The Elegance of the Hedgehog (12 page)

T
his morning Jacinthe Rosen introduced me to the new owner of the Arthens apartment.

His name is Kakuro Something. I failed to understand properly because Madame Rosen always talks as if she has a cockroach in her mouth and because the elevator door opened at that very moment to let Monsieur Pallières’s father out, all cloaked in haughtiness. He greeted us cursorily and hurried off with the jerky stride of a busy captain of industry.

The newcomer is a gentleman in his sixties, very presentable and very Japanese. He is rather small and slim, his face is wrinkled but his features are sharp. His entire person emanates kindliness, but I also sense decisiveness, joviality, and a strong will.

At the moment he is enduring Jacinthe Rosen’s pithiatic prattling. She brings to mind a hen at the foot of a mountain of grain.

“Bonjour Madame,” were his first and only words, in unaccented French.

I am wearing my semi-retarded concierge uniform. We are dealing with a new resident here, and force of habit has not yet compelled him to assume that I am inept, so I must make a special pedagogical effort. I limit myself therefore to a refrain of asthenic yeses in response to Jacinthe Rosen’s hysterical salvoes.

“You will show Monsieur Something (Shou?) the outbuildings?”

“Will you explain the mail to Monsieur Something?” (Pshoo?)

“The decorators are coming on Friday. Could you keep an eye out for Monsieur Something (Opshoo?), between ten and half past ten?”

And so on.

Monsieur Something betrays no signs of impatience, and waits politely, looking at me with a kindly smile. Everything is going very well, I feel. All we need do is wait for Madame Rosen to tire and I shall be able to repair to my den.

And then.

“The doormat that was outside the Arthens’s door hasn’t been cleaned. Can you bring it to the cleaner’s?” asks the hen.

Why must the comedy always turn to tragedy? To be sure, I also misuse language on occasion, although I tend to use such abuses as weapons.

“Some sorta heart attack, huh” is what I had said to Chabrot, to put him off the scent that my outlandish manners have laid.

I am therefore not so sensitive that a minor misuse will cause me to lose my reason. One must concede to others what one tolerates in oneself; besides, Jacinthe Rosen and the cockroach in her mouth were born in the dreary banlieue of Bondy in a row of buildings with grimy stairwells: consequently, I am more indulgent in her case than I would be for Madame Would-you-be-so-kind-as-comma-to.

And yet, there is an element of tragedy: I flinched when she said
bring
and at that very moment Monsieur Something also flinched, and our eyes met. And since that infinitesimal nanosecond when—of this I am sure—we were joined in linguistic solidarity by the shared pain that made our bodies shudder, Monsieur Something has been observing me with a very different gaze.

A watchful gaze.

And now he is speaking to me.

“Were you acquainted with the Arthens? I have heard they were quite an extraordinary family,” he says.

“No,” I reply, on my guard, “I didn’t really know them, they were just another family, here.”

“Yes, a happy family,” says Madame Rosen, who, visibly, is getting impatient.

“You know, all happy families are alike,” I mutter, to have done with this business, “there’s nothing more to it.”

“‘Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,’” he says, giving me an odd look and all of a sudden, even if it’s not for the first time, I shudder.

Yes, I assure you. I shudder—but quite involuntarily. It just happened, there was nothing I could do, I was overwhelmed.

As misfortunes never travel alone, Leo decides it is time to slip between our legs, rubbing against Monsieur Something on his way.

“I have two cats,” he says. “May I ask your cat’s name?”

“Leo,” replies Jacinthe Rosen in my stead then, breaking off our conversation, she hooks her arm under Monsieur Something’s and, saying thank you without looking at me, begins to steer him toward the elevator. With infinite tact, he places his hand on her forearm and gently brings her to a halt.

“Thank you, Madame,” he says to me, then allows himself to be led away by his possessive fowl.

D
o you know what an involuntary act signifies? Psychoanalysts say that it reflects the insidious maneuvering of one’s hidden unconscious. What a pointless theory, in fact. When we do something involuntarily, this is the most visible sign of the power of our conscious will; for our will, when opposed by emotion, makes use all of its wiles to attain its ends.

“I suppose this means I want to be found out,” I say to Leo, who has just re-entered his quarters and—I could swear upon it—has been conspiring with the universe to fulfill my desire.

All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way
is the first line in
Anna Karenina
and, like any self-respecting concierge, I am not supposed to have read it; nor ought I to have jumped at the second part of the sentence when M. Something, in that moment of grace, pronounced it as if I had not known that Tolstoy was its author—for although common people may be sensitive to great works though they do not read them, literature, in their presence, cannot aspire to the lofty peaks where the educated elite place it.

I spend the day trying to convince myself that I am getting into a panic over nothing, and that Monsieur Something, who has at his disposal a wallet so well-stuffed that he was able to buy the entire fourth floor, has other more pressing concerns than the Parkinsonian shudderings of a feebleminded concierge.

And then, at around seven in the evening, a young man rings at my loge.

“Good evening, Madame,” he says, articulating to perfection, “my name is Paul Nguyen, I am Monsieur Ozu’s private secretary.”

He hands me his business card.

“Here is the number of my cell phone. Contractors will be coming to work for Monsieur Ozu and we would not like this to cause you any additional work. So if there is the slightest problem, please call me, I will come right away.”

You will note at this juncture in our little mystery that the current vignette is barren of dialogue, an element that one ordinarily notices by virtue of a succession of quotation marks running vertically down the page as the speakers each take their turn.

By rights, there should have been something like:

“Delighted to meet you.”

And then:

“Very well, I shall call you if need be.”

But there appears to be nothing of the sort.

The fact of the matter is that with absolutely no effort on my part I am mute. I am fully conscious that my mouth is open but not a sound comes out, and I greatly pity this handsome young man who is obliged to contemplate a one-hundred-and-fifty pound toad named Renée.

Generally, at this point in an encounter, the protagonist will inquire, Do you speak French?

But Paul Nguyen merely smiles and waits.

With a Herculean effort I manage to say something.

Actually, it initially comes out as something like: “Grmbill.”

But he continues to wait with the same magnificent abnegation.

“Monsieur Ozu?” I finally say with considerable difficulty, in a voice worthy of Yul Brynner.

“Yes, Monsieur Ozu,” he says. “You didn’t know his name?”

“No,” I say with effort, “I had not understood it very well. How do you spell it?”

“O-z-u,” he says.

“Ah, I see. It is Japanese?”

“Quite, Madame. Monsieur Ozu is Japanese.”

He takes his leave, very affable, while my Good Night seems to travel through a throat afflicted with triple bronchitis. I close the door and collapse onto a chair, squashing Leo in the process.

Monsieur Ozu. Could it be that I am in the middle of some insane dream, crafted with suspenseful, Machiavellian twists of plot, a flood of coincidences, and a dénouement where the heroine in her nightgown awakes in the morning with an obese cat on her feet and the static of the morning radio in her ears?

But we all know perfectly well that, in essence, dreams and waking hours do not have the same texture and, upon careful examination of all my sensory perception, I am able to determine with certainty that I am awake.

Monsieur Ozu! Could he be the filmmaker’s son? Nephew? Distant cousin?

Well I never.

If you offer a lady enemy
Macaroons from Chez Ladurée
Don’t go thinking
You’ll be able
To see beyond

T
he gentleman who has bought the Arthens apartment is Japanese! His name is Kakuro Ozu! That’s just great; something like this
would
happen right before I die. Twelve and a half years in a cultural desert and right when it’s time to go and pack it in a Japanese gentleman arrives . . . It really is too unfair.

But I want see the positive side of things: at least he is here, and really here, and what’s more we had a very interesting conversation yesterday. First of all, there’s the fact that everyone in the building is absolutely crazy about Monsieur Ozu. My mother speaks of nothing else, my father listens to her for once, whereas usually his mind is elsewhere when she starts to go blah-blah-blah about the goings-on in the building; Colombe pinched my Japanese textbook and, in an unprecedented event in the annals of 7, rue de Grenelle, Madame de Broglie came to have tea
chez nous
. We live on the fifth floor, directly above the former Arthens apartment and lately there has been all this remodeling work going on—a gigantic amount of remodeling! It was clear that Monsieur Ozu had decided to change everything, and everyone was drooling with desire to see what he had changed. In a world full of fossils, the slightest movement of a pebble on the slope of the cliff is nearly enough to bring on a whole series of heart attacks—so you can imagine what happens when someone dynamites the whole mountain! In short, Madame de Broglie was dying to have a look at the fourth floor, so when she ran into Maman last week in the hall she wheedled an invitation out of her. And you know what her pretext was? It’s really funny. Madame de Broglie is the wife of Monsieur de Broglie, the State Councilor who lives on the first floor and who joined the Council under Giscard d’Estaing—he’s so conservative that he won’t say hello to divorced people. Colombe calls him “the old fascist” because she’s never read a thing about the French right wing, and Papa holds him up as a perfect example of the ossification of political ideas. His wife fits the image: posh suit, string of pearls, pinched lips and loads of grandchildren called Grégoire or Marie. Until now she would scarcely say hello to Maman (who is a Socialist, dyes her hair and wears pointed shoes). But last week she jumped on us as if her life depended on it. We were in the hall, we had just come back from shopping and Maman was in a very good mood because she had found an eggshell linen tablecloth for two hundred and forty euros. And I swear I thought I was having auditory hallucinations. After the customary “Bonjour, Madame,” Madame de Broglie said to Maman, “I have something to ask you,” which must have really hurt her lips. “Please, go right ahead,” said Maman with a smile (thanks to the tablecloth and her anti-depressants). “Well, my little daughter-in-law, Étienne’s wife, is not very well these days and I think she’ll have to consider therapy.” “Oh?” said Maman with an even bigger smile. “Yes, uh, you see, some sort of psychoanalysis.” Madame de Broglie looked like a snail lost in the Sahara but she stood fast all the same. “Yes, I see,” said Maman, “and how may I be of assistance, Madame de Broglie?” “Well, the thought occurred to me that you might have an idea . . . well . . . how to go about it . . . so I would have liked to discuss it with you, that’s all.” Maman could not get over her good fortune: an eggshell linen tablecloth, the prospect of spouting all her knowledge about psychoanalysis and Madame de Broglie dancing the dance of the seven veils—oh yes, a good day indeed! And she couldn’t resist because she knew perfectly well what the other woman’s actual intention was. My mother may be a bit of a bumpkin in the intellectual subtlety category, but you still can’t fool her completely. She knows perfectly well that the day the de Broglies are genuinely interested in psychoanalysis, the Gaullists will start singing the
Internationale
—clearly, the name of her sudden success was “the fifth-floor landing lies directly above the fourth-floor landing.” Still, she decided to act magnanimously, to prove to Madame de Broglie how kind and open-minded socialists can be—but not without a little hazing to begin with. “By all means, Madame de Broglie. Would you like me to come to your place one evening to discuss it?” she asked. The other woman looked constipated, she wasn’t expecting such a suggestion, but she got hold of herself very quickly and, as a woman of the world, she said, “No, no, please, I don’t want you to have to come down, I will come up to see you.” Maman had already had her little moment of satisfaction so she didn’t insist. “Well, I’m in this afternoon,” she said, “why don’t you come have a cup of tea at around five o’clock?”

The tea party was perfect. Maman did things just as one should: she used the tea service that Mamie had given her, the one with gold leaf and butterflies and roses; she offered macaroons from Ladurée, and, all the same, brown sugar (a leftie indulgence). Madame de Broglie, who had just spent a good quarter of an hour on the landing below, looked a bit embarrassed but satisfied all the same. And a bit surprised. I think our place was not as she had imagined. Maman pulled out all the stops regarding good manners and worldly conversation, including an expert commentary on where to buy good coffee, before leaning her head to one side and saying, “Well, Madame de Broglie, you are concerned about your daughter-in-law?” “Hmm, ah, yes,” said the other woman, who had almost forgotten her pretext and was now struggling to find something to say. “Well yes, she’s depressed,” is all she came out with. So Maman shifted into the next gear. After all this generosity it was time to hand her neighbor the bill. Madame de Broglie was treated to an entire course on Freud, including several titillating anecdotes on the sexual mores of the Messiah and his apostles (including a lurid aside on Melanie Klein), and punctuated with references to Women’s Lib and secularism in French schools. The works. Madame de Broglie took it like a good Christian. She endured the onslaught with admirable stoicism, convincing herself all the while that this was a small price to pay to expiate her sin of curiosity. When they parted, both ladies were perfectly satisfied, but for different reasons, and at dinner that evening Maman said, “Madame de Broglie may be sanctimonious, but she does know how to be charming.”

In short, everyone is excited about Monsieur Ozu. Olympe Saint-Nice told Colombe (who despises her and calls her “Our Holy Lady of the Pigs”) that he has two cats and that she is dying to see them. Jacinthe Rosen waffles on and on about the comings and goings on the fourth floor and she goes into a trance every time. As for me, I’m excited too, but not for the same reasons. Here’s what happened.

I was in the elevator with Monsieur Ozu and it got stuck between the second and third floors for ten minutes because some dolt had not closed the grate properly before deciding to walk down after all. When this happens you have to wait for someone to realize or, if it’s taking too long, you have to shout your head off to alert the neighbors, but of course you must remain dignified, which isn’t always easy. We didn’t shout. So we had time to introduce ourselves and get acquainted. All the ladies in the building would have sold their souls to be in my place. I was just really happy because my considerable Japanese side was obviously delighted to speak to an authentic Japanese gentleman. But what I really liked, above all, was the content of our conversation. First of all, he said, “Your mother told me you were studying Japanese at school. What is your level?” I casually took note of the fact that Maman has been gossiping again to draw attention to herself, and then I replied in Japanese, “Yes, sir, I know a little Japanese but not very well.” And he replied in Japanese, “Do you want me to correct your accent?” and then translated right away into French. Well, I appreciated that for a start. Lots of people would have said, “Oh, you speak so well! Bravo!” whereas I’m sure I must sound like some cow from Outer Mongolia. So I answered in Japanese, “Please do, sir,” and he corrected one inflection and then said, still in Japanese, “Call me Kakuro.” I replied in Japanese, “Yes, Kakuro-san,” and we laughed. And that is when the conversation (in French) got really interesting. He said, right out, “I’m very intrigued by our concierge, Madame Michel. I would like your opinion.” I know plenty of people who would try to worm the information out of me, acting all innocent. But he was up-front. “I suspect . . . that she’s not what we think,” he added.

I’ve had my own suspicions on the matter for a while now too. From a distance, she’s a real concierge. Close up . . . well, close up . . . there’s something weird going on. Colombe hates her and thinks she’s the dregs of humanity. Colombe, in any case, thinks that anyone who doesn’t meet her cultural standard is the dregs of humanity, and for Colombe the cultural standard is social power and shirts from agnès b. As for Madame Michel . . . how can we tell? She radiates intelligence. And yet she really makes an effort, like, you can tell she is doing everything she possibly can to act like a concierge and come across as stupid. But I’ve been watching her, when she would talk with Jean Arthens or when she talks to Neptune when Diane has her back turned, or when she looks at the ladies in the building who walk right by her without saying hello. Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside, she’s covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary—and terribly elegant.

Well, having said that, I admit it: I’m not a clairvoyant. If nothing out of the ordinary had happened, I would still be seeing the same thing everyone sees: a concierge who, most of the time, is grumpy. But something did happen not long ago and it’s odd that Monsieur Ozu’s question came along just when it did. Two weeks ago, Antoine Pallières knocked over Madame Michel’s shopping bag just as she was opening her door. Antoine Pallières is the son of Monsieur Pallières, the industrialist on the sixth floor, a guy who lectures Papa on how France ought to be run and sells arms to international felons. The son is less dangerous because he’s a real moron, but you never know: the capacity to do harm is often an item of family capital. Anyway, Antoine Pallières knocked over Madame Michel’s shopping bag. Beets, noodles, bouillon cubes and soap all fell out and as I walked past I glimpsed a book amidst all the things on the ground. I say glimpsed because Madame Michel rushed over to pick everything up, looking angrily at Antoine (he was obviously not inclined to lift a little finger), but she also looked worried. He didn’t notice but I had all the time I needed to figure out what the book in Madame Michel’s shopping bag was—or rather what kind of book, because there have been loads of the same type on Colombe’s desk since she enrolled in philosophy. It was a book from a publisher called Vrin—ultra-specialized in philosophy books for university. What is a concierge doing with a Vrin book in her shopping bag? is the question that, unlike Antoine Pallières, I asked myself.

“I think you’re right,” I said to Monsieur Ozu and we immediately progressed from being neighbors to something more, conspirators. We exchanged our impressions of Madame Michel, and Monsieur Ozu said he was willing to bet that she was a clandestine erudite princess, and we said goodbye with a promise to investigate this further.

So here is my profound thought for the day: this is the first time I have met someone who seeks out people and who sees beyond. That may seem trivial but I think it is profound all the same. We never look beyond our assumptions and, what’s worse, we have given up trying to meet others; we just meet ourselves. We don’t recognize each other because other people have become our permanent mirrors. If we actually realized this, if we were to become aware of the fact that we are only ever looking at ourselves in the other person, that we are alone in the wilderness, we would go crazy. When my mother offers macaroons from Chez Ladurée to Madame de Broglie, she is telling herself her own life story and just nibbling at her own flavor; when Papa drinks his coffee and reads his paper, he is contemplating his own reflection in the mirror, as if practicing the Coué method or something; when Colombe talks about Marian’s lectures, she is ranting about her own reflection; and when people walk by the concierge, all they see is a void, because she is not from their world.

As for me, I implore fate to give me the chance to see beyond myself and truly meet someone.