letter, and had to go back and reread entire sentences. Since Maman’s death I had no longer been able to concentrate on what I was reading: a manuscript I would normally have finished in one night now required several days.
It had to be a mistake. I did not know anyone called Louis or Annie. I turned the envelope over, but it was definitely my name and address. Someone else with the same surname, in all likelihood. The man called Louis would realise soon enough that he had made a mistake. I didn’t dwell on it any longer and finished opening the other letters, which really were letters of condolence.
Like any good concierge, Madame Merleau had not been fooled by this flood of mail, and she handed me a little note: if need be, I must not hesitate, she was there.
I would miss Madame Merleau, more than I would miss my flat. The one I was moving into might be bigger, but I would never find a concierge as nice as she was. I didn’t want to go through with this move. Couldn’t I just stay in bed, here in this studio which scarcely a week ago I could hardly tolerate? I did not know where I would find the energy to drag all my stuff over to that place, but I no longer had the choice: I needed an extra room now. And besides, the papers had been signed and the deposit had been made; three months from now someone would be here in my place and I would be there in someone else’s place, and they in turn would be in the place of…and so on. Over the telephone the man from the removal company had assured me it was true: if you followed every link of that chain, you invariably came back to yourself. I hung up. I couldn’t care less about coming back to myself, all I wanted was to come back to my mother. Maman would have been happy to know I was moving; she had never liked this apartment, she only came here once. I never understood why, but that’s the way she was, she took things to extremes sometimes.
Still, I had to let Madame Merleau know that I was moving out and thank her for her note.
‘Oh, don’t mention it, it’s the least I can do.’
Whenever anything happens, a concierge already knows about it. She was clearly sorry for me, and she invited me to come in for a few minutes if I felt like talking. I didn’t feel like talking, but I went in for a few minutes all the same. As a rule, we had always chatted at the window, never inside her loge. If I had not already known that this was a difficult moment for Madame Merleau, her invitation alone would have sufficed to make me understand. After she had closed the curtain behind us, she switched off the television and apologised.
‘The moment I open that bloody window, people look inside. They can’t help it. I don’t think they’re really curious, but it’s unpleasant. Whereas when the television is on they hardly look at me. Fortunately the screen is enough to distract them. I couldn’t stand to hear it blaring in my ears all day long.’
I felt ashamed and she realised.
‘Forgive me, I wasn’t saying that about you. You don’t bother me.’
What a relief! I was off the hook – not part of the average mediocrity.
‘With you it’s not the same. You’re nearsighted.’
I was startled.
‘How did you know?’
‘I know because nearsighted people have a particular way of looking. They always look at you more insistently. Because their eyes are not distracted by anything else.’
I was stunned. It was like being handicapped, with everyone pointing at you. Was it that obvious? Madame Merleau burst out laughing: ‘I’m having you on. You told me yourself. Don’t you remember, the day I told you about my fingers, you said it was sort of the same thing with your eyes. “Life is all about being dependent on your body’s every little whim,” that’s what you said. I thought your explanation was terrifying and I remembered it, the way I remember everything I find terrifying. You have to always remember what you say and who you say it to, otherwise some day it might come back to haunt you.’
She leaned over to pour some coffee, but just then her hand began to shake with a violent tremor and the boiling liquid spilled onto my shoulder. I blew on the burn to cool it but above all so I would not have to look at Madame Merleau. I was terribly embarrassed to have witnessed her infirmity.
Before she became the concierge, Madame Merleau had been a tenant in the building. She arrived shortly after I did, two or three months, I think. The sound of her piano resounded throughout the building, but no one complained, her students were committed and the lessons never turned into an ordeal. On the contrary, the ongoing concert was quite pleasant. But as the weeks went by the piano was heard less and less, and I assumed that her students were getting married. Married people didn’t take lessons any longer. Then the piano stopped altogether, and one day it was Madame Merleau herself who opened the window to the loge as I went by. She had acute rheumatism in her joints. The doctors conceded that it was an early onset, and that this sometimes happened, in particular with professional musicians, as their joints tired more quickly, by virtue of being called upon to play. They did not know exactly when, but eventually she would lose both the control and the mobility of her fingers; she was not to worry, she would still be able to use her hands for everyday things – eating, washing, brushing her hair, doing the housework – but she would no longer be able to use them for her profession, or at least not in all the subtle ways she had known up to now. In a matter of weeks she would lose the precious mastery that her hands had taken so many years to acquire.
She was completely devastated by the news. How would she live? The money from her lessons was her only source of income, she had no savings, and no one on whom she could rely, even for the time it would take to find her bearings. No parents, no children.
Then she heard that the concierge of the building was leaving. For several weeks people told her that she was the wrong age and didn’t have the skills required for such a position. But she decided to submit her application to the owner, who agreed to give her the position. She bade farewell to her piano. She reasoned that an unfulfilled passion was too burdensome, and that one must know how to leave it behind in order to let another passion take its place. Why not astrology, for example? It would go well with her new profession as concierge, the know-all, gossipy side. And it would enable her to forestall her fits of clumsiness. If she had known she was going to spill the coffee today, she would not have offered me any. She smiled.
‘You cannot go to work with your jumper in such a state. Go back upstairs and fetch another one. I’ll take this one to the dry cleaner’s, it will be ready this evening. I am really sorry.’
‘Please don’t bother, it’s fine like this.’
‘I insist.’
I wasn’t one to insist so I went back upstairs. She could not be expected to know that I didn’t have a single clean jumper in my wardrobe, that in fact I had nothing at all in my wardrobe, that all my clothes were on the floor and I walked all over them without caring. Just like Papa, I thought to myself, the moment I felt a bit of cloth underfoot: ‘Pick them up, pick them up, please, you always pick up Papa’s clothes, pick up mine, too!’ But Maman did not pick them up. I managed to find one jacket that did not stink of cigarettes – it really was time to quit smoking.
Madame Merleau waved goodbye to me from the window. As the curtain fluttered closed I thought of how the last survivor of a family never receives any letters of condolence. With all that, I had completely forgotten to tell her that I was moving, but at least we didn’t talk about Maman. Madame Merleau did not seem to be any more at ease in the realm of mourning than I was; so much the better.
That evening, when I came home, I was surprised not to find any letters in my box: the end of the letters of condolence already. Meagre takings, Maman. When I opened the door to my flat the smell of cleaning seized me by the throat: everything had been put away, the dishes I had not had the strength to wash for several days were now done, my laundry had been washed and ironed, and my sheets had been changed. A blinking light came from the door to the sitting room. Perhaps Maman’s white ghost would smile at me the moment I entered the room.
The television had been left on, without the sound. Madame Merleau. Hanging in plain view from the wardrobe handle was my jumper, and