Gallic Noir. Pascal Garnier

right, I’ll be there.’

      Jacqueline got up with a sigh. She could almost have supported the tray on her ample bosom, leaving her hands free to carry other plates, other dishes. It must feel good to lie sleeping on those breasts, like being on a cloud. A long time past, down by the canal, the weather was hot. You could smell fresh grass. He had laid his cheek on Jacqueline’s white breast. Beneath the thin stuff of her blouse he could feel her quivering, giving off a fragrant dew. Fish were jumping, snapping at dragonflies. The air was alive with a thousand tiny things. One of them had said, ‘This is nice, isn’t it?’

      The small fluorescent green letters on the screen were no longer making proper words. They were now just long wiggly caterpillars, line upon line of them.

      ‘Is something wrong, Bernard?’

      ‘No, a spot of dizziness, that’s all. It must be the new pills. Take over from me, François. I’m just nipping out for a breath of air.’

      ‘Of course. Why don’t you take some time off?’

      ‘I’ll think about it.’

      Where did those rails along the platforms go? Not all that far. They joined up again over there, behind the warehouses, the end of the world was within arm’s reach. Everything was rusty here, down to the ballast stones, even the grass clinging to life beside the track. The railway had left its mark, a lengthy scar with dried blood at the edges. Sitting on a trolley, Bernard ran his fingers over his face, feeling the rows of teeth, the angle of the jaw. Beneath the pallid, soft skin a death’s head was hiding, like the one on a pirate flag or the labels of particular bottles at the pharmacy, with two crossbones behind. So what if it was ugly here, it was still the richest landscape on earth. You could make a life here. It was all there ahead of him, rails leading to more rails, on and on to infinity. François was right, he would take some leave. Actually, he would leave. Like old Fernand the year before. But he’d been retiring. He was old. He had gone off with a fishing rod under his arm, a cuckoo clock and a return ticket to Arcachon, first class. Bernard would never go to Arcachon. To tell the truth, he didn’t give two hoots about Arcachon, there were so many places in the world where one would never set foot. What was there, anyway? A dune, a big Dune of Pilat which looked just like the desert, they said. It was people who’d never been there who said that. Everything looked like everything else, people couldn’t help comparing the things they knew to the things they didn’t know, so they could say they did know, that they’d been round the world without leaving their armchair. Six of one and half a dozen of the other, no cause for regrets. No gifts for sick employees, they’d prefer them just to clear off, preferably without a trace. Illness really annoyed them, it was bad for business, and they took a dim view of it. It lowered the troops’ morale.

      ‘Oh my poor Bonnet, and with your poor sister too! How much time off do you want?’

      Taking his cap between thumb and forefinger, Bernard sent it flying somewhere over the containers, like a frisbee. He had another one in the locker room. No harm done. The wind caressed his baldness. In the early days, when Yolande’s hair had begun to grow back he’d loved running his hand over her head. All the little hairs standing upright had given him a feeling like electricity in his palm. Her hair had grown back pure white. Yet she was only twenty. The shock of it, no doubt. Before that it was blonde, red blonde, Titian she used to call it.

       WITH SEVEN CENTIMETRES OF HAIR

      I have already told you how hard-working the Germans are. They make clothes and chocolate out of wood, and make lots of things from all sorts of materials which have not been used until now. They have now discovered it is possible to make felt hats out of the hair cut off by the hairdresser. It is likewise possible to make rugs from these hair clippings. Since hair has to be a certain length for this, however, people are not allowed to have it cut before it reaches this length. If the hairdressers are diligent and collect up the hair carefully, in one year almost 300,000 kilos of hair will be obtained. That sounds like a lot of hats and quite a few rugs.

      There it was in black and white, in the girls’ own annual La Semaine de Suzette, under the heading ‘Suzette across the world’, an old copy from 1932, worn to a shine, stained and yellowing, like everything from that era. Despite knowing it by heart, Yolande loved to spend hours leafing through it. She had done all the crosswords, every rebus and sewn the entire wardrobe for Bleuette (a 29-centimetre doll with real curled hair, eyes that shut, and unbreakable posable head). She loved the smell it gave off when the pages were opened, a musty smell of old biscuits. The Germans would be back. She wasn’t especially waiting for them but she knew they’d be back.

      It was the drop of water falling on her newly shaven head which had hurt her the most, a deafening sound like the stroke of a gong which had stayed with her ever since. As for everything else, she had let them get on with it, like a sheep, there was nothing else to be done with morons like that. For as long as they kept her in the café, amidst their yelling, she had been outside her body. She was a past master at switching off, what with her bastard of a father who would bawl her out for the slightest thing. She’d had enough time to practise. But on leaving the Café de la Gare, after they’d let her go, plop!, a large drop filled with all the absurdities of the past four years. It was as though the sky had been holding itself back ever since they’d dragged her out of her house, so as to fall in on her with all its might in that drop.

      Yolande didn’t even remember the Boche’s name. To tell the truth, it wasn’t so much for what she’d done with him that they’d shaved her head, more for what she’d refused to do with some of her ‘barbers’.

      What did it matter anyway? She had never liked them, they had never liked her. It had let her get shot of the damned lot of them once and for all. Besides, they must all be dead by now. But what had he been playing at in the lav for the past hour?

      ‘Bernard, what are you doing in there?’

      ‘Trying to unblock the toilet. How many times have I told you not to use newspaper!’

      ‘I didn’t have anything else. You forgot to get bog roll when you were at Auchan.’

      ‘There’s tissues.’

      ‘They’re no use to me, there’s nothing to read on them.’

      The sound of the flush drowned out Bernard’s reply. He emerged from the toilet, wiping his hands. He was wearing a white shirt, the collar gaping wide round his thin neck.

      ‘What are you dressed up like that for? Are you going to a wedding?’

      ‘No, it’s Jacqueline’s nephew’s First Communion. I told you that last night.’

      ‘You didn’t tell me a thing. You’re always up to something behind my back.’

      ‘For one thing, I did tell you, and for another, I’m not up to anything. I’m going to the Communion, that’s all.’

      ‘So basically you’re going to get sloshed and let her sucker of a husband foot the bill.’

      ‘Yoyo, that’s enough. I won’t be staying long. I’m done in but I’ve got no choice. I won’t be late back. The toilet’s unblocked and I’m begging you, please don’t put any more newspaper in there.’

      Yolande shrugged and buried herself in La Semaine de Suzette again. Bernard rolled down his sleeves, slipped on his jacket and planted a kiss on his sister’s neck.

      ‘Come on now, don’t sulk – I’ve got a present for you.’

      The pendant on its gilt chain was dangling over the annual like a pendulum. Catlike, Yolande caught at it.

      ‘What does that mean, “More than yesterday and much less than tomorrow”? Is it about the blocked toilet?’

      ‘No, it means I love you more than yesterday and much less than tomorrow.’

      ‘You’re going to love me less tomorrow?’

      ‘No, it’s the other way round.’

      ‘It’s