Breaking Away. Anna Gavalda

how many empty bottles we have at the end, we always come to the same conclusion. That if we are like this – silent and determined but absolutely useless when it comes to bigots like him – it is precisely because we haven’t got a shred of self-confidence. We don’t love ourselves.

      We don’t believe in ourselves, that is.

      We don’t think we’re all that important.

      Not even important enough to argue the toss with old man Molinoux. Or to believe for one second that our protesting could ever have any influence on his line of thought. Or to hope that a gesture of disgust like tossing our napkins onto the table or knocking over our chairs might have the slightest impact on the ways of the world.

      What would that good taxpayer have thought if we had given him a piece of our mind and left his house with our heads held high? He would simply have battered his wife all evening with remarks like: ‘What complete pricks. Total pricks. I mean, have you ever seen such a hopeless bunch of pricks?’

      And why should the poor woman be subjected to that?

      There were twenty people enjoying themselves – who were we to spoil the party?

      So you might say that it isn’t cowardice. You might allow that it’s actually wisdom. Acknowledge that we know when to stand back. That we don’t like to make things worse. That we’re more honest than all those people who protest all the time but never manage to change a thing.

      Or at least that’s what we tell each other, to make ourselves feel better. We remind each other that we’re young and already we have no illusions. And that we’re head and shoulders above the ant-hill so stupidity can’t really reach us up here. We don’t really give a damn. We have other things, each other for a start. We are rich in other ways.

      All we have to do is look inside.

      We have a lot going on in our heads. Stuff that’s light years from that man’s racist ranting. There’s music, and literature. There are walks to go on, hands to hold, secret dens. Bits of shooting stars scribbled onto credit card receipts, pages torn out of books, happy memories and horrible ones. Songs with refrains that are just on the tip of our tongues. Messages we’ve kept, blockbusters we loved reading, marshmallow teddy bears and scratched vinyl records. Our childhood, our lonely times, our first feelings and plans for the future. All that staying up late, and all those doors held open for us. Buster Keaton’s antics. Armand Robin’s brave letter to the Gestapo and Michel Leiris’s battering ram of clouds. The scene where Clint Eastwood turns round and says, ‘One thing though … don’t kid yourself, Francesca …’ and the one in The Best of Youth where Nicola Carati stands up for his patients at the trial of their torturer. The dances on Bastille Day in Villiers. The scent of quinces in the cellar. Our grandparents, Monsieur Racine’s sabre and gleaming breastplate, our provincial fantasies and nights before our exams. Our favourite comics: Mam’zelle Jeanne’s raincoat when she climbs on behind Gaston on his motorbike, or François Bourgeon’s Les Passagers du vent. The opening lines of the book by André Gorz dedicated to his wife, which Lola read to me last night on the telephone when we’d just spent ages saying we were finished with love, yet again: ‘You’re about to turn eighty-two. You’re two inches shorter, you weigh only seven stone, and you are still beautiful, gracious and desirable.’ Marcello Mastroianni in Dark Eyes; gowns by Cristóbal Balenciaga. The way the horses would smell of dust and dry bread when you got off the school bus in the evening. The Lalannes, each working in their own studio with a garden in between. The night we spray-painted Rue des Vertus, and the time we slipped a stinking herring skin under the terrace of the restaurant where that stupid ass Mr Teflon worked. And the time we rode on the back of a truck, face down on sheets of cardboard, and Vincent read us all of Robert Linhart’s L’Établi out loud. Simon’s face when he heard Björk for the first time in his life, or Monteverdi, in the car park of the Macumba.

      So much silliness, and regret, and the soap bubbles at Lola’s godfather’s funeral …

      Our lost loves, our torn-up letters, and our friends on the end of the telephone. All those unforgettable nights, and how we were forever rearranging our stuff, and all the strangers we knocked into all those times we had to run to catch a bus that wasn’t going to wait for us anyway.

      All of that, and more.

      Enough to keep our souls alive.

      Enough to know not to try to talk back to morons.

      Let them die.

      They will anyway.

      They’ll die all alone while we’re at the cinema.

      That’s what we tell ourselves so we’ll feel better about not having got up and left the table that day.

      Then there’s the obvious fact that all of it – our apparent indifference, our discretion and our weakness, too – is our parents’ fault.

      It’s their fault – or should I say it’s thanks to them.

      Because they’re the ones who taught us about books and music. Who talked to us about other things and forced us to see things in a different light. To aim higher and further. But they also forgot to give us confidence, because they thought that it would just come naturally. That we had a special gift for life, and compliments might spoil our egos.

      They got it wrong.

      The confidence never came.

      So here we are. Sublime losers. We just sit there in silence while the loudmouths get their way, and any brilliant response we might have come up with is nipped in the bud, and all we’re left with is a vague desire to be sick.

      Maybe it was all the whipped cream we ate.

      I remember how one day we were all together, the whole family, on a beach near Hossegor – because we rarely went anywhere together as a family – family with a capital F, that wasn’t really our style – our pop (our father never wanted us to call him Papa and so when people were surprised we would say it was because of May 1968. That was a pretty good excuse, we thought, ‘May ’68’, like a secret code; it was as if we were saying, ‘It’s because he’s from planet Zorg’) – so our pop, as I was saying, must have looked up and said, ‘Now children, you see this beach?’

      (Any idea how huge the Côte d’Argent is?)

      ‘Well, do you know what you are, you children, on the scale of the universe?’

      (Yeah! Kids who aren’t allowed any doughnuts!)

      ‘You are this grain of sand. Just this one, right here. And nothing more.’

      We believed him.

      Our loss.

      ‘What’s that smell?’ said Carine.

      I was spreading Madame Rashid’s paste all over my legs.

      ‘What … what on earth is that stuff?’

      ‘I’m not sure exactly. I think it’s honey or caramel mixed with wax and spices.’

      ‘Oh my God, that’s horrible! That is disgusting! And you’re going to do that here?’

      ‘Where else can I do it? I can’t go to the wedding like this. I look like a yeti.’

      My sister-in-law turned away with a sigh.

      ‘Be very careful of the seat. Simon, turn off the air conditioning so I can open the window.’

      Please, I muttered, my teeth clenched.

      Madame Rashid had wrapped this huge lump of what looked like Turkish delight in a damp cloth. ‘Next time come see me, I take care of you. I do your little love garden. After you see how he like it, your man, when I make it all gone, he go crazy with you and he give you anything you want,’ she assured me with a wink.

      I smiled. Just a faint smile. I’d just made a mark on the armrest and was juggling Kleenex. What a mess.

      ‘And