And then this morning, the coffee pot fell at her feet without her understanding why. She’d been holding it in her left hand and let it go. That’s when she called.
She doesn’t have a GP. She’s never ill.
She’s standing in front of him, her hands joined on the table. She asks him if it’s serious. And then she adds: ‘I want to know exactly what you’re thinking.’
Thibault did a full neurological examination.
He is going to have to convince her to have more extensive tests without delay. He is going to have to convince her without panicking her. This woman is thirty-two years old and is presenting the first symptoms of multiple sclerosis or a brain tumour. That’s what he’s thinking.
‘It’s too soon to say. But you must take these signs very seriously. As your condition seems to have returned to normal, I’m not going to ask for you to be hospitalised. But tomorrow you must make appointments for the tests I’m going to prescribe. I’ll call the hospital myself so that you’re seen as quickly as possible. And if something else happens before then, you must go to casualty.’
She doesn’t press him. She looks at him and smiles.
He wants to go over to her and take her in his arms. To rock her and tell her not to worry.
He wants to stroke her cheek, her hair. To tell her that he’s there with her, that he won’t leave her.
He’s seen hundreds of patients with serious illnesses. He knows the way life collapses and how quickly. He’s familiar with overdoses, heart attacks, sudden cancers and the constant suicide figures. He knows you can die at thirty.
But this evening, facing this woman, that seems intolerable.
This evening he feels as though he has lost his layer of protection, that invisible distance without which it is impossible for him to pursue his profession. He’s missing something, there’s something he lacks.
This evening he is naked.
He looks for the switch on the landing and turns on the light.
The young woman waves again, thanks him. She closes the door behind him.
He sits in his car. He’s unable to drive off.
For a long time, in the absence of God, he has looked for a higher reason in illness.
Something which would give him a meaning.
Something which would justify the fear, the suffering, the flesh eaten into, exposed, the hours of immobility.
But he’s no longer looking. He knows how blind and pointless illness is. He is familiar with how fragile the body is.
And against that, ultimately he can do nothing.
For the first time in ages he wants to smoke a cigarette. He wants to feel the smoke burn his throat, his lungs, invade his body, numb him.
He notices a card slipped under his windscreen wiper.
He gets out of the car and removes it. He sits back down again to read it.
‘Mr Salif, medium, can resolve your most desperate problems in 48 hours. If your girl/boyfriend has left you, he/she will come running back like a dog after its master. Speedy return of the loved one. Affection rediscovered. Spells broken. Luck. Work. Sexual power. Success in all fields. Exams, driving tests.’
He feels laughter in his stomach, like a wave. But it stops at once. If he weren’t so tired he would laugh heartily, uproariously. Thibault throws the card out the window. He couldn’t care less about the city and its dirt. Today he could quite cheerfully empty into the gutter all the crumpled papers and empty wrappers that have littered the floor of his car for weeks. He could spit on the ground and leave his engine idling for hours. He doesn’t give a fuck.
The base called to ask him if he could go to the police station in the thirteenth arrondissement for an arrest. The cops had been waiting two hours for a medical certificate for a minor.
He said no.
He has no desire to go and examine some sixteen-year-old kid who’s just stuck another kid with a blade to confirm that he’s in a fit state to be detained by the police.
It’s beyond him.
He remembers in the early days the time he would spend at his window, watching people, the attentive hours spent in cafés when he dined alone, listening to other people, guessing their stories. He loved this city, the tangle of its stories, these shapes multiplied to infinity, the countless faces. He loved the effervescence, the crossed destinies, the sum of the possibilities.
He loved that moment when the city grows calm and the strange rumble of the asphalt when night falls, as though the street were giving back the violence it’s absorbed, its excess emotion.
It seemed to him then that there was nothing more beautiful, more dizzying than this great mass of humanity.
Now he sees three thousand patients a year, he knows their irritations, their loose coughs and their dry coughs, their addictions and their migraines and their insomnia.
He knows their loneliness.
Now he knows how brutal the city is and the high price it exacts from those who expect to survive there.
And yet he wouldn’t leave for anything in the world.
He’s forty-three. He spends a third of his time in his car looking for a parking place or stuck behind delivery trucks. He lives in a big two-room apartment above the place des Ternes. He’s always lived alone, apart from a few months when he was a student. None the less he has known a certain number of women and some of them loved him.
He hasn’t known how to put down his bags and stop moving.
He’s left Lila. He’s done it.
You can’t make other people love you. That’s what he repeats to himself, to justify his actions.
At other times perhaps he would have fought.
But not now. He’s too tired.
There comes a moment when the price becomes too high. Exceeds your resources.
When you have to get out of the game, accept you’ve lost. There comes a moment when you can’t stoop any lower.
He’s going to go home.
He’ll pick up his mail in the letter box, climb up five floors. He’ll make himself a gin and tonic and put on a CD.
He’ll take stock of precisely what he’s done. He’ll be able to cry, even if just to show he’s still capable of it. Blow his nose noisily, drown his sorrows in alcohol, kick his shoes off on his IKEA carpet, give in to the stereotype, wallow in it.
A voice was asking passengers to stand back from the edge of the platform, as the train drew slowly into the station. Mathilde got into the second carriage so that she could get off near the escalators when she reached the gare de Lyon.
With her forehead against the window, she’s watching the apartment blocks alongside the track go by, with their half-open curtains, underpants on the line, symmetrical flower pots, a child’s tractor abandoned on a balcony, these tiny lives, reduced, uncountable. Further on, the track crosses the Seine. She makes out the pagoda-shaped Chinese hotel and the smoke from the factories in Vitry.
On the train home, people take stock of their day, they sigh, unwind, grumble, exchange indiscretions. When the information is really confidential, they lean closer to each other, lower their voices, sometimes they laugh.
She closes her eyes. She listens to the conversations around her, she listens without seeing, eyelids shut. She remembers the hours she spent lying on the beach as a child, without moving, soothed by the high-pitched cries and the noise of the sea going out, surrounded by voices without faces. ‘Don’t leave your wet swimsuits on the sand.’ ‘Martine, put your hat on.’ ‘Stay in the shade.’ ‘Come and get your sandwiches.’ ‘Who left the cool box open?’
She used to be in the habit of reading, but she hasn’t been able to for several weeks. The lines slip away from her, become jumbled. She can’t concentrate. She stays like that, with her eyes closed. She observes the relaxing of her limbs, waiting for the tension to lessen little by little.
But not today. She can’t do it. Something is resisting, deep down, she can feel it, something which won’t let go. A sort of anger that her body can’t rid itself
of, something within her which is in fact swelling.
‘Don’t you know it? It’s a really well-known cream in the tanning world.’
The man burst out laughing. Mathilde opened her eyes. Several faces had turned towards him. Sitting on the seat opposite, the girl shook her head, no, she didn’t know this cream, however incredible that might seem. They both had the same tanned complexion, verging on orange. Mathilde concluded that they must work in a tanning salon.
There are such things. These people work in the tanning world. Others in the nightlife or the restaurant world, or in the fashion world or television. Or even in conditioner.
In what world do undertakers work?
And what world does she belong to? The world of cowards, the weak, the quitters?
In the tunnel before the gare de Lyon, the train stopped. The lights went out, then the noise of the engine ceased. Silence descended suddenly. Mathilde looks around, her eyes struggle to adjust. No one is speaking any more, even Mr Orange has gone quiet.
People seem on guard, in the darkness their pupils shine.
She’s stuck in the middle of a tunnel, shut in the lower part of a double-decker carriage, she’s breathing damp air, saturated with carbon monoxide. It’s too dark for her to make out the expressions of confidence on other people’s faces which might reassure her. Conversations are slow to pick up again.
Suddenly it seems to her as though they are linked in a drama that is about to happen. They have been picked by fate, it’s their turn this time. Something serious is going to happen.
She’s never been afraid in the RER, even late at night, even when she goes home after 9 p.m., when the trains are almost empty. But today there’s something in the air that constricts her chest, or else she’s the one who’s not OK, who’s out of her depth.
She’s in danger, she can feel it, an immense danger, though she cannot tell if it’s inside or outside her, a danger which takes her breath away.
Ten minutes later an announcement informs passengers that the train has stopped in the middle of the track. In case they haven’t noticed.
The conductor requests that they don’t attempt to open the doors.
The lights come back on.
The man from the tanning salon starts speaking again. A wave of relief ripples out around him.
At last the train moves again and is greeted with a general ‘ah’.
Mathilde gets off at the gare de Lyon. She retraces her route from this morning in the opposite direction.
At the interchange she tries to hurry, to fit herself into the flow.
She can’t. It’s going too fast.
Underground, the traffic rules are inspired by the highway code. You overtake on the left, and slow vehicles are requested to keep to the right.
Underground, there are two categories of traveller. The first follow their line as though they are suspended above the void, their path obeys precise rules from which they never deviate. By virtue of a wise desire to save time and effort, their movements are accurate to the nearest yard. You can tell them by the speed they walk at, the way they take the corners, and the impossibility of catching their eye. The other category dawdles, stops dead, they allow themselves to be carried along and go off at tangents without warning. The haphazardness of their path threatens the whole system. They interrupt the flow, throw the crowd off balance. They are the tourists, the disabled, the weak. If they don’t keep themselves to one side, the herd takes on the task of excluding them.
So Mathilde stays on the right, sticks to the wall. She withdraws so as not to get in the way.
On the stairs she holds on to the handrail.
Suddenly she again wants to scream. Scream till her throat hurts, scream to block out the noise of footsteps and conversations. Scream so loud that everyone falls silent, everything is interrupted, stops moving. She would like to scream: ‘Get out of here! Look what you have become! Look what we have become! Look at your dirty hands and pale faces. Look at what filthy insects we are, crawling beneath the earth, repeating the same actions day after day under the neon lights. Your body wasn’t made for this. Your body should be able to move freely.’
Mathilde goes through the doors that mark the entrance to the metro.
At the point where several lines meet, there’s anarchy. In the absence of markings on the floor, you have to cut across the current, create your own route.
There are those who get out of the way to avoid a collision of bodies, and those who consider by virtue of some vague right that other people should get out of their way.
This evening Mathilde goes towards the platform, looking straight ahead, as though she’s been struck full force.
This evening she feels like the entire surface of her skin has become permeable. She is a mobile antenna linked to the aggression around her, a flexible antenna, bent in two.
If he looked at his watch, he’d know how long he’s been there, trapped in his car, stuck behind a 4×4 with smoked-glass windows. If he looked at his watch, he would start crying.
It’s jammed, blocked, paralysed. In front, behind, everywhere.
All around him.
From time to time, a cacophony of horns starts up, drowning out the sound of his CD player.
For as far as he can see, the traffic is stationary. Shops are beginning to pull down their shutters, lights are starting to come on in some buildings. Furtive shapes at windows are assessing the extent of the damage.
The man in front has turned off his engine. He’s got out of his car and is smoking a cigarette.
Thibault rests his head on the steering wheel for a few seconds. He’s never seen this before.
He could turn on the radio, listen to the news. He’d probably find out why things are so jammed.
He doesn’t give a fuck.
The city has closed on him like a trap.
The man gets back in his car and moves forward a few yards. Thibault takes his foot off the brake and freewheels.
That’s when he notices a parking place, almost a parking place on the right. A vacant space into which he should be able to manoeuvre himself.
He has to get out of this fucking car.
He’ll leave it there and take the metro. He’ll come back and get it tomorrow.
He makes several attempts, full lock in each direction, and ends up managing it, with one wheel up on the kerb. He picks up his case and his raincoat and slams the door.
He walks to the nearest station. At the foot of the stairs, he looks at the map, works out the shortest route home. He buys a ticket at the counter and takes the stairs to the platform.
He approaches the tracks and puts his case down.
He stands waiting.
Opposite him, the posters are full of summer light. Opposite him, the posters are showing off their sarongs, their golden beaches and their turquoise seas.
The city that crushes human beings is inviting them to relax.
On the platform, Mathilde stopped in front of a vending machine. The electronic sign was announcing the next train in four minutes.
She thought that if she sat down she would never be able to get up again.
She looked at the women’s bodies, their endless legs, smooth and tanned, the sun creams and the bottles of mineral water. And then the posters got jumbled, confused into a single moving canvas, a kaleidoscope of bright colours which spun around her. She felt her body pitching, she closed her eyes.
Later, as the platform filled up, a veil descended upon the whole station, a veil of dark tulle which reduced the intensity of the light.
The people were erased, she could feel their presence, sense their movements, but couldn’t distinguish their faces any more.
Her legs were giving way beneath her, very gently. She was holding the Argent Defender card in her right hand; it seemed to her that she was leaning on him, that he was carrying her.
People were talking among themselves, braying into phones, listening to music which leaked from their headphones.<
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The noise from the people grew louder. The noise from the people grew unbearable.
Mathilde went closer to the track to look for the train. She leaned to the left, peering into the darkness of the tunnel. In the distance she thought she could make out the engine’s headlights.
She stumbled against something, a bag or a case.
The man said: ‘Shit, can’t you look where you’re going?’
When he bent down to pick up what looked like a doctor’s bag, Mathilde noticed his left hand. It had only three fingers.
She passed in front of him. She felt the man’s eyes watching her movements, she sensed his gaze on her back. She didn’t have the courage to meet his eyes, or anything else around her, her whole body was taken up with remaining upright.
The train came into the station, the warm air it stirred up blew against her face. She closed her eyes for barely a second to avoid the dust.
She stepped back to wait for the doors to open and let people off.
She got into a carriage in the middle of the train, and slumped down on a folding seat. The train set off with a lurching motion, she felt sick.
The man with the case was now sitting in front of her, looking at her.
Some outlines attract attention because they are longer or more fragile. The woman was blonde and wearing a big black coat. He noticed her at once. She was standing too close to the edge, unsteady, half stumbling, which the people around her didn’t seem to notice. But he did. She came nearer to him and he almost told her to move away, she was standing so close.
Underground Time Page 15
