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WHEN JACQUES RANG, Kathy was watching a video copy
of Godard’s Nouvelle vague. Béatrice Dumont, the
young Swiss tutor from Geneva had lent it to her, but
the colour system on her VCR was not right for French films. Seeing
such a film in black and white was as inappropriate as a colorized version
of Casablanca. The film was so oppressive in itself that, added to the
typical Sunday afternoon blues, it did little to help her overcome the
vague sadness that had followed her initial resentment toward Jacques.
Nobody at home, no desire to “communicate” with the family, for that
matter. She was not in the mood for socializing. She could have mown
the small patch of lawn in the backyard if it had not been done by that
unemployed engineer who did all the handiwork he could find in order
not to forfeit his mortgage.
Now, it was all different. She felt angrier at Jacques and at
herself. But relieved. The light was softer between the branches of the
two big eucalypts that the neighbour, Mr Kovakcs, wanted cut for fear
they would break his roof if there was a cyclone. Who had ever seen a
cyclone in Ashfield? The truth was he had a smaller block than Kathy’s
parents and could not grow trees on it. But the temperature was just
right for October, the Southern hemisphere equivalent of May in France,
she thought. Now she would not have to wait until next week to make
a decision about her research topic.
They didn’t have to choose it until enrolment time, next February,
but the sooner the better. She was a brilliant student, she had no
intention of working under the supervision of Dr Klapman or any of the
leftovers of the 60’s. She wanted to go on to a Ph.D. But, after the beating
she had received on Friday, she had realized that her project of writing
on Navigations du soir et autres poèmes was not as straightforward as it
seemed at first sight, in spite of her desire to do something completely
original and the good background she had in contemporary French
poetry, her favourite topic. Jacques Voisin was definitely a strange man.
Not in the way other Frenchmen were strange. His was rather a one-ofa-kind
strangeness, a mixture of authority and inner weakness, a blend
of passion and resignation. Ambiguous feelings, a taste for paradox. Not
that you never knew when he was ironical or direct, but you never knew
when he was going to be one or the other. She was aware he liked her
physically, this he couldn’t hide or did not care to, some of her friends
had noticed it too and cracked jokes about it. Did she fancy him? He
could be her father. Actually he was only a couple of years younger
than Dad and looked his age. But she could listen to him for hours, she
could have talked to him for hours, given the opportunity, and she felt
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