But not so fast.
Before he ended up on the sofa Adam had been in the dining room converted into a dance floor and bar where the only drink was a highly alcoholic punch. It was his first New Year’s Eve in Paris. Until now he had always gone home for the holidays, returning to his life as woodcutter / cabinetmaker / painter / surfer / marathon runner / only son. Every year he would be amazed by the ease, the pleasure, and the relief with which he reverted to being that Adam, a rugged, energetic young man, who smelled of timber and salt, and was given to deep breathing and outbursts of hearty laughter. He would also have the feeling he still cannot find words to express, a mixture of enthusiasm and relief welling up once the first pine trees have been spotted beside the route nationale, the tops of the trees silhouetted against the dusk sky, the russet color the ferns turn to in winter, the pounding of the waves that he hears before seeing the sea.
Every year, it is true, he was bracing himself to experience the feelings that seemed to be common to all of his new friends, that boredom with home life, that distaste for the provinces, that contempt for the countryside, in short, the dreary prospect of being far away from the city and with their parents. But on the threshold of the wooden house his father had built with his own hands, his whole being would be overcome by a soft, warm sensation, in which he felt happy, at ease, safe. Adam liked being at home, he liked his father’s company, he went running in the forest with his friend Imran, a marathon runner like himself, he swam and surfed, he painted. Adam liked the simplicity of what it was to be a man down there. Sometimes he felt ashamed as well. Was he making the most of his youth? Wasn’t he just a big spoiled child? Shouldn’t he be yearning for something more (travel, action, noise, city lights, passion)?
For this New Year holiday Adam had decided to stay in Paris. It was his fifth and last year at the school of architecture. Here is what he would do: a long stroll through the city, taking in the most brilliantly lit streets, the most imposing bridges, the grandest squares, the most impressive monuments. He would study all the plaques, go into churches, sit on public benches. Then he would walk up the Champs-Élysées and lay a flower on the tomb of the unknown soldier in memory of his great-grandfather, André, who had died at Soissons in 1917. As midnight began to strike somewhere, he would be beneath the Arc de Triomphe and it would be perfect.
But at the last minute Adam had abandoned the whole plan because his friend Paul had laughed and said to him: What? You’re going to lay a flower on the tomb of the unknown soldier on New Year’s Eve? You must be joking!
Behind this Adam had sensed more, things not said out loud but conveyed in a raised eyebrow, an ironic smile: You’re just a peasant, get back to your farm.
In a world in which Adam had had sufficient self-confidence here is what he would have explained:
André, a “poilu,” a French soldier killed in fighting at Soissons in 1917, the father of Maurice, a resistance fighter, killed in a bombing raid in Bordeaux in 1944, the father of André, pine tree tapper and woodcutter, born in 1940 in Hossegor in the Basque country, the father of Adam.
In a world in which Adam did not feel inferior because he is a provincial, here is what he would have described:
Evenings in the wooden house where the talk is of those heroes. André, who died in the mud, and Maurice, killed at Bordeaux on a patch of wasteland. The sticky gray mud, the rats on André’s body, the dark snow falling heavily on that endless night in 1917. Maurice’s blood caught up in the vegetation that morning in ’44, the dandelion clock blown apart by the draft from his body. Adam’s wax crayon drawings of the tufted herons taking flight gently, ever so gently, the wind that morning is just a light breeze.
But Adam had not come out with any of this. He had laughed as well, and agreed to spend the evening in Montreuil. Beneath his heart, he felt a pain like that from the point of a dagger, just like what he used to feel when running a marathon, around the twelfth mile, and what he heard at that moment was: Foreigner! Who had said that? Had this word been lurking among Paul’s splutterings?
At the start of the evening in that house in Montreuil, Adam thinks he’ll get used to it all, of course he will, he’s twenty-four years old, for God’s sake! There is music, pretty girls with glittering makeup, laughter everywhere. But the hours pass and Adam feels he is shrinking, wilting. He stays on his own in a corner, in his bubble, like a foreigner who does not speak the same language as the others, does not understand their rituals, their culture.
Adam thinks about his father back home in their house. Has it snowed in the valley? What are the waves like tonight? He thinks about his surfboard. Oh, the thrill of tucking it under his arm, and running into the water, that unbelievable thrill! He tries to call to mind the smell of the room where he paints, imagines himself settling down on the stool, patient and alert in front of a white canvas. He knows a secret lies hidden there that he has never yet truly grasped.
Now Adam pictures himself floating above all these people about whom he
