At midday Oradi went to the ships cook and said in Inglish Im hungri. — Eh whats that? The captin hurrid in and said to the cook dont you understand. — No. — Well in that case you cant understand inglish. — No I dont. — He says hes hungri. — All rite said the cook if your hungri Ill give you a cat. — What, to eat? — Eh, no, just to show frendly. Oradi went off furius.
Saying Goodbye
Oradi said goodbye to his friends and went abord the Triglant. The siren blew and they left, Oradi lowerd a canoe into the sea with himself in it, he made a runing bowline and tied the canoe to the bote. He stade at sea 29 days. And when he got to north Africa he told them all his advenchers.
When he had finished reading, Besson dropped the small yellowing exercise-book back on the table, amid a muddle of papers and old pencil-stubs. Then his gaze lost itself in the soft shadows that filled the room, and he began to dream a whole series of minuscule adventures. Without stirring a muscle, in a mood close to tender compassion, he sat and watched every object rise and move in unison, miraculously freed from their ancient lethargy. The furniture acquired the texture of rubber, or marshmallow, and melted slowly across the floor. Grass sprouted, green and fresh, the walls silently contracted, sheets of paper covered themselves with signs and symbols. Fabrics blossomed in a flash with strange incongruous flowers, their tremulous petals spreading across the material like so many blots. An imperceptible breeze passed through the room, blowing the curtains out horizontally. Everything was floating, in suspension. At peace with himself now, all fear gone, having passed far beyond the roads that lead to life or death, François Besson similarly surrendered himself to the wind, let it bear him up and away. He felt the wings of the elements caress and sustain him. The earth in this moment was no longer viscous, no longer needed to engulf beasts and men. Its voracious belly was full to satiety. A few more hours, a few more years perhaps, and it might be possible to break loose from it like this, easily, without effort or suffering, one jump with feet together — So that day, having conquered the force of gravity, Besson spent a long time as he floated in air observing the reddish surface of the floor, seeing it swim up towards him, swollen and angry as an incoming tide.
Chapter Six
Meeting with the redheaded woman — Besson tells her fortune — Brief discussion with a child of four and a half called Lucas — A respectable man — How François Besson and the redheaded woman found themselves lying on the linoleum floor of the kitchen — Another night
ON the sixth day François Besson met the redheaded woman. She was a tall girl, five foot eight or thereabouts, pale-complexioned, and her great brown eyes had dark smudges under them. Her figure, and the absence of lines on her face, suggested an age somewhere between twenty-five and thirty, though she could have been younger — or, indeed, older. She was sitting in the bar where Besson had gone to have a beer, staring into space, doing nothing. When Besson sat down next to her she gave him one quick glance and looked away again. Besson lit a cigarette and began to talk to her. She answered him easily and calmly, just as though they had been sharing a compartment on a train journey. Besson offered her a cigarette: she took it with her left hand, and two silver bracelets jangled together on her arm as she did so. She smoked in an unhurried fashion, occasionally flicking her ash over the edge of the table, since the ashtray (an advertising handout) was stuffed with sugar-lump wrapping-papers. It also contained a long drinking-straw made out of pink plastic, bent into three and bearing traces of lipstick at one end. There was an endless stream of people in and out of the bar, all talking, laughing, downing their drinks. The waiters shouted their orders right across the room—‘One pint of draught beer!’ ‘Two espressos and a plate of ham!’
The chair opposite Besson and the redheaded woman was occupied by an old lady wrapped up in a woollen shawl, who sat there knitting busily. Besson felt pleased at having found someone like the redheaded woman to talk to in this bar. It filled him with confidence, he was the equal of all these other people around him. He was no longer on his own, he had become the hero of an adventure. At last something was going to happen, though exactly what he had no idea. But just how this encounter would turn out did not matter: the point was that it had a future, of one sort or another. One might endeavour to predict it, sitting there over one’s beer, playing with the underside of the paper cup, casting a curious eye over one’s fellow-customers — but an hour later the whole thing was quite liable to be over. The redheaded woman would get up, smile, shake hands, and say: ‘That was nice. Goodbye for now. See you some time.’ Or maybe they would leave the bar together, and he would walk her as far as her bus-stop. One could even try to guess her name. Maybe it was Catherine. Catherine Roussel. Or Irene Kendall. Or Vera Inson. Age: twenty-eight. Occupation: laboratory assistant. Born in Casablanca, Morocco. Mother’s first name: Eléonore.
Besson said: ‘What’s your name?’
‘Marthe,’ said the redheaded woman.
‘Marthe what?’
‘Marthe Janin.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-five,’ she told him.
Besson watched a man and woman pass by their table. Then he went on with his interrogation.
‘Profession?’
‘Come again?’ Martha said.
‘I mean, do you have a job?’
‘Oh, I see. No, I don’t have a job. Why are you asking me all these questions?’
‘No particular reason. Where were you born?’
‘Here,’ the woman said. ‘What are you up to? Want to tell my fortune?’
‘Maybe,’ Besson said. The hardest question still remained to be asked. He preferred to prepare the ground for it in advance.
‘Do you live with your parents?’
‘No,’ said Marthe, and quickly added: ‘Just with my son.’
Instantly Besson backed his hunch on the boy’s first name: it would be Patrick.
‘What’s he called?’ he asked.
‘Who, my son?’
‘Yes.’
‘Lucas.’
Besson stubbed out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. Finally he said: ‘And what about your mother?’
She stared at him in surprise.
‘What?’
‘I mean, what’s she called?’
‘Do you really need to know that?’ she said.
‘It’s essential if I’m going to tell your fortune,’ Besson said.
She grinned. ‘My mother’s dead,’ she told him. ‘But she had the same name as me, Marthe. There.’
Besson relaxed for a moment. He sat staring into his glass of beer without saying anything. The woman touched his arm.
‘Well? I’m waiting.’
‘What for?’
‘My fortune, of course. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already?’