Boxes: Shocking, hilarious and poignant noir. Pascal Garnier

– which necessitated brief commando raids on the supermarket, Brice did nothing. Not once had he gone up to the studio, nor into the other rooms, for that matter. He had adopted the stance of the monitor lizard: total immobility, eyelids half closed, prepared to wait for centuries for its prey – that is, a sign from Emma – to come along. He was becoming inured to boredom as others are to opium. Elbows on the table littered with dirty plates and cutlery, the remains of charcuterie in greasy paper, and wine glasses with a coating of red, he would leaf through his address book, yawning. Except for a few professional connections useful to his survival, he saw no one he should inform of his new contact details. Acquaintances, he had those, of course, but friends? They all seemed to belong to a bygone world, for which he no longer felt the slightest nostalgia. Under each of the names he scored through in red, a face would dissolve, its blurred outlines overflowing the page and calling to mind only faint, drowned continents. He experienced neither remorse nor regret. They had had their time. He had new friends now, called Martine, Blanche, Éliette, Babushka. Only women. Obviously, since in the daytime the village was transformed into a no man’s land. From dawn to dusk the able-bodied men were engaged in obscure and mysterious occupations. Occasionally you might come across an old man on a rickety bicycle in a back street, carrying a crate of cabbages or leeks. Otherwise it was women, nothing but women. Practical, solid women, women you could rely on, with short hair and loose-fitting clothes. In the mornings they would walk the children to school, picking up bread and the newspaper, exchanging two or three pieces of gossip before hurrying off to their respective homes to get on with the countless chores in house or garden which would keep them busy until evening. What might the inner lives of these housewives be like? By what dreams were they haunted? What secrets were they hiding?

      Brice was at that point in his reflections when a loose slip of paper drifted out of his address book. He recognised Emma’s rounded handwriting. She had made a note of the various places she wanted to put up shelves. It was ridiculous how fond women were of shelves. All those he had known had made him put them up when they moved in. It had to be some sort of initiation rite. To be honest, he had never really been excited by that sort of activity, but anything to drag himself out of the dull apathy into which his lunch of tripe à la Provençale had plunged him. It was time to take some measurements, he told himself, braving the garage in search of a tape measure.

      Currently the garage looked like nothing on earth. It was as if some sort of typhoon had laid waste the pyramids of boxes built with such care by the removal men. Odd items of clothing flopped like stranded seaweed over piles of crockery, books fanning open, and scattered CDs, which he had to pick his way over like a heron. The wreck resulted from the simple fact that, in order to lay your hands on some vital object (which very often was still not found), it was necessary to fight your way through a mountain of this, that and the other with an energy born of desperation. If the first few boxes had been meticulously packed and labelled, most of the others, marked ‘Misc.’, simply contained a jumble of things he had no idea even existed. And the more of them he uncovered, the more the confusion grew, until it was no longer possible to tell one thing from another. Only chance could be of any help. And it was thanks to chance that he came upon his DIY kit, after he had toppled a shoebox which hit the floor, pouring out a stream of seashells. He crushed some in regaining his balance, and set about making an inventory of his tools: one hammer minus its shaft, one twisted screwdriver, two baby-food jars (spinach and ham, apple and pear) half full of nails, screws, drawing pins, rubber bands and wall plugs, a Stanley knife without a blade, a gummed-up paint brush, rusty pincers, a ball of string, a roll of sticky tape, two jam-jar lids and, yes, a flexible steel rule, one of those that joiners carry proudly in the special little pocket on the right leg of their overalls. In view of the overwhelming task Emma had entrusted to him, these materials were clearly insufficient. For an hour he sat in the dark, bursting countless blisters of bubble wrap, unable to convince himself of the necessity of a sortie to the nearest Bricorama. DIY superstores were beyond the pale to him, as much a no-go area as a locker room. In any case, if he did have to steel himself to it, it was too late for today. That kind of expedition was undertaken in the early morning, like hunting or fishing. Anyway, he didn’t feel prepared – he had to make a list, take measurements. That was it, first the measurements!

      Armed with the steel rule, he began measuring anything and everything, the width of doors, the length of handles, his left forearm, the wingspan of a beetle squashed at the bottom of the sink that morning, the height of the sink, the depth of a box of camembert, and its diameter. And so on until late into the night, when he finally stopped, worn out, but dazzled at knowing the dimensions of his universe down to the last millimetre. It was then that he remembered all the catalogues and brochures which cluttered up his letter box every morning. Screw-It-All, DIY Super-Something – the bin was stuffed full of them. He ran to get them and began poring over them compulsively until dawn, when sleep carried him off to a universe inhabited by 2,000-watt blowtorches, tilting jigsaws, orbital sanders with dust bags and large-sized sanding sheets.

      

      The timbre of the church bell varied, depending on the wind. It ranged from the whine of an electric saw to the radiating waves of a gong. Thus it not only told the time, but what kind of day it was. Today was a gong day, with a heavy bronze sky that weighed down on you. Brice had indeed gone to Brico-whatsit as planned, but once he had parked in the car park and seen the never-ending coming and going of the half-man, half-bear creatures shifting heavy loads – wooden beams, metal rails, bags of cement, oil cans – he was gripped by a kind of terror which paralysed him for a good fifteen minutes. It brought back memories of military service, or the area around a stadium, or anywhere men were all together. He refused to turn back, however, and, in awkward imitation of the lumbering gait of a man who knows what he has to do, he ventured head down into the store.

      They had thought of everything here. There were all sorts of screws, hammers to drive nails into corners, saws for cutting on the diagonal, glues for sticking anything to everything, spiral staircases that could be put up in ten seconds, paints to hide every sin, real wood, fake wood, marvellous tools for weird and wonderful purposes, and all of them beautiful, red, yellow, green and chrome, like Christmas toys. Brice had no idea what to choose. He went for a five-kilo sledgehammer on sale for next to nothing. It was the first time he had bought a five-kilo sledgehammer. He was more than a little proud. Emma would certainly have approved of his purchase.

      Nothing is as soothing as watching a saucepan of water come to the boil. Brice had just plunged two eggs into the merrily moving bubbles when the phone rang for the first time since he had lived there. The sound was so incongruous that he reacted only at the fourth ring. The girl on the line was nervously offering him a wonderful fitted kitchen. Brice declined, and thanked her. No sooner had he hung up than the phone was gripped anew by the same noisy fever, making the house tremble from cellar to attic.

      ‘Hello, is that Brice?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘It’s Myriam. How are you?’

      That was quite a question his mother-in-law had landed on him.

      ‘Oh, fine, fine.’

      ‘You’re sure?’

      ‘Well, you know, when you’ve just moved into a new house it’s always a little …’

      ‘Oh, I quite understand. You know, Simon and I are thinking of you.’

      ‘That’s kind.’

      ‘It’s all so … so … We were thinking of dropping by this weekend.’

      ‘Oh, I’d love that, but the house isn’t ready yet. There’s still a lot to do and …’

      ‘Exactly. We could give you a hand. You know how keen on DIY Simon is. And I’m sure you could use a woman for your washing and cooking. We all know what a man on his own is like.’

      ‘Honestly, I’m managing very well. I’m just putting up some shelves. Emma would be cross to think I’d entertained you in a building site. I’ve no wish to get told off when she comes back.’

      ‘Brice.’