A Slight Case of Fatigue

Contents

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Human beings kill one other; they also must embrace one other. Time is running out.

—Jacques Lusseyran

I’m no fucking Buddhist …

—Björk

When I was twenty, I dreamed of a secret nook where I’d go with a mature woman with ample breasts, buttocks and belly—a paradise where you leave your head at the door and your heart in the repair shop. Today, I’d go see that woman and I’d make love to her—assuming I could manage to get an erection—and as soon as I finished, I would start going around in circles again like a nervous dog. I’m forty-one and I’m going downhill fast. I’m rolling to the river like a corpse rolled up in a Persian carpet (troublesome, but a sad loss all the same).

Part One

1

MICHEL PUT ON HIS chrome-plated smile—a shiny, almost luminous armour he took refuge behind when the bullets started flying.

Don’t worry about it, he said, we’re all like you, we all have our moments. You know what we should do? Take to the streets and walk through the city giving everybody the finger!

I laughed. I laughed and took a swig of wine. The two things that still stirred something in me, even remotely. Although I was beginning to find laughing more and more of a drag.

‘Take to the streets.’ You’re a real comedian! I’m not talking about layoffs or cuts to health care.

Every time I discussed something with him, no matter what the subject, we ended up with our hands flat on the table and our eyes bulging. If you boiled these scenes down to their essence, you’d get a never-ending conflict between a giant who refused to face life and his oldest friend, an observer of disasters.

Simone came back from the washroom and sat down on my left. She patted my thigh. I took a long look at her reassuring eyes, her warm, solid body … and I started breathing again.

Laugh. Drink wine. Look at Simone.

So, what were you saying? Michel continued.

I was talking about human beings. You remember, human beings? Those pretentious great apes? Those hairless orangutans of the fields? When I look into their faces, with their meanness and their spinelessness, I want to put a bullet between their eyes. Or better still, disguise myself as a dog.

Michel looked at Simone and then at his wife, Claire, raising his long arms to the sky.

Can someone translate that for me?

Claire, who had always taken the path of neutrality, just shrugged. Michel leaned toward me, his mouth a tiny bit twisted.

Are you doing your misanthropic act again, Eddy?

All these years, whenever I tried to make him see the true face of Man, I’d felt like a tour guide leading a group of blind people. I could clearly describe some failing of humanity, some evidence of our insignificance, and he’d never grasp more than the vaguest idea of it. In other words, Michel was the kind of guy who could swoon over a realistic landscape painted on a canvas ten metres square and ignore the fact that behind it there were corpses falling into mass graves.

There’s a reason you’re an optician, I said. You see things perfectly clearly. The problem is that you never look up from your navel.

Every time I invite you over, you end up pissing us off. Every time! It’s amazing. Tell me, how do you do it?

I stood up and slid my chair under the table. Simone didn’t move a muscle.

What are you up to now? asked Michel.

I crossed the dining room as he called on the girls as witnesses.

What the hell is he doing? What did I say?

Simone was following me with her eyes, with her sad little smile.

I think I’ll go home, I said.

It was then that Claire objected. Since this was quite a rare phenom­enon, I stopped short.

You can’t just leave like this, not before dessert.

Claire is a nutritionist. She had planned plenty of amino acids for the last part of the meal. How could I do this to her? Michel smiled at me and nodded. His face had regained that metallic sparkle I could never figure out. He lunged at me, grabbed me around the waist and lifted me off the ground.

I love you, Eddy! Don’t ask me why, but I love you.

He planted his big, wet lips on my cheek before setting me back down on terra firma. I adjusted my clothes and wiped my face. The girls were laughing, while Simone refilled the glasses and Claire piled the plates. Everything was back to normal. Michel had decreed that we could get back on the bus and continue our guided tour of the surface of things. I sat down again, my brow so knitted that I could hardly see straight.

And stop calling me Eddy, please.

2

A MUFFLED STILLNESS FILLED the streets. The sky was as taut as a bow and you could smell a storm coming. The traffic lights were perfectly synchronized, and I was driving slowly, silently, so as not to set ­anything off, moving like a battery-powered submarine through the liquid grey air of the night.

Simone was turned toward the window, watching the strings of ­cottages and bungalows go by, thinking of I don’t know what, perhaps of how calm it would be in the house, of the hours she would spend in her reading chair, of her life laid out before her eyes, illuminated, as sometimes happens when the winds are favourable and the wine is kind.

One after another, the streetlights lit up her face. I could have driven like that for days, beside her quiet body, the sadness she carried in her heart like a family heirloom, like a precious chain passed down from mother to daughter. When I stopped the car, her eyes met mine. There, I said to myself, she’ll begin to move, she’ll contract this and lift that to come and place her warm lips on my cheek and then desert me.

She walked slowly toward the house. I would have accepted a coffee, a glass of water, I would have guarded the door, curled up on the doormat. She gave a little wave and disappeared.

It was not yet midnight. I had twenty minutes of driving ahead of me—not nearly enough. I dragged my feet as far as exit ten, as far as that fabulous bedroom suburb where they dance in the daytime to the beat of lawnmowers and sleep at night to the purring of pool filters.

The wind had risen as I drove. I could see it shaking the mountain ash Véronique, my wife, had given me for my thirtieth birthday. Its bunches of fruit, though immature, weighed down the branches, bending the slenderest ones dramatically. The cedar hedge along the driveway rippled with waves of various frequencies and amplitudes, as if it were being brushed by a huge invisible hand. An incredible bolt of lightning etched a tortuous line across the sky, and a few seconds later, thunder rumbled.

I opened the patio door and tripped over two of my own suitcases. I picked them up to see if my suspicions were founded. They were. It did not immediately dawn on me that the ground had given way beneath my feet. In fact, I felt nothing, sensed nothing, suspected nothing.

My son was lying on the couch, his eyes closed. I looked at him for a few seconds, regretting that he was no longer at that tender age when it was touching to watch him sleep, that marvellous age when every tragedy and every joy is worth its weight in emotion, pure and ­precise, clean and clear, when anger is raw anger, unalloyed with lofty feelings or good manners, when sadness is sadness without shame, without fear of ridicule, when joy explodes in the heart with such force that the whole body is shaken.

He was a slight young man. There was a time when I liked to joke that he had spent a little too much time with his mother, but now that I’m sure this is true, I no longer joke about it. I thought of the suitcases and I imagined fleetingly that the beloved son had returned home tired from his long journey and had fallen asleep on the couch while waiting for his father. This idea wrung a smile from me.

I pressed the button on the remote and the television opened its eye on the news channel. Surprised, I looked back at my son. I found it hard to believe he’d given up his station with its pubescent VJs for whom everything is totally cool, for a news channel.

He woke up suddenly, sat up and looked at his watch. I went on the attack.

You were waiting for me? That’s nice. Guess how many years it’s been since someone waited up to have a nightcap with me?

He didn’t feel like hearing my stories; that was crystal-clear. He rubbed his face to get his blood circulating again. An ambitious plan, I thought.

Six years. So imagine the pleasure you’re giving me. What are you offering?

He stood up and rearranged his hair with a series of ridiculous, complicated gestures.

Well, in that case, I’ll serve myself. But don’t expect me to bring you anything.

For months the house had been like a war zone. The time had come to jump into the minefield with both feet—anything to get this goddamn night over with. I trotted comically to the kitchen and took the bottle of vodka out of the freezer. He came and leaned against the doorframe, and asked if I’d noticed the suitcases at the front door.

Yes. You know, they look exactly like my suitcases.

Don’t worry, you’ll get them back.

Because he had three or four centimetres on me, I suspected him of feeling a slight sense of superiority when we confronted each other. It was probably part of the even more frightening idea his mother had put in his head, which was that my entire life was a failure.

You could have said something to me sooner.

Maman suggested it would be better not to.

I knew why right away. I wondered if he had the slightest idea, or if he had simply gone along with his mother’s little game.

I think it’s best this way, he added.

Yes, of course, things are always best this way. Until the day you ­realize that everything would have been better differently. He left the doorway to go lean against the patio door. In spite of all the energy afforded him by his youth, he only left one support to find another, as close and as soon as possible. I offered to hop into the car and drive him, but he preferred to wait for his buddy.

We’re supposed to go for a drink. Luc will drop me at Maman’s afterwards.

Maman. Every time that word, pronounced very clearly with each syllable distinct, came out of this big beanpole, I had to stop myself from hitting him.

I took a second glass out of the cupboard, grabbed the bottle and went to the dining room, inviting him to come and drink to his departure. He looked at his watch and glanced outside. I realized that if his friend had finished his shift at work earlier, I would have come home to an empty house with nothing but a seven- or eight-word note to keep me company in the endless night. Seven or eight words aren’t much when you’ve given someone eighteen years of your life.

It’s hard to explain precisely what I was feeling then. There was this scene being played out in the dining room between my son and me and, at the same time, a completely different movie was being projected inside me, in a dark, hollow place, and I would only become aware much later of the plot that was developing without my knowledge. Just like his resolution, in fact.

I filled our glasses. The only time I could have a drink with my son was when he was annoyed with me. Under these circumstances, I was always able to convince him to sit down with me for a few minutes. Guilt, probably. And although they were hardly a barrel of laughs, these moments in his company came closest to the idyllic visions I’d had of him and me when he reached adulthood.

There was nothing to add. Since most of his activities were based in the city, my son found life in the suburbs inconvenient. And, as I was supposed to know, he did not much like being seen in my old rattletrap of a car. I couldn’t help smiling, since I had never realized how much it humiliated him to ride in my car five nights a week, every other week. But mainly, I think I was smiling in admiration for his tact and sensitivity. Unfortunately, he quickly regretted being so considerate and struck out across our minefield with careless little steps.

Anyway, do you expect me to believe it makes any difference to you whether I’m here or not?

Have you ever lacked for anything?

Things, food, clothes, no, that’s true, when it comes to those things, I’ve never lacked for anything.

I remember a time when we got along rather well …

Before or after Maman left?

This was the founding event of our calendar, year one of our ­civilization. Right after our separation, Maxime was always very happy to come back to my house, and we would enjoy quiet days together in a closeness that people often envied. Then, slowly, as he got older, he began to realize that I was not like everyone else and that it was ­possibly my fault our family had broken up. I didn’t know the extent of his mother’s contribution to this slow but inexorable revelation. I only saw his behaviour change from week to week until this daunting distance had been established between us and no attempt, no gesture on my part, ever succeeded in bringing us together again for more than a few moments.

I began to hope that Luc would come. I knew we’d make more progress in front of his friend; male vanity can sometimes bring about miracles. Then my son gave a half-hearted sigh, as if he were gradually losing his composure, as if he were capitulating. He nodded his head, looking down at the floor.

I don’t understand you, he said. I swear, sometimes you scare me.

I saw in this a comforting helplessness. If he found it so painful to admit he couldn’t understand me, it probably meant he had tried. I wanted to offer a couple of theories I had developed regarding my case, but I kept my mouth shut, because there are truths about life that a child of eighteen shouldn’t hear. And besides, I was still a long way from understanding the whole situation. I felt I had been drifting off course for some time, but the error was insidious. Only with time and ­distance would it become apparent just how far I had drifted.

Just then, Luc turned up on the patio. In the wind and the storm, probably because of the shock of finding my son and me together, he looked a bit at a loss. Maxime looked up, but he didn’t have the strength to do anything more. I was the one who went to open the door. Luc hurried inside while a bit of the storm crashed into the room.

I had always felt a special affection for the boy. And I think he ­considered me an entertaining father.

You’ll have a last drink with me, at least?

I went into the kitchen without waiting for their reply. When I came back with the glasses, Maxime had gone over to Luc and picked up the suitcases, and the two of them were about to leave. I had to move quickly to get between them and the door. I saw the emptiness that awaited me and broke into a cold sweat. The goosebumps all over me, the drops of perspiration running down my sides were just a sample of what I feared would be on the other side. I had experienced several departures during my life, each one of which had torn a living piece out of my heart, so I knew what the immediate future had in store for me.

I held out my hand to my son, and just the idea of physical ­contact with me was enough to make him back away. In this way I steered him to his chair, like one magnet repelling another.

Just a small one for the road. If I understand correctly, it could be quite a long time before we see each other again.

Luc, who was quite willing, looked at Maxime, waiting to hear his verdict.

Just one, muttered my son.

He went back—reluctantly, it goes without saying—to his place opposite me. Luc sat down at the end of the table. I was surrounded by youth, by the beautiful next generation that should have been dreaming of turning this cursed world upside-down but had instead opted for designer clothes, manufacturer’s car loans and cell phones. I filled the glasses and raised mine to my son’s new life.

It was time to get serious. I knew what I was looking for and I ­didn’t really need to hear it. But for his own good, I wanted him to say those words that were burning his tongue. So I asked him why he couldn’t stand this house anymore. Aside from the fact that it was outside the city, of course. And aside from the fact that the roof had been leaking for several months and I was diametrically opposed to having it repaired.

He clenched his teeth.

And aside from the fact that we’ve been invaded by spiders and you refuse to call an exterminator?

Yes, of course, aside from our friends the spiders.

He pounded his fist on the table so hard that our glasses shook. Unable to hide my satisfaction, I smiled. Maxime stood up, came around the table, and grabbed my arm. It was the first physical ­contact we’d had in months—on my birthday, he’d shaken my hand. He ­hadn’t shown much interest in contact sports in the last few years. He forced me to