Consolation by Anna Gavalda Read Free Book Online

late,’ to whoever will listen, and screw up with the drawings when presenting the umpteenth project to the umpteenth jury, and the only difference now is that the old sword of Damocles has lost none of its trenchancy over the years – it just cuts differently.
    Yes, that’s how things stand . . . Nothing to do with getting good marks and moving on to the next year, it’s all about money. Lots and lots of money. Money, power, and megalomania too.
    Not to mention politics, of course. No, let’s not go there.
    Or perhaps love is to blame? The way it . . .
    ‘And you, Charles? What do you think?’
    ‘Sorry, what?’
    ‘About the Museum of Primitive Mankind at the Quai Branly?’
    ‘Oh! I haven’t been there in a while . . . I went to the site a few times, but . . .’
    ‘At any rate,’ says my sister Françoise, ‘it’s the worst place to try to have a pee . . . I don’t know how much that thing cost but they definitely saved on the partition walls in the lavatory, that much I do know.’
    I can’t help but try and imagine the expression on the faces of Nouvel and his crew if they were here tonight . . .
    ‘Yeah . . . they did it on purpose,’ says her oaf of a husband, ‘you think primitive mankind had a problem with toilet partitions? They just jumped behind a bush and bingo!’
    Uh, no. Just as well they aren’t here.
    ‘Two hundred and thirty-five million,’ says my other, unfunny brother-in-law, clutching his napkin.
    And as no one at the table has reacted, he continues, ‘Euros, of course. That thing, as you so kindly describe it, my dear Françoise, will have cost the French taxpayer the trifling sum of . . . (he pulls out his glasses and his mobile, fiddles with it and closes his eyes) . . . one billion, five hundred and forty million francs.’
    ‘Old francs?’ chokes my mother.
    ‘Of course not,’ he retorts, leaning back comfortably, ‘new ones!’
    He is exultant. This time he’s got them. They’re hooked. The assembly is in an uproar.
    I try to catch Laurence’s gaze; she returns a commiserating little smile. There are some things in my life, like this, that she still respects. I go back to my dinner.
    The conversation is moving again, rumbling along in a mix of common sense and common stupidity. A few years ago they bleated on about the Opéra Bastille or the Bibliothèque Nationale, so this was just rehashing the same old stuff.
    Claire, sitting next to me, leans over. ‘How’s Russia going?’
    ‘It’s 1812 and the Berezina all over again,’ I confess, with a smile.
    ‘No way.’
    ‘Yes, I assure you. I’m waiting for the thaw to count my dead . . .’
    ‘Shit.’
    ‘Yup. Or
chort
, as they say.’
    ‘Is it a problem?’
    ‘Pff . . . not for the agency, no, but for me . . .’
    ‘For you?’
    ‘I don’t know . . . I don’t function well as Napoleon . . . I am missing his
vision
, I suppose . . .’
    ‘Or his madness.’
    ‘Oh, that will come!’
    ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ she adds, worried.
    ‘
Da
!’ I reassure her, sliding my hand between two shirt buttons, ‘from the top of this disaster, forty centuries of architecture have not sufficed to look down on me!’
    ‘When do you have to go back?’
    ‘Monday.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Yup.’
    ‘Why so soon?’
    ‘Well, the latest is – get a load of this – the cranes are disappearing. Overnight, puff, they vanish.’
    ‘That’s impossible.’
    ‘Yeah, you’re right . . . It takes them a few more days than that to spread their long wings. Specially as they take the other machines with them, the excavators, and cement mixers, and drills. The whole lot.’
    ‘You’re having me on.’
    ‘Not at all.’
    ‘So? What are you going to do?’
    ‘What am I going to do? Good question . . . To start with, hire a security company to keep an eye on our security company, and then once that one turns corrupt too, I’ll . . .’
    ‘You’ll what?’
    ‘I don’t know . . . Send for the Cossacks, I