Talking to Ghosts Read online

  He allowed the evening to slip by, watching the frantic activities of the other children out of the corner of his eye. The two brothers were constantly together, each mimicking the other’s actions to the point where, without a word, they would simultaneously turn and focus on the same point with the same flutter of their eyelids, which could as easily signify boredom as fear. At some point, in a perfectly synchronised action, they got to their feet and, with small, quick steps, walked towards the stairs leading to the bedrooms. The older children spent the evening gathered around the table football, but this time Victor kept his distance, happy just to watch their wild gestures, to listen to the dull thwacks and obscenities that were a raucous running commentary on the fiercely contested games.

  Bernard and another social worker came and sat next to the boy and asked him how he was doing, and he said, “Fine, I’m fine,” but when Bernard wanted to know how he felt about the hearing Victor stared at him so intently, his eyes glistening with sadness and confusion, that Bernard had to turn away. The other social worker, Farid, suggested a game of table tennis, “a quiet game, just the two of us,” but Victor shook his head, staring down, and the three of them sat motionless in this pocket of silence, the adults staring at the boy who sat, curled up, his head in his hands. After a while Victor said quietly that he was going to bed, the two men wished him goodnight, and he rushed off.

  He took the urn containing his mother’s ashes from the wardrobe and sat on the bed, cradling it, running his hand over the smooth surface that glowed red in the evening light. For some minutes, he stared sightlessly into some dark corner of the room, then he began to weep silently, his body wracked by sobs, his forehead pressed to the lid of the urn, sniffling and murmuring inarticulately as those who have a god do when they pray.

  Shortly before 10.00 p.m. the other children came upstairs, there were doors slammed, muffled noises, pounding on the walls, pipes rumbling. Shouts, laughter and curses erupted in the corridor. The noise brought Victor to his feet again and he stood in the middle of the room, listening to the uproar, anxious and wary. He stared in alarm as his door shuddered from the racket outside, petrified lest someone come in and steal what little he had salvaged from this tragedy.

  But no-one was interested in Victor’s pitiful belongings or his relics, and he was not called on to protect them. After a while, the commotion faded and he could hear only hushed voices, creaking doors, the throbbing bass of some unrecognisable piece of music, and within an hour everything had fallen silent and the night, with its rustling of trees, its rumble of cars and honking trucks on the motorway, had prevailed. For a long time Victor listened in the darkness to the obdurate, varied life of the city, all the while staring at the shelf where he had placed the urn, watching it intermittently flicker with a crimson glow, or rather a radiance, since no light could cling to its metallic surface.

  *

  He had no idea what time it was, but he knew this was the moment. He had been half asleep, but now he got up, and in three steps he was at the window. He leaned across the sill and, gripping with his hands, swung himself out until he found himself hanging by his arms, then he let go, dropping the three metres to the ground. He rolled as he landed on the lawn and stayed for a moment on all fours, feeling the soft grass against the palms of his hands. He looked back at the building, studying the shadowy windows. Nothing moved. He ran through the darkness along the line of trees towards the fence and scaled it effortlessly. He started walking northwards. Towards home. When he came to the first streetlamps he tugged vainly at the collar of his jacket, trying to hide his face. He took only dimly lit streets, running past houses slumbering in small gardens where now and then a dog rushed up, barking at him and baring its teeth through the wire fence. Then, suddenly fearless, he dashed across broad avenues, bent double as though dodging sniper fire. He could easily have encountered a police car, but he saw none. Above a billboard he saw the time: 1.30 a.m. The city was deserted, the only noise now was a low murmur, the gentle breathing of a monster at rest.

  It took him almost two hours to reach home. As he cut through the dockland area known as Les Bassins à flot, he got scared. Water swirled in the darkness, gurgling like a hungry mouth, and he had a fleeting image of some terrifying slimy creature. Sweat ran down his back in ticklish rivulets and he rubbed the back of his T-shirt with his fingertips. Passing the old submarine base and turning onto the rue Blanqui he felt the urge to run, to sprint the last few hundred metres, but his legs stubbornly refused to obey him and he trudged along the streets where he had spent his childhood, glancing anxiously about him like a wanted fugitive. He kept a watch on the sky, for at any moment, he knew, the treacherous blue of dawn might appear, rousing innocent sleepers.

  He stopped at the corner of his road, suddenly breathless. He could see his house, and the dark blinds of Madame Huvenne’s house next door, could picture her tossing and turning in her bed, her legs crippled with rheumatism. A jumbled crowd of memories teemed in his mind.

  For the first time, he pictured his life in the past tense.

  He scrambled over the gate, just as he had whenever he forgot his keys, jumped down into the garden, panting, scratching himself on the perfumed rose bushes, those familiar hydras that bent their many heads towards him, walked around the house and stood under the silk tree, breathing in the smell of the long grass. He tried to calm the beating of his heart, breathing deeply through his mouth, then fumbled under a flower pot, found a bunch of keys and, ripping away the police tape, managed to open one the French windows. He stood on the threshold, panting. The smell of death still hung in the darkness, a fetid spectre that forced the boy back outside, where he bent double, his stomach heaving, retching up bilious gobs of phlegm.

  Steeling himself, Victor stepped into the house, throwing the French doors wide and waving his hands, which did nothing to dispel this thing that still haunted the place, that gnawed at his stomach, crushing his lungs in its loathsome invisible hands. Turning on the light, he walked more confidently into the hallway, stepped into the kitchen and opened the drawer next to the sink, searching methodically until he found a packet of batteries which he stuffed into his jacket pocket. He looked around at the familiar décor, the cupboards with their crooked doors, the potted plant by the window drooping for lack of water. He stepped closer to the large calendar of film posters that was still showing “Les Enfants du Paradis” and studied the dreamy expression of Arletty and, behind her, the faces of Jean-Louis Barrault and Pierre Brasseur leading the jubilant crowds on the boulevard du Crime. He knew nothing about these actors, or about the film, but was surprised to see the name of Jacques Prévert in the credits. He lifted the page to see what film had been chosen for July: it was “The Asphalt Jungle”. In the foreground he saw Sterling Hayden, worried, tense, half swallowed by the darkness. He knew nothing about this film either. He unhooked the calendar and laid it on the counter next to the draining board, where two plates and two glasses had long ago finished drying, the last that they had used. He picked up the glasses, held them up to the light, trying to make out a lipstick smear, some trace his mother might have left when she last had a drink. But there was nothing, the curved glass was immaculately, devastatingly transparent.

  He went up to his bedroom, running his fingertips over random objects, uncertain what to do. He sat in front of his computer and was about to turn it on to read his email, then decided against it and sat staring at his faint reflection in the black screen. None of it mattered anymore. All the hours he had spent playing in fantastical familiar universes, with their rules and their strange creatures, their vicious and preposterous battles, all the time he had spent flying around only to find himself, with a sigh of relief, on the edge of an accursed forest or on some battlefield where he was to wage war against some enemy, all the while sending instant messages to other players, mocking or berating some prince of darkness – it all seemed so remote now, it was in the past, a crumpled memory, a scrap of paper to be tossed away, a
vanished childhood.

  Slowly he got up and went over to the bookcase to look at a photograph taken the previous winter: snuggled together on the sofa, he and his mother were staring solemnly into the lens. The resemblance between them was striking: they had the same big, dark eyes and thick lashes, the same black hair, their mouths were the same shape. They might have been mistaken for brother and sister, something she often joked about until one day when he had asked her if it was possible for him to be both her brother and her son. She had gazed at him for a long time, then shook her head, shrugging as though to shake off a spider’s web, then with a cheery smile said don’t be ridiculous, just think about it for a second, you silly goose! “That really would be the last straw,” she added. She planted a loud kiss right on his ear and he shook his head, laughing, to banish the ringing noise.

  He took the photograph from its frame and slipped it into his backpack, then rummaged through another drawer for more fresh batteries for the Walkman and a few cassettes that she had given him that he never listened to, some pens and a new exercise book; from his bedside table he picked up a knife she had given him a year ago, running his finger over the embossed Laguiole logo, a copper bee, examining the sharp blade in the lamplight. He sat on his bed for a long time staring at the wall above the shelves of school textbooks, plastered with posters of football players, musicians or singers, and the big poster for “Lord of the Rings”, a film he had seen in April. He studied every inch of these few square metres where his past life was frozen in time. He let himself slip into the confusion of memories that came unbidden. Sensations and precise images flooded back, he was powerless to stop them. He would have liked to cry, to hack up this bitter sadness lodged in his throat. He wanted to sleep here, in his own bed, one last time. To pretend. To wake to the promise of the dawn glow, to lie in bed a little longer, watching sunlight move across the shutters. To hope that maybe the bedroom door would open: ‘You not up yet? Have you seen the time?” He could hear his mother’s sing-song voice and remembered the pleasurable laziness that made him turn over in bed and go straight back to sleep, and the memory of this ghostly pleasure made him shudder.

  He stripped off the bedspread and curled up, his cheek pressed against the coolness of the pillow, turned off the light and lay in the dark listening to the silence, expecting a whispered voice, a rustle of fabric, expecting a miracle, staring wide-eyed into the darkness where even now that miracle seemed to be stirring.

  It had probably been a dream. Nothing had happened. He was lying on his bed surrounded by the familiar outlines of his room, utterly at ease in this familiar space. He didn’t know where his dreams began or ended. He felt he was hovering on the brink of an extraordinary event.

  He scrambled from the bed and stood in the boundless silence. A shiver ran down his back.

  “Manou?”

  His voice sounded strange, hoarse, a whisper. It may not even have stirred the air. The air around him felt thick and heavy.

  And yet there came an answer. A sound like a throat being cleared. Almost a cough. He stood motionless and listened. He called his mother’s name again, softly, as though talking to someone who might be asleep. A low moaning sound filled the air. A soft, almost imperceptible groan. He did not dare to breathe.

  Then suddenly he smelled tobacco smoke.

  He pushed open the bedroom door and glanced down the hall. The kitchen light was on. Someone was smoking. He did not know whether or not he should be afraid. Brushing his fingertips along the wall, he groped his way through the semi-darkness towards the orange light.

  She was sitting with one elbow propped on the table, staring at the window as she exhaled a plume of smoke, she looked thoughtful, her head tilted back. She was wearing cream cotton trousers and a baggy black T-shirt. A packet of cigarettes lay beside the ashtray, a small blue lighter standing next to it.

  Victor had seen her like this dozens of times, sitting in precisely this position, smoking in silence; she never heard him approach, never turned until he was standing in the doorway, when she would turn and smile to hide the sadness that tugged the corners of her lips into a bitter crease. He did not speak now, but made the most of this daydream so that he could study her. As always, he found her beautiful, in this moment perhaps more beautiful than ever.

  She reached out a hand to tap the ash off her cigarette into the ashtray and shook her black hair.

  “Manou?”

  She did not react. She just ran her hand through her hair and down her neck, lifting the dark mane that shimmered with blue.

  “Maman? Is that you?”

  Victor waved his hand to attract her attention, and suddenly everything faded and darkness enveloped him, forcing him back against the wall. He slumped there for a moment. With a groan, he forced himself to stand up straight and, flicking the light on, he stepped into the kitchen.

  He walked around the table, eyes filled with tears, and stood on the very spot where, a moment earlier, he had seen her. He pulled out the chair, ran his hand over the seat, looked around for the ashtray and saw it lying upside down on the draining board. He spun around, then sat where she had been, adopting the same pose, staring out of the window, one elbow propped on the table, hoping that by some magic of this place, this pose, his mother’s body would materialise in this very spot, on him or within him. He waited, breathless, tears pouring from his eyes and snot running from his nose. “Come,” he tried to whisper, “come, Manou,” but no sound came but trickles of grief and desperate sobs.

  After a while he got up and looked around again. He put his head under the cold tap, drinking in long gulps. Dripping wet, he reluctantly returned to his room and found his backpack into which he slipped some books – I Am Legend, The Mysterious Island, Moby Dick – and his MP3 player. Then, checking that he had everything he needed, he glanced around the room one last time, and carefully closed the door.

  Investigating the other rooms, he was surprised that the police investigations had not created more of a mess. A few cupboard doors or drawers stood open, their contents spilling out, but it was nothing like what he had seen on television or in movies. On the large sideboard in the living room he searched in vain for the photo album that was a record of his life, of both their lives over the past thirteen years: the police must have taken it away, and he fleetingly wondered what they might want with pictures of babies or toddlers in pushchairs, children swimming or playing ball. He had to make do with three or four framed photographs of his mother, alone or with him, taking them from their frames which he replaced – gaping, empty windows – exactly where he had found them.

  He did not go into the room where she had been killed. He stood in the doorway, paralysed by this solid block of darkness, so compact that the light from the hallway seemed unable to pierce it. The smell seemed stronger here, so much so that he stepped back, suddenly terrified of this malevolent place, and retreated down the hallway as far as the door, open onto the cool of the night, though he could not feel a breath of wind against his neck. His mind was filled with grisly images, and suddenly the familiar creak of the beams and the walls, the woodwork and floors, seemed evidence of some secret, ominous presence in the house. He found himself out in the garden, gasping for breath, staring back at the doorway into the brightly lit hall, from which no ghost appeared, though a swarm of moths had already begun to flutter in. He turned off the light and closed the French windows, leaning his full weight on the door while he turned the lock, as though on the other side evil forces were trying to push their way out so they could seize him, then, slipping the now useless keys into his pocket, he ran out into the street.

  *

  Victor spent all of the following day listening to his mother’s cassettes on the Walkman, using the batteries he had brought from home. Apart from meal times he stayed in his room or went out and sat on the grass beneath the oak tree, and read a hundred pages of The Mysterious Island. In the afternoon four girls came out with a C.D. player, sitting or lying on towels an
d passing around headphones so they could listen to songs they knew by heart, singing along to the choruses, humming the sentimental lyrics, nodding their heads. They bickered over which singer should make it through to the next round of some television programme they watched religiously. Victor observed them out of the corner of his eye, feigning indifference whenever one of them turned his way, but soon they were all staring at him, giggling and whispering things that made them burst out laughing, and he felt himself start to blush and began to sweat even more, unable to concentrate on his book.

  He pretended to be interested in the football match that a dozen or so boys were playing a little further off, raising a huge cloud of dust. They yelled for the ball, swore at each other, and crowed over every goal scored. They were the same yells, the same insults as when they played table football, but choked now with exhaustion and aggravated by the heat. They often fell, especially the smaller boys who were knocked to the ground by the bigger players, and it looked more like some kind of primitive battle, a confusing jousting match where almost anything was permitted and the survival of the fittest was the only rule.

  The roaring of the boys, the singing and laughing of the girls, this constant reminder that life went on, gradually faded, and Victor, leaning back against the deckchair’s rough canvas, spent a long time staring up into the oak leaves, glittering here and there with scraps of light. From time to time he was blinded by a shaft of sunlight, and, closing his eyes, would see a glowing red wound, watch it slowly close and grow black, leaving only darkness and a shower of stars dancing before his eyes. Then he would go back to watching, disturbed now and then by a gust of warm air, until finally he dozed off.