Consequences (19 page)

He made a friendly gesture, smiled at her, through the thick window of the cafeteria that separated them, but she didn't respond. He made another series of gestures to thank her, but she lowered her head. He got up and took his tray to the self-service area. Got another slice of high-carb lemon meringue pie, because he was going to need fuel to last until evening.

He thought of the various events that had occurred while he got ready for his afternoon class. He'd been forced to sit down in front of Richard Olso and assure him everything was going fine and that he was perfectly capable of going back to work today, that he was giving his word, that it was just a simple vagus nerve problem that included a mild facial paralysis that transformed the slightest smile into a very unpleasant pout; and finally, he'd offered to sign a form holding the university blameless for any accident that might occur, which Richard made haste to accept and then immediately shoved into a drawer.

At that moment, it was only being acutely aware of what was at stake that had kept him from grabbing the poor devil by the throat.

He coughed into his fist. “By the way, Richard. I just thought. Let's see now. What are you planning to do with the equipment you set up at the house. Huh? Answer me.”

“Oh? You're converted?”

He grimaced. “Listen, it doesn't really matter whether I'm
converted, Richard. I went to your brother's. I went over to your brother's store. I know the prices. You think we have the money to buy gear like that? I mean, come on, you take us for bankers, for god's sake. You think we're printing it ourselves?”

“Calm down, old man. Don't worry about the price.”

“Don't worry about the price? Did I hear you right? Excuse me? I'm not supposed to worry about the price? And what about our old TV; what'd you do with that?”

He pushed open the door to class in a dark mood, raised his hand to call for silence, and planted himself in front of the windows with his hands clasped behind him. He was going to have trouble accepting this. More and more trouble. The slight shudder he felt in his neck came from all the eyes focused on him. “I want those who are worried—and I notice there are a lot of you—to know right now that my illness from this morning doesn't mean I've caught AIDS or bird flu or Creutzfeldt-Jakob syndrome. Keep your cool. Where's your spirit? We're not all going to die, friends. No need to get out your surgical masks.”

There was this writer that everybody was talking about, obviously better than average, but his work was decked out with an appalling, wobbly, mannered style that was completely unbearable, whereas the critics unfailingly praised him to the skies and unanimously canonized him. He had stumbled upon one of his books when it was sticking out of one of the students' bags. Once he got hold of it, he paged through it. Skimmed a few lines, then tore one page out of it, and threw the book out the window.

It was always interesting to see where a train derailed, he told them, see what part of a sentence showed the weakness, arrogance, failure, provinciality of its author. On the blackboard
he copied the first sentence that fell under his eyes and that had the gift of ending like the others—namely, in smithereens, a failed balancing act, a tourist trap, pure and simple. What incredible self-conceit you had to have to write that way, what blindness. And what lousy literature they were promoting from magazine to magazine—and what pathetic and ridiculous conventionality it was characteristic of, in this case.

He stepped back to admire his work, which ran along four lengths of the blackboard.

Sometimes, the battle seemed lost. Reaching the end of the year and finding this kind of literature among his students' possessions made his head spin, made him want to give it all up.

“Just take a look at this. Take a look at this hideous stuff,” he said, shaking his head. “Where's Marguerite Duras when we need her, for pity's sake?”

Taking advantage of a break, he went out for a smoke in the hallway and ran into the detective, hanging around with the most innocent expression pasted on his face. It made him wonder why we pay such people when we're perfectly aware of their many comings and goings, cafeteria breaks, and croissant orgies as they page through a sports rag, not only in the morning, but at any hour of the day, not to mention their breaks on campus under the shadow of a nettle tree or linden tree, which really do look like siestas, etc.

One day the detective would be talking about an identity he needed to verify; on another, a student he needed to question; and on yet another, a stolen credit card; but wasn't it more likely that he enjoyed the company of young women, who were so numerous on campus—although he was married? What's more, they were half-dressed in this season and a perfect way to get an
eyeful. Richard Olso had no particular information about the presence of a police officer on campus, unless it was undercover and he was nosing around collecting information on something no one knew about, a hidden trail, probably; but Olso wasn't against this extra security now that there were more and more shootings, which were encouraging adolescents to fire on others before knocking themselves off.

“You think she's alive? You don't believe somebody did her in?” chuckled Richard. “Old man, as far as I'm concerned, this cop can be walking around whenever he feels like it. I'm not interested in getting shot down by some little imbecile who's flipped his lid. Or by one of those psychos. Personally, I wonder whether we shouldn't be armed.”

How was he going to be able to leave Marianne in Richard's hands? That was the only real question.

On the way back to his place that evening, after an exhausting day that had begun with a vagus nerve problem and ended with reading the work his students had handed in and that he didn't feel like dwelling on, he let out a long resigned sigh—class was ending soon, and in a little while he wouldn't need to talk to them about style, composition, language, elements he desired above all, although not a single one of them seemed to understand what he was saying. In any case, not a single one was capable of coming up with a true voice; not a single one had both enough restraint and enough daring to write three lines that were of any interest whatsoever. The level was low this year, yet again. Then what use did writing serve, unless it didn't, he thought, while the amber evening filtered through the dark woods.

Each year, he wondered if he was going to stop teaching—and he probably would have if it weren't for Marianne.
His walks deep into the woods led him more and more often to the conclusion that it was time to put an end to his academic career—he thought of himself as an impostor, paid to teach the unteachable—but he hadn't found the courage to chuck it all, to go live in a tree or inside a cave, because no student would have wanted to give herself to some hairy savage, and none of them would have followed him of their own accord, which was also food for thought. The sex had been an incredible revelation. The sex had allowed him to endure a lot of suffering, and he hadn't been able to imagine putting an end to it with any seriousness without his mind beginning to waver.

Taking advantage of the rather late hour and struck by some vague impulse, he made a stop before arriving at his destination. He parked the car set back from the road and climbed the path quickly and accurately, like a lynx, bent double and almost invisible—wheezing as he made his way and the pebbles rolled under his feet, twigs creaking and crackling. These sounds were familiar to him; he'd always heard them, sometimes mingled with his heartbeats, which became a lot louder when she was chasing him, during those terrible scenes in which she was hot on his heels and bellowing.

Less than twenty minutes later, he was creeping onto the rock that jutted out over the pit. He'd made it in good time, a good enough performance. If you didn't mind walking at a clip, it took a half hour, longer if you were carrying something. Twilight was ablaze. The surrounding forest pulsated with a profound silence, punctuated with drawn-out crowing from far away, sounding hesitant, rapidly swallowed.

However, he couldn't get his breath back. His chest was caught in a vise. Frantically, he brought a cigarette to his lips and
turned onto his back. There was no other option for the pain. Very trying ordeals were waiting for him, in one way or another; unthinkable heartbreak was accelerating, swooping down on him, swirling around him. Not that he had never experienced turmoil, complications settling in, but not with such force, not so rapidly. He was gasping for breath—something that wasn't exactly the most practical thing for a smoker, but the taste of the tobacco in his mouth was enough to keep him alive.

He let himself slide along the wall while still capable of it. This time, no migraine had come to announce the crisis, no veil had fallen over his eyes. That wasn't a good sign, in his opinion. It was terrifying.

Without hesitating any longer, he inched along as best he could, tearing the skin on his back and chest as he moved between a sturdy root and a rock to keep from toppling into empty space; and there he hung with his eyes closed, neck pulled in between his shoulders.

When he came to, night had fallen—the silver disc of sky hovered about sixty feet above him. He was breathing normally. He was whole. He hadn't bitten his tongue. The moon and a few stars now, and everything seemed immobile. He felt better, the warning signs had passed. He was just a little damp, his jaw aching, his neck still a little stiff. Feeling more assured, calm; things had been sorted out. For a moment he pressed his cheek to the damp wall, thanking whoever or whatever it was that haunted this place.

He looked up toward the almost dazzling halo like a powdery cloud floating in the silent darkness and finally started to smile. He felt better. Impossible to explain how this bizarre practice he'd adopted reinvigorated him, how hiding for a while
in the bowels of the earth seemed to restore him to life—a life that had improved, was now unclouded, leaving him ready to go on with confidence and determination, feeling more robust than ever. Impossible to know how the spell worked—it certainly was some kind of spell, a sort of magical, mysterious drug that he administered himself by finding refuge within those damp, dark, potent, overgrown, mossy walls that bristled like the gullet of a monster.

Bucked up. That's exactly what he was. He kept his smile for another moment before sliding a cigarette between his lips. He was shivering, his muddy clothing was soaked. But he didn't light up because now he had to begin his ascent and smoking cut off his legs and compressed his thoracic cage more every day. Not that the challenge proved particularly difficult—or out of reach for a man who'd done his training in the mountain infantry—but he wasn't twenty anymore and currently confused getting back to the open air and hoisting himself up and out with the idea of a rebirth. It deserved more than appearing with a cigarette hanging from his lips, in a volatile cloud of smoke that would be totally out of place.

He remembered a night when he was on ski patrol with a group of his comrades-in-arms and the person at the head of their column had fallen into a crevice. They put him on a stretcher and waited for the rescue squad. Someone had stuck a cigarette between the poor guy's lips; he gave up the ghost before finishing it, surrounded by a waning cloud of smoke—and had a fit of absolutely grotesque coughing. The incident had happened on a summer night, the year Saul Bellow won the Nobel Prize, and they hadn't seen any of the meteor shower that had been announced, been able to swallow anything at all, or
smoke a single cig until daybreak—were only able to keep the filters clenched between their teeth like he was today, keep it in their mouths, and thank heaven for still being alive.

He plunged through a night that was now black as pitch, into the woods and back down toward the Fiat. Moving at a rapid, confident trot, without stumbling once—he'd had enough practice running among these trees, surfing among these bushes, elbows in, a cigarette cocked in his ear—and his breath returned.

Marianne was taking a bath. She examined him from head to toe with a suspicious look, but he raised a hand to reassure her, nodded as a way of confirming he'd taken the wrong road, that he hadn't been doing anything in particular.

She rubbed her neck and breasts with a soapy sponge. “I need somebody to look after me,” she said in a dismal voice. She rinsed off.

As she was getting up, he held out a towel for her. That's when he made the staggering discovery that she no longer had a single hair on her crotch; it was as smooth as a bar of soap. She studied him as he tried to keep the gulping sound he made discreet.

M
yriam had little interest in
Marianne's body hair, although she acknowledged that the removal wasn't an insignificant detail. It was her opinion that he ought to be happy about this sign of emancipation from him, interpret it as a glimmer of such a thing, the germ of a kind of disengagement that could only benefit both of them.

Of course, nothing was as simple. Obviously, the strength of his feelings for Myriam inclined him not to do or say anything that could endanger the incredible time he was having with her, the unimaginable experience of living with a woman for the first time in his life. He nodded. This was their first long weekend together, and not a single blade of green grass was missing from the countryside where they'd gone—after several attempts at leaving, which had failed because of hesitation on the part of one or the other—not a single petal was missing from the acacias bordering the hotel, not one butterfly or ripple of fresh air, etc.; and that's just the way he wanted it. He nodded again, admitted that she was right. He had to act positive. They'd been in bed for thirty-six hours, and the only time their feet touched ground was to go to the bathroom, toilet, bidet, shower, bathtub, minibar, or window as night fell over the
gilded countryside, or again at noon for the blaze of light they'd been watching for between the gap in the curtains.