This Night’s Foul Work

VI

LIEUTENANT VEYRENC TOOK ADVANTAGE OF HIS LONG HOURS IN THE BROOM cupboard to copy out in large handwriting one of Racine’s plays for his grandmother, whose sight was going.

Nobody had ever understood the exclusive passion his grandmother had declared for this author, and no other, when she had been left a war orphan. The family knew that when there was a fire at her convent school, she had rescued a complete edition of Racine, except for the volume containing Phèdre, Esther and Athalie. As if the books had been granted to her by divine intervention, the little country girl had read them over and over, for eleven years. When she’d left the convent, the mother superior had given the volumes to her as a sort of vade-mecum, and his grandmother had gone on reading them, over and over, without changing the order, or ever having the curiosity to seek out Phèdre, Esther and Athalie. She would recite the speeches of this lifelong companion all the time, and the young Veyrenc had grown up hearing the twelve-syllable alexandrines, which had become as natural to his childish ears as if someone were singing around the house.

Unfortunately, he had picked up the habit as well, replying to his grandmother in the same mode – lines twelve syllables long. But since he had not had thousands of verses ingrained in his mind, night after night, he had to invent them. As long as he was living in the family home, it had hardly mattered. But once he was out in the world, this Racinian reflex had cost him dear. He had tried to suppress it by various methods, without success, then had given up the attempt and had gone on versifying unstoppably, muttering like his grandmother, a habit which had exasperated his superior officers. But it had also preserved him in some ways, since encapsulating life in twelve syllables had introduced an extraordinary distance – ‘to no other compared’ - between himself and the hurly-burly of the world. The effort of standing back had always brought him into a calmer and more reflective state and had above all stopped him making irreparable mistakes in the heat of the moment. Racine, despite the intensity of his dramas and his incendiary language, was the best antidote to haste, cooling immediately any temptation to go over the top. Veyrenc had started deliberately using verse this way, realising that his grandmother had contrived similarly to regulate and manage her life. It was a personal medicine – ‘to all others unknown’.

At the moment, his grandmother was unable to take her regular potion, so Veyrenc was copying out Britannicus in big letters for her: He had reached the point when Junie was emerging from her bedchamber,

In the simple array

Of a beauty from sleep summoned forth by the day.

Veyrenc raised his pen from the paper. By the sound of her boots, he could hear the grain of sand coming up the stairs – for the grain of sand always wore a recognisable pair of boots, criss-crossed with leather straps. The grain of sand would stop first on the fifth floor, and ring the bell of the flat belonging to her invalid neighbour, bringing her her mail and her lunch. She would then be up on the seventh within a quarter of an hour. The grain of sand, otherwise known as the resident on his landing, was Mlle Forestier, Camille, whom he had now been guarding for nineteen days. According to the little he had been told, she was to be kept under police protection for six months, shielding her from the possible vengeance of a murderous old man. Otherwise, all he knew of her was her name. And that she was bringing up a baby on her own, without any man on the horizon. He could not guess what her occupation was – he hesitated between plumber and musician. About twelve days ago, she had politely requested him to come out of the broom cupboard because she needed to solder a pipe inside it, at ceiling level. He had moved his chair out on to the landing and watched her precise and concentrated gestures, registering the metallic sound of the tools and the flame from her soldering iron. It was during this episode that he had felt himself slipping towards the forbidden and feared chaos. Since then, she had brought him a cup of hot coffee twice a day at eleven and four.

He heard her put down her bag on the fifth floor. The idea of leaving his broom cupboard that moment once and for all, so that he would never see this young woman again, made him rise from his chair. He tensed his arms, looked up at the skylight and considered his face reflected in the dusty pane. Abnormal hair, ordinary features, I’m ugly, I’m invisible. Veyrenc took a deep breath and muttered to himself:

‘But I see that thy soul is filled with sudden fear,

Thou, the victor of Troy, hero without a peer,

Who gained both the city and people with great art.

Can a woman’s fair face make tremble that brave heart?’

No, no way. Veyrenc sat down again calmly, cooled by his four lines of dramatic verse. Sometimes it took six or eight, other times two were enough. He took up his copying task once more, feeling pleased with himself. Grains of sand pass, birds fly away, control remains. There was no cause for concern.

Camille stopped at the fifth floor and shifted the baby on to her other arm. The simplest thing would probably be to go downstairs and come back after eight o’clock when the duty officer would have changed. The nine conditions of the warrior are to flee, according to a Turkish friend of hers, a cellist at the church of Saint-Eustache, who was a mine of proverbs, as Byzantine as they were incomprehensible and beneficial. Apparently there was a tenth condition, but Camille didn’t know what that was and preferred to make up her own version. She took the letters and the groceries out of her bag and rang the bell. The stairs had become too much for Yolande, whose legs were weak and whose bulk was great.

‘Such a shame,’ said Yolande, opening the door. ‘Bringing up that child on your own.’

Yolande said this every day. Camille would go in, put down the provisions and the letters. Then the old lady, for some reason known only to herself, would offer her some warm milk, as if for a baby.

‘It’s OK, it’s quite all right,’ Camille would reply automatically as she took her seat.

‘No, it’s no good. A woman doesn’t want to be on her own. Even if men are nothing but trouble.’

‘Well, there you are, Yolande. Anyway, women can be nothing but trouble too.’

They had exchanged these remarks a hundred times, almost word for word, but Yolande never seemed to recollect that. At this point, Camille’s comment would plunge the large old woman into meditative silence.

‘In that case,’ Yolande would then say, ‘they’d do well to keep apart, if love just brings them both grief.’

‘Could be.’

‘But you know, my dear, you shouldn’t keep putting them off. Because when it comes to love, you can’t always do what you want.’

‘But Yolande, who’s going to do for us what we don’t want to do?’

Camille smiled, and Yolande sniffed by way of reply, her heavy hand moving to and fro across the tablecloth in search of a non-existent crumb. Who? Why, the Powers-that-be, of course, Camille silently completed the answer. She knew that Yolande saw the signs of the Powers-that-be everywhere. This was her private pagan religion, which she didn’t talk about much, for fear that it might be taken from her.

Eight stairs from her landing, Camille slowed down. The Powers-that-be, she thought. Who had parked this man with the crooked smile in the cupboard outside her apartment. He was no better-looking than average, if one didn’t look too closely. But much better-looking if one had the bad idea of thinking about it afterwards. Camille had always been susceptible to elusive features and undulating voices, which was why she had spent fifteen years, on and off, in the arms of Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, and kept promising herself not to return to them. To him or to anyone else blessed with that subtle sweetness and treacherous tenderness. There were plenty of men in the world who were less difficult to pin down, if one wanted a bit of straightforward contact that would allow you to come home relieved and peaceful, without needing to think about them any more. Camille felt no need of permanent company. Why the hell, then, had some chance dictated, thanks to the Powers-that-be, no doubt, that this guy on the landing, with his husky voice and his crooked lip, should touch her senses? She stroked the head of little Thomas, who was dribbling as he slept on her shoulder. Veyrenc. With his strange black-and-tan hair. A grain of sand in the works and an inconvenient disturbance. Distrust, vigilance and flight.