Ясмина Реза - Babylon

“We should’ve gone before.”

“We’ll go.”

“You won’t be at Pasteur anymore by then.”

“I can still go.”

“I won’t be alive then.”

“OK, that’s enough, we can’t spend the whole night here. What’s the police number, 17?” I had picked up Lydie’s phone again. I went directly to the emergency number.

“Eduardo!” Jean-Lino cried. That had to come. No way to dodge the Eduardo question forever.

“Eduardo will be taken care of . . .”

“By who? The SPCA, no, no no, never! And he’s sick besides!”

“We’ll take him.”

“You don’t like him!”

“We’ll see to him. And if he’s not happy with us, we’ll put him with people who will like him.”

“You won’t know how to take care of him!”

I set the phone down on the suitcase, I stood up and tried to extricate myself from the coat.

“What are you doing?”

“Leaving.”

He stood up. “Let’s go put him in your house.”

The red had risen in his cheeks and his eyes bulged behind the yellow frames. I saw that there was no point arguing. “Quick, then,” I said. We closed the door so the suitcase couldn’t be seen (by whom, at three in the morning?) and took the stairs up two at a time. In his flat, Jean-Lino strode into the small bedroom and emerged in a minute with a canvas satchel. We went into the kitchen. He put in it a package of patties, making clear that these were not the ones that caused diarrhea; according to him the cat was, so to speak, if not exactly cured then at least past any trouble. There’d be two more days of treatment, we could skip the yeast and the anti-kidney-stone capsules but not the Revigor 200. He put the prescription slip and the vet’s address into the bag. He took a Feliway diffuser from a closet and dropped it into the bag—to replace, he said as we moved into the living room, the facial pheromones and help the cat feel safe in the new environment. I was understanding only one word out of two. In the living room he collected some toys, balls and fake mice, then stood and spun slowly in place till he spotted a long wand tipped with a tail of imitation leopard fur and feathers. “He adores the fishing pole,” he said as he shoved the whole thing into the sack. “He’s a hunter, you’ve got to play with him at least three times a day,” he commanded, heading back to the kitchen. “Can you get the litter box?” I picked up the tray. Jean-Lino grabbed Eduardo, who was prowling around his legs. And suddenly I saw the table and I said, “Wait!” My cigarette was in the ashtray! My long cigarette, barely smoked! I’d seen too many episodes of Bring in the Accused not to spot the fatal blunder! I put the stub in my pocket and looked around to see if I hadn’t left other traces. Eduardo meowed and bared his cat teeth. We went down the stairs, Jean-Lino first, me behind. I opened our door. Not a sound. I set the litter box down in the kitchen. I closed the door to the bedroom hallway. In the vestibule, Jean-Lino set down Eduardo and the traveling bag. He spotted a wall socket and immediately plugged in the Feliway diffuser. Down on all fours himself, his torso crammed into the biker jacket, he took the cat’s muzzle in his hands and whispered to him, rubbing his nose against fur. I hurried him along, terrified at the idea that Pierre might emerge. For a moment I thought of changing into shoes before rejecting the idea as a fatal foolishness. As we were leaving, Jean-Lino drew from the bag a T-shirt that probably belonged to him, balled it up and set it in front of Eduardo.

We went back to the stairs. He let himself drop onto each step like a sleepwalker. He was out of juice. Reaching the bottom, we sat back down on the same spot. I took up Lydie’s phone again and although I no longer understood much about the situation, I said, “Jean-Lino, you have to do it. And besides the battery is nearly dead.”

“Where was I going with the suitcase? . . .”

“Nowhere! You weren’t going anywhere. You don’t even know why you put her into the suitcase! You’d lost your mind, you were having a fit of madness.”

“A fit of madness . . .”

I dialed 17 and handed him the phone. A recorded voice said, You are speaking to the Emergency Police, followed by a little anxiety-producing message. Then it rang. It went on ringing with no answer. Jean-Lino hung up.

“No answer.”

“That’s impossible. Call again.”

“What do I say? . . . I killed my wife?”

“Not ‘I killed my wife’ just like that.”

“So what should I say?”

“Give it a little form. Say I’m calling because I just did something stupid . . .”

He calls again. The message again: Your conversation is recorded, any misuse will be punished. An actual woman picks up right after. “Emergency Police, I’m listening.” Jean-Lino looks at me in a panic. I sketch one of those gestures that are supposed to calm your interlocutor. Completely doubled over on himself, his head at knee level, Jean-Lino says “I’m calling because I did something stupid . . .”

“What was it?” says the voice.

“I committed a murder . . .”

“Where are you located?”

“Deuil-l’Alouette.”

“You know the address where you are?”

Jean-Lino answers in a low voice. The girl has him repeat the street name. She asks if the address is the same as his home. She sounds nice, and calm.

“Are you out on the public street or inside a building?”

Under her voice I can hear tapping at a keyboard.

“I’m inside the lobby.”

“The lobby of your building?”

“Yes.”

“Is there a digital door code?”

“I don’t remember now . . .”

“Are you alone?”

Jean-Lino straightens up. Panic. I signal that he can mention me.

“No.”

“Who’re you with?”

Silently I mouth neigh-bor . “With my neighbor.”

“One person?”

“Yes.”

“Sir, what happened?”

“I killed my wife . . .”

“Yes . . . ?”

He turns to me. I find nothing to whisper.

“Where is she now, your wife? Is she with you right now? . . .”

He tries to answer but no sound comes out. The lower lip has begun trembling again, a continuous throbbing. It looks like a batrachian’s buccal floor.

“What’s your name, sir?”

“Jean-Lino Manoscrivi.”

“Jean . . . Lino?”

“Yes . . .”

“Are you armed, Jean-Lino?”

“No. No, no.”

“Your neighbor either?”

“No . . .”

“Have you consumed alcohol or drugs??”

“No . . .” He sees me mime the act of having a drink with friends. “A little alcohol . . .”

“Are you under treatment in connection with a psychi-atric problem? . . .”

The call breaks off. Battery’s dead . . . Jean-Lino stared at the dark screen. He closed the lid and extended the chain on the yellow plastic case to set the feather right. I laid my arm around his shoulders. Jean-Lino put his hat back on. We were in a corner of some railway station, waiting. With the long, too-small coat, my fake-fur slip-pers and the suitcase, a couple of Roma passing through. About to be sent off who knows where. He said, “That girl was nice.” I said, “Yes, she was nice.” And he: “What’s going to happen to my aunt without me? She has nobody else.”

Having nobody. The subjects in The Americans look like they have nobody. That’s who they are. They exist at the edge of roads, of benches, of rooms, they’ve come looking for something they won’t find. Now and then they gleam in some fleeting light. They have nobody. The Jehovah’s Witness has nobody. He walks the streets with his briefcase stuffed with magazines, the briefcase gives him the look of a man and stands in for a destination. When you grow up with the idea you have nobody, you don’t easily find your way back. Even if someone takes your hand and shelters you, it doesn’t really happen for you. Sundays and holidays, on Parmentier Avenue, Jean-Lino’s parents would send him out into the courtyard. He’d hang about, squatting on the cobblestones. He would scratch away at the furrows where weeds were sprouting. He would make things out of the watchmaker’s trash. There were no other children. To have nobody is to have not even yourself. Somebody loving you provides a certificate of existence. When a person feels alone, he can’t exist without some small social fable. When I was around twelve, I was waiting for love to give me back my lost identity (the one we’re supposed to have had before Zeus cut us in half ), but, unsure of such an eventuality, I also placed a bet on fame and honor. Since I was good at science, I imagined myself a future as a researcher: my team discovered a revolutionary treatment for epilepsy and I got an international medal, a Nobel kind of thing. Jeanne was my manager. She would sit on the pullout bed with Rosa the doll, who represented Therese Parmentolo, a kid from high school who had grand mal seizures, she’d listen to my acceptance speech and applaud from time to time. Afterward, Therese Parmentolo (also played by me) would come onstage to express her gratitude. Sometimes I wonder if everything we think we are might arise from a series of imitations and projections. Even though I haven’t been a researcher, and took refuge in something with more security, I often hear that I extricated myself from my background or escaped my class. That’s idiotic. All I did was save myself from insubstantiality. People telephone the Emergency Police number to talk because they have nobody else, a patrolman once told me. Those are the majority of calls to 17. There was one woman who would phone in several times a week. Before hanging up she would say, “Tell the whole crew hello for me.” Joseph Denner used to play melancholy tunes on his guitar. He would do “Céline” by Hugues Aufray, he’d do the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby,” which he’d sing nearly in a monotone with his weak voice, a bad accent, without understanding all the words— All the lonely people . . . Where do they all belong . . . I was all those homeless people. Tell the whole crew hello. As if she meant something to the crew.