Everything around it had already been rebuilt, there were glass buildings and a lot of office space for rent, the cars were going fast along the expressway. There was nothing left to see around here. It wasn’t the way it had been before. It would never be the way it had been before … As for the building where he used to live, they must have been waiting for it to fall apart, and then they’d demolish it like the rest. Adeline Vlasquez, in the end I think I came back for her. The entry code didn’t work, the lock had been forced. His name wasn’t on the mailbox anymore. On top, there were some envelopes addressed to him, and I took them. Had he even notified anyone of his change of address or found someone to forward his mail? I pressed the button to turn on the light, and in spite of the noise from the expressway outside, you could hear it buzzing, just like when I was a kid, and also at my grandmother’s house, a long time ago. A reminder letter from the phone company, a card from the electricity company saying their engineer had called, a few brochures, G20, Carrefour, Auchan, Celibaclub, a club for singles? Don’t stay single anymore. A handwritten letter. A woman’s handwriting, the name didn’t mean anything to me. Should I take the letter or leave it with the bills? It would have been a bit of a headache, and besides, it was none of my business. I went into the inner courtyard. It had been raining that day. Behind the window, I saw the TV screen, the television was on, the kids seemed to be alone again, waiting for their parents. I knocked softly on the window pane.
“Hello, aren’t your parents in? I came to see the neighbor.”
“The neighbor Jean? The one who went to Marseilles?”
The kid looked back at the TV screen.
“Don’t know, he left.”
That was it, then. I said goodbye, and under my breath wished them a speedy departure too. I got back on my scooter. Honestly, how had I ever been able to live without it?
It’s a straight shot all the way to Clichy, in twenty minutes, something like that. Just beyond the bridge is the Bar des Trois Communes, not far from the building where I lived more than forty years ago, which had only recently been demolished. I hadn’t been in that area when it happened. I’d only seen the rubble. But here, on this section of the road to Asnières, nothing had changed, opposite the bar you still had the garage that rented old cars for movies, and the cobblestones had been poorly paved over, as if the asphalt didn’t want to be there. One after the other, the buildings were boarded up, soon there wouldn’t be a Bar des Trois Communes anymore. It was a bar of ill repute, a bar where nasty things happened, though of course nothing had ever happened to Marco and me there. On the wall facing the street, a pink marble plaque had been put up in 2000, engraved photographs of two young girls knocked down by a car, and there were flowers below them, a few bunches, to say that they would never be forgotten. I had always thought I wouldn’t be forgotten either. But of course, everyone forgets. And sometimes it’s better that way. I stayed there long enough to smoke a cigarette, I didn’t go into the bar. There was a kind of war going on inside me, what had become of my life, and what could I do to change it? I calmed down, thinking about the good things that might still happen to me, but later it would be like the building where I spent my childhood or the Bar des Trois Communes, I was in no hurry to wait my turn but I wouldn’t try to hide, the way children do.
I made a phone call before getting back on my scooter. Hard to believe I’d only just bought it, it was as if I’d had it my whole life, and I’d go traveling without moving from the Hauts-de-Seine and two or three arrondissements of Paris. Sometimes I slept at Marie’s place, but most of the time I went home. I picked up her mail, watered the plants. I would stay there for a while, sitting on her couch in the empty apartment, daydreaming, hoping that we’d soon be living together, I really hoped for that. Plans for the future buzzed in my head at night, but the only way to deal with them was to go to sleep and keep them to myself. Too early? Too late? I couldn’t decide. According to Marco anyway, I didn’t have too much time left to let myself go. Aïcha had visited Marie in Beaujon, by the way. Oh, really? The four of us had only met once, the last time she’d come home after a chemo session. Marie wouldn’t be moving into my place. With all that time ahead of me, I could start looking for a larger apartment, something to rent maybe, and I’d see if she liked it. Once or twice, when I started having my doubts, I took a shower, and another time, from the office, I called Benjamin and we spent quite a while chatting away. He was spending twelve hours a day in his lab. But do you like it? And what about Anaïs? Oh, so-so … Bye, then. Speak again soon. Every week, we got in touch once or twice, and it had immediately become as important to me as the days when he came to me, when I’d go and wait for him outside school or at the end of the platform at Saint-Lazare, I would always wait for him anyway.
I’d had a drink with Marco the week before. He’d seen me coming on my Vespa and his face had lit up in a smile. He wanted to try it, but in our suburb it was better when there was nobody on the streets. At the office too, people laughed when they saw me. I was feeling more confident now and would go on long rides. We had a few days of rain, and then good weather again. Sometimes I’d set off blindly, or else a place from my past would come back into my mind and I’d decide to take a look at it. I must have been the old fool who only notices one thing, that which-ever way you look at it, things aren’t what they used to be. I kept these visits to myself, but gradually the idea came to me that I should tell all, that I should keep a record. Of course I didn’t know how, or how long I’d do it for, I probably wouldn’t have time to get to the end. I went back to his place, on the expressway. I’d hoped that someone would take care of his letters. They had boarded up the door and his windows in the meantime. The family who looked out on the courtyard hadn’t left the place yet, but it couldn’t be long now. When I arrived, they shut their window. What did they imagine? I didn’t dare ask. There were more letters and reminders addressed to him, but what the hell, he’d been getting ready to disappear completely.
We did hear from him, the following month. He’d sent Marco a letter. He was pleased to be living in Marseilles. What beat everything was that he’d immediately found a job, luck often waits until the last moment. He was taking care of a large house with a garden and swimming pool in a ritzy neighborhood. It just goes to show, it must have been in his genes, taking care of a house. He had quite a lot to do, which he liked. The owners were German, but that was another story! He was living in a studio apartment away from the main house, and he took care of the maintenance, the gardening, he was starting to feel more self-confident. And then there was the sea and the sun. He went to see his mother once a week, she’d aged a lot, they’d diagnosed the onset of Alzheimer’s. He should have gone earlier. His handwriting was clear and well rounded, as if he hadn’t yet reached our age but had stayed the way he’d been before, in high school, when we were twelve or thirteen. When I went back to his last address on my scooter, the family across the courtyard had gone. The mailboxes had been torn off and someone had dumped hundreds of leaflets from a nearby supermarket. The entrance hall smelled of urine. That’s it, I told myself, it’s over. I did what I’d wanted to do the time before, or even a long time earlier to tell the truth. I took several photos with my little digital camera and returned home. In the evening, I went to Brochant. Marie and I went for a walk, as far as Place de Clichy, she wanted to see the new titles in the window of the bookstore. This time I saw two guys turn to look at her, and I think she noticed, so that was fine.