It amused me to think of all that. It was Michelle who first told me about the superstitions of Halloween. She told me it was a shame that children here didn’t dress up and go out and ask for candy. She told me about Celtic legends, drew their symbols, wrote out for me the names of some of their goblins. Pinch. Grogan. Jack-in-Irons.
Michelle, the woman who was still my wife. Who had been far from me for so long, too long.
—
WHEN I GOT HOME, the fog had not yet cleared. I opened the gate and the iron stuck to my fingers like dry ice. Before I got to the stone steps, I saw Michelle standing in front of me in underwear and a T-shirt, a paper tissue clutched in her right hand. Her eyes were the color of her hair and the tip of her nose looked irritated.
“Go inside,” I said. “You’re going to catch cold.”
“You told me,” she responded.
“Calm down, nothing happened.”
“You told me you were coming back. I fell asleep, but I was waiting for you until half an hour ago. I was waiting for you, I fell asleep, you didn’t come back.”
I held her gently: her body was like a badly fired ceramic and was threatening to crack or fall to the floor and smash into pieces. She kept talking.
“But I don’t want this to happen again. I don’t want nights like this.”
“Nobody wants nights like this,” I said. “But we still have time.”
“You wanted to leave. I know it. You don’t have to lie to me.”
“Come on, let’s go upstairs.”
“I’ve been crying all night. I’m tired.”
“Yes, but you don’t know how much I want to be with you.”
We went upstairs. It was warm in the bedroom and it was good to be back. I took off my clothes and lay down on the bedspread. Michelle lay down beside me. “You’re exhausted,” she murmured. “I can tell.” A crow flew past the big window that overlooked the lake, and I asked Michelle to close the curtains. In that lake there were small trout. The day I asked Michelle to marry me, I remembered, I’d caught two. At that moment, two trout had seemed like a good sign.
“I wonder where the bird is,” said Michelle. “I hope he’s died, poor thing.”
“Hope so,” I said.
I thought later I’d go out to look for the pheasant, and that I’d like Michelle to come with me to look for it. I thought of proposing this to her, but she’d fallen asleep on my shoulder. I wanted to explain that we were going to be okay. I wanted to tell her that we’d made a lot of mistakes, and hurt each other a lot, but we didn’t do any of it out of cruelty, but rather trying, maybe in mistaken ways, to suffer as little as possible. I surprised myself feeling that the most difficult part had just begun.
“Nobody wants nights like these,” I said to Michelle, although she couldn’t hear me. “We’re not going to have to live alone.”
With the tip of my thumb I wiped away a dribble of saliva at the corner of her mouth. She snuggled her head against my chest and I closed my eyes to listen better to the silence of the early hours, the way the murmur of the heating mingled with the sounds of the Ardennes just as Michelle’s breathing began to mingle with mine.
—
WE LET THE MORNING go by without rushing it, and around midday I discovered there was no dry wood to light a fire with. I hadn’t been able to at Zoé’s house, either—Zoé, that already strange name, that distant night that belonged to her, not to me—and now the image and feeling of a crackling log fire turned into a sort of craving. But I didn’t go out to Modave to get a bundle, because I didn’t like the idea of being away from Michelle. Instead, I phoned Van Nijsten’s shop, in Aywaille, and a woman asked me to wait, and while I did an electronic version of a Jacques Brel song played in my ear. Then the same woman told me that Van Nijsten wasn’t there but someone would deliver my order in thirty minutes.
“Anything else?” asked the woman.
“She’s asking if we want anything else,” I said.
“Not for me,” said Michelle.
Michelle had taken a long shower, and after her shower we’d made love slowly, having taken the time to unplug the telephone and turn the digital alarm clock around, and then she had dried her hair and put on a soft pearly lipstick. But what I remembered, after all that, was how I had sat on the floor to read while she was showering, leaned against the wall beside the bathroom door, and a sliver of wood from the frame had snagged the right sleeve of my pullover. I took the sweater off and fixed the bunched thread by pulling on it with my teeth, while I heard the water pouring over Michelle and let myself be calmed by it, because the running water meant that Michelle was there, and hearing her shower, worrying about a sweater that she had given me, I felt comfortable and simple and satisfied, and I thought that must be happiness.
When the doorbell rang, Michelle was about to say something.
“Go ahead, get the delivery,” she said then.
I opened the door to a man with a bare head. His scalp was so cleanly shaved the glass of the door was reflected on it. The man put the wood down beside the poker and left the bill on the mantel, took the money, and left, all without saying a word. I knelt down in front of the fireplace.
“Okay, now we’re ready,” I said, rubbing my hands. “You were going to tell me something.”
“Have you got matches?”
I said yes, I had matches and several editions of La chasse aujourd’hui to burn. I made a bed of paper twists on the grate. When I was arranging the kindling and logs, I heard Michelle.
“On Thursday I was at my parents’ house. I’m going to spend some time with them.”
I stayed still, as if paralyzed. Maybe I believed that, if I pretended not to have been listening, the words would fall into oblivion.
Michelle went on talking. She said she no longer had any hopes for this, and that love seemed to her a distant emotion, something that no longer had anything to do with us. It hurt her to speak of love that way, like a dog that had run away in the middle of the night, while she was alone. But that was the truth. She had glimpsed it last week—on Tuesday, after eating alone in front of three bulletins from Euronews—and she’d talked to her mother and her mother had told her to think it over carefully. She did as she was told: she didn’t want to give in to her first impulse; she preferred to give us a few more days, give life a chance to straighten out its course.
“Now I’ve thought about it, while I was in the shower. And that hasn’t happened, nothing has straightened out. I want to be alone. I don’t want us to go on hurting each other.”
“Is that why you took so long?”
“What?”
“Showering. That’s why you were so long in the shower?”
“I don’t know, love. I don’t think that changes anything.”
“You had it all worked out,” I accused her. “You’ve known for a long time, and you made us carry on with this farce.”
I imagined her naked, letting the hot water hit her face, or leaning on the wall of the shower with her eyes closed and the cascade of her hair stuck to her shoulders. How had she decided? Had she thought of me, of a history of my mistakes? Had she recalled any happy moments, perhaps ones that I didn’t even remember, to then confirm how much everything had changed? I could think back, too, but the only thing that came into my head would be the coolness of the air this morning, when I got home and Michelle was waiting for me. It was cold air, but it didn’t have the harshness of winter; it was air that was pleasant to breathe, and I had breathed it avidly and had felt that every lungful was cleansing my body. At that moment, the world was as simple as bread fresh out of the oven. The spirits of the night of the dead had gone back into hiding, and Michelle was waiting for me.
“Are you sure? Is there nothing we can do?”
Michelle covered her face with her hands.
“Almost all my clothes are at my
parents’ house. I took them when I went to visit, just in case.”
“And if someone helps us? If we were to see someone?”
“I’m ready,” said Michelle. “I can leave this afternoon, if you want. So we don’t drag this out.”
I felt sorry for both of us. Out of fear of feeling faint, I kept my eyes fixed on the bare match between my fingers. I realized I’d stopped understanding, that I’d lost control of something: the immediate course of my own life, Michelle’s emotions, or, simply, the idea of a splendid renovation I usually glimpsed like a prophecy when I thought of us splitting up. And the most uncomfortable aspect was to feel that some semblance of truth was about to be conceded to me and I hadn’t managed to know what it was about. I closed my eyes to listen to the voice that perhaps wanted to speak to me, to show me something about this moment. But nobody spoke in my head. Maybe this moment didn’t have any meaning, after all. Maybe pain and loss had meaning only in religion or in fables. Maybe it was futile to look for meaning in the shapeless vertigo that now, for the first time, filled me from within.
“And now what are we going to do?” I said.
“I don’t know,” said Michelle. “We’re going to be fine, I imagine.”
—
THAT AFTERNOON, after I dropped Michelle off at the station in Aywaille, after waiting with her for the orange train that would take her to Liège and seeing her get into the car and put the yellow knapsack I once brought her from Paris in the luggage rack, after asking her to call me when she arrived and hearing her say I promise, I’ll call as soon as I get in, after saying good-bye and walking out of the station along with the rest of the relatives and friends who’d been saying good-bye to their relatives and friends, after all that, I decided to pass through Saint-Roch before going home. But the trailer was closed, and I peered in the window and the kitchen was not working and the oil was not boiling. It seemed strange to me that a place like that would close on Saturdays. I looked at it from the outside: things are bigger in daylight. I waited awhile, then went to look for Zoé at her house. I didn’t find her there, either, but I found something better: there was a note hanging on the gray mailbox, stuck with insulation tape, that Zoé had left for someone. I read: I won’t be long, attendez-moi. And trying to imagine who would be waiting for Zoé, trying to investigate the plural request and the circumstances of the day, I thought that Zoé wasn’t so alone after all, if she had people willing to wait for her on a Saturday at five o’clock in the afternoon. I realized then that the note was written on an English postcard, and I thought Graham would have brought it back from some trip, and from the caption under the image I found out it was a bronze plaque in Liverpool, perhaps near the port, and that those English words, courage and compassion joined, were an homage to the musicians who’d died in the shipwreck of the Titanic. I put the postcard back in its place and made sure it was well stuck, pressed the insulation tape firmly, because it would be terrible if the wind blew it away and Zoé’s friends left without waiting for her due to the breezes that usually blow in the Ardennes. I drove out of the neighborhood before Zoé returned, and on my way I imagined her going out to get the wine she hadn’t been able to offer me the night before, or buying some pastry at L’Épi d’Or for her guests. Of course, it was also possible the note was not directed at any friend, but at strangers who were coming to fix her hot-water heater or dishwasher or maybe leave her a bundle of firewood in anticipation of winter. That was also possible and I knew it. But I preferred to hold on to the other idea.
The Lodger
THE NIGHT BEFORE, at around nine, Xavier Moré had arrived on foot at the Lemoines’ house. He suddenly appeared in the kitchen, filling the doorway, looking like an old scrounger. His skin was as dry and rough as blotting paper, and the wisps of white hair across the top of his head looked like paint peeling off a clay wall.
“I’ve come to get my car,” he said.
Georges and Charlotte looked at each other.
“Why don’t you come in and have a hot drink?” she said. “We’re just finishing dinner.”
“I don’t want anything. I just want my car.”
Several months earlier, Jean Moré, Xavier’s only son, had asked Georges if he’d keep his father’s old Porsche in the barn. “He’s still drinking a lot,” he’d said. “I’d rather chauffeur him around than see something happen to him on the highway.” The strategy worked out well: Xavier began to get used to being a passenger, even seeming to forget he’d ever sat behind a steering wheel. Meanwhile, the Porsche slept in Georges’s barn, surrounded by bags of manure and rusty shovels.
“The car’s here, but we don’t have the keys,” said Georges. “Your son has them.”
“That’s a lie,” said Xavier. “The keys are here, too. I want it. It’s mine and I want to drive it.”
Georges listened closely: there were no traces of alcohol in Xavier’s voice. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had arrived on foot. It hadn’t happened since wartime, when they were young enough to walk the five kilometers between their houses without breathing any heavier. More than once they’d gone as far as the border by bicycle, unconcerned about the risk of running into German soldiers, to buy potatoes at lower prices. But now they were old men, and old men don’t walk alone, at night, braving the autumn cold of the Ardennes. Georges took Xavier by the arm, led him to the table like a blind man, and Xavier accepted a glass of port: no matter that he’d suffered an attack of gout a couple of weeks earlier that had forced Jean to hire a nurse from the Rocourt hospital. Georges wanted to say: Don’t worry, think of tomorrow. Tomorrow everything will have changed, one goes hunting and forgets the bad things.
“I don’t really know why I came,” said Xavier.
“You wanted to see us,” said Charlotte.
“Well, yes. But it wasn’t urgent.”
“I have an idea. Why don’t you stay overnight? You can’t go back at this hour.”
“We could call a taxi,” said Georges. “There’s a car service in Aywaille—”
Charlotte cut him off. Her blue eyes reproached him for something.
“We don’t need any taxis. The guest room is made up.”
“This is stupid,” said Xavier. “My Porsche is sitting in your barn and I want to take it. What has my son told you, might I ask? I’m fine. Do you think I’m drunk?”
“We’ll call Jean,” said Georges.
Xavier lifted his arm and the wine in his glass was illuminated with a yellow light. He threw the glass down on the wooden floor, hard. But the glass didn’t smash: its stem snapped off with a quiet sound, and the port spilled out, forming a long puddle.
“Merde,” said Xavier.
He fell back in his chair, his head in his hands. “Just as well. The doctor said I wasn’t allowed any.” He didn’t look at Charlotte, but said:
“I wanted to talk to you.”
“Well, talk to her,” said Georges.
“It was nothing. I was feeling lonely, it happens to us all.”
“All of us,” said Charlotte. “But that’s why there’s—”
“Not to you two, of course. You’re the happy family, the little house on the prairie.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Georges.
“Nothing, nothing. Don’t get paranoid.”
Then there was a knock at the door. Xavier smiled, and in his smile there was a bitterness Georges had never seen.
“There’s my son, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. It’s touching. Everyone worries so much, they notice I’m not home and go out looking for me.”
—
BUT ALL THAT had been the night before. Today, Georges didn’t want to worry about bitter thoughts. Charlotte took his hand and he felt the roughness of her skin. He adored that roughness, and hearing his wife’s smoker’s voice, and stroking her gray hair, calmed him. Xavier chose his life without
anyone forcing him to do anything. The past was far behind them, everyone made their own selves. That was terrible, but it was true.
He poured himself some coffee and thought he could add a few drops of cognac without harming his aim. The mountain cold had stayed in his hands, and as he lifted the warm coffeepot his fingers thawed out. It was almost eight in the morning and the room was beginning to fill up with people and voices. Hunters crossed the paved courtyard with long strides; through the window Georges watched them arrive. The rubber soles of their waterproof boots barely dented the silence. Some of them left the back doors of their four-by-fours open, and the dogs barked from inside their cages when a tortoiseshell cat ran past toward the lake.
Georges knew the routine by heart. Jean Moré, the host, was welcoming the hunters, and at his side was Catherine. Tradition forbade a hunter’s wife serving as a beater, but they didn’t concern themselves about that. Sitting at the dining room table, standing in the faint light coming in the window, or trying to warm up in front of the fireplace were the rest of the beaters. They had fluorescent jackets flung over their shoulders and hunting horns hanging around their necks like medallions. It was the same team as ever, except for the presence of a novice toward whom Jean was feigning tolerance.
Lovers on All Saints' Day Page 5
