As for Ève, she was nonchalant and pensive, seemingly quite unaware of anything. Free despite being monopolized by Ludo, replying sparingly to his volley of questions, she was daydreaming and only pretending to be there. Not only was she not interested in the young man, she didn’t even realize the stir she was causing and responded to his flirting out of mere politeness.
It was she who, getting a text message on her phone, suddenly stood up, blushing, and said that she had an appointment. Relieved, the three other young women got up in unison, showered Claudine with thanks, and escaped as quickly as they could.
Alone with her son, Claudine was unable to hold back for more than thirty seconds. Blushing with happiness, she cried, “Tell me if I’ve gone mad, but I have a feeling you like Ève.”
Ludo shrugged. “How can any man resist her? Anyone would fall head over heels in love with her.”
“What has she got that the others haven’t?”
“Mom, I’m ashamed of you. Didn’t you see her? Didn’t you hear her husky voice? Didn’t you notice her modesty, her simplicity? Didn’t you grasp that she goes to all the best plays and concerts in town? She isn’t a woman, she’s a pearl, a treasure.”
“I’ve never seen you so bowled over.”
Ludo nearly lost it at this point and had to adjust a lampshade so that he could turn away. But then he continued teasing his mother. “There’s no point in dreaming. A woman like that isn’t interested in a man like me.”
“Why not?” Claudine cried indignantly.
“Did you see her? And have you seen me? We’re like Beauty and the Beast.”
“I forbid you to speak like that about my son. Life isn’t just about beauty. There’s also—”
“What? I’m not Croesus, and I’m not Einstein.”
“Stop putting yourself down. If that young woman had wanted to, she would already have married Croesus or Einstein. And yet she’s single.”
“And how does that make me more desirable?”
“It means there’s still a possibility.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
Claudine was excited by the challenge. She wanted to prove to her son that, having introduced him to the love of his life, she was going to make sure he married her.
To put the finishing touches to his performance, he said, “Look, Mom, if I thought for a fraction of a second that it was possible for me to marry that woman, I’d say yes without the slightest hesitation.”
Claudine rubbed her hands, like a woman congratulating herself on sealing a successful business deal.
By the door, just as he was leaving, Ludo frowned. “It might be a good idea to get some information about her . . . ”
“I’ll take care of it, darling.”
“I think . . . who was it? . . . someone told me about Ève . . . Who could it have been? . . . let’s see . . . Oh, that’s right, it was your friend Xavière!”
“Xavière the florist?”
“Yes.”
“You’re right. Xavière knows everything about everybody. I’ll call her right away.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“It’s so rare to hear you thank me, darling.”
“I needed the opportunity. Now I’m counting on you. Promise?”
“Promise! Your Mom will sort out your girlfriend.”
Ludo left with a show of joy, like a man in love who wants to dance. In truth, he was joyful because he’d so enjoyed the trick he’d played on his mother.
Back in his apartment, he couldn’t resist the temptation to check if Fiordiligi had written to him.
A message had arrived an hour earlier:
Our relationship is so perfect and so complete that I don’t want to break it up. Why take the risk of seeing each other when we get along so well?
He typed:
Dear Soul Mate, you have so many faults, you are so seductively awkward, that I long to meet you.
Much to his surprise, she replied immediately:
You might not like me.
Amused, he decided to start a conversation:
What do you know about my taste in looks? What do I know about them myself?
I’m sure you love blondes.
Ludovic smiled, thinking about the act he’d put on to Ève in front of his mother.
Real ones or fake ones?
Fake ones, those who think they ought to have been blonde.
Dear Fiordiligi, why not come out with it and say I like sluts?
You’d be the first man not to like them!
He thought this over for a few seconds.
Fiordiligi, do you look like a slut?
The reply arrived, as quick as lightning:
No.
How would you describe your style?
Old lady.
What do you mean?
People wonder where I buy my shapeless sweaters, my pleated skirts, my embroidered jerseys, and my printed blouses.
Grungy old lady, then?
Yes. What about you?
Non-grungy old man.
The thick sweater and loose jeans type?
Add spotless but overlarge boxers.
I love it.
Why?
It’s amazing at a time when men are as vain as women. It’s not sexually correct.
I don’t think I’m trying to be rebellious or to stand out from the crowd. Basically, I just don’t care.
Stop showing off, you’re driving me crazy. What about shoes?
The same style since I was fifteen, solid, round suede shoes with crepe soles. I keep several specimens in reserve. The day they stop manufacturing them, I’ll cut off my legs. What about you?
A closet full of colored pumps. My feet are the only part of me I see all day long, so I look after them and dress them with care.
Iron tips on the soles so as not to damage them?
Of course. I love the sound they make. I feel like the school supervisor who screams at the kids. It fuels my sadism.
Stop it, Fiordiligi, you’re getting me excited. I love your style: at ease with your own absurdity. It’s so attractive!
All right, I’m going to leave you now, you naughty boy. I have better things to do than please you.
Ludovic looked at his watch and decided to go to the pool. He loved swimming—one of his few healthy habits. Even though he practiced on a regular basis, he didn’t have the physique of a swimmer, far from it. He still looked like a piece of cardboard, with no muscle emerging from under his white skin. It didn’t matter. All he needed to do to protect himself from sarcastic remarks was to keep this activity more secret than if he was indulging in something shameful and go to the pool at times when he didn’t risk bumping into anyone.
At this time of day, when the building was only open to schoolchildren, he would keep to the lane reserved for regulars.
Once he had shut himself in the locker room, he smiled at the fresh, stimulating, unerotic smell of bleach. He slipped on his dark blue swimming trunks, which were neither tight nor revealing, and went into the shower room, where he liked the white tiles, the overheated air, the sugary scents of shampoo. It was a place where the atmosphere wavered between the clinical and the cosmetic.
Finally, he came out into the pool area, taking care to avoid the footbath, a microbe-breeding puddle he found disgusting. He looked at the kids splashing each other.
The heated water created condensation beneath a dome that dispersed the sounds like hollow echoes, as if words and cries were diffracted by the steam.
The head swimming instructor, a man with chiseled pectorals, gave him an unfriendly look. Never having understood the reason for his recurrent hostility, Ludo had concluded that it was an expression of the hatred felt by the handsome for the ugly, the champion for the loser. The instructor was certainly ath
letic, with his broad shoulders, his narrow hips, and his prominent spindle-shaped muscles from the tibia to the trapezium. At the same time, what Ludo found fascinating was the man’s gait: although slim, he would trudge along in tight wooden sandals, swinging one shoulder, then the other, leaning on his left leg before transferring his weight to the right, like a giant exhausted after some marathon or other. Seeing him move so slowly, majestically, and awkwardly, you felt he was making an effort better suited to a heavier, thicker, larger body than his, carrying around a huge, invisible carcass that impaired his movements.
Ludo entered the water and moved to the accessible narrow lane. In order to avoid the kids, he tried to go quickly, but couldn’t. He suddenly grasped why the instructor moved the way he did: he walked on dry land as if he was in the water, pushing the air aside like heavy liquid.
Ludovic put on his cap and goggles and, confident that he now looked like a fly, began doing his lengths. He swam without style, but he always swam for a long time.
Today, though, he found it impossible to go beyond that five-minute point after which the heart muscle adapts to continuous effort; his heartbeat was irregular, refusing to adopt a steady rhythm. Accustomed to such rebellion, Ludo decided to come out, breathe, and start all over again once he had caught his breath.
He heaved himself up the ladder, recovering bar by bar the pounds the water had relieved him of. Light as a jellyfish in the pool, he weighed his full one hundred and eighty pounds on the tiled floor.
Absentmindedly, he walked in the direction of the small pool. A thin, bony father with muscles like ropes was dealing with his little girl. She hated water, but he didn’t seem to care. Because she screamed at the slightest splash, and cried when forced to go further into the water, the father lost his patience and slapped her.
Stunned, she stopped crying.
Feeling he had taken an important step, her father pushed her back down into the water. She started screaming again. He gave her two loud slaps. This time, in a state of shock, the child fell silent.
When she recovered, she moaned, and received four slaps. The scene verged on the absurd: the slaps would mechanically eliminate the sobs. The man just kept hitting her, as if he had forgotten there was a human being taking the blows.
Ludo made up his mind to intervene. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He ordered his body to get up: nothing moved. The walls spun, and he collapsed and rolled on the floor. Even when he came to a stop, he was unable to move or make a sound.
He could no longer hear clearly what was going on, whether or not the man was still hitting the child, or if his actions had triggered a response. Everything had suddenly frozen. Ludo was receiving blurred visual sensations—shapeless colors—and even more blurred perceptions of sound—a kind of cathedral acoustic that blurred the origin of the echo.
How long did this paralysis last?
They were shouting at him . . . hands were touching him . . . there was an insistent rumbling, which grew sharper and finally became words. “Monsieur? Monsieur? Are you all right, monsieur?”
He realized that his dizzy spell had been noticed, and that he was being taken care of.
They laid him on his back: he saw the face of the instructor, who was the one asking him questions. Ludo lay there, eyes wide open, unable to reply.
They put a blanket over his body. Firefighters arrived. They slid him onto a stretcher and carried him to a room away from the pools. There, he had the impression he was regaining his hearing. They placed a mask over his face and told him to take a deep breath. The dose of oxygen refreshed him, and his muscles relaxed. Life was returning. He smiled.
He was told to keep breathing deeply. The rescuers stood aside.
Ludo heard the instructor talking to the firefighters. “He fainted as he got out of the water.”
“Does he come here regularly?”
“The pedophile? Yes, he’s a regular. He’s a lousy swimmer, but he can swim for a long time.”
“Why do you call him the pedophile?”
“My colleagues and I call him that because he only ever comes at the same time as the schoolkids.”
“Has he ever . . . ?”
“No, never. Still, you must admit it’s a bit odd to pick the time when children are in the pool and making a hell of a racket. I can’t help thinking . . . Anyway, we keep an eye on him. That’s why I immediately noticed he wasn’t feeling well . . . ”
Lying on the stretcher, drugged by the shot of oxygen, Ludo felt like laughing. Now he knew why the instructors always gave him those stern, inquisitive looks when he got close to the pools: they thought he was a pedophile! Him! He never even looked at children. He considered himself a child who had grown up by mistake.
The firefighters turned to him. “Monsieur, can you hear us? Blink if you can hear us.”
Ludovic obediently blinked.
“Can you talk?”
Ludovic thought it was an illusion, but he heard himself say, in a battered voice, “No, I . . . Yes.”
“What happened, monsieur?”
His eyes filled with tears. Ludovic suddenly saw the picture of the little girl being hit by her father, his reaction, his powerlessness. No, he wouldn’t answer the question.
“Could I have . . . a little bit of oxygen?”
The firefighters exchanged dubious glances, worried they might be dealing with a drug addict, even if only an oxygen addict; one of them took the gas cylinder, put the mask on Ludo, and gave him a dose.
A feeling of bliss swept over Ludovic, a sense of utter contentment, followed by an epiphany: the reason his life was a disaster was because of his childhood.
Like the little girl, he had been beaten as a child. An adult had used violence against him, and he hadn’t understood why. There was just one certainty: whenever his father appeared, there were blows. After the beating came the worst part: the kisses of remorse. Having slapped him until he had bruises, his father would feel so guilty, he would smother him in kisses. Ludovic as he was now was descended from that child. The reason he couldn’t bear being touched was because his father had connected physical contact with violence. And since his mother never touched him, he doubted that a body could be anything but a place that was brutally invaded by other people’s moods and bad habits. His parents had stifled him, and hadn’t helped him to bloom.
Ludo wept and at the same time burst out laughing: he was a hopeless case. The firefighters saw this paradox as the effect of the oxygen, and decided to leave.
Ludovic slowly returned home. He felt a happy kind of weariness.
On the way, he discovered from his phone that his mother had called him some twenty times. He listened to the lengthy message she had made up her mind to leave:
“Ludo, since you’re not picking up, I shan’t use kid gloves, I’m going to tell you the truth. Too bad if it hurts. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but you must never again give that woman any thought. I forbid you to see her. You see, Ludo, there’s a limit. I spoke to Xavière: this Ève is a . . . how shall I put it? . . . she’s a . . . I’m just repeating Xavière’s words . . . she’s a whore! There, I’ve said it. She’s a kept woman. Kept by rich lovers, and she has lots of them. I didn’t believe it at first, but then Xavière provided details. Yes, you’re right, the woman’s charming, but we know how she uses her charms! So there it is, Ludo: don’t even say hello to her if you see her. And to think that I introduced her to you! It gives me the shivers . . . In any case, from what I gathered, you’re not old enough or rich enough for her. So spare yourself the heartache. I hope you’re not angry with me, darling. Call me. I’m still your mom.”
Ludo smiled. His plan had worked out just as he’d expected. His mother was feeling guilty for introducing her son to the devil, a remorse that would eat away at her for two or three weeks and put introductions to other potential girlfriends on the back burn
er. At least that was something . . .
Back home, almost without thinking, he sat down at his desk and wrote:
Dear Fiordiligi, we must say goodbye. My case remains hopeless. I was prepared to commit to you because I knew we would never meet. I knew I would raise the temperature then vanish into the digital ether. What I love about the Internet is its immateriality. And yet what pains me in my own life is my immateriality.
Please let’s break off all contact. My only strengths lie in my mind. I experience feelings through books. I experience sex on a screen. Yes, even my memories of love don’t belong to me, they’re other people’s memories. I’ll never leave this virtual prison.
What is a lie? The truth we wish for, the reality we don’t experience. There’s nothing more genuine than my deception. When I said I wanted us to meet by a lake, I knew that would never happen, and yet I longed for it deeply. When I imagined a life with you, I was summoning up an impossibility that appealed to me. In other words, the Ludovic who made promises was the perfect Ludovic. The one who will never keep his promises is the real Ludovic. Our correspondence was nurtured by my desire for the best. What is more moral than mystification, since it involves an ideal?
There is nothing more generous than a lie. Nothing more petty than reality.
Alas, I realize that what is best about me will always be ethereal. Something keeps me trapped in my mediocrity—the past, no doubt. I can’t seem to overcome my victim status—the victim of a father’s violence, the victim of a mother’s tactlessness.
The Carousel of Desire Page 32