Low Heights

by Pascal Garnier

‘For a mirror, one could do better. He’s pathetic, a failure. And anyway, why are you interfering in the first place? What gives you the right to judge me?’

  ‘I’m not judging you, I feel sorry for you. He may be a failure, as you say, but he’s young, he still has his chances, while you …’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘You must have made a mess of things in your life in order to have become what you are. Too bad. It’s a waste.’

  Thérèse turned on her heel and disappeared. Monsieur Lavenant felt an enormous weight descend on his shoulders. He was short of air like newborns who suffocate between two sobs. Anger and confusion created uncontrollable turbulence in his head. He felt like a boxer alone in a ring with no one to fight but himself. He looked around for something to break – it didn’t matter what. He was about to grab the lamp on the little desk when he caught sight of the letter beginning ‘My dear Thérèse …’ All that emptiness, all that blank space that followed made him dizzy, forcing him to sit down. He couldn’t take his eyes off the pure white page splashed with light from the lamp. Automatically, his right hand took hold of the pen: ‘Well, yes, I have been a father for two days. I have a child but he is an orphan …’

  When Thérèse and Jean-Baptiste came back they found him asleep, forehead resting on the desk, and the page completely filled with his small handwriting.

  My dear Thérèse …

  Well, yes, I have been a father for two days. I have a child but he is an orphan. It’s rather unusual … but that’s how it is. It has had the same effect on me as learning of my own death. He looks like me, it appears; personally I don’t see it – he’s much too young and I wouldn’t wish that on him anyway. What would the world do with another Édouard Lavenant?

  You know how old I am, my dear Thérèse. Who knows better than you my physical and mental decrepitude? I’m a wreck, aren’t I? You may understand what it’s like for me to feel this old wrinkled prune of a heart beat again in my hollow chest. I’m afraid of this new life; it’s as though I had to start everything again from the beginning, question everything again, tear down the citadel of certainties in which I have taken refuge for so long. What an irony of fate to see the past resurface just as my memory is emptying like a basin of stale water. Thanks to you, I was gradually learning to accept this state of affairs serenely, aspiring to nothing more now than to live hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second. Old people, like lovers, are alone in the world, which is to say, profoundly egotistical. They need to be understood, they are fragile; with the slightest draught their bones shatter like glass. Everything is too strong for them, the cold, the heat; they protect themselves from life while they wait for death.

  And then suddenly this vision of youth standing before me like a phantom … Recognising this son meant looking myself in the face, and that is something which, through cowardice, I have always refused to do. With all the strength I have left I have fought against this unfamiliar emotion which has gripped me since Jean-Baptiste ’s arrival. Everything for which I reproached him was really addressed to myself. Now I surrender. I lower the arm which I raised against him and offer him my hand. I don’t care what he may or may not have done, good or bad. Jean-Baptiste was born two days ago and that is all that matters. And in any case which of us has greater need of the other?

  My dear Thérèse, will you help me in this task by assuming the place which falls to you at the core of this odd family? I wish it with all my heart.

  Yours, Édouard

  Jean-Baptiste handed the letter to Thérèse without meeting her gaze. The sheet was trembling in his hand. Thérèse folded it up carefully and slipped it into her pocket. After putting Monsieur Lavenant to bed they had each gone back to their own room but, unable to sleep, had met again in the early hours in the kitchen, where the remnants of night still stagnated.

  ‘A little coffee?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  It was a day like any other except that it seemed to be setting in for eternity. Jean-Baptiste tilted his head back and gave his neck a rub.

  ‘I think I’ll go for a walk. I need to stretch my legs.’

  When he had gone out, Thérèse set about removing all traces of the evening before, emptying the ashtrays, washing up, cleaning the floor, exorcism by housework. She felt no tiredness; floor cloth, broom and duster flew in her hands and her feet scarcely touched the floor. She made a mental note that the walls could do with a good lick of paint and it would be nice to change the sun-bleached curtains in the living room. Yellow perhaps, that would be more cheerful. Then in a short pause she dreamed of the little blue dress she had thought about buying on her last trip to the market. For lunch she would make a Swiss chard gratin, yes, a nice chard gratin with béchamel sauce. Édouard was wild about it. A mouse moving along the skirting board stopped just opposite her, staring at her with its little round eyes. Thérèse just shook her duster and the creature vanished into a tiny hole behind the sink.

  Édouard had been awake for some time but couldn’t manage to drag himself out of bed. Or rather he didn’t want to. He didn’t regret the letter he had written but dreaded coming face to face with Thérèse and Jean-Baptiste, which was unavoidable. Never had he felt this exposed, this unprotected; so much so that he thought he wouldn’t ever get up, speak, eat or laugh again. The effort he’d had to put into writing those few sentences had drained him of all substance. Opening his eyes, he had been amazed that he was still alive. It was rather like a failed suicide. While he knew that this unpleasant sense of vulnerability was only the result of his wounded pride, he had enough of it left to refuse a complete surrender. His last trump cards lay in his age and the precariousness of his mental health. That was why he had let himself be carried like a parcel the previous evening when he could perfectly well have gone upstairs to bed on his own. After what he considered an exemplary mea culpa, the least they could do was be concerned about his condition, cosset him, do him justice and homage. Otherwise, of what possible use was redemption?

  But his overfull bladder compelled him to get up, slip on his dressing gown and make a rush for the toilet. No sooner had he got back into bed than there was a knock on the door and, without waiting for a reply, Thérèse appeared with the breakfast tray. The beatific smile on her face exasperated him in the extreme.

  ‘I heard you going to the toilet and thought you’d like to have your breakfast in bed.’

  His only answer was to turn his face to the wall.

  ‘It’s a fine day, a little wind but the weather’s good. Shall I open the shutters? All right, I’ll leave you then. Have you remembered we were going to see the vultures at the Rocher du Caire? The weather’s ideal; it would be good to be there by about eleven. Édouard, are you listening to me? Édouard? Stop being so childish. No one’s cross with you, quite the reverse. Don’t spoil everything. Jean-Baptiste himself fetched the croissants; they’re freshly baked. We ’ll wait for you. It’s only half past nine, take your time. I’m so proud of you. What you did was very brave, worthy of a true father.’

  Left on his own, Édouard pushed back the covers and punched open the shutters with his fist. The daylight was like a pail of water full in the face. ‘It was very brave, worthy of a true father … I’ll say!’ He wolfed down both croissants, drank his coffee in one go, showered and took an absolute age to get dressed, as if he were going out on a date. When he appeared before Thérèse and Jean-Baptiste he was wearing a pearl-grey pinstripe suit, a soft panama hat and was wreathed in clouds of vetiver.

  ‘Well, what are we waiting for?’

  This theatrical entrance left the other two speechless. All he needed now was a cane, which he naturally found in the umbrella stand, a metal-tipped walking stick with a handle shaped like a bulldog. He twirled it a few times, as if trying out the balance of a sword, then leaned on it, legs crossed and arching his eyebrows. He wasn’t lacking in style but his bad night had given him a waxy complexion. He was like a waxwork from the Musée Grevin on a day off.<
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  ‘Well then, are we off?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Édouard refused to get into the front of the car. ‘At my age one sits in the back, leaving the risks to those with their whole lives ahead of them.’ Thérèse drove carefully. Édouard talked constantly, about everything and nothing, like those who are uncomfortable with silence. It was only once they’d parked the car at the end of the little path and gone a hundred metres or so that the verbal diarrhoea stopped for lack of breath. Thérèse went in front, and Jean-Baptiste made clumsy attempts to match his stride to his father’s.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Of course I’m all right!’

  ‘You can lean on my arm if you like.’

  ‘I have more trust in my stick. I’m fine I tell you, son.’

  ‘Can I call you Papa?’

  ‘Might as well. Tell me, what are you good at?’

  ‘Well, er … not much. I studied accountancy.’

  ‘And we’ve seen where that got you. Haven’t you got a passion for something … I don’t know, model-making, travel, watercolours?’

  ‘I studied astrology in prison. I know how to do a birth chart.’

  ‘That’s a lot of good to us! An astrologer!’

  ‘I’m not as stupid as all that, I’m a fast learner. Look.’

  Jean-Baptiste stopped, stuck two fingers in his mouth and filled his lungs. He produced such a piercing whistle that a long way ahead, even with the wind against him, Thérèse turned round.

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘I practised this morning. With the smoke rings I’m not quite there yet.’

  ‘A whistling astrologer … It’s a start. Go on, give me your arm and take my stick – it’s more of a nuisance to me.’

  Thérèse had arrived at the top well before them. She had always been proud of her legs, not for their shapeliness but because they were strong and reliable, like a team of Percheron horses. They had never let her down. Leaning against the big wooden cross, shading her eyes with one hand, she followed the slow progress of father and son, arm in arm, on the path. From time to time they would pause. Édouard was holding his hat on and would nod his head as if affirming something. Jean-Baptiste signalled his agreement in the same way. Without knowing what they were talking about she sensed the two of them were getting along extremely well. Her heart was pounding in her chest, less from the physical effort than because she was certain she had finally attained the happiness she had been waiting for all her life. She smiled as the wind played around her like a young dog, blowing her hair back onto her cheeks and forcing her to hold her skirt down with one hand. The wood of the cross vibrated at her back. She turned round, eyes filled with tears: ‘Make this last for ever …’

  ‘Something wrong, Thérèse? Do you feel dizzy?’

  With their jacket tails flapping around them, the two men looked like birds about to take flight.

  ‘No, it’s the wind.’

  ‘It’s mighty strong, that’s for sure. Oh, Jean-Baptiste, look, there they are!’

  Two vultures launched themselves a few metres away, regal, their outspread wings sweeping through space, eyes fixed, hooked beaks parting the sky like the prow of a boat. Three others followed, as if from nowhere, scratching cabbalistic signs on the azure expanse. Jean-Baptiste spread out his arms, facing into the wind, leaning at a 45-degree angle, mouth open, eyes closed.

  ‘I spent hours staring at the window of my cell. “All that blue for nothing,” I’d think. Eventually I no longer saw the wire netting, the bars … For a moment I was free.’

  The wind had gone mad, intoxicated by the birds. It was making them draw incredible arabesques as if it wanted to prove to us poor earthbound creatures the eternal supremacy of the void.

  ‘Hey, my hat!’

  The white panama spun on the cliff edge and lodged in the branches of a bush lower down. Jean-Baptiste rushed over.

  ‘Leave it, Jean-Baptiste, it’s too windy – let it go!’

  ‘It’s not too far; I can reach.’

  Thérèse and Édouard clutched each other. Pressed against the rock, clinging onto the stump of a thorny bush with one hand, Jean-Baptiste inched his other arm towards the hat. He finally managed to catch the brim between two fingers, and looked up at Thérèse and Édouard with a radiant smile.

  ‘Got it!’

  At that moment the root gave way. His smile froze and an astonished expression flicked his eyes wide open. Jean-Baptiste toppled backwards, hat in hand, like a music-hall entertainer taking his bows. His body plummeted some hundred metres onto a vulture ’s eyrie, from which the terrified female flew up with the shrillest of cries. Thérèse fell to her knees, arms hanging by her sides. Her lips were moving but no sound came out. The raptors were wheeling, undecided, up above the corpse which the sky had delivered to their door.

  ‘It’s not right, leaving him up there.’

  ‘Why? Would you prefer it if he turned into a sack of maggots six feet underground?’

  ‘I’m not saying that, but it’s not Christian.’

  ‘Big deal! In many countries no one would be shocked. It’s clean, useful and spiritually impeccable.’

  ‘Don’t you feel any sorrow, Édouard?’

  ‘What difference does it make what I feel? It’s not me I’m thinking of but him. All his life he tried to take off, but, maybe because he didn’t spread his wings wide enough, he never could. A few brief forays outside his feathered nest, stolen hopes, nothing more. Now he’s soaring, he’s in every one of those birds churning the sky. I’m certain that at last he feels at home. I’d rather think of Jean-Baptiste as I watch them wheeling freely in the boundless sky than when I’m staring at an icy marble slab. Besides, I would never have gone there, I’ve got a horror of graveyards – they smell of rotting geraniums and you get dodgy people there.’

  ‘Well, personally I’ll never be able to look at the creatures ever again. And you’ll be bringing trouble to your door; it’s against the law not to declare someone’s death! You can be sure that sooner or later his body will be found … What’s left of him, rather – his clothes, watch, papers … They’ll suspect you of killing him, because no reasonable person would act the way you are. We ’ve got to go to the police station; there ’s still time.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘I’m absolutely sure of it. Trust me, Édouard.’

  Édouard had to admit that Thérèse was right, but he balked at the chore. They were going to have to explain the inexplicable, and he felt that was beyond him. He wasn’t afraid, it was quite simply a nuisance.

  ‘So we’ll go then?’

  ‘Purely to please you.’

  The gendarmerie was no bigger than a family-size box of matches, covered in ochre rendering and topped by a dishcloth of a flag in mauve, beige and pink. The two gendarmes manning it were fine, but seemingly as deaf as each other; everything had to be repeated three or four times. Out of cowardice, Édouard had opted to play the senile old man, and it was Thérèse who answered the questions. The typewriter didn’t work very well and there was a smell of sweat and stale cigarettes.

  ‘But why wait so long before coming to make your statement?’

  ‘Monsieur Lavenant felt unwell. I had to attend to him.’

  ‘It’s five o’clock already. My men are going to have difficulty recovering the body … We ’ll come and pick you up in the morning for the identification.’

  From trying not to hear anything, Édouard had a buzzing in his ears when they left, as if on a plane coming in to land after a long flight. They walked home. As they passed the bakery, Thérèse stopped to buy bread. On the glass door was a notice announcing a Mass on Saturday at 10 a.m. in memory of little Ange Spitallieri who had been killed in a tricycle accident.

  They had dinner early, barely touching their soup and exchanging no more than two or three words. It was still light when they went up to bed, exhausted but sure they wouldn’t be able to fall asleep any time soon. After tossin
g and turning a thousand times, Édouard got up and opened the window wide. The dark spread like an ink stain in the room.

  ‘What does it all mean, all this dark, all this time?’

  The quick padded steps of a cat on the tiles answered him, only to be snatched away again by the thick, echoless silence.

  ‘Édouard? Who are you talking to?’

  ‘Who d’you think I’d be talking to? Nobody.’

  He came back and stretched out next to her, shivering, incapable of formulating the slightest thought, not that he had any.

  ‘Can you hear, Thérèse?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘All this nothing, this emptiness surrounding us … I think we’ve been forgotten. Not a breath of wind, not a cat miaowing, not a rustling in the leaves … People have abandoned the world; there ’s only us left.’

  ‘I can hear your heart beating.’

  ‘It’s just habit. It’s striking its anvil like an old workman who doesn’t know how to do anything else.’

  ‘And my heart, can you hear it?’

  ‘Yes, it’s answering mine. It doesn’t know why it’s beating either. It’s beating because it’s been told to beat. Thérèse, will you suck me off?’

  Thérèse gave a start beneath the sheet, a sort of gagging, but her hand gripped Édouard’s shoulder more tightly.

  ‘I’m sorry, Édouard. I don’t think I can. I’ve never done it. It’s not that it disgusts me, it’s just that … I wouldn’t know how to …’

  ‘Don’t apologise, I understand. To tell you the truth I don’t really feel like it. I can’t get to sleep so I just thought that maybe …’

  ‘I can masturbate you if you want? I’ve already done that, to a man in the hospital. He had only a short time to live. The two of us struggled for quite a while. He didn’t get there. I was doing my best though. No doubt I’m not cut out for that. He’d been very badly burned and it was the only part of his body that had been spared. He stroked my hair and, beneath the bandages covering his face, he smiled at me. He died two days later.’