“I’m fed up with these hold-ups. By the way, what about your scooter, do you have it?”
“Soon, yes.”
Jean turned to me. “Don’t you already have a car?”
He smiled vaguely, as he often did. When we got to Clichy, a car was just pulling out and we didn’t have to drive around looking for a parking space. Marco got out first, he switched off his cell phone. That way I can have a little peace and quiet. I’ve had a rough day. We sat down in the smoking area. The place had been refurbished two years ago and, in addition to the music, which was a little too loud, the lighting was also too harsh in the middle of the room. We sat down in a corner at the far end. Jean had brought his case with him. When they took our orders and served the aperitif, he told us he wanted to show us some photographs, to see if they reminded us of things. I thought that was weird, Marco was as surprised as I was. He’d kept everything. It was still in his case, he had never let it out of his sight. He’d stuck some of them in a school notebook, along with the dates, sometimes followed by a question mark. The oldest dated from 1976. The three of us were twenty, barely more than children. I recognized some of them, class photographs I must have somewhere at home, then he showed us others in which we didn’t appear.
Several photographs in the courtyard of the building where he lived with his mother. He had the same eyes as her, the same way of looking with a slight lift of the head, the way people look under their glasses, except that he didn’t wear glasses. Photos also of him when he was very small, that was my father, he said, pointing to a middle-aged man, who really seemed to be from another time, very distant even in the 1970s, and even further from us today. And then lots of photographs taken in Asnières, at the Bar des Trois Communes, where we sometimes went, and at Nazim’s in Bois-Colombes, the one who had died only two months ago and had had a good life. We really had lived it up. We gradually relaxed. We even pushed away our plates, there was a kind of fire still burning in all this that went beyond our common memories. When the waitress brought us our meals, we left his photographs to one side. We told each other about long-gone things. There were our teachers and our parents. The injustices never swallowed, the hopes never followed by results. Then there were the stories about girls, love affairs we’d never forgotten. We realized we’d pretty much known the same girls in high school, and at Le Cercle near the station, we spent a whole lot of time there, and when we were alone, up until the early ’80s, that was where we went. Generally, you didn’t have to wait too long.
He was getting excited as he spoke, our memories were gradually falling into place, just like that, for no reason, he was putting our past together. We ordered a good bottle of red wine, we had to celebrate this, in the end it had been a good idea of his to make us revisit our lives. There weren’t so many of us left now. We’d lost touch. And then almost nobody lived in our old neighborhood in the Hauts-de-Seine anymore. He had other photographs in a small brown envelope. Several times, he seemed hesitant to show them to us.
“Here, I have this too, if you want. I’ll be back.”
He went to the toilets. Marco watched him walk away and shook his head.
“Are you thinking the same as me? I’m surprised he held out all this time.”
I opened the envelope. It was her, the girl he’d been harping on about all this time. Adeline Vlasquez. She was wearing a long flowered skirt on platform B of the station at Asnières, and in the sunlight the colors looked a little fake. They were already old, these photographs. In this one, he had long hair, he was wearing a shirt with a large collar, he had his arm around her shoulders and they seemed to be in love. Who’d taken the picture? Do you remember this girl? I had only a vague image of this Adeline Vlasquez.
“He’s in a bad way, though, I wonder how he’s going to pull through this time.”
I put the photos back in the envelope. He came back toward us with a big smile.
“Did you look at them?”
“Yes,” we said. “They’re great. That was quite a time. Do you still hear from her?”
He’d looked for her for a long time, and in his opinion, all these last few years he wouldn’t have let himself go the way he had if he’d been able to keep track of her, which was pointless, since she hadn’t chosen him. Marco was looking around him, and then after a while he took off his glasses and massaged his eyelids.
“And what are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to see my mother, didn’t I tell you?”
“Yes, but what are you going to do to earn a living?”
He shrugged. “I’d really like some dessert. How about you?”
We talked about other things. We were relieved that he’d finished showing us photos of his life, and also the life he thought had been ours. He seemed quite happy, though, that evening. But I couldn’t be sure. Not far from here, there was this woman who might become mine, I hoped that very strongly, and I didn’t know why, and then there was my son in Switzerland who called me from time to time. He’d suggested we contact each other via instant message. Whenever I got home, I switched on the computer and looked to see if he was online. He had a lot of work. I wrote more often to Anaïs, she’d started taking German classes, she’d be coming back to Paris from time to time, she hadn’t yet decided what she was going to do. We stayed in the pizzeria for a long time. Maybe we wouldn’t have many more opportunities? Marco would have liked to stop working, he was earning a good living, but it didn’t matter anymore, Aïcha was advising him to do what he wanted, but what did he want? Over time, he’d forgotten what he liked. For lots of guys like us, nothing mattered anymore. He would have liked to do legal counseling for people with money troubles, defend widows and orphans, instead of which he handled corporate accounts, surrounded by guys … Jean was listening to us and smiling, as if we’d thrown a great party just for him. It was coming to its end now.
I found it sad, when I got home that night, but not really, it wasn’t as sad as all that, to be honest. You just have to let yourself go from time to time. It doesn’t lead to anything, with guys like us. He hadn’t wanted us to drive him home. How was he going to manage with all those boxes? Oh, he’d ask Ahmed, the neighbor opposite, to lend him his station wagon. We weren’t too worried about him. In any case, he’d try to be in touch before he left for Marseilles.
“Can we do anything for you?”
“For me?”
For a moment, he seemed troubled.
“No, but I’ll let you know where I’m living. We should keep in touch, don’t you think?”
We shook hands. His handshake was too strong. The son of the concierge where we’d taken root, the lover of Adeline Vlasquez, the girl in the flowered dress on platform B of the station. The man who’d never managed to … Our friend too, in the end, who kept traces of our lives in a case, the same as all those guys who pretend that things are normal, when in fact they aren’t. His mother would be happy to see him again. He picked up his case. Thanks for dinner. Right, shall we go?
He strode along Boulevard Jaurès, in the direction of the bridge, we let him go, the way guys like him do. His life wasn’t slowing him down tonight. He seemed impatient to leave. He’d never really been there with us, but he remembered everything, he’d carried our memory in that case along with the welfare papers, the forms, and the discount vouchers. He was probably going to come back into our lives, but when? Marco and I were still watching him. He was walking quickly, like a man much younger than he was, surrounded by the lights of the Seine.