Consequences (9 page)

Winded, he glanced at his computer.
I'd sooner die, sooner die
, he thought. But he finally gave in and sat down in front of the screen.

There were several messages. One of them from Myriam. “Are you there?” she was asking. He reread it several times. It had been sent around sunset, about an hour ago. “Hi,” he answered. “How are you?”

He got up, went to smoke a cigarette at the window, in the reinvigorating freshness of the starry night. Year after year, the smell of spring tumbling down from the neighboring woods—suddenly hurtling down the hill toward the lake, unimpeded—awed him.
No better cigarette of the day than the one burning here
, he thought, admiring the little beauty he held between his fingers. A light shone on the ground floor, a sign that his sister hadn't gone to bed and might be contemplating the same landscape as he as she smoked. The garden was lit up all the way to the road.

Although the house seemed the same, they'd had the swimming pool resealed, the garden torn up and everything replanted, completely changed, before restoring the grounds; they'd done it so well that today, forty years later, not the slightest trace existed of the events that had occurred. The trees had become big ones, the copses had grown, paths had been designed, a lean-to roof and greenhouse built, and the lawn was kept up from then on. Marc regularly borrowed the electric clippers from the neighbors, and Marianne liked using the pruning shears as a way of fighting depressions. He wondered if Myriam had fallen asleep in front of her screen.

He was so grateful at having these doors unlocked for him, at having had his eyes opened, whatever the result might be. So grateful. He hoped that the angels were watching over her sleep, that her mattress was soft and hand-embroidered. The students could go to the devil from now on. Their blandness could go to
the devil. Their pure but distant and insipid flesh could go to the devil, starting today. The target had been shifted upward, toward the heights. There was no looking back.

Annie Eggbaum called, for what it was worth. Her message wasn't very clear because she seemed potted and in a noisy place, but the gist of it was that she was pissed at him, really pissed, and was asking him in quite a loud voice just who he thought he was.

He began by excusing himself, then sent her about her business because she obviously didn't want to listen to him.

Richard called him in two days later and made it clear that he'd crossed a line.

“It was the thing not to do, and you did it,” he said in an admiring tone. “I take my hat off to you, really. I congratulate you.”

“I didn't touch her.”

Richard squealed as if he'd pinched a finger in a door. “I should think not. Oh shit, I should think not. You know who Annie Eggbaum's father is? Jeez, old man. Do you know who Tony Soprano is?” On top of all that, generous donors could be counted on the fingers of one hand. “But I warned you, didn't I buddy? Didn't I tell you to proceed with caution? We don't want any trouble here. You know the situation. Our budgets are getting smaller by the day. This is a record crisis we're in. Listen, I'm about to tell you something that isn't going to feel so good. Old man, this time you've left me no choice.”

Marianne got him out of
this tight spot. He didn't know exactly how far she'd gone, but she stopped speaking to him and for several days went to lengths to avoid looking at him, refused to share meals with him, ride in his car, without giving him any
more explanation. Richard Olso, for his part, pasted a satisfied expression on his face.

“Now, stay out of sight, you hear me? Old man, this is your final warning. Read my lips. Your final warning, okay?”

Nobody wanted to be left at the side of the road in the current climate. It was still too chilly out there. With all the chinks in his armor, it was better to think twice about too much swagger. He nodded. He hadn't done anything, but he knew what kind of opposition he was facing—Richard did too. He lowered his head and left without a word.

But that wasn't all. No sooner had he gotten out of that mess when he was attacked in the parking lot, at the end of the day, as he was leaving Martinelli's office totally lost in thought about how flimsy and insignificant their grievances against him were. All of it was proving to be so disgusting.
With today's unemployment rate reaching new heights, frankly, what could you do with your pride?
he was wondering when a violent blow to his head knocked him to the ground.

There hadn't been any message. The two guys who'd given him the thrashing and knocked him out hadn't said a word. But he didn't need to wrack his brain for hours to find out who this present was from. When he could stand up again and get hold of his handkerchief to sponge up the blood running from his nose, he dragged himself to a pharmacy, dropped onto a chair, and put himself in the hands of a young homosexual in a smock with a disapproving look. He had a clawed cheek, lips as swollen as frankfurters, hands covered with black-and-blue bruises from the blows he'd received while protecting his crotch, disheveled hair, shortness of breath—all of it looked like it was from a particularly violent catfight.

When he felt better, he thanked the young pharmacist and went back to the parking lot with a gel ice pack pressed to the side of his face, which smarted the most at that moment, eventually changing to the other cheek.

The Eggbaums seemed to be genuine maniacs. Father and daughter. He studied himself in the rearview mirror, grimacing because of his ribs. But this wasn't the first thrashing in his life he'd received, and he almost smiled after verifying that he still had all his teeth—especially the three outrageously expensive implants Marianne had generously paid for on his fiftieth birthday. Basically, he'd gotten off easy. It was clear that these people didn't play by the rules.

Nor was it the first time Marianne had seen him in such a state. How many ice packs had she brought for him, how many bandages had she applied, and how many aspirins had she given him to take since the time they were old enough to stand up?

“So, you're running after that girl?” she said in a neutral tone.

“I refused to tutor her privately. She's the one who was running after me. I hope you can grasp that slight difference.”

Because she was leaning over his cuts and bumps, he automatically had a direct view of her personal charms, was able to see down the inside of her apple-green kimono. Under normal circumstances it was enough to make him nervous, to force him to leave and get a little fresh air. By nature, their relationship was rarely simple. Obviously, nothing was very clear. Very early, they'd had to hold each other tight, touch, hug, caress, in order to rein in their fears, smother their sobs, clinging to each other as long as the storm lasted or they'd been sent to their rooms without eating. As a little girl, Marianne cried a lot, preferably in the hollow of his shoulder; and then, heartsick, he had to go and
change his clothes, looking as if somebody had thrown a bowl of briny water onto his chest.

Her tears were tepid and salty. He knew the smell of her perspiration and hair and other odors, which sometimes hit him like lightning; but seeing her chest that evening, a sight that would have normally made him tremble like the frailest leaf, glimpsing her pear-shaped breasts, their tips, left him cold.

Obviously, his physical state had something to do with it. That beating certainly hadn't put him in any kind of raunchy mood, but did that really explain it?

He had himself disinfected, daubed with arnica cream, and then he smoked a cigarette.

He couldn't get over it. Experiencing such a difference. This unexpected void inside him. “What's the matter?” she asked, freezing for a moment. He blinked at her as a way of saying that everything was okay, gave her a faint smile. His forehead and jaw were smarting. Breathing through his nose wasn't easy. His hands were killing him.

But was it the price of peace? Why not, after all? If the Eggbaums considered it even, he was willing to leave it at that. He'd offended Annie Eggbaum and been given a thrashing in return. Fine. And for god's sake, how delicious that cigarette tasted as he surveyed the calm night in the garden.

Of course, Myriam was the cause of this strange phenomenon. Never had any of his youthful conquests prevented him from being ultrareactive to bodies, and to his sister's physical presence. Never had any of his friendly students gratified him to the point of feeling what he'd felt for Marianne today; nothing at all, in fact, as improbable as it was—at least from a strictly carnal point of view.

God knows, that green kimono had fed a host of fantasies. At times, just the sight of it, even when it was hanging in the closet on a soulless hanger, floored him. Some girls had noticed how heavily chained he was to his relationship with his sister—and although his affairs with these girls now seemed like nothing but seven-day wonders, he had to admit they had a certain intuition and were right. But knowing this was like looking directly at the sun at high noon; he was blinded immediately, couldn't say a word, was incapable of describing what he was feeling.

Was it all in the past? Whatever the case, getting Annie Eggbaum out of the game wasn't any less the healthy and only attitude to adopt, to avoid being plunged into inextricable chaos. He ran the tip of his tongue over his throbbing lips and noticed Marianne looking at him.

“I'm not the unhinged person you think I am,” he sighed. “I didn't have an affair with that student. But this guy, he's Tony Soprano. You know who Tony Soprano is? No? Well, don't think you're living in a civilized country. Most people are still living like they did in the Dark Ages.”

“And meanwhile, I've been sacrificing for you. To keep you from being given the boot. I sacrifice for you, and this is the reward I get. Well, that'll teach me, won't it?”

She was among the last women in the world who smoked Gitanes. And when she exhaled the smoke in your face, everything around you disappeared in an awful fog. “Good night,” she said, turning on her heels.

At least
, he thought,
she is starting to talk to me again.

Now he realized he'd been very hard on her. Before the time he'd placed a hand on a woman, and before he'd admitted he'd never be anything but a mediocre writer, he'd been vicious. But
after he'd tried one out and accepted the latter, his mind calmed down a great deal, his mood softened. His conduct adopted a less brutal, less exacting, less negative tone; but it was a bit late to offer Marianne the smile that she'd probably always been without.

Even so, he wanted to protect her. As much as possible. Keep her safe. He certainly owed her that. He gave several little knocks on the door of her room to wish her good night as he walked by. She was crying. He hated to hear her cry. It was something he couldn't stand. So he retraced his steps and put on his coat and left the house. Outside, the moon sparkled in the sky like a diamond in its case—literally. It was cold. He lit a cigarette and walked through the garden until he got to the road, which a light, low cloud of fog was beginning to cover.

He walked through it, plunged into the woods.

In the morning, he woke
up in the Fiat, feeling terribly motheaten and frozen stiff. The water vapor condensed on the windshield formed a network of tiny silver rivers. He studied them for a moment before deciding to budge. The sun had barely risen.

How had he landed there? Weird. What had he been up to during the entire night? He noticed the mud coating his shoes, drying on the cuffs of his pants and on his coat. His hands were dirty. His legs exhausted—but pleased. Apparently the jaunt had been long, athletic.

Hard to know what passed through his mind from time to time. In all honesty, he wasn't too sure of it himself; his only certainty, for the moment, was that he was dying of hunger.

He opened the car door, stuck out one leg, then the other, then an arm into the golden sunshine spreading through the garden in a flurry of light, telling himself that a half-dozen eggs was just what he needed. Once outside, he stretched and stared at the expanse of azure, yawning his head off. It was quickly becoming a clear morning, the light banishing shadows. Sparrows were perched on the electric wires waiting for the rays of the sun to plump up their feathers, save them from the icy embrace of night.

Not a sound in the house. He hung his cap and coat at the entrance, then immediately headed for the fridge. When she was feeling in good enough shape, Marianne changed to twenty-percent fat content, which was nearly edible, but the zero-percent was really revolting, incredibly depressing, despicably repellent. Despite this, he took the top off a jar of the vanilla-flavored stuff and served himself some before tackling whatever else there was.

This type of exercise—these long, random walks—gave him an appetite for almost the entire day. Marianne thought he was somewhat of a sleepwalker; and although she didn't much appreciate knowing he was wandering outside the entire night—exactly where, no one really knew—she saw no point in giving the phenomenon more importance than it had, in her opinion. At the very most, she'd made him put up with a few acupuncture sessions to ease her conscience, or sent him for treatment by hypnosis; but there was nothing very conclusive about any of it, no tangible results.

He found eggs. A dog barked in the distance as the sun suddenly loomed above the woods. No bacon or ham, of course—Marianne had stopped doing any grocery shopping for almost
a month. He looked down and swore to take care of it, found some frozen croissants, checked his watch. There was still enough time to place an order. He ought to buy some steaks, rib steaks, a whole joint of roast beef, all kinds of meat—except horse meat—if he wanted her to recover and get back some color.

For a moment he watched the eggs cooking, then looked up and straight ahead toward the garden, blazing with sunlight. He'd covered quite a distance; that was about all he could say about it. His appetite afterward. The smell of the woods clinging to him, the odor of damp earth and dead leaves. Stone, sap, and resin. That's all he could say about it.