The Three Evangelists - Страница 3

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‘Of course not,’ said Mathias. ‘Did you walk out?’

‘No, got sacked. I used to change whole sentences in the page proofs. Because I’m bitter and twisted, and because I was so fed up. They noticed. Are you married? Partner? Children?’

‘No, nothing like that,’ said Mathias.

The two men drew breath and looked at each other.

‘How old are we now?’ asked Mathias.

‘Thirty-five-ish. We’re meant to be grown-up by now.’

‘Yeah, so I’ve heard. Are you still poking about in that medieval midden?’

Marc nodded.

‘What a pain,’ said Mathias. ‘You were always a bit unreasonable about that.’

‘Don’t start, Mathias, it’s not the moment. Where do you live?’

‘In a room I’ve got to get out of in ten days. The posters don’t pay enough to rent a bedsit. Let’s say I’m going downhill.’ Mathias squeezed his two powerful hands together.

‘I can show you this house,’ said Marc. ‘If you’ll come in with me on it, we might be able to forget the thirty thousand years between us.’

‘And the midden too?’

‘Who knows? What about it?’

Mathias, although he was uninterested in, indeed was hostile to anything that had occurred since 10,000 BC or so, had always-incomprehensibly-made an exception for his lanky medievalist friend, who always wore black with a silver belt. To tell the truth, he had always considered this weakness for his friend a lapse of taste on his part. But his affection for Marc, his appreciation of the other’s versatile and sharp mind, had made him close his eyes to the distressing choice his friend had made to study that particularly degenerate phase of human history. Despite this appalling weakness of Marc’s, Mathias tended to trust him, and had allowed himself to be dragged now and then into one of his quixotic enterprises. Even today, when it was clear that Don Quixote had been unhorsed and was reduced to trudging along like a pilgrim, in short, now that he was clearly down on his luck, just as Mathias was himself (and in fact that was rather pleasing), Marc had not lost his persuasive air of royal grace. There was a world-weary expression perhaps in the lines at the corner of the eyes, and some accretion of unhappiness, there had been shocks and traumas he would rather have done without, yes, there was all that. But he still retained his charm and the fragments of the dreams that Mathias had lost sight of in the underground corridors of the Châtelet Métro station.

True, Marc did not seem to have given up on the Middle Ages. But Mathias was ready to go along with him to this ‘disgrace’ that he was describing as they walked along. His hand, adorned with rings, waved arabesques as he explained the deal. What it seemed to be was a tumbledown house, with four floors if you counted the attic, and a bit of garden. Mathias wasn’t put off. They would have to try to find enough money for the rent. Make a fire in the hearth. Find room for Marc’s aged godfather. Why? He couldn’t be abandoned, because it was either that or a retirement home. OK. No problem. Mathias was not bothered. He could see Châtelet Métro station receding into the distance. He followed Marc’s lead, satisfied that his friend was in the same boat as himself, satisfied that he was in the pathetic situation of an unemployed medievalist, satisfied with the showy ornaments his friend dressed up in, and entirely satisfied with the wretch of a house, in which they were certain to freeze to death because it was still only March. So by the time they arrived at the rusty gate, through which you could see the house across a patch of long grass, in one of those secret streets that exist in Paris, he was incapable of viewing the dilapidation of the site with any objectivity. He found the whole thing perfect. Turning to Marc, he shook hands. It was a deal. But even with what he earned selling posters, it still wasn’t going to be enough. Marc, leaning on the gate, agreed. Both men became serious. A long silence followed. They were trying to think of names. Someone else as down and out as themselves. Then Mathias suggested a name: Lucien Devernois. Marc reacted strongly.

‘You’re not serious? Devernois? Have you forgotten what he does?’

‘Yes, I know,’ sighed Mathias. ‘He works on the history of the Great War.’

‘Come on, you can’t be serious. We may not have much money, and I know it’s not the moment to be too fussy, OK. But still, there is a bit of the past left to think about the future. And you’re proposing we get in a contemporary historian? Someone who works on the Great War? D’you realise what you’re saying?’

‘Well, yes,’ said Mathias. ‘But he isn’t a complete prat.’

‘Maybe not. But still. It’s not an option. There are limits.’

‘Yeah, I know. Although if you push me, Middle Ages and contemporary history, it’s all pretty much the same thing.’

‘Oh, steady, watch what you’re saying.’

‘OK. But I think I heard that Devernois was seriously down on his luck, although he may earn a bit on the side.’

Marc frowned.

‘Down on his luck?’

‘That’s what I said. He left off teaching teenagers in a lycée up north. He’s got a really dead-end job now, teaching part-time in a private school in Paris. Bored, disillusioned, writing, on his own.’

‘So he really is down on his luck, like us. Why didn’t you say so straightaway?’

Marc stood still for a few seconds. He thought fast.

‘That changes everything,’ he announced. ‘Get going, Mathias. Great War or no Great War, let’s turn a blind eye. Courage, men, France expects you to do your duty. You go find him and persuade him. I’ll meet you both back here at seven with the landlord. We’ve got to sign the lease tonight. Go on, find a way, convince him. If all three of us are in such a bad way, we ought to be able to contrive a total disaster.’

Saluting, they went their separate ways, Marc at a run, Mathias at walking pace.

IV

IT WAS THEIR FIRST EVENING IN THE DISGRACE IN RUE CHASLE. THE Great War historian had turned up, shaken hands at speed, taken a look at all four floors, and hadn’t been seen since.

After the first moments of relief, now that the lease was signed, Marc felt his worst fears reviving. The excitable modernist, who had turned up with his pale cheeks, his long lock of hair falling in his eyes, his tightly knotted tie, grey jacket, and a pair of shoes which had seen better days, true, but which had been handmade in England, inspired in him a degree of apprehension. Even setting aside his catastrophic choice of research subject, Lucien was unpredictable: a mixture of stiffness and laissez-aller, bonhomie and seriousness, good-natured irony and deliberate cynicism, and he seemed to lurch from one extreme to the other, with short bursts of fury and good humour. It was disconcerting. You couldn’t anticipate what was coming next. Sharing a house with someone who wore a tie was a new experience. Marc looked over at Mathias, who was pacing around the empty room with a preoccupied expression.

‘Was it easy to persuade him?’

‘Piece of cake. He stood up, twitched his tie, put his hand on my shoulder and said, “The solidarity of the trenches. Theirs not to reason why. I’m your man.” A bit over the top. On the way, he asked me what we were up to these days. I told him a bit about pre-history, selling posters, the Middle Ages, ghostwriting romances, and machines. He pulled a face-maybe it was the Middle Ages he didn’t like. But he recovered, muttered something about the melting-pot of the trenches, and that was it.’

‘And now he’s vanished.’

‘He’s left his rucksack. That’s promising.’

Then the trenches expert had reappeared, carrying on his shoulder a packing case for firewood. Marc wouldn’t have thought he had the strength. He might be OK after all.

So that was why, after a scratch supper, eaten off their knees, the three seriously unemployed historians found themselves huddled before a large fire. The fireplace was imposing and coated in soot. ‘Fire,’ Lucien Devernois announced with a smile, ‘is our common starting-point. A modest example, but common to us all. Or if you prefer, it’s our base. Apart from being out of a job, this is our only known point of contact. Never neglect points of contact.’

Lucien accompanied this with an expansive gesture. Marc and Mathias looked at him, without trying to work out what this meant, warming their hands over the flames.

‘It’s simple,’ Lucien explained, getting launched. ‘For the sturdy pre-historian among us, Mathias Delamarre, fire is essential. He thinks of groups of hairy men huddling around their life-giving fire at the cave mouth, because it keeps away wild animals: the invention of fire.’

‘The invention of fire,’ Mathias began, ‘is a controversial…’

‘Enough!’ said Lucien. ‘Please keep your expert opinion to yourself. I have no interest in who is right and wrong about the caves, but let us honour the importance of fire in prehistoric times. Moving on, we come to Marc Vandoosler, who racks his brains trying to calculate the medieval population and what does he count? “Hearths.” Not so easy either, for the poor medievalists. Swiftly climbing the ladder of years, we get to me, and the firing line of the Great War: men under fire, the line of fire, reaching back to the dawn of mankind. Rather touching, isn’t it.’

Lucien laughed, sniffed loudly and rekindled the blaze in the grate by pushing a log with his foot. Marc and Mathias smiled weakly. They were going to have to reckon with this impossible guy who was nevertheless indispensable, since he would be paying a third of the rent.