While I hide my trembling hands under the table, Gabrielle is now silent. Smiling, very proud of herself. I grab the metal center post of the table and squeeze it until my palms burn. I start pinching my knees and feel my nails through the cloth of my pant legs, then I attack my thighs, which does help me calm down. Gradually I relax and feel like myself again. I bring my hands out from under the table and pour the tea that has just arrived.
Quite a story I remark, to show my detachment.
Like it? replies the widow. In that case, you need simply pass it on to your friend Angèle. Or I can relay it myself, if you give me her phone number. But above all, about the money, not a chance.
I haven’t got my cell phone, it has all the numbers I say, looking at Gabrielle, and I take a sip of tea, which gives me time to think because I immediately remember that I placed my cell on the empty chair to my left. As I’m putting my cup down I see her looking away from the phone and back at my lying face. But I straighten up while pushing away the hand grabbing at my sleeve and I shove her back when she rises to detain me by force. Snatching up my phone I leave the café posthaste.
11
Viviane, think of your career.* You know that you’re not twenty anymore and that young women are lying in ambush, ready to take your place and wring your neck. Perhaps they’re already installed in your big office on Rue de Ponthieu, where they’ve let your ferns die, thrown out all your fountain pens, replaced your posters of the Florentine masters with photos of carnivorous flowers like sundew and bladderwort, and soon you will have ceased to exist.
You also know that you do not deserve your 4,500 euros net per month. You’ve hit your maximum, you’ve got nothing more to offer Biron Concrete. For years they’ve been keeping you purring in your office, with its wide selection of particleboard furniture in different shades of gray that watches you daydream as you pretend to think up presentations, sprinkle punctuation around brochures, set up websites.
Viviane, reclaim your position. At your age and with offspring you’re not going to start again at zero, climbing the steps of humiliation from the bottom of the ladder. There isn’t enough room for everybody. Well, you’ve got your job and you’re going to defend it. Your daughter will not witness her mother unemployed, besieging social agencies, counting small change tossed into a plastic cup while passengers wrinkle their noses at the aroma you leave behind in the métro car.
Héloïse is the person you hired to fill in for you during your maternity leave. Héloïse studied public relations in an excellent university, has a stellar portfolio, and she can spell. All you could pounce on during her two-week trial period at the beginning of the summer were a few ill-advised past participles here and there, but it was a pleasure to correct them with showy manifestations of indulgence. The two of you got along fairly well. Which was in your joint interest because Jean-Paul Biron was watching you both out of the corner of his eye, while you were watching right back. You had to make sure he wasn’t too taken with Héloïse’s fuselage, so that once you’d delivered this child pummeling your hips, you wouldn’t have too much trouble reclaiming your role as the reigning favorite.
Today is November 22, a Monday, and it’s high time to take stock. You’re wearing a belted raincoat over a blouse with a most flattering neckline and black pants just a tad roomy. Facing the mirror, you felt that the ensemble reasonably emphasized your return to form and recovered allure. Yes Viviane, you can still pull it off on Place de l’Étoile and pass for a high-class tart among misinformed tourists.
You swing through the revolving door at Biron Concrete with a triumphant step, raising a wave of rejoicing behind the reception desk, for the two young women there harbor certain reservations vis-à-vis Héloïse, who is their age but has better diplomas, plus pretensions and attitudes that encourage a desire to see her canned. You hide your pleasure behind a sympathetic mask. But take heart, girls: within three weeks, you’ll be firmly back in charge, and ambitious young things will simply have to beat a retreat.
As it happens, not everyone thinks that Héloïse’s personality is a wrench in the works for the company. Jean-Paul Biron for example — who receives you in the fourth-floor conference room because painters are at work in his office — is proud of the contributions the young woman has made to the managerial style he envisions for the coming year, a particularly dynamic, enterprising approach that’s more open to diversity.
And just what are you suggesting, Jean-Paul?
Oh, nothing specific for the moment, but I thought that with your new responsibilities. .
Yes, Jean-Paul? you inquire in a murderous tone.
Well, we might hire this young, uh, what’s her name again, Héloïse, yes, to help you out a little?
Help me out a little with what, Jean-Paul? With my work? My career? My life?
Okay okay, we’ll drop the subject. She’ll go on the dole like everyone else. Otherwise, I was thinking of moving you up to the top floor to be closer to me. What do you say to that?
Viviane, what do you say, you say nothing. In any case, it will still be footbridges and subway tunnels, traffic circles and highways, excavators and backhoes.
Come, I’d like to show you something, continues Jean-Paul, pulling you toward the elevator.
You go down to the first basement. Before reaching the general services department, which is a fancy name for some broom closets, you turn off toward a room that has been freshly refurbished. On something like a billiard table sits a miniature village with its main street, its church on the village square, its monument to the war dead. The details are rendered with an especially realistic touch, such as the baguettes with their ridged crusts on display in the bakery, the geraniums in the windows, the carafes on the bistro tables.
Yes? you say encouragingly, half wheedling, half prying, the way one deals with a patient suspected of having a serious personality disorder.
Héloïse did it, announces Jean-Paul, beaming. To show we don’t just disfigure the landscape, that we also renew our national heritage. To present our policy of sustainable development in a good light, you see?
Frankly, you don’t see at all. On the other hand, you get the idea someone had a lot of time on her hands, after you’d been careful to leave Héloïse with impressive stacks of files to keep her busy.
Well, hedges Jean-Paul, it’s mostly for show, of course. Because we’re not going to start sprucing up villages for communities in financial straits. Those big tower buildings are still more profitable. But this is pretty, don’t you think?
Magnificent, you say firmly, heading back to the elevator.
Then you tour the offices to say hello to your colleagues, collecting congratulations from the mothers, envious or sympathetic smiles from the young women, and polite indifference from the gentlemen. They’ve taken up a collection and present you with a big package wrapped in paper sprinkled with stylized infants. To yourself you exclaim what is this ghastly thing, to them oh how wonderful. When you solve the mystery it turns out to be a coatrack: the hooks are formed by the trunks of the elephants down at the base. You thank everyone again, kiss everyone again, and dash off to your office.
She’s sly, Héloïse. She welcomes you all smiles and practically curtsies, with her blue eyes and silken curls. She’s pleased to see you, tells you straight-out. You don’t believe a word. You see that your ferns are still there — but luxuriant, glowing with health. They’ve been appropriated, lavished with care. A mother wouldn’t recognize her own ferns. And it’s even your slightest talents that are thus devalued, to increase your feeling of superfluity.