Waiting for Monsieur Bellivier Read online

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  Title Page

  Waiting For Monsieur Bellivier

  About the Author

  More on W&N

  Copyright

  At 73 Boulevard des Batignolles, there is a small grocer’s shop. The type of place English-speaking tourists tend to call an ‘Arabic shop’. Mancebo, the owner of the shop, doesn’t like that, but he holds his tongue. In any case, they don’t get all that many tourists on the boulevard. Most visitors stick to the Champs-Élysées, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre or the Arc de Triomphe. Tourists who want to discover the ‘real’ Paris will go somewhere like Château Rouge, feeling bold and cosmopolitan as they stroll at a reassuring distance from the metro entrance. The fact is, there’s no such thing as one real Paris. The city has many faces. If you want to discover Paris, it’s better to sit on one of the city’s benches. From there you can watch several million people trying to find their place in life.

  Mancebo discovers Paris every day, sitting on his stool outside the shop at 73 Boulevard des Batignolles.

  It doesn’t occur to Mancebo that he discovers Paris every day. He unconsciously registers everything that goes on on the street. The smell of cooking causes him to interrupt his observations. The first time it happens is at lunchtime, when he knows that a meal prepared by his wife, Fatima, will be waiting for him in the apartment upstairs. But before the clatter of china even has time to reach him, Mancebo’s cousin, Tariq, comes rushing into the shop. He works not far away, just across the boulevard in fact, in his cobbler’s shop. The very shop he claims he is about to shut up and sell in order to move to Saudi Arabia and open a school for parachutists. Not that he knows anything about skydiving, but one day about five years ago a man had come in to get his shoes reheeled and in the time it took the glue to dry, he told Tariq how he had changed profession, giving up work as an IT consultant in Paris to open a bungee-jumping school in Jordan. And later that same day a young man came in and happened to mention that he and his wife had moved to Dubai. They had been getting by in ordinary jobs in Paris, but now they lived like kings. That was how Tariq got the idea for his skydiving school. ‘The Saudis are gagging to get airborne,’ he often says. As long as the oil keeps on flowing, they’ll pay, Tariq is sure of it. He’s even gone to the library to borrow books on Saudi Arabia. But Fatima thinks he would be better off mastering the parachute jumping part first.

  Tariq doesn’t discover Paris the same way Mancebo does; he keeps to his cobbler’s shop, often having a cigarette in the office. Mancebo is only allowed one cigarette a day, even though he feels like smoking more. Fatima has decreed her husband will smoke only after dinner. ‘Just imagine if a food shop smelled of smoke!’ she likes to say. She also claims to be allergic to cigarette smoke, so Mancebo can’t smoke at home. Mancebo isn’t afraid of his wife, not really. While he works seven days a week she stays at home. Beyond cooking, he’s not really sure how she passes the time, and he doesn’t ask.

  The cousins not only work close by, but live close by. Tariq and his wife, Adèle, live in the apartment above the shop, and Mancebo, Fatima and their son, Amir, live in the one above that. It should be the other way round, Mancebo often argues. It would be much more natural for him to have Tariq’s apartment, because then he’d only need to go down one flight of stairs to open the shop, and up one flight after he closed it. But Fatima doesn’t agree. ‘It’s the only exercise you get.’

  A few years ago, when Mancebo had more energy, he’d mustered every argument he could think of to engineer an exchange. The first, and most persuasive, was that he is much older than Tariq, and in a few years’ time the stairs could become a problem for him. Secondly, he gets up earlier than the others and sometimes wakes them when he goes downstairs. And, thirdly, Fatima always cooks on the first floor because the stove there is better. It was as clear as day, at least to Mancebo, that his family ought to have the first-floor apartment.

  He diligently assembled his arguments and presented them over a grilled chicken one evening. But to his surprise, no one backed him up, not even his wife, which still today strikes him as odd. In fact, she made a joke at his expense, asked if he’d been round the neighbours collecting signatures for his petition. Tariq had laughed, as he always did, Adèle had said nothing, as she usually did, and Amir probably hadn’t been listening.

  If anyone asks Mancebo what his job is, he says that he works in the service industry. If anyone asks for further details, he says he owns a grocer’s shop. All this is true. And if anyone asks where this shop is, he replies that it’s at the foot of Montmartre. That point is debatable.

  Mancebo likes the idea of living and working at the foot of the white, pointy confection that is the Sacré-Cœur. But his answer leaves many with the impression they can find Mancebo and his shop on the little square called Parvis du Sacré-Cœur, or squeezed into one of Montmartre’s alleyways. That is not the case. You can see the basilica from his address, but it’s far off on the horizon, high up on the hill. Fatima thinks it’s childish of him to say he lives at the foot of Montmartre and snorts every single time he does. Sometimes she tugs his ear and Mancebo protests that no one knows the size of Montmartre. He’s right, of course.

  Mancebo’s daily life is governed by the scents and signs of the city. He has no need of a watch. But he does have an alarm clock, which rings just after five o’clock every morning. Fifteen minutes later he’s in his white van on the way to Rungis, to the south of Paris, to buy fresh fruit and vegetables. By eight, he’s back in Paris, and a few minutes after that he drops in on François at Le Soleil for a quick coffee, which he calls breakfast.

  Along with Mancebo’s shop and Tariq’s cobbler’s, the cousins’ local café, Le Soleil, forms a triangle in their neighbourhood. ‘The Golden Triangle’, the bar owner likes to joke, alluding to the more famous triangle between three well-known old cafés: Café de Flore, Les Deux Magots and Brasserie Lipp. ‘Bermuda Triangle, more like,’ Tariq always says. Neither François nor Mancebo really understands what he means by this.

  At nine on the dot he pulls up the grille and the shop breathes in the morning air. Then he works until the smell of cooking intensifies. Down with the grille and time for lunch. Once he’s finished his meal, he makes his way downstairs to pull up the grille for the second time that day. It comes back down late in the afternoon, when the time comes for a pastis with Tariq at Le Soleil. After that, it’s back to work until the smell of cooking again lies heavy in the air, at around nine. The grille comes down for the last time.

  Another day is over. He counts the day’s takings, twisting rubber bands around the notes and putting them into a plastic bag. He’ll take those to the bank. The aroma of a rich bean stew wafts through the chink between the door and its frame, a pair of slightly parted lips. The very breath of the building lets Mancebo know when it’s time to bring in the stands, which in turn signals to Tariq that it’s time to shut for the day. In the mornings, when Mancebo opens up the shop, yesterday’s breath is always lingering in the air, but only for a few minutes, or as long as it takes to pull the fruit and vegetable stands outside. Then it blends with the dubious freshness of the Paris air.

  Mancebo finishes counting the money. It hasn’t been a good day. Heat has paralysed the city, but now a storm seems to be brewing. He starts shutting the little green doors on the vegetable stand. Mancebo adjusts the small black cap he wears all year round. He feels naked without it. Just as Adèle does without her headscarf. He remembers the dinner when they discussed the similarities between his cap and Adèle’s headscarf. Both have become a part of them. Fatima thinks neither the cap nor the headscarf serve any purpose. She would never wear a headscarf, it would only get in the w
ay of her chores. Whenever she’s fed up with Adèle for not helping with the housework, she chides that headscarves were invented for people who sit around listening to the radio all day. Adèle claims she can’t do anything more because of her back. Fatima thinks it’s this back problem that has prevented Tariq and Adèle from producing children. Not the condition in itself, but the fact that they might not be able to do it in the ‘baby position’, as Fatima puts it.

  Sometimes Tariq closes only an hour after his pastis, and spends the rest of the afternoon in the office behind the workshop. But he never leaves the shop until it’s time to eat. ‘What would I do up there with the womenfolk?’ he always says. Mancebo doesn’t really know what he does in the office when he shuts up early. Tariq claims he has financial matters to attend to, but Mancebo can see him, reading the paper as he smokes.

  A middle-aged lady comes in, and Mancebo greets her politely. He knows who she is, she often comes in to buy a little something in the evening. She probably does her big shop somewhere else and only comes to him when she’s forgotten something. Today it’s biscuits and a Coca-Cola. She pays, Mancebo wishes her a good evening and accompanies her to the door. She leaves just as Tariq comes in, pats his cousin on the shoulder, opens the door to the stairwell and vanishes upstairs. The scent of food grows stronger now that the lips of the shop have been flung open.

  It’s been a thoroughly ordinary day. A day that started like all others and passed like all others, and Mancebo assumes, understandably enough, that it will also end like all others. But in actual fact, he assumes nothing. It’s only once a day becomes extraordinary that the time leading up to it seems ordinary. Mancebo has nothing but food on his mind right now, food and his daily cigarette. Maybe Fatima is right when she says Mancebo’s reptile brain takes over as the day progresses. The morning demands that he be bright and alert for the drive to Rungis, working out the quantities of everything he needs to buy. But as the day wears on, he becomes more and more passive. The gateway to the slower tempo is his afternoon pastis at Le Soleil.

  ‘Hi there,’ he calls to announce his arrival.

  Fatima vigorously stirs the orange-coloured stew, and Tariq lights his sixteenth cigarette of the day as he grumbles about not having had time to smoke.

  ‘You hear that!’ Fatima cries, ‘Tariq hasn’t even had time for a smoke.’

  She laughs and tastes the stew.

  ‘Hi there, you lazy devil,’ Mancebo calls out to Tariq before he ruffles Amir’s hair and kisses Fatima on the cheek.

  The heat in the room is unbearable. Everything is quickly laid out on the low table and they sit down on the rugs, everyone except Fatima, who is still pottering around them. Tariq gestures with one hand that she should sit down. She does so, immediately, as though she had been waiting for his signal. They start helping themselves to the food. Tariq puts out his cigarette and Adèle removes her veil from her face.

  ‘We’ll all die of passive smoking in here,’ grunts Mancebo, mainly to placate Fatima.

  They sing the praises of Fatima’s cooking. But Adèle is unusually quiet tonight.

  Suddenly, she jumps up, as though something had startled her, and glances around the table.

  ‘Didn’t you hear that?’

  Fatima shakes her head, causing her double chin to tremble, and licks the last of the dressing from the spatula. Amir’s mobile rings and Fatima tells him in extravagant gestures that he needs to leave the table.

  ‘Relax, darling. It was only the mobile,’ Tariq says.

  ‘No, it was before that, there was someone knocking … banging …’

  She hardly gets to the end of her sentence before they all hear it. Yes, there’s definitely someone down there, banging on the bars of the grille. Tariq gets up, takes the chance to light another cigarette and looks out of the window. A light drizzle has started to fall, and the boulevard is empty.

  ‘I can’t see anything, but there could be somebody down there.’

  They hear more banging, and without a word Mancebo puts on his black cap and hurries downstairs. He doesn’t really think about who it could be, doesn’t even try to guess. He’s too tired to think. He’s only going down, really, so he’ll be able to eat in peace afterwards, to have his smoke and then go to bed.

  There’s a woman standing outside the shop, and once Mancebo unlocks the door and pushes up the grille she comes sweeping in. Mancebo thinks that the bread will be gone by the time he gets back up. But at the same time, he knows that his survival depends on good, personal service in the shop, and that includes flexible opening hours. Otherwise his customers may just as well buy their food at Monoprix, or at the Franprix nearby. Many of his lines are available there for half the price. But that doesn’t change the fact it’s highly likely all the bread will be gone. The woman looks around, as though she’s surprised that she has entered a shop. Then she smiles. Mancebo doesn’t return the gesture. The woman smiles again, and this time he smiles back.

  ‘What can I do for you, madame?’

  She looks around the shop, as though she can’t quite believe where she is. As though someone had dragged her in there, blindfolded. She smiles again, but Mancebo pretends not to see. He’s starting to feel weary and wonders if he’ll miss the tea and cakes as well.

  Suddenly, the woman takes an interest in his wares, as though she has finally realised that Mancebo’s patience is running out. The woman sweeps around, there’s no better way to describe her progress through the shop. Mancebo scratches his head beneath his cap and yawns. She stops, but this time she doesn’t smile. Instead, she looks earnestly at Mancebo, grabs one of the jars of olives and heads towards the till. She holds out the jar as though she wants to show him what she has found, as though Mancebo should exclaim, ‘Wherever did you find a thing like that?’ When he doesn’t, she lifts the jar a few centimetres from the counter then heavily sets it back down.

  ‘Anything else?’

  He doesn’t know quite what to make of this woman. She picks up the olive jar for the third time and again puts it down on the counter. It’s as though she’s trying to make Mancebo understand something. She shakes her head conspiratorially, her gaze now directed at the street. She pays, thanks him and walks off carrying the jar as though it were a relay baton. Mancebo locks up and shakes his head.

  ‘I had a real nutcase down there,’ he pants when he reaches the top of the stairs.

  ‘As I always say, if you locked up the population of Paris and only let out the sane ones, we’d be down to less than a million,’ Tariq replies.

  Fatima laughs and shows Mancebo the bread she’s saved for him. It’s her way of showing love. He is just tucking in to the warm pitta when the banging starts up again. They glance at each other. Are they hearing right? Fatima frowns and goes into the kitchen.

  The banging resumes, and this time it’s more desperate. But Mancebo doesn’t budge. When the knocking starts yet again, everyone around the table stares at him. It’s his job to do something about it. Mancebo takes his bread in one hand and trudges back down the stairs he had hoped not to see again that day. Halfway down, he realises he’s forgotten his black cap. It would never have occurred to him to greet a stranger like that, so he walks back into the babble of voices. It seldom stays quiet for long in his family. Adèle casts a quick glance at Mancebo but the others don’t notice his return.

  Back downstairs, Mancebo switches on the light above the till and squints towards the grille. He can’t see anyone and starts to doubt whether someone really was knocking on his door this time. His fingers drum against the door frame, waiting the few seconds he has decided to let elapse. Then he stops drumming and strains to hear anything unusual. He hears nothing, other than the gentle patter of rain.

  Mancebo yawns and switches off the light. The requisite time has passed and he has almost forgotten what he’s doing down in the shop. But the instant he turns his back, there’s more knocking, even harder this time, as though his visitor is banging something hard against the
grille. Bloody hell, what now? He realises that it’s the same woman, the one who bought the olives a few minutes earlier. Her smile suggests that she finds the whole situation embarrassing, but that she has no choice in the matter.

  The rain beats down on Mancebo’s fingers as he opens the door, keeping the grille down just to be on the safe side. He looks at the woman in her long black coat and black shoes. Her hair, which looks black now that it’s wet, contrasts vividly with her pale face. She holds up the jar of olives, as if the mere sight of it will make Mancebo raise the grille. Rain is splashing into the shop now, and all Mancebo wants is for this strange encounter to be over.

  ‘What do you want now, madame? Can I help you with anything?’

  Mancebo is surprised at his own patience. The woman starts nodding hysterically.

  ‘Yes, you can help me, monsieur …’

  She falls silent, as though she wants Mancebo to supply his name. He doesn’t have the slightest urge to do so.

  ‘Yes, you can help me, monsieur, but you’ll have to let me in.’

  ‘The shop is closed, madame. Can’t it wait until tomorrow?’

  The woman shakes her head. ‘No, it can’t wait until tomorrow.’

  She sounds desperate. Mancebo looks to check there’s no one with her, but sees only a couple caught out by the rain, hurrying along the boulevard. The woman is clutching the olives tightly, and it dawns on him that she must have been banging the jar on the door. She looks him straight in the eye.

  ‘I promise not to stay long, monsieur.’

  In the end, Mancebo raises the grille and the woman sweeps in like a wet cat, quick and gracious. She pushes back her hood and shakes her head. And then she smiles, a calm and easy smile, and takes in the shop, as though she has forgotten her urgent business now she’s safely inside.

  Mancebo starts to feel a certain tension in the air. He’s never experienced anything like this before. This scene doesn’t fit in his humdrum life, and perhaps it will give him a story to tell. Usually Tariq is the one making the jokes and telling the stories. He’s read most of them on the Internet, but even so. Mancebo always says that if you run a cobbler’s shop you have time to read any old rubbish, but Mancebo feels his silence acutely.