No and Me Page 5

  Someone puts a hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Chip, the bell’s gone.’

  Lucas helps me put my things in my bag. We’re last to leave the class. In the corridor he bursts out laughing. He can’t get over it. ‘Chip, you fell asleep right in the middle of Marin’s class. That’ll go down in school history. Lou Bertignac snoozes in class and escapes detention!’ I think I laugh too. Suddenly I’m happy there in the fuzziness of sleep, and maybe this is what happiness is – not a dream or a promise – just living for the moment.

  .

  Chapter 12

  I went back on the right day at the time we’d agreed. No wasn’t there. I waited for her outside the brasserie, searched the whole station, the newspaper kiosk, the ticket windows, the toilets. I waited near the sign where she sometimes sat when the cops weren’t around. I looked for the colour of her jacket and her hair in the crowd. I sat in the waiting room and looked for her skinny silhouette through the window. I went back the next day and the one after that. And on other days. One evening when I was passing the newsagent’s for the tenth time, the red-haired woman waved to me to come over. I went.

  ‘Is it Nolwenn you’re looking for?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I haven’t seen her for a while. She hasn’t been coming here much recently. What do you want her for?’

  ‘Well, nothing, really . . . we were supposed to be having a drink.’

  ‘She must have taken her custom elsewhere. But tell me, do your parents know you’re here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You know, you shouldn’t hang around with a girl like that, dear. I’m fond of Nolwenn, but she’s a street girl. She lives in a different world from you. You’ve probably got homework and lots of other things to do. You’d be better off getting yourself home.’

  I went into the metro and waited for the train. I looked at the posters and wanted to cry because No wasn’t there any more and I’d let her go without thanking her.

  My mother was sitting in her armchair. My father wasn’t home yet. She hadn’t put the light on. Her eyes were closed. I tried to slip into my room without making a noise but she called me. I went over to her and she smiled. When she looks at me like that, when she’s so close to me, another image superimposes itself on her face, sharp and transparent at the same time, like a hologram. It’s another softer, calmer face from before, without that line on her forehead. She smiles at me with a real smile that comes from within, not a smile that’s a front to hide the cracks, not a silent smile. It’s her and at the same time it’s not her any more. I can’t tell the real one from the fake any more. Soon I’ll forget that face, my memory will let go. Soon there’ll only be photos to remember it by. My mother doesn’t ask why I’ve got back so late. She’s got no sense of time any more. She says, ‘Your father called. He won’t be long.’ I put my things down and start setting the table. She gets up and follows me into the kitchen. She asks me how things are. She’s there with me and I know how much this is costing her, what an effort it is. I tell her that everything’s fine. ‘Yes, school’s fine. I was at a friend’s, the one I told you about. I got 18 for my presentation. I don’t know if I told you about it. Yes, it’s fine. The teachers are nice. So are the students. In two days we’ll be on holiday.’

  ‘Already?’

  She’s surprised. Time goes so quickly – Christmas already, winter already, tomorrow already and nothing changes. That’s the problem – our lives have stopped and the world keeps going round.

  When the door opens, cold air rushes into the hall from outside. My father quickly shuts the door behind him. He’s in the warm, we’re all in the warm. I think of No – I don’t know where she is, on some pavement in the cold night air.

  ‘Here, sweetie, I’ve found something that’ll interest you.’

  My father hands me a book, From the Infinitely Small to the Infinitely Large. I spotted it on the Internet and have been dreaming about it for weeks. It weighs a ton, it’s full of wonderful pictures on shiny paper and everything, and I’m going to have to hold back till after dinner to devour it.

  While I wait, I pick up the moussaka packaging that’s lying on the kitchen table. I announce my intention to keep it: from now on all packaging from Picard products are to be handed directly to me. I’m planning to do a comparative test soon. It’s not that they’re bad, but all frozen meals taste more or less the same – moussaka, shepherd’s pie, Mediterranean stew, salt cod puree and so on. They must have a common ingredient, something that gives them that taste. My mother’s laughing – that’s rare enough to warrant some detailed research.

  In bed I think of the woman at the newsagent’s. The words that keep coming back to me are: ‘she lives in a different world from you’.

  I really couldn’t care less that there are several worlds within this one and that you’re supposed to stay in your own. I don’t want my world to be subset A such that it doesn’t intersect with any others (B, C or D), a watertight shape drawn on a slate, whole but empty. I’d rather be elsewhere, following a line that leads to places where worlds communicate with each other, overlap, where the edges are permeable, where life follows a path without breaks, where things don’t come to an end brutally for no reason, where important events come with instructions (level of risk, mains or batteries, expected duration) and the necessary equipment (airbags, GPS, ABS).

  Sometimes it seems as though something’s lacking inside me, like there’s a crossed wire, a part that’s not working, a manufacturing error. Not, as you might think, something extra, but something missing.

  .

  Chapter 13

  ‘Mr Muller, come to the blackboard.’

  Lucas unfolds his long body, gets up casually, steps on to the platform and stands in front of the blackboard’s smooth surface.

  ‘Draw a circle.’

  Lucas picks up the chalk and does it.

  ‘That’s your mark.’

  A ripple round the whole class.

  ‘You can put your things away and spend the rest of this lesson in the study room. I cannot accept such mediocre homework in a test you were told about two weeks ago.’

  Mr Marin gives out our work. Lucas puts his things away without showing any emotion, but throws me a glance of complicity.

  It takes more than that to shake him. He drags his heels, goes towards the door, taking his time.

  At the school gate I see him leaning against a no entry sign, smoking. He waves and calls to me. Every time he does this I get the same feeling in my body, like an air pocket, as if my stomach was suddenly dropping to my feet and back up again, like in the lifts in the Montparnasse tower when you go up for the panoramic view. He was waiting for me.

  ‘You want to come to my place, Chip?’

  Panic in Disneyland! Red alert, general mobilisation, biological chaos, short circuit, internal pile-up, emergency evacuation, cosmic revolution.

  ‘Erm . . . thanks . . . no . . . I can’t.’ (Such verbal skill, as my father would say.)

  I’m dying to, but if he ever . . .

  Maybe that’s got nothing to do with it.

  If he ever kissed me.

  Maybe he just wants to talk a bit.

  But if ever . . .

  When you kiss, what direction is your tongue supposed to go in? (Logic would suggest both clockwise at the same time, but I suppose kissing isn’t something rational, so it’s not inconceivable that you do it the other way round.)

  ‘I’ve got to go home. Thanks. Another time, maybe.’

  He goes off with his hands in his pockets. The hem of his jeans is worn from trailing on the ground. He’s handsome even from a distance. Maybe there won’t be another time. Maybe in life you only get one chance, and too bad if you don’t grab it, it doesn’t come back. Perhaps I’ve just missed my chance. On the bus I lo
ok at people and wonder if they grabbed their chance. There’s nothing to prove it either way. They’ve all got the same tired expression, occasionally a hint of a smile. I get off a couple of stops early to walk. I often do that when I don’t want to go home right away. I don’t go to the station any more. I hang around for a bit on the boulevard Richard-Lenoir. There are lots of homeless people on the central reservation there, around the gardens and in the squares. They’re in groups, laden with bags, dogs, quilts. They’re gathered around benches, talking, drinking cans. Sometimes they laugh, they’re happy. Sometimes they argue. There are often young girls with them, with dirty hair, old clothes and so on. I watch them from a distance, with their ruined faces, raw hands, clothes black with filth, their gap-toothed laughter. I look at them with that feeling of shame, a clinging sensation of being on the right side. I look at them with that fear that No has become like them. Because of me.

  Mouloud died a few days ago. He’d been living on the streets in our area for the past ten years. He had his metro vent in a recess at the junction of two streets, just beside the baker’s. That was his territory. For a few years I saw him every morning and every afternoon on my way to and from primary school. All the pupils knew him well. At first we were scared of him. And then we got used to him. We’d say hello and stop to talk. He refused to go to the shelters because they wouldn’t take his dog in. Even when it was really cold. People used to give him blankets and clothes and food. He was a regular at the café opposite. He drank wine from a plastic bottle. At Christmas people gave him presents. Mouloud was an Algerian from Kabylia. He had blue eyes. He was handsome. It was said that he’d worked for Renault for ten years and then one day his wife left him.

  Mouloud felt ill and they took him to hospital, and the next day we heard that he’d died of pulmonary embolism. The owners of the café told my father. In the place where Mouloud used to sit, people began putting up posters, letters, tributes and even a photo of him. They lit candles and left flowers. The following Friday about a hundred people gathered round his tent, which had been left there because no one wanted to touch it. The next day Le Parisien published an article on Mouloud with a photo of his spot turned into a shrine.

  The lady in the bar opposite took in Mouloud’s dog. Dogs can get taken in, but the homeless can’t. I thought to myself that if everyone took in a homeless person, if everyone decided to look after just one person, to help them and be with them, perhaps there’d be fewer of them in the streets. My father told me that wouldn’t work. Things are always more complicated than they seem. Things are what they are, and there are lots of things you can’t do anything about. You probably have to accept that if you want to become an adult. We can send supersonic planes and rockets into space, and identify a criminal from a hair or a tiny flake of skin, and grow a tomato you can keep in the fridge for three weeks without it getting a wrinkle, and store millions of pieces of information on a tiny chip. Yet we’re capable of letting people die in the street.

  .

  Chapter 14

  We’re staying in Paris for the school holidays. My mother doesn’t like travelling any more. The mountains and the sea are more than she can manage, she needs to stay here on familiar ground. In the evening I feel like I can see us from the outside through the windows, the Christmas tree blinking at the back of the living room. These are the same baubles and garlands that we’ve taken out for centuries. No one’s interested or pays any attention, not even my father, who’s practised at playing happy familes. We could probably all agree that it’s pointless, but no one says so, and so every year the box is opened, the tree decorated and the menu known in advance. Usually my grandparents come up from the Dordogne and stay with us on Christmas Eve. The only thing I like is that we eat very late because they go to midnight mass (my grandmother refuses to eat before it because otherwise she falls asleep on account of her digestion). On Christmas Day my aunt, uncle and cousins come for lunch. The Christmas truce means that we have to pretend to be happy and content, to get on well with everyone. For example, my aunt (who’s my father’s sister) always passes comments on my mother right in front of her as though she wasn’t there, like she was part of the background. ‘Anouk should give herself a bit of a shake. There comes a time when you’ve got to take yourself in hand, don’t you think, Bernard? It’s not good for the little one, who’s disturbed enough as it is. And you look worn out. You can’t do two things at once. She’s going to have to snap out of it.’ My father doesn’t reply and my mother acts as if she doesn’t hear. We pass round the serving dish, take some more lamb or turkey or whatever. They go on about their latest holiday in Mauritius. ‘The buffet was gigantic. The shows were marvellous. We met a very nice couple. The boys went diving.’ I don’t like it when people attack others who can’t defend themselves. I get really angry, especially when it’s about my mother, so one day I said, ‘And how would you be, Sylvie, if you’d held your dead child in your arms?’ An Arctic chill came down instantly. I thought she was going to choke on her oyster. There was a long silence. It was a wonderful moment because of the little smile that flickered across my mother’s face. My grandmother brushed her hand against my cheek and the conversation picked up again.

  Christmas is a lie that unites families around a dead tree covered in lights, a lie woven of bland conversations, buried beneath tons of buttercream, a lie that nobody believes in.

  They’ve all gone. Around my neck I’m wearing a little gold chain with a heart-shaped pendant which my parents gave me. One evening at the table I think of No, Mouloud and Lucas. I look at the plate in front of me. I try to count the noodles and at the same time the number of beats of my feet below the table. I like dividing myself in two, tackling two things at the same time, like singing a song while I’m reading some instructions or a poster without interruption. I set myself challenges – too bad if they’re pointless. Forty-six noodles and fifty-four beats of my feet later, I stop counting. It’s all pointless. The only point is it makes me forget one thing: No is alone. No’s out there somewhere and I don’t know where. No gave me her time and I gave her nothing.

  .

  Chapter 15

  The next day I took the metro to Porte de Bagnolet and went straight into the shopping centre. I thought about taking a trolley to help me blend into the background. It was ten o’clock and the Auchan superstore was already really busy. There were about ten people waiting at the deli counter. Two girls were serving. I took my place in the queue and began watching them. They were both wearing white aprons and a kind of paper hat. One of them was blonde with straight hair and the other had curly brown hair. I put myself in the hands of fate: when my turn came, it would be No’s friend Geneviève who served me.

  Sometimes chance obeys necessity. That’s one of my theories (the theory of the absolutely indispensable). You just have to close your eyes, visualise the desired outcome, and concentrate on the image without letting anything interfere or distract you. And something happens, exactly the way you wanted it to. (Of course it doesn’t always work. Like every theory worthy of the name, the theory of the absolutely indispensable has exceptions.)

  The brunette was asking me what I wanted. I gave a start.

  ‘I’m looking for someone you might know. She’s called No.’

  ‘Nolwenn?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What do you want her for?’

  I’d been concentrating so hard I had forgotten what I was supposed to say.

  ‘I want to find her.’

  ‘Listen, I’m working. I can’t talk to you.’

  ‘Does she still come to your place?’

  ‘No. I asked her to leave and never come back. I couldn’t keep her. She’d empty my fridge, she did nothing all day and she wouldn’t look for a job.’

  ‘Do you know where she is?’

  ‘Last I heard she was in a shelter. But those things never last long. I c
an’t remember which one.’

  Behind me a woman in a tight green coat leaning on a trolley that was filled to the brim was starting to get impatient.

  I said thank you and turned to go.

  I took the metro back to Bastille and walked to the rue de Charenton. Opposite number 29, alongside the Opéra, just as No had described it, an Igloo tent was set up on the pavement. Behind it, jammed against the wall, was a pile of boxes, bags and blankets. The tent was zipped up. I called out. I waited a few minutes, hesitating, and then began to pull down the zip. I poked my head inside. There was a terrible smell. I went forward on all fours looking for a clue (when I was little I played at detectives with my cousins – I was the best). I scanned the tent – plastic bags were piled up at the back, a few empty cans were scattered on the ground.

  ‘Hey! You there!’

  At once I tried to get up, stepped on my lace and fell flat on my face. The man was grumbling behind me. He’d caught me by the collar and in a single movement dragged me from the tent and stood me upright. If I’d been equipped with the ability to disappear into thin air, that would have been convenient. He was all red and smelled of wine. I was dead scared.

  ‘What are you up to? Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to go into people’s houses?’

  My heart was beating so fast I needed a couple of minutes to be able to utter a sound.

  ‘I’m sorry . . . I was looking for No. She told me she knew you.’

  ‘I don’t remember her.’

  ‘Erm . . . She’s got brown hair, blue eyes, not very tall. Hair like mine. A bit shorter. She’s slept with you once or twice. In your tent, I mean.’