Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series) (16 page)

“Bravo,” Oliveira said, understanding that applause would have been out of place. “Bravo, madame.”

Without standing up Berthe Trépat turned a little on the stool and put her elbow on middle C. They looked at each other. Oliveira got up and went to the edge of the stage.

“Very interesting,” he said. “Really, madame, I listened to your concert with real interest.”

What a bastard.

Berthe Trépat looked at the empty hall. One of her eyelids was trembling a little. She seemed to be asking herself something, waiting for something. Oliveira sensed that he should keep on talking.

“An artist like you must be aware of the lack of understanding and the snobbism of the public. Deep down I know that you were playing for yourself.”

“For myself,” Berthe Trépat repeated in a macaw voice strikingly similar to that of the gentleman who had introduced her.

“For whom, then?” Oliveira asked, climbing onto the stage with the ease of a dreamer. “An artist can only count on the stars, as Nietzsche said.”

“Who are you?” Berthe Trépat was startled.

“Oh, someone who is interested in manifestations …” He could have run words together the way he always did. All he could say was that he was here, looking for a little companionship without really knowing why.

Berthe Trépat was listening, still a little absent. She got up with difficulty and looked at the hall, the curtains.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s getting late. I’ve got to go home.” She had said it to herself as if it were a punishment or something.

“Could I have the pleasure of accompanying you for a while?” said Oliveira as he leaned forward. “I mean if no one is waiting for you in your dressing room or at the stage door.”

“There’s no one. Valentin left after he introduced me. What did you think of the introduction?”

“Interesting,” Oliveira said, more and more certain that he was dreaming and that he wanted to keep on dreaming.

“Valentin can do better,” Berthe Trépat said. “And I thought it was nasty of him … yes, nasty … to leave the way he did, as if I were some old rag.”

“He spoke of you and your work with great admiration.”

“For five hundred francs he would speak about a dead fish with great admiration. Five hundred francs!” Berthe Trépat was lost in her thoughts.

“I’m playing the fool,” Oliveira told himself. He bowed and got down off the stage; maybe she had forgotten about his offer. But she was looking at him and Oliveira saw that she was crying.

“Valentin is a swine. All of them … there were more than two hundred people, you saw them, more than two hundred. That’s remarkable for a première, don’t you think? And they all paid, don’t think we sent out any complimentary tickets. Over two hundred, and now you’re the only one left. Valentin left, I …”

“Some absences can mean a real success,” Oliveira said in some incredible way.

“But why did they leave? Did you see them go? Over two hundred, I tell you, and prominent people, I’m sure I spotted Madame de Roche, Doctor Lacour, Montellier, the teacher whose pupil got the latest grand prize in violin … I don’t think they liked the
Pavan
too much and that’s why they left, don’t you think? Because they left before my
Synthesis
, that’s for certain, I saw them myself.”

“Of course,” Oliveira said. “You have to admit, the
Pavan
…”

“It isn’t really a pavan at all,” Berthe Trépat said. “It’s a piece of shit. It’s Valentin’s fault, they warned me that Valentin was sleeping with Alix Alix. Why do I have to keep a faggot, young
man? Me, gold medalist, I’ll show you my notices, hits, in Grenoble, in Puy …”

The tears were running down to her throat and getting lost among the withered pores of her ashen skin. She took Oliveira’s hand and shook it. At any moment she was going to become hysterical.

“Why don’t you get your coat and we’ll get out of here,” Oliveira said hurriedly. “The outside air will do you good, we can have something to drink, for me it would be a great …”

“Something to drink,” Berthe Trépat repeated. “Gold medal.”

“Whatever you want,” Oliveira said incongruously. He made a motion to free himself, but the pianist gripped his arm and came closer. Oliveira could smell the sweat of the concert mixed with naphthaline and benzoin (as well as piss and cheap perfume). First Rocamadour and now Berthe Trépat, it was unbelievable. “Gold medal,” she kept saying, crying and snuffling. Suddenly a great sob shook her as if a chord had burst into the air. “And it’s the same old thing …” Oliveira finally understood as he fought in vain to get away from personal feelings, to take refuge in some metaphysical river, naturally. Offering no resistance, Berthe Trépat let herself be led back towards the curtains where the usher was looking at them, holding a flashlight and a feathered hat.

“Doesn’t Madame feel well?”

“It’s emotion,” Oliveira said. “She’s getting over it now. Where is her coat?”

Among easels and creaky tables, a harp and a coatrack, there was a chair with a green raincoat on it. Oliveira helped Berthe Trépat, who kept her head down but was not crying any more. They went out through a little door and along a dark passageway and came out on the boulevard. It was drizzling.

“It’ll be hard getting a taxi,” said Oliveira, who barely had three hundred francs in his pocket. “Do you live far?”

“No, near the Panthéon, I’d really rather walk.”

“Yes, it would be better.”

Berthe Trépat moved ahead slowly, swaying her head from side to side. The hood of the raincoat gave her a martial look or something like Ubu Roi. Oliveira huddled into his lumber jacket and pulled the collar up high. The air was crisp, he was beginning to get hungry.

“You’re very nice,” she said. “You shouldn’t bother. What did you think of my
Synthesis?
”

“I’m just an amateur, madame. Music for me, if I can say so …”

“You didn’t like it,” Berthe Trépat said.

“A première …”

“We worked for months with Valentin. Night and day, trying to bring the inspirations together.”

“Of course you must admit that Délibes—”

“Is a genius,” Berthe Trépat said. “Erik Satie admitted it one day in my presence. And no matter what Doctor Lacour says about Satie’s pulling my leg … what would you say. Of course, you must know what the old man was like … But I can read people, young man, and I know full well that Satie was convinced, yes, convinced. What country are you from, young man?”

“From Argentina, madame, and I’m really not a young man, by the way.”

“Ah, Argentina. The pampas … And do you think they would be interested in my work there?”

“I’m sure of it, madame.”

“Maybe you could get me an appointment with the Ambassador. If Thibaud was able to go to Argentina and Montevideo, why not me, I play my own music. You must have noticed that, it’s basic: my own music. Almost always premières.”

“Do you do much composing?” Oliveira asked and felt like a mouthful of vomit.

“I’m working on my Opus Eighty-three … no, let’s see … Now that I think of it, I should have spoken with Madame Nolet before I left … It concerns money, of course. Two hundred people, that means …” It was lost in a murmur, and Oliveira asked himself whether it wouldn’t really be more merciful to tell the truth outright, but she already knew, of course she knew.

“It’s scandalous,” Berthe Trépat said. “Two years ago I played in the same hall, Poulenc promised to come … Do you understand? Poulenc himself. I was on the pinnacle of inspiration that afternoon, it was too bad that a last-minute commitment stopped him from coming … but you know, musicians who are all the rage … And that was the time that Madame
Nolet charged me half the take,” she added angrily. “Exactly half. Of course it came out the same, counting on two hundred people …”

“Madame,” Oliveira said, taking her softly by the arm and leading her into the Rue de Seine, “the lights were out and maybe you had trouble seeing how many people there were.”

“Oh, no,” Berthe Trépat said. “I’m sure I’m right, but you’ve made me lose track. Excuse me, I have to figure …” She was lost again in a dedicated whispering, and she kept on moving her lips and fingers, completely unaware of the way Oliveira was taking her, and almost even of his presence. Everything she was saying aloud she could have said to herself, Paris is full of people who go along the street talking to themselves, Oliveira himself was no exception, in fact the exception was that he was playing the fool as he walked along beside the old woman, seeing this tarnished puppet home, this poor blown-up balloon in which stupidity and madness were dancing the real nighttime pavan. “It’s repulsive, I ought to fling her down against a step and stamp on her face, squash her like an insect, make her fall apart like a piano dropped from the tenth floor. True charity would be to get her out of her world, stop her from suffering like a dog with all her illusions which even she does not believe, which she builds up so that she will not feel the wetness in her shoes, her empty room, or that dirty, white-haired old man. She bugs me and I’m going to cut out at the next corner, and who will know, after all. What a day, my God, what a day.”

If they could only get to the Rue Lobineau he would take off like a bat and the old woman could get on home by herself. Oliveira looked behind, he waited for the right moment, shaking his arm as if something were hanging down from it, something that had sneaked up and was hanging from his elbow. But it was Berthe Trépat’s hand there, clinging with resolution. Berthe Trépat was hanging on with all her might to Oliveira’s arm and he was looking out for the Rue Lobineau as he helped her cross the street and went with her towards the Rue de Tournon.

“They must have lit the stove by now,” Berthe Trépat said. “It’s not that the weather is so cold, really, but we artists like our warmth. Don’t you think so? You must come up and have a drink with Valentin and me.”

“Oh, no, madame,” Oliveira said. “No indeed, it’s been a great pleasure and honor just to have seen you home, besides—”

“Don’t be so modest, young man. You are young, you know, isn’t that so? I can tell that you’re young, your arm for example …” Her fingers dug a little into the sleeve of his lumber-jacket. “I always look older than I am. You know, an artist’s life …”

“Of course,” Oliveira said. “As for me, I’m over forty, so you’ve been flattering me.”

That’s how the words came out of his mouth and he couldn’t help it, it was too much, really. Hanging on to his arm Berthe Trépat talked about other times and every so often she would stop in the middle of what she was saying and seem to be putting something back together in her mind. Sometimes she would stick a finger in her nose and look at Oliveira out of the corner of her eye; in order to stick her finger up her nose she would quickly pull off her glove, pretending that she wanted to scratch the palm of her hand (after delicately removing it from Oliveira’s arm), and would raise it up with a motion worthy of a pianist to scratch one nostril for a split second. Oliveira pretended to look away, and when he looked back again Berthe Trépat was clinging to his arm again with her glove back on. They went along like that in the rain talking about many things. On passing by the Luxembourg they spoke about life in Paris, more difficult every day, the pitiless competition of young people whose inexperience was matched only by their insolence, a public that was incurably snobbish, the price of beef in the Saint-Germain market or on the Rue de Buci, places where the elite go to get a good cut of meat at reasonable prices. Two or three times Berthe Trépat had asked Oliveira in a friendly sort of way what he did for a living, about his ambitions, and especially about his failures, but before he could reply everything suddenly had to do with Valentin’s inexplicable disappearance, the mistake of playing Alix Alix’s
Pavan
out of consideration for Valentin, but that was the last time that would happen. “A faggot,” Berthe Trépat muttered, and Oliveira felt her hand tighten on his lumberjacket. “Me, mind you, having to play a shapeless piece of shit for that son of a bitch when I have fifteen pieces of my own that are waiting to be played in public …” Then she would stop in the rain, peaceful inside her raincoat (but Oliveira began to feel water coming in through the collar of his lumberjacket, a collar made from rabbit skin or rat skin, which had begun to stink like a cage in the zoo, it always did
that whenever it rained and there was nothing he could do about it), and stand there looking at him as if waiting for an answer. Oliveira smiled in a warm sort of way, tugging at her a little to lead her towards the Rue de Médicis.

“You’re too modest, too reserved,” Berthe Trépat was saying. “Tell me about yourself, let’s see. I’ll bet you’re a poet, right? So was Valentin when we were young … The
Evening Ode
, a hit in the
Mercure de France
…A card from Thibaudet, I can remember it as if it had been just this morning. Valentin was weeping in bed, whenever he had to cry he would lie face down on the bed, it was very touching.”

Oliveira tried to picture Valentin crying face down on the bed, but all that came to mind was a little Valentin red as a crab, he was really imagining Rocamadour crying face down on the bed and La Maga trying to give him a suppository while Rocamadour resisted and arched his back, slipping his little ass out of La Maga’s clumsy hands. They must have given the old man who had been in the accident a suppository in the hospital too, it was incredible how popular they had become, he would have to make a philosophical analysis of this surprising vindication of the anus, its elevation to a second mouth, into something that no longer limited itself to excretion but which could swallow and digest those rose green white little anti-aircraft shells. But Berthe Trépat would not let him concentrate and again she wanted to know about his life and held his arm sometimes with one hand, sometimes with two, turning towards him a little bit with a girlish air which made him shiver even in the middle of the night. All right, he was an Argentinian who had been in Paris for some time, trying to … Let’s see, what was he trying to do? It was hard to explain it all at once like that. What he was looking for was—