The Elegance Of The Hedgehog Part 18

"Is this octopus?" I ask, for I have just found a crinkly little tentacle in a bowl of saffron yellow sauce.

The waiter brings two thick little wooden trays, without edges, covered with pieces of raw fish.

"Sashimi," says Kakuro. "There is some octopus here, too."

I am lost in contemplation of the masterpiece. The visual beauty of it is enough to take your breath away. I squeeze a little chunk of white and gray flesh between my clumsy chopsticks (that's plaice, elucidates Kakuro obligingly) and, determined to find ecstasy, raise it to my mouth.

Why do we go in search of eternity in the ether of invisible essences? This little whitish chunk is a far more tangible morsel thereof.

"Renee," says Kakuro, "I am very happy to be celebrating my birthday in your company, but I also have a more pressing reason to have dinner with you."

Although we have only known each other for three weeks or so, I am becoming familiar with Kakuro's reasons. France or England? Vermeer or Caravaggio? War and Peace War and Peace or our beloved Anna? or our beloved Anna?

I wolf down another feather-light sashimi-tuna?-of a respectable dimension which might, I concede, have preferred to be divided in two.

"I did invite you to celebrate my birthday with me, but in the meantime, someone has given me some very important information. So I have something crucial to tell you."

The piece of tuna has been absorbing all my attention, and does not leave me prepared for what is about to follow.

"You are not your sister," says Kakuro, looking me straight in the eyes.

20. Gagauz Tribes.

Ladies.

Ladies, if on an evening you are invited by a rich and agreeable gentleman to dinner at a luxurious restaurant, be sure you behave at all moments with equal elegance. If you happen to be surprised, or annoyed, or disconcerted in any way, you must preserve the same refinement in your impa.s.sivity, and, should a turn of phrase astonish you, you must react with the distinction appropriate to such vexations. Instead, because I am a country b.u.mpkin who gulps down sashimi as if they were spuds, I begin to hiccup spasmodically and, aghast at the prospect that the fragment of eternity might well have become lodged in my throat, I endeavor with all the distinction of a gorilla to spit it out forthwith. All around us, silence has fallen. After many eructations and a last and very melodramatic spasm, I finally succeed in dislodging the guilty morsel and, grabbing hold of my napkin, I lodge it there in extremis.

"Should I say it again?" asks Kakuro who-dash it!-seems to be enjoying himself.

"I ... kof ... kof ... "

Kof kof is a traditional response in the fraternal prayer ritual of the Gagauz tribes. is a traditional response in the fraternal prayer ritual of the Gagauz tribes.

"I ... that is ... kof ... kof ... " My conversation is evolving brilliantly.

Then, with a show of cla.s.s that clearly seeks to best all my efforts thus far: "Whaa??"

"I'll say it again to make myself perfectly clear," says Kakuro, with the sort of infinite patience one exercises with children or, rather, the simple-minded. "Renee, you are not your sister."

And as I go on sitting there like a moron, staring at him: "I'll repeat it one last time, in the hopes that this time you won't choke on a piece of sushi that-I might mention-cost thirty euros apiece and normally require a bit more care in their consumption: you are not your sister, we can be friends. We can be anything we want to be."

21. All Those Cups of Tea.

Toom toom toom toom toom toom toom Look, if you had one shot, one opportunity, To seize everything you ever wanted One moment Would you capture it or just let it slip?

That's Eminem. I confess that, in my capacity as prophet of the contemporary elite, I do on occasion listen to him when I can no longer ignore the fact that Dido has perished.

But, above all, I am greatly confused.

The proof of it?

Here:

Remember me, remember me But ah forget my fate Thirty euros apiece Would you capture it Or just let it slip?

That is what is going around inside my head, and it needs no commentary. The strange way that a tune can get stuck in one's mind will always amaze me (not to mention a certain Confutatis Confutatis, patron saint of small-bladdered concierges), and it is merely with pa.s.sing, though sincere, interest that I notice that this time it is the medley that has prevailed.

And then I burst into tears.

At the Bra.s.serie des Amis in a dreary banlieue like Puteaux, a patron who almost chokes, barely comes out of it alive and then bursts into tears, with her face in her napkin, would be priceless entertainment. But here, in this solar temple where sashimi are sold by the piece, my excesses have the opposite effect. A wave of silent reproach has enclosed me, and here am I, sobbing, my nose running, obliged to find refuge in an already seriously enc.u.mbered napkin in order to wipe away the marks of my emotion and attempt to hide a behavior that public opinion reproves.

Which only causes me to sob all the harder.

Paloma has betrayed me.

So, impelled by my sobs, it unravels in my bosom, this life spent in the clandestinity of a solitary mind, all these reclusive readings, all these winters of illness, all that November rain on Lisette's lovely face, all the camellias restored from h.e.l.l and come to rest on the moss of the temple, all these cups of tea in the warmth of friendship, all these words spelling wonder from the lips of my school teacher, these so wabi still lifes, these everlasting essences luminous with their own singular light, and these summer rains bursting in the delight of pleasure, snowflakes dancing the Melopoeia of the heart, and then, in the jewel case of old j.a.pan, the pure face of Paloma. I am weeping, weeping uncontrollably-thick round l.u.s.trous tears of happiness, while all around us the world is fading, leaving nothing to the senses beyond the gaze of this man in whose company I feel like somebody, and who has taken me gently by the hand and is smiling at me with all the warmth in the world.

"Thank you," I manage to whisper.

"We can be friends," he says. "We can be anything we want to be."

Remember me, remember me, And ah! envy my fate.

22. Meadow Gra.s.s.

I know now what you have to experience before you die: let me tell you. What you have to experience before you die is a driving rain transformed into light. know now what you have to experience before you die: let me tell you. What you have to experience before you die is a driving rain transformed into light.

I did not sleep all night. After-and in spite of-my infinitely gracious outpourings, dinner was marvelous: smooth, full of complicity, with long, sweet silences. When Kakuro walked me back to my door, he kissed my hand for a long time, and that is how we said goodbye, without a word, with a simple, electric smile.

I did not sleep all night.

And do you know why?

Of course you do.

Of course everyone must know that along with everything else-that is, a seismic tremor suddenly turning a thawed-out life upside down-something more must be jogging through my little fifty-something schoolgirl's head. And what if I say it out loud: "We can be anything we want to be."

At seven o'clock I get up, as if propelled by a spring, catapulting my indignant cat to the other end of the bed. I am hungry. I am literally hungry (a colossal slice of bread staggering under the weight of b.u.t.ter and cherry plum jam only serves to sharpen my Gargantuan appet.i.te) and I am figuratively hungry: I am in a state of frenzied impatience to find out what will happen. I roam through my kitchen like a wild animal in a cage, I scold my cat who pays not the slightest attention, I indulge in a second round of bread-b.u.t.ter-jam, pace up and down putting things away that do not need putting away, and prepare myself for a third round of bakery consumption.

And then, all of a sudden, at eight o'clock, I calm down.

For no particular reason, and in the most surprising way, a great feeling of serenity trickles over me. What is happening? A mutation. I can see no other possible explanation; some people find themselves growing gills; in my case, 'tis wisdom.

I flop into a chair and life goes on its way.

A way which, incidentally, is hardly cause for exaltation: it occurs to me that I am still a concierge, and that at nine o'clock I have to go to the rue du Bac to buy some bra.s.s cleaner. "At nine o'clock" is a whimsical addition: let's just say "at some point during the morning." But yesterday, as I was planning today's ch.o.r.es, I thought to myself, "I'll go at around nine." So I take my shopping bag and my purse and head out into the wide world in quest of a substance that will cause the ornaments in rich people's houses to shine. It is a marvelous spring day outside. From a distance I can see Gegene extricating himself from his cardboard; for his sake I am pleased there is fine weather ahead. I think briefly of how fond the old tramp was of that arrogant grand master of gastronomy, and it brings a smile to my lips: for those who are content, cla.s.s struggle suddenly seems less important, I muse, surprised that my rebellious consciousness has yielded in this way.

And then it happens: Gegene staggers. I am only a dozen steps away from him: I frown, concerned. He is staggering uncontrollably, as if he were on the slippery deck of a pitching ship, and I can see his face, his lost look. What is going on? I wonder, out loud, and hurry toward the pauper. Ordinarily Gegene would not be drunk at this time of day and besides, he holds his liquor the way a cow does its meadow gra.s.s. Woe of woes, the street is almost deserted; I am the only person who has noticed the poor man teetering on his feet. He takes a few wobbly steps toward the curb, stops, and then, when I am no more than six feet away, suddenly breaks into a run as if he were being pursued by a million demons.

And this is what happens next.

What happens next-like everyone, I wish it would never happen.

23. My Camellias.

I die. die.

I know with a certainty that is close to divination that I am dying, that I am about to expire on the rue du Bac, on a fine spring morning, because a tramp named Gegene, suddenly overcome with Saint Vitus's dance, wandered onto the deserted street without a care for either man or G.o.d.

But that street was not so deserted after all.

I ran after Gegene, leaving my shopping bag and purse behind me.

And then I was struck.

It was only as I was falling, after a stunned moment of utter incomprehension, before the pain crushed me, that I saw what had struck me. And now I am lying on my back, with an unrestricted view onto the side of a dry cleaner's van. It had tried to avoid me and skidded off to the left, but too late: I bore the full brunt of its left front fender. The blue logo on the side of the little white vehicle says "Malavoin Cleaners." If I could, I would laugh. The paths of G.o.d are all too explicit for those who pride themselves on their ability to decipher them ... I think of Manuela, who will feel remorse until the end of her days over this death by dry cleaning-can it be anything other than a punishment for the double theft of which, through her great fault, I was guilty? Now the pain is overwhelming me; the pain in my body, radiating, sweeping through me, succeeding brilliantly in being nowhere in particular and everywhere at once, wherever my body has a nerve to feel; but also the pain in my soul, because I have thought of Manuela, whom I will leave behind, alone, and never see again, and this sends a stabbing pain straight to my heart.

They say that in the moment of your death, you see your entire life. But pa.s.sing before my wide-open eyes-they can no longer make out either the van or its driver, the young woman who had handed me the plum-colored linen dress and who is now crying and wailing without a care for propriety, nor do they see the pa.s.sersby who ran over after the accident and who are all talking to me non-stop with none of it making any sense-pa.s.sing before my wide-open eyes that can no longer see the outside world is a procession of beloved faces, and as each one goes by, my thoughts are wrenching.

With respect to faces, the first one is a little muzzle. Yes, my first thoughts go to my cat, not that he is the most important one of all but, before the real torment and the real farewells begin, I need to be rea.s.sured regarding the fate of my four-footed companion. I smile to myself, thinking about the big fat windbag who has been my partner through these years of widowhood and solitude, and I smile sadly, tenderly, because, seen from death, our close relations with our domestic animals no longer seem to be something minor to be taken for granted, given their everyday nature; ten years of a lifetime have crystallized in Leo, and I take the measure of how the ridiculous, superfluous cats who wander through our lives with all the placidity and indifference of an imbecile are in fact the guardians of life's good and joyful moments, and of its happy web, even beneath the canopy of misfortune. Farewell, Leo, I say to myself, saying farewell to a life I did not think I would be so reluctant to lose.

I entrust the fate of my cat to Olympe Saint-Nice, with the deep relief of knowing with the utmost certainty that she will take good care of him.

Now I can confront the others.

Manuela.

Manuela my friend.

Now that I am about to die I shall say tu tu to you at last. to you at last.

Do you recall all our cups of tea in the silk of friendship? Ten years of tea and saying "vous" to teach other and, at the end of it, a warmth in my breast and a hopeless grat.i.tude toward someone or something, life perhaps, for having graced me with your friendship. Do you know that it is in your company that I have had my finest thoughts? Must I die to realize this at last ... All those hours drinking tea in the refined company of a great lady who has neither wealth nor palaces, only the bare skin in which she was born-without those hours I would have remained a mere concierge, but instead it was contagious, because the aristocracy of the heart is a contagious emotion, so you made of me a woman who could be a friend ... How easy would it have been to transform the thirst of a poor woman like me into the pleasure of Art, to conceive a pa.s.sion for blue china, for rustling foliage, for languid camellias and all the century's eternal jewels, all these precious pearls in the endless movement of the river, if you had not, week after week, offered your heart, and made with me the sacrifice to the sacred ritual of tea?

How I miss you, already ... This morning I understand what it means to die: when we disappear, it is the others who die for us, for here I am, lying on the cold pavement and it is not the dying I care about; it has no more meaning this morning than it did yesterday. But never again will I see those I love, and if that is what dying is about, then it really is the tragedy they say it is.

Manuela, my sister, may fate keep me from being for you what you were for me: a safeguard against unhappiness, a rampart against ba.n.a.lity. Carry on with your life, and think of me with joy.

But in my heart the idea that I shall never see you again is infinite torture.

There you are, Lucien, on a yellowed photograph, as if on a medallion, the way I see you in memory. You are smiling, whistling. Was it like this for you too, the feeling that it was my death and not your own, the end of our gazes long before the terror of going into the darkness? What remains of a life, exactly, when those who spent it together will now have both been dead for so long? Today a strange feeling has taken hold, that I am betraying you: by dying, I am truly causing you to die. Is it not enough in this ordeal to feel that others are becoming distant-must we also put to death those who were still alive only through us? And yet you are smiling, and whistling, and I too am smiling. Lucien ... I did love you well, after all, and for that reason, perhaps, I deserve to rest. We'll sleep in peace in the little cemetery, in our village. You can hear the river in the distance. They fish for shad and gudgeon there. Children come to play, shrieking their heads off. In the evening, at sunset, you can hear the angelus.

And you, Kakuro, dear Kakuro, who made me believe in the possibility of a camellia ... Only fleetingly do I think of you today; a few weeks do not provide the key. I hardly know you beyond the person you were for me: a heavenly benefactor, a miraculous balm against all the certainties of fate. How could it be otherwise? Who knows ... I cannot help but feel my heart ache over that uncertainty. And what if? And what if you had made me laugh again and talk and cry, washing away all those years of feeling tainted by sin, restoring to Lisette her lost honor through the complicity of an improbable love? What a shame ... You are fading into the night, and at this moment when I know I shall never see you again, I must give up all hope of ever knowing what fate's answer might have been ...

Is this what dying is about? Is it so pitiful? And how much time is left?

An eternity, if I still do not know.

Paloma, my child.

Now it is your turn. You are last.

Paloma, my child.

I did not have any children, because it did not happen that way. Did I suffer because of it? No. But if I had had a daughter, it is you she would have been. And with all my strength I implore that your life be worthy of all that you promise.

And then, an illumination.

A true illumination: I see your lovely face, grave and pure, the pink frames of your eyegla.s.ses and the way you have of fiddling with the hem of your sweater, of looking me straight in the eye and stroking the cat as if he could speak. And I start to cry. To cry from the joy inside. What do these onlookers see as they bend over my broken body? I do not know.

But inside me, the sun.