Authors: Herve Le Tellier
We go down the steps into the conservatory, with Lea between us skipping and laughing. Thanks to her, we are side by side for the first time.
EIGHT
I heard the water running, secretly opened the door to the bathroom, and now I’m watching you. You’re naked, taking a shower. Mind you, one of your friends has given you a piece of unfaithful woman’s advice: “Never smell of soap when you go home in the evening.” Under the circumstances, it’s difficult to do without it, but at least let’s make sure it’s the same soap as usual. I have bought myself some. You arch your back, avoiding getting your hair wet so there is no moisture on it to give you away. Your buttock shadows into a dimple I have never seen before, your smooth skin forms goose bumps in the cold, your nipples are still erect.
You will tell me, later, that you like very hot showers, or very cold ones, showers that produce a burning sensation. The window behind you looks out over the city, its lights coming on as night falls. You’re not aware of me watching you; soon you will turn, will be surprised, and, delighted, you will smile at me.
NINE
We’re walking down the hill on the rue du Chevalier de la Barre (1743–1760). I have my arm around your waist and you’ve allowed me to, even though Paris may be full of all these “people you know,” which means that from the Place de la Concorde to the Marais I’m not allowed to kiss you. But, in the middle of the street, you take my hand and put it on your ass, spontaneous and provocative in equal measures. My hand seems happy with the arrangement, and so does your ass. I immediately want you. One day you will formulate a sentence referring to, if I remember, “the role played by desire in the corpus of our relationship,” and I will smile. For now, I like feeling your buttocks moving beneath my hand.
TEN
It’s just a desk, straight lines, a modern feel dating from the sixties. There it is, abandoned on the sidewalk on the rue des Abbesses. You really like it, so do I. You love hunting around for antiques, I thought you would. You decide to take it and go to get your car; we have some trouble putting it into the trunk. You’re planning to paint the steel feet red. Or black. I agree. Where will it live? With you, in Paris or Burgundy, or, one day,
with us? That last option gets my vote. Either way, it’s our first piece of furniture. Wherever it lives its desk life, it will bring you back to memories of us.
ELEVEN
I also have memories of you that don’t include you, memories of the two of us that you won’t know about at all. Where you are such a strong presence in me that your absence is almost imperceptible. It’s the imprint of you on the sand of me, the silent melody that your existence leaves in me. In one of these memories, I’m walking along the cloisters of an abbey, sheltered from the rain by a Roman vaulted ceiling. I sit down on some stone stairs, surrounded by the sound of footsteps, voices, children calling. All I can think of is you. The day before, I held you in my arms for the first time, and you’ve invaded me already. Sentences about you come to me, and I write them down, with no clear intention yet. Legend would have it that a piece of shrapnel lodged in Shostakovich’s brain meant that, if he tilted his head a particular way, he could hear unknown pieces of music. You are my Shostakovich’s shrapnel.
Shostakovich’s Shrapnel
would make a good title for a novel. Life is full of good titles for novels.
TWELVE
I know the exact place. I could trace the outline of your feet and mine with white chalk, the way a forensic scientist draws a line around the body at a crime scene, or a dance teacher makes diagrams of basic dance positions. It’s here, in the kitchen, between the refrigerator and the wooden table. You’re in my apartment for the first time, you’re walking ahead of me and
you suddenly stop. It’s so obvious that I should take you in my arms. Besides, I am walking so close behind you that, if I don’t, I’ll run into you. I put my arms around you, my chest touches your back, my mouth reaches for the back of your neck, you turn in my arms and we kiss.
One day, I’ll draw those marks on the floor tiles. They’ll prove to you that you’re not a mermaid, because mermaids don’t have feet.
THIRTEEN
You’re succumbing to tiredness, your breathing’s getting quieter, your eyes closing in the warm bed. You suddenly start talking about tobacco pouches. What you’re saying is incoherent, but even so I try to make some sense of it (I know the people close to you who do have tobacco tins); I’ve forgotten what I said to you, but you use the words “tin” and “red paper,” your words growing less distinct. I haven’t grasped that you’re already asleep, haven’t yet discovered that, of all the threads connecting you to the conscious world, speech is the most enduring, the one you consent to relinquish only after you have sunk into sleep.
FOURTEEN
Without thinking what you’re doing, and not even aware you’re doing it, I think, you put your hand firmly against my temple and force my head down onto the sheet. Either way, it’s clear that you want to use me to your own ends. I’m surprised at first, so surprised that my neck—which is as amazed as the rest of me—resists for a moment before giving in to your invitation.
Then I laugh, and so do you, about the intimacy between our bodies over which we have no control.
FIFTEEN
You drag me into a clothing store, opposite the pretty Enfants-Rouges market on the rue de Bretagne. It’s the first time. I’ve not yet gauged how important jewelry and fabrics are to you. You go into the boutique with all the confidence and simplicity of a regular, fingering dresses and tops, asking my opinion, which I give. The prices seem high but I’m far from informed: in the months to come, I will learn a lot. You slip into a fitting room to try on a denim dress, through the gap in the white canvas drapes I glimpse your hips and red lace panties. I don’t know you well enough yet to risk popping my head in and gazing at you almost naked. But just for the time it takes you to try on a dress, I like being the man beside you in life: I think the hat fits me pretty well.
SIXTEEN
The telephone rings, and it’s you. Your breasts are “enormous,” that’s the word you use, because you’re pregnant, you’re in absolutely no doubt: “I know my body,” you say, unequivocally. I’m at Roissy airport, about to board for Berlin, and, given that I believe in this pregnancy and feel no shred of fear at the prospect, I see something clearly: I want a life with you. You hang up and there I am, for a few hours, the potential father of a little Sarah or a little, now what would it be, Jude?
And, in spite of the inevitable drama, the tears to come and the heartache, do you know what? I’m happy.
SEVENTEEN
“Do you know what?” That’s
your
phrase. A relic from adolescence that you haven’t shaken off, a linguistic weakness I find touching. What do you use it for, what role does it play in the way you speak? Is it a pause you allow yourself to give you a better chance to formulate an idea that comes to you? I take the question seriously every time, I answer no, quietly, which is my own discreet way of saying how interested I am in you, and how much I care too.
EIGHTEEN
It’s already dark on the rue de Grenelle, you’re back with your children. But, so that I don’t have to leave you quite yet, I’m following the three of you around Monoprix, with no valid excuse.
Karl and Lea are energetically maneuvering between the aisles with their mini shopping carts decked out with flags. On your instructions, they pile up cornflakes, sugar, yogurts … For their sakes, you transform the chore of shopping into an exciting game, a treasure hunt. I briefly interpret this frenzy as your fear that life might stop being a party, as if you owed it—to yourself and your children—to be a fairy.
A fragile side of you emerges from this feverish activity as an attentive wife and mother, and I find it touching, it bowls me over. I restrain my mounting urge to take the kindly sorceress in my arms, and protect her from the demons of routine and boredom.
NINETEEN
You think you know how to go about catching me. You do. But how can I describe my desire, the way my hands thirst for
your skin, my lips for yours? There’s no point describing what we do, choosing one thing among a thousand. That’s what I’m doing here.
Our nakedness, side by side. I like looking at you naked, you like me looking at you. You’re lying on your stomach, desirable, offered up, but a man’s body doesn’t always obey him so readily; and you may deny it, but that is something you definitely regret.
I am sitting on the bed looking at your nakedness, when your buttocks turn and rise up toward me, their every curve wanting to arouse me, their soft, soft skin intended just for me. You smile, and this gesture gets the better of me, I’m gripped by desire, you are mine and I take you.
TWENTY
It’s very late, you have to go: your husband is on duty, the children with their grandparents, but your guilt won’t let you sleep at my apartment, it persuades you to go home.
It’s winter, the weather’s cold. As usual, I walk you to your car, expecting to accompany you to your neighborhood and come back by taxi afterward. It’s a ritual we have, a way of stealing another half hour from the time we don’t have together. We’re getting close to the Renault, I see you stop dead in your tracks. There’s a man sitting in the driver’s seat, sound asleep. You’re petrified, unable to make a single move. I knock on the window, in vain, I open the door, pat the man on the shoulder gently, then more insistently. He wakes, with some difficulty, and I ask him, not unkindly, to get out of the car.
This homeless person is young, probably a foreigner, Polish, Russian … he’s embarrassed, mutters a few words of apology, he hauls himself out of the vehicle, still groggy with sleep, and walks off into the night. He’s left his backpack on the passenger seat,
I run after him to give it back. You’re still standing on the sidewalk, shocked, unable to get into the car that’s been desecrated by an intruder. You feel sick, you’re still shaking. “I’ll drive, if you like,” I suggest. You agree, you know I’m happy to shoulder the role of a man you can depend on. You’ve just discovered a facet of me you didn’t know, and it seems to amaze you.
We drive to your apartment, you seem flattened by exhaustion. You say, “You’re nice,” and it’s not meant as a reproach, even though you hate people being “nice.” I shake my head but you insist: “Yes, you are, you’re nice. You were very nice to that man. You’re not frightened of people, you’re not frightened of approaching them.” You suddenly like the fact that I can be nice. From now on, it’s no longer just a sign of weakness to you.
TWENTY-ONE
Your perfume:
Eau de lierre
. A “nose” would define it like this: the head notes are very green with a vegetal elegance, until the ivy discreetly gives way and eclipses itself before tones of stone and dry wood. It could be a fragrance worn by an effete man, but on your skin the warm musks and spices win over. We’re already a long way from our animal state, and when I close my eyes, I can’t conjure up that smell as well as I can the image of your face. It will always be the color of the back of your neck where I completely lose myself, and, if I lose you, it will be the smell of my nostalgia.
TWENTY-TWO
It’s an evening in December, the car is pulling away from the neon lights on the Place Clichy and easing as best it can onto the busy Boulevard des Batignolles. You’re off to pick up your children.
I don’t know how we’ve ended up talking about death, but you suddenly say: “If I had a terminal illness, a cancer, I don’t think I’d have any hesitation, I’d come and live with you.” Perhaps it’s out of modesty, but I quote Woody Allen: “Life is a terminal illness.” But you’re already parking, and your words are still worrying away at me.
I measure the scope of your declaration. It’s not the emergency itself you’re talking about here, but the requirement for truthfulness that emergencies demand of us. All at once, I grasp something else, between the lines: that, with me, you would leave the serenity of an illusory eternity where your days are not counted, for an unreliable world in which they are. Illness would finally launch you into that world where time actually passes. I understand what it is that I give you, it’s being afraid.
TWENTY-THREE
A café outside the Scuola Musica, in winter. You’ve left me to look after Lea, or maybe it’s Lea who’s keeping an eye on me. At first she wants to play a board game with kings and queens, then, because she gets bored with it or because she wants to show me different games, picture dominoes. She has hot chocolate, I have coffee, as usual: I like feeling she and I have our own habits. She stirs the froth with her spoon, I make sure she doesn’t spill any. You’ve taken Karl to his music theory lesson, but you come right back.
To Lea, I’m Yves, mommy’s friend who sometimes has a suitcase because he’s going a long way away. I don’t know what makes you think of this question but you ask: “Who’s the wolf?” “Me!” Lea replies artlessly. Then, very pleased with herself, she adds: “Mommy is mommy wolf and Yves is daddy wolf.” You’re
embarrassed but also upset, you correct her, bringing the real daddy back into the equation.
I can still picture Lea, with that impish look you sometimes have, bursting out laughing.
TWENTY-FOUR
It’s a memory of memories. You leading me through your apartment, to your bedroom. You go to a closet and take out some cardboard boxes. Photographs, lots of them. Then you take me to the kitchen so you can show them to me properly.
It’s your life.
You with your little boy, under a Christmas tree. Your daughter running across a garden I don’t recognize, another one of her, with your husband. You hesitate for a moment, then show me still more photos, your wedding I think, though I’m not sure. I’m launched into your world, submerged by a wave of snapshots of your life before, where I don’t belong. I understand what you’re doing, what it means, the desire for intimacy that it presupposes, but I’m slowly drowning in this tide of pictures. You don’t notice, but imperceptibly I take a step back, to avoid suffocating. You rummage through the box some more. One by one, you take out pictures of yourself, set them to one side, give them to me.