Out of Sorts Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2014 Aurélie Valognes

  Translation copyright © 2015 Wendeline A. Hardenberg

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Previously published as Mémé dans les orties by the author via the Kindle Direct Publishing Platform in France in 2014. Translated from French by Wendeline A. Hardenberg. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2016.

  Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503950375

  ISBN-10: 1503950379

  Cover design by Kimberly Glyder

  For Laetitia

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  Prologue

  Skipping Town

  December 2012

  Slumped on his suitcase, Ferdinand Brun, age eighty-three, helplessly surveys his apartment, which he is leaving forever. He who hates moving. Who hates communal living. Who hates people. How did it come to this?

  His heart aches.

  He takes a deep breath: the scent of mothballs fills his nostrils. The familiar fragrance soothes him. He’s going to miss that smell, and the brown wallpaper with huge flowers, too, even though he never liked it.

  He’s grown accustomed to all these things—his furniture covered with sheets, his books stowed in plastic bags, sheltered from the dust. From time. From life.

  Ferdinand has lived as a recluse for years—no friends, no family nearby. This is his fault, in a way. Throughout his life, though, he’s made his choices, alone. Rarely the right ones. Always dictated by grudges or impulses. He’s never changed course, nor admitted when he’s wrong. His weaknesses, his mistakes, or just his feelings—he’s always kept them to himself. “A real Aries!” as his grandmother would say.

  So how could he have allowed a stranger to ensnare him and influence his fate? He hates to be told what to do—at his age, no less. And what’s more, he’ll never be able to stand living so far from his home.

  Where he’s going, he knows they’ll try to infantilize him, to change him into Old Pappy Marshmallow. They can’t fool him! And then there will be all those old harpies . . . No. He’s had it with women!

  Dressed warmly, Ferdinand has been waiting for his taxi for more than twenty minutes.

  He searches his memory for the exact moment his fate started to get away from him. It all began right here, three years earlier. Right from the get-go, he and the neighbor ladies didn’t gel. And exactly one year ago, the situation deteriorated, though he doesn’t know why. Ferdinand is in the midst of remembering, when the telephone rings in the apartment. It takes him a moment to realize the ringing is for him. He stands abruptly, staggering, then picks up and hangs up in one sharp movement.

  “It boggles the mind. Heaven forbid you be left in peace in your own home. Always somebody volunteering to be a pain in the ass, and today, no less.” Ferdinand tears the telephone cord out of the wall and returns to his post in the entryway.

  At no point does he think this call could be important. At no point does he consider it could be the taxi driver. At no point is Ferdinand aware that this phone call could have changed his life if he’d only listened to what the person at the other end of the line had to tell him, that it could have kept him from leaving.

  No. Lost in his thoughts, Ferdinand muses that perhaps it isn’t too late to stop everything. Doesn’t one always have a choice? He could escape, lie low: his specialty. And if he doesn’t go, what would happen? He will just be his usual self, predictable in his unpredictability. After all, isn’t he the cantankerous old man who, as recently as last New Year’s, terrorized his neighbors and laid down the law in his apartment complex? Isn’t he still the man with the troubled past? The one everybody runs away from. The one they’ve dubbed the serial killer. There’s bound to be a way out. He just has to find it. And not look back.

  Chapter One

  Turning Ugly

  Eleven Months Earlier: January 2012

  Things started to go wrong for Ferdinand when he moved into the apartment complex, two years earlier. After a divorce that had left him bitter, he’d moved into the left-hand side of the second floor of Building A in the apartment complex situated at Eight Rue Bonaparte. Built in the fifties, the well-maintained complex stood at the end of a street lined with hundred-year-old plane trees, in a tranquil little town. The walls of cut stone, the elegant black iron gate, and the lovely courtyard full of flowers between Buildings A and B always left the old man indifferent. As did the path lined with hollyhocks that wound around the little patio to the vegetable patch and the trash area.

  At Eight Rue Bonaparte, all was quiet. Everyone enjoyed a peaceful existence. The residents were comfortable. It was an apartment complex without drama. The buildings had always housed around ten families; over time, the parents had watched their children leave the nest. Since then, single older ladies remained, in apartments grown too large for them. In the small courtyard, the only sound was the purring of Mrs. Berger’s cat; or the singing of the canaries belonging to the concierge, Mrs. Suarez; or else the noises of her Chihuahua’s greedy chewing as he gulped down his mistress’s biscuits.

  Every day after lunch you could also hear the cackling from a throng of old ladies who sat at tables on the patio, gossiping in the sun, hot beverages cradled in their hands. They spent hours gabbing, swapping the latest stories, solving all the world’s problems—a tradition established decades ago.

  All these people seemed made to live together. Never a voice raised, never a sound louder than the television. It was their heaven on earth.

  But that was before.

  Before the arrival of the disrupter. The antagonizer. A man. Alone. An octogenarian whose mysterious past and bizarre behavior immediately alarmed the residents of Eight Rue Bonaparte.

  In the two years he’d lived on the second floor of Buildi
ng A, across from Mrs. Claudel, Mr. Brun had imposed a reign of terror. The grandmothers tolerated the fellow’s aggression as best they could—his inability to make an effort at community life. Not to mention his dog. A monster—a Great Dane. Together, this man and his dog had disturbed the tranquility of the premises. Their tranquility.

  Everything escalated several months ago, after word spread of the death of Louise, the apartment’s original owner and Ferdinand Brun’s ex-wife. War was declared against the old man. From then on, behind those seemingly peaceful walls, the united residents plotted to rid themselves of their unmanageable neighbor. The cold war was over. The direct confrontation would begin—crueler, but more effective. All orchestrated by Mrs. Suarez, an iron-fisted woman who had been the apartment complex’s concierge for more than thirty years.

  Chapter Two

  Holding a Grudge

  Mrs. Suarez, age fifty-seven, is always elegant. In order to perfect the forced smile she aims at the little people (the mailman, the garbage men, the gardener), Mrs. Suarez maintains impeccable oral hygiene. Three daily cleanings of three minutes each, with an electric toothbrush, harsh mouthwash, resonant gargling, and then finishing off with dental floss. With all that hard work, it’s a shame Mrs. Suarez constantly purses her lips and frowns, as busy as she is keeping an eye out for the smallest misstep by her fellow human beings.

  Some residents have gotten used to her supervision and obey the rules. That’s the case with Mrs. Joly, Mrs. Berger, and Mrs. Jean-Jean, subservient residents faithful to Mrs. Suarez. Mrs. Claudel, a superactive nonagenarian whose good breeding no longer needs to be proved, poses no problem, either. The other residents, however, have been more difficult to train. As soon as someone passes by her special concierge loge holding a trash bag, for instance, Mrs. Suarez follows. At the slightest deviation in sorting—a banana skin in the mixed-waste bin rather than the compost, for example—she picks up the intercom straightaway and rings their bell, or sticks a Post-it note on their door.

  Yes, Mrs. Suarez does a thankless job, with very little recognition, but oh, how useful she is to the community. Without her, the apartment complex would go to wrack and ruin. But do the residents of Eight Rue Bonaparte realize it? Are the neighbor ladies aware of their good fortune in having Mrs. Suarez for a friend? And her husband, that good-for-nothing—shouldn’t he thank her for living in this lovely apartment complex and finally being someone because of her?

  For at Eight Rue Bonaparte, Mrs. Suarez is the mistress of the house, having inherited her position in the loge from her mother. She struts around the courtyard, does inspections, and keeps the various deliverymen and gardeners moving. She loves that things go quickly, that the chores get crossed off her list, so she can return to her post.

  From her loge, Mrs. Suarez monitors the life of every resident. Outings, visits—she knows everything, knows everyone’s habits. It’s even rumored she logs everyone’s quirks in a black notebook. She almost never leaves her post, where, with her sewing machine, she fashions little coats for Rocco, her Chihuahua. It’s with regret that she leaves her loge twice a day to take out the trash and distribute the mail. The longest absence is when she deposits letters on doormats, which takes her exactly fifteen minutes.

  Mrs. Suarez loves punctuality. If the mailman is late, she lets him know it. Even if those fifteen minutes are during off-peak hours—that is, when activity is at its lowest—Mrs. Suarez might still miss an infraction or an interesting movement. And she can’t count on her husband, who refuses to pick up the slack and log those precious minutes, hiding behind his weak excuse that he thought he wasn’t allowed to set foot in his lady’s loge.

  When Mrs. Suarez drops the mail on a doormat, she does so as quickly as possible and rarely accompanies her rounds with a “Hello.” Though she is a gossip, she can’t allow herself to be so all the time, and especially not with everyone.

  And then there’s Mr. Brun.

  Mrs. Suarez hates Mr. Brun. She’s hated him since the minute he and his dog set foot in her apartment complex. What with his not saying “Hello,” cigar smoking in the common areas, never-sorted trash, and vacuum cleaner running during her cigarette break in the courtyard. She’s convinced he performs some sort of mischief during her daily fifteen-minute absence, just to needle her. She’s never been able to catch him in the act, but she’s working on it.

  The hollyhocks are thriving all around the courtyard, except under Mr. Brun’s balcony. She’d bet her fur coat he waters them with weed killer. The lightbulbs in the common areas on the old man’s floor blow out every month. And every time she does her mail rounds, the stairs are wet and slippery. Not to mention the enormous piles of dog waste across from the apartment complex, near the school. She’d bet they’re from his filthy mutt. Though she can’t stand Mr. Brun, she hates his dog even more—a colossus that frightens Mrs. Berger’s cat, her own beloved Chihuahua, and above all, her poor canaries. Last year, six of them died of fear, because of the beast. The veterinarian couldn’t confirm it, but she’s certain of it.

  To avoid being seen as vulgar, Mrs. Suarez accompanies the mail she deposits on the octogenarian’s doormat every day with a “Hello, Mr. Brun.” The barbarian has never answered her! Never, even though he’s on the other side of the door, staring at her through the peephole. But she persists because she’s sure her “Hello” antagonizes him.

  It won’t continue like this, though. Mrs. Suarez vowed as much after the death of her favorite bird. As the head of the apartment complex, she will take appropriate action. So with the help of her acolytes, she has hatched a plan to make Mr. Brun leave. It’s what the ladies discuss every day in the courtyard during their vitamin D and nicotine break, after Mrs. Suarez’s private lunch with the one o’clock news’ handsome anchorman, while the noise of the vacuum cleaner prevents the old man from catching a single word.

  Chapter Three

  Jinxed

  Ferdinand Brun is going deaf. It doesn’t bother him much—he has no one to make conversation with anyway. But since he’s a hypochondriac, he’s already imagining the worst—complete hearing loss, like Mozart. Or was it Beethoven? He can’t quite remember anymore.

  Mr. Brun hasn’t had much luck in life. It started out badly, and it wasn’t really his fault. He was born on Friday the thirteenth. His mother did all she could to keep him in a few more hours, but she was able to ascertain the disappointing masculinity of her unwanted offspring twenty minutes early. The new mother then decided to say the birth had taken place on the fourteenth, as was the custom back then to ward off the evil eye, though Ferdinand eventually learned the truth.

  But the bad luck continued to pursue Ferdinand Brun. His mother died two years later, following the birth of his little sister—herself born dead. Next, his grandmother, who raised him after his mother’s death (he never knew his father), died at the hospital from the flu, though she had come for a broken leg. Finally, his wife, who took advantage of him and his salary for forty years, ran off with the first comer as soon as he retired from the factory.

  Bad luck may not have had everything to do with it, though, as Ferdinand isn’t the easygoing type. He runs on a different voltage, with a logic all his own, leaving him nearly incomprehensible to ordinary people.

  For example, he’s not about to risk losing his parking spot just to go refuel—he’ll carry the empty jerry cans to the pump at the other end of the street and bring them back to his car instead. His furniture is still in its protective covers. And though he has new things neatly arranged in his wardrobe, he continues to wear his too-big trousers with the worn-out seams, his holey underpants, and the perforated wallet that could cause him to lose his credit card, if he’d resign himself to adopting that method of payment. In short, Ferdinand is thrifty—certainly with regard to property, but particularly to feelings. The only one who has ever mattered to him, the only one he loves, the only one who has never abandoned him, is Daisy. His dog. The most loyal. With her, everything is simple. No tricks. No
coercion. No emotional blackmail. No need to furnish kind gestures or sweet nothings. That right there is the problem with everybody, but especially with women.

  What’s worrisome is that Daisy didn’t come home last night. She wasn’t tied to her usual post when he left the bakery, and she didn’t join him for lunch, or for dinner, or to spend the night at his side. It’s the first time this has happened. To disappear like that . . .

  Ferdinand hovers around the telephone. He’s not going to call the police, though. He hates cops. And it’s too soon to be plastering her photo along the street. Ferdinand is worrying himself sick. Daisy is his last reason to live. In any case, at eighty-two years old, he has nothing else to do.

  Chapter Four

  Treated Like a King

  Daisy has not returned. Ferdinand roamed the streets all day and into the night, called her name until his voice grew hoarse, wore his eyes out staring out the window, and couldn’t sleep a wink. With a stool tucked under his rear, he is now riveted to the peephole, witness to the comings and goings of his neighbor across the way—a rickety old bat who puts on bourgeois airs with her Mary Poppins hairdo and whose wooden cane could hide a bit of alcohol, maybe to sip while waiting at the bus stop.

  Like all Saturday mornings, it’s a flurry of activity around Beatrice Claudel’s apartment. She goes in, she goes out, ever more laden with packages, bags, boxes. Like every Saturday, she has one, some, or all of her grandchildren over for lunch. And she insists everything be spic-and-span. The house, the meal, the conversation. At ninety-two years of age, she wants to prove she’s a granny who keeps up with the times—energetic and, above all, in great shape. Which isn’t far from the truth, a few little health glitches aside. Of course, the old lady has a bit of difficulty understanding when everybody talks at once, but she isn’t about to pop off tomorrow. She gladly trades her cane for a motorized cart when she does her shopping, since it happens to be “extremely convenient,” as she says. Her eyes work much better since her cataract operation—the Figaro’s newsprint even changed from yellow to white like magic! In order to read, she still puts on her big round glasses, which she doesn’t lose anymore since her grandkids gave her a very chic lanyard.