The Panda Theory (13 page)

‘
That’s a nice gun you’ve got there, Françoise.
’

‘
It belonged to my husband. He was a great hunter. I clean it regularly. It’s in perfect condition, like when he was alive
.’

The little girl resembled a wild strawberry trampled by an elephant. Her small hand still gripped the saxophone with which she had just played a flawless, if slightly fast, rendition of
Au Clair de la Lune
for Gabriel. Beside her, as if asleep, her brother sat leaning against the wall, his arms slack by his sides, his legs extended, his chin resting on his chest, in the middle of which the buckshot had left a hole the size of an orange. Françoise lay in the hallway, a few feet from the door. She was faceless, as if a mask had been ripped violently off her. José was at the foot of the stairs on his back, his arms outstretched, his mouth wide open and his eyes burning with shock. The echo of the last gunshot still rang in the stairwell. José had been halfway up the stairs when he saw Gabriel on the landing with the gun in his hand.

‘Gabriel? What on earth—’

The force of the gunshot blew him away.

Gabriel stepped over José’s body, put the gun on the kitchen table and filled a large glass with tap water. The smell of gunpowder had dried his mouth. Everything had happened so quickly, two minutes at most.

Happiness is a calamity you can never recover from. As soon as you catch a glimpse of it, the door slams shut and you spend the rest of your life bitterly regretting what is no more. There is no worse purgatory and no one knew that better than Gabriel. The Westminster clock struck eleven, immortalising the moment for ever. He felt vacant and hollow, his bones and arteries empty, as if all the blood that had been spilt had been his own. He was hungry and wanted a beer. That was what the two kids had done after they had torn his family apart. They had gone and plundered his fridge and drunk some beers. That must be the normal reaction. His path back to the car was strewn with abandoned luggage.

It was always like that with the horizon: you never knew where it really ended. There had to be a hole in it, that was it, an unending chasm. And the sky. It has to break into day, but you sense that it doesn’t really want to. It’s a sky that would rather go back to bed.

Gabriel parked the car on the roadside. He had a pressing urge. His jet of urine swept over the wild grass and unnamed indestructible plants. Once a year they blossomed, producing scrawny and charmless flowers as well as seeds, which allowed them to reproduce. All for nothing. They weren’t edible and would never look good
in a bouquet. Like humanity, a lot of creation is totally pointless. And yet it is this kind of landscape that is the most resistant. You could piss on it for ever.

As he closed his flies, Gabriel’s gaze was drawn to the clump of brambles opposite. Despite its apparent chaos, there seemed to him to be a deep-rooted architectural logic to this tangle of barbed branches. It wasn’t just coincidence that one stalk had wound itself round another three times. Nothing was left to chance. Everything happened for a reason. It was fascinating. The icy wind blew its foul breath in his face. Gabriel felt tired. He climbed back into the car, tipped the seat back and turned on the radio. The presenter was telling a stupid joke but it made him laugh. A man walks into a bar …

The space outside the Faro where José had been parked that morning was still empty. Gabriel pulled up, cut the engine and closed his eyes. He remembered the big brasserie at the end of the street where the two young businessmen had argued over the babies’ bottles and their mismatched teats. Sauerkraut, that’s what he wanted. A good plate of sauerkraut.

‘What are you doing, Rita?’

‘I’m cooking an egg, can’t you see?’

Her face was swollen. She wore a baggy tracksuit and dirty slippers. With her arms folded in front of the stove, she stared into the pan of boiling water, watching the egg dance from side to side. Everything seemed too big for her, her skin, her clothes, her life. The little girl with the white poppy was once again forgotten in the purse at the bottom of the bag. She had the same air of resignation as José had had that morning when picking up his kids, his neck stretched out to take the yoke of a life already written and planned in advance. A look that said every day was like a Monday morning.

‘José lent me his car. I was thinking, I could take you to the hospital if you want.’

‘Um, yeah, I guess so. Only if you want.’

‘It is today you’re going, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, yes. I’ll eat my egg and then we can go. The coffee’s still hot if you want some.’

The dishes from the night before had been washed and stacked precariously in the drainer. Opposite Gabriel, Rita carefully peeled the shell off her egg. Once finished, she took her time looking at the egg before taking a bite. The coffee was lukewarm.

‘What time is it?’

‘Twenty past three.’

‘I didn’t sleep a wink last night. How are José and the kids? And their grandmother?’

‘They’re fine.’

‘Good. He’s nice, José, not complicated, not needy. He doesn’t ask for much.’

‘Have you heard anything from Marco?’

‘I called the hospital this morning. They didn’t want to give me any details. He’s not dead though. Right, I’ll put some clothes on and then we can go.’

‘You’ve got a bit of egg yolk in the corner of your mouth.’

‘Ah, thank you.’

Warehouses and retail parks selling all sorts of useless tat sprouted on the edge of town, amid the turn-offs and roundabouts. They were all overburdened with signs, logos and giant arrows shouting ‘Come on in! This is where it’s at!’ But actually finding the entrance was always a nightmare. A windscreen wiper squeaked annoyingly.

‘Pull over at that café there. I have to get a drink before the hospital.’

The supermarket café was full of people coming and going. But they could all have been the same person, more or less successfully disguised, with moustaches, glasses, wigs or shaved heads. Rita was already on her third beer She wasn’t talking, preferring instead to smoke and chew her fingernails, her gaze drifting towards the car park full of puddles.

‘Are you worried, Rita?’

‘No, it’s not that. I’m fed up with going nowhere. I feel like I’ve been pedalling just to stay still my entire life. José’s got his kids, a family …’

‘You’ve got Marco.’

‘Yes, or maybe he has me. I’ve been a whore for him and now I can be his nurse! When happiness doesn’t come, there’s nothing you can do about it. Last night was good though, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, it was good.’

‘At least that’s something. Let’s go.’

The hospital wasn’t that different from the shopping centre. It was also a cube-shaped block, probably dreamt up by the same architect, but with stretchers instead of shopping trolleys, humans instead of groceries. Here, as at the supermarket, business was good. Gabriel struggled to find a place to park. Rita fidgeted in her seat.

‘Gabriel, let’s get out of here.’

‘Hold on, it’s fine, I’ll find a space. Look, there’s one over there.’

‘Let’s go, I said! I don’t want to go inside. Let’s get out of here!’

‘If that’s what you want. Where do you want to go?’

‘Anywhere, I don’t care. Let’s go.’

Rita’s cheeks were red and glazed with tears, which she let run down her face without wiping them away. She sniffled, her lower lip sticking out dejectedly. Gabriel drove around aimlessly, a left turn here, a right turn there. They drove through a small estate full of new houses, all identical, reproduced ad infinitum. Past that, they travelled through fields, all flat except for the odd cluster of bare trees. Rita’s tears had dried up. Her breathing was back to normal. She dabbed her eyes and blew her nose.

‘I’m sorry, Gabriel, but I just couldn’t.’

‘You don’t need to apologise.’

‘Can you pull up here by the trees? I need to pee. Those beers …’

Gabriel turned off down a rutted dirt track and cut the engine. Rita jumped out of the car. Through the wet windscreen he could see her scrambling through the undergrowth and then suddenly disappearing into a thicket. One day, he had taken Juliette to the mountains to see the marmots. Every time he had pointed one out to her, the animal had disappeared down a hole before she had managed to see it. They returned home with Juliette convinced that it had all been one big joke. As far as she was concerned, marmots didn’t exist.

Without thinking, Gabriel started playing with one of the laces he had bought at the cobbler’s. He wound it round his hand and tested its resistance by pulling on it. The rain started hammering on the roof. Rita ran back to the car and jumped in, her hair flattened by the rain.

‘Fucking mud! My shoes got bloody stuck in it. I’ve got
mud up to my knees. I hate the countryside.’

Rita brushed her hair back, slumped into the seat, closed her eyes and sighed.

‘My God, it feels good to take a piss when you really need one. It’s nice hearing the rain, when you’re under cover …’

Rita wasn’t as heavy as he had thought. But these brambles catching at his clothes, and the slippery mud … He got to the spot where he thought he had seen her crouch. Her face was calm, peaceful. The rain washed away her
tear-smudged
make-up. She hadn’t struggled when Gabriel had leant in. Maybe she thought he wanted to kiss her. It was only by reflex that she had stretched her legs and arms out as the lace tightened round her neck.

‘… I never left the apartment. I didn’t answer the phone, pick up my mail or answer the doorbell. I spent my days lying on the terrace looking at the sky. It was still just as blue, the kind of blue you can get lost in. And then one day I got up from my deckchair and shut the door behind me. I took only what I could carry on my back. I think I caught a ferry or a train, I can’t remember. Once the door had shut I started to forget. The days and nights merged into one. I slept wherever and whenever I could. With each day that passed, I forgot a little more of myself. I wandered around Paris for a bit. I could have chosen anywhere, but I chose Paris. Perhaps because I was born there and wanted to go back to where it had all started, or perhaps it was just to disappear into the crowd. It was cold. When I was so drunk I couldn’t sleep, I would walk until I started to hallucinate. It was like that every day. Always the same. I couldn’t feel anything, except the
weight of my tiredness, and that’s all I wanted. One night I got picked up half frozen off a pavement. I woke up in hospital. I don’t know how but my friends found out. I asked them to sell everything I owned, the house, the car, everything, and then not to come searching for me ever again. I never wanted to go back, ever. After I left the hospital I went into a convalescent home. I stayed there for weeks, months, until one day I felt a sudden urge to see the sea. I needed something to look at other than the walls of my room. I felt trapped. I needed space, to be far away. I got the first train to Brest. Don’t ask me why – I couldn’t tell you. I was suffocating in the train carriage. I needed air. That’s the whole story.’

The headlights from the cars travelling in the opposite direction flashed across Madeleine’s face. Since Gabriel had started telling his story, she had gone rigid, as
milky-white
and transparent as an alabaster statue.

‘Why are you telling me this now?’

‘Because we’re alone in a car at night. Let me know if you want to stop to eat or drink something.’

‘No. I can’t take it all in. Rita, José, you … You’ve all been through so much. And I’m just floating through it all, oblivious …’

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.’

‘Of course you should. It’s always good to talk.’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never spoken about it to anyone. My suffering has stopped though. It’s just the pain of others which hurts me. I always want to help them.’

‘You’re very good at it. You’ve been great to José, and Rita as well.’

‘But not you?’

‘Oh, you can forget about me. I’ve never been too happy or too sad, just bored. You get used to it. I’m so happy to have met you and to be here with you now in this car, tonight.’

‘It’s lucky you were able to get away for a couple of days.’

‘My boss owed me! I had so much holiday to take. What else was I going to do with it? It was fine. It was kind of José to lend you his car.’

‘It was him who suggested it. He said, “You’re looking after me and Rita too much and you’re neglecting Madeleine. Borrow the car and take her to the sea.”’

‘What a great idea! It’s just that I’m a bit worried about Rita.’

‘Don’t be. When she reads your note, she’ll understand. She was fine, really, when I dropped her off at the hospital.’

‘So we’ve got clear consciences then?’

‘Absolutely. What time is it?’

‘It’s just gone quarter past eight.’

‘We’ll be at Roscoff in half an hour. I hope there’ll be a restaurant still open.’

‘There’s bound to be a crêperie.’

‘I hope so. I’m hungry. Here we are at Morlaix.’

Road signs lit up by their headlights flashed by: Saint-Martin-des-Champs, Sainte-Sève, Taulé, Saint-Pol-de-Léon … They were just signposts, that was all. Nothing was there to prove that these places actually existed. The night dissolved these villages like sugar in coffee. You passed them by without seeing them and forgot them
almost as quickly: a high street, a war memorial, a town hall, a post office, a church, a graveyard and it was over. You moved on to the next one.

‘Why did you choose the Île de Batz, Gabriel?’

‘Because you can walk all the way round it in a morning.’

‘
Gabriel, look at this shell – it’s huge!’

Blandine was running over to him holding something in her hand that looked from a distance like a skull. Her yellow raincoat was the only splash of colour in an otherwise
pearly-grey
landscape. He was scared she would slip on the green and brown algae-covered rocks. The wind carried his voice away, so he signalled to her to be careful. But she took no notice. She leapt over rock pools in the oversized wellington boots they had borrowed from the hotel. Her momentum carried her into Gabriel’s arms and the two of them fell onto the sand. She smelt of salt and of the breeze. The shell looked like a big ear. She put it up to her ear, then up to Gabriel’s and then held it against her already round stomach.