On Leave (7 page)

And finally there are insane streaks of pink and green neon running across the ceiling over the bar, matching its contours, like a shadow, so exactly that in the end you can't tell where the beam is coming from, whether it's rising or falling, or, by the same token, whether you are standing on your legs or on your head with respect to the rest of the world.

An electric clock shows that it's around 3:30 a.m. Every two minutes the long hand jumps forward with a little clack that sounds like a lightbulb bursting. Behind the bar the waiters shift their weight from one sore foot to another. Their faces are worn and their white jackets are rumpled and stained. It must be the end of the week.

Slumped on the bench seat, Lachaume strokes the back of Lena's head as she reads a newspaper with her elbows on the table. There are two large empty glasses in front of her, standing in saucers filled with the black goo of wet cigarette ash.

He whispers: “Lena! Lena! You're reading
Paris-Turf
, you're drinking your
pastis
, you're lighting your Gauloise, and you don't give a damn whether I'm here or not.”

And you hear:

Java!

What's he doing there

With his hands in your hair

That accord … ionist?

He leans toward her, slips a hand into her stiff hair with its curls that twist around his fingers, and kisses the back of her neck. She doesn't react.

He touches his lips as if he wanted to test the effect of the kiss. He can't tell if his fingers are cold and his lips hot, or the reverse. Nor can he smack his tongue or click his fingers, and there's something strange about the floor, because when he stamps his heel it makes no sound.

“Lena! Lena! Can you hear me?”

But what can be heard is:

Java!

What's he doing there

With his hands in your hair

That accord … ionist?

The singer moves slowly forward through the ill-lit room. She could be anyone you like, dressed according to your own whim, but she's dancing the
java chaloupée
with clenched hands held out in front of her, searching for someone, and everyone around you quakes as if each of them was the person she's looking for but can't find because of their borrowed clothes that pinch at the seams and their put-on expressions that stretch the skin over their faces like scars. Everyone sighs with relief, happy to be unrecognizable, but without grasping how much it would hurt to be in that place and behaving that way if in your heart of hearts you still hoped to be sent packing like an urchin with a clap around your ears, and to run back home.

What nonsense, Lachaume thinks as he sits with his head in his hands. When you're a kid you start getting excited. You're knee-high to a grasshopper, but you're already saying you'll be this and you'll do that when you grow up, and your mother approves and your father disapproves … What nonsense! You eat your greens, you grow, you wear long trousers, it's time to take your school-leaving exam, you saunter around with your ink bottle on a piece of string … Ah! If I could get hold of the swine who gave me that string, I'd give him a piece of my mind!… What nonsense!

That's what he's thinking with his head in his hands, but when he tries to say something and grips Lena's wrist to force her to listen to him, all that comes out is a scream:

“They can go hang themselves with their bloody string! They can go…”

Lena releases herself from his grip, calmly, as if she has always been accustomed to having her wrist crushed for no reason at all, and says: “You're as pissed as a newt.”

“Ass-an-oot! Ass-a-noot!” he says angrily, mocking her German accent. “What have you got against newts?”

“Let's have a drink,” she says.

“No thanks. Enough is enough … Why make me drink if I'm drunk ass-a-noot? Why do you talk such rubbish?”

“All right,” she replies. “You are not drunk.”

“Yes, I am! I'm totally sozzled. Everyone can see I'm wasted. Except you.”

“Listen to the music,” she says. “I took a taxi the other day…”

“I want to dance!” he declares, standing up abruptly and trying to drag her to the floor. “Let's dance. Just a few steps, to warm up a bit … Come on!”

“There's no dancing in this place,” she says.

“Just let them try to stop me!” he snarls. “Bloody hell! It's freezing in here…”

Lena doesn't pick up on the absurd untruth Lachaume just uttered, as if men had forever lied to her in the same stupid way. She tugs his arm gently to make him sit down again.

“Listen to me,” she says. “I took a taxi to get to the racecourse at Longchamp, and the driver said, ‘To you camble, matam?' He was a genuine Russian aristocrat, with a yellow mustache—bright yellow. I said, ‘Yes, Your Excellency.' So he says, ‘How to you camble, madam?' So I says…”

“How about that for a muddle!” Lachaume broke in with a sinister laugh. “You and your accent … mimicking a Russian accent in French! It's the best philosophy lesson I know. They should make a recording of it to play in schools.”

“So I says: ‘How about you?' And he says, ‘I keep it simple, ever so simple. I play my car registration number in order on odd dates and in reverse order on even dates: 423-324–423–324 … It's the best formula for picking a winner.'”

The song goes on:

Java!

What's he doing there

With his hands in your hair

That accord … ionist?

He says, “I've got a friend who dances the java like a ballroom star. You wouldn't turn
him
down if he asked you to dance! He stares at you greedily like he was going to pick a fight at the first opportunity. Mind you, I've nothing against him, but I'm wary of guys who look like they're aiming for the moon. They'll dump you at the drop of a hat. Don't you agree, Lena?”

She says, “Just listen to the guy: ‘I play 423 and lose. Only'—Laaaachaume, I'm talking to you!—‘only I should have played 324 because today is the thirtieth (I was using yesterday's newspaper), and get this, 324 sure was the right number.' So I thought, Lena my dear, go back to your mummy, you're no use, go back and put your little arms round her skirt. So I'm telling you the big story: I am going back to my mother, and I'm going to hug her skirt. After all, she is my mother, and she wanted to have me, to have a girl-child in the house. So okay, let her do that, let her keep me, her girl-child.”

And he says, “What do you think, Lena, are there any really courageous guys in the world? Men who do what they say…”

“Aren't you going to see your mom? Wouldn't your mom like you to give her a kiss and a cuddle? It's always the same. Nothing works. You go home, you say, ‘
Guten Morgen, liebe Mamma.
' It's nice, the strudel is in the oven, there's a lovely smell of nuts, but you've already got your eye on the door. Nothing ever works out. Why?”

“Dunno.”

“It was the same for the others, for the whole lot of them, with their hangdog looks. But even so, on the last day, at the end of the last day, they still wanted to go home. Go back home, in spite of everything. Cuddle their mom and then have a bite of strudel. Or eat the strudel first and cuddle mommy second, then have some more, but with a cuddle in between. It's not very
draufgängerisch
, but you can get through it all the same.”

And he says, “Have you been with lots of soldiers?”

“What's that mean, ‘been with'?” she asks angrily.

“Just what I said, been friendly with. Shake hands, have a drink, chat. Have you met a lot of soldiers, Lena?”

“Thousands of them,” she says. “Nothing but.”

“And what did they do?”

“
Eins! Zwei! Eins! Zwei!
That's what they did!”

“No.” He shook his head. “No … what did they really do?”

“What's that supposed to mean? You're as pissed as a newt … Go get some sleep. They got sozzled and made a nuisance of themselves with the girls, that's what they
really
did.”

“No, that's not it,” he said, shaking his head again. “That's not what I meant at all. Not at all.”

And the song goes on:

Java!

What's he doing there

With his hands in your hair

That accord … ionist?

“Let's have another drink.”

And since he assents with a nod of his head, she orders two Pernods.

“Ach, Laachaume, my brother,” she says as they clink glasses, “I drink to your health.” She puts her arm around his shoulder and digs her nails into the back of his neck, pulling him toward her, forehead to forehead.

“Tell me,” he whispers, “what did they do when they were at the end of their tethers, right at the end?”

“Who?”

“The soldiers,” he says. “The … other soldiers.”

“
Mein Gott!
” she exclaims, moving back from Lachaume. “What's the world coming to if Frenchmen have become as stupid and obstinate as Germans? Sweden is ice-cold, Italy is infantile, Spain … is a wreck. Apparently the only place you can have fun anymore is Japan. Let's go to Japan, my brother.”

She gives a little laugh and claps her hands on her thighs.

“Let's go and make our fortune in Japan. We could open a French restaurant … Do you know how to cook? Doesn't matter! I know a boy who hadn't any talent at all and still made a pile in Japan. He even swam there, if you see what I mean; all the capital he had was the underpants he was wearing. Now he's rolling in it. His mother lives in Dortmund. You should see her all wrapped up in a kimono! She puts on a posh accent to say,
‘Ja
,
ja
, Wolfgang always was a good swimmer.' Swimming matters more than a Ph.D., Herr Professor,” Lena added with a laugh. “But do
you
actually know how to swim?”

“Yes,” he said ungraciously. “But how did that guy get all the way there?”

“I don't really remember … He was in the Foreign Legion in Indonesia, I think, then he jumped off the ship somewhere or other, maybe off Java. Anyway, there were sharks in the water … Anyway, that's what his mother says, but she's got a gift for embroidering things.”

And the song goes on:

Java!

What's he doing there

With his hands in your hair

That accord … ionist?

Lachaume's mind wanders back to Lasteyrie. He can see him outside Gare de Lyon hitting his forehead with two fingers by way of a salute, saying, “If you find I'm not on time on the third, don't bother to wait for me…” What if he wasn't bluffing? What if Lasteyrie didn't turn up on the third? He can see himself in the station hall keeping watch for Lasteyrie, who still hasn't turned up; it makes his mouth go dry, and he keeps on downing great gulps of Pernod automatically. He could just dump us, he thinks. He just could … He feels he's been taken for a ride, betrayed; he would like to get his hands on Lasteyrie right then so as to get things straight. But he doesn't know where his parents live, can't even remember whether they live in Billancourt or Boulogne-sur-Seine. Upon which he reckons he's not been fair to Lasteyrie. He'd found his constant grumbling and his skepticism irritating, not to mention his frequent vulgarity, especially his hand gestures, which embarrassed Lachaume … as if
he
was as pure as the driven snow! he thinks angrily.

Empty glasses give way to full ones. The aniseed taste has become unpleasant; he drinks without thirst, as if he were doing a penance. And his thoughts rearrange themselves, so it seems to him, into one single idea: Lasteyrie has gone missing. (Never again will his captain address him with the familiar
tu
; never again will his eyes meet those of villagers in
mechtas
that are being burned to the ground; never again will he hold his finger on the trigger, quaking with fear, and feel his heart rent by hatred and shame.) And what will you be doing, Lachaume?

“Lena! I am a maiden pure as the driven snow. It's time to educate me.”

“Gladly!” she said through laughter. “I love educating pure young ladies … So, where do we begin?… What's the most important thing in life? Guess.”

“I've forgotten.”

“Luck!” she declares, with her index finger raised as high as her nose. “Above and beyond all else, there is Luck … Let's start with a game of 421.”

The waiter fetches the board and the dice, and two more glasses of Pernod. Lena lights a cigarette, wipes her hands energetically with a balled-up handkerchief, raises the sleeves of her pullover, and winks.

“What's the stake?”

“Japan.”

“No, Japan doesn't exist, it's a joke. Let's play for a thousand francs.”

She throws the dice first, then passes them on to him. If I get an odd number with three throws, he promises in silence, then I'll go AWOL like Lasteyrie. He casts the dice and gets 642 … Lost!

“642: you've won!” she says. “Your turn again.”

He has another throw, repeating, “Odds, I win,” and gets 542 … Lost again!

“You've won again,” she says after having her turn.

This is my last chance, he thinks as he throws the dice once more. He can feel his heart thumping, as if he really were gambling his life away: 642 … Lost!

“And you're on top again!” she announces, handing the dice back to him.

But his hand won't follow instructions, his head is wobbling, and all of a sudden he is overcome with drunkenness.

“Lena, Lena!” he mumbles, with his head in his hands. “Lena … let me hide in your place … Tell them … to leave me alone!”