Someone Else Read online

  Tonino Benacquista, born in France of Italian immigrants, dropped out of film studies to finance his writing career. After being, in turn, museum night-watchman, train guard on the Paris–Rome line and professional parasite on the Paris cocktail circuit, he is now a highly successful author of novels and film scripts. Bitter Lemon Press introduced him to English-speaking readers with the critically acclaimed Holy Smoke, which won the RTL-Lire literary prize in 2002.

  SOMEONE ELSE

  Tonino Benacquista

  Translated from the French by Adriana Hunter

  BITTER LEMON PRESS

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2005 by Bitter Lemon Press, 37 Arundel Gardens, London W11 2LW

  www.bitterlemonpress.com

  First published in French as Quelqu’un d’autre by Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2002

  This book is supported by the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs, as part of the Burgess programme administered by the Institut Français du Royaume-Uni on behalf of the French Embassy in London and by the French Ministry of Culture (Centre National du Livre); publié avec le concours du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères (Programme Burgess) et du Ministère de La Culture (Centre National du Livre)

  © Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2002 English translation © Adriana Hunter, 2005

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.

  The moral right of Adriana Hunter has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-9085-2413-3

  Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Broad Street, Bungay, Suffolk in Great Britain by Bookmarque Ltd, Croydon, Surrey

  For Alain Raix

  Contents

  Prologue

  Thierry Blin

  Nicolas Gredzinski

  Thierry Blin

  Nicolas Gredzinski

  Thierry Blin

  Nicolas Gredzinski

  Thierry Blin

  Nicolas Gredzinski

  Thierry Blin

  Nicolas Gredzinski

  Paul Vermeiren

  Nicolas Gredzinski

  Paul Vermeiren

  Nicolas Gredzinski

  Paul Vermeiren

  The Other

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  That year, for the first time in ages, Thierry Blin decided to play tennis again, with the sole purpose of confronting the man he had once been: a competent player who, without ever earning a place in any official seeding, had given a few ambitious players a run for their money. Since then the cogs had ground to a halt, his shots had lost their edge, and the simple act of running after a little yellow ball no longer seemed so instinctive. Just to be clear in his own mind, he took out his old medium-headed Snauweart racket, his Stan Smiths and a few other relics, and made his entrance cautiously at Les Feuillants, the club closest to him. Having paid for his membership, he asked an attendant whether he knew of anyone who was looking for an opponent. The attendant pointed to a tall man who was playing alone against a wall, returning the ball with pleasing regularity.

  Nicolas Gredzinski had been a member of the club for two months now, but he still didn’t feel confident enough to challenge a seasoned player, or sufficiently patient to restrain his shots against a beginner. Gredzinski was actually refusing to admit to himself that his perennial fear of confrontation was being demonstrated yet again, in these weekly two-hour tennis sessions; he had a way of seeing hawkish tendencies in the most peaceful situations. The fact that a stranger had come and suggested knocking up for a while, or even playing a set, was his one opportunity to get onto a court for real. To gauge his opponent’s skill, he asked a few questions to which Blin gave only guarded replies, and both men headed for court number 4. From the first few warm-up shots, Blin rediscovered forgotten sensations: the felty smell of new balls, the sprays of rust-coloured grit on his shoes from the clay surface, the creaking sound of the strings as they slackened with the impact of the first returns. It was still too early to talk about the rest: the feel of the ball, the gauging of distances, his position, the suppleness of his leg movements. The priority was to return the ball. To return it, come what may. He had to launch into this dialogue and remember how to use the words, even if his first sentences were not those of a great speaker, let alone epigrammatic.

  Gredzinski was reassured by the eloquence of his forehand, but felt that his backhand was talking gibberish. There had always been something forced about it; he avoided using it as an attacking shot and preferred taking his chances and lunging – at his own risk – in order to end up playing a forehand. He had actually succeeded in integrating this weakness into his game, paradoxically creating a style. It only took a few balls for him to make up for that slight delay in the attack, and his backhand rediscovered that little flick of the wrist which was far from a copybook move but which usually proved to be successful. He surprised himself by suggesting a match; however wary he was of competition, he could already see himself emerging from the trenches as a hero and striding towards the enemy lines. “It was bound to come to this,” they both thought, and it was actually the only way that Blin could be absolutely sure, and that Gredzinski could break free of his fatalism, which meant he didn’t see tennis for what it really was: a game.

  The first exchanges were courteous but unremarkable, each of them wanting to review his argument before the great debate. With his long straight shots which kept Blin behind the baseline, Gredzinski was trying to say something like: I could go on chatting like this for hours. To which Blin replied with a succession of precise, patient as you please s, alternating forehands and backhands. When he lost his service, which put him 4–2 down in the first set, he decided to get to the point by coming in unexpectedly for a volley, which clearly meant: How about stopping this chitchat? Gredzinski was forced to answer yes by serving an ace, taking him to 15–love. And the conversation became increasingly heated. By systematically coming straight up to the net after the return of serve, Blin threw all of his opponent’s suggestions back in his face, flinging down a Not a chance! or an Onto the next! or even a Hopeless! or a Pathetic! with each definitive volley. It was a good tactic and it saw him win the first set 6–3. Gredzinski never seemed to think of things until it was too late; it was while he was mopping his forehead as they changed ends that he realized how he should have replied to such peremptory attacks. He thought he might demonstrate for the two or three onlookers who had come to hang on to the wire mesh round the court. He now started serving into the middle of the service box to give his opponent as little angle as possible, then he had fun sending his drives one way then the other, playing Blin back and forth to the point of exhaustion as if to say: You see . . . I too can . . . pick up the pace . . . you madman . . . or you poor ignoramus . . . who wanted . . . to make me look . . . like an idiot. The madman in question fell into the trap and missed a fair few opportunities as he ran out of breath and failed to follow his shots through properly. Some of his net-skimming volleys warranted a bit of attention and issued a strange request, a sort of Let me get one in, at least. The second set was beginning to look like a summary execution, and the members of the Feuillants club, whether they were players themselves or just there to watch, were pretty sure which way it would go. There were now almost a dozen spectators to applaud the risks Gredzinski was taking and the rare replies from Blin, who lost the set. Even so, Blin had a psychological advantage that Gredzinski had always lacked, a profound conviction of his own rights, a belief in his own reasoning which forced him to play within the lines, as if the principle was self-evident. Gredzinski couldn’t help but be affected by t
his and it wasn’t long before Blin was giving the questions and the answers, taking the lead 5–2 in the third with victory in his sights. One of the elementary laws of debating then came to poor Gredzinski’s aid: a debater of limited skill can’t bear having his own arguments thrown back in his face. Accordingly he started using long shots with maximum spin as if deciding to resume control of a conversation with an inveterate talker. Strange though it may seem, Blin lost a game at 5–3 and was quickly overwhelmed, eventually letting Gredzinski re-enter the set at 5–5 with his service still to come. But Blin still had a few lines of argument in his racket; he had a perverse way about him, he was the sort who would never lie but just wouldn’t tell the whole truth. Now for the first time he played several magnificent backhands straight down the line, and this saw him break the service of Gredzinski, who turned to stone between the tramlines. The latter had been prepared for anything except for this show of bad faith from an opponent who, from the very beginning of the match, had had the good grace to proceed quite openly. Where had these backhands straight down the line come from? It was dishonest! He should have declared them at the outset, just as you pronounce some profound truth to show exactly what sort of man you are. The third set ended in a painful tie-break which brought both men right back into the match, and proved what each of them was capable of when he felt threatened. Blin came up to the net to volley three times in succession, and the last of these was too much. Gredzinski replied with such a high lob that you could clearly read the message in its parabola: This sort of reasoning will always be way over your head. That showed he had misjudged the other man, who wasn’t afraid of sending drop shots from the baseline just to see his opponent run: You have no idea how far you are from the truth. Gredzinski ran as fast as he could, sent the ball back onto the court and planted himself in front of the net: I’m here and I’m staying! And he stayed, towering, waiting for a reaction from the man who’d just made him run flat out, the man who hated using lobs, even in the direst straits – to him they were a cheap trick, cowardly shots. He delved to the depths of his racket to come up with a superb passing shot which meant: I’m cutting you off at the knees. The beginnings of a tear fogged over Gredzinski’s eye; not only had he run several miles to get the drop shot in extremis, but now he was floored by the most humiliating rejoinder known to this demonic sport: the passing shot down the line. The coup de grâce was dealt by a handful of spectators who had become fascinated by the quality of their game: they started clapping. One of the longest standing members of Les Feuillants climbed up onto the umpire’s chair to pronounce coolly: “3–0, change ends.”

  Gredzinski could see himself cracking his Dunlop over the poor devil’s head; but all he did was change ends, as he had just been reminded to do. Like any other shy person who feels humiliated, he trawled through his darkest feelings for some residual energy. Blin, on the other hand, was celebrating the fact that he had found himself again, the man he had been, the man he might be again for some time, always agile, mischievous and sure of himself when it really mattered. He just managed to win the fourth point and then lost the next with just as much effort. When one of them said: I’ll be here to the end, the other would reply: And I’ll be right there beside you, but neither of them had managed to edge ahead. At five all, the two players exchanged a last look before the final showdown. A look which said the same thing, a feeling almost of regret that they couldn’t find a gentleman’s agreement or some way of pulling out, each with his honour intact. The moment of truth had come, they were going to have to go through with it. Gredzinski eased the pressure and lost the next point, then the match, delivering tired shots devoid of malice. As if to tell Blin that victory comes to whoever hungers for it the most.

  *

  When they came out of the changing rooms they bypassed the sodas and the club’s garden chairs to take refuge in a bar near the Porte Brancion. They needed somewhere worthy of their match, a reward for so much effort.

  “Thierry Blin.”

  “Nicolas Gredzinski, pleased to meet you.”

  They shook hands a second time, sitting on two tall stools, facing hundreds of bottles of spirits lined up in three rows. A barman asked what they would like to drink.

  “Vodka, ice cold,” Blin said without thinking.

  “And for you, sir?”

  The fact was that Gredzinski never knew what to have in cafés, let alone in bars, where he hardly ever set foot. Fuelled by a sort of complicity engendered by the match, he looked at the barman with obvious delight and said: “The same!”

  Now that “the same” needs some consideration because Gredzinski, despite distant Polish origins, had never drunk vodka. He sometimes sipped at a glass of wine with a meal, or a beer to freshen up when he left work, but you could say he didn’t have a personal relationship with alcohol. Only the enthusiasm and the euphoria of the match could explain that “the same” with which he surprised even himself.

  Tennis was not truly a passion for either of them, but no other sport had given them so much pleasure. Leaning on the long wooden counter, they ran through all the players who had made them dream. They very quickly agreed: whether or not you were susceptible to his game, Björn Borg had been the greatest ever.

  “And his extraordinary list of wins is only the tip of the iceberg,” said Blin. “You just had to watch him play.”

  “That silence the minute he walked on the court, do you remember? It hovered in the air, it didn’t leave room for any doubt about the outcome of the match. He knew it, you could see it in his face; but his opponent would still try his luck.”

  “Not one spectator ever asked themselves if he was having a good day, if he’d recovered from the previous match, if his shoulder was hurting or his knee. Borg was just there, harbouring his secret, which – like any real secret – shuts everyone else out.”

  “Borg didn’t need luck. He even denied the whole idea of chance.”

  “The one unexplained mystery is his gloominess, that little something in his features which was so obviously sad.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say there was sadness but, quite the contrary, serenity,” said Gredzinski. “Perfection can only ever be serene. It shuts out emotion, drama and, of course, humour. Or perhaps he had a sort of humour, which involved robbing his opponents of the last weapons they had left to defend themselves with. When people tried to dismiss him as a machine returning balls from the baseline, he’d retaliate by playing extraordinarily cruel volleys.”

  “Put Borg up against the biggest server in the world? He’d start by inflicting a love game on him, all in aces!”

  “Did Borg sniff out their weaknesses? Did he wear them down? If he wanted to, he could step on the accelerator and save more than an hour for an audience keen to go and watch a less monotonous match.”

  “As soon as he lost just one game, the journalists started saying he was on the way down!”

  “Whoever the other finalist confronting Borg was, he could be a hell of a tournament winner. Being number two to Borg meant being the best in the eyes of the world.”

  They stopped talking for a moment to bring the small chilled glasses to their lips. Blin automatically took a good swig of vodka.

  Gredzinski, who was not prepared for it and had no experience of the stuff, kept the drink in his mouth for a long while to let it express itself completely, swirling it round so as not to miss out a single taste bud, creating a cataclysmic response all the way down his throat, and closing his eyes until the burning passed.

  “There’s only one shadow on the picture of Borg’s career,” said Blin.

  Gredzinski felt ready to take up a new challenge. “Jimmy Connors?”

  Blin was amazed. Gredzinski had responded with all the confidence of someone who knows the answer. And it wasn’t the answer but his answer, just his opinion, a quirky idea intended simply to rock the so-called specialists.

  “How did you guess? He’s exactly who I was thinking of!”

  And, as if it were st
ill possible, the very mention of Jimmy Connors inflamed them almost as much as the vodka.

  “Are we allowed to love something and its exact opposite?”

  “Absolutely,” replied Gredzinski.

  “Then you could say that Jimmy Connors was the opposite of Björn Borg, don’t you think?”

  “Connors was a destabilizing force, the energy of chaos.”

  “Borg was perfection, Connors was grace.”

  “And perfection is often lacking in grace.”

  “His constant willingness to pin everything on every shot! His exuberance when he won and his eloquence in defeat.”

  “The sheer audacity of his despair, his elegance in the face of failure!”

  “How can you explain that he had every audience in the world on his side? He was adored at Wimbledon, adored at Roland-Garros, adored at Flushing Meadow, adored everywhere. People didn’t like Borg when he won, they liked Connors when he lost.”

  “Do you remember the way he used to launch himself into the air to strike a ball before it had even had time to get there?”

  “He made his return of service into a more deadly weapon than the serve itself.”

  “His game was counter-intuitive, it was even counter to the rules of tennis. As if, ever since he was little, he’d made a conscious effort to contradict his teachers in every lesson.”

  “We love you, Jimbo!”

  They drank to Connors, and then drank again, this time for Borg. Then they fell silent for a moment, each lost in his own memories.

  “We’re not champions, Thierry, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t got a bit of style.”

  “Sometimes even a bit of panache.”

  “That backhand down the line, have you always been able to do that?” Gredzinski asked.

  “It’s not what it used to be.”

  “I’d really like to have had a shot like that in me.”