During the forty-three first years of
his life, Apollonius Heunislas
Pollock had always been punctual.
From the cradle, he had shown a meticulous precision in everything he
did. He was born the day the doctors and mid-wives had predicted –
a 14th of November, at noon –, had walked his first
steps at twelve months, as described in the manuals, and had started
talking as was meant to. As a child, the young Apollonius, while
clever, had never been precocious, neither had he
been late. He was, one might say, on time.
At school, he had never retook nor skipped a class. His homework was
always done in due time, as it had to be. He got his baccalaureate at
seventeen, before naturally turning himself towards the succession of
Daddy's company, in the building industry.
Thorough and of a rare efficiency, he speedily climbed the levels,
learning all the different trades along the way, and quickly became a
construction manager respected by his employees and clients alike.
Remarkably – and against the professional tradition in place –
his projects never suffered any delay. The business became prosperous
almost by itself.
At the
age of thirty-seven, his fortune was made.
And
at forty-three years old, Apollonius
Heunislas Pollock decided that the time had come to get married.
He
got engaged to a Miss Marguerite Descailles, quiet and of a good
family, who shared with him the taste for punctuality. For his
betrothed, his future family and, of course, himself, he
undertook the construction of a pretty little house, in a small
village of a tranquil suburb.
It
was on the morning of the day scheduled
for his wedding
that everything dramatically changed, because in this kind of story,
something
must always dramatically change.
Was
it really all that he was expecting from life? Marguerite, and then
what? What were his aspirations? Was he not rushing into things a
bit? When was the last time he had a picnic? Did the cherries taste
better if eaten directly from the tree? Had he forgotten to turn off
the gas?
And, above all, why hadn't he ever ask himself those questions
before?!
He
was so deeply lost in thoughts that neither his best-man, his father,
his mother nor even his fiancée could snap him out of this
irrational trance. A behaviour so extraordinary that everyone agreed
that it would be better to postpone the event, as the guests
were already settling in the church...
Marguerite
went to treat her embarrassment
in a sanatorium, as, in those days, one would still
do such things.
Apollonius
retreated into the pretty little house,
which wasn't quite finished yet, to think a bit more, or so it
seemed.
After
three more postponements, two
indecisions and a clear unease over the whole situation, Marguerite
left to wed under warmer climates, with a rich American industrial met
in Châteauneuf-les-Bains.
And
that is all there is to say of Apollonius on the chapter of marriage.
Although
he never tried to repeat the experience, to say that the change upon
his personality had been drastic would still be a profound
understatement.
During
the weeks that followed, Apollonius went less and less to work. At
first, his associate and brother, Gaëtan, embarrassed, explained to
their customers that Apollonius was indisposed. A swarm of doctors of
all kind was then fetched to visit him, auscultate him, examine
him... But they all came back empty-handed : Apollonius was in
perfectly good health, even brighter than usual.
He
had simply lost his taste for twelve hour days of gruelling hard work,
or at least, not every single day...
And
that is about all there is to say on the chapter of
work...
All
of this, I got it from a very reliable
source.
For the last eight years, Apollonius Heunislas Pollock has been my
neighbour. I asked him once, when we were chatting over the little
fence which separates our gardens – mine, a yellowed lawn that has
seen better days and his, a kind of gentle jungle which had grown
around the small man –, how he occupied his days after he had left?
He told me: “Oh, with thousands of things... and nothing. I always
believed I was living my life without ever procrastinating and I
suddenly saw that I had missed out on so many things. I had never
gone fishing, for example, that
was always for later... I love fishing! I also love lies-in and,
sometimes, just to sit on the grass ; it took me forty years to
realise it...”
We
see each other regularly. I help him a bit with and around his house,
which is a little less pretty and still not entirely finished ; a
nail here, a touch of varnish there, put back the occasional stray
roof tile in the right way,
etc. Last summer, I repainted his shutters. Even if he wanted to do
everything himself, he cannot any more really. Apollonius Heunislas
Pollock turned a hundred and seven years old this year.
I
often asked him the secret of his longevity, that sort of stupid
reflex we all have when confronted with a living ancestor. Or maybe
it's that I don't feel all that young myself any more... He
invariably replied: “You must just take the time to live.”
Invariably.
Except
for a year ago.
A
year ago, his answer was a lot more enigmatic:
“For
a good fifteen years now, every morning, a pale man, in a dark suit,
comes to politely knock at my door. He doesn't say anything, he just
stands there, he waits. And every morning, I tell him the same thing:
“Today? Oh I don't know... I don't think so, no. But tomorrow,
maybe...”, then he nods and, half
a smile on
his lips, he goes away.”
