Читаем Incest полностью

We went on a walk. We’d arrived by airplane. We didn’t have a car there. He had just gotten his pilot’s license. He had rented a plane and we flew there from Reims, he from Strasbourg. I was going to be able to tell Véronique at school. He asked me what Véronique’s family name was, how it was spelled, and explained the etymology, where she lived, her father’s profession, viticulturist, Foureur champagne. We’re taking a walk in the forest surrounding Le Touquet, the pine forest, the area is filled with beautiful houses. He writes articles in his field, linguistics, he has a book in progress. He’s an admirer of Champollion, he’s very interested in the Iberian language, it will be his major work. He wrote an article on the pronunciation of w in French. People think it’s v, because of they way wagon is said with a v sound, but it’s oueu according to French rules of pronunciation. Wagon is an exception, from German, Wagen, der Wagen. We pass the houses, each more beautiful than the last, he makes jokes, he’s in a joking mood: that one is fifty thousand copies. That one there, oh, that one, it’s at least one hundred thousand. I’d have to write a detective novel to get that one, he jokes. I, who have never seen anything, I laugh, fascinated. My book might not sell many copies, it’s a difficult subject, linguistics, which doesn’t reflect on its quality. That one, oh two hundred thousand. A million. One and a half million. That one, fifty thousand. One million. Two million. One hundred and fifty thousand. We laugh. We had just been to see the airplanes.

The lock

Easter holidays one year later. In Strasbourg, in the family apartment. They’re all away on vacation. My vacation is their empty apartment. I sleep in the parents’ bedroom with my father, in the marriage bed. I see the children’s room, their little universe. They’re much younger than I am, eight and ten years difference or six and nine. They don’t know me, they don’t even know I exist. Yes, I know, I’ve already said it, let me repeat myself if I want. I’m there for a week. It’s a long week. We’re used to weekends, sometimes long ones. He works. I don’t know how to take care of a house. I don’t know how it’s done. I know how to do two or three things, I have two or three routines, I see what my mother does, but I don’t have the reflexes. He works. I’m on vacation, not him, he comes home for lunch and in the evening. I’m bored, I look at the house, the décor, Elisabeth’s taste, in all it’s cute. When I get home my mother will say “I don’t like cute things.” In the bathroom there’s a rather large glass jar filled with costume jewelry and another filled with cotton balls. There are printers type set drawers with tiny trinkets. It’s not the apartment I’d visit later with Claude (at the time of the Codec when there was nothing left), a large duplex, very large, with terraces, just a few steps from the Orangerie, the public garden he adores, which he tells me about. He explicates everything. Iberian, Latin, the Orangerie, etymology, German, the pronunciation of w in French, politics, racism, animals, plant names, everything, the Egyptian pharaohs, the origin of languages, language families, Noah, Shem and company, Indo-European, Hindi. It’s all clear. In the morning, we eat breakfast in the kitchen. At noon he comes home. He sees the milk left out, the bottle of milk, I’d forgotten to put it away, don’t I know that milk spoils? That it’s undrinkable if it’s not kept cold? He throws a tantrum. His arguments are endless. And above all the lock: