Gilbert let out a glum little laugh and protested that Lemaître wasn’t his friend, that people like Lemaître—a district councilor and a swimming-pool builder—felt nothing but disdain for villagers like Gilbert, even though he was the son of a merchant. The fact was that when you came from the village you couldn’t possibly hope a Lemaître might see you as an equal, however kind and affectionate he was with you. Gilbert knew that to Lemaître (a native of L.) he was simply a hick, too backward even to pass the baccalauréat, but by some miracle endowed with physical attributes (handsomeness, presence, etc.) that made him worth spending time with, eclipsing his deplorable origin just enough to let it be forgotten—even as he treated Gilbert with all the condescension and dismissiveness that went with the degrading nimbus of the village enveloping his agile young body. So no, you couldn’t call Lemaître his friend. But Gilbert had worked his magic on him. The man was seduced, that was certain. And now Lemaître would have no choice but to help him. It was in Lemaître’s power to get him into the First School of Commerce without a degree. It wasn’t exactly kosher, but Lemaître had the means. Except he wasn’t the type to bestow favors purely out of friendship.
“Ha, ha, that’s for sure!” Gilbert laughed, his upper lip now glistening with sweat.
Lemaître liked a little fun, he liked making bets. They’d agreed that if Gilbert won the match Lemaître would pull the necessary strings at the school for Gilbert and never ask anything more of him. If not, Gilbert would have to find some way to purchase his help. That was fair. Because what chance did Gilbert have of getting anywhere without a leg up from Lemaître? He would vegetate in the village, with nothing to do, drifting from internship to internship, at best he would wind up in some lowly, demoralizing little job like janitor at the cider works or asphalt layer, obscure city office worker or summer factotum for the Parisians. He wasn’t going to let that happen, not for anything in the world. Whatever the price to satisfy Lemaître and get his support, Gilbert would pay it; he would never resign himself to letting go and languishing his life away in the village.
“Yes, well, I did tell you I haven’t played tennis for twenty years,” Herman fretted.
He shifted unhappily this way and that in his seat. He was angry at Gilbert for picking him as a partner when he hardly knew how to play, placing the responsibility for an almost certain defeat on his feeble, shivering shoulders.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter that much,” said Gilbert.
But he gunned the engine, sped up even more. His eyelids twitched nervously as he strained to make out the edges of the pavement. Already he had dark makeup smudges at the corners of his eyes. He rolled down his window and took a deep breath. Herman felt as if the water that had replaced the blood in his veins was beginning to freeze, and he knew for certain that nothing would ever warm him again.
“You know, the big thing,” Gilbert explained, “is for him to see that I know someone from Paris, that I’m not so…that I’m even friends with a Parisian, because apparently he knows a ton of them, but he doesn’t play tennis with them or anything, whereas I…he’ll have to admit I’ve got him beaten there…”
And that, he explained, would earn him a glory far more precious than he would ever get from possibly winning the match. Too bad if he then had to sacrifice himself to Lemaître. Besides, he will have brought Herman, so Lemaître would treat him a little more respectfully. Herman still had his magnificent Parisian face that would shut Lemaître up.
“You don’t mind too much, I hope?” Gilbert asked softly.
But Herman couldn’t bring himself to answer. He slumped against the car door and closed his eyes, so furious with himself for leaving the village that he was trembling all over in fear and resentment.
Gilbert parked his car on the main square of L. and walked Herman to the tennis club, where they would all sit down for lunch before the match. Destroyed in the last war, the subprefecture city of L. had been entirely rebuilt in concrete and brick. The town center consisted of three pedestrian streets lined with low apartment buildings, flat-roofed, their balconies fronted with tinted plastic. Herman was a little taken aback: was that really all there was to L.? The streets were almost deserted in the falling rain. The cobblestones were slippery, the flower pots half filled with bottles and wax-paper wrappers.
“Oh, Métilde!” cried Herman, spotting a young woman walking ahead of them, hunched under an umbrella.
But she turned a corner, and the club lay straight ahead. Herman wanted to go after her.
“No time,” said Gilbert.
“She would have saved me,” thought Herman, suddenly resigned. Because he knew Métilde didn’t have a car, and never went to L. It would be another six months before she hoped to be driven there for the exam. So why would she be here, if not, providentially, just for him? To take him back to the village, to help him go home? But she hadn’t seen him, and in his great weakness around Gilbert he’d let her slip away.
And now they were at the tennis club, Gilbert on edge, forcing himself to whistle, slapping his thigh with his racket. He’d recognized Lemaître’s massive 4x4 outside, and now he was peering around for him in the restaurant that overlooked the tennis courts, roofed for the season. Catching him off guard after the dull, empty streets, the tumult in the club filled Herman with anguish. He put his hands over his already aching ears, but the violent music pouring from a dozen speakers in the ceiling, the hubbub of voices in the packed room, and the balls being batted back and forth on the court below had exploded in his skull the moment he came in, and now his head was vibrating, resonating, ringing absurdly. He turned to flee, but Gilbert clasped his elbow and herded him toward Lemaître’s table, just by the balustrade, with a view of the games going on below.
“The other one will be here after lunch,” Gilbert whispered, meaning Lemaître’s partner.
He gave Lemaître a quick embrace and made the introductions.
“Herman’s from Paris,” he launched in. “The fourteenth arrondissement, actually, right, Herman, the Rue des Plantes?”
“Say, I know someone who lives around there, a big deal,” Lemaître shot back.
He was about Herman’s age, but enormously taller and fatter. He was dressed in tight jeans, a floral tie, a striped shirt, his gray-white hair in a ponytail. He looked at Herman with an arrogant, incurious gaze. The whites of his eyes were generously veined with red. Herman felt him studying his narrow shoulders, his spindly arms, observing, perhaps with pleasure, the wetness in him and on him, his master inside and out.
“But in that case why are you still here with us, Monsieur Herman?”
“My wife wanted to stay,” Herman murmured, and Lemaître seemed to understand.
Tortured by the noise, Herman couldn’t repress a grimace. He was deeply ashamed to be there. He was betraying the village.
“We opened this club not six months ago, you won’t find one like it even in Paris—there’s squash, a sauna, a weight room, the works. Two million, it cost,” Lemaître explained. “I brought the club to this city, yes, and it’s changed things around here, believe me.”