Delicacy

by David Foenkinos

  Forty-one

  Markus couldn’t concentrate. He wanted his explanation. There was only one way to get it: create a fake coincidence. Keep going back and forth in front of Natalie’s office—all day, if he had to. There’d have to be a moment when she came out and … bam … he’d be there, by pure coincidence, walking in front of her office. By the end of the morning, he was drenched in sweat. Suddenly he thought, This isn’t my best day! If she walked out now, she’d come across a man dripping sweat who was frittering away his time walking through the hallway without doing anything. He was going to seem like somebody who walks around aimlessly.

  After lunch, his thoughts from the morning returned with a vengeance. His strategy was good, and he had to keep up his back-and-forths. It was the only solution. It’s really hard to keep walking and pretend you’re going somewhere. You’ve got to look focused, as though you have a clear aim in mind; the hardest part’s faking a brisk manner. At the end of the afternoon, when he was worn out, he ran into Chloé. She asked him, “Are you okay? You’re acting really weird …”

  “Yes, yes, I’m okay. I’m getting back the circulation in my legs. Helps me think.”

  “Still on 114?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it’s going okay?”

  “Yes, it’s okay. More or less.”

  “Say, I’ve got nothing but problems with 108. I wanted to talk to Natalie about it, but she isn’t here today.”

  “Oh, really? She … isn’t here?” asked Markus.

  “No … I think she’s out of town. All right, gotta go; I’m going to try to take care of it.”

  Markus stood there without reacting.

  He’d walked so much that he could have ended up out of town, too.

  Forty-two

  Three Aphorisms by Cioran

  Read by Markus on the Suburban Train

  The art of love?

  It’s knowing how to combine the temperament of a vampire

  with the discretion of an anemone.

  *

  A monk and a butcher are wrangling inside

  every desire.

  *

  Sperm is the purest form of bandit.

  Forty-three

  The next day, Markus arrived at the office in a completely different state of mind. He couldn’t understand why he’d acted like such a crackpot. What an idea, going back and forth like that. The kiss certainly was disturbing, and he had to admit that lately his love life had been especially uneventful, but that was no reason for acting so childish. He should have kept his cool. He still wanted an explanation from Natalie, but he would no longer try to run into her by faking a coincidence. He’d merely go and see her.

  He rapped on the door to her office with a firm hand. “Come in,” she said, and he walked in unflinchingly. But then he had to face a major problem: she’d gone to the hairdresser’s. Markus had always been very sensitive when it came to hair. And now he was faced with a disconcerting sight: Natalie’s hair was wonderfully sleek. Of an astonishing beauty. If only she’d tied it back, as she did sometimes, everything would have been simpler. But in the face of such a capillary revelation, he felt at a loss for words.

  “Yes, Markus, what is it?”

  Interrupting the rush of thoughts in his mind, he ended up saying the first sentence that popped into his head:

  “I really like your hair.”

  “Thanks, that’s nice.”

  “No, I mean, I adore it.”

  Natalie was surprised by such an early morning admission. She didn’t know whether to smile or get embarrassed.

  “Okay, and so?”

  “…”

  “You certainly didn’t come to see me just to talk about my hair?”

  “No … no …”

  “All right, then. I’m listening.”

  “…”

  “Markus, are you there?”

  “Yes …”

  “Well?”

  “I’d like to know why you kissed me.”

  The memory of the kiss returned to the foreground of her memory. How had she been able to forget it? Each instant was being pieced together again, and she couldn’t hold in a pout of disgust. Was she crazy? For three years, she hadn’t approached a single man, hadn’t even thought about being interested in anybody, and then she goes kissing this inconsequential coworker. He was waiting for an answer, which was perfectly understandable. Time was passing. She had to say something.

  “I don’t know,” murmured Natalie.

  Markus would have preferred any answer, even a rejection, to this nothing of an answer.

  “You don’t know?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You can’t leave it like that. You need to explain it to me.”

  There was nothing to say.

  This kiss was like modern art.

  Forty-four

  Title of a Painting by Kazimir Malevich

  White on White (1918)

  Forty-five

  Afterward, she thought about it: why that kiss? It just happened. We’re not the masters of our biological clock. In this instance it was the one that concerns mourning. She’d wanted to die, had tried to breathe again, had succeeded, then was able to eat, had even succeeded in going back to work, smiling, being strong, affable, feminine; and then time had passed with that wobbly energy of reconstruction, until the day she’d gone into that bar but fled, unable to bear the cruising game, certain she’d never be able to be interested in a man; yet the next day, she’d started walking on the wall-to-wall carpeting, had just done it, an impulse stolen from doubt; she’d experienced her body as an object of desire, its shape and hips, and she’d even been disappointed she couldn’t hear the sound of her spike heels … All of it had come out of nowhere, the unforeseen birth of a sensation, a lucid force.

  And that was when Markus had entered the room.

  There was nothing else to say. Our biological clock isn’t rational. It’s exactly like an unhappy love affair: you don’t know when you’ll get over it. At the most painful moment, you think that the wound will never heal. And then, one morning, you’re startled to discover that you no longer feel this terrible burden. What a surprise to notice that the angst has disappeared. Why on that particular day? Why not later, or sooner? It’s the totalitarian decision of our body. Markus shouldn’t have looked for a tangible explanation of that impulsive kiss. It had appeared all in good time. Besides, most stories can often be summed up by that simple question of the right moment. Markus, who’d made a mess of so many things in his life, had just discovered his ability to appear in the field of vision of a woman at the perfect moment.

  Natalie had read the distress in Markus’s eyes. After their last exchange, he’d left slowly. Without making a sound. As unobtrusive as a semicolon in an eight-hundred-page novel. She couldn’t leave him like that. She was terribly upset about having acted as she did. She also thought he was a nice man to work with, respectful of everybody, and that made her even more upset about the notion of wounding him. She called him to her office. He put file 114 under his arm, in case she wanted to see him for a work reason. But he didn’t give a good goddamn about file 114. In responding to the call, he made a detour by way of the restroom and splashed a little water on his face. Curious about what she was going to say to him, he opened the door to her office.

  “Thanks for coming.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I’d like to apologize. I didn’t know how to answer. And to be perfectly honest, I still don’t know …”

  “…”

  “I don’t know what came over me. It had to be some kind of physical drive … but we work together, and I must say that it was completely inappropriate.”

  “You sound like an American. That’s never a good sign.”

  She began to laugh. What a strange reply. It was the first time they were talking about anything other than a file. She was discovering a clue to his real personality. She had to get ahold of herself.

&nb
sp; “I sound like somebody in charge of a six-person team that you belong to. You walked in just as I was daydreaming, and I didn’t grasp the real situation at that moment.”

  “But that moment was the realest of my life,” protested Markus without thinking. It had come right out of his heart.

  Things weren’t going to be simple, thought Natalie. It was best to put a stop to the conversation. Which she rapidly did. Somewhat curtly. Markus didn’t seem to understand. He stood stock-still in her office without moving, vainly looking for the strength to leave. The truth was, when she’d called him in ten minutes before, he’d imagined that she might want to kiss him again. He’d wandered into this dream and had just understood once and for all that nothing more was going to happen between them. He’d been crazy to think it would. She’d only kissed him on the spur of the moment. It was difficult to admit. It was like somebody offering you happiness and then immediately taking it back. He wished he’d never known the taste of Natalie’s lips. He wished he’d never experienced that moment, because he was deeply aware that he’d need months to get over those few seconds.

  Markus headed for the door. Natalie was surprised to catch a tear forming in his eye. It hadn’t flowed yet, was waiting to come sliding out in the hallway. He wanted to hold it back. Certainly didn’t want to weep in front of Natalie. This was stupid, but the tear he was going to weep was unexpected.

  It was the third time he’d wept in front of a woman.

  Forty-six

  Thought of a Polish Philosopher

  There are incredible people

  whom we meet at the wrong moment.

  And there are people who are incredible

  because we meet them at the right moment.

  Forty-seven

  Little Love Story About Markus,

  Told Through His Tears

  First and foremost, in this case, let’s disregard childhood tears, tears in front of his mother or schoolteacher. This is only about Markus’s romantically motivated tears. And so, before that tear he’d tried to control in front of Natalie, there had already been two other occasions.

  The first tear went back to his life in Sweden, with a young girl answering to the sweet name of Marilyn. Not a very Swedish name, but surely, Marilyn Monroe respects no boundaries. Marilyn’s father had fantasized about this myth his entire life and hadn’t found any better idea than naming his daughter after it. Let us say no more about the psychological danger of naming a daughter in honor of one’s erotic fantasies. Marilyn’s family history is rather immaterial for us, isn’t it?

  Marilyn belonged to that curious category of women who know their own mind. Regardless of the subject, she could always keep from voicing the slightest uncertain opinion. It was the same when it came to her beauty: every morning, she rose with stardom on her face. Perfectly sure of herself, she always sat in the first row, sometimes trying to undermine male teachers by playfully using her obvious charms to deflect issues of geopolitics. When she entered a room, men fantasized immediately, and women instinctively detested her. She was the subject of every fantasy, which ended up getting on her nerves. Then she came up with a brilliant inspiration for throwing cold water on their enthusiasm: going out with the most insignificant boy. This would unnerve the males, and reassure the girls. Markus was the lucky elect, without understanding why the center of the universe was suddenly taking an interest in him. It was like the United States inviting Liechtenstein to lunch. She showered some compliments on him, claimed she looked at him a lot.

  “But how can you see me? I’m always at the back of the class, and you’re always in the first row.”

  “The back of my neck told me everything. There are eyes in the back of my neck,” said Marilyn.

  Their understanding was born from this exchange.

  An understanding that set tongues wagging. That evening, they left high school together under the flabbergasted eyes of everybody. During that period in time, Markus’s self-awareness was still not very acute. He knew he had a rather unattractive body, but being with a pretty woman didn’t strike him as uncanny. He’d always heard, “Women aren’t as superficial as men; for them looks count less. The important thing is to be cultured and amusing.” So he’d studied a lot of things and tried to offer proof of his mind. With some success, it should be said; so that his pockmarked face nearly withdrew behind what you’d call a certain charm.

  But this charm was shattered when the issue of sex came up. Marilyn certainly had made a lot of effort, but the day when he tried to touch her wonderful breasts, she couldn’t control her hand, and her five fingers landed on Markus’s astonished cheek. He turned around to look at himself in a mirror and was stupefied by the appearance of red on his white skin. He would always remember this red and associate the color with rejection. Marilyn tried to excuse herself by claiming the gesture had been impulsive, but Markus understood what wasn’t being put into words. Something animal and visceral: he disgusted her. He looked at her and began to weep. Each body has its own way of expressing itself.

  This was the first time that he cried in front of a woman.

  He obtained the Swedish version of an associate’s degree and decided to leave for France. A country where the women weren’t Marilyn. He’d been hurt by this first romantic episode and had developed a sense of self-protection. Maybe he would follow some path in life that was an alternative to the world of sexuality. He was afraid of suffering, of not being desired, for valid reasons. He was fragile, but had no idea that fragility could be touching to a woman. After three years of urban-style loneliness, despairing of ever finding love, he decided to take part in a speed-dating session. He’d have a chance to meet seven women and talk to each for seven minutes. An infinitely brief time for someone like him: he thought he would need a minimum of a century to convince a sampling of the opposite sex to follow him on the limited path of his life. But something strange happened: during the first encounter, he had the feeling of something in common. The girl’s name was Alice,g and she worked in a pharmacyh where she was sometimes responsible for the beauty shop.i To tell the truth, it was a simple enough situation: both of them were so uncomfortable with the proceedings that they were able to relax with each other. As a result, their encounter was ideally uncomplicated. After the speed-dating sequence, they hooked up again to extend their seven minutes. Which became days, and then months.

  But their story didn’t last out the year. Markus adored Alice but didn’t love her. Even more importantly, he wasn’t attracted to her enough. What a dreadful predicament: for once he’d met someone good, and he absolutely wasn’t in love with her. Are we always condemned to the incomplete? During the weeks their relationship lasted, he made some headway in learning about being a couple. He discovered its strengths and its capacity for feeling loved. Because Alice fell madly in love with him. It bordered on the disturbing for someone who’d only known maternal love (and not even that, really). There was something very sweet and quietly moving about Markus, a mixture of a kind of strength that reassured and a weakness that melted your heart. And it was exactly that weakness that made him put off the inevitable—leaving Alice. But that is what he finally did one morning. The young woman’s suffering wounded him in a remarkably intense way. Perhaps more than his own suffering. He couldn’t resist weeping, but he knew it was the right decision. He preferred being alone to digging a larger pit between their hearts.

  This was the second time he cried in front of a woman.

  For almost two years nothing happened in his life. He’d begun to miss Alice. Especially during subsequent speed-dating sessions, which were especially disappointing—not to say humiliating—when some girls didn’t even make the effort to talk to him. As a result, he decided not to go to any more. Had he perhaps given up all thought of living with someone? He was beginning to see nothing interesting about it at this point. After all, there were millions of single people. He could do without a woman. But he was telling himself this as a rationalization, to keep from t
hinking about how unhappy his situation made him. He dreamed so much about a female body, and sometimes he wore himself out thinking that he’d always be denied it from now on. That he’d lost his passport to beauty.

  And suddenly, Natalie had kissed him. His supervisor and an obvious source of fantasy. Then she’d explained to him that it hadn’t existed. So he’d just have to get used to it. It wasn’t such a big deal, really. Yet he’d wept. Yes, tears had flowed from his eyes, and that had deeply surprised him. Unexpected tears. Was he that fragile? No, that wasn’t it. He’d taken a worse clobbering many times before. It was just that he’d been especially moved by this kiss; not just for the obvious reason that Natalie was beautiful, but also because of the madness of her action. No one had ever kissed him like that without making an appointment with his lips. That was the magic that had moved him to tears. And now, to the bitter tears of disappointment.

  Forty-eight

  That Friday evening, as he left, he was really glad to be able to take refuge in the weekend. He was going to use Saturday and Sunday as two thick blankets. He didn’t want to do anything, didn’t even feel like reading. So he put himself in front of the television. That was how he ended up witnessing the speech of the American candidate for president, Barack Obama, on election night in the United States. As Obama himself admitted, he hadn’t been the likeliest candidate. Compared to the other front-runners, he hadn’t much money behind him or that many corporate endorsements. It was the people, rather than the political machines, who were going to lead him to victory. And he had galvanized all of them with a simple statement: “Yes, we can.” What a fabulous statement, thought Markus. Obama went on to talk about the challenges, setbacks, and false starts he and his supporters would inevitably face. And then he began describing a 106-year-old black woman, born just a generation past slavery, who’d stood in line in Atlanta on election night and cast her ballot. Obama said that, like all of us, she’d seen heartache and hope. And then he repeated the same simple statement, “Yes, we can.” After that, he went on to mention all the trials and challenges that his country had faced in the twentieth century, from the First World War to the Great Depression to putting a man on the moon, and he summed it all up once again with the simple sentence, “Yes, we can.”