But I was sure all the same, so that was that.
“If you want my opinion, Pierrot, you’re taking all this too much to heart.” He looked at his watch. “Well, I’ve got to be moving on, things to do. Drive you home?”
We shook Slimane’s hand, he’s a very decent guy too, come to mention it.
After all these years as a barman, everyone I know’s in my own line of work. My friend Roger, my friend Pierrot, and then the others. They come and go, for the most part. Let the world turn around us, beyond our spotless bars, in the end every day will be carefully wiped away to make room for the next. That’s why I make myself watch the late-night news on Channel 3, you can’t just forget everything, after all. I promised myself I wouldn’t drink any more wine till next week, if I happened to have dinner out somewhere. I never drink wine at home anymore. Roger was still a close friend, even with all those Muriels getting under his skin. And what about me? I thought vaguely about the student girl on the sixth floor, but I bet that’d be a very bad idea. I did the laundry, my mother always did her washing on Sunday morning, for me it was Sunday night. I hung out my white shirts on the curtain rod in the shower, I got out my space heater to make sure they’d be nice and dry the next morning. I like those moments of my life, and at the same time I’m afraid of them, because sometimes, with one thing leading to another, I forget that I’m a fifty-six-year-old guy, and then I start asking myself questions. I remember my past, more than forty years ago.
It was ten o’clock at night when the boss’s wife phoned. She’d called Amédée and Madeleine before me. She’d decided to close the café for a while, take some time to think things over, and then maybe she’d be going to England, she’d phoned her daughter, who was living there, as I knew. “Yes, ma’am.”
I felt very tired all of a sudden, I sat down on the bed, my shoulders weighed ten tons, I was completely exhausted. I really had no desire to hang up my apron.
“It’s just a week, Pierre, it’ll be over before you know it!”
“If you say so,” I answered. “You know, this is going to be great news for the people at La Rotonde.”
She cleared her throat, she was hoarse from too many cigarettes, probably. She said “I know, Pierre,” which meant shut up.
“You think that’s where he is?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea. Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll keep you posted. By the way, the deliveries will be coming on Tuesday, if you could go deal with them.”
“Yes, fine, if you like.”
“The checks are in the cash register, behind the coins. Make sure it’s all there, you know how they are! Thanks, Pierre.”
And then she hung up. I sat down on my bed and waited, then I watched the late-night news on 3. I took another shower to clear my head. I hadn’t seen a bit of whatever was going on in the world. This would give me a chance to take care of some things that had been on my mind for a few months. I had to go through my papers, I’ve been working since I was nineteen but I never knew just how many trimesters I had left before my pension kicked in, because some years there’d been gaps of various lengths. Also, I could finally go to the dentist and get that tooth pulled. I’d already cancelled twice.
When I got out of the shower I set about dealing with the ravages of time, if you’ll pardon the expression. The hairs in my ears, the hairs in my nose, and then — although here there’s not much you can do — I put on my Nivea. I have a sort of gray and splotchy complexion, like so many others in my line of work. I even tried to masturbate, as a special treat, but I didn’t go through to the end. I couldn’t find the right picture. That depressed me vaguely, but anyway. I went to bed. Monsieur Primo Levi was waiting in vain beside the alarm clock on my nightstand. I’d brought it here from my mother’s, along with all the photos and souvenirs I could manage. The rest I’d tossed out or given to her neighbors. I had my bad dream about the dead leaves in the café, which woke me up at three. I waited for morning to come. What was I going to do, if…? This was some kind of number he’d done on us. Now and then a dull white gleam ran over the ceiling, I’d had it repainted last spring. I nodded off again, but I didn’t like what was waiting for me behind my closed eyelids. There were more dead leaves, and women’s bodies, and then, with my eyes open now, my mother when I was ten, when I was adopted, and locked doors. And so, at seven in the morning, I was ready to go.
I made the trip on foot. La Rotonde was already open, and as usual I spotted some of Le Cercle’s old regulars, side by side with the new ones. Do you ever really meet anyone face to face in a café? I gave the boss there a nod, he reminds me of my own boss, back when he was around. Every morning and evening you can see him out walking a big Irish setter. I hear he goes hunting in the Sologne, he had a house built down there. His business is booming. He’s already come calling, very casually, in hopes of worming some info out of me. But I’m from the old school, so a fat lot of good that’ll do him, if you don’t mind my saying. I turned on the lights and gave the bar another good wipe, because that’s how I’ve started my day for as long as I’ve been at this job. I put my mop rag in its usual place, and then I fixed myself a cup of coffee. I could see people looking my way, and a lot of fast-moving feet in fancy polished shoes, and some blue-jeaned legs with sneakers, and then the shuffling misshapen boots of the vagrants who wander the streets around here in spite of the city’s best efforts and the good people of the employment agency. I cranked the shutter all the way up when ten o’clock came around. The sky was clear and blue overhead, and grayish over toward the Seine, above the train tracks. I closed the door and locked it again. But that was no good, people kept coming and peering in with their hands cupped around their eyes, what would they think? I decided to put up a little sign to make them stop. Where was I going to find paper around here? Pierrot, my friend. I took Amédée’s notepad, the one he uses to write down his orders. “Closed due to a disappearance.” That seemed a bit indiscreet, I told myself. So I wrote “Closed for a week” in big capital letters, and I thought that was very good. I taped up my sign inside the glass door, and, I’m not kidding, in the space of two hours I counted at least a hundred pairs of eyes that came along to give it a look, and also to stare inside the café, where I was.
I even saw the young man in black. He read my sign and shrugged, saying something out loud to himself, and heading for the café across the street, obviously. I hung around till twelve-thirty, I was about to leave for my appointment to find out how many trimesters I have left when I spotted Amédée. He was wearing a yellow boubou, with a sort of Afro bonnet on his head, and a pretty cousin I’d never seen before on his arm. He chuckled when he saw me, and he was still chuckling when I knelt down to open the lock.
“Hey, Amédée, how are you doing?”
“You taking over for the boss, Pierrot?”
He introduced his friend, she gave me a peck on both cheeks, and they stayed for a while to drink a beer. “What a mess,” Amédée said, “I never thought I’d see such a thing.” H is only question was:
“What’ll you do if he doesn’t come back, Pierrot?”
“They said next week, Amédée.”
“You think it’s true?”
He didn’t look a bit like the Banania man when he said that.
“Nothing to worry about, Amédée. They can’t very well just let it all go, can they?”
And in any case he was a very good cook, certainly much better than the one in Le Rapide, at Quatre-Routes, where I went for lunch once those two had gone on their way. The daily special set me back ten euros, I wanted someplace not too close to Le Cercle, for discretion’s sake. I was a fool, I told myself, I would have been better off eating at home, but as a matter of fact no. I took a Paris train and got off at Saint-Lazare, then waited in line to see about this trimester business. Social Security had a whole big building by the Place de l’Europe, the land of offices, the easy life. The secretary explained the new laws that had gone into effect, they’d probably be changing before long, I had a little trouble following it all. I just wanted to know where I stood, and if I was going to end up in the soup line anytime soon. She punched some keys on her computer, pushing her glasses up on top of her head. I wasn’t far from a full pension, but I wasn’t quite there yet. And then the most important thing was that I was missing all sorts of important papers I’d be needing for my work history, my pay stubs were all out of order, my retirement account statements, I’d gone through some hard patches, and I’d left them scattered around here and there. I haven’t always been the most conscientious person around, but all in all, when I left, it seemed like things were going to work out OK. Still, it was a real relief to get away from there, to take the train back in the other direction with the office workers, the saleswomen, and the students. Night was falling by five-thirty now, and across the Seine I could see headlights all the way to the skyscrapers at La Défense, everything was nicely lit up, and in the water the sky looked brighter than it actually was.