The A26

by Pascal Garnier

  ‘Please don’t start, Jacqueline.’

  ‘What? What would we have left if we no longer had our regrets?’

  ‘Remorse, perhaps.’

  ‘Sometimes I think I might prefer that. At least it would mean we’d done things.’

  ‘Things? They don’t leave much of a trace behind them.’

  ‘Well, did you want to leave pyramids behind you? Things aren’t just stuff made of stone, your churches, castles, monuments! It’s the little things, like when you used to go fishing in craters on bomb sites, smoking your first P4 round the back of the bike sheds, all the things we said we were going to do even if we already knew we’d never do them … I’m coming, I tell you! Please come on Sunday, just for me.’

  ‘All right, I’ll be there.’

  Jacqueline got up with a sigh. She could almost have supported the tray on her ample bosom, leaving her hands free to carry other plates, other dishes. It must feel good to lie sleeping on those breasts, like being on a cloud. A long time past, down by the canal, the weather was hot. There was a scent of cool grass. He had laid his cheek on Jacqueline’s white breast. Beneath the thin stuff of her bodice he could feel her quivering, giving off a fragrant dew. Fish were jumping, snapping at dragonflies. The air was alive with a thousand tiny things. One of them had said, ‘This is nice, isn’t it?’

  *

  The small fluorescent green letters on the screen were no longer making proper words. They were now just long wiggly caterpillars, line upon line of them.

  ‘Is something wrong, Bernard?’

  ‘No, a spot of dizziness, that’s all. It’ll be the new medication, no doubt. Take over from me, François. I’m just nipping out for a breath of air.’

  ‘Certainly. Why don’t you take some time off?’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  Where did those rails along the platforms go? Not all that far. They joined up again over there, behind the warehouses, the end of the world was within arm’s reach. Everything was rusty here, down to the ballast stones, even the grass clinging to life at the edge of the track. The railway had left its mark, a lengthy scar with dried blood at its edges. Seated on a trolley, Bernard ran his fingers over his face, feeling the rows of teeth, the angle of the jaw. Beneath the pallid, soft skin a death’s head was hiding, like the one on a pirate flag or the labels of particular bottles at the pharmacy, with two crossbones behind. So what if it was ugly here, it was still the richest landscape on earth. You could make a life here. It was all there ahead of him, rails leading to more rails, on and on to infinity. François was right, he would take some leave. Actually, he would leave. Like old Fernand the year before. But he’d been retiring. He was old. He had gone off with a fishing rod under his arm, a cuckoo clock and a return ticket to Arcachon, first class. Bernard would never go to Arcachon. To tell the truth, he didn’t give two hoots about Arcachon, there were so many places in the world where one would never set foot. What was there over there, anyway? A dune, a big Dune of Pilat which looked just like the desert, they said. It was people who’d never been there who said that. Everything looked like everything else, people couldn’t help comparing the things they knew to the things they didn’t know, so they could say they did know, that they’d been round the world without leaving their own fireside. Six of one and half a dozen of the other, no cause for regrets. No gifts for sick employees, they’d prefer them just to clear off, preferably without a trace. Illness really annoyed them, it was bad for business, and they took a dim view of it. It lowered the troops’ morale.

  ‘Oh my poor Bonnet, and with your poor sister too! How much time off do you want?’

  Taking his cap between thumb and forefinger, Bernard sent it flying somewhere over the containers, like a Frisbee. He had another one in the locker room. No harm done. The wind caressed his baldness. In the early days, when Yolande’s hair had begun to grow back he’d loved running his hand over her head. All the little hairs standing upright had given him a feeling like electricity in his palm. Her hair had grown back pure white. Yet she was only twenty. The shock of it, no doubt. Before that it was blonde, red blonde, Titian she used to call it.

  ‘WITH SEVEN CENTIMETRES OF HAIR’

  ‘I have already told you how hard-working the Germans are. They make clothes and chocolate out of wood, and make lots of things from all sorts of materials which have not been used until now. They have now discovered it is possible to make felt hats out of the hair cut off by the hairdresser. It is likewise possible to make rugs from these hair clippings. Since hair has to be a certain length for this, however, people are forbidden to cut hair before it has reached this length. If the hairdressers are diligent and collect up the hair carefully, in one year almost 300,000 kilos of hair will be obtained. That sounds like a lot of hats and quite a few rugs.’

  There it was in black and white, in the bound volume of La Semaine de Suzette, under the heading ‘Suzette across the world’, an old collection from 1932, worn shiny, stained and yellowing, like everything from that era. Despite knowing it by heart, Yolande loved to spend hours leafing through it. She had done all the crosswords, every rebus and sewn the entire wardrobe for Bleuette (a 29-centimetre doll, real curled hair, eyes that shut, and unbreakable posable head). She loved the smell it gave off when the pages were opened, a musty smell of old biscuits. The Germans would be back. She wasn’t especially waiting for them but she knew they’d be back.

  It was the drop of water falling on her newly shaven head which had hurt her the most, a deafening sound like the stroke of a gong which had stayed in her head ever since. As for everything else, she had let them get on with it, like a sheep, there was nothing else to be done with idiots. For as long as they kept her in the café, amidst their yelling, she had been outside her body. She was a past master at switching off, what with her lunatic of a father who would bawl her out for the slightest thing. She’d had enough time to practise. But on leaving the Café de la Gare, after they’d let her go, a large drop, plop! filled with all the absurdities of the past four years. You’d have thought that ever since they’d dragged her out of her house, the sky had been holding itself back so as to descend on her with all its might in that drop.

  Yolande didn’t even remember the Boche’s name. To tell the truth, it wasn’t so much for what she’d done with him that they’d shaved her head, more for what she’d refused to do with some of her ‘barbers’.

  What did it matter anyway? She had never liked them, they had never liked her. It had let her get shot of all those bastards for good and all. Besides, they must all be dead by now. But what had he been playing at in the lav for the past hour?

  ‘Bernard, what are you doing in there?’

  ‘Trying to unblock the toilet. How many times have I told you not to use newspaper!’

  ‘I didn’t have anything else. You forgot to get toilet paper when you were at Auchan.’

  ‘There’s tissues.’

  ‘They’re no use to me, there’s nothing to read on them.’

  The sound of the flush drowned out Bernard’s reply. He emerged from the toilet, wiping his hands. He was wearing a white shirt, the collar gaping wide round his thin neck.

  ‘What are you dressed up like that for? Are you going to a wedding?’

  ‘No, it’s Jacqueline’s nephew’s First Communion. I told you that last night.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me a thing. You’re always up to something behind my back.’

  ‘For one thing, I did tell you, and for another, I’m not up to anything. I’m going to the Communion, and that’s all.’

  ‘So basically you’re going to get yourself filled full of liquor by that cuckold she calls a husband.’

  ‘Yoyo, that’s enough. I won’t be staying long. I’m done in but I’ve got no choice. I won’t be late back. The toilet’s unblocked and I’m begging you, please don’t put any more newspaper in there.’

  Yolande shrugged and buried herself in La Semaine de Suzette again. Bernard rolled d
own his sleeves, slipped on his jacket and planted a kiss on his sister’s neck.

  ‘Come on now, don’t sulk – I’ve got a present for you.’

  The pendant on its gilt chain was dangling over the book like a pendulum. Catlike, Yolande caught at it.

  ‘What does that mean, “More than yesterday and much less than tomorrow”? Is it about the blocked toilet?’

  ‘No, it means I love you more than yesterday and much less than tomorrow.’

  ‘You’re going to love me less tomorrow?’

  ‘No, it’s the other way round.’

  ‘It’s beyond me. Can you put it on for me?’

  Bernard’s fingers had a little difficulty in doing up the clasp. Strange, the skin on Yolande’s neck wasn’t an old lady’s but a baby’s, all soft, warm little folds.

  ‘You’re very beautiful.’

  Yolande put the pendant into her mouth.

  ‘I used to have one with the Virgin Mary, a blue one, it tasted of electric wire. At school when you went for an X-ray, you had to put it in your mouth so you wouldn’t see right through to the Virgin’s bones. This one doesn’t taste of anything.’

  ‘See you later, Yolande.’

  The countryside, accustomed to low skies and drizzle, looked ill at ease done up in its Sunday best in the sunlight. The bricks were too red, the sky too blue, the grass too green. It was as if Nature felt embarrassed at being so extravagantly made up. As if for the camera, she was quite still except for the occasional crow hopping about in the middle of a field. At the wheel of his car Bernard was feeling good, for the first time in a long while. He loved these expanses of brown stretching as far as the eye could see, you could almost fancy you were by the sea. He passed a motorcyclist at the roadside, leaning against his bike. He was smoking a cigarette, at right angles to the horizon. There was no house nearby. Here was a chap who had simply said to himself, ‘I know what, I’ll stop here for a cigarette because this is absolutely the best place in the world for that.’ It was over in seconds, just the time it took for the motorcyclist’s image to disappear in the rear-view mirror, but Bernard felt every bit of that man’s happiness in his own body: ‘I feel good.’

  ‘And what’s going to happen to me as long as Yolande’s still alive?’ He realised he had never asked himself that question before. He would very much have liked to be a biker stopped at the roadside for eternity. No doubt Yolande had never asked herself that question either.

  She didn’t care, had never cared about anything but herself. It couldn’t really be called egotism, she had simply never been aware of other people. They were bit parts, at most, even her brother. When she had come home with her head shaven, never to leave the house again, she had appeared relieved, her face serene like that of a young nun. They didn’t want her any more, and she had never wanted them. At last things were clear, ordered, everyone in his own place. She had never wanted anything but this cat’s life of cosseting and food.

  Bernard slowed down as he passed the works on the A26. The pillars supporting the slip road had advanced a few steps. RIP Maryse.

  ‘Now, Bernard, that’s not an empty glass, is it?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m fine, thanks.’

  Roland’s eyes looked like two egg whites, pastis yellow shot through with red.

  ‘It’s lovely to see the young ones having fun, so full of life!’

  In the back room of the café, where the tables had been arranged in a horseshoe, the young ones were jigging to one of the summer’s hits. The acrylic of the girls’ little skirts was stretched out of shape over their bulging thighs. The boys, a glint in their eye, were blowing themselves a smoke screen to hide their acne and drinking out of cans. Jacqueline, hair dishevelled, was zigzagging amongst the dancers with a tray in her outstretched arm. She looked like a statue carrying its upturned plinth.

  ‘She’s not bad, even now, huh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Even with a few miles on the clock she’s still a catch, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m telling you, Bernard, not only am I not angry with you, I feel sorry for you. Yes, I do, don’t argue. What’s more, out of all the men who’ve come sniffing around after her, you’re the one I like best. You are! Because you’re going to kick the bucket soon – before me. Not by much maybe, but before me.’

  Roland’s brow was dripping with sweat. The few hairs he had left were plastered to his temples. He’d been a very good footballer, the best goalkeeper Subligny had ever had, and had inherited the café-restaurant from his parents.

  ‘I had to tell you, Bernard – it may not look like it but I respect you. Look, if you want to, you can have her right here and now, before my very eyes, and I won’t say a thing. Scout’s honour.’

  ‘You’re talking rubbish, Roland. You’re sozzled.’

  ‘Not at all! You’ll see. Jacqueline! Hey, Jacqueline!’

  ‘What’s the matter? Have you taken leave of your senses, yelling like that?’

  ‘He won’t believe I respect him! Do your business, you two, and I won’t so much as raise my little finger. Go on!’

  ‘You’ve got to be mad! There are children present!’

  ‘So, there’s children. They’ve got to learn the facts of life, haven’t they? Like on the farm, the pigs with the sows, and the mares with the … I don’t know what, but that’s nature’s way, isn’t it, shit!’

  ‘Be quiet! It’s you who’s the pig – clear off, you’re ruining it all.’

  The music had stopped, and so had the dancers. Some of them were sniggering behind their hands, others raising their eyes. Only Serge, whose Communion they were celebrating, still moved around between them on his brand-new roller skates.

  ‘I’ve got to go, Jacqueline.’

  ‘No, you don’t, that’s stupid.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s not because of him, I’m just tired. I was leaving anyway. Say goodbye to Serge from me.’

  Out in the car park Bernard rubbed his eyes. The red sphere of the setting sun was pulsing on his retina. Someone knocked on the window.

  ‘Hello. Which direction are you going?’

  The girl was made up like in the silent movies, hair all over the place, black and red, like a kid disguised as a witch.

  ‘Towards Arras, but I’m turning off in six kilometres.’

  ‘That’ll still be a help. Could you give me a lift?’

  ‘If you like.’

  With the amount of perfume she was wearing, she needn’t have bothered getting dressed, a heavy scent.

  ‘On Sundays, the buses … Is it all right if I smoke?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The girl lit a cigarette. The smoke lingered above their heads. They had stopped talking. Bernard was driving slowly. The sky took on streaks of purple and mauve.

  ‘It’s pretty. All this silence does you good.’

  ‘Yes, it’s like staring into a fire in the grate.’

  ‘Wasn’t there a war here?’

  ‘That’s right. The Great War and the Second. It’s taken a while for it to look alive again.’

  ‘Do you remember the war?’

  ‘Just a little. I was young then.’

  ‘All our lives we’ve heard people talking about it on TV, all over the world, but we’ve never seen it for real. We’re not quite sure it exists. It’s like fairytale monsters, and ogres and death. We know it exists but we don’t believe in it. We have doubts about everything, even ourselves. We’re never quite sure we’re not in a video game.’

  ‘Does that bother you?’

  ‘No, you just have to get used to it. I spotted you just now during the shouting match. You were different from the others. Me too. I’d come with a mate of the boyfriend of … well, whatever, it’s a shame, he was cute. Your air of sadness is very attractive.’

  ‘I’m not sad.’

  ‘You look it.’

  The sound the girl’s stockings made as she crossed her legs caused him to jerk the whe
el. But he was very swiftly back in control. She had noticed. He could just imagine the smile on her face as she crushed her cigarette end in the ashtray.

  ‘What do you do for a living?’

  ‘I’m going to drop you off here.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  Bernard parked on the verge. A car hooted as it went by. The lower part of the sky was turquoise with a tinge of gold right at the top.

  ‘OK, well, thanks a lot anyway.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Vanessa.’

  ‘Goodbye, Vanessa. Very nice to have met you.’

  Vanessa, the motorcyclist, Jacqueline, all of them in the rear-view mirror, in one small piece of mirror which saw things the wrong way round. A life wasn’t very much, not much at all. Giving, taking away. It was so easy. Sometimes death spares people.

  Yolande was making pancakes, dozens of them, building them up into an enormous stack. There were enough to feed at least fifty. It was her only way of combating the successive waves of ‘outside’ which had been beating against the walls of the house non-stop since the morning. For almost two hours now she had been busy, frying pan in hand in front of the stove. To begin with, she had counted them, as people count sheep to fall asleep, but then it had become mechanical, like breathing: a ladle of batter, turn the pan, wait, toss the pancake, wait, put it on the pile, a ladle of batter, turn the pan … They were like the skin of faces, faces she could put names to: Lyse, Fernand, Camille … She saw them go past one after the other, the way they used to lean over her cradle, gigantic, stinking of beer or cheap perfume, and belching out their slobbering coochie-coos, disgusting. Even then she had hated them, was nothing to do with them. She had only had to look at her father’s face or her mother’s belly to know for certain that she did not come from ‘that’. Each time she tossed a pancake bubbling with dark craters, she said, ‘Nice one.’