This is Life (32 page)

Neither Toshiro nor Sylvie were convinced by his assurances, but he was adamant, and they couldn’t see what they could do but allow it to happen. At least this way they were able to hold
conversations, and they were sure that Lucien was so sincere that he would never misinterpret anything. They were right to put their trust in him. He never abused his power by putting inappropriate
words in their mouths; all he did was translate their conversation as literally as he could, down to the finest nuances.

Sylvie
, he said, as the pain tore through his flesh and bones,
I didn’t know what love was until I found you
, and
Toshiro, you are the most handsome man I’ve ever
seen
.

Whenever Sylvie or Toshiro used lines like these they would realise halfway through what they were saying, and add the brief addendum:
I’m sorry, Lucien.
He would translate these
postscripts as he translated everything else. He saw no reason why he should spare himself.

This was Lucien’s last night in the employment of the Akiyamas. The next morning they would be heading back to Japan, and he had another party of visiting tourists arriving straight away.
He was going to be accompanying them on a trip around the countryside on a coach, and he was looking forward to getting out of the city.

Without Lucien there, communication between the new couple was going to become a lot harder. They had already planned for this, though. Once they had seen Monsieur and Madame Akiyama on to the
plane, Toshiro would move his bags to Sylvie’s apartment and while she was at work he would keep on top of his music, and explore the city, and when she wasn’t at work they would take
their clothes off and lie down together. For Lucien’s sake they hadn’t gone into further details about what they planned to do once they had taken their clothes off and lain down, but
they had agreed on this broad outline. Each wanted to be sure that the other was ready to take that step. So far they had only kissed, but they could tell from this that they were absolutely
compatible, that their bodies would fuse into a thing of extreme beauty. And when they weren’t lying down together they would play backgammon, and cook for each other, and learn odds and ends
of vocabulary, and be happy just being close.

While Monsieur and Madame Akiyama were away watching Le Machine, Aurélie got to know Toshiro. She even asked him the question that Sylvie hadn’t dared to ask:
How did Natsuki
take the news that you were flying to France to be with somebody else?

Toshiro didn’t take this question lightly. It hadn’t been quite as slick a break-up as he had hoped it would be. It turned out that Natsuki had loved him deeply after all, and as he
told her he was leaving she had caved in straight away and finally admitted to herself that the cat had been a mistake, that she had bought him in a moment of weakness to keep her company on the
long nights when Toshiro was so absorbed in his work that he was barely there. She sobbed as she told him that he was right, that they should have discussed Makoto before she got him. She told him
she didn’t even like the cat, that she had accepted that he looked mean and had a matching personality, and she had even grown tired of crafting hats for him. He wasn’t the kind of cat
that looked cute in novelty headgear anyway. She would try to find another home for him, and if nobody was prepared to take in such a nasty creature she would drive him to another city and abandon
him, so things could go back to the way they had been before.

‘Just don’t leave me, Toshiro,’ she had said, and he had seen the love and the fear in her eyes.

But he had left her, a sobbing wreck with a cat she didn’t like, and he had taken the plane to Paris to meet a girl he had seen in a photograph and who, according to his mother, was very
nice.

Via Lucien, he told them he felt sorry for his ex-girlfriend, but he knew he had done the right thing. He had come to realise that he had never loved her the way he loved Sylvie, and that the
relationship had to end. If he were to stay, it would only be out of pity for her, as well as being a terrible act of self-sabotage. Lucien’s own love for Sylvie was confirmed when he felt no
urge at all to fly to Japan with the Akiyamas, and find Natsuki Kobayashi and comfort her. He had seen a photograph of her, and until days ago he would have considered her to be his type, on a par
even with Akiko. He would have been ready to dry her tears and help her rebuild her life. He would even have helped her to rehome the cat, if she had asked. But, no, there really was only one girl
for him, and there she was, right by his side as he helped her to plan the practical details of her forthcoming life with another man, her face aglow as he confirmed that this other man’s
previous relationship was definitely over.

At least, he thought, he had lost to a man who was amiable, and talented, and good-looking, and had a decent sense of humour. There was some consolation to be found in the knowledge that Sylvie
was right to have chosen him: Toshiro Akiyama was a better man than he would ever be. It would have been harder still to watch her go off into the sunset with a man who was unpleasant, or dull, or
who had a moustache, or who didn’t love her as she deserved to be loved. Even in defeat he could at least see that there was some sense to the world.

Toshiro was telling her how easily he could move his job to Paris, how most of the people he worked with wouldn’t even realise he had gone. She was saying that they could start out using
her apartment, but that they would need to look for a bigger place if they were to have a room for them and a studio for him. ‘And when the baby comes,’ said Lucien, interpreting
Toshiro, ‘I can rent a studio space elsewhere.’

Sylvie looked at Toshiro, and he looked surprised, as if only just realising how much he had revealed. ‘Baby?’ she asked. ‘What baby?’

Toshiro’s surprise turned to a smile. He seemed not to regret his revelation. ‘Our baby,’ he said, and Lucien interpreted. ‘We’ll be having a baby one day,
right?’

Time was short, and Sylvie and Toshiro hadn’t bothered pretending that things were anything other than major between them. They had already spoken about her inevitable visit to Japan to
meet Akiko and his grandparents, and to see where he had grown up. Neither had mentioned marriage yet, but Lucien knew Toshiro was only waiting for the right moment to ask her if she would be his
wife, and it was clear that Sylvie had already decided upon her response. Toshiro had leapfrogged that particular conversation and moved straight on to babies.

Sylvie said nothing. She was speechless with happiness. She leaned across the table, and kissed Toshiro.

For Lucien, this was even worse than overseeing a marriage proposal. Just when he thought his life had reached its absolute nadir he was proved wrong, and things got worse. At last, it had all
become too much for him.

Once their kiss had finally come to an end, he addressed Toshiro. ‘Please tell your mother and father that it has been a pleasure working for them. I’m sorry that I’m not going
to be finishing my agreed time with them, but I’m sure that under the circumstances they will understand. Please wish them a pleasant journey home.’

And then he spoke to Sylvie. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘When we met I truly had no idea this would happen. I’ve really let you down.’

She shook her head. ‘No, you haven’t. You just need to . . .’ She didn’t know what he needed, and neither did he.

He carried on. ‘You’re going to have a great life with Toshiro. He’s a good man. I don’t know what I was thinking, falling in love with you.’ He then translated
this exchange, word for word, to Toshiro, just to let him know what had been said.

None of them knew what they could do but give him a look of sympathy. He stood, put on his coat and slung his bag over his shoulder. Aurélie, Sylvie and Toshiro said nothing as they
watched him go, hunched over in defeat. Of the three of them, only Toshiro Akiyama would ever set eyes on Lucien again.

Monsieur and Madame Akiyama had returned from
Life
. They had been there for an hour, and Madame Akiyama was bursting with excitement. ‘I feel like a girl again,’ she said,
showing them the souvenirs she had bought, mainly official
Life
cutlery for friends and neighbours. Akiko was to get a miniature version of his huge urine bottle to use as a vase. She turned
to Aurélie. ‘And he’s really your boyfriend?’ She had heard the story.

Aurélie hadn’t understood a thing, and without Lucien there, there was no hope of them being able to hold anything like a viable conversation.

Madame Akiyama was so full of her experience that she carried on anyway. ‘Lucky you,’ she said. It wasn’t until she realised that Aurélie wasn’t going to respond
that she looked around for her interpreter. ‘So where’s Lucien?’

Toshiro explained what had happened. Madame Akiyama understood. ‘Poor boy,’ she said. ‘First Akiko and now Sylvie. He doesn’t have much luck, does he? But he falls in
love fast; I’m sure he’ll have moved on to the next girl in a day or two.’

But somehow all of them, even Aurélie and Sylvie, who hadn’t understood a word she had said apart from the names, had a feeling that there would never be a next girl, not after
Sylvie.

They sat in silence, every one of them overwhelmed with sorrow for him, and when Aurélie stood up to leave she felt as if she was interrupting a funeral service. She said goodbye to them
all. She wished the Akiyamas a good flight. They couldn’t understand what she was saying, and just smiled at her. She was determined to bridge the linguistic divide, so she stuck her arms out
in imitation of an aeroplane, pointed at them and gave two thumbs up.

It worked. ‘Thank you,’ they both said, in their finest French.

Resisting the temptation to go back into
Life
for a sneaky look at her boyfriend, Aurélie made her way to the Métro and back to the Papavoines’
place. She hoped Herbert would still be awake when she got there. She was missing him, and they only had one full day left together. She knew it would be a good one. She only wanted to keep him
well, to have fun with him and to return him to his mother at nine twenty-two on Wednesday morning with a minimum of fuss.

As the Métro rolled on, there was no reason why it would have occurred to her for a moment that Sylvie would call her in the morning and, when she didn’t get an answer, leave a
message on her phone asking her whether she had seen the papers that day, and that if she hadn’t, she might like to head down to a news-stand.

But whatever you do
, Sylvie will say,
don’t wear that coat you’ve been wearing, the professor’s wife’s one. And if there’s any hair dye in the house, give
yourself a dose. Oh, and do you have a balaclava for Herbert?

O
n the pavement outside Le Charmant Cinéma Érotique, the arts editor of
L’Univers
stared at his chief arts correspondent
as he waited for his car to arrive. The chief arts correspondent of
L’Univers
could not bring himself to return the stare, and as he looked away he wore an expression that appeared to
passers-by, many of whom recognised him, to be one of steely resolve. They weren’t to know that for the last two days Jean-Didier Delacroix had found himself suffering from momentary lapses
of self-confidence, an experience so new to him that he had been knocked off balance, and neither the steeliness nor the resolve were quite what they appeared to be.

It was such an unusual situation for him to find himself in that it had even begun to affect his home life. That afternoon he had made love to his girlfriend, and she had tutted and yawned as he
pounded away at her. There was nothing unusual about that, but for a moment he was sure he could sense a whole new layer of dissatisfaction over and above the default settings from which she had
never deviated. He tried to tell himself that this couldn’t possibly be, but even so the experience had made him anxious to the point where he had felt himself begin to lose his prowess, and
she had very nearly ended up really having something to be disappointed about for the first time in her life. It had been a close shave, but he had pulled himself back from the brink and finished
the job with his customary aplomb. Even so, he couldn’t shake the feeling that she suspected that something was not quite right with his life, and he knew he would be rejected at the first
sign of weakness. To lose her would be an incredible blow; it would be hard, even for Jean-Didier Delacroix, to find another girl as right for him as she was.

Standing with his boss as they waited for the car, he was more nervous than he had ever been, and it took every bit of strength he had to keep his lips in a steadfast line and his chin set at a
defiant angle. He was determined for his inability to return his superior’s gaze to seem like a refusal rather than a failure. Just as had been the case with his girlfriend, he knew that no
matter what was going on in his mind he must at least appear to be strong.

They had spent ninety minutes in the auditorium, and Jean-Didier Delacroix knew that this time had been pivotal to his future. His editor had been so incensed with him for reneging on their
agreed assault upon Le Machine that in that first, furious phone call he had fired him. As soon as he had slammed the phone down, he had called the newspaper’s head of dismissals and had
Jean-Didier Delacroix’s termination papers drawn up and faxed to his apartment.

Jean-Didier Delacroix had waited a while before getting back in touch with his superior and, taking pains to make sure that at no point did it appear as if he was begging, he asked for a final
chance to remain in his post. He had told him that he would accept the terms on offer without fuss, on one condition – that they go together to
Life
. If, after an hour and a half in
the room with Le Machine, his editor still thought the man deserved to be destroyed, then he would go quietly. The arts editor knew that news of a scuffle over Jean-Didier Delacroix’s
departure from the paper would get around the business within seconds, and be the source of a feeding frenzy for their rivals. He had no option but to accept this challenge.