Zenith Hotel (4 page)

The train pulls into the station. Emmanuel gets off. Now he has to take the métro. Not the same
atmosphere
. You feel more rushed. It’s not unpleasant, you’re stepping into your day. It’s hard to get a seat. If you’re lucky, you can grab one of the folding seats, but the standing passengers press against them.

Emmanuel picks up his newspaper in the métro. The headlines, the pretty photos, a horoscope and a crossword. All that he gets free. It’s something to read at work.

Today, there’s too much to do. He went to
Barcelona
with the Year Elevens and the absence slips have piled up. You go away for four days, you come back, and you have to catch up.

Emmanuel is all on his own with his absence slips. The others don’t help him: recording the absentees is his job. And annoyingly, when he talks to Estelle about it, she doesn’t hear a thing. She chops her vegetables and gives little grunts to give the impression she’s listening. So,
Emmanuel
is all on his own with his absence slips. Pink forms, blue forms. They have to be sorted, filed, recorded. The absences go down on the students’ reports. The parents have to explain them. It’s a lot of work, and that’s a fact.

Emmanuel likes doing the absences but it’s not very rewarding. No one ever talks to him about it except when things go wrong. And then it surges back like a huge wave. That’s why Emmanuel says it’s a long-term job, like taking on the sea. He was the one who’d asked for these responsibilities, so now he can’t complain. Sometimes he could do with a helping hand. The other supervisors have different tasks. They can’t understand what’s involved. They collect the students’ forms, bung them in the in-tray and
basta
, they go off for a little wander, the bastards. They’re forever going outside for a smoke and they’re always laughing.
Emmanuel
doesn’t smoke. He’s convinced the others make fun of him. He can tell when sometimes he walks into the office, the others are falling around laughing and suddenly they stop. He’s tried talking to them but he gets a strong feeling that they don’t like him. Anyway, we’re there to do our job! Yes, but all the same, it would be nice to have some friends at work. It would take his mind off things, it would be less stressful. Still the same
responsibilities
but they’d help out, like Father in the war. If he’d had to rely only on himself, Father would have died – he often says so. All in the same boat. Each person at their post, ready to help their mates if there’s a hitch. Mustn’t go under, if one goes, we all
go. You feel supported, invincible. But Emmanuel is well and truly on his own with his absence slips.

In any case, in life you’re always alone, he reckons. You’re alone with your wife, you’re alone with your friends. No point going around wiggling your arse, it might turn people on but at the end of the day, you’re the one who’s steering the ship. However much you depend on them, have a little laugh and delegate a bit, you’re alone. Now that he’s grasped that, he’s more relaxed. You walk through rooms, the office, the métro, the car park; you’re alone, you pass through and you move on. Actually it’s not unpleasant. You know who you can count on. You fight. It’s a jungle. Sometimes you win. That’s how Emmanuel has chosen to see things. On the whole, life’s going well. You have to earn your bread and butter to have a bit of comfort. He’d found a good job and settled down with Estelle. She’s fat, but you can’t have it all. And anyway, Emmanuel has never thought of himself as particularly
attractive
. Not an ugly mug either, but he’s certain that people don’t notice him. At school he had a friend who said he didn’t stand out against a white wall. In a way, that’s how Emmanuel thinks of his face.
He’s no pin-up, for sure, just a regular guy. But he’s honest, and that’s what matters. Estelle says that honest men are few and far between. All the others think about is getting you between the sheets! She sounds as if she’s talking from experience, but Emmanuel’s pretty certain that it’s never happened to her – she reads women’s magazines.

Estelle does the same job as Emmanuel but she doesn’t like it. She can’t stand a single one of the kids. Emmanuel feels more torn. He talks to them. Not all of them, but the nice ones, he asks how they are, tells them jokes. He tells himself that the students will remember him. You have to get the balance right. Not too keen, not too mean. When he started the job, one of the teachers told him to be merciless at the start of the year. It sets the boundaries, he said. You can cut them some slack later on. That’s the way it is, there are rules. You can’t just do as you like.

Now, he’s beginning to understand, but it wasn’t easy at first. It’s a real profession. When he first started the job, he wanted out. And then, little by little, he told himself that everything was fine and he stayed. He signed a permanent contract.

Initially, he wanted to be a teacher. History and Geography. You need a diploma. He sat the
teaching
exam three times. They’re not easy, those things. This year, he didn’t attempt it. He told himself that after all, he had everything he needed. Later, he might be promoted to senior supervisor, maybe, and anyway, Emmanuel has never wanted loads of money. He lacks for nothing; he and Estelle have two cars. He’s never liked guys who flash their money around. The image that comes into his mind is a guy getting out of a car with a girl on each arm. The three of them look a little the worse for wear; they go to a restaurant. The girls are wearing dresses. Tits spilling out, like in the ads. The guy’s wearing leather shoes. He’s shorter than the girls. They shriek with laughter when he whispers something into their necks. He talks dirty and they make a great pretence of being shocked, they laugh, tossing their heads back. You can see their teeth gleaming in the dark. He takes them into the restaurant. They have to walk up some steps. They’re going to carry on drinking, that’s for sure. And then afterwards, the guy will take them to a hotel. They’ll snort some coke and fuck like dogs.

When he thinks of images like that, Emmanuel’s lips tend to quiver. He’s not too sure what he’s looking at. It perturbs him and his lips tremble a little, like at the beginning of a kiss, before it all goes mad. Sometimes he’s aware of it. He likes catching himself out. In a way he feels as if he is escaping from himself, as if he were no longer in control of his body, as if he, Emmanuel Tavernier, were governed by a dark force. He’s been a fan of stories of dark forces ever since he was very little. Trolls and magic rings. On his bookshelves, there’s nothing but fat books with American covers. A big title, the author’s name in big letters, all embossed. He finds them at Saint-Michel. When Emmanuel reads a book, he loses himself in it. He reads all the time, when he’s walking and in the corridors of the métro. That’s what he loves, entering into another world. Estelle says it’s his need to escape. She’s a woman, she always has to use
psychological
words. She wants to explain everything. He tries not to think about it, otherwise he gets anxious. She comes out with stuff like that when they’re eating in front of the TV and it makes him panicky. He comforts himself by saying she’s a woman, she has to explain everything, or she
wouldn’t be able to cope. But when he thinks about things like that, it’s as if the light around him were changing. It turns greyish; it runs down the walls. He doesn’t like those moments when it feels as though everything is flying away. He forgets his responsibilities, the absences and paid holidays, the office chair and the train timetable. When she starts explaining, Estelle’s words turn his little admin system upside down. He’s never spoken about it, but now he’s beginning to know himself; he can tell when the light is about to change. He’s not sure whether other people
experience
the same thing. He doesn’t know whether like him they sometimes feel sad for no reason. It’s not like when something happens to you, it’s stranger than that. You feel it in your body, you feel a bit dizzy. Eventually it passes and you go back to what you were doing.

He indulges in moments of relaxation, TV in the evenings, when he’s tired. After being on your feet all day long, on the lookout, it’s nice to be able to come home and unwind. When Estelle hasn’t got her period and is in a good mood, things can get a bit wild. Emmanuel loves sex. He feels a bit
ashamed afterwards but he feels free. It’s not like in the films, though. It’s never like in the films.

What Emmanuel likes best is breasts. He finds big breasts comforting. When he was little, he stared at breasts the whole time. Now he tries to be more discreet. Just a glance to size them up without looking at the girl, and he thinks about them again afterwards. In the street or in the métro, he fixes an image of boobs in his mind like a photo and thinks about them again, staring vacantly,
sometimes
for hours. When he has sex with Estelle, he thinks about other girls he’s seen, about all the ones he’ll never have, tall and short, brunettes and redheads, the girl in the bakery. There are so many. He doesn’t think about seducing them. Shadows. He fixes the image firmly in his mind and that way he can think about it whenever he wants.