A maître d’ comes toward me. I beat a retreat, go back to the linden tree that hid me before. The jealousy I’m feeling is not even violent. It’s an abyss, a freefall. How many lovers does she have? How many men is she going to bring into my life? Is the one she moved into Rue de Duras already not enough for her? How many times is she going to kill me in someone else’s arms? She’s sick, she has certainly gone insane, and it smoldered during all those years of silence, spats, depression hidden beneath conjugal boredom. I know what the breaking point was – the slap over the Jenny Jones Show – but what is the real root of the problem? Getting fired from her law office, for which she never gave me a convincing reason? My expeditions without her to every forest on earth? Or the routine of my hours in the lab fifty miles from our home? Every time I found her acting strange, in the evening, she fended off my questions by asking me how my research was coming, and she looked so fascinated at first that I didn’t even see the subterfuge. I told her about my insights, my experiments, my amazing discoveries; she seemed thrilled, and it was enough to reassure me about her. Convinced that I was her dream man, I slept peacefully.
The photographer leaves first, with a half-smile, his camera over his shoulder. He straddles a scooter marked ‘Press’. Three minutes later, she leaves the hotel in turn and heads back toward the subway, with the same expression as when she arrived. I follow in her steps, automatically, without trying to understand where this boy came from, why their meeting was so short, why she seems so indifferent, concerned only with her image in the shop windows.
I speed up to overtake her, then change my mind. Not here. Not as someone trailing her. Not in a position of strength.
At Champs-Elysées-Clémenceau, I get off the instant the doors open, run as fast as I can to the exit, and stop at the end of the platform in front of a vending machine, which I lean against. I hunch over, arms folded, giving myself the extinguished look of someone who has been there for hours, who isn’t waiting for anything in particular, who has lost all hope. I spot her raincoat in the crowd. I raise my eyes as she approaches, notice her as if in surprise.
‘Liz!’
She freezes. She didn’t jump, or barely. She lets a group of people pass, then comes up to me. I can see in her eyes that she’s going to call me ‘sir’, ask me to leave her alone or she’ll yell for the cops.
‘I’ve understood, Liz. I know why you’re doing this.’
Her face relaxes. Then she frowns, suppresses a gesture of annoyance, pretends not to follow. Four completely contradictory ways of reacting. As if it were up to me to choose, validate one of these possible attitudes.
‘Why I’m doing what?’
The question doesn’t commit her to anything, asked in a neutral tone that can mean resentment just as well as defiance. I plunge forward, in one burst.
‘You don’t know me anymore, you’ve replaced me, fine. We had become strangers, it’s true. The only thing still holding us together was our memories, everything that was strong between us in the beginning. So suddenly you have a chance to destroy all that and you go for it: you erase me, deny me, okay, but why, Liz? Why? To give me back my freedom, or to make me realize what I’m losing?’
There is no support in the look she gives me, no echo. She listens, registers, waits.
‘I’m asking your forgiveness, Elizabeth. I can change. I’m going to prove to you that I can be different. Just give me a chance …’
‘Did you come from the apartment?’
That’s all she’s worried about. I’ve got it now. I shake my head, tell her that I didn’t dare try to force my way in again, go through more hostility, rejection, ridicule. She digs her hands into the pockets of her raincoat, looks for the truth in my eyes. She wants to make sure I haven’t seen the impostor again. Or that I didn’t follow her. My disarmed look, making no claim and ready to do anything to get back in her good graces, should comfort her.
‘What’s all this bullshit?’
She has spoken in a low voice, her head to one side, almost as if she were addressing another part of me. She insists:
‘What game are you playing? Are you fucking with me? You getting even?’
Her tone is clear, without hostility, without reproach, with an incomprehension that sounds authentic. Once more I lose my footing.
‘Liz … am I your husband or not?’
She makes no sign of impatience, no movement to leave, none of the reactions I would have expected. She stares at me, undecided, serious. As if she had to think before answering the question, deciding what her behavior should be. She suddenly grabs me by the wrist, with a vigor that takes me back years.
‘I can’t, Martin.’
‘You can’t what?’
She looks around, nervous.
‘I don’t have a choice.’
‘Is he threatening you? Is that it?’
She nods, her lips shut.
‘If you don’t play along, he’ll come after you? Is he making you talk? But what about?’
‘I can’t answer that.’
‘And who is he?’
‘I can’t tell you anything, Martin. It’s bigger than us. All I want is for us both to get out in one piece. All right?’
The mix of supplication and hope in her voice leaves me shattered. She’s saying whatever comes into her head, she’s improvizing; I don’t get the feeling she’s in danger. On the other hand, she seems genuinely concerned for me. It even appears she’s trying to protect me.
‘What am I supposed to do, Liz?’
‘Lie low, just until Saturday, and everything will be okay.’
‘Why Saturday?’
‘I’ll explain everything afterward, but keep out of sight until then, don’t talk to anyone, don’t try to prove who you are. Promise?’
‘So what’s the goal? To keep me from working at the INRA against GMOs?’
A shudder that she suppresses, a hesitation in her eye, once again. Like incredulity.
I venture, ‘I mean, this is crazy! There are easier ways of keeping me quiet. No? Unless it’s something else. If it’s not Monsanto, then who is it?’
She gives my arm a squeeze, then lets her hand drop.
‘We’ll get out of this, Martin, I promise. But stay out of sight. I love you.’
And she is perfectly believable. Her eyes crinkling, lips pressed together, chin quivering. I remember her kissing the photographer, letting him rub up against her. I say, ‘All right.’
‘Do you need money?’
She has already opened her handbag, slips her credit card into my pocket.
‘Where did you sleep?’
I give a vague wave toward the benches on which bums continue to sleep off their night. She sighs, shaking her head, as if she blamed me for the situation I’ve gotten into because of her.
‘Get a room at the Terrass.’
Those two syllables bring back the hotel on the corner above the Montmartre cemetery, the suite where we made love for twenty-four hours straight. It was our first trip to Paris. Our first vacation as lovers. I see her again in panties and a shirt, yesterday morning, standing in the hall, looking at me like some mistake. I see the other man in my pajamas, telling me to leave her alone and throwing me out of their home …
‘I want to know one thing, Liz. Is it because of me, or because of him?’
‘Of him?’
‘Is he someone you were seeing, who wormed his way into your life by blackmail? Did you discover when it was too late that he was unbalanced, some guy who thought he was me, who wanted to get rid of me so he could take my place?’
She turns away, tightens her lips while staring at the train arriving at the platform across the tracks. I sense that I’ve hit the mark – or else she’s trying to make me believe I did, to divert me from Monsanto. She hasn’t answered any of my questions. And she gave me her Visa card so they can trace me if I use it.
‘Let me handle this. I’ll meet you Saturday at the Terrass. Trust me, Martin.’
&
nbsp; A final glance, deep into my eyes, as if to reawaken everything that once bound us together. That expression, that glimmer of appeal … I don’t understand. It’s not love, but friendship. The memory of complicity, of unspoken understanding, of fraternity through thick and thin. The opposite of our story. Of our passion that died from misunderstanding, deceit, pretense.
I suddenly clasp her to me, crush my lips against her mouth. She kisses me casually, studiously, with good will. Nothing. I don’t recognize anything, not her tongue, not her body pressed against mine, nor the hands frozen on the nape of my neck. I have a clone in my arms. A clone with no emotion, no desire, no reference points. A robot who kisses me as if I were the photographer from a while ago, or the stranger under the national debt … It’s exasperating. I feel like smacking her, like that Monday morning in Greenwich, the only time I ever raised a hand to her.
‘What are you thinking about?’
I tell her. She raises her eyebrows. I give her my version of the fight, damning myself as much as I can, in the hope of lessening the violence I feel toward her. She listens to me, eyes staring, lips parted. It’s as if she doesn’t remember the scene. In spite of myself, I brush aside her fringe. The scar is where it should be.
‘Get a grip on yourself, goddammit!’ she hisses, shaking me. ‘This isn’t the time!’
‘Then where did you get that scar?’
Her eyes narrow.
‘A sliver of glass, in Manhattan, on October second. Okay? The eyeglasses. You with me?’
‘It was the lamp in the living room, Liz. When I pushed you down. Why do you refuse to … ?’
‘Enough!’
The people waiting on the platform look at us with curiosity, distrust, fatigue.
‘Go to the Terrass Hotel, Martin, I’m begging you. And wait for me there. I love you.’
She hasn’t said that to me in eight years, and here this makes twice in five minutes. I watch her silhouette walk away under the vaulted ceiling, head to the exit stairs, return to its life without me. I was expecting anything, but not this reversal of the situation. She accused me in public of not being me, when she’s the one who has become someone else. Aside from her looks and her perfume, she is nothing like the woman with whom I spent the last decade.
I dig for a coin, slide it into the vending machine, swallow a Coke in small gulps with my eyes closed. What is she trying to do? Neutralize me, mix me up, make me feel tender? She didn’t follow up on anything, pursue any arguments or explain any of her statements; she gave only hints, and didn’t even try to convince me. She merely echoed back my theories, telling me to lie low. The only time she seemed completely sincere was in that look of fraternal comradeship that isn’t based on anything.
9
The secretary asked me to wait for a few moments. I’ve been sitting for a quarter of an hour between an iron sculpture and the court’s ruling against a brand of cigarettes, framed under glass, with the amount of damages underlined in yellow.
The detective emerges from his office accompanying a female client, comes back to apologize to the man who showed up after me: he’ll be with him in three minutes. He points me to his office.
I leave the waiting room with a bad feeling that is verified as soon as the bald man sits down. He pulls a file from the stack at his left, opens it, and states in a neutral tone, ‘You don’t exist.’
I look straight back at him, my mouth dry. He spreads out the documents before him and continues.
‘What should I begin with? Your birth? No one named Martin Harris came into the world on 9 September 1960.’
I reply, sitting in the chair that he hasn’t offered me, ‘And who told you that?’
‘Public records. Nor did any Franklin and Susan Harris work at Disney World or at Coney Island. You did not marry Elizabeth Lacarrière on 13 April 1992, in Greenwich. Number 255 Sawmill Lane, where you claim to live, is in fact a sawmill, and the Environmental Science Center on Sachem Street at Yale, whose laboratory you’ve supposedly headed since 1990, was not even built until last year. Shall I go on?’
Huddled against the armrest, a cold sweat in my collar, I open my mouth to defend myself. He takes another document.
‘The legal department of Monsanto has never heard of you. On the other hand, we found five treatises on botany published under the name of Martin Harris, as well as his deposition concerning testimony from plants, given before the court of Madison, Wisconsin, in 1998 – except that Martin Harris died the following year. Your social security number corresponds to a man with the same name, an electrician in Kansas.’
He raises his eyes, rests his elbows on the papers, and joins his fingertips.
‘In short, you were never born, your family doesn’t exist, none of your colleagues recognized your photo, and your botanical discoveries were made by someone else.’
He closes my file and pushes it toward me.
‘Conclusion: you owe me one thousand three hundred euros. I’d prefer it in cash.’
I stand up, regain my wits, and tell him there must be some mistake.
‘That’s not my problem. You hired me to verify information, my correspondents have done so, I’m handing you the proof, and here is my invoice: you pay it and we’re done. The rest is none of my concern, is that clear? The report is yours to do with as you please. I have no wish to know what kind of scam you’re trying to pull, or if you’re just some joker who likes to waste people’s time. Pay up and get out.’
Calmly, my hands raised, my tone reasonable, I try to explain to him that the results of his investigation confirm the thesis of a plot against me: they have erased my existence even in the government’s computers … But nothing moves on his face. I undo the strap of my Rolex and place it on his desk.
‘If this is as fake as the rest …’
I don’t answer. He picks up the watch, turns it over, looks for the hallmark, puts it in his drawer. It was worth four thousand dollars six months ago, for my tenth wedding anniversary.
‘Goodbye, Mr Harris. And congratulations on your acting talent. You missed your calling.’
I stand up, take the documents, and leave as he starts into the next file. My hand on the doorknob, I turn around.
‘Are you sure about your investigators?’
‘What would we get out of lying to you?’
I walked in the streets, mechanically, without seeing anything, my head empty, squeezing under my arm the file that reduced my forty years on this earth to nothing. The rain fell harder and harder. I went into a McDonald’s, bought some fries, and took some paper napkins to wipe off the file. I read the research reports, the investigators’ notes. Everything was false. Leaving aside the mistakes in my personal information, intentional or not, nothing corresponded to my memory, and I knew that was correct. A recollection can be mistaken, one can interpret reality, lie to oneself, but not when it concerns the basic touchstones of one’s life or the details that support them.
One aberration among so many others: the investigator claims that, of the two Figure 8s at Coney Island, the Thunderbolt was the one they demolished, and the Cyclone has been classified an historic monument since 1991. I don’t know how he could have confused the two, but for me it’s as if he had said that the Twin Towers were still standing, and that the terrorists had destroyed the Empire State Building. I can still see the surroundings, the decrepit charm of Coney Island at dawn with its closed rides, the seagulls flying around the yellow-and-red pylon of the Parachute Jump, the teenagers between fixes, and the old Russians in electric wheelchairs rolling toward the dock with their fishing rods. I see the roped-up workmen unbolting the Cyclone’s rails, my father’s desolate look in the square of plastic turf in front of the brick house as he watched the last scrap of his life being dismantled. Watchman over a closed ride. Responsible for a heap of scrap iron sold by the ton that the steel mills would come fetch someday.
At first I think the investigator simply hasn’t bothered visiting the sites, but next in the l
ist of errors he claims to have discovered comes John Dewey High School. He’s turned the wooden school building on the edge of the dunes into a brown warehouse surrounded by barbed wire, between the elevated train and the air-conditioned tenements of South Brooklyn. Why this confusion? Carelessness, or a deliberate attempt to blur my reference points, my awareness of the past, my internal logic? What he’s describing is Rubinstein and Klein, the department store opposite Bay 50th Street station on the W line, where I worked for two months before my father got me the job at Nathan’s. I know better than he does – it’s my life! I’m the one who spent all those years between Coney Island and the depths of Brooklyn: those graffitied walls next to a river of garbage, those trailers next to the houses beneath dented air conditioners, those fire escapes that crumble into rust when you’re kissing beneath them – that’s my youth! Who does this nameless person think he is to challenge my past and mix up all the names, dates, and places? And if he did it on purpose, then why?
As for my department at Yale that supposedly wasn’t built until 2001, I give up. Could I have dreamed all those mornings for eleven years when I parked my Ford next to the Old Campus and walked up the hill to the Environmental Science Center, beneath the maple trees of Hillhouse Avenue? Could I have lived all those years in a sawmill without realizing it, married to a woman I never wed?
There’s at least one positive side to these three pages of denials: if my biography is only a heap of lies and deceptions, then the man living in Paris with my name is as much a fake as I am. It gives me a brief feeling of revenge against those who chose to believe him, but it doesn’t change the problem. The proof that that Martin Harris is false doesn’t make me any more authentic. For some reason I can’t fathom, this report makes us both out to be impostors. But I don’t believe so much confusion can be unintentional. How can I explain that no one recognized my picture, in Greenwich or at Yale, other than by the investigator’s ill will? The question is to know who is trying to erase my existence, remove my life from the record, destroy me in the eyes of the world – and destroy me in duplicate.
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