Father often made scenes like this. When Antoine and Jean-Paul were little, it scared the pants off them. But it boosted their morale. They set off for school prouder than ever. It was true: Végétal is better than Lestrange! We’re not going to let people walk all over us, are we, Antoine? We’re not going to let people trample us! We’re going to shove their faces in their sauerkraut. Who do those scumbags think they are? Stupid numbskulls! Go and eat your puke like those fucking Lestranges! Yesss, nice one, Jean-Paul, let them eat their puke, those fucking Lestranges! Like those poor… huh… like those poor Lestranges.
The day is over. They call a truce to the negotiations. Mother has the upper hand. Jean-Paul thinks that actually the Perspex isn’t so bad. They put away the glossy catalogue. Jean-Paul would like to empty his mind once and for all. We’ll see tomorrow.
‘Have you got coffee?’
‘That’s not something I’m asked very often. I’ll make you one. Do you want sugar?’
‘Yes.’
She brings a cup, a sugar lump, coffee.
‘Thank you. You know, coffee’s my life.’
‘I have a coffee in the morning.’
‘I work in a café. It’s hard work. You’re on your feet all day. It must be the same for you…’
I don’t know why I’m thinking of this. When I was a kid, at my grandparents’, we always ate the bread from the day before. We had to finish it up, even though there was fresh bread. We never got to eat that.
I don’t feel too bad this evening. I’ve seen worse, believe me. No, this evening, things are OK. I did the same things, said the same words as usual. I’m an old hand, like a factory worker on a production line. The same action, relentlessly, for years. No hope. A little factory worker of the flesh. My factory is the city, my production line, cocks.
Time passes. One more and then I’m going home. Before I go to bed, I’ll have something to eat. Something sweet.
Then, like every evening, I’ll go and fill up my plastic bottle on the landing. I’ll have a lick and a promise at the sink. Have to wait till tomorrow for a shower.
I’ll be tired, but I won’t sleep. I’ll have to numb my mind with television. Something really smutty that makes me feel alive again.
Robert
1
Robert is a sponge. He soaks up events and people, retaining everything in his thick yellow foam. But at some point, if someone grabs him, if he’s crushed in the métro or in a cinema queue, he spews out everything in a stream of insults and platitudes, an uncontrolled performance that splatters the toes of your shoes. But he’s discreet, people don’t notice him. Only don’t wring him like a dirty sock, don’t squeeze him too hard.
He scrubs away the days and the years, and at the same time he mops up sorrows and regrets. He quite enjoys his condition, it’s just that he doesn’t like being left in the sink. He deserves better, he has a teaching qualification. Robert’s thing had been philosophy. And then he stopped, he can’t remember why. Robert’s a bit floppy, he has difficulty moving. Sometimes he wants to. He sits down and thinks about it, and finally he stays put. He used to have a lovely armchair in cracked leather. He realized there was a danger that he’d never get up again. He threw it out and has sat on a wooden chair ever since. It’s not as comfortable but even so he can sit in it for hours. People have to understand that he’s not playing games, that if he does nothing it is principally an ambition, like his own personal regurgitated philosophy, a version of Lettrism. Robert doesn’t work. He’ll never work. The only problem is that he doesn’t create anything either. He’s never been any good with his hands or his mind. Robert is a sponge, he absorbs everything that flows around him. And that’s all.
Being a sponge rather suits him. Or rather, it appears to suit him because he never questions whether it does or not. Sometimes he loses his temper, on one occasion he threw out his aunt’s ancient Chesterfield. In short, his life is running smoothly. He feels that nothing should be changed.
Robert fancies himself as a leading Surrealist figure or something similar. He could happily have been a burglar too, or a pirate. That’s classy, not like all those office jobs, four-colour ballpoints and double-sided adhesive tape.
Robert likes Bryan Ferry and nettle soup. He likes nibbling the bits of cuticle that grow on his nails, falling asleep listening to the radio and flicking through mail order catalogues. Robert likes all that, he’s almost a complete wimp. There’s something singular about him, something touching. He has dark circles under his eyes, as if his tears had gradually encrusted themselves around his eye sockets. Yes, that’s it, the tears furrowed his flesh and turned it purple as they dried. A trace of dried sadness around his eyes. Something that won’t pass, always ready to spurt out for some unknown reason. That’s Robert’s little mystery. He has a secret, a scar he can’t show, even though it’s raw and always will be. That gaping wound will remain inside him as long as he lives. ‘Don’t shake me, I’m full of tears’, he might have said had he been a genius and a famous writer called Henri Calet.
What am I without other people? asks Robert. I mean, if there weren’t any other people, would I wash my hands after going to the toilet? No, definitely not, he wouldn’t wash his hands, he wouldn’t change his socks. He’d crawl on the ground like a little rat full of slime. As Sartre said, the other is the indispensable mediator between myself and me. But Robert is no Calet, and he’s no Sartre either. No, I definitely wouldn’t wash my hands, I’d eat my bogies and fart in the street.
That’s pretty much how Robert suddenly came to realize that he needed others, all those other people around him. He decided to face the world, meet people, sign up for yoga classes. Suddenly, he aspired to a social life, to negotiations, to the hustle and bustle of the crowd. He pounded the pavement, he carried heavy banners with enthusiasm, he went shopping on Saturday afternoons on Boulevard Haussmann. He tried to chat up girls and find friends to play darts with. He bought a TV and burned his books. He became a blinkered activist and chased girls. He found a job and joined a trade union. He wore his jeans like everyone else, he played online poker.
Then he realized that he wasn’t made for that life, that he wasn’t made for them. He went back to his chair and his solitude. He had never felt so free as at that moment.
He has ten or so bonsais. He calls them dwarf trees. The sales assistant always corrects him, but it’s useless, for Robert they’ll always be dwarf trees. He’s not exactly wrong, it’s a good image.
He loves his dwarf trees. He’s put some in the bathroom, in his bedroom, and in the living room. He tends them, pruning the branches and watering them every day with a mineral-water spray. He bought them Japanese-style ceramic pots. The dwarf trees deserve them, they’re well behaved, they have leaves, they don’t grow. He’s given them names, but nobody knows that. Dwarfbus, L’il Dwarf, Branched Dwarf, Titch, Lilliput, Mimimati… they seem to like it.
In winter, he turns on the central heating to protect them. He plays them music. When the weather’s nice, in summer, he puts them out in the sun on his little balcony, but not for too long, it’s bad for the bark. He talks to them sometimes but he’s a bit embarrassed about it. So he goes out and tries to forget his dwarf trees, he mills around in the crowd for an afternoon.