Hunting and Gathering Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  PART TWO

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  PART THREE

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  PART FOUR

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  PART FIVE

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  EPILOGUE

  Also by Anna Gavalda

  I WISH SOMEONE WERE WAITING FOR ME SOMEWHERE

  SOMEONE I LOVED

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  First published in France by Le Dilettante as Ensemble, C’est Tout, 2004

  Copyright © Le Dilettante, 2004

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  RIVERHEAD is a registered trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The RIVERHEAD logo is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Riverhead trade paperback edition: April 2007

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gavalda, Anna, 1970-

  [Ensemble, c’est tout. English]

  Hunting and gathering / Anna Gavalda ; translated by Alison Anderson.—1st Riverhead trade

  paperback ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-594-48144-4

  1. Marginality, Social—France—Paris—Fiction. 2. Paris (France)—Social life and customs—Fiction.

  I. Anderson, Alison. II. Title.

  PQ2667.A97472E5713 2007

  843’.914—dc22

  2006034334

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Muguette

  (1919-2003)

  Body unclaimed.

  PART ONE

  1

  PAULETTE Lestafier wasn’t as crazy as they said. Sure, she knew what day it was, since that was all she had left to do now. Count the days, wait for them, and forget. She knew for certain that today was Wednesday. And what’s more, she was ready. She had put her coat on, found her basket, and gathered all of her discount coupons together. She could even hear Yvonne’s car in the distance . . . But what can you do? The cat had been outside the door, hungry, and it was while she was leaning over to put his bowl back on the floor that she fell and banged her head against the bottom step.

  Paulette Lestafier often fell, but that was her own secret. Didn’t tell anyone, ever.

  “Not anyone, you hear?” she’d threaten, silently. “Not even Yvonne, or the doctor, not to mention the boy . . .”

  She would get up again slowly, wait for things to go back to normal, rub herself with some Synthol and hide those damn bruises.

  Paulette’s bruises never turned blue. They were yellow, green or violet, and they stayed on her body for a long time. Far too long. For several months, sometimes. It was hard to hide them. People asked her why she always dressed as if it were the middle of winter, why she always wore stockings and never took off her cardigan.

  The boy was the one who pestered her most: “Hey, Grandma? What’s going on? Take off all that stuff, in this weather, do you want to die of heat?”

  No, Paulette Lestafier wasn’t crazy at all. She knew those huge bruises that never went away would get her in trouble someday. She knew how useless old women like her ended up. Old women who let weeds take root in their vegeta
ble gardens and who held on to furniture to keep from falling. Old women who couldn’t thread needles or remember how to turn the volume up on the TV. And who would try every single button on the remote and finally just unplug the thing while they cried tears of rage. Tiny, bitter tears, head in hand, in front of a defunct television.

  So? Is that it? No more sound in this house? No more voices, ever? Simply because you can’t remember the color of the button? Even though he’d put colored stickers on there, your grandson, stuck them on, just for you! One for the channels, one for the sound and one for the power button. Come on, Paulette, just stop your crying and look at those stickers!

  Stop shouting at me like that, all of you . . . They’ve been gone for ages, those stickers, they came unstuck almost right away. I’ve been looking for that button for months and I can’t hear a thing, all I have is the picture, with a tiny whisper of sound.

  So stop your shouting, or you’ll make me deaf on top of it.

  2

  “PAULETTE, Paulette, are you there?”

  Yvonne muttered crossly. She was cold and pulled her shawl tighter across her chest, then muttered some more. She didn’t like the idea of being late for their weekly appointment at the supermarket. That was one thing she couldn’t stand. She went back to her car with a sigh, switched off the ignition and picked up her hat.

  Paulette must be out back in the garden. She was always out back in the garden, sitting on a bench next to the empty rabbit hutches. She’d sit there for hours, from morning to night—upright, motionless, patient, her hands on her lap and her eyes vacant.

  Paulette would talk to herself, calling to the dead, praying to the living.

  She talked to the flowers, to her heads of lettuce, to the birds and to her own shadow. Paulette was losing her mind and she no longer knew which day was which. Today was Wednesday, and Wednesday was shopping day. Yvonne had been coming to get her every week for over ten years; now she raised the latch on the gate and groaned, “Isn’t it a crying shame . . .”

  A shame to be getting so old and alone, and they’d be late at Intermarket, and now there wouldn’t be any shopping carts left near the checkout.

  Wait a minute. The garden was empty.

  Even crotchety Yvonne was beginning to worry. She went to the back of the house and put her hands on either side of her eyes to peer through the windowpane, trying to get to the bottom of this silence.

  “Sweet Jesus!” she exclaimed when she saw her friend’s body sprawled on the kitchen tiles.

  Yvonne was so overwhelmed that she made the sign of the cross any which way, mixing up the Son with the Holy Ghost. She let a few small curses fly too, and then she went to get a tool out of the shed. She broke the window with a hoe and with colossal effort managed to drag herself up onto the windowsill.

  It wasn’t easy for her to cross the room, kneel down, then lift her friend’s head from the pink puddle where it lay bathed in a mixture of blood and milk.

  “Hey! Paulette! You’re not dead, are you?”

  The cat was licking the floor, purring, supremely indifferent to the unfolding drama, or to what was appropriate, or to the fact that there was broken glass everywhere.

  3

  YVONNE didn’t really like the idea, but the paramedics had asked her to go along in the ambulance in order to deal with administrative issues and formalities of admission to the emergency room.

  “You know this lady?”

  She was offended: “I most certainly do! We were in grade school together!”

  “Get in, then.”

  “What about my car?”

  “Your car won’t run away. We’ll bring you back later.”

  “All right,” she sighed, resigned. “I’ll get my shopping done later.”

  It was so uncomfortable in there. They’d pointed to a tiny stool next to the stretcher and she wedged herself in there the best she could. She clung to her handbag and nearly fell off the stool every time they went round a curve.

  There was a young man in there with them. He was complaining because he couldn’t find a vein in the patient’s arm, and Yvonne didn’t like the sound of it: “Stop your yelling,” she muttered. “Stop it . . . What are you trying to do, anyway?”

  “Put her on a drip.”

  “A what?”

  The way the young man looked at her, she understood she’d better just be quiet and keep her little monologue to herself: “Just look at that, just look at the way he’s twisting her arm, would you just look at that . . . It’s awful. Better not look. Blessed Virgin, pray for . . . Hey! You’re hurting her!”

  The paramedic was on his feet, adjusting a little screw on the tube. Yvonne counted the bubbles and went on praying as best she could. It was hard to concentrate, what with the siren and all.

  She held her friend’s hand in her lap, smoothing it as if it were the hem of a skirt, mechanically. She was too sad and frightened to show any more tenderness than that . . .

  Yvonne Carminot sighed, examining the wrinkles, the calluses, the dark spots here and there; her friend’s nails were still in fairly good shape, but hard, dirty and split. She held her own hand next to Paulette’s and compared them. Of course she was younger, and a little bit plumper, but above all she hadn’t suffered as much as Paulette had in her time on earth. She hadn’t worked as hard, she’d had a greater share of caresses. And when was the last time she’d had to toil in the garden? Her husband still grew their potatoes, but for everything else it was better to shop at Intermarket. The vegetables were already clean, and you didn’t have to pull the lettuce apart to look for slugs. And then she had so many people close to her: there was dear Gilbert and Nathalie and the little ones to fuss over. Whereas Paulette—what did she have left in life? Nothing. Not a single good thing. Her husband was dead, her daughter was a slut, and her grandson never came to see her. Nothing but worries, nothing but memories, a rosary of little sorrows . . .

  Yvonne grew thoughtful: so was that it, was that all there was to life? Such a weightless, unrewarding thing? And yet Paulette had been a beautiful woman, and a kind one, too. She used to be so radiant. But now? Where had it all gone?

  Just then the old woman’s lips began to move. Yvonne instantly abandoned her pointless philosophizing: “Paulette, it’s Yvonne. Everything’s fine, Paulette. I came to take you shopping and—”

  “Am I dead? Is that it, am I dead?” she muttered.

  “Of course not, Paulette! Of course not. The idea! You’re not dead!”

  “Oh,” she replied, closing her eyes. “Oh—”

  There was something terrible about that “oh.” A disappointed little syllable, disheartened, so full of resignation.

  Oh, so I’m not dead. I see. Too bad. Oh, forgive me.

  Yvonne wasn’t about to go along with that.

  “Come on, my dear Paulette, you’ve got to live! You’ve got to live, for goodness’ sake!”

  The old woman shook her head. Almost imperceptibly, very gently. A tiny, stubborn, sad regret. A tiny revolt.

  Perhaps the first.

  Then silence. Yvonne didn’t know what to say. She blew her nose, then took her friend’s hand again, more delicately.

  “They’re going to put me in a home, aren’t they?”

  Yvonne started: “Of course they’re not going to put you in a home! Not at all! Why would you say that? They’re going to take care of you and that’s all. In a few days you’ll be back home again.”

  “No. I know perfectly well I won’t.”

  “Well, I never! That’s a switch! And why should I, young man?”

  The paramedic was gesturing to Yvonne to speak more quietly.

  “And my cat?”

  “I’ll look after your cat. Don’t worry.”

  “And what about Franck?”

  “We’ll call Franck, we’ll call him right away. I’ll take care of it.”

  “I can’t find his number. I’ve lost it.”

  “I’ll find it.”

  “But y
ou won’t disturb him, will you? He works hard, you know.”

  “Yes, Paulette, I know. I’ll leave him a message. You know what it’s like nowadays. Kids all have cell phones. You can’t disturb them anymore.”

  “You tell him that I, that I—”

  Paulette began to sob.

  The vehicle started up the drive to the hospital, and Paulette Lestafier murmured through her tears: “My garden. My house. Take me back to my house, please.”

  Yvonne and the young stretcher-bearer were already on their feet.

  4

  “DATE of your last period?”

  She was already behind the screen, struggling into her jeans. She sighed. She knew he would ask her that question, she just knew it. And yet she’d had her strategy all planned; she’d pulled her hair back in a really heavy silver barrette and stood on the fucking scale, clenching her fists to try to weigh herself down as much as possible. She’d even wiggled a bit to try to move the needle. But it hadn’t worked, of course, and now she’d have to listen to a little sermon.

  She knew it from the way he’d frowned a few minutes earlier when he pressed on her abdomen. Her ribs and hip bones were too prominent, her breasts were downright ridiculous and her thighs were hollowed out, and that was the last thing he wanted to see.

  She fastened her belt buckle slowly. She had nothing to fear this time. This was a medical visit for work, not school. He’d give her some sweet talk for form’s sake and then she’d be out of there.

  “Well?”

  She was sitting across from him, and she smiled.

  That was her deadly weapon, the secret rabbit she could pull out of the hat. Smile at people when they’re trying to put you on the spot: no one’s ever found a better way to change the subject. Unfortunately, the jerk was familiar with the trick. He put his elbows on the desk, folded his hands, and then delivered his own disarming smile. She had no alternative but to respond. She might have expected as much: he was cute, and she couldn’t help closing her eyes when he placed his hands on her stomach.