Chapter 2
Three Lines Further Down
You’re picking up where you left off.
I'm not going to copy the sentence out. First because it belongs to Romain Gary and not to me, and second because it was, and this is galling to admit, better than mine. Mine was sad. The one three lines further down was sad too, but with a door left ajar at the far end, a light on in the hallway. Mine said that people leave. The other one said that you go on loving them anyway, and that this is the hardest thing and the most beautiful.
I closed the book. I opened it again. I reread the margin. The handwriting hadn't changed in the meantime, which was disappointing of it.
“You underlined the wrong sentence.” I mean, honestly. Who writes that? Who picks up a stranger's book, reads it, corrects it and brings it back to her seat the next day, like homework handed back with a comment in red? All that was missing was “Could try harder.”
Between Gembloux and Ottignies, I didn't look at the fields. Between Ottignies and Brussels, I didn't draw a thing. I held the book closed on my lap, in both hands, the way you hold a bird that's fallen out of its nest, and I felt at once insulted and, in some way I couldn't explain, extraordinarily happy.
When the blond train guard came through, I had my season ticket in my hand before he'd even opened his mouth.
“Oh,” he said. “You're ready today.”
“I've made some resolutions.”
“Don't,” he said. “They never last.”
And off he went, laughing, unwrapping a cereal bar. I looked at his hands. Big hands, quick ones. I found myself thinking, without meaning to: are those the hands of someone who writes in pencil in other people's books? Then I decided I was being ridiculous, and concentrated on the Citadel, which had disappeared from view a long time ago.
“Let's see,” said Inès.
Inès Bekkali does page layout at Éditions du Pélican, has been my best friend for three years and is the only person in the world who knows I once cried at a documentary about otters. She has black curls that reject all forms of authority, red glasses that she pushes up onto her forehead when she's thinking, and a theory about everything. Especially love. Especially other people's love.
She took the book, found page 47, read the margin, read my sentence, read the one three lines further down. Then she pushed her glasses up onto her forehead.
“Right,” she said. “He's right.”
“I'm sorry?”
“His is better. Yours is a break-up sentence. His is the sentence of someone who survived the break-up. Can you see the difference?”
“I didn't ask you for literary criticism. I asked you to share my outrage.”
“Oh. Sorry.” She put the book down and arranged her face into something solemn. “What a cad. The nerve of it. Correcting a woman's underlining. Wars have started over less.”
“Thank you.”
“You're welcome. Right. There are two possibilities.”
With Inès, there are always two possibilities. It's how her mind works: she cuts the world in half, like an apple, and looks to see which of the two pieces has the worm in it.
“Either he's a psychopath,” she said, “or he's a French teacher.”
“What's the difference?”
“The psychopath keeps the book. The French teacher gives it back with a comment.” She tapped the cover. “This is a French teacher. Sixth form, probably. Fair Isle jumper, probably. Married, probably.”
“You're drawing a lot of conclusions from a pencil.”
“The pencil matters. Pencil rubs out. He used a pencil so you'd have the choice of rubbing him out. That's polite. That's almost tender.”
I took the book back. I put it in my bag. I switched on my screen, where my hedgehog who was afraid of the dark was waiting for me, looking as bereaved as ever.
“You're going to write back,” said Inès, without looking at me.
“I most certainly am not.”
“You're going to write back,” she said again, and went back to lining up her columns, humming.
Mrs Wauters came by at about eleven, with her immaculate grey bob and her glasses on the end of a chain, to look at my hedgehog. Claire Wauters has run Éditions du Pélican for twenty-five years. She has published books that taught half the children of Wallonia to read, she can say no to an author without him noticing until he's got home, and she has a gaze that goes through drawings like an X-ray.
“Your hedgehog is sad,” she said.
“He's afraid of the dark.”
“No. Being afraid is something else. This one has lost something.”
She left. I stayed in front of my screen, in front of my hedgehog who had lost something, and all of a sudden I found the likeness a little too close for comfort.
That afternoon I redrew his eyes. I put a tiny glint of light in them. A door left ajar at the far end. Three lines further down.
That evening, in Jambes, I put the book on the kitchen table next to a nicely sharpened pencil. Pompon sat on it. I dislodged him. He sat on the pencil.
“You're right,” I told him. “I'm not writing back. You don't write back to a stranger who corrects you. One has one's pride.”
Pompon yawned, which, with him, is a form of commentary.
I rang my sister. Margot is twenty-seven, lives in Liège, is five months pregnant and laughs at everything, including me, especially me. I told her about the book, page 47, the pencil.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, Louise. It's the beginning of a film.”
“It's the beginning of nothing at all. It's some man who has a problem with other people's punctuation.”
“You're going to write back.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that?”
“Because you've already sharpened your pencil,” said Margot. “I can hear you twiddling it between your fingers. You've been doing that since you were six.”
I put the pencil down. Then, once she'd hung up, I picked it up again.
It took me ages. I wrote three draft replies in the margin of an old gardening catalogue. The first was huffy. The second was funny, but funny in a way that showed too much. The third was so long it would have needed a second book. I crossed them all out. And in the end, on page 47, beneath his slanting hand, in my small round illustrator's writing, the writing of someone who has spent her life putting sound effects into speech bubbles, I wrote the only question that mattered. Inès's question.
“Are you a psychopath or a French teacher?”
I blew on the lead. I closed the book. I went to bed with the very distinct feeling that I'd done something silly and the very distinct urge to do it again.
On Monday morning I said nothing to Patrick, who served me my crème with the air of a man who knew something. He knew nothing. Patrick always looks as if he knows something; it's a gift he has, and it earns him a lot of tips.
On the train I didn't read. I held the book. Gembloux, Ottignies, Brussels-Luxembourg, Schuman, Brussels-North. At every stop I thought: maybe he's here. Maybe he's that man getting on with his umbrella. Or that young woman, why not, with her dancer's bun. It had never occurred to me that it might be a woman. I studied the bun with great attention, until the young woman studied me back and I pretended to take an interest in the ceiling.
I didn't turn round. Two rows behind me, someone coughed, softly. That is all I know about what was going on behind my back that morning.
At Brussels-Central I stood up. For once, I stood up in time. I put the book on the seat, perfectly straight, in the middle, the way he had. I hesitated. I almost took it back. A woman said, “Are you getting off or not, miss?” in the voice of someone who's already missed one connection this year. I got off.
On the platform I watched the train pull away towards Brussels-South, and I had the strange feeling that I'd left a message in a bottle, except that the bottle had wheels and a timetable.
On Tuesday, the 13th of October, the book was on my seat.
I feigned indifference for roughly four seconds, which is my limit. Then I sat down, opened it at page 47, and beneath my small round question was his answer, in the same fine slanting hand, with those letters that dropped a long way down, like roots.
“Neither. But I always read on three lines further down.”
And the two-pronged fork underneath. The little catapult.
I laughed. All on my own, in carriage 4, before eight in the morning. The man in front turned round, scandalised. I didn't care. I'd already got my pencil out.