Low Heights

by Pascal Garnier

  ‘Form is limitation, poor old Jean, form is imitation! Vanity, nothing more! Outlines are confines, the sky has no angles! The body is unstable, that’s why it’s survived!’

  Gripped by a frenzy worthy of Bernard Palissy burning his furniture as his wife looked on in terror, Édouard gave three or four other paintings the same treatment, before Thérèse arrived.

  ‘What are you doing, all covered in paint? You’re behaving like a madman!’

  ‘Look, Thérèse, look! That’s astonished you, eh?’

  ‘That doesn’t look like anything, all those daubings.’

  ‘Exactly! Exactly.’

  ‘You really have no respect for anything …’

  ‘But you don’t understand. It’s the opposite – I’m carrying on his work, going where he was never able to go because he was so trammelled by his knowledge … I’m un-teaching him, that’s it … Un-teaching him!’

  ‘Lovely paintings like that … Right, go and wash your hands, it’s ready.’

  Thérèse’s reaction in no way dented Édouard’s morale. A good many artists before him had suffered the incomprehension of those around them. However, as he sat down to eat he reproached her for not cooking him something hot.

  ‘Don’t you like my herring salad?’

  ‘I do, but I’d have preferred soup, a nice soup. You make such good ones.’

  ‘For that I’d need something to make it with. There’s nothing here but tinned food.’

  ‘Tomorrow we’ll go shopping. Speaking of which, what day is it?’

  ‘Tuesday.’

  ‘Then tomorrow’s Wednesday … Wednesday … We ’ve nothing planned for Wednesday?’

  ‘What would we have planned?’

  ‘I don’t know … It seemed to me … Pah … I’d like a little more please, I’m as hungry as a wolf. What’s wrong now, Thérèse? You’ve got ever such a long face.’

  ‘I can’t do it!’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Get used to the idea that we ’re murderers!’

  She collapsed sobbing on the edge of the table. Édouard was stunned. It was all so simple, so obvious …

  ‘Come now, Thérèse, my dear …’

  He stood up and took her in his arms, gently patting her on the shoulder.

  ‘You’re too emotional. Give yourself up to the great happiness we ’ve been given.’

  She put her arms round his waist, her head nestling against his stomach.

  ‘If that were true, there ’s nothing I’d like better … Why did you do it?’

  ‘You don’t get something for nothing.’

  ‘But you’re not short of money – we could have rented a house.’

  ‘This was the one, there wasn’t any other one. I knew it as soon as I set foot here. And Jean knew that too.’

  ‘What would you know about that?’

  ‘I know because I am him. Now stop your moaning, enter into the game and play your part, for goodness’ sake. You’ll never have a better one. Stop looking over your shoulder, there ’s no one following you. You’re like me and Jean, you have no past. Who’s going to weep for us? You’re giving us too much importance.’

  *

  The night was pitch-dark, an immense sky, like a cavern. Billions of stars speckled the picture window, indifferent to the unaccustomed sight of a hysterical old man daubing solvent onto warped canvases in the company of a woman flat out on a sofa, both of them bathed in a jelly of white light.

  ‘You see, Thérèse, literature wasn’t made for me – too complicated, too ambiguous, too many words, mere soap bubbles! Whereas painting, it’s concrete, material, sensual, real! Am I right?’

  Thérèse had no opinion on the subject, nor on any other. She was floating, her whole being absorbed by the supreme power of the white powder which Édouard had made her sniff.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A medicine. It’s very good for what you’ve got. Close one nostril and breathe in very deeply.’

  ‘Is this a drug?’

  ‘Go on, for heaven’s sake.’

  Thérèse wasn’t fooled but had succumbed to the powerful need to rid herself at all costs of the anguish which held her captive. It was like an atomic mushroom exploding in her head, an orgasm which sent her off into unimaginable spheres from which she descended gently, as if with the aid of a parachute, to land, ecstatic, on this sofa as soft as a cushion filled with rose petals. She had administered morphine to terminally ill patients in the final stages and now she recalled how their faces were transformed, the pain slipping away, forming a kind of halo … Now she understood. Death was nothing, nor was life … But survival! Édouard had taken some as well but the product didn’t have the same effect on him … He was gesticulating non-stop, arguing with himself as he rubbed the solvent-soaked rag over Jean’s canvases and, she had to admit, allowed much richer forms and colours to come through than those originally depicted by the painting.

  ‘Making a white rabbit come out of a hat, that’s a conjuring trick; anyone can do that, but drawing a hat out of a white rabbit, that’s real magic! Do you grasp the distinction, Thérèse?’

  Thérèse couldn’t have cared less. Her eyelids were growing heavy and she felt better than ever. The persistent smell of petrol proved that paradise was nothing but a huge garage, and on this certainty she sank voluptuously into the most perfect no man’s land.

  Édouard had taken hold of another canvas, which showed a young Adonis reclining at the foot of an oak tree. The rag went to work again but unlike the other paintings the bland image was hiding another: two ladies, standing, identically clothed in the same pale dress with a blue pattern, the smaller afflicted by a divergent squint and the other straight as a letter i with its dot disappearing under a vault of shade. Édouard burst out laughing: ‘You’re indefatigable! I wish you good evening, Mesdames. Make yourselves at home.’

  Édouard could have slept for no more than a couple of hours yet he felt on top form, fresh as a daisy, with such an appetite for life. Thérèse was still sleeping, rolled up in a cocoon of sheets and covers.

  ‘Well now, Thérèse, wake up! It’s almost ten o’clock. We ’ve got shopping to do.’

  On automatic pilot she took her shower, swallowed a bowl of coffee and, without knowing quite how, found herself at the steering wheel.

  ‘I’m driving?’

  ‘You’ve got to start. Imagine if something were to happen to me. I may be immortal but no one is proof against a bad cold. It’s child’s play, you’ll see.’

  And indeed, despite swerving a few times starting off, Thérèse soon felt as much at ease as on the sofa where she had spent the evening. She was not to exceed 60 kmh. The effects of the drug she ’d taken the evening before were still there and her head lurched this way and that like a jar full of a thick, sweet liquid.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Well, very well … A little woozy. But fine.’

  ‘That stuff ’s amazing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No wonder young people take drugs.’

  They burst out laughing like a couple of kids hiding behind a curtain.

  They made some random purchases in the village minimarket, where Monsieur Marissal was greeted very deferentially, which sent them into a new fit of uncontrollable giggles. Nothing was real, everything was allowed. On the way back they listened to the radio news. A footballer had just been bought by a club for some incredible sum, and a husband and father, unemployed and crippled with debt, had just wiped out his family before killing himself in a bungalow in the Pas-de-Calais region. A storm was expected in the evening, and traffic jams on roads out of Lyon. It was a perfect world.

  Someone was waiting for them outside the door, a tall blonde girl who rushed towards them as soon as they had parked.

  ‘Where have you been, Papa? You were supposed to collect me from the airport.’

  Like two insects in amber, Thérèse and Édouard stared dumbstruck at the bizarre apparition
framed by the car window. The girl must have been twenty-five or thirty years old, with clear skin and glossy hair, not unattractive, although her teeth seemed slightly too big for her mouth. Her features vaguely reminded Édouard of someone.

  ‘I tried to call you but your phone’s out of order.’

  Édouard drew his hand over his face like an actor pulling on his mask. The girl, good God, the girl! In a split second he identified her: she was the one in the photo which had been torn and stuck together again, now a few years older.

  ‘I’m sorry, my dear, I completely forgot. I worked all night. Have you been waiting long?’

  ‘The taxi dropped me off half an hour ago. I was beginning to worry …’

  ‘I’m really sorry … Thérèse, let me introduce my daughter …’

  The young woman got him out of an awkward situation by introducing herself, offering her hand through the window.

  ‘Sharon.’

  ‘Delighted to meet you. Go ahead, Monsieur Jean, I’ll see to the shopping.’

  Édouard dragged himself from the car and let himself be kissed on both cheeks.

  ‘Have you shaved your moustache off? It makes you look younger. You seem on top form. So this is where you live? It’s magnificent but, my God, it’s isolated! The taxi driver had a hell of a time finding it. “Low Heights”, what a funny name.’

  ‘Did you have a good journey?’

  ‘I almost missed the plane in New York thanks to Gladys. In the space of a week I only ever saw her in passing, then at the last moment she remembered I was there. But you know her …’

  ‘Of course, yes.’

  Édouard was getting flustered with the lock. He couldn’t find the right key among the bunch.

  ‘What’s wrong with your arm? Have you hurt it?’

  ‘Nothing. No, I … I had a stroke a few months ago. Paralysis of the left side. Everything’s fine now except for this arm.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘Old people’s stuff, no one’s interested. I can manage, I tell you. There, go in.’

  Immediately they were inside, a furious desire to shove the girl into the cupboard under the stairs and double-lock the bolt came into his head. CLICK CLACK! Jean’s offspring out of the way; out of sight, out of mind the girl with the big teeth – good riddance! But she was already making her way into the sitting room.

  ‘Lovely space! You must feel lost, all alone in here?’

  ‘I’m not alone.’

  ‘True. And who is Thérèse?’

  ‘My nurse. To begin with I couldn’t do much on my own. She still helps me a lot. Plus she ’s excellent company.’

  ‘It’s still strange for me to see you with a woman.’

  ‘There was your mother, you know!’

  ‘Gladys isn’t a mother or a woman, you know that as well as I do.’

  ‘Yes, all right. Do you want me to show you to your room? You’d no doubt like to freshen up.’

  ‘I would, yes.’

  In the kitchen Thérèse was weeping hot tears over a heap of thinly sliced onions.

  ‘What are you making?’

  ‘Gratinée à l’oignon. You wanted soup so I’m making soup.’

  ‘But … that’s a very good idea.’

  ‘What is she doing?’

  ‘Taking a shower.’

  ‘I told you this would end badly.’

  The blade of the knife rammed into the chopping board vibrated like a tuning fork. The tears reddening Thérèse’s eyes were not just from peeling onions. Édouard shrugged his shoulders, fiddling with a packet of grated Gruyère.

  ‘I can’t help it if I’ve got a big family.’

  Sharon gave the plastic shower curtain a sharp tug, heart pounding. Of course there was no old woman hiding behind it, brandishing a butcher’s knife. She stuck her tongue out at her reflection in the mirror and rubbed herself vigorously, without, however, being able to banish the strange unease which had gripped her since she ’d been reunited with her father. It was stupid but she didn’t recognise him. It was him and yet not him. It wasn’t to do with the absence of his moustache any more than with his disability, nor the fact that she hadn’t seen him for almost three years. It was something else – the stiff, staccato way he moved and his voice which crunched words like glass. Maybe the stroke had changed him … But when it came down to it, how well did she really know him anyway? In twenty-seven years of existence she had crossed paths with him only five or six times. Until she was eighteen Gladys had let her believe that he was dead. If it hadn’t been for that fortuitous encounter at a private view at a New York gallery she would never have suspected his existence. He had been as surprised as she was since her bitch of a mother had never informed him of her birth. One month later, free of her mother’s authority, she joined him in Morocco where he was living at that time. He hadn’t been against her coming and had shown himself full of goodwill and consideration towards her, but she had quickly understood that there was no place for an eighteen-year-old girl in the life he was leading. The drugs and the young boys took up too much space. She hadn’t resented him for it and had led her own life, while staying in regular contact with him by post or telephone, or by meeting up with him here or there, in London, Paris or Berlin, wherever fate brought them together. They had never spent more than four or five days together, just enough time to share superficial pleasures and take leave of each other awkwardly on a station platform or in an airport waiting area. Their relationship was difficult to define. Love had never had time to blossom but the sporadic meetings had ended up creating a tender complicity between them as if they shared a secret, though neither of them knew what that secret was. Perhaps it was just an irrepressible attraction to the void? She had known he was ill for several years, which was why he had left Morocco for Switzerland, but this stroke did not tally with the usual symptoms of the virus he had. Apart from the bent arm he appeared to be in perfect health. If that hag Gladys had not refused her the five thousand dollars she needed to open her interior design studio she would never have made the journey here, such was her fear of illness and death. Only the lease had to be signed in two days’ time and this was her only option.

  Having blasted her hair dry until she had restored its full bounce, she put on a T-shirt, a clean pair of jeans and some trainers and left her room, sticking her chest out like a boxer making for the ring.

  Édouard was waiting for her on the balcony, a cardigan over his shoulders, at a low table with several bottles of alcohol lined up on it. He seemed older than he had just before.

  ‘Here, the Guggenheim catalogue you asked me to get.’

  ‘Thank you, Sharon. What will you have?’

  ‘The usual.’

  Édouard hesitated. There was Scotch, vodka and white Martini. He reached for the last.

  ‘With an olive.’

  ‘Of course, I haven’t forgotten.’

  He served her and began leafing through the catalogue.

  ‘You’ve started working again then? From what you’d told me, I thought there was no question of that.’

  ‘Let’s call it a relapse.’

  ‘Will you show me?’

  ‘If you like, but it’s still at the sketch stage. To you then!’

  ‘To us! … What, are you drinking whisky now?’

  ‘At my age you can’t taste anything or else you like everything, which comes to the same thing.’

  The clink of ice cubes answered the rumbling of the storm which was announcing its arrival by sending thick clouds scudding over the lake.

  ‘Isn’t Thérèse joining us for a drink?’

  ‘She ’s coming. She’s a little shy. We live like bears in a cave here. Do you like onion soup?’

  ‘I’ll never forget the one we ate together the last time we saw each other, at the Pied du Cochon in Les Halles in Paris. Do you remember?’

  ‘Of course, what an evening!’

  A blast of infernal heat made Thérèse take a step back
wards when she opened the oven door. The layer of golden Gruyère was rising, letting out little jets of steam, each bowl like a mini volcano. On the table the apple and walnut salad sat alongside the cheese platter. All that was missing was the guests. Thérèse wiped her eyes with a corner of her apron, a ridiculous apron made to look like the torso of a woman wearing a bra and sexy knickers. There weren’t any others. Thérèse could put off no longer the inevitable confrontation with the girl who had appeared from goodness knows where. She wasn’t the one from whom a blunder was to be feared, because after all she wasn’t supposed to know of Sharon’s existence, but rather it was Édouard. The high-wire act on which he had embarked, without even the flimsiest safety net, was making her panic. He reminded her of the tarot card, the Fool, depicting a vagabond with his head in the air and a meagre bundle on his shoulder, one foot poised over a void, and a dog hanging on his coat-tails. No matter how crafty or diabolically cool-headed he was, some day or other he would end up falling into the void, and this girl, this Sharon, was the void. That was visible in her excessively blue eyes, like two small bottomless lakes. For the first time in her life she felt hatred towards someone and was horrified by this. She jumped as if she ’d been caught in the act of an evil thought when Édouard called her.

  ‘Aren’t you joining us for a drink, Thérèse?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘So it’s ready, is it? Can we eat?’

  ‘Er … yes.’

  The soup was scalding but delicious accompanied by an excellent white wine of which Édouard, to Thérèse’s relief, partook in moderation. Contrary to her fears he was behaving like a worthy patriarch, sober and sparing in his words. As Thérèse was no more talkative than Édouard, the responsibility of making conversation fell on Sharon. Once the anecdotes about the crazy life people led in New York and treacherous attacks on a certain Gladys, her mother, were over, they learned that Sharon had been living in Munich for five years and was counting on opening an interior design studio there in the near future, with someone called Monica.