‘Yes.’
She took it in her hands like a relic, and teardrops appeared in the corners of her eyes.
‘It’s heavy. I’ll give it a good clean. Is it gold?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Oh, it is, it’s gold! Thank you!’
‘The toothbrush doesn’t go there; it goes here!’
For some time now he had been in the habit of talking to himself. Depending on his mood, he would concoct domestic squabbles for himself, or little compliments. If you have an inner life you inevitably have a double life. It remained to be seen which of the two lives would gobble up the other. The funny turn he had had during the dinner with Blanche had seriously thrown him. Even if nothing like it had happened since, he remained on the alert nonetheless. The sense that his self had been taken from him impelled him to cling to the slightest of his memories so as to keep himself together. He had to admit, however, that doubts were swarming inside him like worms in a fruit. He was about to brush his teeth when, in the bathroom mirror, he discovered with amazement that he had a beard. And not two days’ growth, either. A proper beard! A good three centimetres of salt-and-pepper bristles covering his cheeks, chin and upper lip. How had that grown in one night? Unless he had lost sight of himself some time ago?
It was Sunday then. The bell was going full swing. Getting through Sunday was a lengthy business, very lengthy.
How many of them had he lived through? Hundreds, thousands, all identical, those interminable Sundays which, from earliest childhood, inure us to boredom as to a drug. The morning was all right: there was the market, the smell of roast chicken drifting through the house, the clouds of eau de Cologne from the bathroom where, for once, everyone had been able to take their time. The midday meal was a sort of Christmas dinner. But, winter or summer, by three o’clock it was as sombre as All Saints’ Day. If you were not snoring, hands on belly, in front of the TV which was going round like a washing-machine drum, then you would go down to meet your mates in the car park, a football tucked under your arm. The older you became, the less use you made of the ball. It was taken for a walk like a faithful old dog. Sitting on a low concrete wall, you would roll it around distractedly beneath your foot while you played, ‘What would you do if you won the lottery?’ Unlike their fathers who had always played it safe, putting their money on houses, cars, dogs and wives, their dreams still had a certain class: pilot (any sort), pop star, adventurer. Everyone knew it was wrong to aspire to a different future from the one their parents had in mind for them: engineer (any sort), civil servant, lawyer, doctor. But time was still on their side.
There was an unbelievable number of beer caps stuck into the tarmac, a Kronenbourg galaxy amid which the ball was kicked haphazardly back and forth. Later, when the streetlights came on and the sky imitated the car park, everyone went home. Sometimes the ball was left behind. After the big film, Monday was as good as there.
His ankle needed exercise. Ten chimes rang out crystal clear on the pure air. He put on his coat, picked up his stick and found himself in the street, breathing in big lungfuls of fresh woodsmoke-scented air. He stopped in front of the cemetery, which seemed a good place to extend his acquaintance with the locals. He pushed open the gate which failed to creak mournfully. It looked like a walled garden with cypress trees, bushy hedges, benches, and even the odd tomb to justify the nature of the place. People here didn’t die much. A small Sacred Heart for the Cahusset family, local dignitaries no doubt; a half-dozen or so marble plaques in varying states of upkeep; and three or four molehills with lopsided crosses on the top. A concrete slab, recent in appearance and covered in a riot of fresh flowers, had as its centrepiece the childlike smile of a young man of around twenty who had, according to the gilded inscription, fallen victim to a man-eating plane tree while minding his own business doing 180 kph on his motorbike on the main road.
Between two cypresses he came upon the Montéléger vault. Engraved on the grey stone were a host of Clothères, Mariuses, Anselmes and Victors, and their wives, Suzannes, Marie-Louises, Fernandes and Marthes, all Montélégers. Most of the sepia photographs depicting them in their glory days were, because of the mist which had formed under their glass domes, now mere ghosts, vague outlines, auras of life on the point of definitive extinction. The most recent, depicting Louis, was by contrast absolutely clear. To judge by the dates, this had to be Blanche’s father. He was smiling behind his beard, but awkwardly, as if under constraint. His weary expression was not without similarity to the one which had looked back at Brice in the bathroom mirror that morning. Perhaps it was because of his sudden beard, but there was an indefinable family resemblance between this Louis and him. When he stood up again, he found a small bunch of freshly picked white flowers. They had no smell, or rather they smelled of Blanche’s coat. Brice continued to crunch his way along the gravel paths, and a little further on flopped on to a bench, arms and legs outstretched, his face upturned to the gentle rays of the sun. He dozed off for a moment. In front of him the gravestones pitched like leaky old tubs gone aground in the Bay of Douarnenez.
A bee came and settled by his hand on the back of the bench. An old bee, swamped by its oversized yellow and black striped jacket. It must have come a long way, from the previous summer maybe. It could go on no longer, panting and waggling its antennae as if trying to pick up Radio London. It began turning round and round on the spot, frantically waving its spindly legs: ‘Where d’you go to die around here?’ In one last effort, it vibrated its wings but managed only a fatal loop-the-loop which threw it over on its back. Brice thought of shortening its sufferings with a well-aimed blow from his walking stick, but against all expectations it righted itself again and directed a still formidable sting at his hand, before taking off once more on its wandering flight towards the backstage area of life, where no audience member is allowed to enter.
It was a tiny scrap of paper folded into quarters, found deep in a pocket, a poem of the everyday.
Leeks, parsley, lemon
Drain unblocker
Bread
Milk, instant mash
Ham
Pot scourer
Shoes from repairer’s
Between the lines of this short list of errands, the watermark of a whole day became visible, an ordinary yet unique day which flitted past Brice’s eyes in its entirety, in a fraction of a second.
He and Emma had woken up furry-mouthed. The evening with the Planchons had been long and seriously liquid. While making the coffee he noticed that the sink was still blocked. An enormous pile of washing-up stood on the draining board. The Scotch-Brite scourer was on its last legs, both sides in shreds.
‘Let’s have something light to eat this evening.’
‘Ham and mash?’
‘Perfect!’
‘I’ll make a list.’
‘Oh, could you pick up my shoes from the repairer’s? Ugh, this coffee’s disgusting! Oh God, my head’s killing me … See you this evening, darling. Have a good day.’
When he came back from shopping, he unblocked the sink and did the washing-up while listening to the radio. A psychologist was explaining that eight people in ten wished to change their lives. Oddly enough, though, when asked to be specific about the life they dreamed of, what they described was almost exactly the life they had been leading all day every day since birth. Emma’s shoes smelled of glue. If he had not found that scrap of paper he might not have remembered that day. How many others had he lived that had since melted away into oblivion?
The camp bed groaned as he stood up. He kicked it, hard. He was in no mood to listen to its tales of woe.
Sensing the atmosphere, the cat crept under a quilt at the other end of the garage, wisely deciding this was not the moment to claim its meagre rations. The weather was neither good nor bad; there was only a blank sky like a blind man’s eyes. Brice felt stiff and weak. His body needed to move about, loosen up a bit. He decided to go to the chapel he could see from his window, at the very