This morning, Georges has made some little cakes for Dominic’s birthday and has even found a candle. Dominic’s pleased, he blows on the flame; he’s going to see his forty-eighth spring.
‘They were trying to kill me. That’s why I’m here. I promise you I’m not bad. They were out to kill me. I had no choice.’
‘I know, sweetheart. Tell me, was it Georges who sent you?’
‘Yes, it’s for my birthday. Forty-eight springs, as he says.’
‘What a lovely present Georges has given you.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know how to do it. I’ve never been able to.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll show you. We’ve got twenty minutes. Now try and relax a little.’
‘OK, lady.’
Good old Georges! You never know what he’ll come up with next. But this is a first. Dominic, poor Dominic. Really sad, really hard done by. And completely bonkers to boot.
On the bus home. Can they imagine what I’ve just done? I doubt it. What about them, what have they been up to? Actually, I don’t give a shit. I don’t need them. I don’t care what happens to them, they don’t exist for me. We’re on the same bus. They don’t speak and neither do I.
I have no compassion, that’s something I’ve lost. I don’t even feel anything for the kids in the street, the cute little creatures with blond or dark curls throwing sticks and running around all over the place. I’m surrounded by jelly, it feels as if I’m flailing around at the bottom of a big jar of jam. It sticks to my skin. I can’t shake it off. I’m in this jar, with my cheeks stuck to a high glass wall. I press my forehead against it and wait my turn for the knife to come and then squidge me on the burning-hot toast. Sickly sweet goo that sticks to your skin. I’ve lost my compassion. It’ll never come back now, I’m too old.
If only I were truly alone. Don’t count on it. We’re alone in the midst of people, we’re alone in the midst of their solitude, we’re alone with others. People stink, swarm and sweat. I don’t run away from them, but I don’t go near them either.
They’re simply there, as alone as I am. I used to think that men paid me to get away from all that. Perhaps that’s what they think too. But I can tell you that when they screw me, when they get all horny jiggling about on top of my poor inert body, those sad suckers are well and truly alone. We don’t share anything. They’re alone when they fuck me. They’re faced with nothing but a waiting body, an absent body, its mind elsewhere, a body that’s simply trying not to feel too much pain. They can’t be unaware of it, they can’t forget that they’re alone when they’re with me. Guys think they come to talk to me, that they’re unhappy, that I help them. I give them nothing but the harshest image of their lives, the reflection of their misery. That’s all they get. Bankers, family men, workers, guys with syphilis, poets, boxers, they all wallow in the same swamp. They leave more dejected than when they arrived. You can see it in their faces, their features puffy with loneliness – that bitch solitude, which they can’t do anything about. Go on, try, get married, fuck old whores, have kids, read novels, you’ll always be alone. Christ, it’s about time you accepted that that’s your destiny. It’s bitter, but you still have to swallow it.
I’m going to sleep for a bit, so I don’t have to think about my life.
I don’t know why I write. It churns me up, it soils me from inside. Honestly, I don’t know why I’m doing this. To pass the time, perhaps. That’s it. I write like some people do crosswords, it keeps me busy. I think about words, style, the shapes of the letters. I feel as if I’m doing something without getting up off my arse. It’s not vital, it’s not therapeutic. I don’t know, I write to keep my hands occupied, like doodling on Post-its when you’re on the phone. I fill pages, writing one sentence after another. It’s a pointless exercise, but it keeps me busy. I could listen to the radio, do sudokus, read the paper or look out of the window, but I write, I don’t know why. I kill time. It’s a tough bastard.
I’m a pen-pushing old slag. How about that?
I’m not a fanatic. I don’t like literary types. I don’t like those guys with greasy hair who smell of the second-hand bookstalls on the banks of the Seine. I don’t like the hairy students who take the métro to go to the library. I can’t stomach their accent. They turn me off much more that those evil Le Pen supporters in the north who admire that smarmy newsreader Jean-Pierre Pernaut.
They think clever thoughts. They talk of Zola and Montesquieu. I spew my ignorant guts in their faces.
I tend to let my hate run away with me when I write. I should stop it. I don’t really mean it. I don’t loathe people as much as I make out. It’s easier to hate, to write that you puke over all those arseholes, that you cheerfully shit on them. You feel alive, you feel above all that. To be honest, I’m no better than they are. I can’t bring myself to hate them.
I could write about my squeaking window, about my aching feet. Not now. Writing makes me anxious. I don’t know how to go about it. I’m afraid to talk about myself. I smoke a cigarette, feeling wistful. Maybe that’s enough. A chair, a cigarette and a vacant look. I don’t know. I can’t think of anything special enough to write about. I feel hollow – as commonplace as a chamber pot that you plonk down beside a bed. An old pot full of spunk who hangs around the Gare Saint-Lazare and comes home to the Zenith Hotel in the middle of the night to try and think about nothing and sleep. I wish I was able to not give a fuck, to live as I please, in a cave, drinking cool water. I’m not brave enough.
I’ve got no nerve. Maybe one day I’ll develop some. And I’ll follow it outside my body, wherever it leads me. What else can I do but wait? I harbour my little woes, caress my little scorchmarks. I don’t try and heal them. I wait for them to leave my flesh. You live with your burns. What else can you do?
We can recall what we were two months or a year ago. No need to go very far back to be a stranger to oneself.
Good old Nanou who sucks and fucks. And who suffers, like everyone else, in silence, without really knowing why.
I’ve seen some things in my time, believe you me.
I find it all so absurd that I just try and get by as best I can.
I don’t like my life, but I wouldn’t want to live anyone else’s life. I find other lives even more sickening than my own, which isn’t much fun. We live as we do, we’d never cope with life otherwise. I’m a prostitute for all eternity.
Emmanuel
Emmanuel has blue eyes. Right now, they’re wide open. It’s very late, but Emmanuel hasn’t closed them. His wife’s asleep next to him. She’s fat. Emmanuel loves her anyway, he doesn’t mind that she’s fat. And besides, he can play with her breasts – pretend to lose himself in them. Her name is Estelle and she snores gently. Not loudly, just a deep breath in that can’t find its way out of her stomach, obstructed by fat. At first, it used to irritate him, but he’s gradually grown used to it.
You get used to the things life throws at you – Emmanuel grasped that a long time ago. There’s Estelle sleeping next to him; she snores a bit, she’s fat. You get used to it. This is my life now. She’s the one who irons my shirts and cooks. Sometimes she nags a bit, but it never lasts long. And anyway, I must be sympathetic – her job makes her anxious. Emmanuel does the same job. He’s a high-school supervisor. He supervises all day long. He has responsibilities. At all hours, you have to go to the upper floors and lock the classrooms. Before turning the key, you make sure there’s no one left in the room. You have an early lunch, and while the kids are having theirs, you patrol the playground. You pick up the yellow sponge balls, you go sniffing round the toilets to see if there’s a smell of cigarette smoke. You stand there bolt upright by the door, your hands behind your back dangling a big bunch of keys. And then you have to collect all the pink and blue forms and log all the absentees and latecomers on the office computer. You mustn’t make any mistakes: it goes down on their reports. Those things are important, otherwise you can get students into trouble unfairly. You phone their parents at an inconvenient moment, when it’s not their fault. They work, too; they can’t keep track of their kids all the time. But if the kids don’t show up, you have to inform them. You call them, you apologize for disturbing them, you explain that little Jérôme hasn’t come to school this morning, so that they know, so they don’t worry. And they thank you. You tell them you have to fill in a little pink form explaining why. You thank them and say have a nice day.