Consolation by Anna Gavalda Page A

excitement. And already so eager.
    Militsia
, they announced.
    Right, who else.
    All the others who were called as witnesses, most of them workers, only spoke Russian. Balanda was surprised that his usual interpreter was not there. He called Pavlov’s office. A young guy was on his way, they assured him, he spoke excellent French. Good. And here he is now, knocking at the door, red-faced and out of breath.
    The discussion began. Or rather, the interrogation.
    But when it was his turn to defend himself, he quickly realized that Starsky and Hutchov’s eyebrows were wiggling in the oddest fashion.
    He turned to his interpreter: ‘Do they understand what you’re saying?’
    ‘No,’ went the interpreter, ‘they say the Tadzhik not drinking.’
    Er . . .
    ‘No, but what I said to you before, about Mr Korolev’s contracts . . .’
    He nodded, started again, and the militsiamen’s eyeballs grew ever rounder.
    Well?
    ‘They say you guaranter.’
    What?!
    ‘Forgive me for asking, but . . . how long have you been learning French?’
    ‘In Greynooble,’ he replied, with an angelic smile.
    Oh, fuck.
    Charles rubbed his eyelids.
    ‘
Sigaryet
?’ he inquired of the younger of the two sheriffs, tapping his index and middle fingers against his lips.
    Spasiba
.
    He let out a long breath, a delicious puff of carbon monoxide and pure discouragement as he contemplated the ceiling where a broken neon hung crookedly between two darts.
    And he suddenly felt for Napoleon . . . That genius of a strategist who, as he’d read a few chapters earlier, failed to win the battle of Borodino because he’d been suffering from a head cold.
    Go figure; suddenly he felt great solidarity with the man. No, kid, they won’t hold it against you . . . You’ve been fighting a losing battle from the start . . . Those guys are far too crafty for the likes of us. Far, far too crafty.
    Finally Pavlovich arrived, Fiat Lux, accompanied by an ‘official’. A friend of the brother-in-law of the sister of the stepmother of Luzhkov’s right-hand man, or something like that.
    ‘Luzhkov?’ exclaimed Charles, ‘you mean . . . the . . . the mayor?’
    Pavlovich didn’t even bother to reply, already too absorbed by the presentations.
    Charles went out. In cases like this, he always went out, and everyone was always grateful.
    He was joined at once by his Berlitz wonder boy, and decided to show some enthusiasm of his own: ‘So, you spent some time in Grenoble?’
    ‘No, no!’ corrected the interpreter, ‘I am live here at day!’
    Right.
    Dusk had fallen. Machines switched off. Some of the workers greeted him, while others shoved them from behind to get them to move along faster, and then Viktor drove him to the hotel.
    He was entitled once again to a Russian lesson. The same one, over and over.
    Roubles were
rubli
, euros were
yevrà
, dollar, ha, that’s
dollar
, imbecile of the ‘Move, c’mon, let’s go’ type was
kaziol
, imbecile of the ‘Let me pass, arsehole!’ was
mudak
, and ‘Move your arse!’ was
sheveli zadam
.
    (Among other things.)
    Charles was going over things absent-mindedly, hypnotized by the kilometres and kilometres and kilometres and kilometres of rows and rows of rabbit hutches. That was the thing that had struck him the most on his first visit to Eastern Europe, when he was still a student. As if the very worst of the peripheral suburbs in Paris, the most depressing of all the council housing tower blocks, could not stop reproducing, ad infinitum.
    And yet Russian architecture . . . Yes, Russian architecture, that was something else . . .
    He recalled a monograph by Leonidov that Jacques Madelain had given him . . .
    It was a familiar refrain . . . Anything beautiful had been destroyed because it was beautiful, hence, bourgeois; and then an entire nation had been crammed into . . . into this, and the little bit of beauty that remained, well, the Nomenklatura had appropriated it.
    Yes, we know. No need to pontificate about