Scissors (25 page)

“You can.”

He picked up the only glass that was still standing and emptied it in one gulp. “Good,” he said.

We all breathed sighs of relief.

That could have turned out bad. I’d just realized that Anne hadn’t denied having a relationship with Max after her
marriage. Victor had understood. Or maybe Max’s story had made him understand before this.

All of a sudden I got angry at Max. It was just like him to cause a lot of trouble.

“He couldn’t get it up,” Anne said.

“What?”

“He was too drunk. I reminded him of that fact when he claimed to be the girls’ father. But he had too much pride.”

Anne shook her head, as if she missed Max in spite of all his faults. Fred let out an incredulous laugh. I was petrified.

Without taking his eyes off Anne, Victor nodded. His nostrils flared. You would have thought he was breathing in the alcoholic vapors. “All the better,” he said.

Anne looked at us, at Fred and me, as if she was challenging us to say a single word.

“All the better,” Victor repeated, although no one knew what he was alluding to.

His head was tilted to one side. For the space of an instant, I feared he was going to go all wobbly. He seemed to have no idea where he was.

He crinkled his eyes. Had he just figured out the meaning of his wife’s words?

At that point, I said, “Have you all seen how much booze we’ve put away? I mean, have you got any idea?”

There was some tittering. Anne uttered a moan, but whether it was joyful or appalled I couldn’t tell.

“Say now,” Fred remarked, surveying the disaster.

Victor wasn’t with us anymore. His brain was on fire. It frightened me to think he might sober up completely.

Anne had stopped paying attention to him. She said, “We’re about to drink ourselves to death!”

“Soon we’ll be joining Max!” Fred shouted.

“Except the drink that did Max in wasn’t wine or whiskey …”

They all shut up.

“Not wine or whiskey,” I said again. “The drink that did him in was water.”

They remained dumbfounded.

“It’s never occurred to any of you? Max starts drinking when he’s fifteen. The first time is when he goes fishing and takes along a thermos full of whiskey. He hides his drinking from his parents. He hides his drinking from his friends. And he hides his drinking from the doctors in the hospitals he winds up in. For thirty-five years, he drinks. And when the miracle takes place, when he quits alcohol and starts drinking water, what happens? He dies.”

“Holy shit,” someone whispered.

They all burst out laughing.

Fred elaborated my point, talking over the laughter: “He drinks like a fish and then when he switches to water, he croaks. He kicks the bucket.”

An orgasmic howl escaped Anne.

Fred was holding his sides. My laughter mingled with theirs.

“He kicks the bucket!” Victor exclaimed fiercely. He repeated the words several times, as if taking revenge.

We all had tears in our eyes. I don’t know how long our giggling fit lasted. Eventually the laughter died down and everything grew calm again.

We could hear crickets. A cloud of insects was dancing around the lampshade. It was time to go back into the living room. Time to leave the veranda, whose atmosphere affected us so strangely.

Anne gathered up the bottles while I collected the glasses. After a few seconds, there wasn’t so much as a square inch of free space on the tray.

Walking into the living room, Fred and Victor started chatting again. What was surprising was that they were chatting about Max, and casually at that. “So I take it he was an alcoholic?” Victor asked. “I knew he was the anxious type, but I didn’t think—”

“Alcoholic
and
anxious. He was afraid of going blind. An absurd fear.”

“Totally unfounded.”

“You examined his eyes, you should know.”

As they spoke, they moved apart.

Anne smiled. As if she remembered something she couldn’t reveal.

More of their conversation reached us from the living room.

“Max was blind when it came to the essential things in his life. But he was in no danger of losing his sight.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” Anne said in a low voice.

“I’ll be able to get it out. I’ve got a lot of products that work on this mat.”

“No, I mean …” She looked at me. Tears different from those we’d just been shedding filled her eyes. She carried the bottles away, saying, “I’m going to fix us something to eat.”

In the living room, Fred and Victor lit up cigars.

I looked around. It had been optimistic of me to say I’d get the wine stain out. The paper towels hadn’t done a very thorough job.

Even though it wasn’t cold, I felt a shiver run over me.

I didn’t feel like going back inside. Nobody was calling me; I could stay out on the veranda for a while. I switched off the lamp and tried the window lights again. They worked. Then, lured on by the fragrant evening air, I took a little walk in the garden.

The trees were shivering too. Creatures shifted about, moving in the branches and the night.

I thought again about Max. I wondered if he would have liked my little disquisition on the drink that did him in. How would he have told that story? More cruelly, no doubt.

Frigging Max. Who’ll immerse himself in us now?

I moved away from the veranda to a part of the lawn the window lights didn’t quite reach.

That was when I saw him.

Gottfried. A yard away from me, hopping in the grass. I froze. He got closer to the light. Was he looking for his cage? Did he want to return to his prison?

I heard Fred’s voice, then Anne’s, calling me inside the house. “Iris? Iris?”

I leaned down to the bird. “Go on,” I said. “Go away, Gottfried. Don’t go back to your cage.” He hopped to one side, skirting the porch.

“You’re free now.”

He entered the shadows. I couldn’t see him anymore. I hesitated, waited.

Then I went back to the house and rejoined the others.

Adelman, Bob, and Raymond Carver.
Carver Country: The World of Raymond Carver
. Scribner, 1990.

Carver, Maryann Burk.
What It Used to Be Like: A Portrait of My Marriage to Raymond Carver
. St. Martin’s Press, 2006.

Carver, Raymond.
Collected Stories
. Edited by William Stull and Maureen Carroll. Library of America, 2009.

Gallagher, Tess.
Deux audacieux. Auprès de Raymond Carver
. Arléa, 2001.

Halpert, Sam.
Raymond Carver: An Oral Biography
. University of Iowa Press, 1995.

Lish, Gordon, ed.
All Our Secrets Are the Same: New Fiction from Esquire
. Esquire, 1976.

——
.
The Secret Life of Our Times: New Fiction from Esquire
. Doubleday, 1973.

Romon, Philippe.
Parlez-moi de Carver
. Agnès Viénot, 2003.

Sklenicka, Carol.
Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life
. Scribner, 2009.

In the course of his work on this book, the author benefited from a writer’s residence in the Villa Marguerite Yourcenar and from a grant given by the Conseil Général du Nord. He thanks Achmy Halley and his team for their warm welcome.

The author likewise thanks John Baule, Tom Chiarella, Marion Coutarel, Hervé Delouche, Jeanne Guyon, Karen and Henner Krueger, Aurélien Masson, Nathaniel Rich, Rebecca Saletan, Elisabeth Samama, Lilas Seewald, and Robert Stewart.

Stéphane Michaka was born in Paris in 1974. He studied at Cambridge University and taught French in South Africa before embarking on a writing career. He has written theater pieces, children’s books, television scripts, and radio plays.
Scissors
is his third novel.

For more information, please visit
www.nanatalese.com