Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi

they aren’t at the funfair? Maybe the girls sold shoes and the men were mechanics or delivered pizzas? Maybe they only laughed at the fair and the rest of the time they were just getting ready for it? Getting ready for that, I mean, for the fair. So their men didn’t mind draining fuel from old cars, they knew that at the funfair they’d be the strongest, the proudest, ready to fight if they had to. Soon they’d be telling everyone about it, talking about it in cafés, hitching up their balls in their trousers, it’s called memories. Me, I haven’t got any. Everything that’s happened is lost.
    Kevin was lagging, pulling at my shoulder and snivelling, he didn’t have any memories either, the fair was already forgotten, Did you like the dodgems? I asked him. What? he said in his sulky little voice. We went in the red one three times, said Stan, did you see us? There was too much hope in Stan’s voice, I preferred not to answer.
    We reached the hotel. I was frightened. We went into that place like going into a church. I often go into churches, when they’re empty of course. There’s a smell which makes you think about time passing, there are candles, there’s silence, it always has an effect on me, a hollow feeling inside. Churches are very old but they are still standing. They are old but they never die. An empty church is something you can’t explain, I like it. The hotel was the same. Something had to happen there. We went in with our rain and our mud, all that stuff we lugged with us, everything we’d picked up outside, we left traces of it all over the place again, the nightwatchman still didn’t give a damn, there was another match on the tiny black-and-white TV, and what if it was always the same one? Always the same match on the same TV and us coming in every evening from that filthy weather and never hearing the nightwatchman say Good evening, how are you? Good night, madam, and what are the names of these two fine lads? He gave us the key, recognizing us without looking up, he knewhis job by heart. I would have liked to ask him what time it was, what day it was, to have something clarified, the beginnings of an explanation about what was happening. He wouldn’t have heard me. It wasn’t worth it.
    We climbed the six floors without holding hands, without talking, without complaining, Kevin wasn’t even crying any more, he looked dazed, walking with great wide eyes, a sleepwalker. Those six floors were a punishment, it had to be done, all three of us had got the message there. I looked at my boys, sad, tired and struggling, it was the law, that’s what I thought, These stairs are the law. Fuck this life where stairs are the law.
    We didn’t make a sound. We walked like old men, the ones who don’t talk any more because they’ve got the message, so they just keep their heads down. Yes, we’d grown old. Let’s hope it’s not too late, I thought.
    On and on we climbed, our place was up at the top, above the others, they were all asleep beneath our footsteps, and we climbed on. The nightwatchman’s TV was just a tiny crackling sound now, the keys behind him hung there like bats and he didn’t even feel the threat. We were breaking away from the earth, leaving a little bit of it on each stair, that was the mark left by my children, patches of dirt on brown lino. Their shoes had had it. Eaten away by the sea, ruined bythe rain, my boys were walking in exhausted old shoes, why should they carry on if even their shoes couldn’t follow?
    We didn’t talk but we could hear each other. We could hear our breathing, getting louder and louder, were there people behind those doors to hear my kids suffering? Was their breathing getting inside their dreams, and blowing on them, snuffing them out? My God, I would have liked that so much, for my kids’ breathing to have snuffed out all the dreams of people I don’t know, and for there to be nothingness instead, a bit of room for nothing, behind every