Zenith Hotel (3 page)
Authors: Oscar Coop-Phane
On the bus home. Can they imagine what I’ve just done? I doubt it. What about them, what have they been up to? Actually, I don’t give a shit. I don’t need them. I don’t care what happens to them, they don’t exist for me. We’re on the same bus. They don’t speak and neither do I.
I have no compassion, that’s something I’ve lost. I don’t even feel anything for the kids in the street, the cute little creatures with blond or dark curls throwing sticks and running around all over the place. I’m
surrounded
by jelly, it feels as if I’m flailing around at the bottom of a big jar of jam. It sticks to my skin. I can’t shake it off. I’m in this jar, with my cheeks stuck to a high glass wall. I press my forehead against it and wait my turn for the knife to come and then squidge me on the burning-hot toast. Sickly sweet goo that sticks to your skin. I’ve lost my compassion. It’ll never come back now, I’m too old.
If only I were truly alone. Don’t count on it. We’re alone in the midst of people, we’re alone in the midst of their solitude, we’re alone with others. People stink,
swarm and sweat. I don’t run away from them, but I don’t go near them either.
They’re simply there, as alone as I am. I used to think that men paid me to get away from all that. Perhaps that’s what they think too. But I can tell you that when they screw me, when they get all horny jiggling about on top of my poor inert body, those sad suckers are well and truly alone. We don’t share
anything
. They’re alone when they fuck me. They’re faced with nothing but a waiting body, an absent body, its mind elsewhere, a body that’s simply trying not to feel too much pain. They can’t be unaware of it, they can’t forget that they’re alone when they’re with me. Guys think they come to talk to me, that they’re unhappy, that I help them. I give them nothing but the
harshest
image of their lives, the reflection of their misery. That’s all they get. Bankers, family men, workers, guys with syphilis, poets, boxers, they all wallow in the same swamp. They leave more dejected than when they arrived. You can see it in their faces, their features puffy with loneliness – that bitch solitude, which they can’t do anything about. Go on, try, get married, fuck old whores, have kids, read novels, you’ll always be alone. Christ, it’s about time you accepted that that’s your destiny. It’s bitter, but you still have to swallow it.
I’m going to sleep for a bit, so I don’t have to think about my life.
I don’t know why I write. It churns me up, it soils me from inside. Honestly, I don’t know why I’m doing this. To pass the time, perhaps. That’s it. I write like some people do crosswords, it keeps me busy. I think about words, style, the shapes of the letters. I feel as if I’m doing something without getting up off my arse. It’s not vital, it’s not therapeutic. I don’t know, I write to keep my hands occupied, like doodling on Post-its when you’re on the phone. I fill pages, writing one sentence after another. It’s a pointless exercise, but it keeps me busy. I could listen to the radio, do sudokus, read the paper or look out of the window, but I write, I don’t know why. I kill time. It’s a tough bastard.
I’m a pen-pushing old slag. How about that?
I’m not a fanatic. I don’t like literary types. I don’t like those guys with greasy hair who smell of the
second-hand
bookstalls on the banks of the Seine. I don’t like the hairy students who take the métro to go to the library. I can’t stomach their accent. They turn me off much more that those evil Le Pen supporters in the north who admire that smarmy newsreader
Jean-Pierre
Pernaut.
They think clever thoughts. They talk of Zola and Montesquieu. I spew my ignorant guts in their faces.
I tend to let my hate run away with me when I write. I should stop it. I don’t really mean it. I don’t loathe people as much as I make out. It’s easier to hate, to write that you puke over all those arseholes, that you cheerfully shit on them. You feel alive, you feel above all that. To be honest, I’m no better than they are. I can’t bring myself to hate them.
I could write about my squeaking window, about my aching feet. Not now. Writing makes me anxious. I don’t know how to go about it. I’m afraid to talk about myself. I smoke a cigarette, feeling wistful. Maybe that’s enough. A chair, a cigarette and a vacant look. I don’t know. I can’t think of anything special enough to write about. I feel hollow – as commonplace as a chamber pot that you plonk down beside a bed. An old pot full of spunk who hangs around the Gare Saint-Lazare and comes home to the Zenith Hotel in the middle of the night to try and think about nothing and sleep. I wish I was able to not give a fuck, to live as I please, in a cave, drinking cool water. I’m not brave enough.
I’ve got no nerve. Maybe one day I’ll develop
some. And I’ll follow it outside my body, wherever it leads me. What else can I do but wait? I harbour my little woes, caress my little scorchmarks. I don’t try and heal them. I wait for them to leave my flesh. You live with your burns. What else can you do?
We can recall what we were two months or a year ago. No need to go very far back to be a stranger to oneself.
Good old Nanou who sucks and fucks. And who suffers, like everyone else, in silence, without really knowing why.
I’ve seen some things in my time, believe you me.
I find it all so absurd that I just try and get by as best I can.
I don’t like my life, but I wouldn’t want to live anyone else’s life. I find other lives even more
sickening
than my own, which isn’t much fun. We live as we do, we’d never cope with life otherwise. I’m a
prostitute
for all eternity.
Emmanuel has blue eyes. Right now, they’re wide open. It’s very late, but Emmanuel hasn’t closed them. His wife’s asleep next to him. She’s fat. Emmanuel loves her anyway, he doesn’t mind that she’s fat. And besides, he can play with her breasts – pretend to lose himself in them. Her name is Estelle and she snores gently. Not loudly, just a deep breath in that can’t find its way out of her stomach, obstructed by fat. At first, it used to irritate him, but he’s gradually grown used to it.
You get used to the things life throws at you – Emmanuel grasped that a long time ago. There’s Estelle sleeping next to him; she snores a bit, she’s fat. You get used to it. This is my life now. She’s the one who irons my shirts and cooks. Sometimes she nags a bit, but it never lasts long. And anyway, I must be sympathetic – her job makes her anxious. Emmanuel does the same job. He’s a high-school supervisor. He supervises all day long. He has responsibilities. At all hours, you have to go to the upper floors and lock the classrooms. Before turning the key, you make sure there’s no one left
in the room. You have an early lunch, and while the kids are having theirs, you patrol the playground. You pick up the yellow sponge balls, you go
sniffing
round the toilets to see if there’s a smell of
cigarette
smoke. You stand there bolt upright by the door, your hands behind your back dangling a big bunch of keys. And then you have to collect all the pink and blue forms and log all the absentees and latecomers on the office computer. You mustn’t make any mistakes: it goes down on their reports. Those things are important, otherwise you can get students into trouble unfairly. You phone their parents at an inconvenient moment, when it’s not their fault. They work, too; they can’t keep track of their kids all the time. But if the kids don’t show up, you have to inform them. You call them, you apologize for disturbing them, you explain that little Jérôme hasn’t come to school this morning, so that they know, so they don’t worry. And they thank you. You tell them you have to fill in a little pink form explaining why. You thank them and say have a nice day.
Yesterday was hard work. Before the holidays, it’s always the same. The kids don’t want to be
in school. It’s all very well yelling at them and punishing them, those wretched brats are
oblivious
. And some of them are just plain stupid. You do everything you can for them, you stop them cheating or drinking in secret, and all you get is spitting and abuse. They give you a nickname and they take the piss behind your back. You try to do everything right, to keep to the rules and teach them to do the same. They don’t want to know, they only think of themselves. They let off bangers and water bombs, they throw paper pellets at your back. Some of them have weapons, Biro
peashooters
and rubber bands stretched between the thumb and index finger. They’re rich kids, it’s a private school.
It’s the same routine, day in and day out. There are the public holidays, but they’re all in May. Every day it’s the same old, same old. You have to be there a quarter of an hour before the students, that’s a responsibility. 8.15. And Estelle wants space, so we live in the suburbs. We don’t use the car in the week, the train’s more practical. There’s one at 7.12. Has to be that one. The next one, the 7.45, gets there too late. A twenty-minute journey.
First compartment, third door from the end. It’s by the métro exit. You see the same people in the compartment in the morning. Sometimes there’s one who’s not a regular and he takes your seat. You can’t hold it against him, he doesn’t realize. Still, it’s annoying. But that’s life. You go because you have to. Often, it’s crowded – you’re all crammed together, people step on each other’s toes.
Everyone
’s on their way to work.
There are hundreds like us. We simply don’t see them. Actually, it’s a bit scary, it sort of hits you in the stomach, like when you realize you’re going to die.
When I have the time to think about it, that is. Otherwise I have to deal with the absences or Estelle. It all takes time, keeps my mind busy. I don’t look at the other people, I think about my own business. And besides, I’ve got Estelle and the family, that’s plenty.
Emmanuel’s father used to be in the military. He’s retired now. He’s been places and done things! He was in Sudan. Darfur. He drove tanks and jumped with a parachute. He fired a submachine gun; he peeled spuds. Emmanuel’s father was a hero, and
Emmanuel has always been fascinated by him. Sometimes he talks to his colleagues about his father, but they don’t understand. His father is better at recounting his exploits. Emmanuel struggles to find the words. He’s slower, like a guy who’s no good at telling jokes. It’s all there in his head, but he can’t get the words out. He’s aware of it when he talks. But he can’t help it, sometimes he gets the urge to talk about his father.
There are dark circles beneath his blue eyes. Administrative, industrious circles, not tiredness from partying or drinking. What’s making
Emmanuel
tired is his life. It troubles him and he can’t sleep.
No one notices his nose. His chin juts out a bit. He has a goatee, trimmed around his mouth. His wife says it makes him look dapper, and it doesn’t take long to do. He’s never known how to dress. Now, it’s Estelle who chooses his clothes. A nice shirt and smart trousers. He looks good in shirts – he doesn’t look slovenly. You have to keep up appearances in front of the students. You have responsibilities, and they judge you on what they see, they don’t look beyond. If you’re slovenly, they get ideas straight away, and after that they have you at their mercy. They find the crack, they pour into it like little black ants and eat you alive. You
have to show them who’s boss. They’re not there for amusement either.
Emmanuel doesn’t like children. Estelle though, she wants one. It’s scary. A kid messes up
everything
. We’d have to rethink our lives when we are fine just as we are. You spend years trying to get a decent job, you know how it all works and what you have to do. A kid turns everything upside down, it knocks down all the cards you’ve stacked up, like a big gust of wind.
That’s Estelle for you. We’re settled, we’ve got ourselves sorted out. The minute things are going smoothly, as they should be, and we could just relax, she has to rock the boat. We’d have to rebuild everything around us. Months of preparation so that everything fits together nicely and we wouldn’t even get to enjoy it. That’s what a child would do, we’d have to rethink everything, the apartment for example. And if we move, that means changing our schedule, taking a different train, a different compartment and a different door, without even knowing where the métro exit is.
With a kid, you’re venturing into the unknown. You can’t go to the cinema on Saturday night like
you did before. What do you do on Saturday night with a kid? And we don’t get enough sleep as it is. If we’re going to have broken nights as well … no, that’s no life. Estelle, sweetheart, we’ll see later, we’re fine as we are, just the two of us. We like our jobs. We go to the cinema on Saturday night. And besides, with your dickey heart it’s not a good idea. And he thinks about how much weight she’d put on. Perhaps a baby in her tummy wouldn’t show. But he doesn’t say that to her. He’s right, that wouldn’t go down well. He doesn’t say it, but he chuckles when he thinks about it. Mustn’t laugh in front of her. To stop himself, Emmanuel pinches his thigh through his trouser pocket. When Estelle’s upset, it’s best not to wind her up. Otherwise things go awry and he can’t touch her for a month. She bears grudges, she never forgets. Emmanuel would like to make all the decisions, but Estelle is stronger.
Sometimes, you have to give in – Father often says so. He knows what he’s talking about, he’s seen his share of enemies. Not minor domestics in the suburbs, but gun battles ending in death. He’s got loads of friends who died. One of them had both his legs cut off above the knee. When
Emmanuel
was little, it gave him the creeps. Mind how you go, son, or you’ll end up like Gillou. After that he could no longer blithely ride his bike, he was
haunted by the image of Gillou, who’d stepped on a mine. No legs, no bike. And the two pink stumps sticking out of Gillou’s shorts were ugly. Despite that, he seemed happy, he was always telling jokes. And then one day, he blew his brains out. Bang! They said he was cleaning his gun, but
Emmanuel
wasn’t fooled, he’d seen it on TV, they say he was cleaning his gun so the widow can get the pension. A funeral with full honours for Gillou. Even though he had no legs, the coffin was the normal size.
A gun salute and red-white-and-blue flags. Flowers everywhere. Father had got out his uniform. He keeps it in the big cupboard in the sitting room. When Emmanuel was little, he used to touch all the badges stuck on like buttons. With the tip of his index finger. Had to be careful, the uniform was kept in a polythene cover. Like at the dry cleaners. Father didn’t want him to touch it, had to be careful.
The real medals were in the display case. A glass tower kept locked. His mother cleaned it every Sunday. Emmanuel had never managed to open it, he’d never found out where the guns were. Now he could ask Father but he was a bit ashamed. And what would he do with guns? They’re dangerous, believe me.