots. With each step, a stripe of flesh behind her knees showed, was hidden, showed.

  Pippa went into the kitchen, and Will followed. Kirsty stretched out her legs; her toes, strapped into red Birkenstocks, were dusty and straight. She asked polite questions that Céleste answered mechanically—she was listening to Will quiz Pippa about her novel.

  Kirsty began to describe the morning’s tourism. She and Will had walked up to Montmartre for the view and then kept going, choosing streets at random. On a boulevard lined with clothing stalls, Kirsty had felt like such a white girl. Within ten minutes of Sacré Cœur, the tourist city disappeared. ‘We came to railway lines, and everything looked desolate. It looked like London.’ Céleste grew distracted, gazing at Kirsty. There were hollows at her temples and under her cheekbones, making her face look dinted.

  Pippa served a lamb curry, a dish of spicy beans, coconut chutney and eggplant in mustard sauce. She said, ‘I really got into Indian cooking last year.’

  ‘See, that’s the great thing about globalisation,’ said Will. ‘You can get into Thai or Malaysian or Indian cuisine without ever having to know any Indians or Malaysians or Thais.’

  Will and Pippa had done the same creative writing course in Sydney, Céleste learned. Will worked in finance now but hadn’t given up on fiction. He had written a novel but was still perfecting it. ‘So many terrible no
vels get published and three months later they’ve disappeared forever. I don’t see the point of rushing into print.’ His manuscript was long and boldly experimental. ‘I’m going to insist on it being published loose-leaf, in a box. No pagination—it’s so authoritarian. Real literature interpellates the reader in active meaning-making. I mean, what’s the point of writing if you’re not going to push the game along?’

  People drank and chewed.

  ‘I’ve just bought your mate George’s new book, Pips,’ said Will, helping himself to more beans.

  ‘I’ll have to get around to reading him sometime,’ said Kirsty. She asked Pippa, ‘Do you like his books?’

  ‘They’re very intelligent.’

  Will turned to Céleste: ‘That means “No”. Intelligence is unAustralian.’

  After they had eaten, the inevitable lament about coffee began. ‘That was the best thing about being back home at Easter,’ said Will. ‘There’s nothing like being able to go into any cafe—even in the airport—and get a great latte.’

  ‘Did you really order lattes in Sydney?’

  Will’s thundery blue eyes turned on Pippa.

  ‘It’s just that the coffee scene’s changed since you left Australia,’ she went on. ‘Only people from the ’burbs have lattes now. You’re no one if you don’t ask for a flat white.’

  Kirsty told Céleste that she worked for an NGO that monitored human rights. Soon she would be going to Sri Lanka, where she would address members of the armed forces on why the use of torture should be banned.

  ‘How will that work?’ asked Céleste. ‘I mean, what do you say to people like that?’ She intoned robotically: ‘Torture is bad.’ And added, ‘If they don’t know that by now…’

  ‘The government’s invited us. So they must be interested in change.’

  ‘In foreign aid, more likely. Don’t Western governments tend to link that to favourable human rights reports?’

  ‘You can’t get anywhere without hope.’ Kirsty said, ‘I believe in the ethics of possibility.’

  In the days that followed, she often appeared to Céleste: such a white girl, calm as a queen in her dusty sandals. She stood at a lectern in a darkened room, addressing men whose medals gleamed like blades. Kirsty pressed a key on her laptop, but the image that flashed up on the screen belonged to Céleste’s past. It showed a hospital room in Perth. Yvette patted her bed, saying, ‘Sit.’ She informed a child in a school uniform, ‘Today I’m going to tell you why the police released your father.’ The air-conditioning unit shuddered on the wall. Then the soundtrack went silent, because that was all that Céleste could remember. She was thirteen years old. She loathed the bald yellow woman who had replaced her mother. The bald woman’s soundless voice went on and on, speaking French, which Céleste detested. Over the road from the hospital, a building was going up. Céleste watched the activities of men in orange hard hats. What happened if one of them needed to scratch his head?

  Years later, she would write to Roy, ‘Did Mum talk to you about my father when she was dying?’ But Roy couldn’t help. It was Céleste who knew and Céleste who had forgotten. There were days when it seemed straightforward: the police lost interest in her father because they had been informed of the Algerian demonstration. La police, pleine de malice. But why would Yvette, knowing that she was dying, return to that well-worn tune? Céleste answered herself: To stop me imagining worse. Worse meant her father telling his torturers what the Algerians had planned. This scenario was simply there when Céleste woke up in Paris one day, waiting like the blue stain that had spread in the washbasin from the base of the taps. It was absurd—the demonstration was a secret no Algerian would have shared with a Frenchman. Not even Karim? asked the tireless vigilante in Céleste’s brain. Karim who was self-important. Karim who wanted money and might have offered a secret in return. ‘Ils n’étaient pas copains,’ said Yvette, emphatically—why was she so insistent? What was certain was that someone had betrayed the Algerians. The police records of the protest and all that pertained to it remained classified; Céleste had checked.

  When she returned to live in Paris, Céleste had been accepted into a postgraduate degree in French literature. Enrolment at a university, which had required half an hour in Perth, took three weeks in France. During that time, Céleste waited in line outside a variety of offices to which prospective students were allowed entry at arbitrary, obscure and clashing hours. From each office, usually on a second or third visit, she collected a piece of paper or a stamp. At last, she had everything she needed. In the final office, she handed her dossier across a counter to a hunchback. He accepted it without returning her smile and checked through each page, unhurriedly ticking items on a list; his fingernails were rimmed in black. Satisfied at last that no document lacked its authorised triplicate, he transferred the contents of her folder to a large manila envelope. With practised grace, he tossed the envelope over his shoulder into the metallic yawn of a filing cabinet that contained dozens of identical, unmarked envelopes. That meant Céleste was enrolled.

  Whenever she thought of the police records, Céleste saw a basement the size of a principality in which streets of filing cabinets stuffed with plain manila envelopes were stacked ceiling high. One of the envelopes contained a sheet of paper that told the story of her father: it was stamped ‘Informant’ or ‘Fool’. If you held it up to the mirror, the stamp read ‘Collaborator’ or ‘Victim’. But the information could never be retrieved. Céleste studied the two images she owned of her father. In his wedding photograph, where he seemed to be smiling at neither his wife nor the photographer but at an invisible onlooker, his face was partly shaded by his hat. The second photo, taken on some momentous provincial occasion, was the one in which his head looked like a cup. What could photographs say? Their testimony was useless, mute.

  Céleste had once visited a soft-palmed hypnotist who recovered buried memories. Fragrant oil burned on his desk. When he told Céleste to picture herself descending a flight of steps, her pulse picked up. She listened, hyper-alert, to his lavender-scented evocations of grassy meadows and gentle, bath-warm streams. He ran Céleste’s credit card through his machine and informed her that she was an unsuitable subject. On her way home, she discovered that she had the answer to a translation problem which had teased her for weeks.

  Pippa was running a Facebook poll on whether people preferred their freekeh toasted or not.

  Céleste asked her mother, ‘Why do Australians go on so much about food?’

  ‘Because they live in a country of no importance.’

  Céleste texted Pippa, proposing a visit to the Rodin Museum. Matt was due in a couple of days. They would all have dinner together before Pippa and Matt left for Italy. But this would be Céleste and Pippa’s last outing together.

  It was early September, and the wind was sharpening itself on the edges of buildings in readiness for what was to come. When the sun put its head out, the day turned ruffled and golden, like Sabine’s hair in bed. Céleste was wearing a dark jacket with dropped sleeves that had belonged to Yvette before she married, and a round tweed hat. The homeless man at the bottom of her street hailed her from his bench. His heavy woollen coat, encrusted with dirt, must have once been expensive. When Céleste put her hand into her pocket for coins, he cried, ‘Go on, lady, get out your chequebook!’ His merry red eyes danced in his knotted face.

  Céleste had finally got around to starting George Meshaw’s novel. It described an average kind of man, married to a thorny sort of woman, who had run into difficulty at work. One of his co-workers, an Indian passed over for promotion, had accused him of racism. There was trouble at home, too: his daughter had failed her scholarship exams, and now money had to be found for her schooling. Her father was in favour of her attending the local high school, but her mother disagreed.

  Translation had taught Céleste that every book had an internal rhythm: energetic or languid, jittery or calm. That was its hum. The novel she was translating at present was arterial
blood: oxygenated, pumped out. It had something in common with George Meshaw’s sentences: metrical as marchers, they pushed Céleste forward. Meanwhile, the problems closing in on his protagonist were a weight, growing heavier with each paragraph, which pressed down on her chest.

  At the museum, Céleste waited beside an urn that held a ruthless topiary shape. All at once there was Pippa, the suddenness of her face. Her hair was in pieces from the wind. She wore a belted green coat and a red scarf—had she never seen a garden gnome? Her cheeks were icy under Céleste’s lips. Nodding at the urn, she said, ‘That belongs on a grave.’

  What had Céleste imagined? That Pippa would wail, I can’t believe I’m going away? She told Pippa, ‘You sound exactly like me,’ and led the way inside.

  The parquetry squeaked as they moved from one exhibit to another. Céleste lingered before a strange assemblage called L’Adieu: a woman’s marble head set on a rectangular plinth with two bony hands touching her mouth—the eyes were wide with fright. The museum was crowded with weekend visitors, and a couple came up beside Céleste—one of those couples that populate Paris, a man with silvery, swept-back hair, a worshipful, thin-wristed young woman. A cardigan in a docile colour was draped around her shoulders. Her hips, streamlined in cunningly cut linen, nevertheless promised the production of sturdy heirs in a selfless perpetuation of family and nation. Anyone could see that she would prepare a light, delicious savoury flan that evening. While trimming half a kilo of slender green beans—she had risen at dawn to haggle over them in a market—she would comment intelligently on the latest developments in the Middle East. After supper, it would be time to draft the next chapter of her doctoral thesis, write the footnotes for the man’s forthcoming book, put on a load of his washing and practise the pelvic floor exercises that maintained his sexual pleasure at an optimum.