Michel walked over to his car and bent stiffly forward from the waist; he was like the conductor of a brass band after the end of a number, and he examined the damage. The other driver was pacing out the distance from the two cars to the corner and counting out loud in a shrill, mad voice. He had a way of looking at things, Michel — shafts, flanges, joints, cylinder heads, casings — which stopped them being intransigent, which made them obedient. As I watched him I thought of his gift of taking away the pain of burns. Was it a gift of attracting to himself and so dispersing a kind of shock? The shock suffered by burnt flesh or a chassis?
If we order the parts tonight, he shouted to me, it’s only one day’s work, we’ll be on the road the day after tomorrow.
Swaying like a ninepin, he moved across to the Peugeot. The owner screamed: It’s not possible! Less than twenty-eight metres from the corner, you can see my brake marks, can’t you? Jesus! I jammed them on as soon as I saw you. You’re a public danger. If you’re a gimp you should get yourself about in a wheelchair.
I reckon, said Michel very calmly, the packet there won’t cost you more than a hundred and fifty thousand — the price of a good bicycle! You’re fortunate, considering the speed you were going.
Crippled cunt! the man said.
The storm hadn’t broken and we had to wait for the café owner to drive us to the nearest hotel, five kilometres away.
Give us some cold beer, can you? Michel asked. The sweat lined the furrows of his brow and the pouches under his eyes. He sat on a table, his back to the wall, legs straight out, pointed polished shoes at an impossible angle, as if both ankles were broken.
On a day like this, he said to me, when you’re working on the furnaces, you’re working in a temperature of seventy degrees centigrade. Half-way between blood-heat and boiling point. Halfway to hell … He poured some beer down his throat.
I could never believe in hell, I told him. I couldn’t believe any father would invent hell as a punishment for his children.
Fathers shoot their sons dead, he said.
They shoot in anger. The way I learnt, hell has to do with justice, not anger.
I offered him a handkerchief to wipe his face. He held it up before his eyes because it had flowers printed on it, and he didn’t use it.
You really want to know about hell, he said smiling, it’s here.
Sounds odd coming from you, Michel, the one who’s always talking about change and progress …
I put the handkerchief carefully back in my bag.
Who says hell has to stay the same? Hell begins with hope. If we didn’t have any hopes we wouldn’t suffer. We’d be like those rocks against the sky.
I caught hold of the hand he was pointing with. He didn’t resist and I turned it over. On the back of his fingers he has black hairs; where the violet scar is, there is no hair. I sprayed some eau de cologne onto his wrist and he withdrew his hand to smell it.
Hell begins with the idea that things can be made better, he said. It’s refreshing — your scent. What’s the opposite of hell? Paradise, no?
Give me your other hand.
I sprayed the back of that hand and he didn’t withdraw it, it lay in my lap.
I could take you to your hotel now, announced the café owner.
The hotel backed onto a river whose bed was almost dry. The window of my room looked out onto the pebbles. It was the first time in my life I’d stayed in a hotel — which didn’t prevent my realising this one was unusual. The proprietor, who was working in the kitchen when we arrived, came out wiping his hands on a sack tied round his waist.
Two rooms, yes, he said, you’ll be eating here tonight? Tonight I’m cooking a dish I’ve never tried before!
The corridor leading to the bedrooms was stacked with wardrobes, there was scarcely space to get by. In my room, besides a bed and a washbasin there were two electric radiators and a deep freeze. I looked inside the freezer and it was full of meat. At last the rain began to fall, large drops the size of pearls. I washed and lay on the bed in my slip, with my feet bare.
I had the impression that we had lost our way: we were not going to arrive in Paris, Michel’s prosthesis was not going to be adjusted, we were in a land apart, which we had come across by accident, without meaning to, and without realising it, until now we had found ourselves in a hotel run by a madman. With this idea, and yet peacefully and to the sound of the rain, I fell asleep.
When I woke up the storm had passed. I put on another dress and a pair of white shoes — the pair which had prompted me to buy the summer gloves. I also put on a necklace of coloured beads that Christian had made for me at school. It was getting dark — the short days of August for all their heat — and I could just make out the white shapes of geese down by the river. I slipped past the wardrobes and found my way downstairs.
To my surprise there were three or four other guests in the dining room. Michel was sitting at a table by the window, where there was a large vase of orange gladioli. I can still see the flowers. He had changed his shirt and washed.
So too had the proprietor, who had discarded the sack and was now wearing a tie. He led me to the table. Michel insisted upon getting to his feet. We said good evening to each other like people do in films.
Would we like an aperitif? asked the proprietor. Two Suzes, said Michel. My sense of us having lost our way reminded me of the uncertainty children feel when they find themselves having to do something for the first time. Yet I’d never felt older.
Can we propose to you, sir, poularde en soutien-gorge?
What is it? asked Michel.
A skinned chicken roasted in pastry, sir. Unforgettable. And as an entrée perhaps truite au bleu?
It’s the chicken you’ve cooked this way for the first time? I asked.
Precisely, Madame, the first soutien-gorge I’ve ever fitted! he winked at Michel.
Four point to the sky, four walk in the dew, and four have food in them; all twelve make one — what is it? I asked the man.
He didn’t know and I wouldn’t tell him. We ate well, like at a baptism.
If you wanted, I could help you, Michel said.
What do I need help for?
To live.
I’ve managed not too badly up to now. It’s good, this white wine, isn’t it? Santé.
Do you know what people say about you?
I’ve never worried. It’s the one thing, Michel, I’ve never worried about.
There’s no talking with her, they say. When Odile’s made up her mind to do something, she does it. When she’s made up her mind not to, nothing can make her. There’s no approaching her. They respect your courage, they respect the way you’ve brought up the boy — but from a distance. You’re alone.
I don’t feel it.
In a few years it’ll be too late.
Too late for what?
Too late to change.
You want to change everything, Michel, the world, hell, people, politics, now me.
You think things can stay as they are?
I don’t know.
Happiness doesn’t say anything to you?
There’s more pain than happiness, I said.
Pain, yes.
Have I told you the story of the two bears? I asked.
Who’s been eating from my plate? The story of the three bears?
No, two. Two bears in the snow …
Fairy tales, Odile! We’re too old now for fairy tales. We need to face reality.
Like we both do all the time.
Then he said something that impressed me, for he said it so slowly and emphatically: Things can’t … go on … as they are. These words were more grunted than spoken and the gladioli I was gazing at in their vase blurred before my eyes.