diseases about the same time, and that almost all of us break something playing football.
“I know, I haven’t mentioned anything other than the usual coincidences, very visible. For example, even that Luc looked like me is of no serious importance, even if you’re sold on the revelation on the bus. What really counted was the sequence of events, and that’s harder to explain because it involves the character, inexact recollections, the mythologies of childhood. At that time, I mean when I was Luc’s age, I went through a very bad time that started with an interminable sickness, then right in the middle of the convalescence broke my arm playing with some friends, and as soon as that was healed I fell in love with the sister of a buddy of mine at school, and God, it was painful, like you can’t look at a girl’s eyes and she’s making fun of you. Luc fell sick also, and just as he was getting better they took him to the circus, and going down the bleacher seats he slipped and dislocated his ankle. Shortly after that his mother came on him accidentally one afternoon with a little blue kerchief twisted up in his hands, standing at a window crying: it was a handkerchief she’d never seen before.”
As someone has to be the devil’s advocate, I remarked that puppy love is the inevitable concomitant of bruises, broken bones and pleurisy. But I had to admit that the business of the airplane was a different matter. A plane with a propeller driven by rubber bands that he’d gotten for his birthday.
“When he got it, I remembered the erector set my mother gave me as a present when I was fourteen, andwhat happened with that. It happened I was out in the garden in spite of the fact that a summer storm was ready to break, you could already hear the thunder cracking, and I’d just started to put a derrick together on the table under the arbor near the gate to the street. Someone called me from the house and I had to go in for a minute. When I got back, the box and the erector set were gone and the gate was wide open. Screaming desperately, I ran out into the street and there was no one in sight, and at that same moment a bolt of lightning hit the house across the road. All of this happened as a single stroke, and I was remembering it as Luc was getting his airplane and he stood there gazing at it with the same happiness with which I had eyed my erector set. The mother brought me a cup of coffee and we were trading the usual sentences when we heard a shout. Luc had run to the window as though he were going to throw himself out of it. His face white and his eyes streaming, he managed to blubber out that the plane had swerved in its trajectory and had gone exactly through the small space of the partly opened window. We’ll never find it again, we’ll never find it again, he kept saying. He was still sobbing when we heard a shout from downstairs, his uncle came running in with the news that there was a fire in the house across the street. Understand now? Yes, we’d better have another glass.”
Afterward, as I was saying nothing, the man continued. He had begun thinking exclusively of Luc, of Luc’s fate. His mother had decided to send him to a vocational school, so that what she referred to as “his life’s road” would be open to him in some decent way, but that road was already open, and only he, who would not have been able to open his mouth, they would have thought him insane and kept him away from Luc altogether, would have been able to tell the mother and the uncle that there was no use whatsoever, that whatever they might do the resultwould be the same, humiliation, a deadly routine, the monotonous years, calamitous disasters that would continue to nibble away at the clothes and the soul, taking refuge in a resentful solitude, in some local bistro. But Luc’s destiny was not the worst of it; the worst was that Luc would die in his turn, and another man would relive Luc’s pattern and his own pattern until he
“I know, I haven’t mentioned anything other than the usual coincidences, very visible. For example, even that Luc looked like me is of no serious importance, even if you’re sold on the revelation on the bus. What really counted was the sequence of events, and that’s harder to explain because it involves the character, inexact recollections, the mythologies of childhood. At that time, I mean when I was Luc’s age, I went through a very bad time that started with an interminable sickness, then right in the middle of the convalescence broke my arm playing with some friends, and as soon as that was healed I fell in love with the sister of a buddy of mine at school, and God, it was painful, like you can’t look at a girl’s eyes and she’s making fun of you. Luc fell sick also, and just as he was getting better they took him to the circus, and going down the bleacher seats he slipped and dislocated his ankle. Shortly after that his mother came on him accidentally one afternoon with a little blue kerchief twisted up in his hands, standing at a window crying: it was a handkerchief she’d never seen before.”
As someone has to be the devil’s advocate, I remarked that puppy love is the inevitable concomitant of bruises, broken bones and pleurisy. But I had to admit that the business of the airplane was a different matter. A plane with a propeller driven by rubber bands that he’d gotten for his birthday.
“When he got it, I remembered the erector set my mother gave me as a present when I was fourteen, andwhat happened with that. It happened I was out in the garden in spite of the fact that a summer storm was ready to break, you could already hear the thunder cracking, and I’d just started to put a derrick together on the table under the arbor near the gate to the street. Someone called me from the house and I had to go in for a minute. When I got back, the box and the erector set were gone and the gate was wide open. Screaming desperately, I ran out into the street and there was no one in sight, and at that same moment a bolt of lightning hit the house across the road. All of this happened as a single stroke, and I was remembering it as Luc was getting his airplane and he stood there gazing at it with the same happiness with which I had eyed my erector set. The mother brought me a cup of coffee and we were trading the usual sentences when we heard a shout. Luc had run to the window as though he were going to throw himself out of it. His face white and his eyes streaming, he managed to blubber out that the plane had swerved in its trajectory and had gone exactly through the small space of the partly opened window. We’ll never find it again, we’ll never find it again, he kept saying. He was still sobbing when we heard a shout from downstairs, his uncle came running in with the news that there was a fire in the house across the street. Understand now? Yes, we’d better have another glass.”
Afterward, as I was saying nothing, the man continued. He had begun thinking exclusively of Luc, of Luc’s fate. His mother had decided to send him to a vocational school, so that what she referred to as “his life’s road” would be open to him in some decent way, but that road was already open, and only he, who would not have been able to open his mouth, they would have thought him insane and kept him away from Luc altogether, would have been able to tell the mother and the uncle that there was no use whatsoever, that whatever they might do the resultwould be the same, humiliation, a deadly routine, the monotonous years, calamitous disasters that would continue to nibble away at the clothes and the soul, taking refuge in a resentful solitude, in some local bistro. But Luc’s destiny was not the worst of it; the worst was that Luc would die in his turn, and another man would relive Luc’s pattern and his own pattern until he
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