Underground Time

by Delphine de Vigan

  On a new notepad, she makes a list of things she could do to pass the time. Phone the train company and book tickets for the holidays, explore the World of Warcraft site and expand her knowledge of the rules of the game, do some online shopping at La Redoute, send an email to the managing agent about the bike park for which no one has a key.

  She’s got to make it to six o’clock.

  Even if she has nothing to do. Even if it’s pointless.

  Mathilde takes the Argent Defender out of her pocket and places it just in front of her.

  When the computer goes into standby mode, the screen turns into an aquarium. Fish of all colours bump against the glass, and go from one side to the other endlessly.

  They swim past each other, rub against each other. Fine bubbles come from their mouths. They don’t seem to suffer.

  Maybe the answer is there, in their unconsciousness.

  So life in a bowl is possible as long as everything slides along, as long as nothing collides and no one panics.

  And then one day the water turns cloudy. At first it’s imperceptible. The merest haze. Some particles of silt settle at the bottom, invisible to the naked eye. But silently, something is decomposing. You don’t exactly know what. And then the oxygen begins to run out.

  Until the day when one of the fish goes mad and starts to devour all the rest.

  When Thibault got back to his car, there was a ticket fluttering on the windscreen. He went into the nearest café. The noise assailed him immediately. For a moment he almost turned back. After ordering a sandwich at the counter, he sent a text to Rose to let her know that he was taking a twenty-minute break.

  Thibault sits down on a vacant stool. He’s turned off his mobile.

  He’s tired. He would like a woman to take him in his arms. Without saying anything, just for a moment. To rest for a few seconds, to gain support. To feel his body relax. Sometimes he dreams about a woman who he’ll ask: ‘Could you love me?’ With all his tired life behind him. A woman who would have known dizziness, fear and joy.

  Could he love another woman?

  Now.

  Could he desire another woman? Her voice, her skin, her perfume. Would he be ready to start over, once again? The game of meeting, the game of seduction, the first words, the first physical contact, first mouths and then genitals. Does he still have the strength?

  Or has something been amputated? Is there now something he lacks, something missing?

  Start over. Once again.

  Is it possible? Does it have any meaning?

  Beside him a man in a dark suit is eating his lunch standing up and leafing through a newspaper. He would like to close his eyes, not to hear anything any more, to absent himself for as long as it takes for something within him to grow calm, something which he cannot contain.

  ‘Do I know what it means to be with someone? What form that can take, at my age, what it’s like, with all the pathetic little love affairs that you drag behind you. Do you know?’

  Thibault turned towards a woman sitting on his other side. For a moment he thought she was talking to herself, and then he saw the earpiece in her ear and the microphone dancing in front of her mouth. She’s speaking louder and louder, indifferent to people looking at her.

  ‘No, I don’t believe it any more. You’re right, yes, that’s it exactly! I don’t believe in it any more. I don’t want to be taken for a ride. Because I’m heartsick. Yes, I’m scared. Yes, if you like. So? Fear is sometimes a good counsellor. I . . . what?’

  She’s sitting with her legs crossed, her back straight, perched as if by some miracle atop her stool, one heel resting on the steel bar. Her mobile is lying in front of her. She’s looking at her empty glass, absolutely unaware of what’s around her, waving her arms about as she talks.

  He would like to put his right hand on this woman’s shoulder to attract her attention. To say, could you just shut up? All we can hear is you.

  Behind him a dozen conversations mingle with the sounds of cutlery and chairs scraping on the floor. Behind him people are drinking, laughing, complaining.

  He wants to be alone. He feels hot and cold at the same time. He’s not sure if he’s getting a migraine but thinks he may be. He’s aware of his body in a strange way. His body is a wasteland, abandoned ground, yet linked to all this disorder. His body is under pressure, ready to implode. The city is suffocating, pressing down on him. He is tired of its randomness, its shamelessness, its fake intimacies. He is tired of its feigned moods and the illusion that men and women ever really connect. The city is a deafening lie.

  ‘So what do you think of it?’

  Laetitia has burst into her office without knocking. She twirls around, poses, moves back and forth, waiting for Mathilde’s verdict.

  ‘It’s fantastic. It really suits you. Did you get it at the weekend?’

  ‘Yes. It’s completely crazy since I’ve already got it in blue and black . . . You know, the one I was wearing the other day . . . It’s the same . . . When I got home I felt pathetic.’

  ‘You shouldn’t! Just tell yourself that your buying policy follows an implacable logic. That there’s coherence in the way you approach clothes, a sort of consistency.’

  Laetitia laughs.

  Mathilde really likes this girl. Her way of diverting her, not starting with a drama, avoiding compassion.

  Laetitia hasn’t come in with the overwhelmed look that anyone else would have adopted in the circumstances. She’s come in with her new jacket and this apparent triviality which she has never given up.

  ‘And what about you? Have you made up your mind about seeing Paul Vernon? Because you need to have the union behind you now, Mathilde. You won’t manage it on your own. You’re not up to it. That guy is sick, and he’s not finished giving you a hard time. You were his creature, his thing, and then you escaped him. That’s what people are saying, you know. Among other things. It won’t sort itself out by itself, Mathilde.’

  Laetitia looks around.

  ‘But seriously, look at this, it’s shameful!’

  Laetitia doesn’t lower her voice. She wants people to hear her. Any louder and she’d be standing in the corridor with a megaphone crying scandal.

  ‘Patricia Lethu called me back a little while ago. She’s taken things in hand. She’s really trying to find me something else. I believe that she’s taking care of it.’

  ‘Listen, Mathilde, that’s all well and good. But for your part you mustn’t let anything go. You must protect yourself. Continue exactly as if the war was going to go on. You must anticipate the worst.’

  And then after a silence, Laetitia adds: ‘Watch out. Promise me you’ll see Paul, even if just for advice. You need to get help, Mathilde. You can’t do it on your own.’

  Laetitia has gone. She has a meeting.

  Mathilde didn’t manage to tell her that she called Paul Vernon. Last week. Within a few moments, Paul Vernon got the picture. He repeated to her several times that she must not resign. Whatever happens, on no account. He explained to her how to keep records of everything, to note every detail, to describe in the most factual manner possible what has changed, the objective development of the situation. He suggested that she write down a sort of chronology that traced the deterioration in her relationship with Jacques stage by stage, noting the key dates. She must compile a dossier.

  Nothing in Mathilde’s account seems to surprise him. Neither the situation in which she found herself, nor the time it had taken her to call.

  He said, ‘In cases like this, people always wait too long. They try to fight and they run out of steam.’

  If things turn nasty, you need witnesses. She’ll need proof that she was taken off projects, that the content of her job was changed. She needs to bring proof that she no longer has objectives, that she has been marginalised. Other people need to stick their necks out and support her. Her colleagues. People in her team. People in other teams. Because nothing of course is written down or official. Nothing is verifiable. />
  Paul Vernon had to go to an industrial tribunal about a sacking on a production site. Mathilde promised to call him back.

  That was a week ago and she hasn’t done it. In spite of all the empty time before her, she hasn’t begun writing the document he asked for either.

  She didn’t tell Laetitia that she called Paul Vernon because she no longer has the strength. Because it’s too late. She isn’t up to doing what he needs her to. She can’t talk any more, she’s got no more words. She who used to be feared for her rhetorical flair. She who was able to get her point of view acknowledged, alone against ten, when she stood in for Jacques at the management committee. On the phone Paul Vernon didn’t realise it, but it’s too late. Now she is one of the weak ones, in the sense that Patricia Lethu means it. The transparent, shrivelled, silent people. Now she is fading away in an office by the loos because it’s the only place she deserves. There is no reason for this to stop.

  Mathilde looks at the list she’s just written, those tiny things that she can’t manage.

  Éric passes her office to go to the toilet and glances furtively in but doesn’t stop.

  She hears him on the other side of the partition: lock, ventilator, stream of urine, paper, flush, washbasin.

  He passes her door again and Mathilde calls to him.

  He comes in hesitantly, ill at ease, and she says, ‘Sit down.’

  Over the past few weeks, Mathilde has developed a sort of intuition about the position of other people as allies or adversaries. In the world of Azeroth, on the threshold of the Dark Portal, it’s important to recognise who’s on your side.

  She recruited Éric herself three or four years ago. She fought to get him appointed. He’s become one of the best product chiefs on the team.

  But Éric eludes her recognition system. He’s a blur.

  ‘Éric, I’d like to ask you something.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Could you write a letter with some precise, concrete facts. Not a letter against Jacques or against anyone, more like an account of the current situation. For example, that I don’t have direct responsibility for the team any more, I don’t run the planning meeting and that I’m not involved in any decisions. Just that. To record that I don’t take part in anything any more.’

  There was a silence. Éric’s cheeks turned a deep red.

  He looked around, the windowless office, the dusty furniture. He rubbed his hands mechanically on his thighs and moved his chair back. He spoke without looking at her.

  ‘I can’t, Mathilde. You know that I can’t risk losing my job, to . . . I . . . My wife’s pregnant, she’s not working any more, I . . . I’m sorry. I can’t.’

  Éric slunk out.

  She won’t ask Jean or Nathalie or anyone else. She knows when to let it drop.

  The other fish are dazzlingly coloured, their scales look soft, their fins aren’t damaged. They have moved away from her, they are swimming in brighter, clearer waters.

  She has lost her colours, her body has become translucent, she’s lying on the surface, belly up.

  Mathilde doesn’t look at her watch, nor at the clock at the bottom of her screen, nor the one on her phone. If she starts watching the time, it will stretch into eternity.

  She mustn’t count anything, not the time that’s gone by nor the time left to fill.

  She mustn’t listen to the noises coming from the other offices at the end of the corridor, sudden sounds of voices, bits of conversation in English, the ringing of the telephones.

  The sound of people working.

  She mustn’t listen to the torrent of the flushing lavatories either. On average every twenty minutes.

  Being in this place seems less difficult to her. She’s got used to it.

  If she thinks about it, that’s all she’s done since the start – get used to it. Forget how it was before, forget that things could be different, forget that she knew how to work. Get used to it and lose her way.

  Mathilde looks at the memory stick with her personal files on it. She hesitates to put it in the slot, then gives up on the idea. Why bother transferring her files to her new computer?

  Tomorrow she may be somewhere else, somewhere in the basement, near the canteen kitchens or by the bins. Or she might be transferred to another department, another subsidiary, somewhere where she’ll receive calls and emails, where people will expect projects and opinions and documents from her and where she’ll rediscover the desire to be there.

  She presses a key on her keyboard to wake the computer. Each machine has its own memory called the C: drive. The C: drive includes ‘My Documents’, ‘My Music’ and ‘My Pictures’. Her C: drive is empty since she has only just got her new machine. All the computers are linked to the company server. The server is called the M: drive. Each team has a directory on the network. The marketing and international department’s directory is called MKG-INT. Everyone has to save all of their documents that relate to the team’s activities there. For a few weeks, Mathilde has been looking at this directory to see the new action plans for the brands and the follow-up on promotional campaigns. She keeps herself up to date. Even if her view is no longer canvassed, even if she no longer participates, even if it is pointless.

  Mathilde double-clicks on the M: drive icon. The server opens, she finds the directory and clicks again.

  An error message comes up immediately:

  ‘M:MKG-INT not accessible. Access denied.’

  Mathilde tries again. The same message appears.

  The IT people probably forgot to configure her authorisations on her new computer.

  She dials their number. She recognises the voice of the technician who came that morning, the one who asked her for her Argent Defender card.

  She tells them who she is and explains her problem. She hears tapping on a keyboard, the man breathing in the handset. He’s checking.

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with your new machine. You don’t have authorisation to access that directory.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘We got a memo on Friday and you’re not on the list any more.’

  ‘What list is this?’

  ‘Each department has been asked to update its access authorisations at directory and sub-directory level . . . The request from your team doesn’t give you access to this directory.’

  ‘Who signed off on it?’

  ‘The manager, I guess.’

  ‘Which manager?’

  ‘Mr Pelletier.’

  There comes a moment when things have to stop. Or it’s no longer possible.

  She’ll call him. She’ll let it ring as long as necessary, twenty minutes if she has to.

  But first of all she has to calm down. She has to breathe. Has to wait for her hands to stop trembling.

  First she has to shut her eyes, leave the domain of anger and hatred, move away from the stream of curses that have come into her mind.

  After about a hundred rings, Jacques finally picks up.

  ‘It’s Mathilde.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Apparently you have withdrawn my authorisation to access the departmental directory.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Patricia Lethu told me that you’ve asked for a transfer. Therefore, as you know, I cannot allow you the same access as the other members of the department. You know that marketing policy obeys particular constraints of confidentiality, in-house included.’

  Sometimes when she is upset her voice becomes shrill, climbing octaves in the space of a few words, but not this time. Her voice is low-pitched and composed. She is astonishingly calm.

  ‘Jacques, we need to talk. Give me a few minutes. This is ridiculous. I wouldn’t have put in for a transfer if things hadn’t taken this turn, you know very well that I no longer have . . .’

  ‘Huh . . . yes, well, listen. That’s the result. We’re not going to get lost going back over what happened when I think we both have better things to do.’

  ‘No, in fact, Jacques, you know very well I h
ave nothing to do.’

  There’s a silence that lasts a few seconds. Mathilde holds her breath. She glances at the Argent Defender. He is scrutinising the line of the horizon far in front of him.

  Her heart is no longer beating fast. Her hands aren’t trembling any more. She is calm and everything is perfectly clear. She has come to the end of something.

  And then Jacques suddenly begins to shout.

  ‘Don’t talk to me in that tone of voice!’

  She doesn’t understand. She had spoken softly to him. Not one word louder than the rest. But Jacques is off again: ‘You do not have the right to speak to me in that tone!’

  She’s no longer breathing. She looks around, looks for a point of anchorage, something fixed and tangible, she’s looking for something that has a name, a name that no one can dispute, a shelf, a drawer, a hanging file, she’s incapable of uttering a sound.

  He is beside himself. He goes on: ‘I forbid you to talk to me like that. You are insulting me, Mathilde. I am your line manager and you are insulting me!’

  Suddenly she understands. What he’s up to.

  His door is wide open and he’s shouting so that everyone can hear. He repeats: ‘I forbid you to speak to me in that tone. What’s come over you?’

  Everyone can vouch for the fact that Mathilde Debord insulted him on the phone.

  She’s speechless. This can’t be happening.

  Jacques goes on. He responds to her silence with indignant exclamations, takes offence, gets enraged, exactly as though he were reacting to what she was saying. Eventually he says: ‘You are becoming coarse, Mathilde. I refuse to have this conversation with you.’

  He has hung up.

  Then the image comes back. Jacques’s face, swollen, with a trickle of blood coming from his mouth.