Boxes: Shocking, hilarious and poignant noir. Pascal Garnier

using his head as an anvil.

      

      ‘That’s not too hot, is it?’

      ‘No, it’s fine.’

      Martine’s strong fingers were not only massaging his scalp, they were giving his brain a good kneading, and Brice was thoroughly enjoying it. The thousand and one domestic worries which had in recent days sprung forth from his skull like water through the holes in a colander were now merging into a soft paste not dissimilar to the origin of the world, when every embryo was unaware even of its own existence.

      ‘Right, if you’d like to follow me …’

      He let himself be shown to the swivel chair and draped in a huge black nylon robe which completely obscured the lines of his body.

      ‘Short?’

      ‘Er … Yes, well, not too short.’

      ‘It’s strange. I feel I know you.’

      ‘But it’s the first time I’ve been here.’

      ‘Yes, you said. It must be from seeing all those faces go past. In the end they merge into one.’

      He surrendered himself to Martine’s hands while his upturned eyes sneaked a good look at her in the mirror facing him. She had reached the age when a woman’s sugar turns to honey. An inviting bosom in a tight black T-shirt with a spangled Pierrot embroidered on it formed the base to a neckless doll-like face plastered with make-up which gave her plump cheeks the shiny satin look of artificial fruit. The features were brought to life by two obsidian pupils shaded by extravagant false lashes, with a piercing gaze that went straight to your wallet. Two-tone hair, platinum blonde and Day-Glo pink, crowned a forehead crossed by a worry line which no face cream could shift. A garlic-tinged accent emerged from lips picked out with a thick garnet line.

      ‘Well now, so you’re the one who’s taken the Loriol house?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘It’s a beautiful house, and renovated top to bottom. I must say, a builder like Loriol knows how to go about it. And he’s a shrewd one, knows all the tricks. If you’d seen how it was before, a real wreck. I have to say, old Janin, the previous owner, was no good for anything after his wife died, let everything go to rack and ruin. He spent more time in the cellar than he did in the rest of the house, if you take my meaning. Poor old thing … Loriol must have got it for a song.’

      The cellar. He had been down there for the first time the day before. A lovely vaulted cellar with walls covered in saltpetre and a trodden earth floor. He had stayed there for some time, sitting on a crate, looking at the double ceiling hook which in olden days had been used for hanging the pig. By concentrating hard enough he had ended up seeing the pig, head downwards, split open, offering up the unfathomable mystery of its entrails as in a Soutine painting. Seized by an irresistible force, he had grasped the iron hooks and, with knees bent, had swung there until his hands lost their grip. For three days he had been putting off the countless administrative procedures entailed by a house move: electricity, telephone, change of address, gas, water, bank … Normally it was Emma who took care of these chores. She would have had it all sorted in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, whereas he broke into a sweat, eyes watering, ears buzzing, if faced with the simplest form to fill in. No way out but to go and hang from a hook in a cellar ceiling. Old Janin must have felt this same deep distress after his wife died.

      ‘Did he hang himself?’

      ‘No, his liver gave out on him.’

      ‘Oh. What was his wife’s name?’

      ‘Marthe, I think.’

      ‘And were they very much in love?’

      ‘No, they used to row the whole time, but that’s normal. There you are, all nice and handsome.’

      In the mirror Martine was holding up behind him, he noticed the skin on his neck reddened by shaving burn. The neck of a hanged man.

      ‘That’s perfect, thank you.’

      A cloud of white hairs floated up round him as Martine relieved him of the robe.

      ‘You’ve a good type of hair, thick but slightly dry. I’ve a very effective lotion, if you’d like.’

      ‘Um, OK. Why not?’

      Every time he got out of the hands of a hairdresser he was in such a vulnerable state that he could be sold anything at all, at no matter what price – something those seasoned professionals were not slow to sniff out and exploit.

      While Brice was waiting for his change, a curious apparition made the little bell on the door ring.

      ‘Hello, Blanche. I’ll be right with you.’

      Blanche lived up to her name, being dressed in white from the toes of her shoes right up to her strange crocheted lace cap which reminded him of a tea cosy. All in white, but an off-white bordering on old ivory. She was like a bride who had been in the shop window for too long. It was difficult to put an exact age on her; she could have been anywhere between sixteen and sixty, depending on whether you looked at her eyes, which were like those of a timid child, or her hands, gloved in skin like puckered silk.

      Instead of making a beeline for the dog-eared magazines littering the coffee table, as any other female client would, she stayed standing, twisting a little purse embroidered with pearl beads in her impossibly delicate fingers. Her eyes were fixed on Brice. It made him vaguely uneasy.

      ‘So, Monsieur. Welcome to Saint-Joseph!’

      Outside, the north wind grabbed the back of his neck with its icy fingers. Through the curtain veiling the window, he saw Martine take Blanche by the arm and lead her gently to the washbasin, where she sat down, leaning back so abruptly that it looked as if an invisible hand had just snapped her in two. On his way from the hair salon to the post office he could not rid himself of that immaculate vision imprinted like a negative on his retina.

      In the post office, three elderly ladies were waiting at the counter – one big, one middle-sized and one small, all so alike it was tempting to think of slipping them one inside the other like Russian dolls. The saving in space would have been advantageous as the place was minuscule. Four customers was definitely one too many. Brice squeezed himself up against the wall as best he could, between a missing persons notice depicting a curly-headed cherub and an advertisement for a loan with unbeatable rates. One after the other, each babushka exchanged with the postmistress news of their respective states of health. The talk was of hernia bandages, support stockings, varicose veins, rheumatism, prolapses, and other of life’s small mishaps, punctuated by the sound of documents being stamped, and this for a good half-hour. At last it was his turn. Not yet on sufficiently intimate terms with the postmistress to mention the ravages wrought by time on his own body, he confined himself to asking for a packet of cards, intended to inform people of his change of address. Éliette (that was the postmistress’s sweet name) had the ashen complexion of a consumptive heroine. No doubt her screen was not up to the job of protecting her from her customers’ germ-ridden breath. She broke into a wan smile as she handed him a bundle of cards and, raising an eyelid like a withered iris petal, turned a watery gaze towards him.

      ‘Are you the gentleman who’s taken over the Loriol house?’

      ‘Yes, that’s me.’

      ‘Do you have relatives here?’

      ‘But … No … Why?’

      ‘You look like a gentleman who used to live here. The family goes back generations. Welcome to Saint-Joseph, then.’

      He thought he detected a touch of irony in the little phrase which she breathed out like a last sigh.

      

      The days