Too Close to the Edge (10 page)

‘And I’ll get married and have lots of children. Are you taking the piss? What about the briefcase?’

‘We’d do best to forget about it. We can build new lives for ourselves.’

‘Sure, crummy little lives, while two kilos of perfectly good coke sits under the compost heap … Do you think I’m a fucking idiot?’

‘I swear I’ll help you! We need to put an end to all this.’

‘You’re not exactly a walking advert for sex with the elderly. It’s made you soft in the head. So you’re trying to ditch me again?’

‘Agnès …!’

‘She’s got you wrapped around her little finger, the old slapper! You’ve fucked around long enough, and now you want to leave me out in the cold! Well, you can’t! Think about what you’re going to get from her. A wheelchair and a little handjob at Christmas. You deserve better, Daddy dear, and so do I! I’ll take your fucking case and cart it around with me wherever I go, cross borders with it, no problem. I’ll take it to China if I have to! I won’t let you leave me twice, you old bastard. We’re joined together, you and me. Joined!’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘We keep a low profile. You play along and keep your mouth shut. Later on, I’ll go and get the case. We meet at the station. You buy two tickets to Rome – I know people there; the addresses are in my bag. Éliette will go back to being Éliette, and we … we’ll carry on being what we are. You can’t turn me down. You can’t do anything except love me.’

‘Do me a line.’

In a glass globe, everything is back to front. The snow always falls the right way.

‘What? You haven’t got snails?’

‘No, Mademoiselle.’

‘Even tinned ones?’

‘Certainly not! Everything’s freshly made here.’

‘Fine, I’ll have an ice cream then.’

‘For your starter?’

‘An ice cream, I don’t care what flavour but with Chantilly cream – and lots of it!’

‘Very good, Mademoiselle.’

There were very few people in the hotel dining room, but those who overheard Agnès’s order held their forks in mid-air. Éliette and Étienne hid behind their menus.

‘What? I can order an ice cream if I want, can’t I?’

‘Don’t you think you might be overdoing it a bit?’

‘No, I don’t, Daddykins. All I want is an ice cream and to get out of this hole as soon as possible. Don’t you want that too, Éliette?’

‘You read my mind. And you didn’t even need to ask your mirror on the wall.’

‘Oh but I did ask. Mirror, mirror … Mirrors covered in snow … Whatever. The pair of you can do what you like, but I’m getting out of here, OK? I’m moving on. Éliette, if you’ll take me back to fetch the case, I’ll disappear. How does that sound?’

‘What about your statement to the police tomorrow?’

‘You can write me a sick note.’

Under the table, Éliette’s hands were strangling her napkin. Étienne seemed unusually interested in the ceiling mouldings.

‘Fine. Let’s go straight away.’

‘Great! I’ll go and get my bag. Bye bye, Daddykins, and don’t worry, I’m kosher. As soon as the deal’s done, you’ll be getting your hands on your pension.’

The two women rose, as did the eyebrows of their fellow diners. When the waiter brought over a sorbet dripping with Chantilly and two vegetable terrines, there was no one left at the table.

‘What’s this factory?’

The Aixam’s headlights swept over the towers of Cruas nuclear power station.

‘A nuclear plant.’

‘Why have they painted a naked kid playing with water on it?’

‘Probably to make us all think the atom is perfectly safe.’

‘It’s dumb. Kids aren’t afraid of atoms; they’re all over the place.’

‘What are they afraid of then? The big, bad wolf?’

‘No. Their parents.’

The road slithered snake-like through the countryside. All they could see was blue or black, as if these were the only two colours left on earth. The journey seemed to go on for ever, the little car making painfully slow progress. Agnès
never stopped crossing and uncrossing her legs, nervously drumming her fingers on the dashboard.

At last the house appeared at the end of the track. It looked like an abandoned dog. Éliette barely recognised it. In the space of a few hours, the haven of peace she had pampered like a pet all her life had become ‘the murder house’ that people would drive past quickly, crossing themselves, before it became derelict because nobody wanted to buy it. Despite the reassuringly thick walls, misfortune had found its way in and laid its cursed eggs. She could not live here any more. For a split second, Éliette had a vision, blurred by the tears welling in her eyes, of Charles with his chest bared, mixing cement, and then of Sylvie and Marc spraying one another with the hose, and it all disappeared for ever when she cut the headlights.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Oh, nothing. I’ve just turned a page, that’s all. Be quick. Go and find your filthy stuff and I’ll drop you at the station. I never want to see you again.’

‘No danger of that!’

Agnès got out of the car and disappeared into the porch. Éliette had lost her home, her memories, but she had gained Étienne. When he had returned to their room earlier, having seen reason, her heart had leapt in her chest. She was sure it would work out fine with the police. It was the memory of his prison days that had made him lose his head. He had stopped Paul from assaulting her. They would understand. It was all just an unfortunate combination of circumstances. Of course nothing would ever be the same again, but there
were still so many pages of life to get through. Charles would have given her his blessing. As for Agnès’s departure, taking the briefcase with her, she couldn’t have wished for more. Oh, she didn’t despise the poor girl, but truth be told she didn’t give a damn what became of her. Sometimes, only selfishness can save you, even the good Lord knows that, He who condemns suicide.

Agnès reappeared, briefcase in hand.

‘You haven’t got a cloth, have you? This thing stinks! You country people are unbelievable. You want to grow flowers so you let a pile of crap sit rotting right under your windows!’

‘That’s exactly why the flowers smell good. Here’s a cloth.’

Agnès rubbed it over the case, cursing filthy nature for being full of dead creatures, poison mushrooms, stinging nettles and insects that bite.

‘Hey! Look at that! … A dead crow!’

Éliette jumped at the sight of the bird Paul had nailed to the door.

‘Leave that! Let’s go.’

The lights on the dashboard made it feel like they were inside an aquarium. They could have been at the bottom of a lake, were it not for the Aixam’s throaty cough.

‘Agnès?’

‘Yes.’

‘If you love your father, I think it would be best if you didn’t see him again for a little while.’

‘If I love my father? … And what if he loved me?’

‘Of course he loves you, the same way any father loves his child …’

‘The same way? Or … some other way?’

‘What are you getting at?’

‘Oh, poor Éliette! We’ve moved on from the days of steam engines. Know what we were doing when he came to my room earlier? … He was fucking me, and we were going for it like you’ve never gone for it in your life!’

‘Agnès!’

‘And not for the first time either! … Two months it’s been going on. Well, that’s shut you up, hasn’t it, love? It’s not our fault, you know; we didn’t find out we were father and daughter till it was too late. Life’s a bitch like that, isn’t it? But at the end of the day, if we love each other, who’s to judge us? Don’t worry – we’re not planning on having kids together.’

‘You’re lying. You’re just saying it because …’

‘Because it’s true, just like the fact he’s waiting for me at the station so we can fuck off together, somewhere, anywhere, who gives a shit.’

‘I don’t believe you!’

‘You don’t want to believe it, but it’s the truth! ’Cos I’ve got something you ain’t. So you’ve got your house and your little car, and you smile away like a happy little garden gnome, but I make him hard. HARD!’

The entire night sky burst out laughing in Éliette’s face; the universe had creased up, the trees were in stitches, the river beneath them giggling between the rocks, and for
good reason! Watching from his cloud, Charles himself was doubled up with laughter, slapping his thighs as the little car kept dead ahead while the road bent round.

‘For Christ’s sake, what the fuck are you doing?’

Just in time, Agnès grabbed the steering wheel and slammed her foot on the brake. The Aixam swerved, grazed one tree and came to a standstill against the trunk of another. The night sky had fallen silent. A red-faced moon tried to hide its shame behind the clouds.

‘Jesus! You could have killed us! Éliette …?’

She was slumped over the steering wheel, her shoulders shaking. Agnès rubbed her elbow.

‘Can’t even kill yourself properly in this stupid fucking car.’

She got out. The ground swayed beneath her feet and she fell onto the grass. Never before had the silence seemed so full, an amalgam of thousands of tiny sounds: a falling leaf, a crawling insect, a passing breeze, a breaking bud, the water bubbling away below … It amounted to almost nothing, with darkness all around, but she was alive. Then came the sound of the car door slamming and the sight of Éliette, as she opened her eyes; Éliette lifting a rock above her head, a rock as big as the moon.

Montélimar station, unlike that of Perpignan, is less the beating heart of the city and more its back end. In a shady corner of the concourse, Étienne was beginning to regret not having sided with Éliette. A tramp with a mangy dog and a nasty stench had just squeezed ten francs and a cigarette out of him. The effect of the two lines of coke he had done in Agnès’s bedroom had given way to a frightening sense of disarray. Inside his head was an incredibly complex maze which he weaved through frantically like a lab rat. The state he was in was not wholly down to what he had taken. Having spent three-quarters of his life high, until prison brought him down again, Étienne knew exactly what to expect from a hit. No, more worrying than drugs was the unbelievable addiction to life that paradoxically kept pushing him to get into deeper and deeper shit. His record was hard to top. He had become a kind of world champion of failure, a haggard wayfarer of the road of relationships. Éliette? … Agnès? … Queen of hearts? … Queen of clubs? … Though he knew it was stupid to dither at life’s crossroads since the road taken must always be the right one, the others having become mere figments of the imagination, still he could not make up his mind. Escaping, anywhere, but on his own, seemed the wisest option. So what if some called that cowardice. No one but him was in his shoes …

He stood up, threw his bag over his shoulder and began to laugh to himself, like a kid playing a prank. He was going to disappear, simple as that, walk through the night, and all the next day, and so on like the fool in a tarot set. He had barely stepped out of the station when the little Aixam pulled up in front of him.

‘Éliette!’

‘Get in … Don’t just stand there, get in!’

He obeyed, open-mouthed like any village idiot. The microcar’s right eye wandered like the inspector’s, and the wing was crumpled. No sooner had he taken his seat than Éliette put her foot down.

‘What’s happened? Have you had an accident?’

‘Nothing serious. Agnès is dead.’

‘What are you talking about? Are you mad?’

‘Maybe!’

‘Where are we going? This isn’t the way to the hotel … Tell me what’s going on!’

‘We’re driving. It’s seven minutes past eleven, and we’re driving south.’

‘I don’t know what’s gone on, but you’re making a big mistake, Éliette.’

‘No. I’ve done that already.’

Éliette’s profile seemed to be carved in stone; she didn’t so much as blink. She stared straight at the road ahead of her, oblivious to the honking of horns as she was repeatedly overtaken.

‘Something’s catching on the front right-hand wheel.’

‘Yes, it is.’

As they drove out of town, the road sign with
MONTÉLIMAR
struck out looked like a funeral wreath with a red ribbon pinned across it.

‘Why don’t we stop and you can tell me all about it?’

‘No. You’ve been doing your best to go nowhere all your life. Well, now you can.’

The sound of something rattling in the back made Étienne look over his shoulder. The handle of the briefcase was bumping against the window.

‘You picked up the case?’

‘When you’re going nowhere, you have to take your baggage with you.’

‘For fuck’s sake, come on! Stop messing around. Where’s Agnès?’

‘Hey! Stop shouting! Agnès is nowhere, just like you, just like me, just like everyone.’

‘Fine, be like that. You’ll have to stop eventually to get petrol.’

Étienne reached for the handle of his door. The Aixam wasn’t exactly speeding along, but it was going fast enough for a fall onto the tarmac to be fatal.

‘What about our date with the law tomorrow?’

‘They won’t miss us.’

‘No, of course not! This is ridiculous. You said yourself everything would work itself out.’

‘I was wrong. I’ve killed your daughter, don’t you get it? … Bashed her head in with a rock. It’s just the two of us now.’

‘You’re not serious.’

‘All the bridges are burnt now. The past is gone; now everything’s in the headlights ahead of us …’

‘I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it!’

‘Me neither. I used to believe, but I don’t any more.’

‘But why? Why, damn it?’

‘You’re asking me why … Please. Take a holiday; stop acting like a bastard. It doesn’t suit you.’

The lab rat in the maze suddenly came to a halt. The note of sincerity in Éliette’s voice was crushing any vague hope of escape. If there had been a way into the labyrinth, there was surely no way out. It was pointless fighting it; all he could do was wait, and thank the heavens for the reprieve that had come in the shape of the Aixam’s engine gasping for breath. The for and against had finally joined hands, slotting together like the pieces of a jigsaw whose picture you guessed long before it was finished. Going from one tragedy to the next, you eventually reached a nebulous nirvana, ending up more or less back where you started.

‘You killed Agnès …’

‘Yes. She told me about you two. I could have understood, but I was so hurt … You should have told me.’

‘I couldn’t even admit it to myself.’

‘You know, it’s not the incest that shocked me so much as the way you played me for a fool, or rather the way you played at life without me. I love you, Étienne – I would have understood; I could have been your ally. You needn’t have been afraid of me. It’s the fear of fear that did for us. I didn’t hate her, you know; I could have accepted it. You don’t try
to compete when you’re my age. If you like, I’ll drop you at the next service station.’

Étienne’s heart was like an Agen prune: shrivelled and black. Darkness was closing its fist around the ridiculous little beige car that no outlaw in his right mind would have used to make his getaway. In spite of everything, the kilometres of road kept coming, like parts of a never-ending telescope. They passed through villages with peculiar names. Chairs were being put away on café terraces, and soon the only light came from the street lamps looming over them like the eyes of a dinosaur. What they felt was more akin to the sensation of teetering on the edge of a vertical drop than of chasing the horizon. They shared the silence like a cell, without hope of escape.

As they rounded a wide bend in a sort of shadowy creek, the blinking pink and blue neon lights of a truckers’ café, or a nightclub, or something, made Éliette slow down.

‘I’m thirsty. Let’s stop.’

‘OK.’

A dozen cars were parked outside, each sporting a white tulle bow. The puffed-out Aixam nestled in among them. The air was pulsing to the binary rhythm pumping out of the building. As soon as they stepped inside, they were confronted with a thundering rendition of ‘Macarena’. A hundred or so people were writhing about on the dance floor, dripping with sweat and screaming along to the chorus. Waiters weaved their way through the crowd, hair slicked to their foreheads, carrying trays laden with glasses and bottles. Here and there children slipped under the tables and popped up to down the
dregs of drinks. Just like in photos of family celebrations, everyone had red eyes – only here it was not the fault of the camera. The tang of sparkling Clairette de Die hung in the air. Éliette and Étienne gradually manoeuvred their way to the bar. Cupping his hands around his mouth, Étienne asked the glassy-eyed barman for a Coke and a beer which they drank while pinned to the wall. The bride – for a wedding was the cause of this bonanza of animal magnetism – was a tall, skinny brunette. A fine layer of bluish fuzz covered her upper lip, suggesting the rest of her body might be equally hirsute. Wearing the Barbie-doll outfit of her dreams, she swung on the arms of her guests, twisting her ankles on her high heels, a permanent smile slapped on her horsey face. As for the groom, he could have been any one of the prematurely aged, bleary-eyed young men singing at the tops of their voices, ties loosened, blue suits bursting at the seams, never to be worn again. The oldest and ugliest members of the party sat, deafened, eyelids heavy, around the edge of the room, their chins resting on ample chests or distended stomachs. A dishevelled-looking girl moving with difficulty in a tight lamé dress tried to make Étienne join a wild farandole around the room. Her sticky hand slipped between his fingers like a fat fish. There was no need to pay for anything. No one had fingers left to count on, or clear enough vision to keep an eye on things. In a few rare circumstances, the little people play rich. It takes them the rest of their lives to shake off the horrendous hangover, if not longer!

Neither the Coke nor the beer had quenched their thirst. But the fine spray from the night sky was now spitting in their
faces. As he was about to get back into the Aixam, Étienne noticed that the keys to the car parked next to theirs had been left in the ignition. The car, which no doubt belonged to the wedding couple, was more laden with flowers than a hearse.

‘Éliette, wait!’

‘What?’

‘Get the case and the bags out.’

‘Why?’

‘Just do it!’

The luggage was transferred from one vehicle to the other. Étienne got behind the wheel while Éliette sat in the passenger seat. An incredible racket like the sound of bins being emptied followed their departure. Étienne pulled over a hundred metres down the road to detach all the saucepans and chamber pots that had been tied to the bumper.

‘We’re not going nowhere any more; we’re going everywhere.’

The tulle- and flower-adorned Citroën XM waited for a greengrocer’s van to give way before rearing up and galloping into what remained of the night.

The speed, the real speed of a real car thrilled Étienne and made Éliette’s legs stiffen plank-like in the footwell. The trucks and cars they overtook seemed to be treading water. Éliette stared goggle-eyed at the night’s gaping mouth, as they steamed towards it. The heady scent of the bouquets heaped up on the back seats was getting to her.

‘All these flowers are making me feel sick.’

‘Open your window and chuck them out. It stinks of cheap happiness.’

The wind rushing at her head stopped her breath. One by one the sprays of roses were scattered on the tarmac in a firework display of multicoloured petals.

‘Better?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s got the fire of God in it, this motor!’

‘As if the devil were biting at its heels. We’ll get there quicker in this car.’

‘I don’t want to go anywhere any more. At this rate we’ll be at the Italian border by daybreak.’

‘And then?’

‘We’ll be Italian. This wedding car is worth all the passports in the world. They’ll let us through in this, no question. No one will say a word. We’re on honeymoon! Rome, Naples, here we come!’

Éliette burst out laughing despite herself. It was stronger than she was; she had just realised that for her entire life she had been two people and that the other Éliette who had played second fiddle for so long to the sweet version of herself – the good wife and mother, the dignified widow – had just taken charge. And she was capable of anything. With her head tipped back and a strange smile playing on her lips, she gave in to sleep. Étienne put the radio on. Bashung was singing
‘Ma petite entreprise …’