She stroked Charlotte’s head and said:
“Monsieur Herman, how can we get her to understand that she needs to make something of herself?”
Leafing through a manual on computer languages, he smiled awkwardly and shrugged with his elbows. Now and then the spattering rain on the windows half drowned out their voices. Encouraged by Métilde’s full, smooth face, thinking he could trust her, he asked if she thought he was obliged to say yes to the tennis match with Gilbert against the district councilor.
PART TWO
1 – Herman would pass by the inevitably wide-open door to Alfred’s room, shared by Charlotte, and see the bed strewn with the cassettes she listened to whenever she had a free moment, and magazines devoted to cooking or scandals involving people whose names meant nothing to Herman but were well known to Charlotte, which she read with a passion that—Herman grumpily told himself—she never threw into anything else. Charlotte would get up very early to bring the president his breakfast, and often he would criticize what she brought him; he was always out of sorts in the morning. Then he would leave for work at the town hall and Charlotte would set about cleaning the rooms, giving Herman no chance to approach her like he wished he could: she worked with great diligence, fearing her mother, and although she never said it to his face she didn’t like him even simply asking a question that would force her to turn off the vacuum to hear, or pause as she scrubbed out a sink or swatted a bedspread. Any other time of day, the mother would have urged Charlotte to talk with Herman for as long as he liked. But during housekeeping hours she’d come creeping up, stand behind Herman, smiling, affable, and assign Charlotte some task or other—keeping her eyes on her—in a voice that Herman found nothing short of exquisite in spite of himself. And, since he hadn’t yet talked to her about the exorbitant price of his board and didn’t feel at ease in her presence, he’d soon wander off, slowly, regretfully. He went back to his room, glancing toward the window. The rain poured down, erasing the hills in the distance. Sometimes, with the skies so gray and the clouds so low, he couldn’t even see the face of the old woman across the way, but he no longer minded being watched. Because was there ever anything strange or private in his behavior? The whole village could have had their eyes glued to him twenty-four hours a day, watching his every move, and they would have nodded their heads with unwavering approval.
Then, having nothing else to do, he would take a little nap. He would also sometimes walk past Gilbert’s room, but quickly, staring straight ahead. And if he sensed that Gilbert was there, lying on his bed, smoking, then he would race to the toilets at the end of the hall and lock himself in until Gilbert was gone.
Sometimes the father would happen upon Herman and, to make conversation, tell him with a sigh:
“Our Gilbert’s out of work, it’s been more than two years, what hope do we have of finding something for him in the village?”
And the mother would chime in:
“It’s sad, seeing him hang around here all the time with nothing to do. At least he has his weekend connections in L., something’s going to come of that, I’m sure of it.”
But the parents, proud of their son’s handsome face, didn’t want him to be offered a position as some sort of subordinate. They wanted to see him in business school, and they were indignant that it required a baccalauréat, which Gilbert didn’t have. And so they’d staked their pride on seeing to it that he got in without one, through the intercession of his friend Lemaître, an important figure in L. They also seemed to have gotten the idea that Herman was somehow going to help Gilbert get on his feet, although they hadn’t heard about the tennis match. They lavished him with kindness and attention, particularly the mother, but Herman was still resolved to pay only half of what they were asking when the end of the month came. Which was why he avoided her, despite the captivating courtesies she was capable of dispensing.
All day long he would wander around the hotel, heading aimlessly upstairs, then down, trying to bump into Charlotte, hiding from Gilbert and the mother. He ceremoniously greeted any other guests he met, and they him. They were mostly traveling salesmen. The rain and the cold discouraged any thought of going out. And with Charlotte he had the emptiest conversations over and over, never unhappy about it, adapting to the simple way her thoughts progressed, affectionately squeezing a bit of her flesh here or there. Charlotte’s tranquil existence was filled with housekeeping, magazines, and serving the ever capricious and demanding president, Alfred. How could she need anything more? Indifferent to her appearance, she always dressed in the same unbecoming clothes.
“She charms the worst part of me,” mused Herman, “the laziest part, the most shiftless. The hours go by without thought or vitality, and everything’s the same, from minor villainies to virtuous good deeds. How restful, yes, what a restful life this is! What a restful place is this village!”
At six thirty, he would rouse himself and go wait for Métilde in the lobby of the town hall. They drank a glass of fortified wine at her apartment, all the while discussing Métilde’s chances of success, as well as the possibility of saving Charlotte, which interested Herman less, because he didn’t believe anyone could or should extract her from her torpor. Dynamic tension kept Métilde’s shoulders straight and square. And although he was very fond of her, a growing weariness made Herman less talkative around Métilde every day.
“The Bodin Marble Works, the Vocational Training Certificate, all that fuss and work day after day, what’s the point?” he vaguely asked himself. “Who cares?”
He wasn’t far from thinking that a rudimentary, inert existence in the hibernating village was the only life worth living. But he still forced himself to believe that—with her pure, honest, industrious will—Métilde brought out all his finest instincts, that her presence was good for him, as the unconsciously toxic Charlotte’s was not. He paged through Métilde’s books, did his best to provide useful advice. He would have been happier sprawled on the comforter; he would gladly have lain there silent and mindless for hours on end.
Then Gilbert, Métilde’s long-time lover, would show up, pouring himself generous glasses of port and holding forth, perpetually upbeat and confident. Gilbert and Métilde would talk about leaving the village for the bustling subprefecture city of L., Gilbert smugly depicting his life as a student admitted to the First School of Business with no baccalauréat, while in a few hopeful words Métilde modestly evoked an executive secretary position at the Bodin Marble Works, then gave up even on that, not wanting to even think of leaving before she’d saved Charlotte from her pointlessness.
“Yes, life in this village is a good life to live,” thought Herman, “once summer’s over there’s nothing to do with yourself, and boredom without awareness or resentment slows the mind, and the subprefecture city of L. seems unreachable in the storms: you have to accept it, and even deep in an ugly little room with flowered wallpaper, find your way to restfulness, to a sort of dulled, larval inertia. Such a good life!”
All the same, he took care not to interrupt Gilbert and Métilde as, more and more heated, their voices sharp and seething, they went on and on about the village, suddenly scorned amid their evocations of L.’s superiority. In the village, Gilbert couldn’t enjoy or exploit his prerogatives as a universally charming young man. In the village, Métilde couldn’t rise professionally, she could learn only the theory of a life enriched and liberated by a very modern career, which in her eyes was perfectly represented by the vision of herself entering the Bodin company’s receipts and expenses into a computer. In the village, Métilde had no prospects but ribbons for her blouse and everything that came with them. She wanted no such life, she said, for her dear Charlotte either.