Hunting and Gathering (50 page)

 
Like a tortoise, Paulette stretched out her old wrinkly neck from her carapace:

“Pardon?”

“Oh, just something simple. I thought maybe veal chops with assorted vegetables. And strawberries for dessert. If they're good ones. Otherwise I'll make an apple pie. We'll have to see. A little Bourgueil from my friend Christophe to wash it all down and a good nap in the sun, what do you say?”

“And your work?” asked Philibert.

“Bah. I do enough as it is, don't I?”

“And how will we get there?” said Camille with a touch of irony. “In your top case?”

 
He took a sip of coffee and announced calmly: “I have a beautiful car waiting outside the door: that scum Pikou already baptized it twice this morning, the wheelchair is folded up in the back and I filled her up a little while ago.”

He put his cup down and reached for the breakfast tray: “C'mon. Get a move on, guys. I've got peas to shell, you know.”

Paulette fell out of bed. It wasn't her cerebellum; it was the hurry.

 
No sooner said than done, and what was done was repeated every week.

Like all their wealthy neighbors—but without them, since they were one day out of synch—they would get up very early on Sunday morning and come back on Monday night, their arms filled with victuals, flowers, sketches and a sweet fatigue.

 
Paulette revived.

 
There were times when Camille suffered from spells of lucidity and she would look things squarely in the face. This thing with Franck was truly pleasant. Let's be happy, let's be crazy, let's nail the doors shut, carve the bark, exchange our blood samples, not think about it anymore, let's discover each other and pluck daisy petals and suffer a bit and gather our rosebuds and yadda yadda yadda—but it could never work. She didn't feel like going into it at length, but their affair was bound to be a washout. There were too many differences, too much—anyway. Let's move on. She just couldn't put the wanton Camille side by side with the watchful Camille. One was always looking at the other, wrinkling her nose.

It was sad, but that was the way it was.

 
But sometimes it wasn't that way. Sometimes she managed to bring it all together and the two bickering Camilles would melt into a single silly and helpless Camille. Sometimes, he really won her over.

 
On that first day, for example. The business with the car, the nap, the good-natured little market and all that, that wasn't bad, but it got even better.

It was when he stopped on the way into the village and turned around: “Grandma, you should walk a little and do this last bit on foot with Camille. We'll go on ahead and open up the house in the meantime.”

That was a stroke of genius.

Because you should have seen her, the little dame in her quilted slippers, grasping the arm of her youthful cane, the same lady who for months had been sinking into the mud, how slowly she moved forward to start with, slowly slowly so as not to slip; then she raised her head, lifted her knees and loosened her grip . . .

You should have seen her so you could appreciate words as corny as
happiness
or
bliss
. Paulette's suddenly radiant face, her queenly bearing, those little nudges with her chin toward the furtive net curtains, and her implacable commentary on the state of people's window boxes or entryways.

How quickly she was walking all of a sudden, her blood flowing with memories and the smell of warm tar . . .

 
“Look, Camille, there's my house. There it is.”

87

CAMILLE just stood there.

“Well, what is it? What's wrong?” asked Paulette.

“This—this is your house?”

“Well, I should think so! Oh, just look at this jungle. Nothing's been cut back. What a sad state of affairs.”

“The house looks like mine . . .”

“Pardon?”

 
Her house: not the one in Meudon where her parents scratched each other's eyes out, but the one she used to draw for herself from the time she was old enough to hold a felt-tip pen. Her little imaginary house, the place where she sought refuge with her dreams of hens and metal biscuit boxes. Her Polly Pocket, her Barbie camping-car, her nest for the Marsupilamis, her blue house clinging to the hill, her Tara, her African farm, her promontory in the mountains.

 
Paulette's house was like a square and solid little woman, showing off and greeting you with one hand firmly planted on her hip and the knowing look of someone who gives herself airs. The kind who lowers her eyes and acts modestly when really, everything in her oozes happiness and serene satisfaction.

 
Paulette's house was a frog that wanted to become as big as an ox. A little railway guard's bungalow that was not afraid of competing with the grand châteaux of Chambord and Chenonceaux.

 
Dreams of grandeur, like a pushy little peasant woman proclaiming: “Take a good look, sister dear. My slate roof with that white limestone which nicely sets off the door- and window-frames—I've made it, don't you think?”

“I fear not.”

“Ah, you don't think? And my two dormer windows, there? Aren't they pretty, my finely carved freestone dormer windows?”

“Not in the least.”

“Not in the least? And the cornice? The cornice was carved by a journeyman!”

“You don't even come close, my dear.”

The timid country bumpkin became so upset that she veiled herself in a trellis, dolled herself up with unmatching flowerpots and pushed her disdain to the extreme—body piercing with a horseshoe above the door. Ha! They didn't have anything like it, those Agnès Sorels and other royal mistresses of Poitiers!

 
Paulette's house
existed.

 
Paulette didn't feel like going inside, she wanted to see her garden. Oh, woe . . . Everything's ruined . . . Weeds everywhere . . . And this is when we should be sowing . . . Cabbages, carrots, strawberries, leeks . . . All this fine soil gone to the dandelions. Oh, woe. Fortunately I have my flowers. Well, it's still a bit early, now. Where are the narcissi? Oh, there they are. And the daffodils? And here, Camille, bend down so you can see how pretty they are. I can't see them but they must be around here somewhere . . .

“Little blue ones?”

“Yes.”

“What are they called?”

“Grape hyacinths . . . Oh,” she moaned.

“What?”

“Well, they have to be divided.”

“No problem. We'll take care of it tomorrow. You'll tell me what to do.”

“You would do that?”

“Of course. And you'll see, I'll be a better student than I was in the kitchen.”

“And sweet peas too. They need planting. They were my mother's favorite flower.”

“Whatever you like.”

Camille felt her bag. Good, she hadn't forgotten her watercolors.

 
They rolled the wheelchair out into the sun and Philibert helped her sit down. Too much emotion.

 
“Look, Grandma, look who's here!”

Franck stood on the porch, a huge knife in one hand and a cat in the other. He glanced at the cat, then said, “Actually, I think I'd rather make you some rabbit!”

 
They brought out some chairs and picnicked in their coats. By dessert, they had undone their buttons and, eyes closed, head back, legs outstretched, they breathed in the good country sunshine.

 
The birds were singing, Franck and Philibert were squabbling:

“I say it's a blackbird.”

“No, a nightingale.”

“A blackbird!”

“A nightingale! Shit, this is where I live! I should know!”

“Stop,” sighed Philibert. “You spent all your time fiddling with mopeds, how could you possibly hear the birds? Whereas I was reading in silence, and had all the time in the world to become familiar with their dialects. The blackbird trills, and the robin's song is like little drops of water falling. I promise you, that is a blackbird. Can you hear how it's trilling? Pavarotti practicing his singing exercises.”

“Grandma. What is it?”

She was asleep.

“Camille. What is it?”

“Two penguins spoiling the silence.”

“Fine. If that's the way things are. Come, Philou dear, I'll take you fishing.”

“Ah? Uh . . . It's just that I . . . I am not very good at it, and I al- always tangle up . . .”

Franck laughed.

“Come on, Philou dear, come on. Come tell me about your lover so I can explain to you where the reel is.”

Philibert rolled his eyes in Camille's direction.

“Hey! I didn't say a thing!” she protested.

“No, it's not her. A little bird told me . . .”

 
The tall Mutt with his bow tie and monocle and the little Jeff with his pirate's headband walked off into the distance, arm in arm.

“Tell me, boy, tell Uncle Franck what sort of bait you've got. Very important, bait is, you know that? Because those beasties are not stupid, ooh, noo, not stupid at all.”

 
When Paulette woke up, the two women walked around the hamlet with the wheelchair, then Camille forced her to take a bath to warm up.

She was biting the inside of her cheek.

All this was not very reasonable.

Never mind.

 
Philibert lit a fire and Franck prepared dinner.

Paulette went to bed early and Camille sketched the boys playing chess.

“Camille?”

“Mmm?”

“Why do you draw all the time?”

“Because that's all I know how to do.”

“And what are you drawing right now?”

“The Bishop and the Knight.”

*

They decided that the boys would sleep on the sofa bed and Camille would take Franck's old bed.

 
“Uh,” protested Philibert, “would it not be better if Camille, umm, took the big bed?”

They looked at him with a smile.

“I may be nearsighted, to be sure, but not that nearsighted, you know.”

“No, no,” Franck countered, “she goes in my room. We're like your cousins: never before the wedding.”

 
Because he wanted to sleep with her in his childhood bed. Beneath his soccer posters and his motocross trophies. It would be neither very comfortable nor very romantic but it would be the proof that life was a good lay in spite of everything.

 
He'd been so bored in that room. So, so bored.

 
If someone had told him that one day he would bring home a princess and that he would lie down there, next to her, in this little brass bed where there was a deep hole, once upon a time, where he used to get lost as a child, and where in later years he would rub himself as he dreamt about creatures who were not nearly as pretty as she was . . . he would never have believed it. That pimply boy with his big feet and his bronze trophy above his head . . . No, it wasn't a foregone conclusion, not by a long shot . . .

 
Yes, life was a strange chef: years in the cold store and then, boom! From one day to the next, you're on the grill, dude!

“What are you thinking about?” asked Camille.

“Nothing important. Are you okay?”

“I can't believe you grew up here.”

“Why not?”

She sighed. “It's so far from everything. It's not even a village. There's . . . there's nothing here. Just little houses with little old people in the window. And this house, where nothing has changed since the fifties. I'd never seen a kitchen stove like that one. And the other stove takes up the whole room! And the toilet's out in the garden! How can a child grow and bloom here? How did you manage? What did you do to survive?”

“I went looking for you.”

“Stop . . . None of that, we said.”

“
You
said.”

“Come on.”

“You know how I managed, you went through the same thing. Except that I had nature. That was lucky for me. I was outdoors all the time. And Philou can say what he likes, it was a nightingale. I know so because my granddad told me and my granddad was like a singing magpie. He didn't need any bird whistles.”

“So how do you manage to live in Paris?”

“I don't live.”

“Isn't there any work down this way?”

“No. Nothing interesting. But if I have kids someday, I swear I won't let them grow up in the middle of traffic, that's for sure. A kid who doesn't have a pair of boots, a fishing rod and a slingshot isn't a real kid. Why are you smiling?”

“Nothing. You're sweet.”

“I'd rather you said something else about me.”

“You're never satisfied.”

“How many do you want?”

“Pardon?”

“Kids?”

“Hey,” she whined. “Are you doing this on purpose or what?”

“Hold on, I didn't!”

“I don't want any.”

“Really?” He sounded disappointed.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

He caught her by the neck and held her by force close to his ear.

“Tell me.”

“No.”

“Yes. Tell me. I won't tell anyone.”

“Because if I die, I don't want the child to be all alone.”

“Of course not. That's why you have to have lots of kids. And besides, you know . . .”

He squeezed her even tighter.

“You're not going to die, not you. You're an angel . . . and angels don't ever die.”

She was crying.