The Elegance of the Hedgehog (11 page)

A
nna Arthens is selling her place!

“Anna Arthens is selling her place!” I say to Leo.

“Well I never,” he replies—or at least that is my impression.

I have been living here for twenty-seven years and no apartment has ever been sold out of the family. Old Madame Meurisse left her place to young Madame Meurisse, and the same thing happened, more or less, for the Badoises, the Josses, and the Rosens. The Arthens arrived at the same time we did; in a way, we grew old together. As for the de Broglies, they’d already been here for a very long time, and still occupy the premises. I do not know how old the Councilor is, but as a young man he already seemed old, which means that now that he is truly very old, he still seems young.

Anna Arthens, consequently, is the very first, under my mandate as concierge, to sell property that will change hands and name. Oddly enough, the thought of it terrifies me. Am I therefore so used to the eternal repetition of the same old things that the prospect of a change that is as yet hypothetical plunging me once again into the river of time serves to remind me of that river’s currents? We live each day as if it were merely a rehearsal for the next, and the cozy existence at 7, rue de Grenelle, with its daily proof of continuity, suddenly seems like an island battered by storms.

Considerably upset, I take out my shopping cart and, leaving Leo behind to snore gently in his chair, I head with an unsteady step for the market. At the corner of the rue de Grenelle and the rue du Bac I encounter Gégène, the imperturbable inhabitant of his cardboard boxes, and as I approach he watches me like a trapdoor spider sizing up his prey.

“Hey there, Ma’am Michel, you gone and lost yer cat again?” he shouts, and laughs.

Here is one thing at least that never changes. Gégène is a tramp who spends his winters here and has done so for years: he sleeps in squalid cardboard boxes, and wears an old greatcoat which, like its owner, has somehow miraculously made it this far and, like him, is redolent of a turn-of-the-century Russian merchant.

“You should go to the shelter,” I tell him, as I always do, “it’s going to get cold tonight.”

“Ah, ah,” he yaps, “that shelter, I’d like to see
you
there. I’m better off here.”

I go on my way, then feeling guilty, turn back.

“I thought I’d let you know . . . Mr. Arthens died last night.”

“The food critic?” asks Gégène, with a glint in his eye, and his nose raised like a hunting dog sniffing out a partridge’s ass.

“Yes, the food critic. His heart suddenly gave out.”

“My, my!” Gégène is clearly moved.

“Did you know him?” I ask, to have something to say.

“My, my!” says the tramp again, “why do the good ones have to go first?”

“He had a good life,” I say hesitantly, surprised at the turn the conversation is taking.

“Ma’am Michel,” says Gégène, “folks like him, they don’t make ’em anymore. My, my, I’m going to miss the old fellow.”

“Did he give you something, I don’t know, some money for Christmas?”

Gégène looks at me, then spits at his feet.

“Nothing, in ten years not a single coin, whaddya expect? No two ways about it, he was quite a character. Don’t make ’em like that anymore, no they don’t.”

This little exchange is disturbing, and while I thread my way up and down the aisles of the market, I let my thoughts wander back to Gégène. I have never given poor people credit for having noble souls, on the pretext that they are poor and only too well acquainted with life’s injustices. But I have always assumed that they would be united in their hatred of the propertied classes. Gégène has set the record straight on that score and taught me this: if there is one thing that poor people despise, it is other poor people.

Basically, that does make sense.

I wander up and down, distractedly, and find myself in the cheese section, where I buy a chunk of parmesan and a fine piece of
soumaintrain
.

W
hen something is bothering me, I seek refuge. No need to travel far; a trip to the realm of literary memory will suffice. For where can one find more noble distraction, more entertaining company, more delightful enchantment than in literature?

Quite suddenly I find myself by the olives, thinking about Ryabinin. Why Ryabinin? Because Gégène wears that old greatcoat, embellished in the back with buttons at the waist, and it reminds me of Ryabinin’s greatcoat. In
Anna Karenina
, Ryabinin, a greatcoat-wearing timber merchant, comes to see Levin, a country aristocrat, about a sale with Stepan Oblonsky, a Moscow aristocrat. The merchant swears on all the icons and all the saints that Oblonsky will profit from the sale, but Levin accuses him of cheating his friend out of a small forest that is worth triple what Ryabinin has offered. This scene is preceded by a dialogue where Levin asks Oblonsky if he has counted how many trees there are in his forest.

“What on earth, count the trees?” exclaims the gentleman, “you may as well count the sand in the sea!”

“You may be certain that Ryabinin has counted them,” retorts Levin.

I am particularly fond of this scene, first of all because it takes place in Pokrovskoye, in the Russian countryside. Ah, the Russian countryside . . . there is a very special charm about such a place—it is wild and yet still bound to mankind through the land, mother to us all . . . The most beautiful scene in
Anna Karenina
is set at Pokrovskoye. Levin, dark and melancholy, is trying to forget Kitty. It is springtime, he goes off with the peasants to mow the fields. In the beginning the task seems too arduous for him. He is about to give up when the old peasant leading the row calls for a rest. Then they begin again with their scythes. Once again Levin is about to collapse from exhaustion, once again the old man raises his scythe. Rest. And then the row moves forward again, forty hands scything swaths and moving steadily toward the river as the sun rises. It is getting hotter and hotter, Levin’s arms and shoulders are soaked in sweat, but with each successive pause and start, his awkward, painful gestures become more fluid. A welcome breeze suddenly caresses his back. A summer rain. Gradually, his movements are freed from the shackles of his will, and he goes into a light trance which gives his gestures the perfection of conscious, automatic motion, without thought or calculation, and the scythe seems to move of its own accord. Levin delights in the forgetfulness that movement brings, where the pleasure of doing is marvelously foreign to the striving of the will.

This is eminently true of many happy moments in life. Freed from the demands of decision and intention, adrift on some inner sea, we observe our various movements as if they belonged to someone else, and yet we admire their involuntary excellence. What other reason might I have for writing this—ridiculous journal of an aging concierge—if the writing did not have something of the art of scything about it? The lines gradually become their own demiurges and, like some witless yet miraculous participant, I witness the birth on paper of sentences that have eluded my will and appear in spite of me on the sheet, teaching me something that I neither knew nor thought I might want to know. This painless birth, like an unsolicited proof, gives me untold pleasure, and with neither toil nor certainty but the joy of frank astonishment I follow the pen that is guiding and supporting me.

In this way, in the full proof and texture of my self, I accede to a self-forgetfulness that borders on ecstasy, to savor the blissful calm of my watching consciousness.

Finally, climbing back into the cart, Ryabinin complains openly to his clerk about the mannerisms of these fine gentlemen.

“And with regard to the purchase, Mikhail Ignatich?” asks the lad.

“Well, well! . . . ” replies the merchant.

As we may rapidly conclude, from a human being’s appearance and position, to their intelligence . . . Ryabinin, accountant of the sand in the sea, wily actor and brilliant manipulator, has no time for whatever negative opinions his person might inspire. He was born intelligent, and a pariah, but he has no dreams of glory; the only thing that compels him to action is the promise of profit, the prospect of politely fleecing the overlords of an imbecilic system that has nothing but scorn for him but does not know how to stop him. Thus am I, poor concierge, resigned to a total lack of luxury—but I am an anomaly in the system, living proof of how grotesque it is, and every day I mock it gently, deep within my impenetrable self.

If you forget the future
You lose
The present

T
oday we went to Chatou to see Mamie Josse, Papa’s mother, who moved to a retirement home two weeks ago. Papa went with her when she settled in and this time we all went together to see her. Mamie can’t live all alone anymore in her big house in Chatou: she’s almost blind, she has arthritis, and she can hardly walk or hold anything in her hands and the minute you leave her alone she gets frightened. Her children (Papa, my uncle François and my aunt Laure) tried to manage things for her with a private nurse but she couldn’t stay there 24/7; besides, all of Mamie’s friends were already in retirement homes, so it seemed like a good solution.

Mamie’s retirement home is something else. I wonder how much it costs a month, a luxury old people’s home like this? Mamie’s room is big and light, with lovely furniture and lovely curtains, a little adjoining living room and a bathroom with a marble bathtub. Maman and Colombe went into raptures over the marble bathtub, as if Mamie could care less that her tub is marble when her fingers are concrete . . . Besides, marble’s ugly. Papa didn’t say much. I know he feels guilty that his mother is in a retirement home. “Well, you don’t expect us to take her in?” said Maman when they both thought I was out of earshot (but I hear everything, especially things I’m not supposed to hear). “No, Solange, of course not . . . ” replied Papa, in a tone that implied, “Let’s pretend I really think the opposite, all the while saying ‘No, no’ with a weary and resigned air about me, like a good husband who goes along—that way I come off as the good guy.” I’m very well acquainted with that tone of Papa’s. It means: “I know I’m a coward but don’t anyone try to tell me as much.” Obviously, it couldn’t fail: “You really are a coward,” said Maman, furiously flinging a dishrag into the sink. The minute she gets angry, it’s really weird, she has to throw something. Once she even threw Constitution. “You don’t want it any more than I do,” she continued, picking up the dishrag again and waving it in front of Papa’s face. “In any event, it’s done,” said Papa—which are the words of a coward to the power of ten.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m glad Mamie is not coming to live with us. Although with four thousand square feet it wouldn’t really be a problem. I do, however, think that old people deserve some respect. And in a retirement home, you get no more respect, that’s for sure. When you go there, it means: “I’m done for, I’m nobody, everyone, myself included, is just waiting for one thing: death, a dreary end to all this boredom.” No, the reason I don’t want Mamie to come and live with us is that I don’t like her. She’s a nasty old woman and before that she was a nasty young woman. I think this too is profoundly unjust: take a very old man, who was once a heating engineer, a kindly man, who never showed anything but kindness to those around him, a man who knew how to create love and give it and receive it, who connected with people in a human and sensitive way. His wife is dead, his children don’t have two pennies to rub together and, moreover, they have their own kids—and lots of them—to feed and raise. And they live all the way at the other end of the country. So you put this nice old man in a retirement home near the village where he was born, where his children can only come to see him twice a year—a retirement home for poor people, where he has to share a room, where the food’s revolting and the personnel are fighting off their own certainty of ending up in the same place someday by mistreating the inmates. Is this the price you pay for love, to end your life in sordid promiscuity? Now take my grandmother, who has never contributed to anything in life beyond a long series of receptions, fixed smiles, intrigues and futile expenses, and consider the fact that she is entitled to a charming room, with a private living room, and scallops in champagne sauce for lunch. So is that the reward for emotional anorexia—a marble bathtub in a ruinously expensive bijou residence?

So I don’t like Mamie and she doesn’t like me very much either. She adores Colombe, however, who returns it in kind, which means she has her eye on her inheritance—with the utterly genuine detachment of the girl-who-doesn’t-have-her-eye-on-her-inheritance. So I figured the day in Chatou would be an unbelievable ordeal, and bingo: Maman and Colombe go into raptures about the bathtub, Papa looks as if he’s just swallowed his umbrella, and old dried-out bedridden invalids are being wheeled around the corridors with all their drip bags. A madwoman (“Alzheimer’s,” said Colombe with a learned air—yeah, really!) calls me “Pretty Clara” and shouts two seconds later that she wants her dog right away, practically poking my eye out with her huge diamond ring and to boot, someone even tries to escape! The residents who are still healthy have electronic bracelets around their wrists: when they try to go outside the walls of the residence it beeps at the reception desk and the personnel rush out after the fugitives who, obviously, get caught after a hundred hard-earned yards and who protest vigorously that this is not supposed to be the Gulag, and they ask to speak to the director and make all sorts of weird gestures until they are shoved into their wheelchairs. This lady who attempted her final sprint had changed her clothes after lunch-time: she had put on her escape outfit, a dress with polka dots and ruffles all over, very practical for climbing over fences. In short, at two p.m., after the bathtub, the scallops in champagne sauce and the spectacular escape of Edmond Dantès, I was ripe for despair.

Then suddenly I remembered that I had decided to build and not destroy. I looked all around me for something positive, careful not to look at Colombe. I couldn’t find anything. All these people looking for death, not knowing what to do . . . And then, oh miracle, Colombe herself provided me with a solution, yes, Colombe. When we left, after we’d kissed Mamie and promised to come back soon, my sister said, “Okay, it looks like Mamie is nicely settled in. But as for everything else . . . we have to hurry and forget about it, and quickly.” Let’s not quibble about the “hurry quickly,” because that would be petty, let’s just concentrate on the idea: to forget about it quickly.

On the contrary, we absolutely mustn’t forget it. We mustn’t forget old people with their rotten bodies, old people who are so close to death, something that young people don’t want to think about (so it is to retirement homes that they entrust the care of accompanying their parents to the threshold, with no fuss or bother). And where’s the joy in these final hours that they ought to be making the most of? They’re spent in boredom and bitterness, endlessly revisiting memories. We mustn’t forget that our bodies decline, friends die, everyone forgets about us, and the end is solitude. Nor must we forget that these old people were young once, that a lifespan is pathetically short, that one day you’re twenty and the next day you’re eighty. Colombe thinks you can “hurry up and forget” because it all seems so very far away to her, the prospect of old age, as if it were never going to happen to her. But just by observing the adults around me I understood very early on that life goes by in no time at all, yet they’re always in such a hurry, so stressed out by deadlines, so eager for now that they needn’t think about tomorrow . . . But if you dread tomorrow, it’s because you don’t know how to build the present, and when you don’t know how to build the present, you tell yourself you can deal with it tomorrow, and it’s a lost cause anyway because tomorrow always ends up becoming today, don’t you see?

So, we mustn’t forget any of this, absolutely not. We have to live with the certainty that we’ll get old and that it won’t look nice or be good or feel happy. And tell ourselves that it’s now that matters: to build something, now, at any price, using all our strength. Always remember that there’s a retirement home waiting somewhere and so we have to surpass ourselves every day, make every day undying. Climb our own personal Everest and do it in such a way that every step is a little bit of eternity.

That’s what the future is for: to build the present, with real plans, made by living people.