“Oh, it was nothing. Really.”
In fact, he would have been relieved if Bejardy forgot to give him this commission.
“I insist. You need some pocket money. At your age…”
They rejoined Odile and Nicole Haas, who had already crossed the lawn. The path was lit by a lantern hanging on the outside of the annex.
An outdoor staircase led to the second floor, and the rooms opened out onto a balcony with a rough-hewn wooden railing.
“Good night.”
“Good night.”
Their rooms were next door to each other.
•
Around two in the morning, Louis and Odile were woken by voices — Bejardy’s and Nicole’s. At first they couldn’t understand what the voices were saying. Bejardy was talking nonstop and it seemed to Louis that he was reading something or talking to someone on the phone.
“You bastard!” Nicole Haas shouted.
“Shut up!”
Something shattered on the floor.
“You’re crazy! You’ll wake everyone up!”
“I don’t care!”
“Do you think they’ll start hitting each other?” Odile said.
She leaned her head against the hollow of Louis’s shoulder. They didn’t move.
“You can keep your dough!” Nicole Haas shouted. “I’m taking the car and going back to Paris!”
“Enough already!”
One of them slapped the other. The sound of a scuffle.
“Crook! Crook! You’re just a pathetic crook!”
“Shut up!”
“Murderer!!”
“Coco…”
He must have covered her mouth with his hand, because her voice sounded muffled, like a moan.
“Bastard! Bastard!”
“All right, calm down. Calm down, Coco.”
Their voices got softer. Suddenly, they laughed. Silence. She let out a sigh, then another, at intervals that grew closer and closer together.
Odile and Louis stayed motionless, their eyes wide. A latticework of reflections played on the blanket.
“I wonder what’s happening over there,” Louis said.
After a few moments, he felt the same smothering feeling of dependence in this room that he had felt in boarding school and in the army. The days followed one another and you wondered what was happening over there, and you hardly believed that you would ever be free of this prison.
“We have to leave,” Odile said.
Leave. Of course. Bejardy had no hold over him. None at all. He didn’t owe him anything. No one and nothing had any hold over him. Even the school yard and the barracks yard now seemed unreal to him, and harmless, like the memory of a little park somewhere.
~ ~ ~
BROSSIER was waiting for them at one of the outdoor tables at place Jussieu, since the night was warm. When Odile and Louis arrived, he stood up and gave them a hug, a gesture full of an affection that was unusual for him.
He had changed a lot since they’d left for England. He was wearing an old sky-blue tracksuit jacket and sneakers, his face was thinner, and he was starting to grow a beard, which he stroked from time to time.
“Louis. I have big news for you. I’m not working with Bejardy any more. It’s over.”
He waited with a triumphant look for Louis and Odile’s reaction.
“What are you going to do now?” Odile asked.
“Listen… I’ve never been this happy.” He puffed up his chest with pride. “I’ve signed up at the Faculty of Sciences, as an independent auditor. That’ll let me feel even closer to Jacqueline. We’re in the same building, Quai Saint-Bernard.”
“You’ve broken with Bejardy completely?” Louis asked.
“Completely. I don’t ever want to see him again. I’m making a clean break with that whole period of my life. I’m an entirely different person now, Louis.”
Between the traveling salesman with the puffy face Louis had met in Saint-Lô and this man in his tracksuit jacket, with shining eyes and haggard cheeks, there was not the slightest family resemblance. Had he even kept his Tyrolean hats?
“I’m sorry I’m in such a funny outfit,” Brossier said. “I’ve just come from a gym I go to once a week.”
“And what about me?” Louis suddenly said. “I’m supposed to stay with Bejardy alone? You’re just going to drop me?”
“No, not at all. I hope you’ll follow my lead… Jacqueline won’t be long, her class runs a little later tonight.”
The square with its trees was like one in a country town. There were a few people at the edge of the sidewalk playing boule. Music from a jukebox came out of the café-tabac next door.
“I had to show you this neighborhood. You have the Jar-din des Plantes right nearby, and the Arènas de Lutèce, where Jacqueline takes me every now and then. When we don’t go to the U restaurant or the cafeteria, we have dinner in a little Mexican place next to the Arènas. Let’s all go together some night, if you want.”
His voice was no longer guttural, it was alive with excitement, clear and melodious. He had left his usual vocabulary behind, and the slang words that had always spiced up his conversation before — bones, sharp, zilch, brass nickel — would now have sounded all wrong coming from his mouth.
Jacqueline Boivin came and sat down at their table, and rested a student satchel on her knees. Louis was entranced by her Ethiopian grace.
“How was class?” Brossier asked, kissing her on the forehead.
“Good.”
She turned to Odile and Louis.
“It’s nice to see you again. Has Jean-Claude told you?” Her face sought their approval.
“I think he’s doing the right thing,” Louis said.
“Will you walk us to Cité?” Brossier suggested. “We can have a bite to eat there. I’ll carry your book bag, Jacqueline.”
They passed the Lycée Henri-IV, then the Sainte-Geneviève church, and came out on place du Panthéon, with Jacqueline Boivin on Brossier’s arm and he with the satchel in his hand.
“Do you know this area?” Brossier asked.
“No,” Odile said. “I’ve never been to college.”
“It’s never too late! Here’s proof.” He pointed to himself and then kissed Jacqueline on the neck.
“All you need to do is fill out the registration forms,” Louis said.
On rue Soufflot, by the outdoor tables of the Mahieu, there were groups of people in lively conversation drifting by from left to right. Brossier, not moving, pulled Jacqueline Boivin closer to him. Next to them, Odile and Louis let the clusters of people push past them and were almost carried away in the stream. Luckily, Brossier held them firmly by the hand.
“On the right,” he said, in a tour guide’s sententious voice, “on boulevard Saint-Michel, you have Capoulade… Then the Picart bookstore, where I often go with Jacqueline. And Chanteclair, the record store… Farther down, there’s Gibert, where I sometimes sell used books to get a little pocket money. And the Café de Cluny. There’s a pool table on the second floor…”
He sounded breathless, as though panicking at the thought that there wasn’t enough time to introduce them to all the many delights of the neighborhood. A whole life wouldn’t be enough time.
At the Gare du Luxembourg they waited on benches for the Sceaux line train to arrive.
“You need to follow my lead, Louis, and make a clean break with Roland. I’m sure you can influence him, Odile. He doesn’t need to work for Bejardy.”
In the train bringing them to Cité Universitaire, Brossier affectionately held Jacqueline Boivin against his shoulder.
“Let me speak frankly with you, Louis. Roland is a desperate man. Don’t stay on a sinking ship.”
“Have you known him a long time?” Louis asked.