Sometimes when I go to bed I read a page or two of a book and don’t even have time to realize I haven’t understood a word. Other nights I can read a good ten pages or so, which is no small feat for a little guy like me. That night I was reading If This Is a Man, because back in September that’s what the youngster who comes to Le Cercle with his black clothes and his cellphone was reading, and his eyes were shining the whole time. And then, you’ve got to keep up on things. In that respect my profession’s not particularly challenging. There are the horse races, of course, and car wrecks and crimes, and drunk talk, and sex talk, and customers who get caught by the radar on the riverside roads or coming off the Asnières bridge, and then the occasional troubles at closing time, but apart from that we don’t have too much to ponder. If This Is a Man is the story of a Jewish Italian resistance fighter who lived through the concentration camps, he wanted to bear witness. He worked as a chemist to keep body and soul together. I’d asked the young man the author’s name, and he seemed very excited to give it to me, he even wrote it down on the cardboard coaster I’d handed him, I’ve still got it in my apartment. He was some guy, that Monsieur Primo Levi. There’s somebody I would have loved to have as a customer. It stirred me up to see the kid in such a state. I read twenty-one pages. I would even have kept going if I hadn’t had to go back to Le Cercle early to keep an eye on developments. Le Cercle was closed, and no one had thought to unlock the door for me. My friend Pierrot, lost in a bad dream. Inside I could see more and more dead leaves all over the big gray and white floor tiles. I knocked on the glass door and fumbled with the key, but all around it seemed like people were avoiding me. I thought I saw Sabrina and her two kids, but when I came closer to ask what was happening she got scared and started to run, her two children were pulling at her to make her hurry up. There was no sound in my dream, even though I ended up yelling like crazy. And that was that. I woke up at six in the morning covered in sweat, I went to drink a glass of water and pee. I picked up Primo Levi’s book again, I was hoping to sleep a little longer, but nothing doing. Pierrot, you’ve got to get up. I was sick of that stupid dream, and especially of waking up afterwards. Would I never know how it ended, assuming it did?
Still, that night went by better than the one before. It made me happy to be among the first ones up in my building. The street was lit up by the three lights under my windows. Sometimes I hope for another beautiful day as I’m opening my shutters, I can feel it taking shape inside me, and I’m not talking about the weather. I get up at six, which leaves me more than an hour to myself before I set off for work, and I try to make the most of it.
It started to rain when I left my building at seven. I looked into Le Voltigeur on the Rue Alibert to see if my pal Roger was there, but no, only his boss, who’d just cranked up the metal shutter. We waved hello. Then I picked up the pace, because even with my umbrella I could feel my pantcuffs getting wet. I like walking in the morning, but this time I heard the 161 bus coming up behind me, and since I was almost at the Mathurins stop I raised my hand to get on. There was already quite a crowd. The office workers get off at the station to take their train, the others go on to the warehouses and the last few factories a little further along, we’re all together, just a little tired. That beast’s easier to spot in the morning than at night. Sometimes it seems like it’s been with us since the day of our birth, here in the 161 bus. And then no, after all, you catch a glance, a face, and things are much better than you think.
I sat down in the very front of the bus, I looked out the window, I can’t even say I saw much, my reflection maybe, but that film’s the same every time. I was going to be very early for work. That’s what I’d decided to do, just in case he wasn’t there and she hadn’t come down. In my mind he’d be coming back in the evening, after calling to let us know. I also thought about my mother, two stops before mine. Sometimes I could go for days without thinking of her. Other times, in spite of my fifty-six years, she showed up day after day, at all hours, to tell me “Work hard in school,” “Don’t forget to buy bread,” “Don’t touch yourself like that Pierrot, you’ll make yourself sick,” she’d never stopped watching over me, especially now that I live alone.
“Where are you going, Pierrot?”
I think I must have smiled like an idiot, because this time she was coming to visit me early in the morning. I told her “Don’t worry, mama, I’m just going to work,” but then I put a quick stop to that because I’d made eye contact with a woman I often saw early in the morning at Le Cercle. I’d talk to her later, I told myself. I gave the woman a nod, luckily she hadn’t heard anything. We take the same bus almost every morning, but we’ve never talked. She always used to order a cup of coffee with a little eye-opener on the side, but a few months earlier she’d got a new hairstyle, cut short and dyed blonde, and she’d given up on the calvados. I’d never seen her there with a guy, maybe there wasn’t one? I liked her better before, even if she seemed a little more worn. I thought she looked pretty good this way, but in my head she was still the woman who drank a couple of calvas before lighting her first cigarette of the day and heading off to the Asnières station for her train. She’s one of the people I know, just because of my job. Without really meaning to be, we’re kind of alike. But we keep to ourselves, we say hello and goodbye, and that’s it. Why not, in the end?
I got off with the last few people at the stop by the station, Le Cercle was still locked up tight. There was a light on in their apartment. I’d open the place this morning, and then, a little later, the boss would come down with his sour face on, looking like an overweight Buddha, and everything would go back to normal. What would become of Sabrina? She was backed up against the wall in her wobbly high heels, with a kid under each arm. I cranked up the shutter and turned the key in the lock by the floor, the rain was really coming down now, I had to close my umbrella. I took off my raincoat as soon as I got inside, once I’d started up the Lavazzo and turned on the lights at the box in the kitchen. I kept my sweater on, it still wasn’t warm enough for that. I was glad to be alone, I didn’t feel like talking. When the boss opened he was always a little chattier than usual till eight in the morning, after that he pretty much kept his mouth shut, apart from the standard how-are-you-how-are-yous with the customers or phone calls from his pals. I gave the bar a good wipe with the mop rag. It didn’t really need it, but that was something I liked doing, so why not indulge? You really are a useful thing in other people’s lives when you’re a barman. The customers don’t realize it outright, of course, but when all’s said and done, in good times and bad, there’s always a bar in their lives, and a barman, a bit wizened but very professional, to serve them whatever they want, and then when they’re done they snap out of their little reverie, unless they’ve been thinking of nothing at all, and when it comes time to go the barman has told them thank you, goodbye, and have a good day. You’re rambling, Pierrot. I ran out to get the croissants and baguettes for breakfast. The bakery’s right on the corner. The last baker died of the same illness I had three years ago, or so I’ve heard. I didn’t stand around twiddling my thumbs for long. Right away I served three separate coffees, one of them an espresso with extra water, and another with a dash of milk, plus one full breakfast with tea.