Marie-Thérèse falls silent. She lowers her eyes and seems to be meditating on this reply. She polishes her spectacles with the cloth and puts them back in their case. The onion sizzles in the frying pan. She gets up to turn down the heat. She adds the potatoes, turns up the power in the exhaust fan, and leaves the kitchen, closing the door.
Marie-Thérèse and Adam sit facing each other. Without the background light from the kitchen the room has taken on the semblance of an empty space. On the low table, apart from the tray she's just brought in, there's a flower in a pot. When the daylight fades, Goncharki had said one day at his house, I don't get up to light the room. I don't switch on anything, I let things take on the semblance of shadows and if I'm doing something I continue doing what I was doing in the dark. Is it quiet in Viry? says Adam, after a long silence.
“Oh yes it's quiet,” she says.
“What's it like?”
“Nothing much. Viry's neutral, it's not much of a place.”
Help me, my God, he thinks, to transmute life into literature! To transmute Marie-Thérèse, the linoleum floor, the Tucs, the gloomy light, to transmute Viry and all the years into literature. I have no greater wish. I offer up this prayer as I swallow a mouthful of cherry liqueur: grant me the power to exist in spite of and beyond reality. Until now I've not been sincere, as you well know, I always wanted to be loved and praised, I wanted to be somebody, my God. I've played at being arrogant, a naysayer. What I wanted, and I laugh at the phrase, was to occupy a place in our time. Of all that I've written, the only thing I have any affection for is The Black Prince of Mea-Hor, my one book devoid of vanity. You see me tonight, seated in this living room in Viry-Châtillon, observing the configuration of the furniture, waiting with Marie-Thérèse Lyoc for time to pass. A switched-off television on a television table: a combination you could find in a hotel room. A set of shelves with CDs, a few books and some photos on them, a sideboard adapted to house hi-fi equipment, a Moroccan cushioned footstool. A Bonnard picture on the wall, a reproduction on paper in a red frame. A woman pouring a cup of tea for a dog that sits upright and obedient at the table, waiting to be served. Here, where nothing is happening, in the absence of any physical body, I feel more disoriented than in the real world, which is, as I heard a commentator on the radio put it, in chemical precipitation. I think about my age and the seconds slip away into the void. Help me, God, to capture all this for the simple comfort of feeling I'm alive. Do you smoke? says Marie-Thérèse.
“No.”
“Do you mind if I smoke? I hardly smoke at all during the day but in the evening I enjoy it.”
“Go ahead.”
The smoke spirals upward, shrouding the woman and her dog in a haze. In the past, he thinks, he's seen other works by Bonnard with a similar feel to them, or with animals in them, at any rate. The fading coil leaves a blurred impression. Adam suddenly sees coarse brushstrokes, a coarse palette, he tells himself, an excessive covering of the canvas, and he tells himself that he could suddenly no longer like Bonnard, he who'd always liked Bonnard, and that Bonnard, exhibited here on this ocher wall, by the light of this Oriental lamp, was turning out to be glutinous and messy, falsely cheerful. So one could always have liked Bonnard and suddenly no longer like him, so one could suddenly stop liking something, he thinks, stop liking a picture or a book or a place, stop liking anything at all, anyone at all, at one fell swoop. Five minutes ago you liked the painter Bonnard, he thinks, when your eyes lit upon this framed print you thought, look, Bonnard, and you liked the teapot, the composition, the dog, and the back of the chair and then all at once you no longer liked any of it at all, you loathed the woman, the dress, the wall, you found it all disgusting, you found it was a disgusting painting, you who a few minutes before and over long years had admired and liked the ingenuity, the warmth, the sensuality of Bonnard's paintings. The notion we form of things fades, he thinks. One day, he thinks, he must count the things he'd become disillusioned with. What are the masculine verbs? Goncharki had asked during one of their innumerable bibulous and elliptical discussions. Don't stop to think. Give me two. Holding and believing, Adam had replied. Isn't that your cell phone ringing? says Marie-Thérèse.
“Where is it?”
“I don't know, where was it?”
“In my coat.”
“I hung it in the hall.”
Adam runs into the hall. He thrusts his hand into one pocket, then the other, finally he takes out the cell phone: Hello, hello? he calls into the receiver in desperate tones. Hello? he says again, absurdly, into the silence. Unknown caller appears on the screen. Adam waits for the little envelope signifying a message to appear. He's standing in the hallway, between the kitchen and the living room. I take my coat, he thinks, I open the door softly, and I make my getaway. Were you too late? says Marie-Thérèse.
“Yes.”
“They're better now, all the same. When cell phones started they'd ring only, oh three or four times, I don't remember now, you missed half the calls.”
“That's right,” he says, resuming his seat in the armchair.
“Would you like more Tucs?”
“No thanks.”
The envelope doesn't appear. Adam dials his code. You have no new messages the voice tells him. She should shut her trap, that fat cow, he thinks, what right has the bitch to interfere in my life. Excuse me, Marie-Thérèse, I'm going to ring home just in case. “Maria, it's me. Did you call me just now?” “No.” “Is everything OK, Maria?” “Everything's OK.” “Irene hasn't got home yet?” “No.” “Are the children in bed?” “They're going to bed.” “They're not in bed yet?” “They're going to bed right now.” “Tell Gabriel to use his electric toothbrush.” “Fine.” “And not to flood the bathroom the way he generally does.” “Fine.” “See you tomorrow, Maria.” “See you tomorrow.”
Maybe it was Albert, he thinks. I need to call my friend Albert, he says. It may have been him. “Hello?” “So?” says Albert. “Did you just call me?” “No. I've got better things to do, pal.” “How's it going?” “Where are you?” “At Viry-Châtillon.” “I hope it's worth the trip.” “We're not talking about that category of event.” “I see. So what category of event, then?” “Are you at Martine's?” “You can't talk?” “That's correct.” “Ha, ha! You can't talk …!”
“Right, I'm hanging up. Ciao.”
Who had been thinking of him at that late hour?
What precious friend had wanted to make his voice heard? Save me, my friend, I wanted to talk to you, I ran but it was too late, ring again, save me. So does he flood the bathroom? says Marie-Thérèse.
“Excuse me?”
“Your son. You said tell him not to flood the bathroom.”
“Yes. He floods the bathroom when he brushes his teeth.”
“How?”
“He plays with the water in the sink. He makes waterfalls.”
“Tell me about your children,” says Marie-Thérèse, after a pause.
“What do you want to know?”
“Their ages, are they dark like you, although now, of course, you're …” She giggles.
“They're five and eight. They're dark.”
“What grades are they in?”
“The younger one is in kindergarten, the older one is in second grade,” he says, thinking, we're scraping the barrel here.
“Are they good students?”
“For heaven's sake, Marie-Thérèse.”
“Here now, this is Andreas,” she says enthusiastically, lifting a framed photograph off the shelf.
For a moment Adam cannot recall who Andréas is; when he sees the child's face he remembers the dentist. Andreas is in color, he's smiling. Can one call it a smile, this skewed twisting of the mouth? thinks Adam. The photographer has said to the child, come on, let's have a smile, and the child twisted his mouth sideways. Adam has already seen this expression on school-related portraits of his elder son, already seen the mindless, sickly pose against a background of cubes. He's already seen this woebegone face, he thinks, the long ears, the first communion haircut, already seen the part in his hair they'd sweated blood to create, the shirt buttoned too tightly, accentuating the puffy look, not, he knows, on his own child, but on the Adam Haberberg of long ago, and, as he holds the frame in his hand, not knowing what to do with it, he has to struggle against an unexpected impulse to burst into tears. After striving every day, he thinks, to rid oneself of compassion, advocating withdrawal and endurance as a way of life, when faced with the photo of a schoolboy one caves in. He didn't have his retainer by then, he says, for the sake of saying something. No, not yet, says Marie-Thérèse. But he was already an expert on dental occlusion, she adds proudly. He's apprehensive: she's not going to start on that again. But she doesn't start again, she puts the photo of Andreas back in its place and leaves the room. He hears her rummaging in another room at the end of the corridor then she returns holding something he recognizes as soon as he catches sight of it, which she places on his knees. Look, Demonpion, she exclaims, indicating the woman seated low down on the left in the front row. You. Alice. Serge. Tristan. Me. Corrine Poitevin. Blaise. Jenny Pozzo, she says. Philippe Gros-Dujarric. Evelyne Estivette. Hervé Cohen. Hervé Cohen, thinks Adam, looking at the grinning boy, I was friends with him. What happened to Hervé Cohen? he asks. I've no idea, says Marie-Thérèse. Adam remembers Hervé Cohen. A name vanished from his life, which he would never have uttered again but for this encounter. And yet he remembers Hervé Cohen, they used to go to each other's homes, they went on winter sports holidays in the Pyrenees. Adam remembers how they celebrated Passover in the hotel room at Font-Romeu. The Cohen parents were trying to locate Jerusalem. It's very simple, the father said, where's Perpignan? The mother pointed to one wall, he favored another, when did she have any sense of direction, he said, a woman incapable of opening the road map of France without homing in on Baden-Baden? In the end the father's geography won the day and they had, all of them, the parents, Hervé, his sister, Joèlle, and Adam himself, turned toward the wall opposite the window. During the prayer the mother had had a fit of the giggles, which spread to the children, while the father, in his jacquard ski pullover with the prayer shawl half flung over his head, continued to read the story of the Red Sea crossing earnestly and reprovingly to the bathroom door. The Cohen parents were the opposite of his own, thinks Adam. The Cohen parents were cheerful and irrational. The Cohen parents were marvelous. What counts, thirty years later, looking at this class photo, thinks Adam, is not Alice Canella, nor Tristan Mateo, nor Hervé Cohen, but the Cohen parents. Tristan, he notices, is wearing a white shirt, he has long hair and a mustache, a cross between Jim Morrison and Frank Zappa. Alice is slim, blond, sullen, as was fashionable at the time. Adam tries to picture her fat. And dead. Dead is easier, he thinks. At Font-Romeu the Cohen parents may well have been exactly my age now, he thinks. What's become of them? Dead, too? Or living somewhere, aged and shrunken. Or living somewhere, not aged and shrunken at all, looking after Hervé's and Joèlle's children, reciting the exodus from Egypt for the thousandth time, lighting candles at Hanukkah, railing against Israel, railing against the enemies of Israel, still bawling one another out over trifles, teasing one another. You could never have spoken of his own parents as the Haberberg parents the way you spoke of the Cohen parents. The Haberberg parents were austere and harassed and didn't love each other. They were not interested in their son's friends like the Cohen parents. Monsieur Cohen, Adam remembers, had taught him how to play “421,” as well as the Hebrew alphabet and the rudiments of driving. He drove a Sinica 1500 with the gearshift on the floor. For Father's Day Adam and Hervé had gone down to the car showrooms in the Avenue de la Grande Armee and bought him a wooden gearshift knob. This accessory had literally galvanized him, causing him to lurch from being a man known for his abrupt driving into being a veritable public danger. In traffic jams Cohen senior would step on the gas as soon as he had ten yards clear in front of him. At every traffic light, Adam recalls, they hurtled from the rear luggage compartment to the windshield. Madame Cohen, stoically, seemed to experience the untimely application of the brake as an act of God. Adam had learned to drive in the parking lot beside the Church of Stella Matutina, a modern building Cohen said had been designed by a great criminal. With Cohen as instructor, he and Hervé took turns as pupil and shaken passenger. He used to say: look, my children, if I'd been the architect of that church … I'd have begun by building a synagogue! And he laughed at his own joke, Adam remembered, the way he laughed when we swerved, stalled, and had fits of panic. They won't speak of Irene and me as the Haberberg parents either, he thinks. No friend of his children is ever going to remember them as the Haberberg parents. The Haberberg parents don't give off anything. You felt like a son with the Cohen parents.