The Sermon on the Fall of Rome, стр. 6

back to the routines that she knew so well and would have so much liked to have forgotten, busying herself deftly amid the glasses and ice buckets, mentally noting the orders for rounds of drinks belted out at an infernal pace by thunderous voices of increasing unsteadiness, registering each one as it came and without the slightest error, listening to the disjointed conversations, the same tales told a hundred times before with variations and improbable exaggerations, about how Virgile Ordioni always made a point of slicing fine strips of liver from the dead boar’s smoking entrails, and consuming them on the spot, all warm and raw, with the composure of a prehistoric man, despite the cries of disgust to which he would respond by invoking the memory of his poor father who had always taught him there was nothing better for the health, and now the same exclamations of disgust rang around the bar, with clenched fists pounding on the zinc-topped counter, all spattered with pastis, and there was more laughter and it was observed that Virgile was an animal but a damn good shot, and, all alone in a corner, Vincent Leandri stared at his glass, his eyes full of despair. The more time passed, the clearer it became to Marie-Angèle that she was not prepared to take up this work again, for it had become even more intolerable to her than she would have expected. For years she had relied on Hayet, gradually leaving all the management of the bar to her, in total confidence, as if she had been part of the family and Marie-Angèle felt cut to the quick to think that she could have left without even coming to kiss her goodbye or leaving a farewell message, just a few lines to prove to her that something had happened here, something that had mattered, but this, Marie-Angèle perceived, was precisely what Hayet could not do, for it was evident that she had wanted not only to vanish but also to wipe away all the years spent here, retaining from them only her beautiful hands, prematurely ruined, which she might have wanted to cut off and leave behind her if that had been possible, and the furiously obsessive way she had cleaned the apartment was simply the evidence of a fierce desire for erasure and of a belief that by an act of will one could obliterate from one’s own life all the years one wished one had never lived through, even if this meant erasing the very memory of those who have loved us. And as she poured yet another round of pastis into glasses so full that there was no longer any room for water in them, Marie-Angèle found herself hoping that Hayet, wherever she was and whatever destination she was headed for, might be feeling, if not happy, at least liberated and Marie-Angèle summoned up all the resources of her love to bless her and to let her departure be marred by no resentment. Thus it was that Hayet went on her way, untouched by blessings and resentment alike, not suspecting that her disappearance had already caused an upheaval in a world that was itself no longer in her thoughts, for Marie-Angèle now knew for certain she was never going to open up the bar again, she was never again going to inflict on herself the spectacle of the filthy yellowish soup crystallizing in dirty glasses, the smell of aniseed-flavored breath, and the shouts of the card players at their belote in the depths of interminable winters, the recollection of which filled her with nausea, as did that of the incessant arguments with their ritual but empty threats inevitably followed by tearful and, of course, undying, reconciliations. She knew she could not do it. Her daughter, Virginie, would have had to run the bar in her place until she could recruit a new barmaid, but this solution was impossible to contemplate from every point of view. Virginie had never done anything in her life remotely resembling work, she had always been a pioneer in the infinite fields of lethargy and listlessness, and seemed firmly resolved to pursue this vocation to the end, but even if she had been a workaholic her glum temperament and regal airs made her quite unsuited to the performance of a task that involved having regular contact with other human beings, albeit those as uncouth as the bar’s regular customers. Of course Marie-Angèle would be able to find another barmaid in the end, but she felt herself to be incapable of stepping into the role of patronne once more, she bridled at supervising the opening hours and doing the till every evening to check that the accounts were correct, she had no more appetite for acting out the whole performance of authority and vigilance which Hayet had for so long rendered totally superfluous and, in particular, she was loath to admit that Hayet might well, all things considered, be replaceable. She watched Virgile Ordioni staggering toward the bathrooms, and brooded stoically on the sad fate that awaited the impeccably disinfected toilet seat, not to mention the floor and walls, picturing herself spending the whole of Sunday afternoon, sponge in hand, cursing these savages, and decided to advertise for someone to manage the bar.

That evening, having first given her son, Libero, detailed news of each of his brothers and sisters, and then of the numberless cohort of his nephews and nieces and after asking him, as she had done every night since he got there, if he was settling down alright in Paris, Gavina Pintus told him, just before hanging up, that the barmaid at the bar had mysteriously left the village. Libero passed this on to Matthieu Antonetti, who responded with an absentminded grunt, and they turned back to their work, instantly forgetting something that had nevertheless just marked the start of what would be a new