The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles (23 page)

Antoine couldn’t sleep anymore. He awoke with his pillow and sheets soaked, imagining he saw Faugeron wagging his finger at him. He tossed and turned some more. Finally, he relaxed and breathed in the cool night air. Then he took a shower and went downstairs. He grabbed a bottle of whiskey and went out onto the porch.

Sitting on the steps, he took a sip of whiskey, and another, and then another, while his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Gradually, shimmering yellow spots emerged, lighting up one after the other, until they seemed to be converging on him: the yellow eyes of crocodiles. Like lanterns bobbing on the swamp’s dark, gleaming surface, the eyes watched him.

These creatures have been on earth for fifty million years
, he thought. They had survived every natural disaster as the planet split, folded, shattered, burned, and congealed. The crocs had seen dinosaurs, primates, and humans arise and be struck down, and they were still here, watching.

Antoine felt incredibly alone. Besides Mylène, he had no one to talk to. And still nothing from Mr. Wei. No news, no check, no explanation.

He was living off Mylène’s savings now. When he called his daughters in France, he made up stories about how things were going, spoke of fabulous profits, promised to send for them soon.
And what about Jo?
he wondered, as another crocodile joined the row of yellow footlights shining up at him.
Faugeron must have told her.
Looking back out at the yellow dots in the night, he felt his eyes watering. He was such a coward. Where was the fine self-confidence
he used to feel after a safari, when he’d sit with the other men under a canvas tent drinking whiskey like one of the guys?

Joséphine . . . Mylène . . . Somehow those two have gotten tougher just as I’m going soft.
Mylène exuded calm and serenity. She’d figured out how to cook buffalo meat, marinating it in a delicious mint and wild verbena sauce. It made a nice change from chicken. She wanted to keep busy, and was always making plans: to learn Chinese, make bracelets and necklaces like those worn by the women in the market, use grains and dyes from native plants to create beauty products. Mylène had a new idea every day.

And Joséphine hadn’t even bothered picking up the phone to call him a coward and a thief.

Those two are alike, he thought, with hides as thick as a crocodile’s. Antoine refilled his glass, smiling at the connection he’d dared make between them.

He felt a little breeze rising, and he patted his hair down. A crocodile had come out of the water and was lumbering closer on its short legs. It rested its snout on the sturdy wire fence and tried to bend it, emitting a hoarse cry. It snapped at the fence a few times. Then it lay down and slowly closed its yellow eyes, like someone reluctantly lowering window blinds.

Last night, Mylène had told him that she’d like to go to Paris, maybe for a week. “You could see your daughters,” she said. That’s when the fear started to gnaw at Antoine’s stomach, and he began to sweat. He would have to face Joséphine and the girls and admit that he had made a mistake, that raising crocodiles wasn’t such a good idea after all. That he’d messed up once again.

Now the crocodile was banging against the fence. Its yellow
eyes seemed narrowed in anger and its claws plowed the dirt, as if it were trying to dig its way out.
That’s got to be a male
, thought Antoine.
I have to get that one to breed. This breeding thing has to work, goddamn it! I’m forty fucking years old, and if I don’t make it this time, I am really and truly screwed!

He started to swear, feeding the anger rising inside him. He hated Mr. Wei, he hated the crocodiles, he hated having to live in a world where if you hadn’t made it by his age, it was all over.

Antoine expected that the thought of Wei would bring the knot back into his stomach, but something very different happened. Not only didn’t he feel fear, he was overcome by joy, the joy of a man who suddenly knows exactly how he’s going to get back at the guy who has been trying to pull the wool over his eyes.

I’ll go to Paris, work out a repayment plan with Faugeron, and get my money from Wei. There has to be a way to wring some cash out of this flea-bitten crocodile park. Who do they think is running this crummy plantation, anyway? Me, Tonio Cortès, not some punk in cargo shorts. A real man, with a real pair of balls. A guy tough enough to go kiss that snarling croc over there, if I felt like it.

Antoine laughed out loud and raised his glass to the crocodile’s health.

The light of dawn had extinguished the yellow eyes. Feeling emboldened, Antonio opened his fly and sent a hot, golden stream of urine at the crocodiles. He would show them. Not only was he not ashamed any more, he wasn’t scared, and they’d better behave.

“You really think that’ll impress them?” asked a sleepy voice
behind him. He turned to see Mylène coming down the steps, a sheet around her hips. He stared at her, bewildered.

“You look just great,” she said with a laugh.

He laughed a little too heartily. Did he imagine it, or did he detect a note of disdain in her voice?

“Meet the new Tonio!”

“The old one was fine.”

“Yeah, right. But I know what I know, and I know we can’t go on like this much longer.”

“Okay, just as I suspected,” Mylène said with a sigh. “Come on. Let’s go have breakfast. Pong’s already in the kitchen.”

As Antoine staggered toward the house, Mylène snapped, “I wish you would act this brave with that thieving Wei character. When I think of how fast we’re going through my life’s savings, I’m scared shitless.”

But Antoine couldn’t hear her. He’d missed the first step and lay sprawled facedown on the porch. The whiskey bottle rolled down the steps and came to rest on the lowest one, spilling its contents in an amber puddle that caught the first rays of the morning sun.

“So I told Mother what a shame it was that the two of you aren’t speaking, and she said, ‘No, not till she says she’s sorry, and means it—says it from the heart, not just rattles it off. Joséphine is the one who insulted me, she’s my daughter, she owes me respect!’ I told her I would pass the message along.”

“I’ve had it with her, Iris. I’m not about to apologize.”

“Then you won’t be seeing each other anytime soon.”

“I’m doing just fine without her.”

“Jo, you haven’t seen her in eight months. What if something happens to her? She is your mother, after all.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to her. She’s too mean to die. Dad died of a heart attack at forty. She’ll live to a hundred. And you know what? Ever since I stopped seeing her, I’ve been doing just great.”

Iris didn’t answer.

“Okay, Iris, you didn’t really make me come all the way out to Porte d’Asnières just to lecture me about our mother, did you?”

“No. I stopped in to see Marcel before coming here. Hortense was in his office. She’s looking for an internship for June, for school. From the minute she walked in the door, the warehouse guys couldn’t stop drooling.”

“I know. She has that effect on everyone.”

Joséphine and Iris were having lunch in the working-class Café des Carrefours. Trucks rumbled by, and when they braked before taking the on-ramp to the Périphérique, the restaurant’s windows rattled. Iris ordered fried eggs with ham, Joséphine a green salad and a yogurt.

“I saw Serrurier. You know, the publisher.”

“And?” whispered Joséphine, suddenly anxious.

“He’s delighted with your plot idea and the fifty-page writing sample. He went on and on. You should have heard him!”

Iris opened her purse, pulled out an envelope, and held it up.

“He gave me the advance. The rest will follow when I hand in the finished manuscript. I deposited it and wrote you a check for twenty-five thousand euros. Here you go. But keep it under your hat!”

Joséphine accepted the envelope reverently. But as she put it in her purse, a thought suddenly struck her.

“What will you do about taxes?”

“You’ve got a bit of lettuce stuck right there,” Iris said, gesturing at her own teeth.

Joséphine picked it off and repeated her question.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Iris. “Philippe won’t ever notice. He doesn’t prepare his own return; an accountant does it. Anyway, he pays so much in taxes that a little more won’t make much difference!”

“Are you sure? What if they ask me where all that money came from?”

“You’ll say it’s a gift from your rich sister.”

Joséphine looked skeptical.

“Oh, stop being such a worrywart, Jo. Our project passed with flying colors!”

For a moment, Joséphine was tempted to order something rich, like a choucroute with sausages.

“Isn’t it terrific, sis?” Iris asked, a yellow gleam in her eyes. “We’re going to be rich and famous!”

“Rich for me. Famous for you.”

“Does that bother you?”

“No, just the opposite, actually. When I see what people have to do and say to get on television, I want to crawl under my bed.”

“See, to me that’s the best part. I can’t stand my image as the good little wifey-poo anymore! I’m going to put on a show that’ll knock their socks off. I intend to milk this thing. Serrurier keeps
saying to me, ‘With your eyes, your connections, your beauty, blah, blah, blah.’ Well, let’s put it to the test!”

Iris tossed her black hair and stretched her arms in the air as if she were opening a path to the heavens.

“God, I’ve been so bored, Jo.” She sighed. “So totally bored.”

“Is that why you’re doing this?” Joséphine asked timidly.

“Well, sure. Why else?”

“The other day on the train you said that I’d be getting you out of a sticky situation. I have the right to know about it.”

Iris considered her sister carefully. Jo was changing, she thought. She was becoming more forceful and persistent. Iris let out a long sigh and looked away.

“It’s Philippe,” she said. “I feel he’s avoiding me, that I’m not the eighth wonder of the world anymore. I’m afraid he’s thinking of leaving me. I figured that by writing this book, I might seduce him all over again.”

Iris pushed her plate aside and lit a cigarette.

“When did you start smoking?”

“It’s part of my new image! I’m practicing. Chief’s secretary Josiane said she was quitting, and she gave me her pack.”

Joséphine remembered the scene on the station platform: Marcel kissing his secretary and helping her onto the train as though she were the crown jewels. Jo hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. She thought of Henriette and shuddered. What would become of her mother if Marcel started a new life with someone else?

“Are you really afraid Philippe’s going to leave you?” she asked gently.

“Until recently, it had never crossed my mind. But lately, yes. I feel like he’s drifting away. I was even jealous of the way you two were talking at the chalet. He talks to you with more feeling than he does to me.”

“That’s nonsense!”

“No, sadly, it’s not. I have plenty of faults, but blindness isn’t one of them. I can tell when people are interested in me or not. And I can’t stand being ignored.”

Gazing at the smoke from her cigarette curling upward, Iris thought back to her meeting with Serrurier in his office. The outpouring of praise, the eyes bright with excitement . . . The man was so attentive and respectful, she’d felt alive again. The smoke from his cigar filled the room as he followed the ins and outs of the plot Joséphine had concocted.

“The idea of the girl who wants to join a convent but is forced to marry—that’s terrific!” Serrurier had said. “And I love that she outlives all her husbands, and winds up a rich widow every time. I really like what I’ve read so far. To be honest, I wouldn’t have thought such a pretty head would hold so much skill and talent. And where did you unearth that material about the degrees of humility? It’s wonderful! A woman who does everything she can to be humble, but becomes a heroine despite herself. Very ingenious.”

Iris had come out of Serrurier’s office feeling weak in the knees, her heart pounding wildly.

“By the way, where did you get that stuff about the degrees of humility?” she now asked, trying not to sound too admiring.

“That’s from the Rule of Saint Benedict. I thought it would
fit the character of a girl who dreams only of devoting her life to God.”

“And what is this rule, exactly?”

“Well, according to Saint Benedict, you have to go through various degrees of self-denial to reach perfection and God. It’s what he called the Ladder of Humility. On the lowest rungs, you’re asked to put your desires and your selfishness aside, and to obey God in all things. Then you learn to give, to love those who criticize or slander you, to be patient and good. The sixth rung is to be content with the most humble of circumstances. And so on until the twelfth rung, where you’re nothing but a miserable insect willing to put yourself entirely at the service of God and mankind, and you achieve greatness through abnegation.”

“I see,” said Iris dubiously. “Tell me, Jo, you aren’t turning into some sort of mystic, are you? You’ll end up in a convent if you’re not careful!”

After a moment, Iris continued. “In case you’ve decided to climb the ladder of saintly redemption, why don’t you make your peace with Mother?”