by Anna Gavalda
It was while we were chatting, doing justice to a delicious risotto and your bottle of champagne, that you said how “chic” I was, and I rolled my eyes to the sky, to the ceiling, shall we say, the roof beams, and then we went into the living room, which meant we went to sit six feet further away.
(I’ll open a parenthesis here because I think it is important to mention our living room. Yes, it seems to me that what comes next in this story is in some way connected to the wizardry of my sofa, and without it, we would not have become friends that evening. Later, maybe, later of course, later for sure, but not that evening. Because I know what I’m like: when I love it’s for life, but I don’t love easily. Especially not in that period of absolute lockdown, for reasons of absolute security. This was not the time to let anything seep into my hermetic self. Even love. Especially love. No way. I was sealed off, absolutely watertight.
(The apartment we lived in came furnished, with all the depressing details that implies—heavy plates, flimsy cutlery, sagging beds, synthetic curtains, ludicrous tchotchkes (there was, and the children remember it, too, a stuffed piranha on a pedestal above the fireplace), chairs that were too high, and one sofa, dead ugly. Bit by bit I replaced everything—the time I spent wandering down the aisles of department stores was time not drowned in the bottom of a glass—but for the beds and the sofa it took a courage I didn’t have. I would have had to arrange for delivery, which meant fixing a date and planning something in the future, and that was out. It was too much to ask. But it just so happened that the week before your visit, the three of us went to the Marché Saint-Pierre to buy some fabric for the school carnival. Accommodate the future, no thanks, but dress up the present, doll it up, deny it, trick it by making costumes: with pleasure. Alice, would you believe, wanted a princess gown and we wallowed in clouds of tulle, gauze, chiffon, sateen, and Swiss muslin, whereas Raphaël, would you believe, wanted to dress up as a Pokémon. It was thanks to his lack of imagination that we came upon a tiny shop on the rue d’Orsel, a gold mine of fake fur. Mink, fox, weasel, chinchilla, rabbit, Pikachu, Chihuahua, we didn’t know where to look or how to carry it all and I had to call a taxi to the rescue to help us home with this lode of caresses stuffed into huge plastic bags.
(That very evening I transformed our awful sofa into the belly of Oum-Popotte. This wasn’t my brilliant idea, but Raphaël’s. Or rather, Claude Ponti’s, a marvelous children’s author who is a genius at imagining the silkiest, cuddliest fur. Thus far I may have revelled a lot in my own sorrow, but I have not evoked my children’s, and they had lost the funniest and kindest of daddies; in Ponti’s books there always comes a moment where a little hero with a rough, hardscrabble life finds refuge in an embrace of infinite softness. It’s impossible to describe. You have to read his books to understand what our new sofa meant to Alice and Raphaël. It could be the tummy of Oum-Popotte or of Oups’ parents or of Foulbazar, or of little Pouf. It was no longer a sofa, it was a big, placid animal that enfolded them when they came home from school or felt forlorn, and it cocooned them in endless cuddles. And those cuddles were all the more tender in that I’d made some huge cushions so that they could hold that big beast in their arms, too. Dust mites be damned, those yards and yards of fur were far and away the wisest purchase of our entire convalescence.)
So, as I was saying, we moved into the living room, and you immediately flipped off your ballet flats to curl up against our faithful friend’s midriff, folding your legs under you and surrounding yourself with cushions.
I was sitting in my favourite place, on the floor, in other words, and I watched as you surrendered to Oum-Popotte with the restful smile and cheerful face of a little girl who has had a very, very long day at school.
We looked at each other.
I offered you some herbal tea (alcoholics never drink) (and that is how you can identify them) and you asked me if I didn’t have, rather, some stronger stuff on offer (oh, dear), no, but uh, oh, wait, we’re in luck, I thought there might be a bottle of whisky here somewhere. What a godsend, really. I poured us each a good dose (since it was a furnished apartment I didn’t have any smaller glasses), and with our chamomile firmly in hand we leaned back again, you against the furry spread, me against the wall.
We drank.
The children were asleep, we were lulled by the laughter and shouts of the revelers downstairs, the candles made it cozy, the music on the radio set the mood, and we looked at each other.
We knew nothing about one another apart from the fact that we were both of a nature to shed a few tears at a zinc bar on a winter morning in Paris.
We looked at each other, sized each other up, appraised each other.
You were sipping slowly and I tried to do the same. It was hard. I was down for the count, clinging to my glass as if it were the ropes around the ring. You leaned back, placed a cushion on your stomach and asked,
“Where is their father?”
4
You listened and remained silent, I poured myself some more to drink and you knew, you didn’t say anything, but I could tell that you could tell, the way I was quaffing my peaty dram, lapping it up, and then it was my turn to question you; your turn.
“What about you?” I said.
“What about me.”
“Why are you here?”
Sidestep. Smile. Sigh.
“How long have you got?”
“All night,” I replied, “all night.”
5
You looked down at your lap and murmured, “Well, I, uh . . . ”
I was watching you, I could tell it wasn’t that you were trying to disentangle yourself from it but, rather, you were fingering each strand of thought in your mind, wondering which one would be solid enough to withstand once you started to pull on the whole ball of yarn.
We had all night, and I was used to staying up late, sitting there, flat out, with a glass in my hand. I was in no hurry. I watched you and still found you just as lovely and I wished my love were still there, to see you. I would have liked to introduce him to you. I would have like to introduce you to each other. He loved a pretty woman with a tender gaze and eyes full of mischief like yours. Of course he would have slipped out at some point but first he would have made us laugh. He liked more than anything to make clever women laugh. It was his way, he said, of making us human and of thanking us for existing and putting up with his presence among us. He got this silly gushing laughter out of us, the better to love us.
Thinking of him brought tears to my eyes and to see me sinking like that gave you the courage to take the plunge.
“Wait,” you said, raising your hand, “don’t cry. I’m going to distract you.”
But it was too late, I was crying. As the kids said, I was fed up with him being gone, plain fed up.
“Did you ever go to boarding school?” you asked.
“No.”
“I did.”
You sat up straighter and put your glass down. You’d found your strand.
6
For eight years. From the age of ten to the age of eighteen, and that includes the year I was held back. It’s a lot, eight years. A whole chunk of childhood and adolescence. An entire adolescence spent just counting the days. Makes for a good start in life, don’t you think? I’m from a military family. Army. First Parachute Hussar Regiment. One ancestor fought at Valmy, another at Sevastopol, a great-uncle at Verdun, and both grandfathers in the Ardennes in May 1940. Hard to find a finer military pedigree. Omnia si perdas famam servare memento. ‘If you have lost everything, remember there is honour.’ That’s their motto. Really sets the tone, doesn’t it? My name is Mathilde but my mother really had to fight to get her way with the name because Saint Matilda was a Kraut. Fortunately the priest at the time gave his blessing, otherwise I’d have been stuck with Thérèse or Bernadette. They sent me to boarding school when I was ten. I was hard-working and was already a year ahead, so
when I was ten, out you go, into the fire. My two brothers, Georges and Michel . . . All the men in my family are called either Georges or Michel because they’re the two patron saints of the family business. Georges is the one in armour who slays the dragon and Michel is the paratrooper who strikes his enemies with thunder, falling out of the sky and . . . uh . . . Where was I? Oh, yes, they sent me to boarding school because my two brothers had been there before me and, as my father reminded me so I’d stop crying, it didn’t kill them. So how can a little soldier possibly reply to that? The thing is, military families move around a lot, so a boarding school is a good option because it provides stability. Stability, get it? Makes you well-balanced. Gives you a solid foundation in life. Structure. They stick you in there and you grow up in the mold and you take the exact shape of the mold, that way, nothing protrudes, and afterwards you’re just the right size and caliber to fit perfectly into the barrel of the cannon. To get married, in other words. To find yourself a handsome little junior officer and produce a flock of little paratroopers for France. Well, I shouldn’t dismiss the entire lot. It’s a world unto itself and, like everywhere, there are good people and there are jerks. And besides, I’ll gladly confess that I met a lot of really good people from that milieu, really sincere, fine people. But you see, the other day I was listening to the philosopher Élisabeth de Fontenay on the radio, there was this debate about bullfighting, and everything she said to condemn it made such an impression on me that I listened to it over again on the podcast so that I could copy out what she said. Wait, don’t move.”
You got up, took a notebook from your bag, and came and sat back down, not tucking your legs up, this time. And you read, out loud:
“‘Aristocratic morality, military honour, the honour of one’s name . . . Philosophy caused me to break with all that. That’s it. So I cannot accept this vast system of ethical justification you describe, where you refer to these values: I insist that they are no longer valid. This doesn’t mean we mustn’t have a sense of honour, I try to have one, but that we must accept that this model of virility, of courage, of mastery, is a model that has had its day, and it has had its day precisely because of the crimes of the twentieth century.’ Thank you, Élisabeth. Thank you, gracious lady. You’ve hit the nail on the head. And I spent my entire childhood immersed in all that. In that model, in those outdated values. I was sent to boarding school ‘for my own good’ and my mother was not at all sad to see me go, since she still had my four younger siblings to wean and another child on the way, so she had enough on her hands as it was. And what was more, she said that she had very good memories of her time at convent school, that she’d made lifelong friends and that . . . in short, who cares. But it didn’t suit me at all. In the early years I would go home every weekend, but then they moved to Pau and I only went home during vacation, and then they were in New Caledonia so that meant Christmas, and that was it. But by then, in any case, it was already too late. The harm was done, it didn’t hurt anymore. Why am I telling you all this? Because . . . Hey, give me some more of your magic potion, would you . . . Because boarding school completely conditioned my relationship with the passage of time. With time, period. For me, time, the kind in the hourglass, is the enemy. It’s the enemy, it’s boredom, it’s regression. I tried to move beyond the pain, but . . . no, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Do you remember that nursery rhyme, Solomon Grundy, Born on a Monday, Christened on Tuesday, and so on and so forth, I’ll effing burst your eardrums with the thing all the way to Sunday. Do you know it? I hate that rhyme, and whenever I hear it, I go ballistic. This is how a week goes, for me—and I think that a lot of people who’ve been through the boarding school mill and who weren’t armed for it must feel the same: on Monday, you’re sad, but you still have a little of the warmth of home stored up, so you’re okay, you can get by on what you have in reserve. Already by Tuesday, it’s a little harder to breathe . . . because it’s still just the beginning of the week, you know. By Wednesday it sucks, but for everyone else, outside, Wednesday is a great day, no school in the afternoon, so there are cartoons on TV, activities, dance, horseback riding, friends, music, all sorts of stuff. For them Wednesdays are great. A fine day. And it’s a break in the week. When you’re at boarding school, Wednesday afternoon smells of mold. Of damp. It smells like feet. You’re stuck in this communal life and communal life is everything I can’t stand. On Wednesday you’re all crammed in there doing everything together, even being bored. Especially being bored, and it’s really depressing. Debilitating. There’s this military joke that goes, ‘At the barracks we don’t do anything, but we do it early and all together.’ Well, that’s exactly it. On Wednesdays and weekends when you’ve been left behind, you end up doing nothing, and on top of it you can see in your classmates’ eyes how droopy and resigned and ungrateful you’ve become. You’re there and you’re useless. And life is useless. Life is elsewhere. Life is happening elsewhere. Fashion, music, love stories, intrigues of the sort Whatshername told me to tell you to ask Whatshisname if he wants to go out with her, giggles, kisses, betrayals, shopping, ice skating, memories . . . All of that was going on without us. For a start, it doesn’t jibe with your parents’ beliefs, and anyway you’re in the clink, so that way it’s all taken care of. Well, of course, they do have all these good works for you to contribute to if you’re in need of entertainment. You can keep busy that way if you want. You can go and sing at the old people’s home, you can help the old nuns to polish their prie-dieux, you can go and cheer up sick parishioners or, better still, even more fun, the moribund old nuns. That’s where you hit the jackpot. When little virgins play hopscotch, it’s only one short hop to heaven. At Christmastime they give you this sort of parcel that has everything in it at once. Just add some indigestion from milk chocolate and overlong mass and there you have it, your lovely Advent calendar. Oh, I got sidetracked—what day was I on?”
“Wednesday.”
“Ah yes, thanks. So Wednesday in the cooler meant potato peeling. Thursday . . . Thursday was even worse. The longest day of the week. On Thursdays, if you didn’t have a good book to read after lights out you might as well go hang yourself. You could go and receive communion. By Friday, things were looking up again. During recess you would stand there motionless gazing at the birds in the distance and hoping to see something green. On Friday you were inching your way back onto solid ground. Saturday morning you . . . Hey, you’re smiling! That’s great! I like making you smile. I’m glad.”
“Saturday morning, you did what?”
I was smiling. And this was new. And it felt good. I hadn’t smiled like that in ages. I was smiling and I began to cry like a baby. Smiling meant I could cry, at last. Not just a bitter little tear like a moment before or at the café that morning, but a wash of big greasy wet tears, plump and warm. My body letting go. Hardness yielding. Sorrow melting. It was the first time I had wept in anyone’s presence. The first time in one year, two months, and five days. Because my love had killed himself all alone, I would not allow myself to weep for him in public. I had never broken down in front of anyone, ever. Why, I don’t know. Out of loyalty, I think. To vindicate him. To vindicate myself. To convince myself that I had understood and forgiven him. I had the right to curse and insult him, but only in private. There, I could. There, when I was alone with him and had had one too many, he would get an earful, but that night, with you . . . With you telling me these really off-the-wall things, so unusual and exotic, to me, the only child of two intellectual, liberal, gentle, pacifist parents . . . Yes, it was so exotic. I could allow myself to cry in your presence, I had nothing to fear. We had not been living on the same planet, we had not been raised on the same mother’s milk, we had not been fed on the same saints yet we were equally cynical. And equally modest. And tender. Besides, you hadn’t known him, and . . . And I was crying. Pouring out all that pent-up sorrow. Dumping ballast. Opening the floodgates. I had permission at last.
How good it felt.
“Hey,” you protested, “this is just the preamble. The sad part comes later. Keep a few tears for later, otherwise you won’t be as sympathetic as you should and I’ll be disappointed.”
“Okay,” I said, blowing my nose into my sleeve, “okay. Well then . . . Saturdays?”
“I’d rather . . . Shit, not everybody is lucky enough to be a widow! So on Saturday morning you take the train with your huge bundle of dirty laundry and come home to this noisy, lively household, but in fact they were pretty indifferent. It’s not that you aren’t loved . . . Oh. Right away the big words. Not that you weren’t made to feel welcome, but it was like Wednesday afternoons: life went on without you. Life didn’t wait for you and now no one really knew what to do with you underfoot. No, they haven’t forgotten you, but someone—a niece, a cousin, a colonel’s wife—has been sleeping in your bed while you were away and no one had seen fit to change the sheets, or maybe they had piled some boxes in your room, and then there was a sewing machine on your desk, they were going to take it out but they hadn’t had time, so just go ahead and take it out and put it in your brother’s room. Okay, it was no big deal, really, but it was worse than that, it meant you no longer had your own space anywhere on this planet. Not to mention the fact that Saturday afternoon they would often saddle you with a little sister or two little brothers to babysit, that’s not the way they put it but at the end of the day that’s what you were stuck with. Saturday evenings could be fun. Credit to big families where credit is due: this crowd at the dinner table, the warmth of it, laughter, arguments, the pleasure of seeing people again, good food, cakes, all the extra leaves we had to add to the table because if there was room for ten, there was room for twelve, and when there was room for twelve, there was room for twenty. Yes, twenty people at the dinner table on weekends, that would be a good average. Among neighbours, cousins, friends, family, scouts, scout leaders, my brothers’ friends, red berets, green berets, seminarians, old maids, the homeless, the pious, the people who were alone in the world, lepers, and all the clan, meals at my home, whether on Saturdays or Sundays, were always special. It was like at boarding school, only you weren’t wearing navy blue, the food was better, and the people spoke louder. But no sooner have we cleared the table than it’s Sunday already . . . Sunday morning means mass and Sunday afternoon you’re already packing again, thinking about all the homework you haven’t done and will have to catch up on, on the train. And then it starts all over again. Every week the same. For eight years. That’s what my childhood was like. And when there was no family home left to go to, I had to widen my circle, but at the same time I had even less privacy. I went to my grandparents’, or uncles’ and aunts’, stayed in guest rooms at the friends of friends’, and so on. For eight years, all I ever did was count the days and live with my butt between two beds. For eight years all I wanted was more stability, more sweetness in my life . . . yes, sweetness. More selfishness. A life of my own. A life I could have wrapped my arms around and said: this is mine, this is my home, don’t come in. And if I let you in, then you have to do things my way and never, ever, ask me what day of the week it is. Do you follow? Does this make sense? You know, I’m not telling you all this shit so you’ll feel sorry for me. I’m telling you so you’ll realize how unhappy I am.”
