twilight down the sandy bed of a dried-up river, sort of like the Garonne at the end of its course. They’re driving, alone, in some sort of estuary lined with truck stops, they meet the occasional construction vehicle, pass a gravel pit that’s operating at full capacity. There are boats pulled up in pools of water against the banks, you can tell that there’s free passage only once a day, you can tell the tide’s going to come in, suddenly Arthur tries to grab the wheel and yells, Quicksand—the BMW’s going to sink! Vera replies, All you think about is your damn car, you’re such a gutless wonder, I’m never going to take you anywhere again. When he wakes up, Arthur analyzes the dream, he goes back to the sand, the mud, the rising tide, the gravel, the truck stops pretending to be port taverns, the smell of fish, he thinks about the twilight, he thinks about the horrible reaction when he tried to save the BMW, which is to say their return, which is to say the two of them, and he says to himself, aha, that’s where she was taking me to lunch. She was actually taking me to death.
That was my Arthur. Hypersensitive, irrational. Why, at the moment when there’s nothing more to lose, should he have to give up all claim to his own capriciousness? Embark on a quest for some sort of sorry coherence, at the moment when he should be shedding all inessentials and constructing a last-minute
self,
however pathetic. What’s the point? One day, Genevieve, it was a few years ago, I was driving along the quays at the Cours Albert I, on the opposite sidewalk, a man was skirting the wall, an old man with an astrakhan hat and a beige loden coat. He was walking at the pace old people walk, hands in his pockets, alone with his shadow in the sun. It was my father. I often think about that look, and how he never felt it on him. And I see this image again. An image stripped of its truth. He’s in Bagneux too. We won’t be lost when we get there, Genevieve. My father was what Dacimiento accuses me of being, a sort of cleanliness freak. His grave at Bagneux is of Euville stone. A white stone, plain, perfect for eternity but gets dirty easily. When I go to visit him, I take a plastic bag with an extra-hard-bristled brush, a sponge, and a bottle of water. And we two talk to each other as well, he says here you are at last, my boy, Colette Waintraub, who has no sense of timing, has left this ridiculous pot of flowers on me, it blew over in the first gust of wind, result, everything’s a mess, it’s raining, there’s soil everywhere, patches under the pebbles, can you still read my name? I tell him you’re going to be pleased, Papa, I get out all my stuff, I kneel down, clear everything away, and I start scrubbing, rubbing away with the extra-hard brush, he says that’s good, you at least understand me, you’re the only one who understands me, I scrub away as hard as I can and he starts giving me orders just the way he used to tell me how to scrub his back or how to clean a bathtub, scrub, little one, there, there, right there, you dirty child, do that bit again, scrub the star, you can see it’s clogged up with earth, harder, that’s better. I stand up, I wheeze, after all I’m seventy-three years old, I’ve been bent over in my coat for ten minutes already, I put back the various pebbles on the grave, everything looks wonderful, and then I catch a glimpse of the sides and I see that the sides could do with a cleaning too. I’m saying to myself maybe it’s unnecessary—who pays attention to the sides?—when I feel a voice that’s getting impatient, oh, no, my friend, you’re going to finish it, don’t be sloppy, clean the whole thing, and I admit he’s right, and I kneel down again and I scrub the whole surround like a madman, the lichen, the mold, the gummed-on leaves, the encrusted earth, and when I finish, exhausted, his grave is like new and I say to him you’re happy, and he’s happy.
My own son, Genevieve, trots
That was my Arthur. Hypersensitive, irrational. Why, at the moment when there’s nothing more to lose, should he have to give up all claim to his own capriciousness? Embark on a quest for some sort of sorry coherence, at the moment when he should be shedding all inessentials and constructing a last-minute
self,
however pathetic. What’s the point? One day, Genevieve, it was a few years ago, I was driving along the quays at the Cours Albert I, on the opposite sidewalk, a man was skirting the wall, an old man with an astrakhan hat and a beige loden coat. He was walking at the pace old people walk, hands in his pockets, alone with his shadow in the sun. It was my father. I often think about that look, and how he never felt it on him. And I see this image again. An image stripped of its truth. He’s in Bagneux too. We won’t be lost when we get there, Genevieve. My father was what Dacimiento accuses me of being, a sort of cleanliness freak. His grave at Bagneux is of Euville stone. A white stone, plain, perfect for eternity but gets dirty easily. When I go to visit him, I take a plastic bag with an extra-hard-bristled brush, a sponge, and a bottle of water. And we two talk to each other as well, he says here you are at last, my boy, Colette Waintraub, who has no sense of timing, has left this ridiculous pot of flowers on me, it blew over in the first gust of wind, result, everything’s a mess, it’s raining, there’s soil everywhere, patches under the pebbles, can you still read my name? I tell him you’re going to be pleased, Papa, I get out all my stuff, I kneel down, clear everything away, and I start scrubbing, rubbing away with the extra-hard brush, he says that’s good, you at least understand me, you’re the only one who understands me, I scrub away as hard as I can and he starts giving me orders just the way he used to tell me how to scrub his back or how to clean a bathtub, scrub, little one, there, there, right there, you dirty child, do that bit again, scrub the star, you can see it’s clogged up with earth, harder, that’s better. I stand up, I wheeze, after all I’m seventy-three years old, I’ve been bent over in my coat for ten minutes already, I put back the various pebbles on the grave, everything looks wonderful, and then I catch a glimpse of the sides and I see that the sides could do with a cleaning too. I’m saying to myself maybe it’s unnecessary—who pays attention to the sides?—when I feel a voice that’s getting impatient, oh, no, my friend, you’re going to finish it, don’t be sloppy, clean the whole thing, and I admit he’s right, and I kneel down again and I scrub the whole surround like a madman, the lichen, the mold, the gummed-on leaves, the encrusted earth, and when I finish, exhausted, his grave is like new and I say to him you’re happy, and he’s happy.
My own son, Genevieve, trots
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