The Sermon on the Fall of Rome Page 8

  “And are you going to come back home with a gun?”

  Matthieu shrugged.

  “Of course not. I’m going to leave it at Libero’s place.”

  He was not keen to have dinner with the family. His parents normally never came for Christmas. This was the first time. And they had insisted that Aurélie should join them too, which the man who was sharing less and less of her life had found very difficult to accept. Since the summer he had only spent a few days with her in October. Instead of going back to France as soon as she was able, she had preferred to accept an invitation from her Algerian colleagues to visit sites at Djemila and Tipasa, claiming that she did not want to offend them. These days she was giving more consideration and attention to people she hardly knew than to him, who had, after all, been sharing her life for several years, yet now he must be content with the small amount of time she granted him with wounding casualness, and, in addition, he had to tolerate her reducing their life together by these extra days she planned to spend at the village with her family, without her even suggesting that he should come with her, as if it went without saying that he wasn’t part of her family. And that evening, at table, she was not thinking of him, as she talked about the exceptional richness of a site left abandoned for many years, the trophies, a breastplate swathed in a long bronze mantle, the heads of gorgons that had disappeared from the pediments of marble fountains, the colonnades of the basilicas. She spoke about the kindness of her Algerian colleagues, whose names she was careful not to mispronounce, Meziane Karadja, Lydia Dahmani, Souad Bouziane, Massinissa Guermat, about their commitment, about the skill and faith with which, for children from primary schools, they conjured up a city filled with life, and, as the children gazed at this mass of mute stones, the yellow grass became covered in paving and mosaics, the old Numidian king rode by on his great melancholy horse, dreaming of Sophonisba’s lost kiss, and centuries later, at the end of the long, pagan night, the faithful, resuscitated, pressed close together against the chancels, as they waited to hear the voice of the bishop who loved them arising within the nave filled with light,

  “Hear me, you who are dear to me,”

  but Matthieu heard no such voice, he was looking at his watch and thinking about the warmth of Izaskun’s arms, as well as those of Agnès, all those things he had no desire to share with anyone, and when the dessert was placed on the table he declared that he wasn’t hungry and was going to leave. But his father said,

  “Don’t go, please. Stay a little longer, it won’t take long,”

  and Matthieu remained sitting there, drank a coffee, helped to clear the table and when his grandfather and mother had gone to bed, stood up as well, but his father repeated,

  “Don’t go, please. I need to talk to you and your sister. Sit down,”

  and he began talking to them very calmly and gravely, but without looking them in the eye, he had been feeling tired for some time, he had undergone tests and he was ill, quite seriously ill, and Matthieu heard this perfectly well, but he could not understand why Aurélie’s face was crumpling up as his father went on talking and giving them the details of the regime he would be obliged to follow, which would, without any doubt, be effective, a tried and tested regime, almost routine, and yet Aurélie buried her face in her hands and kept repeating,

  “Oh, Papa. My God, Papa,”

  although he could not be as ill as all that, since he was saying this himself, and Matthieu got up to help himself to whisky, he was vainly trying to concentrate on what his father was saying, but Izaskun’s hands were covering his ears, to prevent him from hearing and Agnès’s hands were brushing his eyelids, as one closes the eyes of a dead person, to prevent him from seeing, and despite all his efforts, he could neither see nor hear his father, Jacques Antonetti, explaining to his children as best he could that he might be going to die soon, because his words had no place in the best of all possible worlds, the happy-go-lucky, triumphal world and within it they could make no sense at all, they were simply a disagreeable noise, the troublesome stirrings of an underground river, whose remote power could present no threat to the order of this perfect world, in which there was only the bar, the imminent New Year, a friend who was like a brother, and sisters whose incestuous embraces exhaled the perfumes of mellow redemption, there was an endless prospect of tranquility and beauty, which nothing could disturb, so that when Jacques folded him in his arms and kissed him with emotion and said to him,

  “Please don’t worry, everything will be fine,”

  he could only answer in all honesty that he wasn’t worried, for he knew everything would be fine and his father replied,

  “Yes,”

  proud, perhaps, of this son whose great sensitivity had spared him the grievous burden of his distress, and he kissed Aurélie and went to bed. Matthieu remained there at the center of the living room, as if made vaguely uneasy by some element of uncertainty, he helped himself to another whisky, standing next to Aurélie who was holding back her tears, but he quickly remembered he could leave now and put down his glass. Aurélie looked up at him.

  “You do realize?”

  “Realize what?”

  “Papa may die.”

  “That’s not what I heard. Not at all.”

  He reached the bar around midnight. Two fellows from Sartène were drinking a bottle of vodka at the counter, they were finding it hard to remain upright but were flirting crudely with Annie, who called them pigs and punished them from time to time with a little reproving caress on their balls, simpering the while and pocketing huge tips. Gratas was pushing a broom around in a corner. All alone at a table Virginie Susini was playing patience. Matthieu went and sat down facing her. She did not pause for a second and did not glance at him. A moment before Matthieu had not felt the need to open his heart to anyone at all but there she was and she might well have been the only person in the world one would not regret sharing confidences with, for it was likely she would not even hear them. He leaned toward her and suddenly said to her,

  “Apparently my father may be going to die.”

  Virginie tossed her head and set down the queen of diamonds beneath the king of clubs before murmuring,

  “I know all about death. I was born a widow.”

  Matthieu made a gesture of irritation. Crazy people wearied him. He wanted to see Izaskun. He regarded Virginie with a smug little pout.

  “Well, I don’t suppose I’m the one you’re waiting for.”

  Virginie picked up another card.

  “No, you’re not. He’s the one I’m waiting for, but he doesn’t know yet,”

  and she pointed a finger at Bernard Gratas, at which he stood there, petrified, broom in hand.

  And now, watching through the window, she was waiting for the Balearic Islands to appear, offering her the promise of an imminent solace, that of a return to the sweetness of a native land, though not the one she had been born in, and her heart began beating faster until she caught sight of the gray strip of the African coastline and knew she was coming home at last. For it was in France now that she felt in exile, as if the fact of no longer breathing the same air day in day out as her compatriots had made their concerns incomprehensible to her and the remarks they made pointless, a mysterious, invisible frontier had been traced around her body, a transparent glass frontier she had neither the power nor the desire to cross. She had to make taxing efforts to follow the most mundane conversation and, despite such efforts, she still could not manage to do so, she had to keep asking people to repeat what they had just said, or else she gave up responding, and retreated behind the silence of her invisible frontier and the man who would soon no longer be sharing her life at all was constantly upset by this, he would reproach her, but she no longer even defended herself for she had given up the struggle against her own coldness, against the indifference and unfairness that had taken over in her churlish heart. It was only when she reached Algiers airport, and then the university premises, and even more at Annaba, that she bec
ame friends again with good nature. She cheerfully endured the interminable wait at the border police controls, the traffic jams and the landfills open to the sky, the water being cut off, the identity checks at road blocks, and, as for the Stalinesque ugliness of the great Hotel d’État in which the whole team at Annaba was quartered, with its dilapidated rooms opening out onto empty corridors, it seemed to her almost engaging. She complained about nothing, her assent was total, for every world is like a man, it constitutes a whole from which it is impossible to pick and choose, and it is as a whole that you must reject or accept it, the leaves with the fruit, the straw with the grain, the vileness with the grace. What lay there, within a casket of dust and filth, were the broad sky of the bay, Augustine’s basilica and the jewel of a boundless generosity, whose brilliance outshone the filth and dust. Yet once a fortnight she went back to Paris to spend the weekend with her father. When she had told them he was ill all her colleagues showed her many kindnesses. They gave her quantities of pastries for her father and prayers for his recovery. Massinissa Guermat insisted on going with her to the airport and was waiting for her on her return. At the beginning of April she was sitting with her mother beside the hospital bed in which her father was trying to regain his strength after his treatment. He had shaved his head so as not to see his hair falling out. He asked for a glass of water which Aurélie handed to him. As he was raising it to his lips he dropped it, his eyes rolled upward and he fainted. Claudie flung herself at him, crying out,

  “Jacques,”

  and he seemed to recover himself, he looked at his wife and daughter and uttered incoherent words, he grasped Aurélie’s wrist and drew her to him, his eyes were those of a dying animal, filled with fear and darkness, and he was trying to speak without managing to do so, despite putting all his energy into it, coming out with a farrago of syllables, sometimes whole words, wrested from the sentences that his sick body cruelly held prisoner, words that were a parody of language and reflected only the desolation of a monstrous silence, much older than the world, and he fell back onto his pillow, his hand still clutching his daughter’s wrist. A doctor and some nurses appeared and asked Claudie and Aurélie to leave. They waited in the corridor and the doctor came out to see them, he mentioned kidney failure and uremia and when they questioned him about what was likely to happen he told them he had no idea and they would have to wait and he left them. Claudie closed her eyes.

  “I think you should call your brother. I can’t.”

  Aurélie went out and when Matthieu picked up the phone she heard laughter and music. At first he seemed unable to understand what she was saying. The treatment was going well, his mother assured him of this every time she called him, there was no need to worry. She closed her eyes.

  “Matthieu, listen to me. He’s unrecognizable. He’s no longer himself. Can you hear what I’m saying?”

  Matthieu said nothing. She could hear the music, voices calling out to one another, more laughter. In the end he muttered,

  “I’ll go and pack. I’m coming.”

  The next day, against all expectation, Jacques Antonetti was much better. He had no memory of what had happened the previous day. He tried to joke. He apologized to Aurélie and Claudie for the fright he had given them. The doctor thought it wiser to keep him in the hospital. At the hospital they could respond as swiftly as necessary in the event of another incident. If Claudie wished they could install a camp bed for her in her husband’s room and she said that would be perfect. Again Aurélie called Matthieu who was relieved and came close to accusing her of painting an apocalyptic picture when the situation was perfectly under control. She did not trouble to respond.

  “So, when are you coming?”

  Matthieu pointed out that there was no longer any urgency and he was very busy preparing for the summer season and, besides, if he arrived out of the blue like that there was a risk of alarming his father for nothing, he might well think he’d come to say goodbye, they had to keep up his morale, and Aurélie was unable to control herself any longer, she told him he was a disgustingly selfish little prick, a blind little prick who deep inside him hoped that in the end this blindness would win him absolution, but he would never be absolved for what he was doing now, and if he were to be, it wouldn’t be by her, she was not their mother who still saw him as a little cherub who must be shielded at all costs from any painful confrontation with the horrors of existence, as if, deep down, he were the one who deserved all the pity, as if his delicate sensitivity, his exquisite sensitivity, which was apparently his exclusive privilege, excused him from fulfilling his most basic, his most sacred obligations, she was not going to waste her breath speaking of love and compassion to him, these were words he was incapable of understanding, but did he, at least, understand where his obligations lay, did he understand that if he persisted in seeking to avoid them, then he would forever remain the little shit he’d turned himself into in record time, with a skill, she was willing to concede, that took your breath away, and no one would be able to help him anymore for it would be too late, it would be too late for lamentations or the comfort of regrets, she would be watching out for this, unless he’d become so rotten to the core that he no longer even experienced the reassuring temptation of regrets, but if anything of the brother she loved remained within him, he would force himself to extract his head from his navel and open his eyes, and she wanted to hear no more talk of his being unaware, or unable to see, or too sensitive, however exquisitely and delicately sensitive, there are terrible things in life and you have to face up to them because that’s what men do, by confronting them they put their humanity to the test and make themselves worthy of it, and he would come to realize that it was impossible, absolutely impossible for him, totally and conclusively impossible, to let his father die without affording him the charity of a single visit, even if such a visit would be infinitely less pleasant than what made up the daily round of his life as a prick, partying and screwing and the vile stupidity in which he wallowed, like a pig on its dunghill, and when he had realized this he would catch the plane without another minute’s delay, and she was so afraid of having to shut him out of her life if she heard the answer he was going to give her now, she was so afraid of having to lose him forever, idiot, incorrigible idiot that she was, that she preferred not to have to listen to his answer and she hung up on him. She went back to Claudie. She was shaking with rage.

  “I’ve just had your son on the phone. You’d have done better to . . .”

  Claudie looked at her, completely lost and defenseless, and Aurélie congratulated herself on not having completed the sentence dictated to her by the brutal impulses of her churlish heart, though she no longer resisted them as soon as she found herself alone with the man who was sharing her life for the last time. She took refuge behind her glass frontier and on that last night she refused to share her body with him, or her anger or her pain. At Annaba Massinissa Guermat asked her how her visit had gone and if her father was getting better, and she replied that everything had gone very well, but as he was taking her back to the vast, silent desert of the Hotel d’État, she surrendered to the wave of sadness overwhelming her and shook her head, no, everything had not gone well, she had thought her father was dying in front of her, he’d been unable to speak, had seized her wrist with all his strength, so as not to be sucked in by the shifting sands that were already filling his mouth and choking him, and there was nothing she could do, because when you die you are alone, oh, how alone you are when you die, and faced with this loneliness she had simply wanted to get away, nothing else, she had wanted her father to let go of her wrist so as to let her get away, and for him to stop compelling her to face this loneliness which is beyond the understanding of the living, and for a long while she no longer felt either compassion or grief but simply a panic fear, the memory of which now filled her with horror and Massinissa said to her,

  “I can’t leave you like this,”

  and she turned to him, with a dry throat, unexpec
tedly feverish and alive, and said to him in commanding tones, without lowering her eyes,

  “Then don’t leave me. Don’t leave me,”

  and without a moment’s thought she flung her arms around his neck, and with immense solace felt Massinissa’s arms enfolding her. He got up before dawn, so that no member of the team and none of the hotel staff should see him returning to his room. Aurélie waited till dawn. She had a bath and stayed there for a long time in the yellowish water, thinking of nothing, and emerged abruptly to make a call to the man she was going to leave. He was unwilling to believe this, he demanded explanations and, weary of battle, since he needed to have an explanation, Aurélie told him that she had met someone, but this revelation provoked further questions, where? who? since when? and Aurélie replied that none of this had any point because, basically, this encounter had nothing to do with what she was in the process of doing, he must understand this, but he insisted and so finally she said,

  “Last night. Since last night.”

  He went on talking, now there were sobs in his voice, why was she telling him so soon? why hadn’t she waited? it could be a passing fancy he would never have known about, she couldn’t be certain, and now it was irreparable, why had she confessed something that might well have had no significance, why was she so cruel? Aurélie thought she owed him the truth.

  “Because that’s what I want: I want it to be irreparable.”