The Elegance of the Hedgehog (24 page)

If you want to heal
Heal others
And smile or weep
At this happy reversal of fate

Y
ou know what? I wonder if I haven’t missed something. A bit like someone who’s been hanging out with a bad crowd and then discovers another path through meeting a good person. My own personal bad crowd: Maman, Colombe, Papa and their entire clique. But today I was with a really good person. Madame Michel told me about this traumatizing event in her life: she has been avoiding Kakuro because she was traumatized by the death of her sister Lisette, who was seduced and abandoned by some rich man’s son. Don’t fraternize with rich people if you don’t want to die: since then this has become her survival technique.

Listening to Madame Michel, I asked myself something: which is more traumatizing? A sister who dies because she’s been abandoned, or the lasting effects of the event—the fear that you will die if you don’t stay where you belong? Madame Michel could have gotten over her sister’s death; but can you get over the staging of your own punishment?

Above all, there was something else I felt, something new, and as I write it I am very moved—proof is I had to put my pen down for two minutes, so I could cry. This is what I felt: listening to Madame Michel and seeing her cry, but above all seeing how it made her feel better to be able to tell her story to me, I understood something. I understood that I was suffering because I couldn’t make anyone else around me feel better. I understood that I have a grudge against Papa, Maman and above all Colombe because I’m incapable of being useful to them, because there’s nothing I can do for them. They are already too far gone in their sickness, and I am too weak. I can see their symptoms clearly but I’m not skilled to treat them and so as a result that makes me as sick as they are, only I don’t see it. Whereas when I was holding Madame Michel’s hand I could feel how I was sick, too. And one thing is sure, no matter what: I won’t get any better by punishing the people I can’t heal. I might have to rethink this business about fire and suicide. Besides, I may as well admit it: I don’t really feel like dying, I want to be able to see Madame Michel and Kakuro again, and his unpredictable little great-niece Yoko, and ask them for help. Of course I’m not going to show up saying, please, help me, I’m a little girl who is suicidal. But I feel like letting other people be good for me—after all, I’m just an unhappy little girl and even if I’m extremely intelligent, that doesn’t change anything, does it? An unhappy little girl who, just when things are at their worst, has been lucky enough to meet some good people. Morally, do I have the right to let this chance go by?

Sigh. I don’t know. This story is a tragedy, after all. “There are some worthy people out there, be glad!” is what I felt like telling myself, but in the end, so much sadness! They end up in the rain. I really don’t know what to think. Briefly, I thought I had found my calling, I thought I’d understood that in order to heal, I could heal others, or at least the other “healable” people, the ones who can be saved—instead of moping because I can’t save other people. So what does this mean—I’m supposed to become a doctor? Or a writer? It’s a bit the same thing, no?

And for every Madame Michel, how many Colombes are out there, how many dreary Tibères?

A
fter Paloma left I didn’t know which way to turn, and sat in my armchair for a long time.

Then, taking my courage in both hands, I dialed Kakuro Ozu’s telephone number.

Paul Nguyen picked up on the second ring.

“Yes, hello, Madame Michel. What can I do for you?”

“Well, I would like to speak with Kakuro.”

“He’s not in, would you like him to call you when he gets back?”

“No, no,” I said, relieved to be able to go through an intermediary. “Could you tell him that, if he hasn’t changed his mind, I would be happy to have dinner with him tomorrow evening?”

“With pleasure,” said Paul Nguyen.

I put the phone down and flopped back into the armchair, and for the past hour have let myself be carried away by confused but pleasant thoughts.

“It doesn’t smell too good in your place, now does it?” says a soft male voice at my back. “Isn’t there anyone who can come to fix it?”

He opened the door so quietly that I didn’t hear him. A nice-looking young man with rather disheveled brown hair and a brand new jean jacket and the large eyes of an amiable cocker spaniel.

“Jean? Jean Arthens?” I ask, scarcely believing my eyes.

“Yup,” he replies, leaning his head to one side, the way he used to.

But that is all that lingers of the human wreck, that ravaged young soul in the emaciated body he used to be: Jean Arthens, once so very close to the abyss, has visibly opted for rebirth.

“You look great!” I say, with my broadest smile.

Which he returns in kind.

“Well good morning, Madame Michel, it is a pleasure to see you. It suits you,” he adds, pointing to my hairstyle.

“Thank you. What brings you here? Would you like a cup of tea?”

“Ah . . . ” he begins, with a hint of his old hesitancy, “yup, I’d love one.”

I prepare the tea and he sits down on a chair and looks at Leo, eyes wide in astonishment.

“Was this cat of yours always so fat?” he inquires, not meaning it in a nasty way.

“Yes. He’s not terribly athletic.”

“It’s not him that smells so bad is it?” With an apologetic expression, he sniffs the cat.

“No, no, there’s something wrong with the plumbing.”

“You must find it strange that I’ve just shown up here like this, especially as we never really talked much, uh, I wasn’t very talkative in those days . . . well, in my father’s days.”

“I’m happy to see you and above all to see that you seem to be doing well,” I say with sincerity.

“Yup . . . I had a close shave.”

We take little sips of scorching tea, simultaneously.

“I’m cured now—well, I’d like to think I’m cured, if you ever can be cured. But I’m keeping off drugs, I’ve met a nice girl—well, a fantastic girl, rather, I must say”—his eyes open wide and he sniffles slightly as he looks at me—“and I’ve found a little job I like.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m working at a ship’s chandler’s.”

“Parts for boats?”

“Yup, and it’s a fun job. It’s kind of like being on vacation, there. Guys come in and tell me about their boat, the seas they’re about to sail, the seas where they’ve been, I like that, and then I’m happy to have a job, you know.”

“What do you actually do at your job?”

“I’m sort of the factotum, stock man and messenger boy, but I’m learning as I go along, so now from time to time they give me more interesting things to do like repair sails or shrouds, or put together the provision inventory.”

Just listen to the poetry of the language:
provisioning a sailboat
. . . providing what is needed, with a vision of the future. To those who have not understood that the enchantment of language comes from such nuances, I shall address the following prayer: beware of commas.

“And you too look like you’re doing well,” he says, with a kindly gaze.

“Really? Well, there have been a few changes that have been good for me.”

“You know, I didn’t come back here to see the apartment or the people, here. I’m not even sure they’d recognize me; I even brought my ID card, just in case you yourself didn’t recognize me. No, I came because there’s something I can’t remember, something that helped me a lot, already when I was sick and then afterwards, when I was getting better.”

“And you think I can help?”

“Yes, because you were the one who told me the name of those flowers one day. In the flower bed, over there”—he points toward the far side of the courtyard—“there are some pretty little red and white flowers, you planted them there, didn’t you? And one day I asked you what they were but I wasn’t able to remember the name. And yet I used to think about those flowers all the time, I don’t know why. They’re nice to look at, and when I was so bad off I would think about those flowers, and it did me good. So I was in the neighborhood just now and I thought, I am going to ask Madame Michel, maybe she can tell me.”

Slightly embarrassed, he waits for my reaction.

“It must seem weird, no? I hope I’m not scaring you, with this flower business.”

“No, not at all. If only I’d known the good they were doing you . . . I’d have planted them all over the place!”

He laughs, like a delighted child.

“Ah, Madame Michel, you know, it practically saved my life. That in itself is a miracle! So, can you tell me what they’re called?”

Yes my angel, I can. Along the pathways of hell, breathless, one’s heart in one’s mouth, a faint glow: they are camellias.

“Yes,” I say. “They are camellias.”

He stares at me, wide-eyed. A tear slips across his waiflike cheek.

“Camellias . . . ” he says, lost in a memory that is his alone. “Camellias, yes.” He repeats the word, looking at me again. “That’s it. Camellias.”

I feel a tear on my own cheek.

I take his hand.

“Jean, you cannot imagine how happy I am that you came by here today.”

“Really?” He looks astonished. “But why?”

Why?

Because a camellia can change fate.

W
hat is this war we are waging, when defeat is so certain? Day after day, already wearied by the constant onslaught, we face our terror of the everyday, the endless passageway that, in the end—because we have spent so much time walking to and fro between its walls—will become a destiny. Yes, my angel, that is our everyday existence: dreary, empty, and mired deep in troubles. The pathways of hell are hardly foreign; we shall end up there one day if we tarry too long. From a passageway to a pathway: it is an easy fall, without shock or surprises. Every day we are reacquainted with the sadness of the passageway and step by step we clear the path toward our mournful doom.

Did he see the pathways? How is one reborn after a fall? What new pupils restore sight to scorched eyes? Where does war begin, where does combat end?

Thus, a camellia.

A
t eight o’clock, Paul Nguyen comes to my loge, his arms loaded with packages.

“Monsieur Ozu has not come back yet—there’s a problem at the embassy regarding his visa—so he asked me to bring all of this to you,” he says, with a lovely smile.

He places the packages on the table and hands me a little card.

“Thank you,” I say. “Would you like something to drink?”

“Thank you, but I still have a great deal to do. I’ll take a rain check for your invitation, for another time.”

He smiles again, and there is something warm and happy about his expression: this does me untold good.

Alone in the kitchen I sit by the packages and open the envelope.

“Suddenly on his shoulders soaked with sweat he felt a
pleasant and airy sensation that he could not initially explain;
but during the pause, he noticed that a huge black cloud drifting low in the sky had just fallen to earth.”
Please accept these few gifts with simplicity.
Kakuro.

The summer rain on Levin’s shoulders as he is scything . . . I raise my hand to my chest, touched in a way I have never been. One by one, I open the packages.

A wraparound dress in a pearly gray silk, with a high round neck and a black satin strap to hold it closed.

A purple silk scarf, light and bracing like the wind.

Low-heeled pumps, in leather of so fine and soft a grain that I lift one to my cheek.

I look at the dress, the scarf, the pumps.

Outside, Leo is scratching at the door, meowing to come in.

I begin to cry, quietly, slowly, a trembling camellia in my breast.

T
he next morning at ten there is a knock on the glass.

A sort of immense beanpole, dressed all in black with a navy blue knit beanie on his head and military boots that must have seen duty in Vietnam. It happens to be Colombe’s boyfriend, a world specialist in the use of the ellipsis in stock polite formulas.

“I’m looking for Colombe,” says Tibère.

Appreciate, if you will, how ridiculous this sentence is: I am looking for Juliet, said Romeo.

“I’m looking for Colombe,” thus spake Tibère, who fears nothing, save shampoo; this becomes apparent when he removes his head covering, which he does not because he is courteous but because it is very warm.

It is May, by Jove!

“Paloma said she was here,” he adds.

And concludes, “Shit, what the fuck.”

Paloma, you are having a good time.

I send him promptly on his way and become immersed in strange thoughts.

Tibère . . . such an illustrious name for such a pathetic demeanor . . . I think of Colombe Josse’s prose, the silent corridors of Le Saulchoir . . . and my mind finds itself in Rome . . . Tiberius . . . The memory of Jean Arthens’s face suddenly takes me unaware, then I see his father, and that outdated lavaliere of his, so ridiculous . . . So many quests, all these different worlds . . . Can we all be so similar yet live in such disparate worlds? Is it possible that we are all sharing the same frenetic agitation, even though we have not sprung from the same earth or the same blood and do not share the same ambition? Tiberius . . . I feel weary, to be honest, weary of all these rich people, all these poor people, weary of the whole farce . . . Leo jumps from his armchair and comes to rub up against my leg. This cat, made obese only by virtue of charity, is also a generous soul who can feel the irresolution of my own. Weary, yes, I am weary.

Something must come to end; something must begin.

A
t eight o’clock I am ready.

The dress and the shoes fit perfectly (12 and 7).

The shawl is Roman (2 feet wide and 6 feet long).

I dried my hair, which I had washed 3 times, with the BaByliss 1600-watt hair dryer, and combed it 2 times in all directions. The results are astonishing.

I sat down 4 times and got up again 4 times which explains why at present I am standing up and do not know what to do.

Sit down, perhaps.

From their box hidden behind the sheets at the back of the wardrobe I have brought out 2 earrings inherited from my mother-in-law, the monstrous Yvette—antique silver, dangling, with 2 pear-shaped garnets. I made 6 attempts before I managed to clip them properly to my earlobes and now must live with the sensation of having 2 potbellied cats hanging from my distended lobes. 54 years without jewelry do not prepare one for the travails of dressing up. I smeared my lips with 1 layer of “Deep Carmine” lipstick that I had bought 20 years ago for a cousin’s wedding. The longevity of such a useless item, when valiant lives are lost every day, will never cease to confound me. I belong to the 8% of the world population who calm their apprehension by drowning it in numbers.

Kakuro Ozu knocks 2 times at my door.

I open.

He is very handsome. He is wearing a charcoal gray suit consisting of straight trousers and a jacket with a mandarin collar and ornamental frog fastenings in matching tones; on his feet are soft leather loafers that look like luxurious slippers. The effect is very . . . Eurasian.

“Oh, you look magnificent!” he says.

“Oh, thank you,” I say, touched, “and you look very handsome yourself. Happy birthday!”

He smiles, and after I have carefully closed the door behind me, before Leo can manage to slip past, Kakuro extends an arm out for me to place my slightly trembling hand on his elbow. Let us hope no one will see us, begs a voice inside, still resisting, the voice of Renée the clandestine. No matter that I have tossed a goodly number of my fears onto the bonfire, I am not yet ready to serve as copy for the Grenelle gossip columns.

Someone’s in for quite a surprise.

The front door, where we are headed, opens before we have even reached it.

It is Jacinthe Rosen and Anne-Hélène Meurisse.

A pox upon it! What am I to do?

We are already upon them.

“Good evening, good evening, dear ladies,” twitters Kakuro, pulling me firmly over to his left, passing them quickly, “good evening, dear friends, we are late, lovely to see you, we are in a terrible rush!”

“Oh, good evening Monsieur Ozu,” they simper, enthralled, turning in unison to follow us with their gaze.

“Good evening, Madame,” they say to me (to me), smiling with all their teeth.

I have never seen so many teeth all at once.

“Until we next have the pleasure,” whispers Anne-Hélène Meurisse, staring intently as we make our way through the door.

“To be sure! To be sure,” chirps Kakuro, pushing the door with his heel.

“Heavens,” he says, “if we had stopped, we would have been there for an hour.”

“They didn’t recognize me,” I say.

I come to a halt in the middle of the sidewalk, completely flabbergasted.

“They didn’t recognize me,” I repeat.

He stops in turn, my hand still on his arm.

“It is because they have never seen you,” he says. “I would recognize you anywhere.”