Delicacy

by David Foenkinos

  Seven

  Examples of Ridiculous Sayings People Love to Repeat

  One lost, ten found.

  *

  To live happy, live hidden.

  *

  A laughing woman is halfway to bed.

  Eight

  They’d been on a honeymoon, they’d taken photos, and they’d come back. Now it was time to start real life. Natalie had finished school more than six months ago. Up until now, she’d used the alibi of getting ready for the wedding to keep from looking for work. Organizing a marriage is like forming a government after a war. And what should be done with collaborators? Justifying all the time put into it is so complicated. Well, that wasn’t altogether true. More than anything, she’d wanted to spend some time on herself, time to read, hang out, as if she’d known she wasn’t going to get such times later. That she’d be snatched up by professional life and, of course, her life as a wife.

  It was time to go to interviews. After a few tries, she realized it wasn’t that easy. So this was normal life? But she thought she’d landed a degree that was recognized, and gained experience through several important internships that hadn’t been confined to serving coffee between two Xerox sessions. She had an appointment for a job interview at a Swedish company. She was surprised to be welcomed directly by the boss, instead of the director of human resources. When it came to recruitment, he wanted full control. That was his official version of the facts. The truth was much more pragmatic: he’d stopped by the department of human resources and seen Natalie’s photo on her CV. It was a strange enough photo; you couldn’t really assess her body. Of course, you suspected she wasn’t devoid of beauty, but this wasn’t what had attracted the boss’s eye. It was something else. Something he couldn’t seem to define but had a feeling about: good sense. Yes, that’s what he’d suspected. He thought this woman seemed sensible.

  Charles Delamain wasn’t Swedish. But you need only enter his office to wonder whether he harbored an ambition to be, no doubt to please his shareholders. On a piece of Ikea furniture could be seen a plate with several small biscuits that make a lot of crumbs.

  “I thought your career path was very interesting … and …”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re wearing a wedding ring. Are you married?”

  “Uh … yes.”

  There was a pause in the conversation. Charles had looked at the young woman’s CV a number of times, and he hadn’t seen that she was married. The moment she said “yes,” he took another look at the CV. So, she was married. It was as if, in his brain, the photo had scrambled the young woman’s personal status. But was it really so important? He had to keep the interview going to keep the slightest discomfort from building.

  “And are you planning on having children?” he continued.

  “Not for the moment,” Natalie answered, without the slightest hesitation.

  Such a question could seem completely normal during an interview with a young woman who’d just gotten married. But she sensed something different, without really being able to define it. Charles had stopped talking and was looking hard at her. Finally, he got up and took a biscuit.

  “Would you like a Krisprolls?”

  “No thanks.”

  “You ought to.”

  “Nice of you, but I’m not hungry.”

  “You ought to get used to it. That’s all we eat here.”

  “You mean … that … ?”

  “Yes.”

  Nine

  Sometimes Natalie had the impression that people were jealous of her happiness. It was a vague feeling, nothing really concrete, just a passing hunch. But she felt it. Through details, smiles that barely registered but spoke volumes, ways of looking at her. No one could imagine that she sometimes was afraid of this happiness, afraid that it could contain the threat of unhappiness. Sometimes she stopped herself when she found herself saying, “I’m happy,” a sort of superstition, a sort of memory of all those moments when life had finally veered onto the wrong track.

  Her family and the friends who’d come to the wedding formed what could be called the first circle of social pressure. Pressure to have a child. Could it be that they were sick enough at this point of their own lives to get worked up about those of others? That’s always the case. We live under the dictates of others’ desires. Natalie and François didn’t want to become a TV series for their crowd. For the moment, they loved the idea of being two people alone in the world, in the most perfect cliché of romantic schmaltzy serenity. Since they’d met, they’d been living in a momentum of absolute freedom. Adoring travel, taking advantage of the slightest sunny weekend, they’d gone all over Europe with the innocence of romance. There was evidence of their love in Rome, Lisbon, or even Berlin. More than ever, spreading themselves thin gave them the feeling of being one. These trips also brought them a real sense of a storybook life. They were crazy about evenings during which they’d again tell the story of how they met, recalling the details with pleasure, glorying in the accuracy of chance. When it came to the mythology of their love, they were like children tirelessly interested in hearing the same story.

  So, yes, such happiness could inspire fear.

  Day-to-day life hadn’t worn them down. Both were working more and more, so they made sure to connect. Lunch together, even a quick one. Lunching “on a dime,” François would call it. And Natalie loved that expression. She’d imagine a contemporary painting showing a couple lunching on a dime, as in a picnic on the grass. That was a painting Dalí could have done, she’d say. Sometimes there are turns of phrase we adore, that we find delightful, whereas the person who said them doesn’t realize it. François liked the idea of a Dalí painting, liked the fact that his wife could invent, and even modify, the story of the painting. It was a form of naïveté pushed to the max. He whispered that he wanted her now, wanted to carry her off somewhere and take her, anywhere at all. Couldn’t, she had to leave. So he’d wait until evening and throw himself on her with the accumulated desire of the frustrated hours he’d passed. Time didn’t seem to dull their sex life. Something rare: every day together still had traces of their first day.

  They also tried to keep up a social life, continue to see friends, go to the theater, and make surprise visits to their grandparents. They tried not to let themselves get isolated. To avoid the trap of losing enthusiasm. Years went by in this way, and everything seemed so simple. Whereas others had to work at it. Natalie didn’t understand the expression “Being in a relationship takes work.” As she saw it, things were simple or they weren’t. It’s quite easy to think such a thing when everything is on the level, when no one makes waves. Although there were some, at times. But that made you wonder if they argued only for the pleasure of making up. Come on, really? So much success was becoming disturbing. Time went by with such fluency, on that rare talent of being alive.

  Ten

  Natalie and François’s Future Travel Plans

  Barcelona

  *

  Miami

  *

  La Baule

  Eleven

  Just breathe, and time will pass. It was already five years since Natalie had started working for her Swedish company. Five years of all types of work, going back and forth in the hallways and in and out of the elevator. Not far from the equivalent of a Paris–Moscow trip. Five years and 1,212 coffees drunk from the machine, 324 of which were drunk during four hundred meetings with clients. Charles was very happy about counting her among his close collaborators. It wasn’t unusual for him to call her into his office just to congratulate her. Certainly by preference he tended to do it in the evening. When everyone had left. But not in a crude way. He felt a lot of affection for her and valued those moments when they found themselves alone. Of course, he was trying to create a context favorable to ambiguity. No other woman would have been duped by such a ploy, but Natalie was living in the peculiar ether of monogamy. Sorry: of love. The love that annihilates all other men, but also any objectivity about seductio
n attempts. Charles had fun with it and thought of this François as a myth. Perhaps her way of never existing in a context of seduction also seemed like a kind of challenge to him. One day or another, he’d inevitably manage to create a dubious context between them, be it minimal. Sometimes he changed his attitude radically and regretted having hired her. Gazing at that inaccessible womanliness day after day was draining for him.

  Natalie’s relationship with her boss, which the others saw as privileged, created tensions. She tried to allay them, to keep away from the petty intrigues of office life. If she kept her distance with Charles, it was also for that reason. To avoid slipping into the old-fashioned role of favorite. Her gracefulness and the aura she created around her boss probably made it even more necessary. That’s what she resented, without knowing if it was justified. Everyone agreed that this brilliant, energetic, hardworking young woman was bound to have a great future with the company. On several occasions, the Swedish stockholders got wind of her excellent initiatives. The jealousies she aroused materialized in low blows. Attempts to undermine her. She wouldn’t complain, was never the type to moan when she came back to François in the evening. It was also a way of saying that the freak show of one-upmanship had no more importance than just that. Such a capacity for letting problems glance off her passed for strength. This was perhaps her most attractive talent: not letting her weaknesses show.

  Twelve

  Distance from Paris to Moscow

  1,540 miles

  Thirteen

  Natalie was often exhausted on weekends. On Sunday, she liked to lie on the couch and read, trying to alternate between pages and dreams when drowsiness got the better of fiction. She put a blanket over her legs. And what else? Oh, yes, she liked to make tea, of which she drank several cups, by small sips, as if the tea were a never-ending spring. The Sunday when everything happened, she was reading a long Russian tale by a writer who’s less read than Tolstoy or Dostoevsky and can make you think about the injustice of posterity. She liked the hero’s spinelessness, his inability to react, to imprint daily life with his energy. There was a sadness in that weakness. She liked romans-fleuves the way she liked her tea.

  François came up to her. “What are you reading?” She said it was a Russian author, but she wasn’t more specific because he seemed to have asked the question only out of politeness, mechanically. It was Sunday. She liked to read, he to run. He was wearing those shorts she thought looked a bit ridiculous. She couldn’t have known that she was seeing them for the last time. He was hopping all over the place. He had that way of always wanting to do his warm-up in their living room, working himself up to breathing hard before going out, as if he wanted to leave a big emptiness behind him. He’d succeed at it, that was sure. Before going out, he bent toward his wife and said something to her. Strangely, she wouldn’t remember these words. Their last exchange would vanish into thin air. And then she fell asleep.

  When she awoke, it was difficult to know how long she’d been dozing. Ten minutes or an hour? She served herself a little more tea. It was still warm. That was some indication. Nothing seemed to have changed. It was exactly the same situation as before she’d fallen asleep. Yes, everything was identical. The telephone rang during this return to the identical. The sound of the ring mixed with the steam from the tea, in a strange synchronization of sensations. Natalie answered. A second later, her life was no longer the same. She instinctively put a bookmark in her book and rushed outdoors.

  When she got to the hospital lobby, she didn’t know what to say, what to do. She stayed there without moving for a long moment. At reception, she was finally told where to find her husband, and she found him on his back. Perfectly still. She thought, It looks as though he’s sleeping. He never moves at night. And for that particular instant it was just like any other night.

  “What are the chances?” Natalie asked the doctor.

  “Negligible.”

  “What does negligible mean? Is negligible none? If that’s the case, tell me it’s none.”

  “I can’t say, ma’am. The chance is minuscule. You never know.”

  “But you do, you ought to know! It’s your job to know!”

  She’d shouted that sentence with all her strength. Several times. Then she’d stopped. She’d looked hard at the doctor, and he, too, was absolutely still, paralyzed. He’d witnessed a lot of dramatic scenes. But without being able to explain why, he experienced this one as one degree higher in the hierarchy of tragedies. He contemplated this woman’s face, contorted by grief. Unable to cry because the pain had drained away everything. She came toward him, ruined, vacant. Before collapsing.

  When she came to, she saw her parents. As well as François’s. A moment before, she’d been reading, and suddenly she wasn’t home anymore. Reality pieced itself together again. She wanted to travel backward into sleep, backward into that Sunday. It can’t be. It can’t be, was what she kept repeating in a delirious litany. They explained to her that he was in a coma. That nothing had been lost, but she sensed quite clearly that everything was over. She knew it. She didn’t feel like fighting. For what? To keep a life going for a week. And after? She’d seen him. She’d seen his stillness. You don’t come back from that kind of stillness. You stay that way forever.

  They gave her tranquilizers. Everything and everybody in the world around her had collapsed. And she was supposed to speak. Cheer up. It was beyond her.

  “I’m going to stay with him. Watch over him.”

  “No, there’s no reason for it. It’s better for you to go home and rest a bit,” said her mother.

  “I don’t want to rest. I have to stay here, I have to.”

  As she said it, she was about to faint. The doctor tried to convince her to go with her parents. She asked, “But what if he wakes up and I’m not here?” There was a pained silence. No one believed he would. They tried to reassure her, but they were kidding themselves. “We’ll let you know immediately, but right now it’s really better for you to get some rest.” Natalie didn’t answer. Everyone was pressuring her to lie down, to give in to the pull of gravity. So she left with her parents. Her mother made some bouillon that she couldn’t swallow. She took two more tablets and fell into bed. In her bedroom, the one from her childhood. This morning she’d still been a woman. And now she was sleeping like a little girl.

  Fourteen

  Possible Sentences Spoken by François

  Before He Went Running

  I love you.

  *

  I adore you.

  *

  Sports first, relax later.

  *

  What are we having to eat tonight?

  *

  Enjoy your reading, darling.

  *

  Can’t wait to get back to you.

  *

  I’m not planning on getting run over.

  *

  We really need to invite Bernard and Nicole to dinner.

  *

  You know, I should read a book, too.

  *

  I’m going to work really hard on my calves today.

  *

  Tonight we’re making a baby.

  Fifteen

  A few days later, he was dead. Natalie was in a daze, knocked out by tranquilizers. She kept thinking of their last moment together. It was too ridiculous. How could all that happiness be shattered in such a way? End with the absurd sight of a man hopping around a living room. And then those last words spoken into her ear. She’d never remember them. Maybe he’d just given her a little puff of air on the neck. He had to have been a ghost already, the moment he left. In human form, certainly, but able to create only silence, because death had already settled in.

  The day of the funeral, everybody was there. They all met where François had spent his childhood. Such a crowd of people would have made him happy, she thought. But then, they wouldn’t, since it was ridiculous to think about that kind of thing. How can a dead person be happy about anything? He’s decomposing in a box m
ade of four wooden planks: happy? As she walked behind the casket surrounded by close relations, another thought occurred to her: they were the same guests who were at her wedding. Yes, all of them were here. Exactly the same. A few years later, we meet again, and some of them are definitely dressed the same. Dusted off their only dark suit, suitable for good fortune as much as for misfortune. Only difference: the weather. Today was beautiful, you almost felt too warm. A high point for the month of February. Yes, the sun goes on and on. And Natalie, looking straight at it, almost burned her eyes doing so, blurred her vision in a halo of cold light.

  They put him in the ground, and that was it.

  After the funeral, Natalie’s only wish was to be alone. She didn’t want to go back to her parents’. She was tired of the pitying looks they gave her. She wanted to lie low, lock herself in, live in a tomb. Friends rode back with her. During the entire car trip, nobody knew what to say. The driver suggested a little music. But very quickly, Natalie asked him to turn it off. It was unbearable. Every song reminded her of François. Every note echoed a memory, an anecdote, a laugh. She realized how horrible it was going to be. In the seven years they’d lived together, he’d had time to leave traces of himself everywhere, on every breath. She understood that there was nothing she could experience that could make her forget his death.