the pain or even just the fear of pain we’d all be off at the first unhappy love affair.’
‘That might not be such a bad thing.’
‘I don’t know about that. All I know is, if you’re still here, it must be for a good reason.’
‘Oh well, do enlighten me then, because I can’t for the life of me think what it is!’
‘Yet you are here.’
‘Barely …Why, Bernard, why have we spent our whole time walking alongside our own lives?’
Jacqueline’s lower lip was beginning to stick out and tremble, her eyes misted over. Her face was so close to Bernard’s that he could see nothing else, as if all there was in the world was this woman’s face, ravaged by regret and steeped in exhaustion. It was as though he were looking at her through a magnifying glass – wrinkles, hairs, blackheads – it was hardly proper. It was life that had caused all this damage, like a river gouging out its course down a mountain, day after day, for so many days. And behind those eyes damp with tears was a little girl struggling, trying to get out of there, beating her fists against the glass walls of the jar in which she’d been suffocating for …
‘I don’t know where you’ve gone, Bernard, but you’ve no right to leave me here, no right at all. One day I’m going to do something stupid, I’ll get a gun and blow that bastard Roland’s head off and I’ll do the same to your bitch of a sister …’
‘Be quiet, Jacqueline. You’re talking nonsense now. Some things can’t be killed with a gun because they’re dead already.’
‘You’re talking like a dead man. But I’m still alive. Go away, you’re even worse than the rest, nothing can affect you any more.’
Jacqueline got up so abruptly that her chair toppled over backwards. She righted it again so violently it was as if she wanted to drive it into the floor. The bang echoed awhile in the empty room of the restaurant. Bernard’s hand still smelt of Jacqueline’s: disinfectant and floorcloth. An hour before, there had been lots of people here, eating macaroni and roast pork amid noisy laughter. No trace of them now, as if they’d been imaginary. Life was about being there when things happened, if not it was a desert. People appeared and disappeared and you never knew where they’d come from or where they were headed. Paths simply crossed.
When Bernard tried to pay for his meal, Jacqueline told him to go to hell, without even turning round.
The rat caught the full force of Yolande’s slipper.
‘A rat’s at home anywhere. Comes from goodness knows where and never gets where it’s going. The thing goes from one house to another, making tunnels for itself all over the place. No limits at all. Dirty beast! That bastard of a butcher came by just now. He sounded his horn several times. Usually Bernard puts his order in on a Tuesday. But he’s not here, he’s never here, even when he is here. Oh well, we won’t be eating meat any more, it’s as simple as that. Or else we’ll have rat. If he’s not in his bed pretending to be dead for days on end he’s disappearing off somewhere. “I’ve got to keep myself busy,” that’s what he says. As if! He’s joined the Resistance and doesn’t want to tell me. The Boches have taken over his body but he’s holding out against them with his mind. I’ve seen right through him. He must be derailing trains, that’s his thing, trains. I see him come home with his conspirator’s face on. As if you couldn’t tell he’s killing Boches! Once a fellow’s killed another fellow, he’s not the same any more. I remember Zep, Zep’s short for Joseph, Joseph Haendel, that was the name of my Boche. One day he was in a platoon which had to kill some hostages. When I saw him the next day he wasn’t the same man. You’d have thought he’d lost something precious, like an arm or a leg. He was looking all around, he seemed distracted. At night he would wake up yelling things in German that I couldn’t understand: “Nein! Nein! …” drenched in sweat. He was a good country lad, Zep, a Bavarian. Pigs, hens, ducks, rabbits, he’d slit their throats by the dozen, but the hostages, that he just couldn’t stomach. You can’t eat people, I wonder if that was why. Always looking over his shoulder. And before him, all he could see was the Russian front. A rat in a trap, that’s what my fine Zep had become. All the men became Ripolin Brothers, lined up one behind the other like in the paint adverts, but it wasn’t paintbrushes they were holding, it was daggers. Row upon row, their white tunics stained with blood like that bastard of a butcher. “I kill you, you kill me.” And the more they killed, the more of them sprang up again, it was truly miraculous! That’s why there’ll never be an end to the war – anyway, it’s always been here, it’s that kind of country, there’s nothing else to do but go to war. The only thing that grows is white crosses. Even Bernard’s not been able to keep out of it. But what the hell, let them go on tearing each other to bits. It makes sod all difference to me!’
Yolande went back to the needlework which had been interrupted by the incident with the rat. She was sewing scraps together, pieces of silk and ends of lace, on to what was left of a red dress, and humming ‘Couchés dans le foin’. She got up and stood before the wardrobe mirror, holding the extraordinary garment up in front of her, stepped back a little, primped and posed, tried out a few dance steps and burst out laughing.
‘I don’t give a damn about the Resistance! You’re all made like rats! You’ve all lost!’
Whenever Bernard went out prowling around aimlessly, sooner or later he would find himself beside the railway. Sometimes he stood on the bridge above the tunnel and waited for the trains to go by. He knew them all, the 16.18, the 17.15 … He would see them coming in the distance then being swallowed up, almost as if inside him, with a din of metal on metal that shook the handrail he was leaning on. Shutting his eyes, he would count how many seconds they took to pass right through. He had already seen himself toppling and trains running over him. He’d imagined the scene a dozen times, the engine hurtling on at top speed and cutting him in two like an earthworm. Always at the end of this dream, however, his two halves would be wriggling on either side of the track and would manage to stick themselves together again. Bernard would find himself in one piece, walking along the rails with no idea where he was going. Rails leading to more rails … Today he was hanging around the warehouses of the disused goods station. Beneath the tall metal structure there was a raised platform where the wagons used to be loaded, with straw, or livestock, up to fifteen times a day sometimes. Dozens of men had worked here. Where were they now? The police kept an eye on the place. People said youngsters came here to get up to mischief, smash the few remaining windows, take drugs. So they said. The concrete paving slabs had burst under the pressure of irrepressible vegetation. Tons of steel and cement would never be a match for the puniest blade of grass. All that work for nothing. What if Bernard were the only survivor of some cosmic disaster? And if there were no one left in the world but him, rattling around all on his own in this deserted shed? Then, if death laid eggs in his stomach, what if he was the first man on earth and everything was going to begin all over again with him? On the walls was obscene graffiti, of erect penises, and legs spread wide, which reminded him of points on the tracks. They’d been boldly drawn in chalk, or scratched using a sharpened stone. This was Lascaux, this was the dawn of humanity, hunting scenes. Men had lived here. Even after countless centuries they still had nothing to express but the need to procreate, to have sex, over and over again. What price evolution?
‘Hey, Granddad, what do you think you’re doing?’
A young guy with eyes like a cat was staring at him, sniggering, sitting on a beam with his legs dangling in mid-air, two metres up.
‘Nothing, just taking a walk. I used to work here a long time ago.’
‘Long ago, so you’re a dinosaur then?’
‘I was just thinking that myself.’
‘Have you got a fag?’
‘No, I don’t smoke.’
It was like a circus act. The young man threw himself backwards, bounced off the wall, catapulted off a heap of old planks and landed at Bernard’s feet.
‘You could have been killed!’