Читать книгу The Supreme Orchestra - David Turgeon - Страница 12

Renée came back from the storeroom with a few boxes of glasses. ‘We’ll need more,’ she thought out loud, laying the glasses in a straight row on a long table draped in white, ‘we broke a lot last month, we’re almost out.’

Alban Wouters raised his head. ‘Really? You’re right, the glasses, I’ll go buy some more before the people get here.’

‘You’ll have to hurry,’ Renée said, ‘it’s starting in just over an hour.’

Alban Wouters checked the clock, a circle marked by four black lines that only ever conceded an approximation of the time. ‘Already!’ he remarked, amazed. ‘Well, let me finish my letter and I’ll run out to Moulin Frères.’ Renée set off to the storeroom for wine. ‘Are we okay for wine?’ ‘Okay,’ confirmed Renée, ‘it’s just the glasses.’ The gallery owner wrote down a few words that seemed wholly unequal to the task of transposing with the requisite tact the subtleties of his current thinking. I’ll send the letter tomorrow, he thought, giving up, I’m running out of time. I’m leaving now. ‘You can greet the people, I won’t be long.’ ‘And Bruno?’ asked Renée with concern. ‘When will he be here? I might not be able to handle everyone myself.’ ‘Bruno,’ Alban Wouters conceded, with a gesture conveying his powerlessness on the question of Bruno, ‘you know, Bruno and time.’

As Alban Wouters made his way from the gallery, a tram finally pulled out of the terminus at Porte du Midi.

‘I don’t like being late,’ said Simone, who was one of the passengers.

‘I told you we should have taken a cab,’ said Faya, from the window seat next to her.

‘Spoken like someone who isn’t paying,’ grumbled Simone. Then silence.

They’d been bickering on and off most of the day. Yet the morning had got off to an auspicious start: Faya brought Simone breakfast in bed. ‘Sorry, the toast is a little burned,’ she apologized, placing the tray on the sheet from which Simone’s head and arms poked out. ‘I’ll be back with coffee,’ she said, before clodhopping back down the stairs to the kitchen. Simone rubbed her eyes, then cast her gaze around the room in search of a robe; the one within easiest reach was hanging from the open closet door. Faya was grinding the coffee beans. Simone stepped onto the cold floor, put on the robe, and jumped back into bed as fast as she could, head stuffed under the pillow. She heard the coffee maker whistling for a good minute before Faya, distracted by a magazine or something else perhaps, finally turned off the element, causing the whistling to peter out. Simone heard an ‘Oww!’; Faya was congenitally incapable of handling hot drinks without clumsily scalding a finger.

‘Coffee is served!’ Faya declared as she triumphantly re-entered the bedroom.

‘You forgot the butter,’ Simone observed.

‘The butter!’ Faya yelled, already turning around and heading back down to the kitchen before Simone could say, ‘It’s fine, come here.’

The toast was cold, an observation Simone passed over in silence. Then Faya finally came back with butter and spread it on a slice of toast she bit into with gusto. Crumbs colonized the quilt.

‘Are zhou happy, ah leash?’ asked Faya, mouth full and eyes wide open.

‘Of course!’ Simone said, perceiving her own grudging tone but doing nothing to sweeten it.

‘Maybe zhou wuh radder eat croi-ahnts?’ guessed Faya.

‘Right,’ Simone mocked. ‘Because you would have walked out to the village, in the cold, to get croissants.’

‘You’re harsh,’ said the aggrieved Faya. ‘I bring you toast and coffee, and this is how you thank me?’

‘Fair enough,’ Simone said, ‘but who’ll pick up all the crumbs?’

‘Me, of course,’ Faya protested. ‘What do you think? C’mon, drink your coffee, it’s getting cold.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Simone said at last. ‘I don’t know what’s up with me this morning. The closing at the gallery, maybe. I never feel comfortable at those things. But that’s just how it is. I never know what to say, especially to Alban. He’s doing a good job with my drawings. But you have to understand, it all grates on me.’

‘My drawings!’ mocked Faya. ‘My work! It’s just Simone Simone Simone around here. And no one ever thinks about poor little Faya. She’s forgotten, withering away. Ignored, mocked …’

‘Poor little Faya,’ Simone shot back, ‘spends her days lying around daydreaming, asking for this, demanding that. Poor little Faya only thinks with her – ’

‘You’re mean!’ Faya bridled.

‘I’m just teasing,’ said Simone in self-defence, readying to tuck into another piece of toast.

‘Well, I don’t like your teasing. Your teasing is mean. And I know what you’re all about. Rich family. Born in the right place. Fancy education. You think you can look down on me, just like every bourgeois woman, secure in her privilege. Well, Faya’s watching you too. With her wise eyes. Faya doesn’t miss a thing.’

‘Wise,’ Simone said, with sarcasm that did nothing to lighten the mood.