Ясмина Реза - Babylon

“I’m telling you, she’s dead.”

Pierre collapsed back onto the couch, his foot caught in the cord of the table lamp, which fell to the floor and plunged us into near darkness. “Shit, I really need all this!”

I turned on the ceiling light, which we never use. “Not the ceiling light, not the ceiling light, for god’s sake!” Pierre moaned. I lit a floor lamp. Jean-Lino faced these successive lighting arrangements without changing his marmoreal posture. I no longer knew what to do, between a husband slumped in the position of a fellow determined to let everything go to hell and a Jean-Lino fossilized and unrecognizable. We’d all had too much to drink. I started tidying the room. I took away the glasses, the bottles, whatever was lying around. I shook out the cloth from the buffet over the balcony edge. I stacked the chairs Lydie had lent us by the door. I brought in the hand vacuum, my beloved Rowenta, to pick up the crumbs. I started to vacuum the coffee table, the carpet beneath it, Pierre emerged from his slack state and snatched it from my hands. “Perfect moment for that! You find this the right time for housekeeping?” He stood up, holding the Rowenta like a machine gun, and said to Jean-Lino, “OK my friend, now we’re going upstairs, come on, up we go!” Jean-Lino shifted a little but he seemed nailed to his Moroccan seat, incapable of pulling himself out of it. Pierre set the vacuum going again and aimed it at Jean-Lino’s chest, sucking up a patch of shirt with a startling noise. I cried, “What are you doing?” Jean-Lino was terrified by the suction and leapt up into a defense stance. At that moment I knew we were actually going to go upstairs. Jean-Lino set his hair back in place and smoothed it compulsively several times, I gently led him toward the door. Pierre put on street shoes and we left the apartment. We went up on foot, by the yellowish light of the stairwell, Pierre ahead in pale pink flared undershorts, naked legs and loafers, then Jean-Lino in his rumpled party clothes, and me at the rear in pajamas and fake-fur slippers. At their door, Jean-Lino fumbled in his pockets before pulling out the right key, we could hear Eduardo meowing and scratching behind the door, Jean-Lino murmured little words to him, sono io gioia mia, sta’ tranquillo cucciolino . I took Pierre’s hand, I felt a little anxiety and at the same time a terrific desire to move forward into the thickness of the night.

We went in. He did not turn on the vestibule light. Eduardo slithered among our legs with his back arched in a dromedary hump. At the end of the corridor, the bathroom and the bedroom were lighted. Jean-Lino took up the same waiting posture again—shoulders hunched high, arms hanging loose—as in our house at the same location.

“Where is she?” Pierre whispered. I found the whispering bizarre and at the same time I understood that there was no way we could talk at normal volume. JeanLino tilted his head toward the bedroom. Pierre moved into the hallway. With me behind him. From the hall we could already see her. Feet up by the head of the bed, skirt rumpled, dressed still as she had been at our house. Pierre pushed the door wider. She was lying with her jaw hanging open, her eyes wide and bulging beneath the poster of Nina Simone in her white string dress and her endless pendants. We saw right away that it was very serious. In a surge of professionalism (from TV serials? police thrillers?) Pierre gripped her wrist to check the pulse. Jean-Lino appeared in the doorway, nodding his head like a witness gloomily gratified at seeing his first impression confirmed. He had his sand-colored glasses on again. Pierre looked at Jean-Lino in alarm. He said, “You really did . . . She is dead.” Jean-Lino agreed. No one moved. Then Pierre said, “Maybe we should . . . maybe close her eyes.”

“Yes . . .”

“I’ll let you do it . . .”

Jean-Lino came over to Lydie and swiped his hand over her eyelids, a gesture from a religious drawing. But the jaw still hung open. I said, “Can’t we put it a little better . . . ?” Jean-Lino opened a drawer where there were all sorts of scarves. I picked up the first I saw, a sheer veil with a pattern of pale flowers. Jean-Lino pressed the mouth closed, I wrapped the head and tied the knot hard beneath the chin. She was much more pleasant to look at now. She looked as if she were taking a little nap outdoors under a tree. And then, I don’t know why, JeanLino also put shoes on her feet, red pumps with straps and a flat bow. I looked at those extremities on top of the trapunto bedcover, it was unthinkable that those feet and the ankle bracelet with the dangling charms should no longer belong to a person. I was startled to find myself framing the image in my head: from the hem of the dress to the edge of the bed, showing a few inches of wall, the slim legs, the satin-clad feet splayed on the puckered fabric as if after some brutal lovemaking. The alreadypast image of Lydie Gumbiner. One of the charms was longer than the others, I didn’t have my glasses on but I thought I could make out some kind of owl. What had that bird meant, dangling against her skin? On the dresser there was another owl, in pewter. To bear life on earth we gather magical objects. This is what enchants me when I look at the stop-time world of photographs, those details like elegies. Clothes, knickknacks, talismans, all the bits of chic or shabby paraphernalia provide silent sustenance to mankind. Pierre said, “Now we’ve got to call the police, Jean-Lino.”

“The police—ah no—no no.”

Pierre glanced at me. I asked, “But what do you mean to do? . . .”

“No, not the police.”

“Jean-Lino, you’ve . . . This thing did happen to you . . .

You came to get us . . . What can we do for you?”

Pierre was standing next to a chest, the gravity of his tone and the prayer-position of his hands a little undercut by his pink skirt-like underwear. Jean-Lino, his head lowered, was watching the cat’s movements around the bed.

“You want us to phone someone? A lawyer? I know a lawyer.”

Eduardo climbed onto the chamber pot. A porcelain chamber pot with a round wooden lid on top (a cheese platter?) and I thought how that wasn’t a bad idea, a chamber-pot at the foot of the bed, what with me getting up three times a night to pee. Jean-Lino said Non sul vaso da notte micino with a little caress meant to make the cat get down. Eduardo ignored him, busy as he was with scrutinizing Lydie’s body from precisely the same level as the view, “ Ti ha fatto male, eh, piccolino mio . . .”

“Jean-Lino, you’re going to have to cooperate a little,”

Pierre began again.

“Let’s go into the living room, maybe?” I said.

“ Povero patatino . . .”

Pierre went to glance out the window. He closed the drapes. In his duckskin loafers and sheer underpants, he declared: “OK, I’ll tell you what, Jean-Lino, if you don’t call the police, at some point we’re going to do it.”

“It’s not for us to do it!” I protested.

“It’s not for us to do. But someone has to do it.”

“Let’s not stay in this room, let’s go think it over calmly.”

“Think about what, Elisabeth? That woman’s been strangled by her husband, a fit of passion, no one’s asking for details, the police have to be called. And you, Jean-Lino, come on back to earth. And say something, in a language a person can understand, because this lovetalk with that fucking Italian cat is beginning to get on my nerves.”

“He’s in shock.”

“He’s in shock, yes. We’re all in shock.”

“Let’s try not to get upset, Pierre . . . Jean-Lino, what do you propose? . . . Jean-Lino? . . .”

Pierre sat down in the yellow velvet armchair. Jean-Lino pulled the pack of Chesterfields out of his pocket and lit one. The smoke spread over Lydie. He imme-diately tried to wave it away with his hand. And then, looking at his wife with what I thought was sorrow, he said, “Could I speak to you alone for two seconds, Elisabeth?”