Consolation (56 page)

A few lines
. . .

My dear, my angel, my little pumpkin, my favourite down- loader . . .

Where are you? What are you up to? Are you into surfing, or surfers?

I often think about . . .

The draft stopped there. The bell had rung and Charles, still groggy from thinking about Mathilde, had gone to join the others, taking a detour via the hill. The only spot where you could get a bit of satellite reception, provided you stood on one leg, with your arms in the air, and wriggled around to face west
.

He’d heard her voice, her laugh, vague echoes, and clinking cocktail glasses
.

She asked him when he was going to join them, but didn’t listen to her stepfather’s mumbling reply to the end. They were waiting for her
.

She sent a kiss and added, ‘D’you want to speak to Mum?’

Charles lowered his arms
.

‘Emergency calls only,’ flashed the screen
.

Why was she pretending not to understand, this child of divorced parents?

Did she think he’d taken a bachelor flat for the summer?

He didn’t drink much that evening, and went back to his garret room well before curfew
.

He wrote her a long letter
.

Mathilde,

Those songs you listen to all day long . . .

He hunted for a second envelope
.

No hope of winning. He hadn’t invented anything original, and for the first time in his life, he was quite incapable of providing a precise diagram
.

Pastern, withers, fetlock, hock, cannon, gaskin, and dock. Charles wasn’t familiar with any of these terms, and yet these drawings are probably the most exquisite ones in the notebook
.

Kate had taken the tourists on an outing and he had worked all morning
.

He had lunch the way he’d been taught, with a few warm tomatoes nicked from the garden and a piece of cheese, and then he went for a stroll along the edge of the property with a book she had lent him, ‘A fantastic treatise on architecture’
.

The Life of the Bee,
by Maurice Maeterlinck
.

He went in search of a good vantage point to vent his spleen
.

For he was cogitating later and later into the night, restarting his calculations ten times or more, and breaking his neck on those 4% gradients
.

He was a family man without a family. He was forty-seven years old and he was having a hard time finding his position on the curve
. . .

Could it be that he had already gone halfway?

No
.

Yes?

Good Lord
.

And now? Wasn’t he wasting the little time he had remaining?

Should he leave?

To go where?

To an empty flat with a bricked-up fireplace?

How could this be? After he’d worked so hard – to find himself with so little at his age?

That other cow had been right, after all
. . .

He had followed her to the stream, like a rat
.

And now?

The rope!

It could well be that at night she was having it off with Monsieur Barbie, while he was manufacturing his bloody housing estates
.

And something in his crotch was itching terribly
.

(Harvest mites.)

He leaned into the shade of a tree
.

First sentence: ‘I have no intention of writing a treatise on apiculture or beekeeping.’

Contrary to expectation, he devoured the book. It was THE thriller of the summer. All the ingredients were present: life, death, the necessity of life, the necessity of death, allegiance, massacres, madness, sacrifice, the foundation of the citadel, young queens, nuptial flight, the massacre of the males, and the females’ genius in construction. The extraordinary hexagonal cell which ‘attains absolute perfection from every perspective, and it would be impossible, even were one to unite all the geniuses, to improve on it.’

He nodded. He looked around for René’s three hives, and reread one of the last paragraphs:

‘And just as it is written in the tongue, stomach, and mouth of the bee that it must make honey, so is it written in our eyes, our ears, our nerves, our marrow, in every lobe of our head, in all the nervous systems of our body, that we are created to transform what we absorb of the things of the earth into a particular energy that is of a unique quality on the planet. No other creature, that I know of, has been so equipped to produce, as we are, this strange fluid, that we name thought, intelligence, understanding, reason, soul, spirit, cerebral power, virtue, goodness, justice, knowledge; for it has a thousand names, although it is all of one essence. Everything in us has been sacrificed to it. Our muscles, our health, the agility of our limbs, the equilibrium of our animal functions, the tranquility of our life: all bear the growing burden of its preponderance. It is the most precious and most difficult of states in which to raise matter. Fire, heat, light, life itself, and then the instinct more subtle than life and the majority of all those elusive forces which crowned the world before our advent, all pale upon contact with this new fluid
.

We do not know where it is taking us, nor what it will make of us, nor what we shall make of it.’

Well, well, mused Charles, that doesn’t half leave us in a bloody fix
. . .

He stretched out, chuckling to himself. As far as he was concerned, he was more than ready to produce the strange fluid that would necessitate
the
sacrifice of his muscles, of the agility of his limbs, and of the equilibrium of his animal functions
.

What an idiot
.

He awoke in a very different state of mind. A horse – huge, fat, terrible – was grazing not three feet away. He thought he would pass out, and was overcome with a fit of anxiety the likes of which he’d rarely known
.

He did not move an inch, only blinking when a drop of sweat tickled his eyelashes
.

After a few minutes of wildly racing heartbeat, Charles reached gingerly for his notebook, wiped his palm on the dry grass, and drew a line
.

‘When there is something you do not understand,’ he never failed to tell his young students, ‘something that escapes you, is beyond you, draw it. Even poorly, even just a rough sketch. When you aim to draw something, it obliges you to sit still long enough to observe it, and if you observe it you’ll see that you have already understood it.’

Pastern, withers, fetlock, hock, cannon, gaskin, and dock – he wasn’t familiar with any of these terms, and the little round handwriting that inserted the caption beneath each watercolour sketch, still crinkly from his sweat, was Harriet’s
.

‘Brilliant! You’re really good! Can I have this one?’

So, another page torn out
.

He made a detour by the stream to wash his hide and, while he was rubbing himself with his damp shirt, he decided that he’d take advantage of the others’ departure to prepare his own
.

He wasn’t really getting much work done and, all in all, he would have preferred it if she had drowned him outright
.

This life just below the surface was making him stupid
.

He decided to prepare dinner while waiting for them, and went into the village to do some shopping
.

He took advantage of the fact that he was back in civilization in order to listen to his phone messages
.

Marc briefly enumerated a whole list of setbacks and asked that Charles return the call as soon as possible; his mother complained of his ingratitude and brought him up to date on all the mishaps of the summer; Philippe wanted to know how far he’d got and told him about his meeting at Sorensen’s offices; and Claire, finally, while he stood in front of the monument to the dead, told him off in no uncertain terms
.

Had he forgotten that he had her car?

When did he intend to give it back to her?

Had he forgotten that she was going next week to Paule and Jacques’?

And that she was too much of an old bag to get herself picked up if she hitch-hiked?

Why couldn’t she reach him?

Was he too busy fucking to spare a thought for others?

Was he happy?

Are you happy?

Tell me
.

He sat down at an outdoor café, ordered a glass of white wine and pressed the return call button four times
.

Began with the most unpleasant one and then was very pleased to hear the voices of those he loved
.

And came up with a really amazing thing
.

He licked the wooden spoon, put all the lids back on, went round humming as he set the table
, Ne me quitte pas, ne me quitte pas
and all that rubbish. Fed the dogs and took the seed to the hens
.

If Claire could see him now . . . Calling the hens, with all the majestic gestures of the sower
. . .

On his way back he spotted Sam and Ramon training in the large meadow, generally referred to as the château meadow; they were slaloming in and out among the haystacks
.

He went over to them. He leaned against the gate and greeted all the teenagers who’d been sleeping in the stables with him, and whom he’d been spending more and more time with, playing endless poker games
.

He’d already lost 95 Euros, but he figured that wasn’t a lot to pay if it kept him from brooding in the dark
.

The donkey didn’t seem very motivated, and when Sam went by, grumbling and cursing, Mickaël called out, ‘Why don’t you whip him?’

Charles was delighted with Sam’s reply
.

True horsemen require legs and hands; incompetent riders need a whip.

A revelation like that was well worth a blank page
.

He closed his notebook, and welcomed the mistress of the house and
her guests with glasses of champagne and a feast beneath the arbour
.

‘I didn’t know you were such a good cook,’ said Kate, with wonder
.

Charles served her seconds
.

‘It’s true I don’t know a thing,’ she added, stiffening
.

‘You’ve got it coming to you, then.’

‘I hope not . . .’

Her smile drifted for a long time across the tablecloth and Charles reckoned that he had reached the last refuge before the mountain pass. Before the final assault on Mons Veneris . . . What a dreadful expression. Ha, ha! He was pissed again, and got himself roped into the conversations on all sides, without really following a single one. One of these days he would grab her by the hair and drag her the length of the courtyard before delivering her to his Teflon thing so that he could lick her scrapes
.

‘Penny for your thoughts,’ she said
.

‘I put too much paprika in.’

He was in love with her smile. It would take him some time to get
round to telling her, but then he’d tell her for a long time
.

He was over two score in years, and he was sitting across from a woman who had lived twice as much as he had. The future had become a terrifying prospect, to both of them
.

Because the amazing plan was indeed amazing, for a few days he abandoned his notebooks
.

Only one drawing remains as testimony . . . Spoiled with a pastis watermark as well
. . .

It was evening, and they were all in the village square. The evening before, his beloved Parisians had arrived, with great fanfare (crazy Claire, honking all the way along the oak avenue . . .); now Sam and his consorts were ravaging the pinball machine, while the little ones played around the fountain
.

Charles had formed a boules team with Marc and Debbie, and they’d taken a terrible beating. Kate had warned them, all the same: ‘You’ll see, these old fellows will let you win the first round to make you feel good, and then, they’ll kick your ass!!!’

With their well-kicked asses – what do you expect from bloody Parisians and Yanks – they sat nursing their anisettes to find some consolation while his sister, Ken, and Kate were laboriously trying to save the day
.

Tom was keeping score
.

The more they lost, the more they had to pay another round, and the rounder they got, the harder it was to locate that fucking little
co-sho-nay.

Claire is the one who is rolling the boule on that solitary drawing of a very colourful weekend
.

She isn’t concentrating very hard. She’s flirting with Barbie boy in English that is basic at best but very quaint:
‘You teer my bioutifoule Chippendale or you teer pas? Bicose if you teer pas correctly, nous are in big shit, you oondairstonde? Show me please, what you are kah-pabble to do with your two boules . . .’

The super genius, researcher into the atom’s atoms, could not oondairstonde a thing, other than that this woman was completely barmy, that she could roll a joint like no one else, and if she continued to cling to his arm like that while he was desperately trying to save the last round, he would ‘push elle dans fontaine, okay?’

Later, and in somewhat more precise English, Charles set out to explain to Ken what his sister did and how she had become one of the most feared attorneys in all of France, if not all of Europe, in her particular field
.

‘But . . . what does she do?’

‘She saves the world.’

‘No?’

‘Absolutely.’

Ken looked up at the woman who was busy fooling around with an
old geezer, spitting her olive pits in the direction of Yacine’s head, and he looked extremely puzzled
.

‘What the hell are you telling him now?’ shouted Claire to Charles
.

‘About your profession . . .’

‘Yes!’ she exclaimed, turning to Ken, who was transfixed, ‘I am very good in global warming! Globally I can warming anything, you know . . . Do you still live chez your parents?’

Kate was laughing. As was Marc, who had driven down with Claire to join them, and according to whom Claire was the most disastrous navigational system on the market
.

But she had great music in the car . . . So much the better, they’d got lost no less than six times, after all
. . .

Between two thrashings they all savoured
ventrèche de porc
and very greasy
pommes frites,
and with their nonsense and their laughter they managed to lure the entire village under the linden trees
.

This was Kate’s gift, mused Charles
.

To create life wherever she went
. . .

‘What are you waiting for?’ Claire would ask, two evenings later, on the other side of the bridge, before starting to load kilos of fruit and veg into her little car
.

And as her brother would not interrupt his scrupulous wiping of her windscreen, she would aim a big kick directly at his arse
.

‘You’re bloody stupid, Balanda.’

‘Ouch.’

‘You know why you’ll never be a great architect?’

‘No.’

‘Well, because you’re too bloody stupid.’

Laughter
.

*

Tom had just shown up again, his hands full of ice cream for the kids, and Marc was picking up the stray boules when Kate announced, ‘Right!
La consolante
, and after that, we’ll head home
.’

With a nod the old geezers pulled the rags from their pockets to wipe the boules
.

‘What is it? Some sort of rotgut?’ asked Charles worriedly
.

She blew on her lock of hair: ‘What
, la consolante?
You’ve never heard the expression?’

‘No.’

‘Well . . . there’s the first game, the second, the decider, the revenge, and then finally the consolation match. It’s a game for no reason at all . . . nothing at stake, no competition, no losers . . . Just for the pleasure, really.’

Charles played a perfect game, thus enabling his team to win – no, not win – to honour the magnificent notion
.

Consolation
.

As he was getting ready to head off to bed, he said good night to everyone, and was leaving his sister to her private lessons (he suspected she spoke English much better than she was letting on, in order to create new challenges with her tongue), when she came up to him and said, ‘You’re right, go and get some sleep. You have to be at the station in Limoges tomorrow at eleven.’

‘Limoges? What the fuck d’you want me to go to Limoges for?’

‘It was the most practical route I could find for her.’

‘Who, her?’

‘Hmm, what’s her name, already?’ she said, pretending to frown, ‘Mathilde, I think . . . yes, that’s it, Mathilde.’

The-happiest-of-his-entire-life
.

Here’s why
.

On arriving back from Limoges with Mathilde he found them all still, once again, and as always, sitting round the table
.

They moved over to make room and gave a distinguished welcome to the new recruit
.

They spent the rest of the afternoon by the stream
.

For the first time since he had come here, Charles did not take his notebook with him. All the people he loved on earth were here around
him
, and there was nothing else he could dream, imagine, conceive, or draw
.

Absolutely nothing
.

*

The next morning they ran into Alexis and Madame his wife at the market
.

Claire hesitated for a few seconds before deciding to give him a kiss
.

But she did give him a kiss
.

Cheerfully. Tenderly. Cruelly
.

They were already gone when Corinne turned around and asked who the girl was
.

‘Charles’s sister.’

‘Oh?’

She turned to the cheesemaker: ‘Hey, you haven’t forgotten the grated Gruyère like the other time?’

Then, to her ghost of a husband: ‘What are you waiting for? Pay the man.’

Not a thing. He wasn’t waiting for a thing. That is exactly what he was doing
.

He would go to Les Vesperies the next day under the pretext that he wanted to borrow some tool or other, and one of the children would inform him that she had already left
.

Charles, who was working with Marc in the living room, didn’t bother to get up
.

Tom, Debbie, and Ken, who had already postponed their departure for Spain any number of times, finally left, too
.

And Kate’s mother, who had arrived the day before, took Hattie’s room in their wake
.

Hattie was already managing really well at poker and very kindly gave up her second room to Mathilde
. . .

For two nights only
.

After that, Mathilde took her mattress down to the saddle room
.

Charles, who had worried about whether the ‘city mouse country mouse’ transplant would take, was quickly reassured. Mathilde had got back in the saddle after the second day, plugged in her headphones, and fleeced them all
.

He already knew what a good bluffer she was. He could have warned them
. . .

He went to bed, disgusted, as he heard her laugh and bid higher than all the others
. . .

One morning when they were alone, she asked him, ‘Just what is this house?’

‘Well . . . it is what is called a house, actually.’

‘And Kate?’

‘What, Kate?’

‘You in love?’

‘You think so?’

‘You’re a case,’ she confirmed, rolling her eyes skyward
.

‘Shit. Is it a problem?’

‘I don’t know. And what about the flat I haven’t even seen, yet?’

‘That doesn’t change anything. But incidentally . . . There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you . . .’

He asked his question, and got the answer he had hoped to hear. Then he remembered Claire and her story about kindness
.

Always the right pleadings, his learned friend
. . .

He recognized his sister’s writing and the shape of a CD
.

If the goat hasn’t eaten your laptop, put track 18 on repeat. The words aren’t very difficult, and with your stentorian voice, you should do a good job with it.

Good luck.

He turned over the box: it was the soundtrack of a Cole Porter musical
.

The title?

Kiss me, Kate.

‘What’s that?’ asked Mathilde
.

‘Oh, just some silly nonsense your aunt sent me,’ he said with a daft
smile
.

‘Pfff . . . you guys are such babies.’

Later, reading through the libretto, he would learn that this was an adaptation of Shakespeare’s
Taming of the Shrew.

Of the Shrew,
no doubt about it
; Taming,
however, was a lot more hypothetical
. . .