Low Heights

by Pascal Garnier

  ‘I’ve got an erection, for …! An erection and I’m ejaculating …’

  It was as though an old piston were starting up again inside his head. What had got this old locomotive of a body going? What could he have been dreaming about?

  ‘Monsieur, are you all right?’

  ‘Fine, Thérèse. I’ve overheated, just need a shower.’

  He ran it over his skin and found himself amazingly reinvigorated, as if the water gushing from the shower head were coming straight from the spring at Lourdes. While drying himself, he observed his body in the mirror. There were folds of skin on the bones of course, but he was still svelte and stood tall. He shrugged his shoulders at so much vanity, but flashed himself a smile anyway, before rolling his trousers and underpants into a ball in the laundry basket.

  While he was in his room getting changed, he asked himself the name of the little prostitute in Bangkok, the one he’d found so exciting. Natcharee! Every prostitute in Bangkok was called Natcharee. Maybe he’d been dreaming about her. Either way, it tended to prove that his memory was as intact as his sexual potency, and that was all that mattered. The monotony of a life lived on the margins of the world and its realities explained his earlier confusion over dates. He wouldn’t let himself be fooled again. The air flooding in through the open window of his room was scented with lavender and thyme. Above the Rocher du Caire a pair of vultures were majestically following the twists and turns of the rising warm air currents.

  ‘Thérèse, what are you doing?’

  ‘I was about to put a wash on.’

  ‘Can’t you put it off till later? What about going to watch the vultures at the Rocher?’

  ‘But … Of course, I’d love to.’

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘You’re wearing your Sunday clothes.’

  Once past the village of May, sitting atop a rocky peak, the road wound like a skein of wool between the cherry trees, their branches bowing under the weight of fruit. Monsieur Lavenant made Thérèse stop so he could pick some, which he presented to her with the same smile as for the earrings the evening before. The cherries were crammed with black sunshine and one of them, bursting between Thérèse’s teeth, made three red spots on her top.

  They had to leave the car a good fifteen minutes from the bird-watching spot. An official sign indicated the point beyond which the track was accessible only in a 4 x 4. They set off on foot, wearing hats to protect them from the sun, which was on home territory here. Other than the occasional tumbledown sheep fold and two or three stunted oak trees there was nowhere to seek shade. Monsieur Lavenant was wearing his binoculars round his neck and Thérèse had a bottle of Evian in her bag. The fields of lavender were crackling with insects. Several hundred metres beyond the point where the pair had set off at a marching pace, Monsieur Lavenant stopped. Large beads of sweat were forming on his forehead and there was a certain stiffness in his foot arch.

  The immensity of the sky seemed insufficient to fill the void which was making his lungs wheeze like a rusty accordion. Thérèse was already far ahead, driven by the pugnacity which never left her, no matter what she was doing. She turned round to see him sitting on a stone trying to get his breath back.

  ‘All right?’

  He nodded a ‘yes’ as no sound would come out of his parched lips. He took a few deep breaths of the burning air, bit the inside of his cheeks and then set off again. Thérèse had disappeared from sight now and for a split second he told himself he would never see her again, which made him speed up. He found her, bright red and out of breath, at the foot of the large wooden cross which dominated the cliff top. In a single gulp he drank half the bottle of water she held out to him.

  The raptors nested on the cliff face, so that from where they were sitting at the edge of the rock they could watch them take off a few metres below their feet. They were impressive creatures, weighing nearly ten kilos and with a wing span of almost three metres. As their weight meant they couldn’t propel themselves by flapping their wings, they would dive into the void with their wings almost still, and a few seconds later were only a tiny dark speck on the other side of the valley. Sometimes one of them flew so close above their heads that they could hear the wind whistling in its feathers. Since they ate only dead things, they were completely harmless, but their intimidating appearance – hooked beaks, fierce eyes and powerful talons – had led them to be hunted to extinction. Five or six years previously, a few pairs had been reintroduced to Les Baronnies massif. Some had readapted, others had not. The day after their release into the wild, one had been found on the roof of the baker’s van, and another on the back of a bench in the square at Rémuzat. But many had recovered the memory of their wings and today there were a good thirty of them. The dead ewes that shepherds left out for them more than supplied their needs. With the ability to spot a carcass at more than three thousand metres, they would swoop down on it, and a quarter of an hour later there would be only a pile of bones.

  Thérèse and Monsieur Lavenant were ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’, squabbling over the binoculars like a couple of children watching the graceful acrobatics of kites. How heavy, awkward and clumsy they felt next to these soaring creatures, the secret of whose aerial grace resided in their obliviousness of their bodies.

  As the sun grew lower, they heard distinct sounds rising from the valley floor – a dog barking, a moped engine, a child’s laugh – but it was impossible to pinpoint where they came from. They were seeing what the gods see, which is to say, nothing in particular. Thérèse shivered with the ancient fear which grips humans’ hearts at the end of the day.

  ‘Perhaps we ought to be thinking about getting back?’

  Monsieur Lavenant didn’t reply immediately. His profile was not unlike that of the wild vultures. He waved his hand as if brushing away a fly, and agreed, getting to his feet. A sudden gust made them teeter as they stood upright again, and Thérèse’s hat almost blew away. On the way back, which seemed unbelievably short compared to the outward path, they neither spoke nor looked at each other. Only their shadows, out in front, seemed to fall into step occasionally.

  ‘I really wonder why I make dessert for you, you never eat any of it. Strawberries like that, it’s a waste!’

  It was such a simple phrase, perfectly ordinary, and yet so full of affection that Monsieur Lavenant gave a faint smile. In his head the huge birds he’d been watching still soared. They’d had dinner outside, in the patch of garden bordering the path to the little wood. It was balmy. Pipistrelles flitted among the branches so quickly that their presence was detectable only from the merest vibration in the air, heavy with the scent of the limes. Monsieur Lavenant was smoking a cigarette, savouring each puff as if it were his last. Strictly speaking, aside from the picnic, the row with his neighbour, the wet patch on his trousers and the vultures in flight, you couldn’t say that anything out of the ordinary had happened in these past two days, and yet Monsieur Lavenant felt intensely alive, intoxicated by the sweet weariness of days lived to the full. Every detail took on its own particular significance; nothing was without some use – though what this new way of interpreting the everyday really meant, he could not say. He felt as if he’d come home after a long, long journey. It was like reading a book he’d had as a child, seeing an old film again, the subtle pleasure of conjugating the past in the present. Was it important to remember everything? The memory’s capacity to absorb has its limits and one day you have to become selective. ‘FREE! We will clear your attic, cellar or whole house …’ Who hadn’t dreamed of one day clearing the decks, of disappearing one fine morning or one filthy night with no baggage but the skin on his bones and the miserable handful of memories that hold it all together? Did he need all that junk one accumulates on the pretext that ‘it might come in useful some day’ and which, over time, rusts like so many saucepans? What should he keep from a day like today? The crash of the Tokyo stock market or the vultures’ imperturbable flight? The answer was obviou
s.

  The crunching of footsteps on the path made him jump. Two shapes appeared at the edge of the little wood, their pale garments creating an aura against the background of blue shadow. A short stout woman of indeterminate age, with eyes inordinately magnified by a pair of glasses with lenses as thick as jam jars, was approaching, holding by the hand a strange creature, a sort of human fingerling of a phosphorescent pallor, probably albino, who could nevertheless be identified as female by the dress she was wearing, which was made from the same beige and blue-sprigged fabric as the short lady’s.

  ‘Good evening, Monsieur.’

  ‘Good evening.’

  ‘What a beautiful evening, don’t you think?’

  ‘Very.’

  The lady’s face was unbelievably elastic. The smile she gave Monsieur Lavenant, despite the darkness, split her face from ear to ear like a gash to a watermelon. The impressive goggles sitting on her trumpet nose made her resemble an amphibian, the random result of a furtive coupling between an innocent young girl and a facetious toad. Other than the dress, the young girl accompanying her bore no family resemblance to her, except her strangeness. Even face on she seemed to be in profile, so thin and evanescent was her figure, shaped like a lengthy drip of candle wax.

  ‘After all the rain we’ve had, it’s good to have a breath of evening air.’

  ‘That’s true, it does you good.’

  The stump of a woman looked up at the sky and immediately her immense glasses trapped the moon. It had risen, almost full, and cast a disturbing light through a reddish halo. Some anaemic stars were pecking around it.

  ‘Might not last. We should enjoy it while we can, shouldn’t we?’

  ‘Tomorrow is another day.’

  ‘You mustn’t believe that, Monsieur. It’s just the same one beginning over and over again.’

  Monsieur Lavenant hadn’t expected his banal comment to arouse such strong feeling in the short lady. She had grabbed hold of the garden gate with both hands so vehemently that it looked as if she was going to uproot it and go off with it. Confronted by the rubbery mask looming towards him, glasses daubed in moonlight, he shrank into his chair.

  ‘You only live for a single day, Monsieur, just one! But it’s the most beautiful one. I wish you good evening, Monsieur. Farewell.’

  He saw them disappearing hand in hand at the corner of the road, leaving only a sort of echo of their presence. For a few seconds he wondered whether he might not have dreamed them, then went back indoors. Thérèse was just serving the lemon verbena tea.

  ‘Thérèse, have you already come across the two women I’ve been talking to?’

  ‘Which two women?’

  ‘Two out for a walk. One tall, and one small with huge glasses. They had identical dresses, beige with blue flowers …’

  ‘I wasn’t watching, I was doing the washing up. Why?’

  ‘No reason. You must have heard me talking to someone though?’

  ‘I confess I didn’t, with the tap running and the noise of the dishes. Is it important?’

  ‘No, we just exchanged a few words about the weather, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s quite usual to have a little after-dinner walk when the weather’s so fine. We ought to take advantage of it more often. Be careful, the tea’s boiling-hot.’

  Monsieur Lavenant was having difficulty concentrating on his book. He read the same sentence for the tenth time and it still made no more sense to him than if it had been in Chinese. He saw, running through the pages like a watermark, sometimes the frog woman’s face, sometimes that of the ectoplasm accompanying her. Uncertainty that they existed was bothering him like a wobbly tooth you wiggle with the tip of your tongue. He laid his book down open on his thigh and lit a cigarette, thinking to himself that it would take a lot more than a cup of lemon verbena tea to send him to sleep. Opposite him, wearing the cone of orangey light from the standard lamp as a hat, Thérèse sat, lips slightly parted, leafing through 1960s issues of Paris Match, which she must have dug out of the attic. There were trunks full of them, and also of Ciné Revue, Elle and other magazines Cécile had a liking for. An onlooker might have taken them for an old married couple. Had his wife not been dead, they would certainly have spent the evening in the same way. Cécile was beautiful, Thérèse was not, that was the only difference; that and the fact that today Cécile would be ten years older.

  ‘Is it good?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The magazine, is it good?’

  ‘Pfff … It’s funny, it reminds me of my childhood: Martine Carol, Gina Lollobrigida, the Algerian war, the Peugeot 403, Saint-Tropez … It passes the time.’

  ‘Are you bored here?’

  ‘No more than elsewhere. It comes with the job.’

  ‘Your work bores you?’

  ‘That’s not what I said. A little bit, sometimes, like everyone. That’s normal.’

  ‘I was never bored when I was working.’

  ‘But you had worries.’

  ‘True. But worries aren’t the same as boredom. With worries, you always find a way of working things out, whereas with boredom it’s another thing altogether.’

  ‘You mean it’s harder to work things out with yourself?’

  ‘Yes. Obviously, with other people it’s quite simple; they’re always in the wrong, so you can argue, but when you’re all alone, face to face with yourself in the mirror …’

  ‘I understand. Personally, I’m never bored by boredom. Listen, without boredom, no prisoner would ever think of digging a tunnel several kilometres long with a teaspoon in order to escape. There’d have been no Christopher Columbus discovering America. On a much smaller scale, how would I ever have left Colmar if I hadn’t been bored to death there?’

  This whole jumble of words descended on Monsieur Lavenant like a summer downpour. He would never have suspected Thérèse could hold that many. Everyone, this evening, seemed to know better than him.

  ‘Why don’t you speak to me like that more often?’

  ‘Because you don’t ask me to. Because it’s not very important, I suppose.’

  ‘I was wrong.’

  Maybe it was an effect of the light, but Thérèse was no longer quite Thérèse and Monsieur Lavenant was less and less Monsieur Lavenant. In the closeness of silence, each of them was shedding the faded trappings the years had gradually covered them in.

  ‘You know, my name is Édouard.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Ah … Perhaps you might call me Édouard instead of Monsieur.’

  ‘If you wish. That’s not a problem.’

  ‘Good. It’s easier, isn’t it? It seems a little … old-fashioned.’

  Thérèse locked her lavender eyes on his until he had to look away. He was no longer accustomed to such trials of strength. Generally it was other people who lowered their eyes in front of him. He had forgotten just how delicious it is to lose one’s head, to lay down one’s heavy rusted armour at the other’s feet. Wiping his hand over his face to get a grip on himself, between his fingers he caught a glimpse of Thérèse’s shoulder, her mouth and a lock of hair that lay across her brow. The desire rising in him could not be blamed on the lemon verbena tea.

  ‘Maybe we should go to bed.’

  ‘Together?’

  Édouard felt a shiver run through him from head to toe, a seismic shock he didn’t even try to contain.

  ‘I’m an old man, you know.’

  ‘You are a man and you need tenderness; I’m a woman, past my youth, and I need some too. I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me …’

  Édouard held her close while, sniffing, she took hold of the tray.

  ‘I’d be honoured, Thérèse, very honoured. Leave all that.’

  They exchanged an awkward kiss, trembling so much that their teeth knocked together, and that made them laugh.

  With his fingertips Monsieur Lavenant felt around for Thérèse’s body. Nothing was left of her but her imprint on the crumpled sheet and one hair f
orming an initial on the pillow. It had to be very early nonetheless, as dawn was only just breaking. Invisible birds were chattering in the trees. He pulled the cover back up over his shoulders because there was still a touch of the night’s chill in the air. He listened out but could hear no sound from either the bathroom or the kitchen. He was a little disappointed. He would have liked to surprise her sleeping. They hadn’t made love but the tenderness they’d felt falling asleep in each other’s arms was worth any number of orgasms. He was amazed that he didn’t feel guilty, like he had every time he’d slept with women other than his wife. It was because this was in no way comparable. It wasn’t about satisfying a sexual need, which in any case generally provided him with only mediocre satisfaction. He wasn’t sleepy any more. An excitement like that of a child on Christmas morning bounced him out of bed. He wanted coffee, bread and jam, and to throw himself headlong into any activity whatsoever. He wanted to live.

  Passing Thérèse’s room, he heard the bed squeak. This morning he would be the one to prepare the breakfast.

  Obviously, with only one arm, the whole business took some time and the results were somewhat haphazard. Thérèse appeared just as he swore at a stubborn jam-jar lid.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’

  ‘The damn lid’s stuck.’

  ‘Never mind. Give it here or you’ll do something silly.’

  Usually when he came downstairs in the morning, he would find Thérèse washed and dressed, and well into her day’s activities. Today she still bore the stigmata of sleep: ruffled hair, sticky eyelashes and pillow stripes scarifying her right cheek.