Consolation Read Online Free PDF Page A

looking for the wastebin that isn’t a wastebin, or so my mother will inform me with a frown a few minutes from now, since it is an umbrella stand, might I remind you. A well-worn script, how long have I been telling you this?
    Yes, and that’s my mother you can see there from behind, at the end of the corridor, in her kitchen, tied up in her apron while she bastes the roast.
    Now she’s turning around and kissing Mathilde and saying, my how you’ve grown, you’re a real young lady now! I wait until it’s my turn and I greet my other sister, not the wife of Jolyon Wagg but of the tall skinny guy sitting over there. He’s not at all the same type. He’s manager of a Champion supermarket out in the country but he has a perfect understanding of the concerns and economic policies of Bernard Arnault. Yes, that Bernard Arnault, the tycoon of the LVMH group. He’s sort of a . . . colleague, you might say. Because they’re in the same profession, you see, and . . . well, I’ll stop there. We’ll enjoy ourselves all the more later on.
    That woman there is Edith, and we’ll be hearing from her as well. She’ll talk about how much the children’s schoolbags weigh, and about the PTA meetings, no really, she’ll add – as she refuses a second helping of cake – it is unbelievable how little people contribute these days. The end-of-year fête, for example, who do you think came to fill in for me at the fishing booth,
who?
No one! So if the parents are dropping out, what on earth can you expect from the children, I ask you? Well, we shouldn’t hold it against her, her husband is a Champion manager when really he was cut out to be a superstore manager, he’s proven as much, and the puddle of sawdust in the fishing booth at the Saint-Joseph primary school fête is her little corner of paradise, so no, we shouldn’t hold it against her. It’s just that she gets very tiresome and she ought to change the record from time to time. And hairstyle too, while she’s at it. Let’s follow her into the living room where the other side is waiting for us: my sister Françoise. Number One. Madame Kazatchok for those who haven’t been following or who stayed behind dawdling in the kitchen. Now she does change her hairstyle quite frequently, but she’s even more predictable than her younger sister. And anyway, there’s no need to prove it, all you have to do is cut and paste the very first thing she says: ‘Oh, Charles, you look frightful . . . And you’ve put on weight, haven’t you?’ Well, may as well include the second thing she says, too, otherwise I’ll be accused of being biased: ‘You have! You’ve filled out since the last time, I assure you. Not to mention the fact that you’re as badly dressed as ever.’
    No, don’t feel sorry for me, in a few hours they’ll have vanished from my life. At least until next Christmas, with a bit of luck. They can’t come into my room any more without knocking, and by the time they snitch on me I’m already long gone.
    I’ve saved the best for last. The one you don’t see, but you can hear her laughing up on the first floor with all the teenagers in the house . Let’s go and track down that lovely laugh, too bad about the cashew nuts.
    *
    ‘Noo! I can’t believe it!’ she cries, rubbing the scalp of one of my nephews, ‘do you know what these cretins are talking about?’
    Kisses along the way.
    ‘Look at them, Charles. Look how young and handsome they all are. Look at their gorgeous teeth! (lifting up poor Hugo’s upper lip), just check it out, they’re the flower of youth! All these thousands of kilos of hormones overflowing all over the place! And do you know what they’re talking about?’
    ‘No,’ I go, relaxing at last.
    ‘About their gigabytes, for Christ’s sake . . . They all sit there wanking about with their MP3 players, comparing gigabytes . . . Disturbing, don’t you think? When you realize that this is what is going to be paying for our retirement .