No and Me Page 6

  ‘Hmmph . . . that vaguely rings a bell.’

  ‘Do you know where I could find her?’

  ‘Listen, I don’t want any of this shit. Anyway, I’ve got things to do. I’ve got to tidy up.’

  ‘How long is it since you saw her?’

  ‘I told you, I don’t have time for this.’

  ‘Don’t you have any idea at all? Please.’

  ‘Heavens, you know what you want, you do . . . I help people out for a night or two and then I forget.’

  He looked at me for a long time – my coat, my boots, my hair. He scratched his head, like someone who’s hesitating.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Thirteen. Almost fourteen.’

  ‘Are you family?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sometimes she’s at the soup kitchen on the rue Clément. It was me who told her about it. I see her there from time to time. Right – now hop it.’

  Back home I did some research on the town hall website. I found the exact address, the opening hours and the phone number. Meals were served between 11.45 and 12.30. They gave out tickets from ten o’clock. For several days I stood on the pavement opposite for more than an hour, watching people come and go, but I never saw her.

  It’s the last day of the holidays. There’s a queue that stretches about fifty metres. They haven’t opened the doors yet. I recognise her jacket in the distance. The closer I get, the weaker my legs feel. I have to slow down, take my time, do very complicated multiplication and division in my head as I walk towards her. I often do that to make sure I keep going forward when I’m afraid I’ll start to cry or turn round. I give myself ten seconds to find three words that start with ‘h’ and end in ‘e’, or conjugate the verb ‘to befit’ in the imperfect subjunctive, or do incredible multiplication with lots of carrying over. She sees me. She’s looking me straight in the eye. Without a gesture or a smile, she turns away as if she didn’t know me. I reach her and see her face, how much she’s changed, the bitterness in her mouth, the way she looks defeated and abandoned. I stop. She’s ignoring me, waiting, stuck between two men. She makes no move to extricate herself, just stays there, behind the fatter one, her face hidden in her scarf. People stop talking. For a few seconds everyone looks me up and down.

  I’m well dressed. I’m wearing a clean coat with a zip that works, polished shoes, a designer rucksack, my hair’s shiny and nicely combed. In a game of spot-the-odd-one-out, it wouldn’t be hard to pick me.

  Conversations start up again, low and attentive. I go over to her.

  I don’t have time to open my mouth. She turns to me, her face hard and closed.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘I was looking for you . . .’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I was worried about you.’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

  ‘But you –’

  ‘I’m fine, OK? Everything’s fine. I don’t need you.’

  She’s raised her voice. A murmur has begun to run through the queue. I only catch snatches of it – ‘What’s going on?’ ‘It’s the girl.’ ‘What does she want?’ I can’t make another move. Suddenly No gives me a shove and I slip on the pavement. I can’t stop looking at her face. She’s still got her hand out to keep me away.

  I’d like to tell her that I need her, that I can’t read or sleep any more, that she has no right to leave me like this, even if I know that that would make the world topsy-turvy. Anyway, the world is topsy-turvy, you just have to look around. I want to tell her I miss her, even if it’s crazy, even if she’s the one who’s missing everything, everything you need to live. But I’m all alone too and I’ve come to look for her.

  The people at the head of the queue are beginning to go in. The queue’s moving quickly, and I follow her.

  ‘Get lost, Lou, do you hear? You’re really pissing me off. This is nothing to do with you. This isn’t your life, do you understand? It’s not your life!’

  She shouted these last words with incredible fury. I step back without taking my eyes off her. Eventually I turn around and go off. A little bit further on I turn round one last time. I see her going into the building. She turns round too and stops. It looks like she’s crying. She’s stopped moving. Other people are bumping into her, going round her. I hear someone shout at her. She swears back at them and spits on the ground. A man pushes her and she disappears into the darkness of the corridor.

  I head back towards the metro station. All I need to do is follow the grey line of the pavement. I count the number of City of Paris bins, green on one side and yellow on the other. I think at that moment I hate her – her and all the homeless people on Earth. All they need to do is be nicer, less dirty, and they’d be fine. All they have to do is make an effort to be pleasant, instead of boozing on park benches and spitting on the ground.

  .

  Chapter 16

  When I look up at the sky, I always wonder how far it goes and whether it ever ends. How many billions of kilometres would you have to travel to see the end? I looked in my new book. They give this question a whole chapter. According to Big Bang theory, various observations suggest that the universe is 13.7 billion years old. It was about 300,000 years after its birth that light was able to circulate freely (when the universe became transparent). The most distant theoretically observable object emitted its light at the first moments of the transparent universe. It defines what’s called the visible horizon. The light of 13.7 billion light years is therefore that of the visible universe. Beyond that distance, nothing is visible, we don’t know if the universe goes further or not. That’s why people stay inside, in their little apartments, with their little furniture and their little bowls and their little curtains and all that – because of dizziness. Because if you raise your head the question inevitably comes up, and also the question of what we, who are so small, amount to in all of this.

  When my father gets home in the evening I plague him with questions that he doesn’t always know how to answer, so he looks in books or on the Internet. He never gives up, even when he’s really tired. The other day I asked him what ‘telluric’ means. I could tell that he’d rather have switched on the TV and watched a good cop show with modern cops who spend their time solving mysteries and hunting criminals, but have their problems like everybody else, and love interest too. All the same he looked in his books and came up with the exact definition for me. My father would have made a good cop in a TV series if he’d wanted to. He never loses his temper, he has a leather jacket, a sick wife he looks after really well, and an adolescent daughter who can be a bit of a pain. Everything necessary to make you like him and not want anything bad to happen to him.

  When I watch a film with him, I make a vow of silence. But sometimes it gets the better of me and I can’t help making some comment or pointing something out, like when the heroine is sitting on the sofa with her hair behind her shoulders, and in the next shot, although she hasn’t moved, her hair’s in front. To tease me, he says, ‘Turn off the computer, Lou. Press pause.’ And then he ruffles my hair: ‘I’m going to fix your hair. Just you wait!’

  When I was little my mother would put a couple of squares of chocolate on a slice of bread and slide it into the oven. I’d wait by the oven door and watch the chocolate melt, going from solid to soft. Watching it being transformed was what I liked best, much more than looking forward to spreading the chocolate on the bread and tasting the result. When I was little I’d watch the blood go solid on my scratches. I’d ignore the pain and wait for the last drop to dry, the one that would become a little crust that I’d pick off later. When I was little I’d stay as long as I could with my head upside down and go bright red, then suddenly turn myself upright again and watch in the mirror as my face went back to its normal colour little by little. I did experiments. Today I’m waiting for my bo
dy to change, but I’m not like other girls. I don’t mean the ones in my class who’re fifteen, I mean the ones who’re the same age as me. I see them when I pass them in the street, walking as if they had somewhere to go. They’re not looking down at their feet, and their laughter rings out with all their shared promises. But I can’t manage to grow up and change shape. I’m still tiny, and staying that way, perhaps because I know the secret that everyone pretends to be unaware of, perhaps because I know that deep down we’re all tiny.

  When you stay in the bath too long your fingers go wrinkly. I read an explanation of that in a book: the outer layer of our skin, the epidermis, absorbs water, expands and goes into creases. Here’s the real problem: we are sponges. And with me it doesn’t just affect my hands and feet. I absorb everything all the time. I’m permeable. My grandmother thinks it’s dangerous and very bad for my health. She says, ‘That poor girl, her head will end up exploding with all that she takes in. How can she make sense of it, Bernard? You should sign her up for gymnastics or tennis. Get her to expend some energy, work up a bit of a sweat, otherwise her head’s going to end up falling at her feet.’

  .

  Chapter 17

  He got on through the back door of the bus the stop after me. He was standing right in front of me. I could tell he was expecting a kiss on the cheek. I was holding on to the rail and let go to get nearer to him. In spite of all the people around us, I noticed the smell of fabric softener that came from his clothes.

  ‘You have a good holiday, Chip?’

  I made a face.

  Lucas is standing in front of me with that laid-back look he has nearly all the time. And yet I know that he knows. He knows all the girls in school are crazy about him, he knows that Mr Marin respects him even if he spends time making comments about him, he knows how time runs away from us and that there’s something not right about the world. He knows how to see through windows and mist in pale morning light, he knows about strength and fragility, he knows we are everything and its opposite, he knows how hard it is to grow up. One day he told me that I was a like a fairy.

  He’s impressive. I watch him as the bus moves off again. People are pushing towards the back. He wants to hear more about my Christmas. I search for something to tell him and instead turn the question back on him. He went to his grandparents in the country. He shrugs and smiles.

  I’d like to tell him that I lost No, that I’m worried about her. I’m sure that he’d understand. I’d like to tell him that some evenings I don’t want to go home because of all the sadness that clings to the walls, because of how empty my mother’s eyes are, because of the photos shut away in boxes and because of the fish in breadcrumbs.

  ‘We could go to the ice rink one night if you like, Chip.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  (I’ve seen ice skates at Go Sport. They’ve got heaps of laces to feed through the eyelets. Impossible.)

  We get off the bus outside school. The doors aren’t open yet. Students are gathering in groups, talking, laughing, lighting cigarettes. Lucas knows everyone, but he stays with me.

  I try to look cool, not to let ideas invade my head, ideas which often come into my mind when I see everything that might happen, the best and the worst. They can surge up at any time as soon as my attention wanders, like a lens that lets me see the world in another colour. Sometimes a better world, and sometimes a disaster.

  I try not to think that one day Lucas could put his arms around me and hold me close.

  .

  Chapter 18

  I go out of the main door, lost in the tide. I see her on the pavement opposite. I spot her at once: a dark shape in the evening light. No’s waiting for me. She remembered the name of my school and she came. She’s not dragging her usual clobber behind her, just a bag that she’s wearing across her body. From this distance I can see that she’s dirty, her jeans stained with dark streaks, her hair matted in little clumps. I stay like that for several minutes without moving, getting jostled by the other students. There’s the noise of scooters, laughter, voices, like a whirlwind around me. Then only me, facing her. Something’s holding me back. Then I notice her puffy eyes, the dark marks on her face, her uncertainty, and all at once my bitterness and resentment are gone, and I just want to take her in my arms. I cross the street and say ‘come on’. She follows me to the Bar Botté. People are looking at us. People are looking because No lives on the streets and that’s as plain as the nose on my face.

  She tells me about it with her head down, her hands round her cup. She’s looking for warmth even if it burns her palms. She’s sleeping in an emergency shelter in Val-de-Marne, they’ve admitted her for two weeks. At eight thirty every morning she’s on the streets, outside for the whole day. She’s got to kill time. Walk so that she doesn’t get cold. Find somewhere sheltered to sit down. She has to cross Paris for a hot meal. Take a ticket. Wait. Go off again. Ask for money outside a shop or in the metro. When she’s got the strength. Enough to say ‘please’. Soon she’s going to need to find another shelter. That’s her life. Going from hostel to hostel. Hold on as long as possible. Push back the time limits. Find something to eat. Avoid sleeping in the street. She’s tried looking for work – fast-food joints, bars, restaurants, supermarkets. But with no address, or only the shelter’s, the answer’s always the same. There’s nothing she can do about it. No address, no job. She’s given up. She never thought that her life would get so crappy. When she was little she wanted to be a hairdresser, do shampoos and colours, and later to have a salon of her own. But she never learned – not hairdressing or anything else. She didn’t learn anything. She says, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, you know. I’ve no idea.’

  She doesn’t speak for a few minutes, staring into space. I’d give anything – my books, my encyclopedias, my clothes, my computer – if she could have a real life with a bed and a house and parents waiting for her. I think about Equality and Fraternity and all the stuff that they teach you in school that doesn’t exist. They shouldn’t make people believe that they can be equal, not here and not anywhere. My mother’s right. Life’s unfair and that’s all there is to it. My mother knows something that you’re not supposed to know. That’s why she’s not fit for work – that’s what it says on her social security papers. She knows something that prevents her from living, something you’re not supposed to know until you’re very old. You learn to find unknowns in equations, draw equidistant lines and demonstrate theorems, but in real life there’s nothing to position, calculate or guess. It’s like when babies die. There’s sorrow and that’s it. A great sorrow that doesn’t dissolve in water or in air, a sort of solid that can resist everything.

  No’s looking at me. Her skin’s gone grey and dry like the rest of them. Seeing her like that, it looks as though she’s reached the end, the end of what she can bear, the end of what is humanly acceptable. It looks to me as though she’ll never be able to get back up again, never be clean and pretty again. But she’s smiling and says that she’s pleased to see me.

  I see her lip tremble. It only lasts a second. She looks down. I pray in my head with all my strength that she won’t cry, even if I don’t believe in God every day, because if she starts crying it’ll set me off too, and when I start it can go on for hours, like a dam that bursts from the pressure of water, a flood, a natural disaster, and crying is pointless after all. She scrapes the bottom of her cup with a spoon to get all the sugar and sits back in her chair. She’s back in control. I can tell from the set of her chin.

  ‘What about your presentation?’

  I tell her how scared I was in front of the whole class, my voice trembling at the start and then not at all because it was as if she was with me, as if she’d given me strength, and then the relief when it was over, and the applause and everything.

  ‘And then Lucas, you know, the boy I told you about, has asked me at least twice to come to his p
lace after school and he wants me to go ice-skating with him, but every time I wimp out. I don’t really know what to do.’

  She likes me to tell her stories. She’s like a little girl, I can see that she’s really listening – maybe because it reminds her of when she was at school. Her eyes are shining. So I talk. I tell her about Lucas, that he’s been kept back two years, the Opinel knives he collects, his dark hair, the white scar above his mouth which runs down diagonally above his lip, his canvas bag with the writing in marker pen that I don’t understand, his cheek in class, his violent outbursts, and the day he threw everything on the floor, books, the table, pens, the lot, before leaving the class, like a king, without even turning round. I talk to her about Lucas, that he’s seventeen, that his body seems so dense, so solid, and the way he has of looking at me, as if I were an ant that had lost its way, his blank exercise books, my excellent marks and his three-day exclusion and my homework held up as an example, how kind he is to me, though he’s the complete opposite of me.

  ‘What about you, have you ever been in love with a boy?’

  ‘Yeah, when I was about your age. I was a boarder at a place at Frenouville. We weren’t in the same class but we used to meet in the evenings instead of going to study hall. We’d hang around outside, sit under a tree, even in winter.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Laurent.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘Well, what happened?’

  ‘I’ll tell you another time.’

  She doesn’t like talking. There’s always a point where she stops. Often in the same way: another time, another day.

  ‘Did it make you sad?’

  ‘I told you – another time.’