Consolation (58 page)

To break the silence, Charles applauded very gently. Everyone followed suit, only soon they were clapping fit to break their knuckles. This startled the dogs who woke up and started barking, so Ramon started braying, so all the donkeys in the campsite asked him to kindly shut up. Swearing, clamours, more yapping, whips snapping, banging and clanking rose in the night from all around, as if the entire sky were celebrating the courtesy of an earthworm
.

For Kate the emotion was too much; she could not join in the Mexican wave
.

Much later, Charles would open one eye to make sure there were no coyotes at the door; he sought out her face on the far side of the embers, and tried to make out her eyelids, and saw them open and thank him in turn
.

Perhaps it was something he had dreamt . . . It did not matter, he snuggled deeper into his Himalayan feathers, smiling with happiness
.

At some point he must have believed that he would build great things and earn the recognition of his peers, but now he was resigned to the fact that the only buildings that would ever really count in his life were dolls’ houses
.

*

For a reason that will remain a mystery to this day, Ramon refused to cross the last open water just before the finish line. The very same stream where he’d splashed about dozens of times
. . .

What happened? No one knows. Perhaps some duckweed had drifted down, or a facetious frog had cocked a snook at him . . . The fact remains that he stopped short a few metres from his title, and waited for all the others to ford the water before condescending to follow them
.

Yet God knows he’d been pampered . . . the girls had brushed him, combed him, made him shine, coddled him all morning until Samuel came along and grumbled, ‘That’s enough, now, he’s not My Little Pony y’know.’

They hadn’t unfurled the banner, they hadn’t taken any photos or put on any dark glasses, to avoid any annoying reflections that might cause Ramon to shy, they’d encouraged him carefully and squeezed their buttocks painfully, but all in vain . . . He had preferred to teach his master a lesson
.
What was important was working hard at school, not acting the idiot between two haystacks
. . .

His master, who for the occasion had put on his great grandfather’s tail-coat, was the sole competitor to drive without a whip
.

The most powerful, therefore
. . .

All he had to say when everyone was pressing round him, each one more sorry than the next, was: ‘I suspected as much. He’s very highly strung. Huh, treasure? Come on, let’s get out of here . . .’

‘And your reward?’ said Yacine worriedly
.

‘Bah. You go and get it . . . Kate?’

‘Yes?’

‘Thanks for the great support. I appreciate it.’ They continued in English
.

‘You are welcome, darling.’

‘And it was a fantastic evening, right?’

‘Yes, really fantastic. Today I feel like we’re all champions, you know . . .’

‘We sure are.’

‘What are they saying?’ asked Yacine
.

‘That we’re all champions,’ translated Alice
.

‘Champions of what?’

‘Well, donkey champions!’

Charles offered to go with him. Sam thanked him, but Charles was too heavy. And besides, he needed to spend some time alone
. . .

Charles adored that kid. If he’d had a boy, he would have chosen exactly the same model
. . .

The next drawing is the only one that is not finished
.

And there are tiny strands of hair all along the fold by the spine
. . .

When Charles was about to put the notebook away in his briefcase, once he had packed everything, his initial reflex was to blow on the hairs to get rid of them but then, no, he closed the page on them, for ever
.

Like a bookmark
.

For the page he had turned
.

He had spent the morning, and the entire previous day, with Yacine, obsessed with building a Spud Gun. He’d had to go back to FixitFreddy’s for the second time (no comment) because the PVC tubing wasn’t good enough. Now he wanted a metal one
.

For a chemical Spud Gun . . . one that could send a piece of potato as far as Saturn, on condition that the reaction between the Coke and the Mentos Mints was properly calibrated (the one between bicarbonate of soda and vinegar only went as far as the moon, and that wasn’t nearly as much fun . . .)

God knows it had kept them busy, that thing . . . They had had to nick a few potatoes on the sly from René, and when they had returned Kate’s special vinegar from Modena they had got yelled at, even though the vinegar was completely useless; they had had to rush back to the bakery because those idiot girls had eaten all the Mentos, they had had to keep Sam from drinking the Coke, beg Freaky to spit out the valve he was chewing on, do a whole bunch of test runs, go back to the grocery to buy a can of Coke because the big bottles weren’t gassy enough, they had had to get everyone out of the way, run to the stream to rinse their hands because their fingers were too sticky to screw the top on, run a fourth time to the grocery – the woman who ran it was beginning to wonder (although . . . she’d had no illusions about the mental health of that household for a long time now) – because Diet Coke was supposed to work better than normal Coke and
. . .

‘You know what, my dear little Yacine? I think it’s easier to build a shopping mall in Russia with Sergei Pavlovich,’ sighed Charles in the end
.

Sheepishly, they came back to the house. They could have made ten kilos of chips with all the spuds they’d just wasted, and they needed to check one more thing on the Internet
.

Kate was cutting Sam’s hair in the courtyard
.

‘Yacine, you’re next.’

‘But . . . we haven’t finished the Spud Gun . . .’

‘Precisely,’ she said, standing up straight, ‘with all that hair gone, you’ll be able to think more clearly . . . And leave Charles alone for a change.’

He had smiled. He didn’t dare say so, but he was beginning to be potatotally fed up. He went to fetch his sketchbook and another chair, and sat down next to them to sketch them
.

Yacine was scalped, the girls had a trim, or a cut, or layers, depending on their mood and the latest trend at Les Vesperies, and locks of hair of every size and colour fell into the dust
.

‘You know how to do everything,’ said Charles, full of wonder
.

‘Almost everything . . .’

When Nedra got up, the hairdresser shook out her big tea-towel cape and turned to the man with his pencil: ‘And you?’

‘What about me?’ he answered, without looking up
.

‘Wouldn’t you like me to cut your hair, too?’

A sensitive topic. His pencil lead snapped
.

‘You know, Charles,’ she continued, ‘I don’t have many principles or theories here on earth . . . Yes, you know as much . . . you’ve seen the way we live . . . And where men are concerned, even less, alas . . . But there is
one thing
about which I am absolutely certain.’

He was clicking on his propelling pencil like a lunatic
.

‘The less hair a man has, the less hair he should have . . .’

‘What . . . what?’ he choked
.

‘Shave it all!’ she laughed. ‘Get rid of the problem once and for all!’

‘You think so?’

‘I know so.’

‘And, uh . . . You know, that thing about virility . . . When Delilah shaves Samson, he loses all his strength, and I feel like I’m being scalped and . . .’

‘Come on, Charlie! You’ll be a thousand times sexier!’

‘All right . . . If you say so.’

Oh, woe. Twenty years he’d been nurturing his meagre little down like some mother hen, and now this upstart of a girl was going to ruin it all in the space of two minutes
. . .

He was headed for the block when he heard the words uttered very surgically:

‘Sam, the clipper.’

Oh, woe
.

‘Kate, let me turn my chair towards the statue of the faun . . . I’ll draw his pretty curls to console myself . . .’

Her associate came back with the little torture kit, and the children had a field day pulling out all the different size combs:

‘How short are you going to do him? A five?’

‘Nooo, that’s way too long. Do two . . .’

‘Don’t be daft, he’ll look like a skinhead! Take the number three comb, Kate . . .’

The condemned man kept mum, but had no trouble reproducing in his sketchbook the gentle sneer of the satyr facing him so proudly
.

Then he drew the line of his neck, and went as far as the lichens on his . . . Closed his eyes
.

He could feel her belly against his shoulder blades, leaned into her as discreetly as possible, lowered his chin while her fingers brushed his skin, then felt him, touched him, stroked him, dusted him off, smoothed him, pressed him. He was so troubled that he pulled his sketchbook higher up on his thighs and kept his eyes firmly shut without caring any more about the noise of the machine
.

He wished his skull were endless, and was prepared to lose all the virility in the world, if only this delicious cramp could last forever
.

She put the trimmer down and took her scissors to finish him off with a flourish. And while she was standing like this before him, concentrating on the length of his sideboards, and leaning over, giving him whiffs of her warmth, her smell, her perfume, he lifted his hand towards her hip
. . .

‘Did I hurt you?’ she asked, concerned, stepping back
.

He opened his eyes, realized that her audience was still there, or at least the little ones, waiting to see his reaction when he’d next look at his reflection, and he decided the time had come to ensure his snow anchor was firmly fixed before he tossed his last rope: ‘Kate?’

‘I’ve nearly finished, don’t worry.’

‘No. Don’t ever finish. Sorry, that’s not what I meant to say. I’ve been thinking about something, you see . . .’

She was behind him again, scraping the back of his neck with an open razor
.

‘I’m listening.’

‘Uh . . . could you maybe stop, there, for a few minutes?’

‘Are you afraid I’ll cut your throat?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh God. What is it you have to say?’

‘Well, I’ll be living on my own with Mathilde once school starts up, and I was thinking that . . .’

‘That what?’

‘That if Sam is really too unhappy at boarding school, I could take him in.’

The blade fell silent
.

‘You know,’ he continued, ‘I’m lucky to live in a neighbourhood where there are any number of excellent lycées and –’

‘Why once school starts up?’

‘Because it’s . . . It’s the end of the story that is in the bottle of Port Ellen . . .’

The blade beginning, gently, to warm up again
.

‘But do . . . do you have room for him?’

‘A very nice room with parquet floors, mouldings, and even a fireplace . . .’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you mentioned it to him?’

‘Of course.’

‘And what does he think about it?’

‘He likes the idea but he’s afraid to leave you on your own. Which I can understand, actually. But you would see him –’

‘During the holidays?’

‘No . . . I was thinking of bringing him back here every weekend . . .’

The blade stopped again
.

‘Sorry?’

‘I could pick him up at the end of the school day on Friday, take the train with him, and buy a little car that I could leave at the station in –’

‘But,’ she interrupted, ‘what about your own life?’

‘My life, my life,’ he said, pretending to be annoyed, ‘never mind
about
my life! You haven’t got a monopoly on self-sacrifice, you know. And then, this business about adopting Nedra, I don’t want to hurt you but you know it would be a lot easier for you to do it if you could show proof of some sort of . . . male presence here, even if it were feigned . . . I’m afraid that people working in administration are still rather . . . old-fashioned, so to speak . . . or even downright misogynistic . . .’

‘You think so?’ she said, pretending to be upset
.

‘Alas.’

‘And you would do that, for her sake?’

‘For her. For Sam. For me . . .’

‘What, for you?’

‘Well . . . for the good of my soul, I suppose. To be sure of going to paradise with you.’

Kate went back to work in silence while Charles lowered his head still further, waiting for the verdict
.

‘You . . .’ she eventually murmured, ‘you don’t say a lot, but when you do, it’s . . .’

‘Regrettable?’

‘No, I wouldn’t say that . . .’

‘What would you say?’

With the tip of her cloth she wiped his neck, blew gently and for a long time into the gap beneath his collar, giving him shivers all down his spine, and hairs all over his notebook, then she stood up straight and declared, ‘Go and get it, that bloody bottle. I’ll meet you over by the kennels.’

Charles walked away, disconcerted, while she went up into Alice’s room
.

Mathilde and Sam were there, too
.

‘Listen . . . I’m taking Charles to do a bit of botany. You look after the house, all right?’

‘How long will you be gone?’

‘Until we find what we’re looking for.’

‘Find what?’

She was already tripping down the stairs four at a time to put together a survival basket
.

And while she was busying herself with this chore, failing to remember where the kitchen was, opening, shutting, banging doors and drawers, Charles was blown away
.

*

This was him, surely, but he didn’t recognize himself
.

He looked older, younger, more virile, more feminine, gentler, perhaps, and yet beneath his palm he found a very rough self . . . He shook his head without having to worry which way his locks might fall, then lifted his hand in front of his face to give himself back a familiar point of scale, touched his temples, his eyelids, his lips, and tried to smile to help himself adjust
.

He slipped the bottle into one jacket pocket (like Bogart in Sabrina) (but without the hair), and his notebook into the other
.

He took the basket from her hands, placed an eighteen-year-old bottle into it, and looked where her index finger was pointing
.

‘Do you see that tiny little grey spot down there?’ she asked
.

‘I think so . . .’

‘It’s a lodge. A little house where the people who were slaving in the fields could go to rest . . . Well, that’s where I’m taking you.’

He was careful not to ask her what they would do there
.

But she could not help elaborating. ‘It’s the ideal place to put together an adoption file, if you want my opinion . . .’