Wonder (24 page)

This morning, when she is out of coffee, when she mislays her keys, when she finds a hole in her boot and has to go home and put on an old pair of sneakers that squash her feet, when she turns up late at the house of the university professor who silently hands over his Labradors with an accusing look over his half-glasses, when it starts to drizzle as soon as they finally get to the mountain, the dog’s sluggishness exasperates her so much that after berating him one last time, she finally leaves him behind as if in punishment for his lack of will. She advances at a brisk pace surrounded by Vladimir, Estragon, Lili, and Juliette who keep going, barking.

—

It can happen that Lili Lady forgets to pay her for a month, then tries to do so three times in the same week, forgetting every day, it seems, what happened the previous day. Two days earlier, when she brought back the dog, she found the old lady in tears, shaking: “Dear God!” she exclaimed in her slightly lilting accent when she spotted the little white dog on the steps, “Lili! I thought I’d lost you forever!” then shut the door abruptly, without looking up, as if the animal had found her way home on her own after being kidnapped. She doesn’t remember the name of the dog-walker but she never forgets the dog’s.

The next day she was cheerful and smiling again but she had her sweater on inside out and at the base of her neck, between her hunched shoulders, you could see, standing up like the spring in a mechanical doll, a label with washing instructions. She helped the old lady take it off, then put it back on properly, guiding her frail arms, the skin nearly diaphanous, into the sleeves, as if she were dressing a child.

“Phhtt,” she says, spitting out a little downy ball, “what is this? Did it just appear during the night?”

Around them, the ground is covered with a fine white coating, like after the first snowfall, but this cottony dust
flies away at the slightest breath of wind in drifting clouds that float at a low altitude for a moment, then touch down on the grass, flowers, and pebbles. The sky is filled with them, as if the mountain had been the scene of a tremendous pillow fight.

Finally Damocles appears, panting, and lies down between them groaning with relief.

“It’s from the white poplars,” he explains obligingly, holding out his hand to pick off a small frothy cluster that had formed on her head.

“You mean they moult? That’s ridiculous, I’ve never seen a living being make such a mess in such a short time.”

As if to back her up, Damocles produces a spectacular sneeze that sends a little white cloud flying around him. Stunned, the dog seems to be a prisoner of a snow globe. He shakes his head vigorously, long ears flapping in the air, but that only sends up a new plumed cloud from the dirt. He looks up, yawns and hastily shuts his mouth when he feels feathers touching his tongue.

“They aren’t moulting, it’s their mating season,” he explains.

“Couldn’t they be a little more discreet?”

“Why would they want to do that?”

She lets out a breath and a small cottony storm is unleashed.

“So what’s all that fluff for?”

“It acts as wings for the fertilized seeds and they’ll be scattered by the wind …”

Another thundering sneeze from Damocles, who scratches his muzzle vigorously with his bear’s paw.

“… and incidentally, by the dogs,” he goes on without interruption. “But not all poplars produce it; look.”

He points to two trees, identical except that one is wrapped in a fog of fluff balls while the second seems nearly naked in comparison, clad in just its shiny triangular leaves.

“What’s wrong with that one, why doesn’t it have any, is it sick?”

“It’s not sick, it’s a male.”

She shrugs one shoulder as if to say that she couldn’t have put it better.

He also works weekends. She could have sworn it.

Alone with Damocles, she has deluded herself into believing she was taking a walk that would just happen to lead her to the summit of the mountain, and scarcely an hour later she found herself a few metres from him. He waves a greeting, puts down his shovel, and comes to pet the dog, who hails him with joyful trumpeting.

“Do you work nights too?”

“Sometimes. You can’t leave plants out of the earth for too long; rosebushes die after no more than twelve hours. And rhododendrons are even more temperamental.”

“And there’s no one but you to take care of them? Surely you aren’t the only employee of this damn cemetery. What if you get sick?”

“I don’t get sick easily.”

They are sitting in the grass and while he pours the tea, she examines the books that he has, as usual, brought along. A flock of geese crosses the sky, honking noisily.

“Are you a student?”

“Not really. It depends what you mean.”

“It isn’t complicated: either you’re registered at the university or you aren’t.”

“No, then.”

“And all that?” she asks, pointing to the little mountain of books.

“That’s the miracle of the library. They give you a card that lets you borrow books and you promise to bring them back.”

“You do all that reading for yourself?” Taking the three volumes at the top of the pile, she lists them:

“Volcanoes: The Character of Their Phenomena, Their Share in the Structure and Composition of the Surface of the Globe.”

“Histoire du mont Vésuve, avec l’explication des phénomènes qui ont coutume d’accompagner les embrasements de cette montagne.”

“Illustrated Guide to the Birds of Quebec.”

This last book opens by itself to the page that shows endangered species. She gives him a questioning look and he assumes an innocent expression, explaining: “I’m allowed to have a hobby, aren’t I?”

She continues her examination, studying the cover of one last book, worn threadbare:

“
Volcanic Studies in Many Lands: Being Reproductions of Photographs by the Author of Above One Hundred Actual Objects, With Explanatory Notices
, by … wait … Tempest Anderson. A prophetic name, don’t you think?”

“You forgot this one,” he says, turning over the old leather-bound volume he’s holding, on which is printed in gilt letters:
An Inquiry Into the Nature and Place of Hell
.

“So you’re trying to locate Hell? Most people find it quite easily, don’t they?”

“You’d be surprised to know where they place it. Underground. In the sky. On the Sun.”

Looking up, he winks as a sign of complicity, with her or with the invisible star beyond the clouds, she couldn’t say. The geese shape themselves into two white
V
s, each one seeming to take an already assigned place. Damocles
raises his muzzle towards the sky, surprised by their honking, and answers it with a brief yelp.

She goes on:

“If you aren’t a student why all this stuff about volcanoes and earthquakes?”

“I’m leaving soon for a job on the dig at Pompeii. The least I can do is arrive prepared.”

She leans imperceptibly away, squeezes the paper cup until a nearly unbearable heat spreads over her fingers.

“Right on. Do you speak Italian?”

He looks at her as if it had never occurred to him.

“No. What difference does that make?”

“None at all. You don’t speak Italian, but you’ll know precisely where Hell is and what it’s made of, so you shouldn’t have any problems.”

“That’s what I think too.”

A breath of wind lifts her hair onto her face, she pushes it away lock by lock.

“Far be it from me to discourage you,” she goes on, “but hasn’t Pompeii already been excavated? I’m quite sure I’ve seen photos, maybe even a documentary … You should probably find out before you buy your plane ticket.”

“The dig was started more than three hundred years ago, broken off, resumed several times, but today there are still as many buildings buried as exhumed.”

“It’s not moving very fast,” she notes, neutrally.

“Actually it’s more and more slowly, because when the buildings are brought into the light, they deteriorate in contact with pollution, even with the air, and also because of the millions of tourists who flood the site every year. Frescoes left perfectly intact for millennia lose their colour in a few weeks; columns that have been standing for two thousand years threaten to crumble.”

“So it’s more secure underground than in the open air?”

“Well … in a way, yes.”

“But why try so hard to unearth what’s buried if it means putting it in danger?”

The question obviously stuns him. He thinks for a moment, then suggests:

“Most likely there’s something more important than security?”

“I see. For instance?”

Again, silence. Then he ventures to say, timidly:

“The open air?”

As she does not answer, he goes on:

“You’ve never been tempted?”

“To go to Pompeii? Not me. Besides, as I already told you I hate flying.”

“Not necessarily Pompeii. Somewhere different. Don’t you ever get tired of climbing the same mountain every day?”

She didn’t see that one coming, nor did he, and he regrets his words as soon as they’ve passed his lips. But she has already gotten up. She says over her shoulder:

“If you really think it’s the same mountain every day you don’t understand a thing.”

She drops the cup into the grass where it overturns, and leaves without looking back. After a second of astonishment, Damocles follows her, dignified, all the disappointment in the world in his dog’s gaze.

Sitting at the foot of the beech tree, he rereads for the third time the introduction to a weighty treatise on elasticity written by a distant ancestor. Distracted, he doesn’t understand much, raising his head every time he thinks he hears footsteps. Finally Vladimir and Estragon appear, followed by Lili and Damocles, who rears up awkwardly when he spots him and then, limping slightly, nestles his damp nose in the man’s neck. But they’re accompanied now by someone in his early thirties, hair short, well-dressed but wearing incongruous rubber boots, his manner strangely familiar. He looks at this fellow, puzzled.

The unknown man greets him politely, noting that the dogs are giving him a warm welcome.

“Where is she?” he asks, suddenly concerned.

“In the hospital,” replies the other man with no apparent emotion. “Nothing serious, some queasiness last night, but ever since the accident it’s best to be cautious so they kept her overnight, under observation.”

The close-shaven stranger might as well have been speaking a foreign language. Then he realizes that this man had been with her last evening – though she’d said that she lived alone.

“And you are?” he asks the stranger, resisting an urge to start running.

“Oh, sorry. I’m her brother, Éric,” says the other man, extending his white hand.

“The airplane pilot,” he murmurs.

“Oh no, not me, I’m an accountant. And … umm … as my spouse needed a little quiet, I’ve come to the city for a few days. A kind of vacation,” he concludes, sounding like a man sentenced to death. “We had a slight difference of opinion, you see, nothing serious …”

But he has already gone. He turns around at the last minute, thinking to ask: “Which hospital?”