Gallic Noir. Pascal Garnier

Right, well, we’ll let you get on, Brice. All the best!’

      ‘You too, Simon. Give Myriam a kiss from me.’

      The way men talk to each other, with their pathetic little meaningless words and all that space between the lines …

      The cat was asleep on his lap, or pretending to be. It was like a loaf fresh from the oven, so warm and round and solid. A burning smell reached his nostrils.

      ‘Shit, the potatoes!’

      Because of that bloody phone call, Brice already regretted having invited his neighbour to dinner. Why did they all persist in building a future for him? He was sick of the lot of them! He had made a blanquette. That was a dish he usually managed not too badly. In the nick of time he rescued the potatoes by running them under the tap. The rest just needed to be heated up. Blanquette was always better reheated. He had started preparing it first thing that morning.

      This was the dish which had helped him win Emma. She had loved it; they’d eaten it for two days. What was Emma eating now?

      The wooden spoon slipped from his fingers. He felt irresistibly drawn to the plughole. He would have loved to dissolve, to disappear through the little holes and join her somewhere in the labyrinth of waste pipes, since that is where the dead live, down below.

      He held his hands under the tap for a long time as if trying to wash away the traces of some unknowable crime.

      ‘Set the table. I’ve got to set the table. Place mats, where are the place mats?’

      He had chanced on them the day before while looking for clean underpants. He thought he remembered roughly where they were. As he trod on the first step leading down to the garage, he stumbled on an object he had never come across before: a gilt metal bust, fairly heavy and some twenty centimetres high, of Camillo (his name was engraved on it), the unforgettable voice behind ‘Sag Warum’. What was the old fool doing there? Emma must have unearthed him in a junk shop for kitsch. Camillo … ‘Sag Warum’ … Straight away, the sleeve of the 45 which had got a generation dancing and flirting came back to him: a sad-looking, wiry-haired old charmer wreathed in smoke. The oh-so slow number they had been crazy about at the youth club in Porchefontaine. There was the bar covered in bamboo, the tartan lampshade perched on a Vat 69 bottle, the red lights … A poc-poc sound could be heard from the next room, where boys too spotty to have a hope of getting lucky were taking out their frustrations at the ping-pong table. Everyone swigged Orangina while the girls wiggled about to ‘La Bamba’.

      Afterwards they would go home on foot, or riding two to a moped, a Peugeot BB or a Flandria.

      *

      Whose past was this, rising in his throat with the acid juices of a bad hangover? What if all this was some huge con, designed to give him the illusion that he was alive? These memories might well have been crammed into his head when he was asleep, along with the date of the Battle of Marignano (1515), nine nines are eighty-one, words spelt with a circumflex accent, man’s first steps on the moon. What proof did he have of all that? And Mabel Hirsch, Dominique Porte, Myriam, Simon, even Emma! Nothing could be taken for granted. And wasn’t Blanche Montéléger a kind of mirage as well? Might not the fronts of the buildings in his street be held up by wooden props like on a film set, lasting for one take?

      Just one take … Only the bust of Camillo seemed substantial, because of its weight. He took it back up to the dining room and placed it in the centre of the table.

      ‘Your Beethoven is handsome.’

      ‘That’s not Beethoven; it’s Camillo.’

      ‘Ah. He’s still handsome.’

      ‘Can I give you some more, Blanche?’

      ‘No, thank you. It was very good.’

      ‘A little salad with the cheese, then.’

      Brice was having trouble standing, yet he had drunk only two or three glasses of an excellent wine Blanche had brought, a bottle which had escaped her father’s ruin. A black film appeared before his eyes while he was tossing the salad. He had to clutch the edge of the sink with both hands to stay on his feet. On the outside of the salad bowl he could see the curved reflection of Blanche behind him, eyes glued to the bust of the Teutonic crooner. During the meal they had exchanged only small talk. However, the pleasantries seemed gradually to take on a double meaning. By the time he had deciphered the hidden one, he had forgotten the first, with the result that he was always a beat behind in the conversation. Yet he wasn’t drunk; he was in fact terribly lucid. He turned the tap full on and splashed his face with ice-cold water.

      ‘Don’t you feel well?’

      ‘I’m fine. I suddenly felt hot, that’s all.’

      ‘Perhaps it’s the wine.’

      ‘Perhaps. Do excuse me. Here’s the salad. Now, there’s Picodon, and some Etorki—’

      ‘Is your wife coming back soon?’

      ‘I’m sorry? Oh, Emma. Yes, very soon. Camembert and—’

      ‘Where did you say she was?’

      ‘In Egypt.’

      ‘That’s a long way away.’

      ‘Er, yes. And Comté—’

      ‘I wouldn’t like to go so far away. I’d be afraid I wouldn’t find my way back again.’

      He was no longer in control of the cheeseboard. Everything became soft, blurred, opaque.

      The tiled floor was cool and yielding; his body was sinking into it. The Picodon rolled along the skirting board, the portion of Etorki was pointing towards his ear like the prow of a ship, and the Camembert came to a halt beneath a chair. Above him, two feet began dancing a peculiar jig and then there was nothing but a long fade to black.

      A limp piece of seaweed felt cool on his brow. Blanche had prominent cheekbones and unbelievably red lips, and as for her teeth! Almost as many as she had fingers – at least thirty.

      ‘Can you hear me? Can you hear me?’

      Of course he could hear her. Her mouth was ten centimetres from his nose. The ceiling beams seemed dangerously bowed. It was as if they were bearing some enormous weight: the whole sky, maybe.

      ‘What are you saying?’

      ‘Nothing. I didn’t say anything.’

      ‘Are you feeling better?’

      ‘I don’t know. I feel a bit cold.’

      As he propped himself up on one elbow, the whole world tipped sideways. The damp towel on his forehead fell on to his face. He took it off to find himself nose to nose with the cat, which was sniffing him in a battle of whiskers.

      Returning to a vertical position was a delicate operation. The chair he managed to get on to appeared bony but solid.

      ‘I think I was taken ill, wasn’t I?’

      ‘These things happen.’

      ‘I’m so sorry.’

      ‘I’m used to it. My father often fell down like that. He liked to drink.’

      ‘But I didn’t have anything to drink apart from the two or three glasses of wine with the meal.’

      ‘In that case it’s the solitude that doesn’t agree with you.’

      Blanche was every inch the nurse who saves the hero in a bad war film, wearing her heart on her sleeve and an indelible smile.

      ‘Well, if you’re feeling better, I’m going to go. It’s getting late.’

      Blanche slipped her coat on. It gave off a disturbing scent of nothingness, the same odour which had struck him on his arrival in the house: the inimitable perfume of emptiness.

      ‘Hang on a second,