“Yes, one hundred days. It’s what I’ve just explained to you: You can’t create new mental habits overnight. If you carry out the task I’m going to give you for a week, it will do no good. Absolutely none. It requires a long-term commitment—repeating it for such a long time that its effects take root in you.”
“What is it?”
“It’s very simple, but it’s new for you. Every evening, you must take two minutes to think of the day that has just passed and write down three things that you have achieved and are proud of.”
“I’m not sure I accomplish that many brave deeds every day.”
“It’s not about brave deeds. It can be really little acts, and not necessarily things you did at the office. Perhaps you took the time to help a blind man across the street, even though you were in a hurry. Perhaps you told a shopkeeper that he had made a mistake in your favor when he gave you change, or perhaps you told someone all the good things you think about them. You see, it can be absolutely anything, as long as it’s something you can be proud of. Moreover, it doesn’t have to be an action. You can be pleased with the way you reacted, with what you felt. Proud to have remained calm in situations where you would normally get worked up.”
“I see.”
I was a little disappointed. I was expecting him to give me a more important, more sophisticated task.
“But do you really think that’s going to help me develop confidence in myself? It seems so simple.”
“Ha! You can see that you’re not pure American! You can’t hide your French origins. For the French, an idea must necessarily be complex; otherwise it’s suspected of being simplistic! That’s probably why everything is so complicated in this country. People love getting worked up about things here!”
It reminded me that he had an accent I’d never been able to identify.
“To be honest,” he went on, “there is no miracle remedy that will give you confidence in yourself overnight. You must see the task I’m giving you as a little snowball. I’m pushing it from the top of the mountain, and if you go down with it for long enough, it will perhaps grow big enough to set off an avalanche of positive changes in your life.”
I was convinced of one thing: Confidence in myself was the key to my equilibrium in a lot of areas. Developing it would contribute to giving me a fulfilled life.
“This task,” he went on, “will lead you to become aware of all the things you are doing well, of all you make a success of day by day. Little by little, you will learn to direct your attention to your good qualities, your values, all that makes you a good person. The feeling of your personal worth is going to be engraved in you gradually, until it becomes a certainty. From then on, no attack, no criticism, no blame will be able to unsettle you. It won’t touch you, and you’ll even have the luxury of forgiving your aggressor and feeling compassion for him.”
I was a long way from imagining myself feeling compassion for Marc Dunker. It was no doubt a sign of how far I still had to go.
Dubreuil got up.
“Come on. I’ll show you out. It’s getting late.”
I said good-bye to Catherine, who looked at me as if I were a laboratory rat, and followed Dubreuil. We went around the château via the garden. The fading daylight gave it a mysterious atmosphere.
“It must be a lot of work to maintain a building and gardens of this size. I understand why you have staff.”
“Indeed, it’s difficult to do without.”
“And yet, I wouldn’t feel at home with all these people in the house. Do they stay day and night?”
“No. They all go at ten o’clock. At night I am the only person who haunts the place.”
We walked, without saying a word, to the tall black gate. An unsettling calm permeated the place. Stalin remained lying down but didn’t take his eyes off me, probably waiting for the auspicious moment to leap. I suddenly realized that behind him ranged not one but four kennels in a line.
“Do you have four dogs?” I asked.
“No, Stalin has four kennels just for him. Each day, he chooses the one he’s going to sleep in. No one but he knows which. He has a strong paranoid tendency.”
I sometimes felt as if I’d stepped into a madhouse.
I turned to Dubreuil. The light from the streetlamps made him look wan.
“I’d like to know one thing, though,” I said.
“Yes?”
“You’re taking care of me, and I’m grateful, but I’d like to feel … free. When will you free me from my promise?”
“Freedom has to be earned!”
“Tell me when. I want to know the settlement date.”
“You’ll know when you’re ready.”
“Stop playing cat and mouse. I want to know now. After all, I’m the main person concerned by this thing.”
“You’re not concerned, you’re involved.”
“You see, you’re still playing with words. Concerned, involved. It’s the same thing, isn’t it?”
“No, not at all.”
“Come on! What’s the difference, then, according to you?”
“It’s the bacon omelet.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everyone knows that in a bacon omelet, the hen is concerned and the pig is involved.”
Dear Sir:
I am writing to you to tell you of my extreme annoyance at the exercise you conducted a few days ago, in the presence of the Recruitment Department teams from your company. With all the respect I have for your position, I am nonetheless obliged to tell you of my feelings since the event: I hate you. You’re a schmuck! A big schmuck! I hate people like you. You’re a loser, a bastard, a shitty, lowlife moron.
Thank you for taking the trouble to read my letter.
Yours sincerely, Alan Greenmor
N
INE P.M.
I
OPENED
the door to my apartment building, my letter in my hand. The lime trees on the street perfumed the evening air. I walked down the steps past Étienne. Propped against the wall, he was looking up at the sky with an inspired air.
“It’s mild tonight,” I said.
“It is what it is, lad.”
I walked along the curb and slipped my letter into the first open drain I came across. “There we are: home delivery.”
I headed for the Métro, calmly walking along the streets. Montmartre has the advantage of being situated on a hill, so that you can have the special feeling of being in Paris without being
in
the city. You don’t feel buried in the noise and pollution of a megalopolis whose borders you can’t even see. In Montmartre, the sky is everywhere, and you can breathe. The Butte is a village and when, at the corner of some winding street, you catch sight of the city below, it seems so distant that you feel closer to the clouds than to the hustle and bustle of Paris.
I arrived outside Dubreuil’s at 9:40
P.M.
and sat down on my familiar bench. I had been coming for three nights now to stake out the mansion. I had given up lying down but had taken the precaution of putting on a knit cap that came down to my eyebrows. From a distance, it should be enough to make me unrecognizable.
I had barely sat down when the lord of the manor’s long black Mercedes appeared. It stopped outside the gate, and Vladi nimbly jumped out. He went around the car and opened the back door. I saw a young woman get out, immediately followed by Dubreuil, who put his arm around her waist. She had short, dark hair that revealed a pretty neck. A very short skirt and infinitely long legs. She had a particularly feminine walk, probably as a result of her high heels, but wasn’t she slightly … unsteady? She hung around Dubreuil’s neck. I heard laughter that revealed the number of glasses she must have drunk.
They went into the yard, climbed the steps to the entrance, and disappeared into the house. Lights came on one after the other at the windows.
Nothing more happened for a good ten minutes, then I heard the vibration of the lock on the little gate, just as on the previous days. One minute past ten. My eyes were riveted to the entrance, waiting for the servants to come out. They appeared 55 seconds later. To within 20 seconds, that was the same lapse of time as on the previous nights. There was the same ritual of separation on the pavement, with a few words exchanged before the group broke up. The bus-taker crossed the avenue. The bus arrived at 10:09, a minute in advance of the official timetable. We were getting to the crucial moment: How long would it be before Dubreuil came to let Stalin out? I crossed my fingers that he would keep to the schedule of the previous days: 10:30
P.M.
precisely.
I kept looking from the door to the château to my watch, each minute as it passed simultaneously reinforcing my hope and my fears. At 10:18, the light in the entrance hall came on, and my heart contracted. I waited, tensely, for the door to open. My eyes were glued to it. Nothing. Then another light appeared, in the library this time, and I began to breathe again. It was 10:21. The bus had left 12 minutes earlier. I relaxed. Nothing more happened. At 10:24, again nothing. At 10:28 and 10:30, still nothing. Now I wanted Dubreuil to appear as quickly as possible. My peace of mind for D-day depended on the regularity of his timetable for releasing Stalin. It was 10:31
P.M.
when the door finally opened, and I gave a sigh of relief. For the third consecutive day, Dubreuil had released his dog to within a minute of the same time. The habit seemed firmly rooted.
I wouldn’t check the next day. It was Friday, and it was probable that things changed on the weekend. I had to stick to the weekday timetable.
I got up to go to the Métro. I walked in silence, looking at the ground, lost in thought. A brief ring on my mobile brought me out of my reverie. A text message. It was him. Even in good company, he didn’t forget me. I took out the prescribed cigarette and lit up as I walked. I would have preferred to breathe in the mild evening air. I was beginning to be fed up with having to smoke when I didn’t want to.
I thought back over the events of the day. What could I be proud of today? Let’s see. I needed to come up with three things. Well, first of all, I was proud of having had the courage to leave the office at 6
P.M.
Before, I would have felt obliged to stay till 7 like everyone else. Then let’s see, oh yes, I was proud of having given up my seat to a pregnant woman on the Métro. Finally, I was proud of the irrevocable decision I had just taken to bring to an end my incessant questioning about Dubreuil’s famous notebook: On Monday evening, in precisely 108 hours, I would know what it contained.
T
HE FOLLOWING NIGHT
was eventful. Four times, I was woken up by the order to have a cigarette. The worst was the one at 5:00
A.M.
I smoked it at the window, half asleep and numb with cold, in order not to let the smell invade the apartment. It was violently disgusting. Dubreuil prescribed a cigarette some 30 times a day, and I was beginning to find smoking unbearable. I anticipated with a certain dread the text message that was going to inflict it on me. At meals, I found myself eating faster and faster, for fear of being interrupted to go and smoke. When the alarm announcing the chore went off, I immediately felt a wave of nausea, before my hand reluctantly dived into my pocket to get the cursed packet.
As it was Saturday, I slept until 11:00, catching up on my sleep deficit. Saturday had always been my favorite day, the only day off that was followed by another day off. But today was a special day. I had stage fright—a latent, underlying fear that even when I wasn’t thinking about what was causing it, continued to tie a knot in my stomach. Today was the day I had chosen to carry out the mission involving Madame Blanchard that Dubreuil had assigned. I had to get it over with and the sooner the better. In an hour, I would have already forgotten about it. So before that I had to summon up all my courage.
Finally, I got up and crossed the room barefoot to my mini stereo. I nearly removed the headphones that were permanently plugged in but then changed my mind. Above all, I didn’t want to give Madame Blanchard a valid reason for complaining. I could have dispensed with music altogether, but I felt I needed it to get me in the right frame of mind. I needed something a bit … freaky. Let’s see, let’s see. What could I put on? No, not that, not that. There we are: a cover of
My Way
by the former bass player from the Sex Pistols—Frank Sinatra revised and updated via hard rock. I picked up my headphones—big headphones with earpieces that really covered the ears—and put them on. Sid Vicious’s deep voice sprang from the beyond, breaking into the first verse. I turned the volume up, moving with the headphone cord in my hands like a singer holding the wire of his microphone. Suddenly, the electric guitars sped up with a vengeance. I began to move in time, my bare feet slapping the floor. The singer’s voice exploded in every direction, as though he was vomiting up the song.
Forget the neighbor,
I thought.
Turn the sound up higher. Higher. Let go. Close my eyes. Come on. Melt into the music. The music is in me, in my body. Move, vibrate, dance. All the way. Freedom from everything. Jump, feel everything.
It must have been several minutes before I realized that the drums didn’t seem to be keeping time with the song. The repeated beats must be coming from somewhere else, and in spite of the trance into which I had slipped, I knew where they were coming from.
I pulled off the headphones, my ears still throbbing, and the banging on my door started again, this time louder. She wasn’t knocking now; she was pounding.
“Monsieur Greenmor!”
The moment I had dreaded was finally here.
Push him, he’ll push you back,
Dubreuil had said. And the opposite was true as well:
The more you push him away, the more he’ll insist
.
“Monsieur Greenmor! Open the door!”
I remained frozen, suddenly seized by doubt. Suppose Dubreuil was wrong?
The blows doubled in strength. How could anyone be so odious? I may have jumped five or six times on the floor as I danced. She couldn’t have heard much in her apartment. She really wanted to ruin my life. What a horrid woman!
Anger pushed me to act. I tore off my pullover, then my T-shirt. Now I was bare-chested, bare-footed, in jeans.