Ясмина Реза - Babylon

“ . . . Jean-Lino?” The suitcase had got as far as the vestibule by itself. Silence. I went to look. Jean-Lino was standing in the hallway, a bit like a shadow puppet silhouetted in the light from the bedroom. “You OK?”

“Elisabeth.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“In case something should happen to me, you never came back up here to my place. You don’t know anything.”

“All right.”

“And the suitcase is mine.”

“All right.”

He put on his Zara biker jacket and his racetrack hat. He set the purse and the coat on top of the suitcase.

“The robber would certainly have taken the wallet . . .”

“Yes. I’ll get rid of it . . . Ah, just a second . . .” He went into the bedroom again and came back with a pair of fleece-lined gloves. “Let’s go.”

We left the apartment. Jean-Lino pulled the load. We stood still for a few seconds on the landing to be sure we heard nothing. I pressed the elevator button. Actually it was still at his floor. We pushed the suitcase inside. Jean-Lino opened the door to the service stairs. Not a sound. We agreed in whispers that I would wait a moment to go down so we would reach the lobby at the same time. He turned on the hall lights and disappeared into the stairwell. I stepped into the elevator, leaving the door ajar. The cabin is very small, there wasn’t much room left. The green coat fell to the floor, I picked it up and pushed it between the vertical bars of the raised handle. I tried to fit the handle through the straps of the handbag but that didn’t work. I let the door close and pressed the lobby button. I looked at my feet, my checkered pajama pants, my fake-fur slippers. I was going down four stories alone with a corpse. No panic. I felt super-daring, really proud. I told myself, You would have been great in the Under-ground or spying for the Foreign Service. Look at you, Elisabeth! Ground floor. Jean-Lino was already there. Breathless and focused. Him too—terrific. He took the suitcase. The coat fell to the floor again, I picked it up. I was carrying the purse and the coat. The wheels made an upsetting noise on the tile floor. The car was parked out front. I could see it just past the stone curb. I calculated the trip, going around the shrubs. I pressed the door button. Jean-Lino opened it. He pulled the suitcase into the half-open doorway. A motor started up behind the building. We heard a small sound coming from outside, a damp sound of heels on wet ground, and we saw coming from the right, her head lowered against the wind, the girl from the second floor on her way home from a party. Jean-Lino drew back, he stood aside to let her come in. The girl said hello, we answered hello. She darted into the waiting elevator.

What could that bitch have noticed? Everything. The tall beanpole lady from the fourth floor holding a coat and a purse, in fur slippers and Hello Kitty pajamas, with the guy from the fifth floor in a fedora and gloves pulling an enormous red suitcase. Heading out for god knows where at three in the morning. Everything. At the moment he runs into the girl Jean-Lino tries to look as if there’s nothing unusual going on, as if this run-of-themill encounter doesn’t affect him. After pulling aside to let her pass, he again tugs the suitcase toward the exit. He’s already gone five yards outside when I clutch at him. “She saw us!”

“What did she see?”

“Us! With the suitcase!!”

“A person has the right to go out with a suitcase.”

It’s sprinkling again. An odious drizzle.

“Not tonight. A night like this people are supposed to stay home.”

I can tell I’m irritating him. He tries to get the suitcase moving again by little tugs but I hold onto it.

“Who’s going to ask her anything?”

“The cops!”

“Why would they come talk to her?”

I tie the coat through the tall handle again and pull at the suitcase to take it back indoors. He blocks it.

“Because there’ll be an investigation! They’ll question the neighbors.”

“Go home, Elisabeth. I’ll manage.”

“She saw me, too. Our plan is ruined!”

“So what do we do?” He is frantic.

“Well at least let’s go back inside.”

“She fucked up the whole thing, that bitch!” He is shouting. He’s losing it. “I’m gonna kill her!”

“Jean-Lino, let’s go back . . .”

He lets go. I grab the retractable handle and drag the suitcase. The coat slides down, the case rolls over it and brakes, stopping me short and almost tripping me. That damn coat, falling down every two minutes!! Back into the lobby. The coat is a mess. Everything’s wet. JeanLino, with nothing in his gloved hands now, looks like he’s disguised as a fur trapper. He pulls a flattened cigarette pack from his jacket and lights up. He says, “What the hell was she doing out so late, the slut?”

“We can’t just stay here.”

“I’m gonna shut her mouth, that bitch.”

“Let’s go into the stairwell and think.”

I pulled the suitcase toward the far wall and stood it in the corner beside the service door. “Come on into the stairwell, Jean-Lino.”

I caught his arm by the leather of the jacket and I pushed him toward the stairs. He let it happen for two or three steps, his legs stiff like a robot’s. I sat down on the lowest stairs at the spot where he’d broken down in front of Rémi. Jean-Lino drew the smoke in deep with that mouth action of his, staring at the suitcase. After a moment he moved toward it, unsteadily. He stroked its top with his sheepskin glove. From left to right, several times in sequence like an unspoken poem. Then he slipped to his knees, moaning. His widespread arms gripped the case from both sides, his cheek was pressed to the canvas. He formed, half in the air, some distorted kisses. We were separated by the doorjamb—the image took on its full effect from that framing. Abyss and nonsense—why had there been no hand, no intervention, to stop the girl? Just a small flick of the thumb from the heavens to throw off by a minute her exit from the party, from the car, just one extra bit of talk there? Instead of abandoning, in this cold lobby, Jean-Lino Manoscrivi, the gentlest of men, and Lydie Gumbiner, small and crumpled in her party clothes. People who think there’s some orderly system to life—they’re lucky.

I was cold. I spread the green coat over my legs. Jean-Lino had let go of the suitcase. He was still on the floor with his legs folded under him, head low and hands on the nape of his neck. I waited. Then I went to get him. I moved to raise him up by encircling his shoulders. I picked up the hat and the glasses that had fallen onto the tile floor. Together we headed back toward the stairs, we sat down where I had been—that is, two yards farther along. Jean-Lino immediately stood up again to bring the suitcase in with us, it just cleared the doorframe and filled the whole space at the bottom of the stairs. The three of us were crammed tight. I’d rearranged the coat over us for protection. The situation reminded me of the huts you make as a kid. You pull everything close, the roof, the floor, the ceiling, walls, objects, bodies, you want the space to be as constricted as possible. The outer world is no longer visible except through a slit while tempest and storm rage outside.

He needed to piss. That was the first thing he said—“I have to piss.”

“Go outdoors.”

He didn’t move.

“I drank too much. I behaved like such an ass.”

“Go ahead, Jean-Lino, I’ll stay here.”

The light went off. We were left in near darkness. I turned it back on. I’d never seen the lobby by this glow, nor in detail. The grille on the air vent, the dirty baseboard molding. A dingy purgatory. In some book Bill Bryson said, “No room has fallen further in history than the hall.” Jean-Lino did go out, I don’t know where, while I stayed with the suitcase. I slipped into the coat, which was far too narrow for me, the sleeves reached only halfway down my arms and I couldn’t button it. It was roughly the same color as the carpeting. I thought about what to do: Go upstairs and put Lydie back on the bed as if nothing had happened? Take the suitcase and go to my own apartment while Jean-Lino called the police? It was useless. The girl from the second floor had seen us together. Whatever there might be in the suitcase, Jean-Lino had left his house after strangling his wife and I was mixed up in the business. I reviewed the sequence of events: Jean-Lino came down to our apartment. He informed us of the catastrophe. We didn’t believe him. Pierre and I went upstairs to see Lydie’s body. Pierre made me go back home and not get involved. Jean-Lino had killed his wife. We had nothing to do with it. He was supposed to phone the police and turn himself in. Pierre went to sleep. I went back upstairs. And what if I hadn’t gone up? What if, instead of going up, I had stayed home, full of anxiety (and curiosity), watching through the windows and the peephole for the slightest movement? Why through the peephole? For fear of some crazy reaction from Jean-Lino Manoscrivi? No. No. Just very simply because I didn’t stay glued to the window. I looked through the peephole from time to time, in case I’d missed something outside.