Hunting and Gathering (41 page)

 
“That's good. I'm not saying I'll make a cordon-bleu cook of you, but still . . .”

“And Franck?”

“What about Franck?”

“Are you the one who taught him to cook?”

“No, not at all. I gave him the taste for it, I suppose. But all that fancy stuff, that's not me. I taught him home cooking. Simple country dishes, cheap to prepare. When my husband was laid off because of his heart, I started working for an upper-class family as a cook.”

“And did he go there with you?”

“He did. What else could I do with him when he was little? And then later on, he didn't come anymore. After—”

“After what?”

“Well, you know how things are. Later on, I couldn't keep track of him, of what he was doing and where. But . . . he was talented. He really liked doing it. About the only time he ever calmed down was when he was in the kitchen . . .”

“That's still the case.”

“You've seen him?”

“Yes, he took me along as a catering assistant once and—I didn't recognize him!”

“You see? But if you knew what a drama there was when we sent him off to do his apprenticeship. He really held it against us.”

“What did he want to do?”

“Nothing. Silly stuff. Camille, you're drinking too much!”

“You must be joking! I haven't drunk a thing since you've been here! Here, a little shot of fermented grape juice, good for the arteries! I'm not the one who said that, it's the medical profession.”

“Okay, then, a little glass.”

“Well? Don't make such a face. Does wine make you sad?”

“No, it's the memories.”

“Was it hard?”

“Sometimes, yes.”

“Was he the one who made it hard?”

“He was, life was.”

“He told me.”

“What?”

“About his mother. The day she came to take him back, all that.”

“You—you see, the worst thing about getting older, is this . . . Pour me another glass, go on. It's not so much that your body goes its own way, no, it's the regret. How everything you regret comes back to haunt you, torment you. Day and night . . . all the time. There comes a point when you don't know anymore whether to keep your eyes open or closed to make the regret go away. There's a point when you—God knows I tried, I tried to understand why it didn't work out, why it all went wrong, all of it. And—”

“And?”

She was trembling. “I can't do it. I don't understand. I—”

She was crying. “Where do I begin?”

 
“I married late, for a start. And like everyone, I had my love story too, you know. Or did I? Anyway, in the end I married a nice boy so everyone would be happy. My sisters had tied the knot long before and I—well, I finally got married too.

“But there was no child coming. Every month I'd curse my belly and cry while I was boiling my linen. I saw doctors, I even came here to Paris to get examined. I saw bonesetters and witch doctors and horrible old women who asked impossible things of me. Some of the things I did, Camille, without even batting an eyelid . . . Sacrificing ewe lambs under the full moon, drinking their blood, swallowing . . . Oh, God. It was really barbaric, I know. It was a different time. People said I was ‘tainted.' And then the pilgrimages . . . Every year I went to Le Blanc, put a finger in the hole of the Saint Genitor, and then I went to scratch Saint Girlichon in Gargilesse . . . What are you laughing about?”

“Those names . . .”

“Hey, and that's not all, just wait! You had to make a votive offering in wax of the child you wanted to Saint Froguefault of Pretilly . . .”

“Froguefault?”

“Froguefault! That's right! Ah . . . They were lovely, my wax babies, believe me. Real dolls. You almost expected them to speak. And then one day, although I'd given up years before, I got pregnant. I was well over thirty. You may not realize it, but I was old already. Pregnant with Nadine, Franck's mother. How we spoiled her, how we pampered her, how we babied that child. A princess. I guess we ruined her character. We loved her too much. Loved her badly. We gave in to her every whim. Every one except the last. I refused to lend her the money she wanted to have an abortion. I just couldn't, you understand? I couldn't. I'd suffered so much. It wasn't religion, it wasn't morality, it wasn't gossip that did it. It was rage. Sheer rage. The taint of it. I would have killed her rather than help her to gut her own belly. Was I—was I wrong? You tell me. How many lives were wasted because of me? How much suffering? How much—”

“Shh.”

Camille reached across and rubbed Paulette's thigh.

“Shh.”

“So she—she had the little baby and then she left him to me. ‘Here,' she said, ‘since you wanted it, it's all yours! Are you happy now?' ”

Paulette closed her eyes and repeated, in a strangled voice, “ ‘You happy now?' and she said it again, packing her bags, ‘You happy?' How can anyone say such a thing? And how can you forget when someone has said it? Why should I sleep through the night, now that I'm not breaking my back and working my fingers to the bone, huh? Tell me. Tell me. She left him to me, she came back a few months later, took him away, then brought him back again. We were going crazy. Especially Maurice, my husband. I think she drove him to the limits of his patience, his patience as a man . . . Then she had to push him just a little bit further, took the baby away again one more time, came back for money to feed him, or so she said, and ran away during the night and forgot the child. Then one day, one day too far, she came back whining and Maurice was waiting for her with the shotgun. ‘I don't want to see you again,' he says, ‘you're nothing but a slut. You're a disgrace to us and you don't deserve this baby. So you're not going to see him. Not today, not ever. Go on, get out of here now. Leave us alone.' Camille . . . She was my child. A child I had waited for every day for over ten years. A child I adored. Adored. How I spoiled that little girl, spoiled her rotten, tried so hard to please her. We bought her everything she ever wanted. Everything! The prettiest dresses. Vacations at the seaside, in the mountains, the best schools . . . Every ounce of goodness in us was for her. And all this happened in a tiny village. She was gone, but the people who had known her since she was a little toddler and who were watching through their shutters as Maurice threw his fit, they were still there. And I kept on running into them. The next day, and the day after that and the day after that . . . It was . . . it was inhuman. Hell on earth. There's nothing worse than the compassion of good people, I tell you. Those women who say ‘I'll pray for you' while they're really trying to worm the story out of you, and the confounded men who teach your husband to drink and keep telling him they would have done exactly the same thing, for God's sake! There were days I felt like murdering someone, believe me. Times I'd wished I too had the atom bomb!”

She was laughing.

“And so? Well, there he was, that little boy. He hadn't asked for anything from anyone. So what did we do? We loved him. We loved him as best we could. And maybe there were times we were too hard on him. We didn't want to make the same mistakes so we made others . . . Aren't you ashamed, drawing me like this, in the state I'm in?”

“No.”

“You're right. Shame doesn't get you anywhere, believe me. Whatever you're ashamed of, it doesn't do you any good. It's only there to please other people who think they're so perfect. So when they close their shutters or head back from the bar, they feel good about themselves. They're all inflated and they put on their slippers and look at each other and smile. They wouldn't have had such a to-do in their family, oh, no! But . . . tell me one thing, you're not drawing me with this glass in my hand, are you?”

“No.” Camille smiled.

Silence.

“Then after that? Things were all right after that?”

“With the little one? Yes. He was a good boy, what can I say. Mischievous, but an honest child. When he wasn't in the kitchen with me he was out in the garden with his granddad. Or gone fishing. He had a temper, but he was growing up well all the same. Growing up well . . . Even if life couldn't have been much fun with two old folks like us, and it was a long time since we'd felt like being talkative, but anyway. We did what we could. We played with him. We stopped drowning the kittens. We took him to town, to the cinema . . . We paid for his football stickers and new bicycles. He worked hard at school, you know. He wasn't top of the class, but he took pride in his work. And then she came back again and that time we thought it was a good idea if he left with her. That a strange sort of mother is still better than no mother. That he'd have a father and a little brother, that it was no life for him, growing up in a half-dead village and that for his studies it would be a real opportunity to be in town. And once again we fell right into the trap. As if we didn't know better. We were idiots . . . Well, you know the rest: she broke him in two and put him back on the 4:12 afternoon train . . .”

“And you never heard from her again?”

“No. Except in dreams. In dreams, I see her a lot. She's laughing. She's beautiful . . . Show me what you've drawn.”

“Nothing. Your hand on the table.”

“Why did you let me go on like that? Why are you interested in all this?”

“I like it when people open up . . .”

“Why?”

“I don't know. It's like a self-portrait, don't you think? A self-portrait with words . . .”

“And you?”

“Oh, I don't know how to tell stories . . .”

“But for you it's not normal, to be spending all your time with an old woman like me . . .”

“No? And do you have any idea what
is
normal?”

“You should get out, see people. Young people your age! Come on, lift that lid for me, there. Did you wash the mushrooms?”

69

“IS she asleep?” asked Franck.

“I think so.”

“Say, I just got stopped by the concierge, you have to go talk to her.”

“Did we screw up again with the garbage cans?”

“No, something to do with the guy you're lodging up there.”

“Oh, shit. Has he done something stupid?”

Franck spread his arms and shook his head.

70

PIKOU coughed up some bile and Madame Perreira opened her little French window and put her hand on her chest.

“Come in, come in, sit down.”

“What's going on?”

“Sit down, I said.”

Camille pushed aside some cushions and placed half a buttock on a small bench with a leafy design.

“I don't see him anymore.”

“Who? Vincent? But . . . I saw him the other day, he was taking the métro.”

“When the other day?”

“I don't know . . . the beginning of the week.”

“Well, me, I tell you I don't see him anymore. He disappear. With Pikou who wake me up every night, I can't miss him, you know . . . And now, nothing. I'm afraid something happened. Go up there, dearie, go up and take a look.”

“Right.”

“Sweet Jesus. You think he is dead?”

Camille opened the door.

“Hey, if he is dead, you come see me right away, all right? It's just that . . . ,” she added, fiddling with her medallion, “I don't wanna scandal in the building, you understand?”

71

“IT'S Camille, open up.”

Barking, a confusion of sound.

“Are you going to open or should I have someone break down the door?”

“No, I can't just now,” said a hoarse voice. “I'm in bad shape, come back later.”

“When, later?”

“Tonight.”

“You don't need anything?”

“No. Leave me alone.”

Camille walked away, then came back: “Want me to walk the dog?”

No answer.

 
She went slowly down the stairs.

She was in deep shit.

She should never have brought him here. It's easy to be generous with other people's property. Well, one thing was for sure, she'd earned her halo by now! A junkie on the eighth floor, a granny in her bed, an entire world for which she was responsible, and here she was still having to hold on to the banister not to break her own neck. What a beautiful scene. Cue the applause. Really glorious. Are you pleased with yourself? Do your wings get in the way when you walk?

Oh, shut up, all of you. Is it better to do nothing—

No, but we're just saying, there are plenty of other tramps on the street. There's one right outside the bakery as a matter of fact. Why don't you pick him up too? What, because he hasn't got a dog? Shit, if only he'd known . . .

You're turning into a real bore, said Camille to Camille. A major, big-time bore.

 
C'mon, let's do it. But not a big one, okay? Just a little one. A little bichon frisé trembling from the cold. Yes, that would be perfect. Or a puppy, perhaps? A tiny puppy all curled up inside his jacket? I'm bound to give in right away. Besides, there are plenty of rooms left chez Philibert . . .

 
Overwhelmed, Camille sat down on a step and put her head on her knees.

Let's go over this again.

She hadn't seen her mother for almost a month. She'd better do something about that soon or her mother might have another chemical liver attack with emergency medical services and a gastric probe to boot. Camille had gotten used to it over time, but it was still never easy. It always took her a while to get over it. Ttt-tt. Still too sensitive, this young lady.