order of things for children to bury their parents, but the appalling disruption of this order added outrage to grief, she wanted to go back to her evening walks with him, taking his arm, and she did so scrupulously, touched to feel him leaning on her, so fragile and so very old. After he had gone to bed, for want of other possible distractions, she went to have a drink at the bar. The young guitar player had made some progress, his vocal technique had improved but he still had a deplorable penchant for schmaltzy ballads, preferably Italian, which he sang with his eyes closed, as if to hold in check the massive surge of his emotion, before receiving the plaudits with the modest air of one who is confident that they are richly deserved. He strolled nonchalantly over to the counter, fully conscious of the female eyes upon him, and made open fun of Virgile Ordioni who laughed in his disarmed innocence, and Aurélie sometimes wanted to slap him as hard as she could, as if the poisonous atmosphere that now prevailed in the bar had contaminated her, too. For the atmosphere really had become poisonous, the scent of a storm hovered in the air, standing at the counter the men coarsely eyed up the tourists’ deep cleavages and sunburned thighs, unconcerned about the presence of husbands who were forced to accept endless rounds of drinks, not bought for them out of kindness but with the palpable intent of making them legless, Libero was constantly being obliged to intervene almost physically, with all the weight of his young authority, and Matthieu looked completely out of his depth. Aurélie almost felt sorry for her brother, he really seemed like a child and basically he was a child, exasperating and vulnerable, one who could only protect himself from the threat of nightmares by taking refuge in an unreal world of childish dreams, a world of sugar candy and invincible heroes. The day before she left Aurélie met Judith Haller, whom Matthieu had invited for the holidays and whom he favored with the sight of himself slipping the pistol into his belt when the bar closed, clearly interpreting the young woman’s look of consternation as an admiring and silent homage to his manliness. Happily inhabiting his role as the patron of a bar, he offered drinks to Aurélie and Judith, for whom more distress was in store, since it would be given to her that very evening to witness a spectacle particularly rich in decibels and gushing tear ducts. Judith was sipping her drink and chatting with Aurélie when a howl, like that of a wounded animal, made her jump. Out on the terrace, her head buried in her hands, Virginie Susini was rocking backward and forward yelling and sobbing and allowing no one to come near her. Apparently, in an incomprehensible recovery of his dignity, Bernard Gratas had just for the first time refused to be summoned to mate with her, and had furthermore grandly insisted that in the future he was not to be treated like a breeding boar and Virginie, who had at first remained impassive, had abruptly launched into a fit of hysterics worthy of the great hall at the Salpêtrière mental hospital from which nothing was lacking, no twitch, no muscular spasm, there was even an attentive and delighted audience, she moaned that she wanted to die, that she was already a lifeless corpse and called out Gratas’s Christian name, she howled that she needed him, news of the greatest significance, albeit highly unexpected, which gave the scene all its dramatic interest. Oh, she needed him, she desired him, why was he rejecting her? she was filthy, she was ugly, she wanted to die and when Gratas, surprised but moved, went up to her and touched her hand, she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth while still weeping, and he returned her kiss with such ardor that Libero had to ask them sharply to go and fornicate somewhere other than in front of his bar. The remaining customers exchanged coarse comments, Virginie was a madwoman and Gratas, it was now as clear as daylight, was a wimp of a Gaul, and everybody laughed, but Judith was not laughing. Aurélie tried to reassure her.
“I don’t think it’s like this every night.”
The next day Aurélie kissed her mother and grandfather goodbye, promising to come back and see him soon, she was sad to leave him, but she wanted to get some fresh air and to see Massinissa. She urged her brother to take good care of their grandfather and pay some attention to Judith, whom she abandoned to her uncertain fate, wishing her a good vacation.
He could no longer remember why he had called her in the middle of the night to invite her to stay with him. Perhaps he had wanted to prove to himself that he was sufficiently remote from the world she represented for him no longer to have to fear it or run away from it, there were no longer two worlds, but just one now, a world that remained unified in its sovereign magnificence and it was the only world Matthieu belonged to. He was no longer afraid of Judith carrying him off with her or reviving within him the painful aftereffects of his former duality, he wanted to show himself to her as he was now, as he had always dreamed of himself being, but she could not see it. She spoke to him as if he had not changed, picking up the threads of old conversations whose sense was now lost on him, and it was like conversing with a ghost. She described in detail how her public teaching oral exams had gone, the sound of the little bell in the Descartes lecture theater, the familiar Sorbonne building immediately transformed into a sacrificial
