The Penalty Area

by Alain Gillot

  I left the bar. The light blinded me. Rue des Carterets started at the corner. I just had to walk a few yards to get to it. It was a fairly narrow but very long street, which started in the rather classy pedestrian zone, and ended up in a noticeably more down-market neighborhood where some of the buildings were being demolished. The dead-end street was tiny, and the hotel the only one. The front was almost black, and an endless crack ran down it from top to bottom. It must have been collapsing on its foundations and, to stop it sinking any more, it was being held up on its right side by beams, like a crutch.

  I stopped outside the front door. A sign indicated the prices, by the day or the month. Given the kind of place it was, they weren’t cheap. I rang the doorbell and a very stout individual came and opened. He was wearing pants that were too short for him and he took up the whole width of the narrow corridor. A strange character. His face made him look like an enormous infant. He looked me up and down suspiciously, then moved away from the door to let me in. Once he was sure I didn’t want to rob his till or deal drugs in his hotel, he had no objection to my going up. He even apologized for the fact that he couldn’t warn Mademoiselle Barteau because the house phone was out of order. Personally, that was fine by me.

  Madeleine was living on the top floor, in the attic, where the rates were cheapest. The fat man had told me the number of her room. It was the one that was missing. As I approached the door, she came out. She was in her nightdress, her hair was disheveled, and she was barefoot. She stood there for a few seconds in shock.

  “I was just going to the toilet. Go in. I’ll be right back.”

  I went in. The room was tiny, the ceiling blistered and swollen. A single bed occupied one side of the room and, facing it, wedged in between the drainpipe and a narrow chest of drawers, was a table with an electric hotplate on it. I sat down on the bed. A small transom in the ceiling was slightly open, letting in a little fresh air as well as daylight. My eyes came to rest on my sister’s bag, the one she took with her everywhere. It was filled to the brim, as if she was about to leave, or maybe had never even unpacked it. I saw a keyring hanging from one of the handles. I hadn’t noticed it when she came to the house, but I knew that keyring. She’d always had it. When she was a little girl, it had adorned her school bag. It depicted a cartoon character who was always getting into trouble. I tried to remember his name. At that moment she came back from the toilet. She lifted her hand to her hair and pushed it back.

  “Why didn’t you warn me?”

  “The time it would have taken me to get hold of you, I thought it was quicker to just come. I dropped by the bar. I saw the painter. He drew me a picture of the situation.”

  “Is that meant to be funny?”

  “Unintentionally.”

  She must have felt like killing me at that moment. I could see it in her eyes. I’d landed in her real world. I was so close to her, it was indecent. She couldn’t retreat, or run away. She grabbed hold of the chest of drawers. She decided to fight back, in spite of everything.

  “If you’re worried about your money—”

  “I don’t care about that.”

  “At least let me finish. Right now, Patrice is negotiating with a new partner. We underestimated the cost of the work, that’s true, but—”

  “Stop.”

  “He’s coming back and then everything will get back to normal. Now’s not the time to—”

  “Stop, Madeleine!”

  The impact of my voice in that little room hit her full in the chest.

  “You’re just like Ma. Don’t you realize? You lie to save face and you end up believing in what you say. You choose men who beat you or humiliate you, just like her. But that’s your business. It’s your life. I’m not here to pass judgment. I came because of Léonard. Because he has nothing to do with any of this.”

  “I’ve always protected Léonard. You know, his father—”

  “You didn’t leave him, he left you. You’d still be with him, otherwise. And your son would be locked up. Like now!”

  “That’s a horrible thing to say. He needs treatment, that’s all.”

  “He isn’t a schizophrenic.”

  “So you’re a psychiatrist now?”

  “He has Asperger’s syndrome. It isn’t a disease. It’s a different way of looking at things. He absolutely mustn’t be isolated, that’s the worst solution of all. He needs two things: to be recognized as someone who’s different, which you haven’t done, and then to be accepted as he is, which your men haven’t done, and when that happens the only solution you can find is to push him away.”

  This time, she was stunned. I saw that from the way her hands lost their grip on the chest of drawers and she almost collapsed, like a boxer on the ropes.

  “He’s the one who wanted to go there. The psychiatrist explained it was what he was asking for with his fits of temper.”

  “And why do you think that is? To protect himself from you, and from me, too, because I let him leave.”

  Madeleine adjusted her dressing gown, and we stood there in silence, brother and sister, face-to-face, in that tiny room. The fight was over. The blows had hit home, it was finished. There was nothing more to defend, nothing to hide. She seemed to relax. Even her voice changed, becoming more human.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Get him out of there.”

  “You won’t be able to.”

  “Give me a proxy. I’ll do the rest.”

  “He’s never been like this before. He stopped playing chess. He broke his chess set.”

  “Give me that proxy.”

  35

  I looked for a store that sold board games. Back in the vicinity of the cathedral, I found one easily. The man behind the counter looked like Don Quixote. He was also the owner, and as soon as I went in, he started talking to me about posterity, it was his obsession. He’d never had children, and it hurt him that when he died there was no son to take over the shop. I listened to him politely, but in the end had to tell him that I was in a hurry. I could see how disappointed he was that he couldn’t confide in me anymore. He laid out several different kinds of chess set on his counter. I didn’t hesitate. A good quality set in a small black box struck me as the right choice.

  The Marcel Blanchet Medical and Psychiatric Center was situated in the north of the town, in a neighborhood that also housed the pound and an incinerator. The uses an area of land is put to sometimes says a lot about a society. The building was a former school that had been closed down after a fire because it did not conform to safety standards. For mental patients, the risk must have been more acceptable. I presented my credentials at the entrance. I showed them the proxy my sister had signed and my identity card, and went to the waiting room, as I’d been told to do. It was lunch hour for the patients, and they were all in the canteen. I wouldn’t be able to see my nephew until after lunch. When I finally found a chair that wasn’t rickety, which took a while, I opened the exercise book that Léonard had left in his room when he left. I needed to revise a little. I plunged back into his world, the diagonals, the indirect attacks, the reverse defenses, everything that made up the art of chess, which he’d mastered to the point of making it accessible. I forgot where I was, and what might be disturbing about it, to the extent that when the nurse came to fetch me I gave a start.

  I followed her down corridors that were distinctly maze-like. It struck me that she was flustered by what I was doing, and that in informing me of Léonard’s mental condition, which she described as worrying, she was implying that taking him out of the clinic wasn’t the right decision. I didn’t answer her. She stopped abruptly, as if her mind had wandered on the way and she’d forgotten the reason she was escorting me. She unlocked a door and let me in. Léonard was there, with his back to me, sitting on a bench.

  I sat down next to him, but not too close, and at first I didn’t speak. It
reminded me of the early days of our relationship. But it wasn’t a problem, I’d gotten to him. I waited a while longer, until I thought that now was the moment. I took the chess set out of my bag and put it down between the two of us. Of course, he didn’t look at it. But he knew perfectly well what it was.

  “You see. I came to keep my promise.”

  He didn’t reply immediately. He was staring at the horrible plate-glass window, covered in dust, which looked out on a children’s playground that had turned into a minefield.

  “I only play with good players. Otherwise I get bored.”

  “Aren’t I a good player?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know, if we don’t play?”

  “It takes years to learn.”

  “Sometimes you can learn faster with a good teacher.”

  “Do you have a teacher?”

  “I have his exercise book. He gave it to me.”

  “I think he forgot it.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Léonard was still staring straight ahead. His face was impassive, but now that I knew him better, I could see signs that had escaped me at first. His lashes were fluttering. He must be faced with a choice, a difficulty to resolve.

  I opened the box and started laying out the pieces. They were of precious wood, a real work of craftsmanship. The man without children hadn’t cheated me when he sold me that model. Léonard changed his position, slowly, to face the chessboard. Then he waited for me to begin the game. In six moves, I was checkmated.

  “You see, I made mincemeat of you.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’m a bad player. It’s just that you’re very good. I’d like to play another game.”

  “You’ll lose again.”

  “I know.”

  “Isn’t it humiliating?”

  “No. I’m learning a lot.”

  He looked up at me. I hadn’t expected him to do that so soon. I let him start this time, and of course he won. But I didn’t care.

  36

  I called Catherine as I was filling up with gas at a service station. I told her I was bringing Léonard back. My mother had woken and had even taken a few steps in the corridor. According to Dr. Vandrecken, she was perfectly lucid. She wanted to have a good meal and had given instructions about it to Catherine, calling her her “daughter- in-law.” A leg of lamb was waiting for us, with sautéed potatoes: the favorite dish of Gabrielle Barteau, née Lemoine. As for us, our mission was to bring back some cakes, including a real mille-feuille for my mother.

  On the way, Léonard asked me for news of the team. I told him about the defeat by Valenciennes. I didn’t insist on Favelic’s performance. Rather, we talked about tactics, the danger of defending too deep and in too large numbers, which meant cutting the team in two and isolating the strikers.

  “Fear makes people lose,” Léonard said.

  I agreed. He was concerned to know when the championship was starting and, when he discovered there was only a week to go, I could sense he was weighing up his chances of getting his place back. But I didn’t want to talk about that, I didn’t want to build castles in the air, it depended on so many things. I thought about my sister in her hotel room, with the hot plate on the table and the toilet on the landing. I remembered the name of the character on her keyring. It was Calimero. The black chicken that wore an eggshell instead of a hat and was always getting into trouble.

  We scoured all the pastry shops in Sedan searching for a decent mille-feuille. We found lots of imitations, but none really convinced us, until we got lost in the maze of streets and came across a simple bakery that had only two kinds of cakes, rum babas and mille-feuilles. Léonard asked to taste the custard, in that slightly irritating voice of his, and I thought we were going to be thrown out, but against all expectation, the baker’s wife took us into the backroom where her husband made the cakes, and this scary-looking man who must have been about seven feet tall took a bowl filled with custard from a cold cabinet. Obviously, it was the right kind, and we walked off with what was left in the window.

  The house had never smelled like that before. The smell of grilled meat, potatoes simmering, a family Sunday. Catherine Vandrecken really was a surprising person. Now she was a housewife with a cloth over her shoulder, cutting fresh garlic into thin slices.

  “You should buy some good knives.”

  “It smells amazing.”

  “I hope so.”

  Léonard sat down on the edge of the bed and placed his hand on his grandmother’s. She opened her eyes, as if she’d been waiting for that signal. What happened at that moment seemed to me to defy understanding. Better than morphine, better than anything, Léonard’s presence gave my mother sufficient strength to get up. She wanted to go into the garden. She wanted to eat outside, to take advantage of the sun. I began by telling her she had to be sensible, but she forced me to go out and see what the weather was like, and I had to admit it was one of those fall days that are like spring.

  I didn’t have to negotiate with Catherine, who’d heard my mother’s request from a distance and was already holding one side of the kitchen table. I took the other, and we put it out on the terrace behind the house. Then Léonard laid it. It was the middle of the afternoon, but nobody bothered about that. We were hungry.

  We sat down at the table, Léonard next to his grandmother, Catherine and I facing each other. I cut the leg of lamb, and we ate it without speaking. My mother wanted to taste the wine. A Côte-Rôtie the same age as Léonard. She spilled a little on her blouse and laughed like a little girl. The sun was on her back. She was feeling fine. She congratulated Catherine on the food, and told me I was lucky. I tried to tell her we weren’t married, but it was no use. Suddenly, her expression changed and she asked why Madeleine wasn’t there. I told her she had a new job, which was very time-consuming, but she would come as soon as she could. My mother appeared to think this over, then changed the subject and told Léonard how, at the age of five, he had regularly beat her at checkers. He pretended not to remember. I cleared the table with Catherine, and we did the dishes together. I washed, she wiped.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “That shirt really suits you.”

  I’d grabbed that white shirt from my closet just before the meal. I’d never worn it before and it still had the fold marks. We got the dessert plates ready, and put the cakes on a dish. A choice of mille-feuille or rum baba.

  When we went back out on the terrace, my mother was standing up. It struck me as unreal, but it was true. Léonard was next to her. She was gazing out at that little garden as if it was the Pacific Ocean.

  “I’d like to walk with you a little,” she said to me. She could sense my reluctance, but clutched my arm. “To the bottom of the garden, and no further. Please.”

  We walked across the carpet of dead leaves that had fallen from the surrounding trees. We reached the end of the lawn, almost easily. My mother weighed nothing, but her steps were sure. She wanted to carry on, along the fence, as far as a cherry tree under which there was a worm-eaten wooden bench with rusty legs that was currently in the sun. She sat down, without giving me any choice. From there, she could see the yard and hear Catherine and Léonard teasing each other as they put the dessert plates on the table.

  “When I was little,” my mother said, “I had a doll house and a collection of rag dolls. I used to play with them. I called them the Rapon family. I loved that house. But when we moved, the house broke and I never found the dolls. I looked for them for years . . . I wanted . . . a family, you know. I hadn’t been brought up by my parents. I was ready to do anything to keep that family . . . ”

  “We don’t need to talk about that.”

  “But I want to talk about it.”

  Her mouth was trembling and her fists were clenched. I sensed that I mustn’t stop her.

  “I could see your fat
her was losing his mind. But I thought I could keep my house,

  that it would work out. I sent Madeleine away. That was why she was a boarder. You, I thought . . . you were so strong, even when you were small. I thought, he’ll leave anyway, he doesn’t need anybody . . . ”

  “Did you really think that?”

  “Yes.”

  The sun disappeared. All at once, it started to feel cooler under the bare tree.

  “We have to go back to the table, Ma.”

  “Wait a while longer. I have one regret. I never held you in my arms, and now it’s too late.”

  We were on that bench, the two of us. I put my arms around her.

  “You’re doing it for me.”

  “Yes. It’s my turn.”

  We stayed like that, motionless, under the cherry tree, then a shiver went through her.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Come and eat your mille-feuille.”

  There was still a ray of sunshine lighting the terrace. My mother cut her cake. She was an expert on mille-feuilles. She tipped it onto its side so that the custard didn’t all come out when the knife went through.

  “It’s the real thing,” she said.

  I stood up to make coffee. I put in the filter and filled the beaker with water. I heard a muffled cry and rushed out. My mother had fallen off her chair without warning, and Catherine was trying to lift her, but her body was limp and her eyes glazed over. I carried her to her bed, while Catherine called her friend, Dr. Mérieux. Barely a quarter of an hour later, he was there. He spent quite a while in the bedroom, then came out to give us his diagnosis. She wouldn’t regain consciousness. It was the end.

  “How long?”

  “A few hours, maybe tonight.”

  “Is she in pain?”

  “No. Not anymore.”