by Jean Echenoz
It is, in fact, a sort of thick obelisk of an irregularity too evident, too decisive to be a natural phenomenon, and its long strands of red, green, and brown seaweed, the eel grass and Spirogyra, the Lithophyllon and Tricleocarpa colonies that carpet its flanks disguise its man-made origin rather clumsily—but it’s true that the place isn’t overrun with people wondering about its origins. Having identified this protrusion, Céleste Oppenheim begins to circle it, scrutinizing every inch of its surface until she finds what she’s looking for: a circular hole about the diameter of a bicycle wheel, apparently the entrance to a pipe it would be appropriate to enter.
Hardly has she done so when this opening closes like the diaphragm of a camera, the iris of curved leaves converging upon the center to overlap themselves into closure, and she keeps swimming until she bumps into the end of the narrow tube. There she remains immobile, cloistered in this new lock chamber that gradually begins to empty itself of water until it’s dry, when the far end opens and light appears at last, toward which Céleste Oppenheim now starts to crawl.
At the other end of this tunnel she must somehow turn herself around to get out. After taking off her flippers, which she places in a net bag, she manages to step backward onto the top rung of a ladder, which she descends. Regaining the open air in a huge and quite brightly lighted hangar, the half-blinded young woman has to blink repeatedly until her eyes are used to this new environment. As high as it is wide and constructed on several levels, with dividing walls that intersect via stairs and passageways, this hangar is furnished with machines no less cumbersome than they are unidentifiable, while part of its ground floor is a parking lot for carefully lined-up underwater scooters. Wearing striped fluorescent outfits, a number of people are busy everywhere, carrying and silently shifting things, consulting blueprints, apparently paying no attention to the young woman.
And she, for a while, contemplates this new setting without taking off the rest of her accoutrements, without even removing her mask, through the “window” of which I can make out her blank expression, watching her from my armchair in my office a few yards from the tunnel exit and separated from the general area by another window, this one of two-way glass, naturally.
Then I see her strip off her equipment, unbuckling her mask before taking off her weight belt, her stabilizer vest, diving regulator, Btex bag, and tank of Nitrox, a mixture of enriched air prescribed for such depths. Freed from these accessories, Céleste Oppenheim is now wearing nothing but her charcoal-gray neoprene wet suit, appealingly skintight, to my great delight. I see her rummage once more in one of those zippered pockets, emptying it of a few technical accessories—the flashlight, the dive map—but also pulling from a different pocket various cosmetic accessories, a comb along with a small mirror, and I watch her apply makeup, discreetly giving her face a bit of color, in little dabs, before the indifferent eyes of my employees.
I light a cigarette and take the time to smoke the whole thing—which is even more strictly forbidden in a submarine habitat but, by now it’s obvious, I am the boss here—while enjoying this show before rising and leaving my office to join her. I head over to Céleste who hadn’t noticed me right away but smiles when she recognizes me; I usher her toward my office and when we’re finally alone, I happily open my arms to her, holding her close, brushing my lips over the neoprene all the more pleasurably in that I’m very fond of the taste of salt—indeed I’m often reproached for that, I always oversalt my food.
THREE SANDWICHES AT LE BOURGET
ON THE FIRST SATURDAY in the month of February, having gone to bed quite late the previous evening, I arose quite late as well and decided to go have a sandwich in Le Bourget. This resolution was something I’d been mulling over for a while.1
Walking toward Gare du Nord, I was almost diverted from my purpose, in particular when passing the front windows of a pizza-by-the-slice place on Rue de Maubeuge* and then the kebab seller’s shopwindow on Rue de Dunkerque,* but I didn’t give in. I held out. Nothing could be allowed, despite my hunger, to interfere with my project.
At Gare du Nord I got lost for a moment in the station trying to get to the RER B, one of the five rail lines in the Réseau Express Régional serving Paris. It was not my habit to go to Le Bourget, in fact it was the first time I was attempting to go there, for reasons too long to explain. So I had never gone there. I didn’t know anyone there. I had nothing to go see there. A few escalators weren’t working, that threw me off, but in the end I found the entrance to the Réseau, then spotted a ticket vending machine, from which I obtained a round-trip ticket (I had no intention, either, of hanging around Le Bourget forever), taking advantage without any hesitation of the reduction available with a senior citizen card.
I felt some pride in swiftly and efficiently completing this self-service purchase even though, through clumsiness, I dropped a few coins, which forced me to crouch down to get them, which I don’t like doing and neither, I would imagine, do most other people with senior cards.
When I got on the train, there weren’t too many of us; a young man was sitting across from me. Through my window I watched an endless perspective of the tags and graffiti, sometimes in palimpsest, that fill the vast majority of the walls along the tracks. I pulled my notebook from my pocket (a small, oblong, beige notebook from New York, witness the price tag: BOB SLATE STATIONER $1.10) and considered writing them down but there were too many; I couldn’t manage to decipher them all and anyway other people must already have done that long before me.
As I was coming to that conclusion, the young man across from me asked where I was going. Le Bourget, I told him. With a look of concern, he informed me that I must have taken the wrong train, this one being a nonstop express to the terminus, Mitry. When I asked him if it was far, Mitry, he led me to understand that it was in fact quite far, that I was in something of a predicament; he even mimicked the gesture of a desperate fellow making an emergency phone call for help. While I was reassuring him, intimating that it wasn’t serious and I had plenty of time, he began to laugh, saying no, it was a joke, and he asked what time it was. I told him: twenty past two. That’s when the train stopped at the first station: La Plaine-Stade de France. We didn’t say much after that; the young man got off at the next station, La Courneuve-Aubervilliers,* after wishing me good day rather coolly, which didn’t seem to jibe with his practical joking, and that’s when some light hail began to fall, as I watched, on the platforms of that station. I’d brought along no hat, no umbrella, no nothing.
When the train left again, I kept watching out the window and saw what was left of the Mécano factory (the lettering of that name reminded me of the one for those old toys, Meccano); then came other companies that seemed more active, especially one involving industrial packaging, until the train stopped at the next station, Le Bourget, my destination. Getting up to get off, I encountered three young guys standing by the doors listening to rap on their cell phones. I glanced at them; they gave me a look with no love lost but that’s fine, that’s fine.
It was now raining at the station, a chilly little drizzle, rather hostile, and I went into the Hôtel de la Gare, which is also a bar and brasserie, just across the way, between the station pharmacy and a medical analysis laboratory. I found a table near the picture window and sat down; there weren’t too many of us there, either. Across from me, the train station at Le Bourget was architecturally reminiscent of an old inexpensive construction set (which reminded me again, by association, of the Meccano toys); three buses were parked in front of it. A big sign described the project currently underway to permit the RER B to link up with a future line called Tangentielle Nord. I waited for a bit.
A man finally showed up, from whom I ordered a ham-and-gruyère sandwich and a glass of Côtes du Rhône: my project was taking shape. Outside, people were going by with umbrellas, visored caps, hoods, shawls, knit caps—one with a pom-pom—but I had nothing like that. The sandwich arrived with its glass of red. I couldn’t really say if they were g
ood, I rather think they weren’t particularly but that wasn’t the point.
In that establishment, as on the sidewalks outside, were plenty of West Indian, North African, and sub-Saharan men and women, as well as a few Asians but not so many as that, and not just them. I did intend to buy an umbrella but I wasn’t sure I’d find one in the neighborhood around the station—and umbrellas, in any case, I already had several at home, all in rather poor working order, which reminded me of the one hundred umbrellas found in Erik Satie’s2 house after his death, out in Arcueil where, incidentally, I could have gone directly afterward by taking the same RER B in the opposite direction but, later, later. Some other time, perhaps.
As often happens at a Hôtel de la Gare, a radio was endlessly playing golden oldies. I recognized without too much trouble Paul McCartney singing “Michelle” while a guy and two girls at a neighboring table animatedly discussed long-term contracts, vacations without pay, and the status of temps. The sun came back out for a moment: disappearance of umbrellas, rarefaction of headgear. On that note I finished my sandwich and drained my glass: mission accomplished.
Before leaving the Hôtel de la Gare, I had time to watch the conversion of a try after thirty minutes of play in a rugby match on the television wall-mounted not far from the bar (Ireland 20, Wales 0). Above this bar, as it happened, a rugby ball was on display along with four soccer balls outfitted, just for a laugh, with different caps (I recognized one from the French national railroad) and a dark blue beret of the Naval Fusiliers.
Afterward, I went for a walk in the town. I went along Avenue Francis-de-Pressensé,* lined with low pebble-dash buildings and classic detached houses of brick or buhrstone like the ones often found in suburbs and, even more often, in descriptions of those suburbs. I noticed one of the ubiquitous Bar de l’Europe cafés on the avenue, as well as two Stars: a Star of Istanbul (bar-restaurant-grill) and a Golden Star (butcher shop). I turned left onto Avenue Jean-Jaurès,* which featured the bar-brasserie-tobacconist L’Aviatic. Not far away, practically across the street, was a bookshop-newsstand-stationery store where the front window was entirely filled with all kinds of models and figurines including a gigantic representation of Nefertiti in the round. I wondered what she was doing there. Having subsequently learned that the lady running that establishment had been mugged several times by youths professing some sort of allegiance to Islam, I wondered if that recourse to Nefertiti might be a vaguely metonymic way of warding off those nuisances.
There were also quite a few fast-food establishments on the avenue (numerous places featuring Turkish, Pakistani, Indian, or Sri Lankan dishes), a few halal or not butcher shops, a few hairdressing and beauty salons including a black-and-white Cosmétique and a black Beauté, plus all sorts of the usual stores such as a jeans emporium, wellness and beauty center, florist, locksmith, Franprix, and Leader Price.
Then I dawdled awhile on Avenue de la Division-Leclerc,* site of the city hall (entirely of brick) and the building housing police headquarters. The latter must have once been the home of a leading citizen: vaguely châteauesque in inspiration, beige and salmon pink, with a pointy pinnacle turret and a roof protected by four lightning rods—which seemed a touch much, and I thought the police could have recycled them as antennas. A sort of yellowing palm was hanging on in front of the façade, from which drooped an astonishingly faded French flag. All shutters were closed save one, on the ground floor, open just a crack. This time I debated whether this institution might be viewed as sealed up tight like a citadel or simply closed for the weekend. Directly across the avenue, a young woman dashed out of a grocery store and into a double-parked car, calling out to me, Hey monsieur, I can buy you a drink if you want. I didn’t really know what that implied; I preferred not to be too sure of what her words meant, or even very sure in fact that she was addressing me (although I don’t see whom else she could have been addressing, I do believe there was no one else at that moment and on that rather empty bit of sidewalk whom she could have called monsieur), but in any case I opted for not answering.
True, I have to say that I was wearing a pair of dark glasses I’d pulled from my pocket when the sun had come out again. Now, perhaps it was incongruous to be wearing dark glasses in Le Bourget in early February, maybe that could seem like a kind of provocation, a vague social class marker as it appears to have been in 1960, in Créteil, if the Jean Ferrat song that sprang to my mind can be believed.3
The sky clouded over again, though, and thinking it might rain once more I repocketed my dark glasses while returning to the station (which by now seemed almost familiar) and, on platform 2B, I had not long to wait for my train home. This time the car was full and I traveled standing. The banal but always intriguing idea occurred to me that all these people had, every one of them, a good reason for traveling, and that mine had been merely that sandwich in Le Bourget.
Five days later, I decided to renew it, that reason, slightly improved. This time I would further refine two aspects of the plan: firstly, a specific destination in Le Bourget, and I rapidly selected the barbrasserie-tobacconist L’Aviatic, previously noticed and to whose face, if I may say so, I’d felt immediately drawn; secondly, the nature of the sandwich, and here I chose the salami sandwich. That’s a quite common kind of sandwich, such a classic in France that it’s familiarly known as a sec-beurre4 but which seems to me, over the past few years, to be appearing less often on menus, to be less desired by consumers, so that one might wonder about a possible tendency for the rate of sec-beurre popularity to decline.
Desirous of putting this hypothesis to the reality test while evaluating the capacities of L’Aviatic in this respect, I thus set out again for Le Bourget five days later, having this time—for experience, as we know, influences method—equipped myself with a cap.
I’d hardly set out for Gare du Nord when a sentence popped into my mind that I thought sounded not bad: I stopped to write it down in my notebook (this time it was a slightly bigger one, printed by the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, and I haven’t the slightest idea where I could have gotten it since I’ve never set foot there). Now, this sentence, aside from being all in all not so terrible, was certainly false, even mendacious. And I was doubtless punished for this lie by my ballpoint pen which, bridling in protest, energetically refused to write it. I shook the pen in vain in every possible direction: it was on strike. I had to accept that it was out of ink and make a big detour over to the stationery store on the corner of Avenue Trudaine* and the Rue Rodier to buy a new cartridge.
I could have bought a new ballpoint, it wouldn’t have cost me any more than the cartridge, but I was fond of my pen, I’d grown attached to it: I admired its rocket- or torpedo-like silhouette, its ingenious safety clasp, its prettily combined materials (brushed metal, shiny metal, plastic), plus it felt good in the hand and the slogan “I (heart) NY” suggested that it had come from the same place as my beige notebook, and it wasn’t very handsome but I was fond of it. Also it was practical for taking notes while walking, given its retractable tip, so it was more practical than the Pilot V5 Hi-Tecpoint 0.5 mm I usually use, but its cap, which must be removed then put back on (and where do you put it in the meantime), slows everything down.
Anyway, good thing I’d brought along my little cap because it was going to rain, although lightly and briefly but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This time the train was neither empty nor full. I took a jump seat. First facing the back of the train (as I usually do in the métro) then facing forward for a better view of the landscape.
And what more did I notice than on last Saturday? A tower topped with the name Siemens, a canal, a beautiful big factory in ruins, companies I found apparently in working order (the industrial packaging one, already noted, was next to an iron- and steelworks, but there were also, for example, the ham company Jambon Georges Chanel and Transports Henri Ducroc), an immense number of buildings one wouldn’t necessarily want to say were inhabited, a soccer field where some youths were playing, a vast zon
e of trash from which arose smoke as if from shantytown chimneys—and perhaps that was the case: I promised myself vaguely that I would check up on that one day.
After arriving at the Le Bourget station, just when I saw the pharmacy and was feeling on familiar terrain, my ballpoint broke down again. This time it was the spring mechanism that had jammed like any old Colt .45 and, to my great surprise, standing on the platform, I fixed it myself. I would never have thought I could do it. I resolved to handle it more delicately from then on.
It was too early, I wasn’t hungry enough to settle that business of the sandwich at L’Aviatic—too early even to eat without being hungry: I decided to go for a walk. First, under the pretext of buying a daily paper, I dropped by the bookshop-newsstand-stationery store. Probably for reasons already mentioned, the entrance was locked up tight like a jewelry store: I had to ring the doorbell to be let inside. Then I spent considerable time looking for the publication I wanted, a mildly left-wing daily of which a single copy turned up on the bottom shelf of the display unit, almost invisible, whereas all the extreme-right papers were throwing out their chests in the place of honor. This sight annoyed me. I reconsidered my hypothesis regarding Nefertiti.
Then, at something of a loss while waiting for sandwich time, I turned onto Avenue de la Division-Leclerc. Lots of places were either closed, not long for this world, or seriously dilapidated, and with a gray sky overhead it wasn’t cheerful. Even though it would sabotage my plans for L’Aviatic, after a while I considered dining somewhere else but the only establishments that would have seemed worthy of consideration—Le Moderne and L’Étoile-Diamant—looked deserted (L’Étoile-Diamant, in particular, with its ashtrays on the floor and its chairs tipped over in all directions, appeared to have been abruptly closed at the height of a general brawl). I walked. I passed three kids leaving their school who were working hard at improvising jingles on scatological themes. Maybe because of the overcast weather, the intermittent rain, this whole environment was giving me a rather sad, rather impoverished impression, and as I was passing another newsstand, when I saw the front-page question on Les Échos—“Can One Still Become Rich in France?”—that question, in situ, seemed well founded. I was similarly interested, from another point of view and on the other side of the avenue, by this sticker on the back window of a charcoal gray Mercedes 300D: “Love for all, hatred for none”—a worthwhile idea at first glance although perhaps a trifle awkward to implement. I kept on walking.
