Reading Lydie Salvayre

...more

I immediately led her back into what we laughingly refereed to as her “apartments,” while requesting the process-server, who had lost none of his composure, even if, I presume, he must have felt rather disconcerted, to be so kind as to wait a few moments.

And then, having taken my mother back to her bedroom, in order to hide her, and if I may put it this way, to neutralize the danger she represented, returning to the hall where I’d confined him, he read out:

On this day, April 15, 1997, the undersigned Maître Echinard, Process-Server-at-Law, officially appointed to the aforesaid position by the civil authorities of the town of Créteil, and residing at no. 44 rue Violette, herewith delivers to Mademoiselle Rose Méile, residing at no. 10 cité des Acacias, apartment number 230, floor 12, Créteil, the undersigned being present and speaking, as is stated hereinafter in the report of notification, on behalf of Monsieur Marcel Leducq, of French nationality, born on August 10, 1930, in Paris (twelfth arrondissement), in retirement, residing in Paris (eleventh arrondissement) at 16 rue Cammile Desmoulins, electing residence at the offices of the undersigned, acting on the basis of a final ruling handed down on June 2, 1996, following due hearing of both parties, by the Juge d’Instance of the town of Créteil, in view of your non-execution of the injunction placed upon you to declare the name and address of your employer or the details of your bank accounts in order for your incomings to be distrained, a formal summons too . . .

- Two –


And while the process-server mumbled his way through this seizure summons, which to me was utterly, but utterly, incomprehensible, I tried to figure out what remote chances I might possess of saving from this damned inventory the few items that I loved and, in particular, the TV set, without which, I thought, it would be impossible for me to live.

Oh, do please come in, I insisted the moment the process-server had terminated his gibberish, and I ceremoniously opened the door to the living room. I hope that such thoroughly Japanese manners might conceal the indescribable mess that reigned in our apartment. Excuse this disorder, I said, though I nearly said “dump.” The process-server maintained a perfectly expressionless face as he swept the room with a gloomy eye. Are you in possession of a motorized land vehicle? he asked me point-blank. It was a curious gambit. What? I said. Do you have an auto? he then asked with a dash of impatience. No, I said.

The process-server at once launched into the inventory and inscribed in a black notebook that he took from his briefcase: on macaronic-style wall thermometer depicting a frightened doe behind foliage carved in copper, which seems to us of no value; a fan possessing a wooden handle and black fabric decorated with red roses and bearing the legend RECUERDOS DE GRANADA, which we deem of little worth; an oval frame, made of gilded wood, containing a photo . . .

And at the precise instant when the process-server, planted in front of the photograph of Uncle Jean, was punctiliously noting down these various particulars, my mother burst in again, in her dirty nightdress, girdled by the hideous fanny pack that never left her and that contained her jewels, some small change, the portrait of Uncle Jean and the one of me, and, with her crazed face, crazed look and crazed voice, screamed at the process-server, Is it Darnand who’s sent you?

A silence ensued. A dismayed silence, it goes without saying. A perilous silence.

Pardon me? asked the process-server.

I felt as overwhelmed with shame as would any girl my age. Assuming a perfectly hypocritical air of pained kindness, I whispered to my mother, Mama, you are tired, you ought to have a little nap, hoping this would compel her to leave immediately. But I was deluding myself as to the power of my words, for no sooner were they uttered than they sank without a trace, and my mother didn’t move.

I then turned to the process-server who, since his “Pardon me,” had been standing still and mute, observing my mother with the same cold look as though she were a footstool or a cheese dish. Please be so good (so good!) as to bear with me one second, I murmured to him. Then I grabbed my mother by the arm and, driving my nails into her flesh to demonstrate she ought never to have left, and, in an abrupt tone that I thought might have a narcotic or at least an inhibiting effect upon her, I urged her to go to bed and behave herself. This, I told her, as I leaned close to her ear, is not time to play games. It was then that I noticed that she smelled bad.

Have I told you, my dear, my mother began as soon as she had lain down on her bed, that it was seven in the evening when (I knew what came next by heart) . . .


- Three –


. . . when your Uncle Jean opened the door of the Café des Platanes? And then the Jadre twins, whom everyone in the village called J1 and J2, stepped in front of him. Didn’t you read the notice? J1 said to him (the notice bore the words NO JEWS NO DOGS). Then J2 kicked the door closed again and your Uncle Jean, who hadn’t realized the danger he was in, without reflecting on what he was doing, slid his foot into the gap. And turning it over and over in my mind, my mother said, I have to come to the view, my dear, that it was because, being the young man that he was, he slid his foot into the opening of a door that your uncle was condemned. It was that minuscule act of resistance that impelled the Jadre twins to commit their barbarous act. Because in those days the Jadre twins did not allow anyone to resist them, any hint of resistance and they would crush it beneath their boots. Ever since they had paraded through the streets of Toulouse under the eyes of Cheneaux de Leyrtiz, General Schubert in person, Bézagu and all the other eminences, the Jadre twins thought themselves the masters of the village, and since they thought themselves the masters, others took them to be so.