The Incorrigible Optimists Club (39 page)

7

O
n Sunday in the early afternoon, Vladimir, assisted by Pavel, arrived at the Balto with two or three crates overflowing with food. The shopkeepers in rue Daguerre had waited for the market to be over to pay him in kind. He spread out the provisions over the tables. The souk was open. ‘It makes us feel young again,' said Igor. ‘It's as though we were back in the days of the New Economic Policy.'

They shared out the fruits of Vladimir's accounting labours according to the neo-Marxist principle: To each according to his desires and his pleasure, which was a matter for subtle negotiations.

‘Take the
pâté en croute
. Next week, you can let me have the knuckle of ham.'

‘Who wants some quiche Lorraine? I've got too much. I'll swap half of it with you for some gruyère.'

The shopkeepers made up generously for the low fees they paid him for keeping their accounts. Vladimir Gorenko had been wrong to treat the objectives set by the Commissioner for Planning as unrealistic and utopian and he had clashed with a vice-commissioner whom he had criticized for never having set foot in a factory in his life and for being a narrow-minded apparatchik. The moment he uttered those words, he had regretted them and knew that his fate was sealed. On his return to Odessa, he had been summoned to the headquarters of the Ministry for Internal Affairs. He had escaped in the hold of a cargo boat and found himself in Istanbul. Once he reached Paris, he had searched in vain for work and had gone back to being an accountant again. His experience as a weary administrator in manipulating accounts to disguise colossal losses and transform them into proletarian success stories gave him a long head start on French clerks. He had no equal in detecting inconsistencies in administrative schedules or fiscal regulations and he had built up a clientele of small shopkeepers for whom paying taxes and national insurance was extortion.

To those who didn't have any cash, Vladimir gave what he brought back. He made others pay a third or a quarter of the price. They obtained camembert from Normandy for one franc, sausage from the Ardèche for five francs a kilo, roast chickens from Bresse at ten francs apiece, and as much loose sauerkraut and sardines as they wanted for nothing at all.

That Sunday, a few protests could be heard.

‘I haven't had any rabbit pâté for months,' Gregorio grumbled.

‘Who's pinched the sausages from the sauerkraut?' asked Pavel.

‘It's not right that Werner should have the rillons,' Tomasz moaned.

‘Do you know why you should gather ceps when they're small?' asked Leonid, who had taken a Bayonne ham bone on which there was masses left over.

We spent five minutes trying to come up with an answer.

‘They're more tasty?'

‘They cook better?'

‘There are very few of them?'

‘You can't have been to the forest very often,' Leonid concluded. ‘If you wait, there's someone who'll pick them before you do. In life, it's the early bird that catches the worm.'

‘And what about democracy?' Tomasz protested.

‘You're getting confused with equality. Democracy is an unfair system. They ask idiots like you for their opinion. Be happy with what you've got. There might be nothing else. And say thank you to Vladimir.'

Imré was the last to arrive. There were six eggs left. Vladimir gave them to him.

‘I'll make an omelette with white beans. That should be good, shouldn't it?'

‘In Hungary, maybe,' said Vladimir.

Imré was a melancholy bachelor. When he got home, he didn't feel like cooking. It's not much fun eating on one's own. He found it hard to endure the silence. He turned up the volume on the radio and paid no heed to the neighbours. He opened the windows of his modest two rooms in Montrouge that overlooked the busy highway, and enjoyed the hellish
noise of the traffic. It didn't prevent him from sleeping with the windows open. No one had taken the place of Tibor, who haunted him like a ghost. He had resigned himself. He preserved this emptiness deep within himself. It wasn't unpleasant. For Imré, eating was a dreary functional activity, to be carried out quickly, mainly involving tinned food: lentils or white haricot beans, with vinaigrette in summer, or heated in the bain-marie in winter. At home or in the street, Imré would speak to himself. He held proper discussions with Tibor. They told each other about their lives and their worries, they asked one another's advice, they joked and they quarrelled. Passers-by were not surprised to hear him. They no longer took any notice of him. There are countless lonely people. Whom should they talk to, if not to themselves?

‘I know you don't like flageolet beans. They make you fat. You put on kilos the older you get. It's normal. I don't feel like salad. Tomatoes are outrageously expensive at the moment. You'll never change.'

For the sake of doing something different, Imré decided to fry the eggs that Vladimir had given him. He took out his frying pan, put in a little butter, broke open one egg, and then a second. When he broke the third, he heard a shrill, repeated ‘tweet-tweet' sound. He thought that a pigeon was sending him a message. He leant out of the window. There was nothing but traffic as far as the eye could see. Pigeons don't say ‘tweet-tweet' he told himself. He was about to empty the contents of the third egg into the pan when he noticed an unusual yellow patch in the shell. He saw the chick. Alive! Taken aback, his arm wobbled and the creature fell in. Without thinking, he caught hold of the little thing before it burnt its feet. At that very moment, something happened, such as happens only once or twice in a lifetime: love at first sight. There is no other term to describe what occurred between them. They gazed at each other for ages. Imré was spellbound. The eggs were burnt. It was Saturday evening. He opened a tin of beans in tomato sauce for himself.

How and why did it get there? Raymond Martineau, the cheesemonger in rue Daguerre to whom Vladimir put the question, refused to believe it. It wasn't possible. In twenty-nine years in the business, he had never heard of such a ridiculous thing.

‘If you're telling me that so you can get an extra egg, you're making a mistake, my lad. You don't fool old Martineau with stories like that.'

Perhaps it was a particularly hardy bird with a knack for staying alive. For Imré, it was a miracle. A real one. He could see no other explanation. He mentioned it to the priest at Saint-Pierre-du-Petit-Montrouge, the church he walked past each day. The priest asked him whether he was making fun of him and asked him to stop blaspheming in God's house. This did not reconcile Imré to the Catholic Church. For him, it was proof that it knew nothing about miracles and that it was blind to reality and to signs from the Lord. When he told us the story the following day, we were convinced that he would get rid of the chick, but he decided to keep it.

‘A chicken is less of a nuisance than a dog. You don't catch cold going out two or three times a day and it's less tiring than a cat. There's no litter-tray to change and it doesn't go on at you all day long asking for food.'

‘If it gives you pleasure, you're right. What will you call it?' asked Igor, who was very broadminded.

‘I haven't thought about that.'

We wondered what you could call a chicken. We were used to the sort of names given to cats and dogs. Médor, Toby, Rex, Kiki, Mimine, Minette, Bibi, Pilou and others of that kind didn't seem right.

‘An animal that's a companion needs a name,' Werner asserted.

‘You'll just have to call it “my Chick”,' declared Gregorios, who had little imagination.

‘What about “Cocotte”? That's perfect,' Virgil Cancicov suggested.

‘Call it “my sweetheart”, that'll make a change for you,' said Tomasz, who had a nasty sense of humour.

‘I don't like that. I'm going to call it… Tibor.'

‘I don't believe it!'

‘You can't do that!'

‘He shall be called Tibor!'

We looked for a resemblance. There wasn't one. The creature was tiny and fragile, with its downy feathers and it's very faint tweeting call. Imré took it to the Club on several occasions. Igor and Werner made an
exception for it, since animals were not permitted. It was a baby that suffered from loneliness and needed affection. Imré put it inside his overcoat pocket. It proved to be a lively and mischievous pet. We took it in our hands and stroked it. It tweeted at us. After four months, it had reached a respectable size and could be left at Imré's home on its own.

‘It keeps me company, but I'm looking ahead. A cat or a dog produces nothing. A hen is useful and productive. It gives eggs. One just has to wait. Hens are unjustly despised creatures. They have a different sort of intelligence to ours. There's a complex hierarchical organization in the farmyard that prevents conflicts. When the hen finds food, she alerts her chicks with a chirping sound. If there's a danger, she gives out a different call according to whether the threat comes from the ground or the air. When I say “Bi, bi, bi, bi”, it rushes over to eat. And if I say “Bou, bou, bou, bou”, it knows we're going out.'

He fed it with the leftovers from his meals: bits of bread and white beans that the creature pecked at delicately.

‘Say what you will. There's nothing like a chick. They're affectionate, discreet, humorous and clean. When I'm sad and don't feel like talking, it stays on its cushion and respects my silence.'

The creature prospered on this diet and grew into a magnificent white hen that never laid an egg. Imré didn't mind. On the contrary. She followed and obeyed him like a lapdog. They communed and had a relationship that few people experience. When Imré went away on holiday he took his hen with him to the Noirmoutier camping site. We felt awkward. Nobody dared ask how he was. It embarrassed us to ask him questions, for fear of having to say ‘And how is Tibor?'

We hesitated to mention his strange companion, though we spoke about it when he wasn't there.

‘He could have chosen another name,' Virgil maintained.

‘It's embarrassing, it's true.' Igor agreed.

‘It's you who have a problem. Not Imré,' Gregorios explained. ‘Because he's homosexual and loves a hen. It bothers you that he's happy with Tibor.'

‘In my opinion, he ought to consult a specialist!' said Tomasz.

‘Don't forget, you moronic Pole, that it was we Greeks who invented psychology. From the Greek
psukhê
which means “soul”, and
logos
which means “science”. When you give affection, you receive it in return. You ought to be able to understand that?'

8

T
he mornings had changed. Previously, when I got out of bed, he was in the kitchen finishing his breakfast. He was listening quietly to the news on the radio and smoking his first cigarette. I would sit down beside him. Adopting Gabin's, Jouvet's or Bourvil's voice, he would ask me whether I had slept well. We didn't say much to one another. He was always in fine fettle. There we were, together. If he wasn't in a rush, he would make me my café au lait. He waited for the weather report and he left. In a hurry, as he did every day. Because of this bloody ring-road, which was never going to be finished and created a shambles everywhere. He had depots all over Paris, customers to see in the suburbs, he had his sights on a big deal, there were Italian goods that had not been delivered, and he didn't know how he was going to cope with getting everything done. That's life. See you this evening, my boy, and work hard.

Now, the flat was quiet. It no longer smelt of tobacco. I couldn't care less about the weather. I drank my coffee in deathly silence. I gulped down my bowl and I rushed off. So I didn't have to see anyone. So I'd left before they got up. I didn't take a shower. I was out of the house one hour earlier. I read my book, in peace. It was the Kazantzakis period. Christiane had recommended him to me. She had ordered all the titles of his that were published in France. I wasn't keen on reading
Christ Recrucified
. I assumed he was one of those conservative Christian writers who preached the catechism. She forced it on me.

‘If you don't read it, you'd better not set foot in this library again!'

I fell under the spell of this story of hopeless redemption. But I felt confused. At times, my mind wandered off like a breeze. It took me two months to finish the book. I had a sort of aversion to it. I stopped reading frequently. I wasn't in the mood. I felt tired and listless. I sat down all day. It was a real slump. I had
Freedom and Death
on my lap, but my mind was elsewhere. I didn't manage to finish the first chapter. I started again.
I switched off. I had had no news of my father for two weeks. A few days earlier, I had asked my mother about him.

‘It's not my job to keep an eye on him. What he does is no concern of mine.'

I called at the Hôtel des Mimosas by the Gare de Lyon. I was taken aback. It was a gloomy, old-fashioned building with a spiral staircase. The receptionist didn't know him. He consulted his register and found his name; he had stayed there for two nights three weeks ago.

‘He told me the owner was a friend.'

‘I'm the owner. I don't remember him. Because of the railway station, a lot of people come here. If I see him, I'll tell him you were looking for him.'

I was convinced that he'd left, that he'd caught a train. Where to? And what if he'd gone to be with Franck? Would I ever see him again? Perhaps he was dead, had had an accident, or he had committed suicide and they didn't want to tell us. Otherwise, he would have phoned. What other explanation was there for his silence? If he wasn't dead and he had simply deserted us, then he was no longer my father. It reminded me of the novels of Dickens. Literature is not just stories. It's based on truth.

I was in my bedroom, lying on my bed. I was peering at the paintwork on the ceiling and listening to Jerry Lee Lewis. My mother came in, wearing a grim expression.

‘Michel, have you seen the state you're in? I've told you a hundred times not to put your shoes on the bed. What's this you're wearing? How long is it since you've changed? I won't have you wearing dirty clothes. What
do
you look like? You must go to the barber. And turn off this barbaric music when I'm talking to you!'

I rolled my eyes and sighed as loudly as I could.

‘You're going to have to change your attitude! If you think I'm going to put up with your tantrums, you're mistaken. I want you to show some respect to your grandfather.'

I turned and faced the wall. I let her continue: ‘Are you ill?… We're not going to have all that again!… You could at least answer me! I don't know what to do with you any more!'

The record wailed like an endless sob. The music stopped. She had pulled out the electric plug. I leapt off the bed.

‘Are you satisfied now? It's scratched! It's not my record!'

‘You'll tidy this room. And take a shower. It smells like a pig-sty in here!'

‘I couldn't give a damn. I'm not going to his birthday party!'

‘We'll see about that!'

She slammed the door. I examined the record under the light. Fortunately, it wasn't scratched. I put it back on the turntable and turned up the volume so that the neighbours could enjoy it. Juliette joined me. She sat down on the bed. We listened until the record finished.

‘I'd love to play the piano like him.'

‘Is it true you don't want to go to grandpa's birthday party?'

‘Did Mama send you?'

I didn't have the heart to conceal the truth from her: ‘I'm not going because… Papa's dead and I'm in mourning for him.'

‘It can't be true?'

I nodded my head in confirmation.

‘There's no other explanation, my dear Juliette.'

She burst into tears, jumped up and ran out of the room. Girls have no guts. I lay down on my bed. I was reading the flyleaf of
Zorba the Greek
when my mother came in like a fury.

‘What's all this about?' she yelled.

She grabbed my arm and dragged me into the sitting room before I could stop her. She picked up the phone and dialled a number.

‘Is that you?' she said.

She passed the receiver to me.

I heard my father's voice saying: ‘Hello? … Hello, Hélène? What's going on?'

He was alive. I put the receiver down. In a flash, I felt something snap. It was worse than if he was dead. My mother said something. I didn't hear her. She took my hand. I pushed hers away. My face was burning. I slammed the door as I left the flat. I found myself outside. I walked without knowing where I was going. I was furious. With him, with her, with
myself and with the whole world. The bastard! He had no right to forget me. He had abandoned me. If he had said to me: ‘I'm going far away, I've got some problems, we're not going to see each other for a few months', I would have understood. I realized that I meant nothing to him. I played no part in his decisions. What seemed unbelievable to me a few minutes earlier now struck me as overwhelmingly obvious. He had struck me out of his life, without any warning. I was surrounded by desert. One by one those I loved had died, gone away or abandoned me. Perhaps it was my fault? Maybe there was nothing about me that merited their affection. Maybe I was worthless. But you can't cut yourself off from those you love. I was falling down a deep well and there was no one to cling on to.

I took the métro to Gobelins on the Porte de la Villette line. If I were to disappear, nobody would realize. There weren't many people on the train. There wasn't any point in going on under these circumstances. There was no hope, no light at the end of the tunnel. Who would miss me? I opened the carriage door. The dark wall of the tunnel rushed by. The electric wires swayed. One second of courage and I wouldn't have to think about it any more. I felt complete indifference. I was going to crush myself between the carriage and the wall. There would be shreds of me left. I smiled to think of their horror when they saw the bits of my body. They would cry from grief and shame. They would blame one another and tear themselves apart over my coffin. People would point the finger at them for having driven their son to despair. They would be haunted by guilt until the end of their days, which would be soon. No, it would be better if it gnawed at them for as long as possible, better if they died slowly from grief and bitterness. I pulled the door a little further. A cold, damp draught blew into my face. My hand trembled. It suddenly occurred to me that I didn't have my papers. They would find an unrecognizable body, without a name. And I would end up as an anonymous corpse in a communal ditch. They would think that I had run away from home. If you're going to do away with yourself, you need to have your identity card on you. Otherwise, there's no point. I got off at Châtelet.

*

I was quite close to the quai des Grands-Augustins. If she had returned, that would alter everything. I hadn't been back there for two months. I had the keys to the flat, but I didn't want to use them. Each time I did, I went away feeling depressed. And there was no point speaking to the concierge. As soon as she saw me, she gave a negative wave. I stayed on the embankment, unconcerned by the passers-by staring at me or the cries from the tourists on the riverboats. I found myself in the Luxembourg. I looked away as I passed the Médicis fountain. I sat down by the pond. I started to blub. ‘Only sissies cry,' my father used to joke. I didn't want to cry. Not for him. I couldn't give a damn about his piddling morality, his shitty promises and his bloody stupid remarks. He could make fun and act the tough guy. It was all his fault. I would never see him again. Too bad. I was holding my head between my hands, trying to create some order in the clutter in my brain when I heard: ‘You're going to catch a filthy cold going out in a sweater in such chilly weather.'

I sat up. Sacha was standing in front of me, his hands in his overcoat pockets.

‘I left home in a bit of a hurry.'

He sat down on a nearby chair. We remained there, side by side, without saying anything, watching the kids playing with their boats on the pond and pushing them with their poles. One of the boats had become stuck beneath the water spouting from the fountain. Sacha took out a Gauloise, held out the crumpled pack to me and gave a flick with his thumb to make one of the cigarettes emerge. I took it. He struck a match. I leaned over to light it while he cupped the flame in the hollow of his hands. That was how I came to smoke my first fag. Because of my father, my mother, and in order to keep myself warm. And besides, you had to begin sometime, take the plunge, cut the ties, push off without your stabilizers, fall off, get up and start again. The cigarette had a bitter taste that clung to my palate and burned my throat, and an unpleasant smell of charred leather. We smoked them in silence and stubbed them out on the ground.

‘You're looking out of sorts, Michel. You seem preoccupied.'

‘What's there to laugh about?'

‘At your age I never stopped. And yet it was a grim time. There was nothing to eat. We had nothing to keep ourselves warm. But what fun we had with our pals. The grown-ups wore gloomy expressions, whereas we made the most of things. We were right. Have you got problems?'

I hesitated to tell him where to get off. What business was it of his? There was nothing he could do to change the situation. He looked on kindly and waited.

‘My parents are separating. My father has forgotten me. My mother takes no notice of me. My brother has run away. My best friend has disappeared. Her brother died in Algeria. My grandfather has returned to Italy. And I'm hoping I haven't lost my identity card.'

‘I'm not someone who gives advice, Michel. But where troubles are concerned, I'm an expert. To get rid of something that's upsetting you, there are three cures. You've got to eat. A good meal, cakes, chocolate. Then listen to music. You should always have some with you. It makes you forget. There are few sorrows that some time with Shostakovich has not removed, even a few minutes. Though you should avoid music when you are eating.'

‘And the third cure is to get thoroughly plastered?'

‘A big mistake. Alcohol doesn't make you forget. Quite the reverse. My own favourite method is the cinema. A whole day. Three or four films one after the other. That way, you forget everything.'

‘It's expensive.'

‘You're quite right. I can't afford it. Come on, I'll take you.'

We walked up rue Soufflot as far as the Panthéon. We turned right into rue d'Ulm. A little further and I would have given up and gone home.

‘Do you know the Cinémathèque?'

I'd walked past a hundred times without noticing it. I'd seen groups of people chatting on the pavement, laughing or arguing. Nothing unusual about that in this area. But I didn't know that it existed, or what its purpose was. Tickets weren't expensive. Forty-seven centimes. I could have paid that myself. Sacha insisted on taking me.

‘What are we going to see?'

‘If you're interested, there's a poster in the window showing the
programme. Personally, I don't want to know. It's of no importance. It'll be a surprise.'

As we walked in, he shook the hand of a huge man with an enormous forehead and tousled hair who was talking to two students.

‘Hello, Henri, how are you?'

‘I'm furious. We've got two copies of Fritz Lang's
Fury
. There's one in English, without subtitles, and in poor condition. It keeps breaking. The other is dubbed in Italian, with subtitles in Spanish, and it's seven minutes shorter than the original version.'

I had just walked into a madhouse. The people at the Cinémathèque couldn't care less about the language. We were given the Italian version. I have to admit, to my great surprise, that after the first few minutes it didn't bother me. The subtleties of the dialogue passed me by, but I was so enthralled that these incomprehensible films have remained rooted in my memory far more than those I saw last year and which I have forgotten. It was a small room with wooden seats that banged when you stood up. It was packed during the week, with retired folk or people who didn't have enough money to go to the local cinema, with those aspiring to make movies, who took notes in the dark about what was the correct thing to do or not to do, with students who were skipping courses, fighting with one another to be in the front row and take it all in, or to sit on the floor. We got to see
Los Olvidados
dubbed in Portuguese with subtitles in German. It was luminously clear. We finished with Raoul Walsh's
The Tall Men
, a magnificent western and in French: bliss.