No and Me Page 9

  .

  Chapter 26

  There’s something annoying in life that you can’t do anything about: you can’t stop thinking. When I was little I practised every evening lying on my bed. I tried to create a perfect vacuum, I chased away ideas one after the other, even before they became words. I exterminated them at the root, wiped them out at source, but I always came up against the same problem: thinking about not thinking is still thinking.

  One day I tried the question out on No. I reckoned that after all she’s been through she might have discovered a solution, a way around the problem. She looked at me in a mocking way. ‘Don’t you ever stop?’

  ‘Stop what?’

  ‘Wearing out your brain.’

  ‘Well, no, that’s exactly what I’m trying to explain to you. In fact, when you think about it, it’s not possible.’

  ‘Yes, it is – when you’re asleep.’

  ‘But when you’re asleep you dream . . .’

  ‘Just do what I do. I never dream. It’s bad for your health.’

  She doesn’t think it’s stupid that I cut out the packaging from frozen food, that I collect labels from clothes and textiles, that I do comparative tests to see which brands of toilet roll are longest. She watches me measuring, sorting, classifying, with a smile at the corner of her lips, but it’s not an ironic smile. Sitting beside her I cut out words from the papers to stick in my notebook. She asks me if I don’t have enough already, what the point of it is, but she helps me look in the dictionary and I can tell that she likes it. You should hear her read out the definition in her broken voice. She separates out each syllable like a schoolteacher in such a serious tone. One day she helped me cut out some geometric shapes for school. She really concentrated. She pursed her lips and didn’t want me to speak to her. She was scared of getting it wrong. It seemed so important to her that it should all be perfect to the tiniest fraction of a millimetre. I told her she’d done really well when she’d finished. The thing she likes best is helping me with my English lessons. Once I had to revise a dialogue between Jane and Peter about ecology. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I could memorise it if I read it once or twice – she insisted on being Peter and me being Jane. With a hilarious French accent she tried ten times to say ‘worldwide’. She stumbled, made a face and tried again. We laughed so much we never did get to the end.

  When I’m busy she spends a lot of time doing nothing. It’s perhaps the only thing that reminds me where she comes from, this ability she has to put herself anywhere at all like an object and wait for the minutes to pass, staring into space, as if something were going to come along and carry her off somewhere, as if everything ultimately didn’t count or was unimportant, as if it could all come to an end suddenly.

  I go on to the balcony with her when she’s smoking. We talk as we’re looking at the lighted windows, the shapes of the buildings which stand out in the darkness, the people in their kitchens. I try to find out more about Laurent, her boyfriend. She told me that he went to live in Ireland, but that one day, when she had the money and a new tooth, she was going to go and find him.

  In the evenings we arrange to meet at Lucas’s. After school I take the bus with him, or when it’s too cold to wait for it we go down to the metro. No meets us there. We’re alone and free. She spends her days visiting shops, associations, agencies. She gives out her CV left, right and centre, calls numbers that have been recommended to her, but always gets the same response. She left school at fourteen, she doesn’t speak any foreign languages, doesn’t know how to work a computer, and has never worked.

  With Lucas we invent a better future for her, lucky breaks, fairy tales. She listens, smiling, and lets us invent another life for her, imagine scenes, details, chains of events, invent coincidences and make the impossible come true. I lay little plates on the kitchen table. He puts bananas at the bottom of a frying pan, sprinkles them with sugar and lets them caramelise. The three of us sit there safe from the world. He imitates the teachers and makes me laugh (except Mrs Rivery, because he knows I adore her and French is my favourite subject). He shows us his comics, posters, his drawing and animation software. We listen to music or watch films, slumped on the sofa. I slide between No and him. I can feel the heat of their bodies against mine and it seems as though nothing bad can happen to us ever again.

  The two of us go off on foot with our scarves wound around our necks, marching into the wind. We could go for miles side by side. We could go on like that, straight ahead, go away somewhere to see if the grass really is greener, if life is easier, sweeter.

  Whatever happens, when I think of her later, I know that these are the images that will come first – full of light and intensity, her face open, her laughing with Lucas, the woolly cap my father gave her pulled down over her dishevelled hair. These moments when she is truly herself, without fear or resentment, her eyes shining in the blue glow of the television.

  .

  Chapter 27

  The evening that No announced she’d found work, my father went out and bought a bottle of champagne. The crystal glasses had to be rinsed because they hadn’t been used for so long. We raised our glasses and drank to No’s health. My father said that a new life was beginning. I tried to work out their emotions from their faces – No had pink cheeks so you didn’t have to be an expert. I think she was even making a big effort not to cry. When she told us more details, my father looked as though he thought it was less than ideal, but she was so happy that no one would have had the heart to spoil her joy by expressing even a tiny reservation.

  Every morning from seven, No works as a chambermaid in a hotel near the Bastille. She finishes at four, but some days she has to stay on to stand in for the barman, who has shopping and deliveries to do. The boss puts her down as part-time and the rest is off the record. She’s told my parents that she’ll invite them to a restaurant when she gets her first pay and that she’ll leave when she’s found somewhere to stay. They both answered simultaneously that there was no rush. She should take her time. Make sure that the job suited her. My mother offered to buy her one or two sets of work clothes, and we all laughed like crazy when we looked in the mail order catalogues and imagined No in polyester floral smocks. They came in all shapes and colours, buttoned at the front or the back, with big pockets, lace aprons, like in Louis de Funès films.

  Now No gets up before us. Her alarm goes off at about six. She makes coffee, has some bread and butter and sets off in the dark on foot. At lunchtime she has a sandwich with the boy in the bar, perched on a big stool, but she only takes a quarter of an hour because otherwise the boss blows a gasket (I looked ‘gasket’ up in the dictionary as soon as she wasn’t looking). In the afternoon she changes before she leaves the hotel, unpins her hair, puts away her overall and makes the same journey in the opposite direction back to our house, exhausted. She lies down for a while with her feet up. Sometimes she falls asleep.

  Every day she has to do about twenty rooms and all the communal areas – lounge, entrance, corridors. She has no time to daydream, the boss is always on her back. She’s never really managed to describe what kind of people go to the hotel. It seems to be a mixture. Sometimes she talks about tourists, sometimes men on business trips. It’s always full. Her boss showed her how to sort the dirty linen from the clean (according to his own personal idea of ‘clean’), how to fold the towels without washing them when they’ve been used once, and how to top up the little bottles of shampoo. She’s not entitled to a break or to sit down, and she’s not allowed to talk to the guests. One day he caught her smoking on the ground floor, and he shouted that this was her first and final warning.

  Her social worker has sorted out her medical cover records. She’s waiting for them to be approved. As she’s got backache, my father sent her to our doctor and gave her enough to pay for the consultation. She came back with an anti-inflamatory and a muscle rel
axant. I read the leaflet that came with them. I know a fair bit about medicines because of all the things my mother used to take and the stuff she still takes. I lock myself in the bathroom to read the dosage instructions, side effects and so on. I continue my research in the medical encyclopedia, I go through each different molecule and their main characteristics. When anyone asks me what I want to do when I grow up, I say A&E doctor or rock singer. That makes people smile. They can’t see the connection, but I can.

  No’s taking her medicine. She seems to be feeling better. She’s getting used to it. When she stays on to work behind the bar, she has to be well dressed and serve the guests until the boy gets back. My mother’s lent her a couple of skirts, which are quite fashionable and really suit her.

  On Tuesdays when she manages to get away she comes to join us at Lucas’s. He downloads tracks from the Internet and plays us new bands. He draws the curtains and we talk about everything and nothing. No tells us about the state of bedrooms first thing in the morning, the things people leave behind, and her boss’s schemes to save pennies. She makes us laugh when she imitates him with his fat stomach and his fingers covered in rings. She puts on a deep voice and pretends to be mopping her forehead with a handkerchief, which is apparently what he does all the time. She tells us anecdotes from her day, like the time the door to the toilets was stuck for two hours, with a man inside who eventually broke it down, or the huge fuss that a guest made when he discovered that the gin had been watered down. Lucas recounts stories about our class, describes people. He spends the lessons observing the other students, their clothes, the way they walk, their tics. He describes them in amazing detail, explains the friendships, the snubs and rivalries. He doesn’t leave out what he gets up to – his gangster manner, all his zeros, the noisy exits from class and the torn-up work. He doesn’t forget to mention how I read my work aloud or to imitate my uptight manner. He can reel off whole paragraphs.

  The rest of the week I go to Lucas’s on my own for an hour or two before I go home. He’s started a blog and writes posts about comic books, music and films. He asks what I think and reads out the comments he receives. He wants to create a page just for me and has thought of a title: The Infinite Chip. I like being beside him, breathing in his smell, brushing against his arm. I could spend hours like that, looking at him, his straight nose, his hands, the lock of hair that falls over his eyes.

  And when he catches me looking at him, he gives me this incredibly sweet calm smile, and I think that we’ve got our lives ahead of us, our whole lives.

  .

  Chapter 28

  No lived with her mother and the security man in a three-room house in the centre of Choisy-le-Roi. He left early in the morning and came back late. He went round businesses trying to sell them locks, reinforced doors and alarm systems. He had a company car, smart suits and a gold chain on his wrist. No says she remembers him clearly, she’d recognise him if she saw him in the street. He was nice to her. He gave her presents, took an interest in her schoolwork and taught her to ride a bike. He often argued with her mother about her. Suzanne made her eat her dinner in the kitchen. She’d put her plate in front of her as if she was a dog and close the door. She’d come back a quarter of an hour later and shout at No if she hadn’t finished. No would look at the clock on the wall and watch the second hand go round to pass the time. No tried not to get noticed. She did the washing-up, the housework, the shopping. She hid in her room as soon as she could, spending hours in there in silence. When the man played with her, her mother would sulk. They argued more and more often. No could hear the shouting and raised voices through the wall. Her mother would complain that the man got back late and accuse him of seeing another woman. Sometimes No realised that they were talking about her. He criticised her for not looking after her daughter. He’d say ‘you’re screwing her up’ and her mother would cry on the other side of the wall. The man would get back later and later and her mother would pace up and down like a caged animal. No would watch her through a crack in the door. She wanted to hug her, console her, ask her forgiveness. Once when No went over to her mother she pushed her away so roughly that No split her eyebrow on the corner of the table. She’s still got the scar.

  One night the next year the man left. When he came in from work he played with No, read her a story and tucked her up in bed. Later that night No heard noises and got up. She surprised the man in the hall. He was holding a big bin bag full of his things and wearing a long grey coat. He put the bag down to stroke her hair.

  He closed the door behind him.

  A few days later a social worker called. She asked No some questions, met her teacher, talked to the neighbours and said that she’d come back. No can’t remember if her mother started drinking before or after the man left. She bought beer in packs of eight and filled her supermarket trolley with bottles of cheap wine. No helped her lug them up the stairs. Suzanne had found a job at the checkout of a local supermarket. She walked to work and began drinking the moment she got back. In the evening she’d fall asleep in front of the TV with all her clothes on and No would turn the television off, cover her up and take off her shoes.

  Later they moved to a council house in Ivry, where her mother still lives. She lost her job. Instead of going to school No often stayed with her to help her get up, open the curtains and make the meals. Her mother wouldn’t speak to her; she’d point with her hands or her head to say bring me this or that, yes, no, but never thank you. In school No was kept back, hid behind the posts in the playground, didn’t play with the other children or do her homework. In class she never put her hand up, only spoke when she was spoken to. One day she arrived with a split lip and bruises all over her body. She’d fallen down the stairs and broken two of her fingers, but hadn’t received any treatment. The social worker notified the local authorities.

  At the age of twelve, No was put in a foster family. Mr and Mrs Langlois ran a petrol station on a B road on the outskirts of Colombelles in Normandy. They lived in a new house and had two cars, a colour TV with a massive screen, a video recorder and the latest model of food processor. No always adds that sort of detail when she’s telling you something before she goes on. Their three children had left home and they’d applied to be foster parents. They were nice. No lived with them for several years and her grandfather would come to visit her one afternoon a month. Mr and Mrs Langlois bought her clothes she didn’t need, gave her pocket money and worried about her bad school results. When she went to secondary school she started smoking and hanging around with boys in the café. She got back late, spent hours in front of the TV and refused to go to bed. She was scared of the dark.

  After she ran away several times, she was sent to reform school in the area. Her grandfather still came to see her and sometimes she went back to the farm during the holidays.

  It was at the boarding school that she met Laurent. He was a bit older than her and very popular with the girls. They played cards after lessons, talked about their lives and jumped over the wall at night to go and watch the shooting stars. It was there too that she met Geneviève, the girl who works at the superstore, and they became friends straight away. Geneviève’s parents had died a few months before in a fire and she had attacks of nerves in class and broke windows. No one could go near her. They called her ‘the savage’. She was capable of tearing down the curtains and ripping them to shreds. Every other weekend Geneviève went to her grandparents near Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives. Once or twice she invited No along and they took the train together. Geneviève’s gran met them at the station. No loved their house with its white walls and high ceilings. It made her feel safe.

  Geneviève was desperate to get out, No said. When she stopped breaking everything and banging her head against the wall, she managed to pass her exams and went to live in Paris. No began running away again.

  We heard a key in the lock and my father came into the kitchen. No broke off. When she’s talk
ing to my mother she’s careful to swear less. I see clearly how my mother treats her. At eighteen you’re an adult. You can tell from the way people talk to you, with a sort of respect and distance – not how you talk to a child. It’s not just a question of what you say, but also how you say it. It’s a way of treating you as an equal. That’s the way that my mother talks to No, in a particular tone, and I admit that it hurts, like little needles being stuck in my heart.

  When I was three or four I used to think that ages reversed. That as I got bigger my parents would get smaller. I could imagine myself standing in the living room, frowning, my index finger raised, saying in a loud voice, ‘No, no, no, you’ve had enough Nutella.’

  .

  Chapter 29

  Sunday’s the day for home experiments: the reaction of different types of bread at setting 8 on the toaster (sandwich loaf, baguette, Viennese, multi-grain), how long it takes for footprints to vanish on the damp floor, how long a mouth-print takes to disappear from a misted-up mirror, comparative resistance test of a scrunchie and an elastic band from the kitchen, evaporation test of Nesquik compared to instant coffee. After detailed analysis, I make a fair copy of the synthesis of my results in a notebook kept specially for this purpose. Since No’s been in the house I’ve had to take care of her, when she’s not at work, I mean. That’s a sort of experiment too, at a very high level, a large-scale experiment against fate.

  No always comes to see me when she gets back in the evening. She lies on the floor with her feet on a chair and her arms crossed behind her neck. We tell each other heaps of little things. I like it when time slips between your fingers without you getting bored or anything in particular happening, when there’s just the pleasure of the moment. She always demands lots of details about my class – what Axelle was wearing, what mark Léa got, how Lucas got on. She knows virtually everyone’s names and asks for news as if it was a soap opera. Sometimes I think she must be missing school and everything, that she’d like to run around a gym in shorts, eat ox tongue in the canteen and kick the drinks machine. Sometimes she asks me to go out with her as though she needed air, as if she had to be outside, so we go for a walk. We have fun playing games with the lines on the pavement, pretending to be tightrope walkers, jumping from square to square. I’d never have thought she’d like that at her age, but No follows me in all my adventures, takes the challenges I set her and almost always ends up winning. The other night we were sitting on a bench. It was incredibly mild for January. We stayed there side by side counting the number of women wearing boots (an epidemic) and the number of bulldogs on leads (also in fashion).