Jean Rouaud - Of Illustrious Men

The dreams of “Joseph, you’re mad” were on the grand scale, and he had now started to roll the heavy stone over toward the steps, first one side then the next, repeating the operation twenty or thirty times, and when one of its beveled sides made the capital deviate from a straight line, he had to shove it back again. Then he started heaving it up the narrow steps one at a time, but it was so precariously balanced — Joseph, be careful — that it looked as if it was going to topple down again and take him with it. Next he reversed the car until it was as close as possible, opened the trunk, removed a blanket and a can of oil, leaned over the stone, which was resting on its edge, slightly tilted, put his arms around it — Joseph, you’ll get dirty — and, like a weight-lifter, took a deep breath before hoisting it off the ground, his jaws clenched, his face showing the extent of the effort, for a moment carrying his burden like a pregnant woman. As he carefully put it down when his trembling arms, if they had had their own way, would already have dropped it, the car suddenly slumped onto its back axle, and with his hands still on the stone he stood there for quite a time, trying to get his breath back, his eyelids lowered. Then he straightened up and put a hand on his back — Joseph, you’ve hurt yourself — and we realized we must say nothing that would elicit a curt reaction from him but simply look at him in silence, the way you wait for a moment suspended in time to give a new sign of life.

Quite a few people were hovering around, giving the tires surreptitious little kicks, caressing the wings, glancing at the speedometer — it went up to 130 kilometers per hour, but all, except perhaps the owner, agreed that speedometers exaggerate — trying to pluck the remains of the blue film off the chromes, though when they pull at it in the hope of removing a long strip, instead of peeling off the film keeps shrinking until it forms a pointed tongue, which soon breaks. Nevertheless, this protective layer is proof positive that the car is new and not secondhand — which often seems a bit like a warmed-up dish or handed-down clothes — and has come straight from the factory still half enveloped in its translucent blue gift wrap. After the debacle of the Dyna coming home at a snail’s pace along the Breton roads, making a deafening racket, the metallic-green Peugeot 403 parked outside the shop and coveted by all the bystanders is a delightful present. It’s quite something to see the joy of the salesman when he gets behind the wheel and starts up the engine in front of his friends: they all bend their ears over the hood and, remembering the Dyna, pretend they can’t hear a thing. What? That vague murmur is enough to power a car? It’s also quite something to see his smile reflected in the windshield, and the way he gently presses the accelerator a couple of times to show his satisfaction.

The pack of Gitanes has naturally already found its place on the dashboard in front of the steering wheel. He takes one out and, instead of using his own lighter, proudly presses the cigarette lighter, which he then holds out the open door to the dumbfounded smokers. “Just a moment, that’s not all.” He also gives them a demonstration of the reclining back of his seat. “It’s got everything but a shower,” someone remarks. When he gets out of the car he walks around it again with the group, the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, and stops in front of the brand-new license plate: 917 GG 44. “GG for grande gueule” he says. Is that what he’s afraid the others think of him? Why beat his breast in public? The shadow is soon dispersed, and everyone laughs at his joke.

In the peaceful War of the Roses being carried on at the beginning of the sixties between the supporters of Peugeot and Renault — although when you consider the victims of road accidents it was a bloody war — from now on we are on Peugeot’s side. To the Renault fans who boast of the speed, responsiveness, and more athletic lines of the range of cars with the diamond logo, we oppose our own arguments: solidity, road-holding, reliability of the engine, and bodywork that doesn’t crumple up like an accordion. But to be on the safe side, Father screwed on to the dashboard a heavy bronze medal of the good Saint Christopher, which he had made sure of removing from the Dyna before she went to the junkyard. Which, for this man, was a little surprising. Heaven is primarily the business of women. Was it to please his devout Aunt Marie? Whatever, the Peugeot 403 is a decent, unpretentious car that can be relied on. Like him. They would understand each other. This new comfort will mean the end of his problems and the relief of his back pains, which have recently been getting more acute. Too many suitcases to be handled, and those useless stones he piles up in his garden. He won’t recognize, not him, that he may perhaps have overtaxed his strength. And who would dare to suggest as much? You might as well reproach him for working himself to death for his family. For what he really wants is that his family should live beyond his means; that’s his duty as a father and husband, regardless of the expense.

But with such an acquisition, everything would be all right now. And indeed, the gallant 403 did take him up to the mythical hundred-thousand-kilometer line he was so anxiously waiting for it to cross. When the clock had reset itself at zero, when its five virgin numerals were aligned, it would immediately wipe out ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine kilometers of Breton roads (there were no other journeys during this period), two years of hotels, of clients, of unpacking, of sales talk — a Faustian cure for the price of the reliability of an engine and a car’s bodywork. Just a few more yards and nothing would have taken place, neither the separation, nor the solitary evenings, nor the hope of better days; just one more turn of the wheel and the world would be no more than a perpetual recommencement.

There. Perfect virginity of the clock. He pulls over to the side of the road, which overlooks a little valley where a bulldozer is desperately trying to transform a mosaic of tiny little fields into a plain in the Beauce. For some time now he has been telling us of his sadness and sense of helplessness at the sight of the countryside being tortured under his very eyes. His anger, sometimes. Where, in this future desert, will he find new landmarks? Every tree was a beacon in his personal geography, and at this or that intersection, with its roadside shrine — with which Brittany abounds, and in front of which many women cross themselves — his car would head in the right direction as if of its own accord, a field of gorse would herald the spring more surely than the color of the sky, and a certain church steeple that used to rise above the hedges now seems undressed and can be seen from so far away that you no longer bother to make a detour to satisfy your curiosity. This furious clean sweep of the great work of the men of the land — do you attack the gardens of Vaux-le-Vicomte? — was the same as if someone had cruelly torn the pins with the colored heads off his wall map. Just because the clock has reset itself at zero, does that mean the whole landscape also has to be wiped out?

He switches off his engine. The ensuing silence is immediately invaded by the parasitical hum of the mechanical digger in the distance. Now he’s ready for action, and he has already premeditated the consequence of this action. He told us about it later, which showed the fine independence of his mind, because his tale was so typical of the female of the species that no one who was supposed to be a big shot or a tough guy would dare confess it. It was the kind of bargain that people sometimes strike to guarantee their future: If things work out the way I hope they will, I promise to do this or that — stay sober, smile at the neighbor’s cat, swallow endless insults, go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem on my knees — the offers vary according to the importance of the bargain. The moment has now come when he must keep his word. But it is so difficult to look at oneself objectively, as if one were a character in a play, and to forget one’s dignity. One observes oneself, and is paralyzed. He temporizes by lighting a cigarette.