Villa Bunker (French Literature) (8 page)

88.
As a matter of fact, I wasn’t even sure who was worse off, my mother or my father. Even in her first letter, she’d sounded depressed to me, like a depressive, hunted by something malicious. And you know I wasn’t even that surprised, since I’d always known deep down that my mother was somewhat prone to melancholy. A depression that had taken its time before making its move, or so I was telling myself, employing various ruses and diversions so as to go unnoticed, growing quietly in the dark, until one day you have no choice but to see yourself in it.

89.
She was sitting in the armchair, the one covered in threadbare mustard velvet, while all around her pots containing wilted flowers were forming a magic circle. She was aware just how ugly and uncomfortable this chair was, without quite being able to get up. She would have liked to not touch the chair, her elbows tight against her body, her spine a few centimeters from the back, knees held together and ankles crossed beneath her, so as to touch the floor with only the toe of a slipper, completely focused on her efforts to take up as little space as possible. She would have liked to close her eyes and wake up somewhere else, as though it were all a bad dream—then she would just have to get up and take a shower, and with clean, fresh-smelling clothes against her skin, she would be ready right away to resume a normal life. But she was still muttering to herself that they’d stolen it all, that all this furniture, that the villa’s contents would never belong to them. She was worried her belongings were getting mixed up with these things that had belonged to strangers, strangers who were perhaps now dead—one day her own effects might end up the same way. She was afraid her things were becoming infected, contaminated through contact with this worn-out stuff. She dreamed of leaving for a safe place, someplace pristine where she could wash her hands, take a shower, put on fresh clothes.

90.
When she found the keys just hanging there, on a nail in the closet under the stairs, she’d immediately thought of the abandoned bedroom on the second floor—this thought had crossed the dark closet like a spark. Since finding the bedroom door locked that first day, they hadn’t tried to open it, they had never mentioned the room again and never once had they tried to get inside; they’d acted as though the room didn’t exist and they’d actually managed to forget about it. How could it be that she’d only noticed the keys now, each week she would stack cartons of water under the stairs; despite his reassurances, she’d never been able to drink the tap water—no, she wouldn’t have drunk that water for anything in the world, water she still thought infected, a carrier of germs and disease. Without thinking, she’d grabbed the keys and climbed straight to the second floor; she’d acted on a sudden impulse, as though she already knew what she would find there—at least she wasn’t afraid, or anxious; gripping the keys in her hand she’d slipped on a step, and as in a dream she’d suddenly found herself in front of the door, she’d grabbed a key at random, there were all kinds of different keys, flat keys, old-fashioned round keys, covered in rust, but she’d found it on the first try, and with the key now in the lock, it was all she could do to stifle a scream, meanwhile the door had opened almost by itself, and as in a dream she’d entered; the first thing she’d noticed was the hospital smell, a neon bulb was emitting a uniform light, this light had switched on just as she had turned the doorknob, she thought. She’d proceeded cautiously, looking around at walls the color of gray sand. There was nothing to discover here: no clue, no crack. The smooth walls made it seem as though the room had just been repainted. And perhaps because of the impeccable cleanliness, the uncharacteristic odor, she’d felt far away from everything, sealed inside a watertight world, with thick bulkheads, having forgotten the secret code to the metal door she’d unlocked on the way in.

91.
Then, looking down at the floor (she didn’t know how long she’d been there), she discovered a row of jars, dozens, perhaps hundreds of transparent jars, all the same size and diameter, each containing a reddish liquid, the color of bricks. The level of the liquid varied imperceptibly in each jar, so that the whole formed a diminishing wave: a kind of indoor oceanic garden, she thought, a sterile wave, biopsied and captured (as though for observation in a lab), cleverly divided among the receptacles arranged on the polished floor. A disturbing arrangement at that: The preserved wave, motionless, arrested in its movement, seemed to span two moments in time separated by an abyss. And this liquid, probably a pharmaceutical solution, but who knows, it could also be unstable and corrosive, perhaps even explosive if you shook it or it came in contact with air. The reality of what she saw didn’t seem to want to register in her, she was having to concentrate to preserve it, so that the sight would be etched in her. And because she was having difficulty assembling this image, her experience of it lacked a unified tonality, as though separated by a pane of emotions, desires, deep inside her: as though she were seeing the wave in some forgotten distance.

92.
In her moments of exhaustion or boredom, she would find it a relief to think about the laboratory bedroom. She’d imagine the rigid discipline, the bittersweet control found in careful, precise gestures, those belonging to the person who had arranged the jars, poured the brick-red liquid, being careful not to spill a drop, noting an infinitesimal difference in the level from one jar to the next, pouring out the excess liquid when necessary, measuring a new amount, perhaps redoing the operation several times over, until the perfect amount was reached. She would always see the scene in black and white, and the images would appear to jump, as in a silent film, disturbing the calm order of the gestures, producing an uneven cadence, like that of a heart. Wiping each jar first with a coarse cloth to eliminate all traces of dust and fingerprints (but surely he was wearing rubber gloves), then pouring the sterile preparation, taking stringent precautions, using measuring vials of various sizes, bending down to the floor to check the level, almost kneeling as though in prayer, and placing the jar in its precise place, determined to the nearest millimeter, repeating the identical operation without once departing from his self-possessed manner. He’d likely proceeded just as calmly when sculpting this lone wave, as though he were performing a ritual, a scalpel’s precision delineating each movement within a monotonous succession, held taut by secret threads.

93.
But when his headaches would leave him alone for a few hours, or sometimes even several days, his face would take on a strange air of satisfaction, approaching meanness. She would look at him and see the contrast between the middle and upper regions of his face—the verticality of his aquiline nose between predatory gray eyes, too close together; his shifty, greedy, almost fanatical gaze in opposition to the depressive, shy insolence of his forehead, suggesting either cowardice or extreme concentration. She sensed he was through with drawing up plans for the villa, and that from now on his only purpose in life would be to further the abandonment and even the ruin of their plans to start anew. And whenever he spoke to her his words would always take the form of a cautionary tale, and then she would see that he was done trying to convince her, or pique her interest; as far as he’s concerned, my acquiescence or refusal is beside the point, my mother had written, it’s almost like he doesn’t even think I’m able or have the right to understand, to agree or disagree with him, because this right, or more to the point this faculty, has for a reason known only to him been henceforth rescinded. And when she stood in front of my father, my mother continued to look for that last particle of impressionable being, something she could touch and restore to good sense.

94.
In the end, they were no longer communicating, except by means of brief notes left on the corner of a table. Who knows, maybe my mother was collecting these enigmatic messages in a shoebox, in hopes of one day finding some way to decode them.

95.
And when he would agree to come down to the living room, seemingly in a conciliatory mood, as though ready to start up a real conversation with her, or, who knows, perhaps he would suggest they take a little drive or go for a walk along the cliffs, she was always performing some familiar task (wiping an object, opening a desk drawer) as though she wanted to present him with a simulacrum of normal life, and then she would feel as though she were waking from a bad dream and that now they could start again from scratch, forgetting about their disappointments, straightening out their affairs, finding a place for everything inside a house that would be familiar, arranged to their taste.

96.
The villa was her only world, she’d said, and indeed as soon as she would have to leave, taking the car to the nearest shopping center, she would feel she was floating through a contrived world, whose laws she’d forgotten; she would feel even more lost, in fact, as though she wasn’t meant to live in that world. She would push a cart down the aisles of the store, automatically grabbing products as though she were connected to another world via secret threads, ready to break at the slightest misstep. Christmas was approaching and everything was awash in holiday preparations: decorations and strands of electric lights, aisles overflowing with toys, stuffed animals, video-game consoles. Noticing her slow meanderings, salespeople would sometimes approach her to draw her attention to some promotion or other. She would avoid looking at them, for fear of being discovered.

97.
Then she would find herself in the vast parking lot, darkened by the waning light. The headlights of the cars would blind her as they left the shopping center. There would be nothing in front of her but a long disgusting asphalt beach, cut into squares; the garish colors of the supermarket’s neon sign standing out against the blood-red sky. She would arrive home only after having driven for hours on country roads, their gentle curves getting lost in the evening twilight. And when she would turn off the ignition, the sound of the motor would continue to resonate inside her head.

98.
Back home in the villa, she’d perpetually wait for something to happen—and whether it did or didn’t happen, she was afraid all the same. She had no idea what this thing could be. Then the rows of jars would come to mind and she found herself wishing they would indeed explode, spreading their corrosive liquid across the floor, starting a fire.

99.
Now and then, when she was feeling especially bored or listless, she would open a moving box at random, as if to make sure their things were still there. Was she afraid they’d evaporated during the move? That’s how she found my old school notebooks, notebooks she’d kept and then forgot, notebooks turned black by the weather and heavy as lead. She’d packed these boxes years ago, like all parents do once their child has become an adult and left home. She wouldn’t have been able to tear those notebooks up for anything in the world, nor even been able to part with them—that’s why she’d filed them away in boxes. We pack these boxes without having the slightest idea what we’ll do with them, in all likelihood such boxes are completely useless and we know it, even as we’re packing them, not that this stops us from completing our task. It’s enough to know that boxes like this exist and that they are stored somewhere, when possible in a dry place. We don’t know why we attach so much importance to the boxes or why we want to keep them at all cost—frankly, these boxes remain hermetically sealed more often than not, and their contents never again see the light of day, for the simple reason that no one thinks to open them.

100.
Your entire childhood is here, my mother had written, you could show up at any moment, you might decide to come and pay us a visit in the villa, just to make sure your childhood has remained intact, and you would find your toys, your clothes, you would find your old notebooks filled with your childhood writings. The bedroom you had as a child doesn’t exist anymore, but your entire childhood is here, contained in these boxes, it’s true, my mother had written. Your toys and your school notebooks haven’t been destroyed, she said; they’ve been preserved in their original state, and are somewhere in the ballroom, with all our stuff, in boxes. We could unpack the boxes containing your childhood toys and things, and we could arrange all these possessions in a bedroom converted to that purpose—we could create a bedroom in the villa, specially conceived to house all your childhood things, and if you wanted you could go through all these toys and notebooks from your childhood, you could reread Krafft-Ebing, you could even fill up new notebooks if you liked, in that way perfectly recreating your childhood bedroom. You know the tiny grand piano we gave you when you turned three, and that you broke that same day, not accidentally but on purpose—the one we got fixed and that you broke a second time, with the same fury? It was an exact replica of a concert piano, and from it we never heard a single chord, let alone a melody, just a cacophony of infernal, frightening notes, notes that reflected your own senseless will to destroy—well, that tiny copy of a piano is still here, carefully wrapped in a gray cover. We’ll eventually find a place for it in the villa. You never touched that piano, save to extract discordant sounds from it; from your earliest days, you disliked everything musical, you rebelled against the very music you were playing, and against the music you were listening to, you showed your musical hatred by plugging your ears every time I started to play piano or put on piano music—it took years for you to get over this hatred and agree to listen to piano music. It didn’t matter that we wanted to instill in you a rudimentary knowledge of music, we shouldn’t have tried to force musical training on you, for your entire being has always been in revolt against music and the music world. We should also never have given you that violin a couple of years later, the one you broke right in front of us by smashing it against the wall. It was crazy to think the violin would bring you back to music, or rather, I should say (my mother had written) bring you back to musical training. You steadfastly refused to play a musical instrument, you refused to have anything to do with them, as though you were furious at them. You had no desire to have a relationship with a musical instrument, and in fact you were completely incapable of having such a relationship. With all your body and soul, you rejected music and musical instruments, and with all your might you stood in the way of your musical training. There was no use insisting, there was no way to teach you music. Playing the piano would have ended up killing you, I realized much later; I often used to think as well, what a mistake it was wanting you to learn piano. Music can’t be taught by force, music can’t be taught to someone who refuses to give himself to music, someone who resists, with all his might, the musical impulse. Our determination to teach you music almost extinguished every last ounce of innate musicality you might have possessed, a little bit more and you’d have been furious at music forever. My attempts to teach you music were always fruitless and counterproductive—attempts that could only ever have led to utter failure, your father said. That’s why not just the tiny piano, but the training violin as well, had always been pointless and condemned to silence.