Happy Are the Happy

by Yasmina Reza

  Virginie Déruelle

  I heard Édith Piaf howling while I was still on the stairs. I don’t know how the other residents tolerate so many decibels. Personally, I don’t care one bit for those voices of wretchedness and those rolled, throaty r’s. It’s like I’m being attacked. My grand-aunt lives in an old folks’ home. To be more precise, in a room in an old folks’ home, because she almost never leaves it, and if I were her I’d do the same. She makes crocheted patchwork items – quilts, pillowcases, or just squares of no particular use. In fact, nothing my aunt makes is of any particular use, because her productions are ghastly dust traps and old-fashioned to boot. You accept them and pretend to be happy with them, but as soon as you get home you put them way in the back of a closet. Out of superstition, nobody dares throw them away, and you can’t find anyone to unload them on. Recently, she was given a CD player that’s easy for her to operate. She loves Tino Rossi. But she also listens to Édith Piaf and certain Yves Montand songs. When I enter her room, my grand-aunt’s trying to water a cactus and wetting the whole shelf while Piaf bellows, “I’d go to the end of the world, / I’d have my hair curled, / If you asked me to …” I immediately turn down the sound and say, Marie-Paule, the cactus doesn’t need very much water. This one’s different, my grand-aunt says, this one loves water, was it you who just turned off “Hymne à l’amour”? —I didn’t turn it off, I lowered the volume. —How are you, darling? Oh my, don’t break your neck wearing those shoes, you’re way up there, my goodness. —It’s you that’s shrinking, Marie-Paule. —Lucky for me I’m shrinking, you see where I live. “My country I’d deny, / I’d tell my friends good-bye, / If you asked me to …” I turn off the music. I say, she gets on my nerves. Who? asks my aunt, Cora Vaucaire? —It’s not Cora Vaucaire, Marie-Paule, it’s Édith Piaf. —No indeed not, it’s Cora Vaucaire. “Hymne à l’amour” is Cora Vaucaire, I still have my wits about me, says my aunt. If you say so, I say, but it’s the song that gets on my nerves, I’m against love songs. The more famous they are, the stupider they are. If I were queen of the world, I’d ban them. My aunt shrugs. Who knows what you like, you young people these days? says my aunt. Do you want some orange juice, Virginie? She shows me a bottle that’s been open for about a thousand years. I decline it and say, young people these days adore love songs, all the singers sing love songs, it’s only me who can’t stand them. You’ll change your mind the day you meet a boy you like, says my aunt. She’s managed to irritate me in thirty seconds. As fast as my mother. It must be a distinguishing trait of the women in my family. On her night table there’s a framed photograph of her husband smoking a pipe. One day she showed me the drawer in her dresser that’s entirely dedicated to him. She’s kept all his letters, his notes, his little gifts. I don’t have a clear memory of my granduncle, I was too little when he died. I sit down. I let myself drop into the big, soft armchair that takes up too much space. It’s sad, this room. It’s got too many things in it, too much furniture. I take the balls of cotton yarn she ordered out of my purse. She hastens to arrange them in a basket at the foot of her bed. Then she sits in the other armchair and says, all right, good, tell me what’s going on. When she has all her wits about her, it’s hard to understand what she’s doing here, alone in this penal colony, far from everything. From time to time, when I call her on the telephone, I have the impression she’s just been crying. But ever since the episode of the exploding rice dish, I know my aunt’s brain is working less and less, to use her expression. The last time my parents and I were at her house, she’d placed a big glass dish filled with rice left over from the previous evening on a hot griddle two hours before dinner. This warming method left the rice at the top cold. My aunt went into her kitchen to stir the rice with a spatula, that is, to project a lot of it onto her work surface. It was impossible to give her advice or even to enter the room. We caught a glimpse of her through the partly open door, up to her elbows in rice, mixing it with her hands as if she was shampooing a mangy dog. At eight o’clock the dish exploded, strewing the kitchen with grains of rice and shards of glass. After that incident, my parents decided to put her in a home. I say, did you like it when Raymond smoked his pipe? —He smoked a pipe? —In that photo, he’s smoking a pipe. —Oh, he gave himself airs from time to time, and besides, I couldn’t control everything, you know. When are you going to get married, sweetie? I say, I’m twenty-five, Marie-Paule, I’ve got a lot of time. She says, do you want some orange juice? —No, thanks. I ask her, were you faithful to each other? She laughs. She raises her eyes to the ceiling and says, a leather goods salesman, what do you think, I couldn’t have cared less, you know! With some people, you can’t see their youthful face anymore, the years have erased it. With others it’s the opposite, when their faces light up they look like kids. I see that at the clinic, even with people who are gravely ill. And my little Marie-Paule is like that too. —Was Raymond talkative? She considers the question and then says, no, not so much, a man doesn’t need to be talkative. Right you are, I say. She twists a strand of wool around her fingers and says, my brain’s still working, you know. —I know your brain’s still working, and that’s why I want you to advise me on an important matter. All right, she says. Do you want some orange juice? No, thanks, I say. So here’s the thing. Do you remember that I’m a medical secretary? —Yes yes yes, you’re a medical secretary. —I work in a clinic with two oncologists. —Yes yes yes. —Well, one of Doctor Chemla’s patients, a woman about your age, always comes in accompanied by her son. He must be nice, says my aunt. —He’s very nice. Especially since his mother’s a pain in the ass. He’s old, imagine, he may even be forty. But I like older men. Boys of my age bore me. One day I found myself having a cigarette with him outside. To tell you the truth, I’d noticed him some time before. I’ll describe him to you: he’s dark-haired, not very tall, he looks like a slightly less handsome version of the actor Joaquin Phoenix, you know who I mean? A Spaniard, says my aunt. —Yes, but … it doesn’t matter. Anyway, we’re standing under the awning and smoking. I smile at him. He smiles back at me. There we are, smoking and smiling at each other. I try to make my cigarette last, but I finish it before he finishes his. I’m still at work, I’ve got my white coat on, so there’s no reason for me to linger. I say to him, see you soon, and I go back to my basement floor. Time passes, he brings his mother in for several visits, I exchange a few words with him. I make their appointments, I find addresses for his mother’s supplementary care. One day she gives me some chocolates and says, Vincent chose them, and another time I see him waiting for an elevator that doesn’t come and I show him where the staff elevator is, you get the picture, that sort of thing. On the days when the name Zawada, their name, is written in the appointment book, I’m happy, I apply my makeup with special care. Do you want a glass of orange juice? my aunt asks. —No, thanks. His name is Vincent Zawada. A lovely name, don’t you think? Oh yes, says my aunt. —I’m in heaven at the moment, they show up every week because she’s having a course of radiation therapy. So last Monday, there we were again, he and I, smoking under the awning outside. This time he was there first. He’s like Raymond. Not at all talkative. My aunt nods. She’s listening to me quietly with her hands in her lap, one on top of the other. Every now and then she looks outside. Right in front of the window, two poplars partly block the view of the opposite buildings. I say, so I muster up all my nerve and dare to ask him what he does. It’s a little odd, you understand, a man who’s always free during the day. My aunt says, true, true. She opens her night-blue eyes very wide. She can thread a little needle without wearing glasses. I say, he’s a musician. He tells me he’s a pianist and also a composer. Not long after that, he finishes his cigarette. And then, instead of going back to his mother in the waiting room, and without any reason, because neither one of us is talking just then, he stays. He waits for me. He has no reason to remain outside, don’t you agree? My aunt shakes her head. It was cold and nasty besides, I say. We stayed outside, both of us, just like the fir
st time, standing there and smiling at each other. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Generally I’m pretty fearless, but around that man I feel shy. When I finish my cigarette, he pushes the glass door open to let me go in ahead of him (which proves that he was waiting for me), and he says, let’s take your elevator. Each of us could have taken a different elevator, or he could have said nothing, right? Let’s take your elevator, that’s a way of connecting us, don’t you think? I ask. My aunt says, yes, I do. The elevator’s very deep, I say, it has to accommodate gurneys, but he stands next to me as if we were in a tiny cabin. I can’t say he glued himself to me, I tell my aunt, but I swear to you, Marie-Paule, considering the size of the elevator, he really stood very close. Unfortunately, it’s a quick trip from the ground floor to the second level down. After we got out, we walked a few steps together, then he went back to the waiting room and I returned to the secretary’s office. Almost nothing happened, that is, nothing specific, but when we separated at the intersection of the corridors, I felt like we were parting on a train platform after a secret trip. Do you think I’m in love, Marie-Paule? Oh yes, my aunt says, you do seem to be. —You know, I’ve never been in love. Or if I was, it was only for two hours. Two hours, that’s not much, says my aunt. —And now what should I do? If I just depend on seeing him at the clinic, things won’t move forward at all. Between the patients, the telephone, and the medical consultation reports, I’m simply not free when I’m at the clinic. No, says my aunt. —Do you think he likes me? He likes me, isn’t that obvious? Oh, he surely likes you, says my aunt, is he Spanish? Don’t trust Spaniards. —But he’s not Spanish! —Ah, well, so much the better. My aunt gets up and goes to the window. The two trees outside are moving in the wind. They sway together, and the branches and leaves all do their frenzied dances in the same direction. My aunt says, look at my poplars, look at how much fun they’re having. You see where I’ve been put. Fortunately, I have my two big boys there. They cover my windowsill with their seeds, you know, their little caterpillars, and that makes the birds come. Don’t you want some orange juice? No, thanks, Marie-Paule, I say, I have to go. My aunt gets up and starts digging around in her wool basket. She says, can you bring me a ball of Diana-Noel yarn, green, like this one? Of course I can, I say. I give her a big hug. She’s minuscule, my Marie-Paule. It breaks my heart to leave her there all alone. On my way down the stairs, I hear Édith Piaf again. She’s singing a catchy tune, and it sounds like someone’s singing with her. I go back up a few steps, and then I can make out my aunt’s thin voice: “It’s strange, what a change, / I’m yours in word and deed. / You’re the man, you’re the man, you’re the man that I need.”

  Rémi Grobe

  So I’m supposed to be what? I asked her. —An associate. —An associate? I’m not a lawyer. A journalist, Odile said. —Like your husband? —Why not? —With what newspaper? —Something serious. Les Échos. Nobody up there reads that. Later, when we got to Wandermines, Odile wanted me to park the car in a narrow side street behind the church square. But it’s raining, I said. —I don’t want to arrive in a BMW. —That’s the wrong attitude. You’ll arrive in the same kind of car the boss’s lawyer has, it’s perfect. She hesitated. She’d opted for an adorable look, heels higher than usual, power haircut. I said, you’re very chic, you’re la Parisienne, you think they want some left-wing activist type with clogs on her feet showing up to represent them? All right, she said. I believe the main reason she agreed was the rain. I parked on the square and went around the car holding an umbrella. She got out. Small, wrapped in a coat, a scarf tied around her neck, carrying a stiff purse and a briefcase full of folders. I started to have a feeling, I mean a real feeling, at that moment. As we were getting out of the car, in Wandermines, in the rain. The influence of place on our emotions doesn’t get its just due. Without warning, certain nostalgias rise to the surface. People change their natures, as in old tales. There in front of the church, which was half hidden in mist, in the square with the red brick buildings and the fried food vendor’s shack, I saw the asbestos victims’ leading lawyer as a little girl, unsure of herself, who laughed – I adore her laugh – when she recognized the group there to welcome her. Amid that fellowship dressed in Sunday clothes and hastening to the mayor’s office to escape the raindrops, as I held Odile’s arm to help her cross the slippery square, I felt the catastrophe of sentiment. There had never been any question of that sort of foolishness before. I know her husband, she knows the women who pass in and out of my life. There’s never been anything at stake between us except sexual distraction. I said to myself, you’re having a fade-out moment, my boy, it will pass. In the municipal hall, Odile spoke before three hundred people, the workers and their families. At the end of her talk, everybody applauded. The president of the victims’ association told her, you just filled three buses for the demonstration next Thursday. Odile said in my ear, I was born to be a politician. Her face was beet-red. I nearly told her that politics requires greater composure, but I didn’t say anything. We left the general assembly hall for another hall, where a banquet was held. Three o’clock in the afternoon came and we still hadn’t made it past the sparkling wine aperitifs. A plump woman of about sixty, wearing a pleated skirt, directed the service. There was a sound system that had been cutting-edge in the 1980s. I struck up an acquaintance with a former worker in asbestos removal and demolition, a guy with pleural cancer. He told me about his working life, about cutting up the corrugated sheets, about grinding or sanding pipes with sandpaper and no protection. He described the asbestos room, the dust. He told me the asbestos was delivered to them in drums and they’d play with it like snow. I saw Odile dancing the Madison with several widows (she’s the one who said Madison, I know nothing about dances) and a kind of tango with some men strapped to oxygen tanks. A woman called out, Odile, your hair looks like you used a rake on it, you need to get yourself a permanent! I thought, this is real life, tables on trestles, fraternity, dust, Odile Toscano dancing in a village hall. I thought, that’s what you should have done in life, Rémi, you should have been mayor of Wandermines in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, with its church, its factory, its cemetery. The servers brought out coq au vin in big cooking pots. My new pal told me that the number of recent graves in the cemetery was higher than the population of the village. We’re fighting, he said. I thought about the force of that word. He said, when my brother died, I had “Le Temps des cerises” sung at his funeral. My head was about to explode. When the end of the day finally came, I got behind the wheel to drive to Douai, but I was as loaded as Odile. Once we were in the hotel room, she collapsed on the bed. She said, I’m sloshed, Rémi, I can’t very well call the children in this state, do you have some aspirin? —I have something better. I took a bottle of cognac from the minibar. I was sloshed too, and the bewilderment I felt persisted. The way she was lying there, the way she pulled a pillow under her head, the way she knocked back the shot of cognac. Her laugh, her weary face. I thought, she’s mine, my little Counselor Toscano. I lay on top of her, kissed her, undressed her. We made love with incipient hangovers, which added just the right dose of pain. Around ten in the evening, we got hungry. The hotel clerk told us about a restaurant that would still be open. Before we found it, we wandered around Douai. We walked along a river called the Scarpe, Odile told me, I don’t know why I remember that name. She told me other things about some of the buildings and showed me the law courts. It was pretty windy and drizzly, but I liked the opaque temperament of the place, the silence, the amusing streetlights, I was ready to stay and live there. Odile trod along bravely, her nose swollen by the cold. I had an urge to wrap my arms around her, to hold her close against me, but I restrained myself. There had never been any question of that sort of foolishness between us before. In the restaurant we ordered vegetable soup and ham on the bone. Odile wanted tea, I wanted a beer. She said, you shouldn’t drink any more alcohol. I said, it’s nice of you to look after me. She smiled. Those people impressed me, I said. I live a stupid fuck
ing life. All the people I know are stupid, stupid and insipid. She said, not everybody’s lucky enough to be born in coal-mining country. —You too, you impress me too. Ah, at last! Odile said, making a gesture that meant I should develop this line of thought. —You’re involved, engaged, strong. You’re beautiful. —Rémi? Hello? Are you all right? —Don’t, I’m serious. You fight with them, for them. —That’s my job. —You could do it differently. You could be more aloof. The workers love you. Odile laughed (I’ve already mentioned that I adore her laugh). —The workers love me! The common people love me, you see, I really should go into politics. And you, my poor darling, you’re going to sleep well tonight. —You’re wrong to laugh. I’m serious. The way you danced and cleared away the plates, the comforting words you said, you made the day enchanting. —You didn’t think those pants made me look fat? —No. —You think my hair looks like I used a rake on it? —Yes, but I like it better than the helmet look you had this morning. And suddenly I thought, tomorrow we’ll be in Paris. Tomorrow evening, Odile will be at home in her cozy cell, with husband and children. And me, I’ll be the devil knows where. Ordinarily none of that mattered, but since things had taken an abnormal turn, I thought, take your precautions, old boy. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket, said excuse me to Odile, and looked for Loula Moreno’s number. She’s beautiful, she’s funny, she’s desperate. Exactly what I need. I sent her a text message: “Free tomorrow evening?” Odile was blowing on her soup. I felt myself invaded by a kind of panic. A dread of abandonment. When I was a child, my parents would leave me with other people. I’d find a dark spot and remain there immobile, getting smaller and smaller. The screen on my cell phone lit up and I read, “Free tomorrow evening, my angel, but you’ll have to come to Klosterneuburg.” I remembered that Loula was making a movie in Austria. Let’s see, who else … Everything OK? Odile asked. Everything’s fine, I said. —You look frustrated. —A client postponing a meeting, nothing important. And then I put on an indifferent air and tossed out, what are you doing tomorrow evening? We’re celebrating my mother’s seventieth birthday, Odile replied. —At your place? —No, at my parents’ house in Boulogne. Having guests is good for my mother. Doing the shopping, cooking for everybody. I have a fear of my parents sitting around being depressed. —Don’t they do anything? —My father was a senior inspector of finances. When Raymond Barre was prime minister, my father was one of his advisers, and later he was director of the Wurmster Bank. Ernest Blot, ever heard of him? —Vaguely. —He had to retire from the bank because of a heart problem. Now he’s chairman of the board of directors, but it’s just an honorary position. He does a little volunteer work, he spins his wheels. My mother does nothing. She feels alone. My father’s hateful to her, they should have separated a long time ago. Odile fished the slice of lemon out of her empty teacup and separated the peel from the pulp. One of the effects of emotional malfunction is that nothing gets passed over anymore. Everything stands for something else, everything’s in code and needs deciphering. I was unhinged enough to imagine that Odile’s last words contained a message, and so I asked her, have you ever thought about separating, you and your husband? I immediately covered her face with my hands and said, I don’t give a damn, forget I said that, I absolutely don’t give a damn. When I removed my hands, Odile said, he must think about it every day, I’m horrible. I’m sure you are, I said. Robert’s horrible too, but he knows how to make it up with me, Odile said, swallowing the lemon slice. I didn’t like that she’d chosen the same meaningless adjective for both of them, and I didn’t like that she’d said the name Robert, that Robert had barged into our conversation. That she could offer such a banal glimpse into their life together, about which I could not have cared less, irritated me. It’s foolish to think that sentiment brings us closer. It does the opposite, it sanctifies the distances between people. In the excitement of the day, in the rain, on the platform with a microphone in her hand, in the car, in the room with the curtains drawn, Odile felt near, her face in reach of my hand, of my kisses. But in that gloomy, virtually empty restaurant where I’d begun, against my will, to scrutinize her smallest gesture and the tone of her every word with feverish attention, she’d ducked away from me, she’d vanished into a world I had no part in. I said, if I had to live here, at the end of two days I’d blow my brains out. Odile laughed (I found her laugh caustic and conventional). —You claimed the opposite ten minutes ago. You were enthusiastic about Douai. —I’ve changed my mind. I’d blow my brains out. She shrugged and dunked a bit of bread in the remains of her soup. I had the feeling she was on the verge of boredom. I was on the verge of boredom myself, permeated with the sullenness of lovers when nothing’s going on outside the bed. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I heard the rain return and start pattering against the window. Odile put on a look of consternation and said, we didn’t take the umbrella. I thought about the asbestos demolition worker who showed his thoroughly stained teeth when he laughed, about the chubby organizer in the pleated skirt that made her look even fatter, and God knows why, about my father, an auto body mechanic whose shop was on the Avenue de la Porte de Pantin, on the edge of Paris, and who used to complain bitterly about whoever had installed the leaky skylight. I was tempted to tell Odile that story, but the temptation lasted half a second. I scrolled through the list of contacts on my cell phone and came upon Yorgos Katos. I thought, there you go, my boy, you can sally forth and lose your shirt at poker. I texted Yorgos: “Need an easy mark at the table tomorrow night?” Odile asked, who are you writing to? —Yorgos Katos. Haven’t I ever spoken to you about Yorgos? —Never. —He’s a friend who makes his living gambling. One day, years ago, he was playing with Omar Sharif in a bridge tournament. He could feel a crowd of girls gathered at his back. He told himself, they know I play much better than he does. It never occurred to him for a second that they wanted to see Omar Sharif’s face. Odile said she was in love with the desert prince in Lawrence of Arabia. As far as she was concerned, Omar Sharif wore a keffiyeh and rode a black charger, he didn’t sit huddled at a bridge table. I realized she was absolutely right. I felt lighthearted again. Everything returned to normal.