Out of place

Several times every day Edouard would console himself with the same thought: Sometimes decisions are made for us and, for a while, we lose our sense of self.  But it’s only transitory. A chance meeting; a date and an address written on a crumpled till receipt.

And he feels out of place in this strangely unwelcoming room cluttered with people he has never met, would never have met, if he hadn’t been in the boulangerie at 10.30am the previous Wednesday.

“You really must meet my friends,” said the antique dealer and collector.

Uncomfortable and sagging on an uncomfortable, sagging stool, Edouard feels like a last-minute addition to the programme of drinkers, smokers and talkers; as if he has been hooked around the neck with the handle of a walking stick and pulled into his own shabby little space on the dirty, dusty circus floor.

Gossip. What passes for philosophy, and laughter.

“What’s stopping me from belonging?” Because now there is not a bone in Edouard’s body that would not want to belong.

There are so many voices that at first he does not realise the words are directed at him.

“I have no time for people who are stupid, who are ordinary,” says the collector, “and especially not those without a future.”

And Edouard feels small.

Then indignant.

And then he feels an exhilarating rush of anger.

“There is no such thing as a stupid person,” he thinks, “only an inconsiderate one.”

He grabs at a memory, holding onto it tightly as if it were the solid handrail running the length of his own wobbly bridge.

“Ordinary people don’t exist,” a loved one had told him. “Only extraordinary ones.”

And a gentle dignity tells Edouard that sometimes it’s good not to belong. And dignified, he walks away.