The Elegance of the Hedgehog (15 page)

S
o I put on my glasses and decipher the title.

Leo Tolstoy,
Anna Karenina
.

With a card:

To Madame Michel,
In honor of your cat.
With my warmest regards,
Kakuro Ozu

It is always reassuring to be disabused of one’s own paranoia.

My hunch was right. I have been found out.

A wave of panic rolls over me.

I stand up, like a robot, then sit back down. I read the card again.

Something moves house inside me—yes, how else to describe it, I have the preposterous feeling that one existing inner living space has been replaced by another. Does that never happen to you? You feel things shifting around inside you, and you are quite incapable of describing just what has changed, but it is both mental and spatial, the way moving house is.

In honor of your cat
.

Genuinely incredulous, I hear a little laugh, a sort of giggle, coming from my own throat.

It is worrying, but it is also funny.

A dangerous impulse—all impulses are dangerous for those who lead a clandestine existence—compels me to fetch a sheet of paper, an envelope, and a Bic pen (orange), to write:

Thank you, you shouldn’t have.
The concierge.

I go out into the hall with the stealth of a Sioux—ah, no one—and slip my missive into Monsieur Ozu’s letter box.

I return to the loge with furtive steps—since there’s not a soul around—and, exhausted, collapse into the armchair, with the satisfaction of having done my duty.

A powerful feeling of utter dismay at what I have done submerges me.

Utter dismay.

Such a stupid impulse: far from putting an end to the pursuit, this will encourage it a hundred-fold. A major strategic error. These wretched involuntary acts are beginning to get on my nerves.

A simple
I’m afraid I don’t understand
, signed,
the concierge
, would have conveyed the proper meaning.

Or even:
You’ve made a mistake, I’m returning your package
.

No fuss, short and concise: Delivered to the wrong address

Clever and definitive:
I don’t know how to read
.

More devious:
My cat doesn’t know how to read
.

Subtle:
Thank you, but Christmas boxes are given in January
.

Or even, administrative:
Please confirm receipt
.

What have I done, instead, but simper as if we were at a literary salon?

Thank you, you shouldn’t have
.

I propel myself out of my armchair and rush to the door.

Woe and damnation.

Through the window I can see Paul Nguyen heading for the elevator, the contents of the mailbox in his hand.

I am undone.

There is only one thing for it: to lie low.

Come what may, I’m not here, I know nothing, I don’t respond, I don’t write, I take no initiative.

Three days go by, on tenterhooks. I have persuaded myself that the very thing that I decided not to think about does not exist, but I can’t stop thinking about it, to the point of once forgetting to feed Leo, who is now the incarnation of mute feline reproach.

Then, at around ten o’clock, there is a ring at my door.

I
open the door.

Monsieur Ozu is standing there.

“Dear lady,” he says, “I am glad that you were not displeased with my little gift.”

In shock, I cannot understand a word.

“Yes, I was,” I reply, aware that I am sweating like an ox. “Uh, uh, no.” I am pathetically slow to correct my stumbling reply. “Well, thank you, thank you very much indeed.”

He gives me a kindly smile.

“Madame Michel, I haven’t come here so that you can thank me.”

“No?” I say, adding my own brilliant rendition of “let your words die upon your lips,” the art of which I share with Phaedra, Bérénice, and poor Dido.

“I have come to ask you to have dinner with me tomorrow evening,” he says. “That way we shall have the opportunity to talk about our shared interests.”

“Euh . . . ” A relatively brief reply.

“A neighborly dinner, a very simple affair.”

“Between neighbors? But I’m the concierge,” I plead, although whatever may be inside my head is in a state of utter confusion.

“It is possible to be both at once,” he replies.

Holy Mary Mother of God, what am I to do?

There is always the easy way out, although I am loath to use it. I have no children, I do not watch television and I do not believe in God—all paths taken by mortals to make their lives easier. Children help us to defer the painful task of confronting ourselves, and grandchildren take over from them. Television distracts us from the onerous necessity of finding projects to construct in the vacuity of our frivolous lives: by beguiling our eyes, television releases our mind from the great work of making meaning. Finally, God appeases our animal fears and the unbearable prospect that someday all our pleasures will cease. Thus, as I have neither future nor progeny nor pixels to deaden the cosmic awareness of absurdity, and in the certainty of the end and the anticipation of the void, I believe I can affirm that I have not chosen the easy path.

And yet I am quite tempted.

No thank you, I’m already busy
, would be the most appropriate route.

There are several polite variations.

That’s very kind of you but I have a schedule as full as a minister’s
(hardly credible).

What a pity, I’m leaving for Megève tomorrow
(pure fantasy).

I am sorry, I’ve got family coming round
(blatant lie).

My cat is ailing, I can’t leave him alone
(sentimental).

I’m sick, I’d better keep to my room
(shameless).

Ultimately, I steel myself to say: thank you but I have people coming over this week, when suddenly the serene affability with which Monsieur Ozu stands before me opens a meteoric breach in time.

S
nowflakes falling inside the globe.

Before memory’s eyes, on Mademoiselle’s desk—she was my teacher until I reached the older children’s class, with Monsieur Servant—is the little glass globe. When we had been good pupils we were allowed to turn it upside down and hold it in the palm of our hand until the very last snowflake had fallen at the foot of the chromium-plated Eiffel Tower. I was not yet seven years old, but I already knew that the measured drift of the little cottony particles foreshadowed what the heart would feel in moments of great joy. Time slowing, expanding, a lingering graceful ballet, and when the last snowflake has come to rest, we know we have experienced a suspension of time that is the sign of a great illumination. As a child I often wondered whether I would be allowed to live such moments—to inhabit the slow, majestic ballet of the snowflakes, to be released at last from the dreary frenzy of time.

Is that what it means to feel naked? All one’s clothes are gone, yet one’s mind is overladen with finery. Monsieur Ozu’s invitation has made me feel completely naked, soul-naked, each glistening snowflake alighting on my heart with a delicious burning tingle.

I look at him.

And throw myself into the deep, dark, icy, exquisite waters beyond time.

W
hy, oh why on earth, for the love of God?” I ask Manuela, that very afternoon.

“What do you mean?” she says, setting out the tea things. “It sounds lovely!”

“You must be joking,” I moan.

“You must think practical, now,” she says. “You can’t go like that. Your hair is all wrong,” she asserts, looking at me with the eye of an expert.

Do you have any idea of Manuela’s notions on the subject of hairdressing? She may be an aristocrat of the heart but she is a true proletarian when it comes to hairstyling. Teased, twisted, puffed out then sprayed with a wicked concoction of chemical spiders’ webs: a woman’s hair, according to Manuela, must be architectural or nothing at all.

“I’ll go to the hairdresser’s,” I say, trying to act un-precipitately.

Manuela looks at me doubtfully.

“What are you going to wear?”

Other than my everyday dresses, my concierge dresses, all I have is a sort of white nuptial meringue buried beneath layers of mothballs, or a lugubrious black pinafore which I use for the rare funerals to which I am invited.

“I’ll wear my black dress.”

“The funeral dress?” Manuela is dismayed.

“That’s all I have.”

“Well, you’ll have to buy something.”

“It’s only a dinner.”

“That’s as may be,” answers the duenna lurking inside Manuela. “But don’t you dress up when you go to have dinner with other people?”

N
ow things start to get difficult: where am I to buy a dress? Ordinarily, I order clothes by mail, even socks, underwear and camisoles. The idea of trying something on in front of an anorexic virgin—something which, on me, will look like a sack of potatoes—has always deterred me from going into boutiques. It is most unfortunate that it is now too late to order anything by mail and have it delivered in time.

If you have but one friend, make sure you choose her well.

The very next morning Manuela bursts into my loge.

She is carrying a clothes-bag, and hands it to me with a triumphant smile.

Manuela is a good six inches taller than I am, and weighs at least twenty pounds less. I can think of only one woman in her family whose figure might be comparable to mine: her mother-in-law, the formidable Amalia, who has a real penchant for frills and furbelows, although she does not strike one as being the sort to indulge fantasy. Portuguese-style passementerie has something rococo about it: nothing imaginative or light, just a delirious accumulation, where a dress ends up looking like a straitjacket made of lace, and even a simple blouse like an entry in a seamstresses’ ruffles and frills competition.

So you may imagine how worried I am. The dinner is already promising to be an ordeal; this could also turn it into a farce.

“You will look like a movie star!” says Manuela, as I feared. Then suddenly feeling sorry for me: “I’m joking,” as she pulls from the bag a beige dress that seems to have been spared where flounces are concerned.

“Where did you get it?” I ask, examining the dress.

At first glance, it’s the right size. It also appears to be a pricey dress, in wool gabardine, with a very simple cut, a shirt collar and buttons down the front. Very sober; very chic. The kind of dress Madame de Broglie would wear.

“I went to see Maria last night,” replies Manuela, pleased as punch.

Maria is a Portuguese seamstress who lives right next door to my savior. But to Manuela she’s more than a mere compatriot. The two of them grew up together in Faro, each of them married one of the seven Lopes brothers and came with them to France, where they managed to have their children at almost exactly the same intervals, only a few weeks apart. They even share a cat, and similar tastes in refined
patisserie
.

“You mean it’s someone else’s dress?”

“Mmm,” answers Manuela, pouting slightly. “But you know, she won’t come to collect it. The lady died last week. And by the time it takes them to realize she left a dress at the seamstress’s . . . you’ll have time to have ten dinners with Monsieur Ozu.”

“This dress belongs to a dead woman?” I say, horrified. “I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” asks Manuela, frowning. “It’s better than if she were alive. Just think, if you got a spot on it—you’d have to rush off to the dry cleaner’s, make up some sort of excuse and what a hassle that would be.”

“Morally . . . I can’t do it,” I protest.

“Morally?” says Manuela, pronouncing the word as if it were something disgusting. “What does that have to do with it? Are you stealing? Are you harming anyone?”

“But it is someone else’s property, I can’t just appropriate it for myself.”

“But she’s dead! And you’re not stealing, you’re just borrowing it for the evening.”

When Manuela begins to embellish on semantic differences, there’s not much point putting up a struggle.

“Maria told me she was a very nice lady. She gave her dresses, and a very nice
Palpaga
coat. She couldn’t wear them anymore because she’d put on weight, so she said to Maria, ‘Could these be of any use to you?’ You see, she was a very nice lady.”

Palpaga
is a type of llama with a highly valued wool fleece and a head adorned with a papaya.

“I don’t know . . . ” I say half-heartedly. “I just get the feeling I’m stealing from a dead person.”

Manuela looks at me from the height of her exasperation.

“You are borrowing, not stealing. And what is she going to do with that dress, poor woman?”

There is nothing to be said to that.

“Time for Madame Pallières,” says Manuela with delight, changing the subject.

“I’ll savor the moment with you.”

“I’m on my way, then.” She heads for the door. “In the meanwhile, try on the dress, go to the hairdresser’s, and I’ll be back later to have a look.”

I look at the dress for a moment, doubtfully. In addition to my reticence to clothe myself in the garments of the deceased, I am greatly afraid that the dress will look utterly incongruous on my person. Violette Grelier is to dishrags what Pierre Arthens was to silk, and what I am to a shapeless purple or navy blue overall.

I shall wait until I get back to try it on.

And I did not even thank Manuela.

A choir is a beautiful thing

Y
esterday afternoon was my school’s choir performance. In my posh neighborhood school, there is a choir: nobody thinks it’s square and everyone competes to join but it’s very exclusive: Monsieur Trianon, the music teacher, hand picks his choristers. The reason the choir is so successful is because of Monsieur Trianon himself. He is young and handsome and he has the choir sing not only the old jazz standards but also the latest hits, with very classy orchestration. Everyone gets all dressed up and the choir performs for the other students. Only the choir members’ parents are invited because otherwise there’d be too many people. The gymnasium is always packed fit to burst as it is and there’s an incredible atmosphere.

So yesterday off I headed to the gymnasium at a trot, led by Madame Fine because as usual on Tuesday afternoon first period we have French class. “Led by” is saying a lot; she did what she could to keep up the pace, wheezing like an old whale. Eventually we got to the gym, everybody found a place as best they could. I was forced to listen to the most asinine conversations coming at me from below, behind, every side, all around (in the bleachers), and in stereo (cell phone, fashion, cell, who’s going out with who, cell, dumb-ass teachers, cell, Cannelle’s party) and then finally the choir arrived to thundering applause, dressed in red and white with bow ties for the boys and long dresses with shoulder straps for the girls. Monsieur Trianon sat down on a high stool, his back to the audience, then raised a sort of baton with a little flashing red light at the end, silence fell and the performance began.

Every time, it’s a miracle. Here are all these people, full of heartache or hatred or desire, and we all have our troubles and the school year is filled with vulgarity and triviality and consequence, and there are all these teachers and kids of every shape and size, and there’s this life we’re struggling through full of shouting and tears and laughter and fights and break-ups and dashed hopes and unexpected luck—it all disappears, just like that, when the choir begins to sing. Everyday life vanishes into song, you are suddenly overcome with a feeling of brotherhood, of deep solidarity, even love, and it diffuses the ugliness of everyday life into a spirit of perfect communion. Even the singers’ faces are transformed: it’s no longer Achille Grand-Fernet that I’m looking at (he is a very fine tenor), or Déborah Lemeur or Ségolène Rachet or Charles Saint-Sauveur. I see human beings, surrendering to music.

Every time, it’s the same thing, I feel like crying, my throat goes all tight and I do the best I can to control myself but sometimes it gets close: I can hardly keep myself from sobbing. So when they sing a canon I look down at the ground because it’s just too much emotion at once: it’s too beautiful, and everyone singing together, this marvelous sharing. I’m no longer myself, I am just one part of a sublime whole, to which the others also belong, and I always wonder at such moments why this cannot be the rule of everyday life, instead of being an exceptional moment, during a choir.

When the music stops, everyone applauds, their faces all lit up, the choir radiant. It is so beautiful.

In the end, I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song.