The Mahé Circle (15 page)

He didn't go there. He was afraid. Afraid above all of the first shock of her gaze. He thought of the counterpane, and saw it again, dazzling white, tidily covering the bed; he saw the little girl with her elbows on the table, turning the
pages of her red book with gold edging.

He found himself not far from the bus stop, and went into a bar. Two or three men standing at the counter
stopped talking as he approached, and looked at him with curiosity.

They were men like Polyte. They had the same supple bodies, relaxed attitude and the same look on their faces, where you always suspected some irony. The barman too, a thin man in shirtsleeves, was of the same type.

‘A pastis?'

One of the men was wearing grey trousers and crocodile-skin shoes, and had his jacket slung casually over his arm. From time to time, he looked outside.

‘It's late.'

He was waiting for the bus to Nice. Sometimes cars went past, large ones mostly, with chauffeurs. You could hardly see them, but you heard a kind of breath of air and their wheels on the asphalt.

The road between Nice and Marseille was one long boulevard, in fact. In an hour these men would be in an identical bar at another point on the boulevard, in Saint-Raphael, Cannes or Antibes.

‘What did Pierre say?'

‘He'll find him, all right. No need to worry, if Pierre's there.'

‘Jules is the one who'll be having kittens …'

And they went on staring at him, examining this fat man who was too hot and had landed in their bar like a bumblebee in a glass of beer.

Almost every day, just before the game of boules, while his wife was on Silver Beach with the children – she was a little happier now, since she had made the acquaintance
of the wife of a factory-owner
from Roubaix – almost every day, at about five o'clock, he would stroll, hands in pockets, over to Dr Lepage's house.

He didn't go in through the front entrance, but took the path round the back. Looking over the hedge, he could see that his colleague was there, slumped in his deckchair under the fig tree, doing nothing, eyes closed, or staring up at the
blue sky.

‘Hope I'm not disturbing you,' he called.

And immediately afterwards came the squeak of the gate.

‘Take a pew.'

‘It's not worth it, the game will be starting soon.'

Because now, every evening, he played boules with the locals, including Gène, Polyte, the Cabrini brothers and the rest of them. They would wait for him, and come to look for him if he was late.

‘Hey doctor! Time to get on with it.'

And he would fetch his boules from his pigeonhole at Maurice's bar. He played with care, tongue between his teeth, and watched the others take their turns, frowning as he tried to discover how they did it.

Dr Lepage's garden was very small, but you could hardly tell, since it was a real jungle of plants of every kind. There were also flowers growing in glazed bowls, which tripped you over all the time. It contained a well where his maid came
to draw water and its creaking was already a familiar sound to Dr Mahé.

‘Nice day …'

‘You've been to Hyères?'

‘Yes, I went for a walk in the old town, it's extraordinary.'

They didn't have anything to say to each other. Neither of them was fooled. Mahé knew that Lepage was cunning. Possibly even more cunning and determined than a horse dealer in Saint-Hilaire! He never mentioned his wish to leave the island
these days, and if you asked after his health, he assumed an indifferent or even surprised expression.

‘I'm fine, just fine.'

So fine that he looked like a lamp about to go out. His skin had become colourless, like his faded blond hair. He coughed from time to time, then put his handkerchief in his pocket, muttering:

‘It's nothing.'

He must have stuffed himself with creosote, since he gave off waves of it, and the whole house was full of the smell.

It was an old house, and inconvenient. From the garden, you went down two steps to the kitchen with its red floor tiles. The whitewashed walls had not been cleaned for years. The range wasn't used, but there were two charcoal stoves and a
gas ring attached to a butane bottle. The place was run-down. And dirty. But Dr Mahé always found some excuse to go inside, charmed as he was by the rosy reflections on the tiles and the constant buzzing of flies. Cool water was kept in a large earthenware jar and he would go and ask for a
glass from the maid, who, for no particular reason, had taken a dislike to him.

He had seen some of the other rooms. But not the bedrooms, since his colleague had never invited him upstairs.

Whatever the hour of day, the house was always in semi-darkness, and when you came in from outside you had to feel your way until your eyes had time to grow accustomed to the dim light. He had never seen
the shutters open.

In one corner was the narrow room which served as the pharmacy, with an old counter, painted black, a few chipped earthenware pots, some bottles on shelves, boxes of medicaments and, on the floor, some demijohns and trial samples of medicines
still in their half-opened boxes.

Next door, the surgery was equally shabby, with its chipped enamel instruments, rubber tubing and consultation couch, covered with a worn oilcloth of indeterminate colour.

There was a sitting room too. The doctor had only been able to glimpse it. There was a bed in the room. Did Lepage sleep there?

Every evening, or near enough, he came sniffing around and sat for a moment or two in the garden. Every evening, he was on the point of saying:

‘So when will you pass this practice over to me?'

Elisabeth was in Hyères, but that didn't alter his plans.

Hélène, unsuspecting, was still living on the island like an outsider, like the other boarders at Madame Harmoniaux's guesthouse. She had got used to it in the end, in the sense that the island was now simply a background that she scarcely
noticed any more.

She would get up every morning, dress the children and come down for breakfast in the bright, sunlit dining room. Her sewing bag was ready, along with the children's toys,
to go to the beach. She
walked slowly, turning round and waiting for her new friend from Roubaix, who would soon join her.

She had never dreamed of putting on a bathing costume, still less of going for a swim.

Usually, because of the glare from the sea, which hurt her eyes, she would sit with her back to it. And in any case, she hardly ever looked up from her work.

She wrote to her sisters, to Madame Péchade, and to anyone else back home whose news she thought she should report to her husband.

‘Listen, François, little Madame Bailleux is expecting again. And yet her husband knows very well she has one miscarriage after another …'

He paid no attention. He watched the
Cormoran
arriving every morning, then he read the newspaper on the terrace outside Maurice's bar, with a glass of white wine. He looked across at Lepage's house, and the small building,
like the narrow streets of old Hyères, grew bigger in his eyes.

He took a turn round the harbour, reddening with pleasure when people spoke familiarly to him:

‘Hey doctor, since you're not busy, perhaps you can give me a hand folding this net?'

The odd thing was that he dared not address a word to Frans, although he often found himself very near him. Had the ex-legionnaire not noticed him?

He progressed through the days like one walking through warm sand, with the feeling he was sinking in, and at five o'clock, his head already heavy, he would go
into his colleague's garden,
knowing that he hadn't yet made up his mind to speak to him.

It was extraordinary how many scenarios he had constructed like this, under the hot sun, each more extravagant than the last. He had gone so far as to imagine an accident. For instance, he could break his leg. He wouldn't be able to leave
the island at the end of their holiday. Because of school, his wife and children would return to Saint-Hilaire. That way, he would have some time in front of him.

But what then?

Blushing to himself, he thought of another possibility, but even more ridiculous, and what was more, distasteful. Everyone, since his mother's death, had agreed that he had been greatly affected, and the words ‘nervous trouble'
had been pronounced. Why not write to Péchade, and ask him for a favour. Péchade would come to see him, pretexting a few days break (he would, of course, reimburse him for the journey). It would not be hard to persuade Hélène that her husband should not go back to Saint-Hilaire yet, that his
rest-cure needed much more time.

He felt cross with himself, and inwardly begged his mother's pardon for making use of her in this underhand way, even in thought.

Then he shook himself angrily. What need did he have to explain himself anyway? Wasn't he free to lead his life as he wished?

Yes, of course. In different circumstances, it would have been easy. For instance, if he had been ambitious, and if he had dreamed of setting up in practice in a town somewhere, or a city even.

Hélène would have had just as much trouble getting used to it, but he wouldn't have felt in the least awkward saying:

‘I don't want to stay in Saint-Hilaire all my life … I need a larger practice, and a better income.'

The trickiest thing would be to bring Hélène – or anyone else, for that matter – to stand outside Dr Lepage's house and declare:

‘This is where I want to live from now on, and you're going to live here with me.'

So much did he think about it that he ended up with a perpetual frown on his forehead and at moments, when he was ashamed of his thoughts, he couldn't meet people's gaze.

‘Hullo, doctor … Not busy today, then?'

‘Oh sorry,' he would say to the indolent Lepage. ‘They're waiting for me at the boules pitch.'

What a bastard! Yes, Lepage was a real bastard, who understood completely, but who wouldn't lift a finger to help him. How shameful, at his age, to be so tortured by what was almost a childish desire and to feel constant shame without any
relief.

He would cross the square to fetch his boules and would say to Jojo as she stood behind the counter:

‘A quick pastis, please.'

Before the game. The others only drank afterwards. They didn't have the same reasons as he did to drink. They were waiting for him. They stood there, blue figures against the golden yellow of the square, their shirts white patches, and the
little ochre-coloured church closing off the horizon.

‘You're on my team, doctor. Go ahead, you throw the jack.'

Elisabeth had no doubt long since got back home. Her sister would have told her that a gentleman had called. What kind of gentleman? And the little one would describe him: a fat gentleman with a red face, he looked very hot and kept looking
round.

Her brother Georges would be home too, with his bible-black violin case, and his hair now worn very long.

What could they be saying to each other, the three of them, in front of the open window through which the racket of the pianola could be heard? If they leaned out, they must see men coming up the hill, looking shifty, and then slipping into the
brothel.

He'd played his shot. He stood waiting, his second boule in his hand. The aftertaste of the pastis still made him feel a little queasy. He drank it without quite knowing why, because it had the colour and the smell of the south.

He had put on weight. Under his leather belt, his belly was a bulging mass.

‘Go on, Gène!'

And Gène took a long time to aim, holding a pose that suggested he was about to take flight. He leaped forward, took three flying steps and the boule arced through the air to hit the opponent's ball. After which, he turned aside, with a
false air of indifference, like a man to whom it all comes easily.

‘Your turn, doctor.'

Suddenly, he was sorry he hadn't waited for Elisabeth. Now it would be much harder to go back there. What
would he say? Or else, he'd really have to bring her some sewing work. But Hélène saw to
all their linen herself.

He felt hot. He kept on searching, with furrowed brow, and the sickening thing was that he didn't know exactly what he was searching for with such determination.

Suddenly he remembered something Gène had said, about Dr Lepage, who spent most of his days lounging in his garden. Gène had said:

‘That man there, I'll tell you what it is about him. He's tired of being in his skin!'

‘Do you realize, François, that we're going home the day after tomorrow?' his wife had said to him over lunch.

They had been served mullet, he remembered afterwards, seeing again the red patches on their plates. It was a Wednesday. They were supposed to be leaving on Friday, in order to be back at Saint-Hilaire by Saturday evening. This was the date
agreed with his locum, who needed to be away to meet someone in the mountains.