The Incorrigible Optimists Club Read online

  Behind the bar was the Marcusots’ domain. The dining hall and the terrace belonged to Jacky. He dashed around from morn till night: he took orders, and as he tore past threw them at old father Marcusot, who would get them ready; he piled up his tray with a jumble of plates, glasses and bottles, he served without spilling a drop, he worked out the sums in his head from memory without making any mistakes, and all with a smile and attentiveness that earned him generous tips. Jacky had only one passion in life: football. A dedicated supporter of Stade de Reims, he vowed undying hatred for Racing Club de Paris, which was a ‘queers’ club’, the ultimate insult. The world was arranged around this confrontation. You were either for one side or the other. And it did not do to talk lightly about his heroes: Fontaine, Piantoni, and Kopa, whom he did not easily forgive for his ‘treachery’ in leaving for Real Madrid. When they lost against Racing or Real Madrid, it was a day of mourning, and no one could revive him, not even the Racing supporters, who were the most numerous. Samy shared this passion for Stade de Reims with his pal Jacky. It was in honour of their strip that he played with the red team at baby-foot. When he won comfortably, he never said a word to the loser; he merely picked up the twenty centimes piece placed in the ashtray by those who were awaiting their turn and inserted it disdainfully in the slot to bring back the balls. When he had been hard pressed, and obliged to make an effort to win, he marked his victory with a cry of ‘Reims has screwed you!’

  The Balto was a vast establishment on the corner of two boulevards. On avenue Denfert-Rochereau, the side with the bar and tobacco counter, there were the baby-foot tables, the pinball machines and the juke-box, and on the boulevard Raspail side there was a restaurant that seated sixty customers. Between the furthest tables, I had noticed a door behind a green velvet curtain. Men of a certain age would disappear through this doorway, but I didn’t see anyone come out again. This intrigued me. I often wondered what was behind it. It never occurred to me to go and look. None of my baby-foot chums knew. It didn’t interest them. For a long time I didn’t bother about it. When it was crowded and I had to wait a long time, I took a book and, without buying a drink, I would sit at a table outside in the sun. Jacky left me alone. He had seen my disappointment when Reims had been beaten in the final by Real. Ever since then, he no longer thought of me as a customer.

  The Balto, in those days, with the Marcusots, Nicolas, Samy, Jacky and the regulars, was like a second family. I spent an incredible amount of time there, but I had to be home before my mother returned from work. Every evening I got back just before seven o’clock, and spread out my textbooks and exercise books on my desk. When she returned home with my father, she found me working. Woe betide me if she should get back first and not find me there. When it happened, I managed to reassure her by swearing that I had been working at Nicolas’s home. I lied with an audacity that delighted me.

  I carried my Brownie around with me and practised taking photographs. The results were poor. People were lost in the background or stood there like dummies. You could not see their faces. My photographs didn’t portray anything. I drew closer to the subjects. Occasionally, I succeeded in capturing an expression or a feeling. How to take photos without being seen? I had to cope with an unexpected enemy: Juliette, my little sister, who was three years younger than me. She didn’t have to choose which side she was on. She was a Delaunay to her fingertips. She was very much aware of her looks, and her cupboards were stuffed with clothes, though she maintained that she had nothing to wear and she spent her time asking what she should put on when she went out. With her ingenuous air, she obtained whatever she wanted from my parents. But her innocent, artless countenance was merely a façade. My mother, who had complete trust in her, would often ask her whether I had come home at six o’clock as I said I had. Juliette had not the slightest qualm in betraying me with a shake of the head.

  She was an unbelievable chatterbox too, capable of rambling on for hours without anyone remembering what it was she was talking about. She monopolized the conversation. It was impossible to have any sort of discussion with her. She never let you get a word in. You just gave up and let yourself be carried along by the flow of words that streamed from her lips without anyone being able to interrupt her. Everybody made fun of her. Grandfather Philippe, who praised her to the skies, called her ‘my pretty little windbag’ and didn’t hesitate to forbid her to speak in his presence. She wearied him. Enzo used to say that she had a little old lady inside her belly.

  ‘You’re a chiacchierona like my cousin Lea, who still lives in Parma.’

  This nickname stuck with her. She loathed it. When anyone wanted to annoy her, they called her a chiacchierona. That made her shut up. Sometimes, she would start talking at the beginning of the meal and continue her monologue throughout, unstoppable. Our father would thump the table.

  ‘Stop, Juliette, you’re making us feel giddy! The girl’s such a chatterbox!’

  She protested vociferously: ‘I’m not a chatterbox! No one listens to me.’

  4

  I hated wasting my time. The only thing that seemed worthwhile to me was reading. At home, nobody really read. My mother took all year to read the ‘Book of the Year’, which enabled her to talk about it and to pass for a great reader. My father did not read at all and was proud of the fact.

  Franck had some political books in his bedroom. The only writer Grandfather Philippe respected was Paul Bourget, whose novels he had adored when he was young.

  ‘They can say what they want, but literature was a damn sight better before the war.’

  Grandfather bought sets of books from the shops in rue de l’Odéon. He had a bookcase built for them, but he did not read them. But I made up for the rest of the family. I was a compulsive reader. In the morning, when I switched on the light, I picked up my latest and never put it down. It annoyed my mother to see me with my nose in a book.

  ‘Have you nothing else to do?’

  She could not bear me not to be listening to her when she was speaking. On several occasions she snatched the book out of my hands to force me to reply. She had given up calling me for dinner and she had discovered an effective solution. From the kitchen, she switched off the electricity in my bedroom. I was then obliged to join them. I read at the table, which exasperated my father. I read when I cleaned my teeth, and in the lavatory. They hammered on the door for me to let them have their turn. I read while I walked. It took me fifteen minutes to reach the lycée, but reading stretched it out to half an hour or more. I took account of this additional time and left home earlier. But I would often arrive late, especially when some thrilling passage brought me to a standstill on the pavement for an unspecified period of time, and I picked up masses of detentions for being unpunctual three times without a valid excuse. I had given up trying to explain to the idiots who were supposed to be educating us that this lack of punctuality was justified and unavoidable. My guardian angel protected me and guided me. I never bumped into a lamppost, nor did I get run over by a car when I crossed the road with my nose stuck in my book. On several occasions, I missed my turn at a pedestrian crossing and the hoot of a car’s horn brought me back to reality. I avoided the piles of dog shit that spattered the Paris pavements. I heard nothing. I saw nothing. I walked on automatic pilot and reached school safe and sound. Throughout most of the lessons, I continued my reading with the book propped open on my lap. I was never caught by a teacher.

  In due course, I came to classify writers into two categories: those who enabled you to arrive on time and those who caused you to be late. The Russian authors earned me a whole string of detentions. When it started to rain, I would stand in a doorway in order to carry on undisturbed. The Tolstoy period had been a bad month. The Battle of Borodino led to three hours of detention. A few days later, when I explained to the school porter, a student who was supervising us, that Anna Karenina’s suicide was the cause of my being late, he thought I was making fun of him. I made my position worse by admitting that I had not u
nderstood her motive for committing suicide. I had been obliged to turn back in case I had missed the reason why. He gave me two Thursday detentions: one for being late for the umpteenth time, the other because Anna was a bloody bore who did not deserve such attention. I bore no grudge against him. It allowed me to finish Madame Bovary.

  When I was drawn to certain authors, I read every word they wrote, even though some books were difficult to get hold of. In the town hall library, opposite the Panthéon, the librarians looked sceptical when I brought back the five books that I was permitted so soon after having taken them out. I couldn’t give a damn and continued to persevere with my author of the moment, resolutely tackling everything on the shelf. I devoured classics that had commentaries explaining the links between the work and the life. The more heroic or illustrious the life, the better the novels; when the fellow was vile or a nonentity, I was reluctant to take the plunge. For a long time, Saint-Exupéry, Zola and Lermontov were my favourite authors, and not merely on account of their books. I loved Rimbaud for his dazzling life, and Kafka for his quiet, anonymous life. How were you supposed to feel when you adored the novels of Jules Verne, Maupassant, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Simenon and loads of others who then turned out to be complete bastards? Should I forget them, ignore them, and not read them any more? Pretend they did not exist even though their novels were tempting me? How could they have written outstanding books when they were such appalling human beings? When I put the question to my classmates, they looked at me as if I were an Iroquois Indian. Nicolas maintained that there were enough writers who deserved to be read that you didn’t have to waste your time with those who had failed to live up to their books. That was wrong. There were repulsive skeletons in every cupboard. When I put the question to my French literature teacher, he told me that all the writers mentioned in the encyclopedia of French writers deserved my consideration; he explained that if you were going to apply these criteria of morality and public spiritedness, you would have to purge and eliminate at least 90 per cent of the authors who featured in the book. Only the most extreme cases had been excluded from the anthology, and only these were unworthy of being studied and should be shunned.

  Grandfather Enzo’s advice clinched it. One Sunday when we were strolling around the Louvre, I told him about my concern. I had just discovered that Jules Verne was a hysterical anti-Communard and a fanatical anti-Semite. He shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the canvases that surrounded us. What did I know about the artists whose work we admired? If I really knew Botticelli, El Greco, Ingres or Degas, I would close my eyes so as not to see their paintings any more. Ought I to block my ears so as not to hear the music of most of the composers or those rock singers I liked so much? I would be condemned to live in a world above reproof in which I would die of boredom. For him, and I could never suspect him of complacency, the question did not arise, the works were always what was most important. I should take men for what they did, not for what they were. Since I appeared unconvinced, he gave me a little smile and said: ‘Reading and loving a novel written by a bastard is not to absolve him in any way, to share his convictions or connive with him, it’s to recognize his talent, not his morals or his ideals. I have no wish to shake Hergé’s hand, but I love Tintin. And after all, are you yourself above reproof?’

  5

  We also played baby-foot at the Narval, a bistro in the Maubert district. We went there after school. Nicolas lived nearby. Denfert was a long way away from him. The standard was not so high, but there was more atmosphere, thanks to the students from the Sorbonne or Louis-le-Grand. They feared us. We broke all endurance records, clinging to the handles for hours on end. Certain spectators did not play, but instead placed bets on us and paid for our round. The Narval was the haunt of Franck and his mates. As soon as he set eyes on me, he would tell me to go home and get on with my work. For a long time, I complied, but shortly after my twelfth birthday, I told him to get lost. I wonder how I had the courage to stand up to him. We had just started our game. We were playing with the blue team. On this baby-foot table it was a slight handicap as the front rod was stiff. I managed a shot that rebounded and went in, which prompted a roar of congratulation from the spectators. One of them could think of nothing better to say than yell out to Franck, who was sitting in the café area with his friends.

  ‘Hey, your brother’s getting along brilliantly.’

  I knew that he was going to come over, put his hand on the edge of the table, and shout at me in front of all the other players. I continued knocking in goals without looking up. There he was, glaring at me. I could see him drumming his fingers irritably. I was playing unusually well. I was slamming in the goals and the experts had fallen silent. I ended on a whirl from the inside left that left them speechless. I was on the point of picking up the coin left by the players who were due to play next when he grabbed me by the hand.

  ‘Michel, go home!’

  I saw them all there, with their mocking grins, convinced that the kid would obey his big brother and return to the fold as usual. All of a sudden, I yelled out: ‘Never!’

  He was surprised by my reaction: ‘Did you hear me? At once!’

  I heard myself yell out: ‘Are you going to hit me? Are you going to squeal on me?’

  Franck was not expecting this. He gazed at me in astonishment. He could sense that I was not going to be pushed around. He shrugged his shoulders and went back to his friends. I glanced over at him furtively. He ignored me. We had been kicked out by a pack of idiots who thought they were the champions. Nicolas, who had inserted the first coin, wanted to have his turn again. But I was flat broke. He set off home grumbling. I went and sat down on the bench beside Franck. He continued talking as if I were not there. I was about to go home when he asked me in the most natural way: ‘What are you having?’

  I was not expecting this. I wondered where the trap lay.

  ‘I’ve got no money.’

  Sitting opposite him, Pierre Vermont intervened: ‘It’s my round, you little bugger. Have what you want.’

  I ordered a really weak lemonade shandy and raised my glass to Pierre, who was celebrating his departure for Algeria. His call-up deferment had just been revoked. He was relieved to have passed his medical as he had feared he might be declared unfit for service. He was a student supervisor for the older pupils at Henri-IV. Built like a house, he played prop for the PUC rugby team. He addressed the pupils as ‘silly bugger’ almost automatically. It was his way of speaking. To begin with, it slightly took you aback. During the two months before he was called up, we saw one another every day. We became friends. I was surprised, given our age difference, that he should consider me worth spending time with, but I suppose I was the only one who paid attention to him. I have always liked listening to other people. After Sciences Po, he had failed the Ecole Nation ale d’Administration entrance examination on two occasions. He had got through the written exam twice, but he had also failed the important oral exam on two occasions. He was, apparently, the only one to do so. He did not conceal his radical views and had decided to devote his life to the revolution. Looking at him with his long hair, his moth-eaten beard and his eternal black velvet suit worn over a thick white woollen pullover, it was hard to imagine how Beynette, the principal of Henri-IV could have accepted him as a supervisor, when he was so fussy about how the pupils dressed. Pierre had just given up the idea of becoming a senior civil servant. It was a clever old system and it had rejected him. He had a deep-seated resentment of all organized structure and, even more so, of the family, state education, trade unions, political parties, the press, banks, the army, the police and colonialism. For him, the bastards should all be killed. And he didn’t use the word ‘killed’ lightly. It meant eliminate them, actually get rid of them. This meant a vast number of people had to be slaughtered. This did not frighten him. His hatred of religion and of priests was boundless.

  ‘We pay them too much respect, bowing and scraping at all their antics. You might as well talk to a wa
ll. What is sacred to them is just an invention of their own uneasy minds. Priests and religion have to be done away with. Don’t tell me they do good deeds. We don’t need a commandment from Jesus to justify moral behaviour.’

  What he loathed most of all, saw as mankind’s absolute worst enemy, were feelings. And, worse still, flaunting them.

  ‘If you show your feelings, you’ve had it. People shouldn’t know what you’re feeling.’

  Once he got going, there was no way of stopping him. No one could interrupt him and argue against him. He spoke quickly, switched subjects all of a sudden, set off in one direction without anyone having any idea of where he was heading, launched into unexpected digressions, and landed on his feet again. Some said he liked the sound of his own voice, but he had a very good sense of humour and never took anyone or anything seriously, least of all himself. Except the Tour de France, that is, which he loathed. I never understood that.

  He was Franck’s best friend in spite of their being fierce political opponents. They spent their whole time squabbling, splitting hairs, having rows and making up. They tore into one another with unbelievable verbal violence and you thought that this time they had fallen out with one another for good, but then, a moment later, they were laughing together. I did not understand the reasons why the Communists hated the Trotskyites who loathed them in turn, even though they were standing up for the same people. Pierre asserted that he was no longer a Trotskyite and that he abominated them just as much as Franck did. From now on he was a free and unattached revolutionary. I listened to their dialogues of the deaf without daring to join in, embarrassed that they should confront one another with such hatred. I had a long way to go. I spent hours listening to Pierre. I was sufficiently in agreement with him about the necessity of destroying this rotten society in order to rebuild it on sound foundations, even though many details of the destruction and reconstruction remained obscure. And I enjoyed listening to him. He was clear and convincing. But when I interrupted him with a question, for instance: ‘Why is this war cold?’