Now and then he wondered if the sight of Trevor’s decline, that ruined body, that panting breath, those endless jeers, was intended to test him: what would he do this time, faced with such obvious signs of distress? What would he fail to grasp now?
But he rejected that suspicion, wearily telling himself that he’d never promised to love or protect this young man. And hadn’t he been punished enough as it is, accepting that his life had turned so unpleasant, accepting that it might never be any more serene or agreeable, accepting that he was irreparably guilty of betraying Clarisse Rivière?
That he accepted, yes, but he admitted it to no-one. He’d sensed that his daughter Ladivine blamed herself, and wanted him to do likewise. He refused. He thought he’d be taking the easy way out, seeking consolation for his shattered soul, if he gave in to the temptation of mutual despair and shared tears. He was bitterly sorry he couldn’t give Ladivine that gift, an admission of guilt, but he thought it ignoble to give up any part of that guilt. It was his fault and he knew it, so why seek to lighten the punishment?
He wanted to be alone with his remorse, with his difficult days. He did not want to suffer less. He wanted what he deserved.
What poor Ladivine thought she had to feel guilty for was nothing.
He believed he’d told her that one day on the phone, unless he’d thought it but never said it, he no longer knew.
What could you possibly have done, so far away, with your children, your own life to lead? Could you have prevented your mother from seeing that guy, from spending time with anyone she pleased?
How he hoped he’d said that! He vowed to telephone her that evening and make sure, and ask how the holiday had gone, if she’d met the Cagnacs, if she’d had a little fun in that country he’d suggested.
He felt an odd hope stirring inside him, the hope that she might have something to tell him. Because he had made several visits to that country, though in the beginning he knew nothing about it, had never been told of it, ostensibly to look into the market for imported cars, but in truth cars were the last thing on his mind.
He did not know it, but he was awaiting a revelation, and that revelation never came, and only when he found that nothing had come, that he was as empty and unquiet as when he arrived, did he realise he’d been awaiting it.
He put on his glasses and smiled vaguely at Trevor, who was making his usual dish of pasta with cream and lardons, facing the stove, not looking at him. He stood up, put his plate and cutlery in the dishwasher.
He thought the kitchen looked dowdy, messy and sad, and yet he’d put more money into this one than any of the flat’s four rooms.
He’d had it completely remodelled, with a slate floor and pale grey glass tiles on the walls. The built-in elements were finished in dark grey, the table was a glass plate with black metal legs.
In the early days, he and Clarisse found that kitchen so beautiful and so elegant that they scarcely dared use it, and frying was out of the question for months.
And yet here as usual was Trevor browning his lardons on high heat, spattering grease on the gleaming black hob and the little tiles around it.
All sorts of things that had no place in a kitchen cluttered the marble worktop and the corner bench, its pale-rose patterned chintz now dark with wear and heavily food-stained: DVD cases, flyers, a scarf, plastic bags carefully folded in four.
The fact that Clarisse or Trevor could go to the trouble of folding a plastic bag and then simply leave it on a chair or on top of the refrigerator, as if the very minimal act of folding it made it a pleasing sight, wearied Richard Rivière beyond measure.
He had an awful feeling that the irreparable loss of his kitchen’s purity was a sign of his own life’s disintegration.
He pictured the bathroom, which had also required much thought and tens of thousands of euros, and those months-long deliberations had plunged him into a state of happy beleaguerment that he didn’t regret in the least.
Spending hours on the Internet comparing total immersion tubs, sinks carved from a single slab of sequoia, mysterious, subtle taps, he felt intensely aware of his being, of his tense, quivering body, of his mind working to judge, to eliminate, to select, with a glorious self-assurance and the faint, thrilling terror that he might be spending far too much money.
But little matter, he applied for loans and inevitably got them, because he made a good living.
And that feeling of being at once outside and fully inside himself, in his self’s heady depths, now suddenly open and luminous but unburdened by care and remorse, by unease and difficult days — however ephemeral, that feeling was beyond price.
What did his magnificent turquoise faience-tiled bathroom look like now?
He knew all too well, and he bridled in advance at what would be waiting for him when, in a few moments, he finished his coffee and went off to brush his teeth, comb his hair: towels tossed haphazardly over the heated rails, wadded against the wall behind them, draped any which way in front, Trevor’s toothbrush abandoned on the glass shelf, worn, dishevelled, ill-rinsed, and Trevor’s clothes, which he never dropped into the Grand Hôtel laundry basket but always to one side of it, and the glass shower door that Trevor never wiped down, white with water stains.
It was beneath him to care so deeply about such trifles, Richard Rivière told himself. And yet. .
Though he accepted the meticulous, unstoppable demolition of his life because he’d baulked at the strange labour of knowing Clarisse Rivière and because, in his cowardice, he’d let that woman he once so loved race unhindered towards her perdition, he could not bear the thought of Trevor, and to a lesser degree Clarisse, carelessly or wilfully befouling that existence’s setting, for it could be painful and dark, but absolutely not dirty and disordered.
“Kind of weird that Mum’s also named Clarisse, though, isn’t it?”
Trevor’s eyes were glued to his plate, his tone hurried and gruff.
“It’s a common enough name, you know,” Richard stammered.
Flustered, he gave up on making himself a cup of coffee. He left the kitchen with the disagreeable feeling that he was running away, and the suspicion that Trevor knew it.
No sooner was he outside than the mountain pounced on his back. He forbade himself to look at it. Nonetheless, the image of that
mountain sternly poised against the bright, blinding sky seemed to
have fixed itself on his retina, because he could still see it now, even
without raising his eyes, and he could feel its fearsome weight on his
spine, its cold claws on the back of his neck, like a corpse latching
onto him before he could shake free, before he could even think. An aching homesickness for his native Gironde, a clement place
without snowy slopes or skiers, put a lump in his throat, so fleetingly
that he only had time to realise where it had come from. His back hurt.
Stooping, he started out to the car park. He’d sold the four-wheel