I’m already always travelling. I’m walking in Berne, looking for the all-too-famous Bear Pit. I go down Kramgasse from the Clock Tower toward Nydegg Bridge. My footsteps on the cobblestones echo all the way to the arcades. The rich, elegant women are coming out of the shops. My jeans are dirty and my sweater is worn at the wrists. I’m suddenly very keenly aware of all this. But still, Jon turns when I go by.
Bärengraben, the Bear Pit. Ill at ease, I watch the Japanese tourists throwing candy and the old men who go there every day to visit the animals. When I start out on the path down to the bank of the Aare, I spot the Norwegian man walking on the bridge up ahead. I think of my pony tail—I don’t dare check if it’s neatly tied back—of my sweater that’s just a bit too short, and of my ass that’s too conspicuous. In the Bärenplatz the next day, I walk by the terraces of the cafés glancing quickly at the menus to find a sandwich and an espresso at a reasonable price. Someone is waiting up ahead, motionless in the blinding light of noon. A gust of wind tears a menu from my hands and I run to catch it, laughing, a little embarrassed, under the waiter’s stern gaze. I decide to sit down there so as not to irritate him further. Jon the Norwegian has had time to leave his lookout post and come over and take the next table. He teases me gently. I don’t know what to say to him. Despite its hard features, his face is so gentle that I’m already disarmed.
“Three times in two days,” I say to him. “This town is really small.”
“You think so?”
And for the first time in my life, I feel a deep turmoil. Not the little quiver within that occurs when a cute guy peeks at my breasts. Nor even the agitation I feel, opening my legs for a man I love while watching, fascinated, the clumsy approach of his orgasm. No, a really deep turmoil. The kind that sticks its hand down your throat and crushes your belly from within. A turmoil that worries you because you might act on it, you’re no longer completely sure of being able to keep from saying that you want it now, right away, there, suddenly, down deep, letting your head go every which way and begging, demanding, commanding, so much do you want to drown in this huge desire without a single second’s fear of being seen as something that he won’t be able to control, that he won’t be able to hold and contain with his arms, his hands, his hips, his mouth.
I come from that huge turmoil of having felt, once in my life, the inner command to go down on my knees in front of a man, to offer my mouth to his sex and my head to his hands, and to obey. And to do the same with my whole life. To offer it to him on the sole condition that he continue every second to give everything its due weight, its due gravity, and that life reveal itself as it is, neither happier nor sadder, just as it is in reality.
I come from the day in June when the oncologist came to tell me that Jon had died in the night, that his great heart, exhausted by pain and morphine, had given out. And I couldn’t stop thinking about the suede gloves he’d forgotten at my house, the right glove over the left one, on the hall table. An absurd sight in the middle of June. I had said to him once in a taxi, “I’ll go get your gloves, you’re going to be cold,” but he hadn’t wanted me to. He’d put his hands between my thighs to warm them up. He wasn’t able to warm himself anymore. The air, time, the wind already went right through him.
The oncologist was explaining what to do, and like an idiot, I was worrying about the gloves. What should I do with them? Maybe I could send them to his brother? And I imagined the suede gloves small in the huge baggage compartment of a plane, itself minuscule in the Scandinavian sky. Then I saw them on Terje’s hands, moving through the air of Bergen, Norway, to the rhythm of his walk in Nygardsparken. That’s how it happened to me, how the death of my love hit me, beginning with the gloves. And the circle gradually expanded. The gloves brought with them his pants folded on their hangers, and then the well-pressed shirts. And the circle expanded further to include the dresser, the underwear, the sweaters, the t-shirts, his whole wardrobe. Then the dresser brought the bed. There would no longer be his hands in the gloves nor his broad shoulders in his shirts nor his hand on my hip while I slept nor his sex asleep or awake against my ass, there would no longer be his warm, regular breath on my neck. And with the bed all the rest of the bedroom was sucked away, no longer his body coming and going from the bedroom, bending over me, turning away from me, getting up after love. Billions of photos stored, billions of Jons everywhere, everywhere. And from there the stairs and next the dining room, the living room, the kitchen in the morning light, him at the table and at the back door and on the deck and in the garden bare-chested and, very quickly, the street, the block, the neighbourhood, the entire city, restaurants, shops, movie theatres, trees, signs, streetlights, sidewalks, then the rest of the world like a trail of napalm, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Estonia, Ukraine, England, France, Scotland, Mali, Guinea, Tibet, China.
I left the hospital and there was nothing but his absence everywhere, in the centre of everything, in the nucleus of every atom. The entire universe was broken, damaged, torn apart because of this void that now surrounded every particle.
I found myself at the plant nursery. By taxi, probably. And then in the car of a man I didn’t know, an employee. I had broken down in grief because I couldn’t manage to buy a tree. I was angry with myself, I felt I was weak for not being able to at least do that—choose it and put it in a cart or simply ask a clerk to take it to the cash for me. But just the thought of opening my purse and taking out my wallet was beyond my strength. I had gone as far as the deciduous section and I didn’t know how to get back to the parking lot. I saw all that distance stretching out ahead of me. And this man came and made everything simple. He took me by the arm and led me to a bench, and it’s true, once I was sitting down, things were simpler. I felt better near him. He urged me to get up and helped me go a little further and sit down in his car. My address came out as a reflex. And I felt still better in the car. Better nearer to him, alone with him. I didn’t look at him, I didn’t speak to him, in fact I wasn’t interested in him, just in his presence. Beside him, I approached the state I had still been in a few hours earlier—Jon’s wife. If I didn’t look at him or listen to what he was saying to me or especially to the timbre of his voice, I could go back in time to before that fateful moment in the hospital when I had dissolved into thin air.
I began to hope.
“Take me to the movies, please.”
In the dark, my head occupied elsewhere, I might perhaps be able to connect completely with the past. We had to rush because the movie was already starting, and it was so much like real life! The man ran behind me and it was even better that way, I didn’t have his silhouette to bring me back to reality, only the awareness of a presence that could have been the one I desired. The darkness of the theatre did the rest. I chose a row, a little excited, even smiling, I disturbed people, I found us two seats, and I even said something out loud as I sat down. The images and the music drew me in. I was once again that woman who loves a man and who is loved by him. I believed it could last forever.
The next day, late in the morning, the same man came into my backyard with a young decorative almond tree and a shovel. He was holding the tree in one hand, with the roots against him. For a second, I imagined that the tree had sprouted from his belly like some marvellous excrescence. I tied my dressing gown and opened the back door.
“You shouldn’t have … ”
I offered him coffee, but he refused, he didn’t want to trouble me—as if anything or anyone could still trouble me. I put the water on to boil and went and got dressed. It was the first time in seventeen years that I’d got dressed for no particular reason, just so as not to expose my nakedness to the world. I grabbed whatever I found, avoiding looking at myself in the mirror. I hurriedly tied my hair and picked up my sunglasses and went out with two cups of coffee. He thanked me. I sat down on the steps of the deck in the slanting rays of the sun and I watched him plant the almond tree. We didn’t speak. I watched his powerful hands w
orking with assurance and yet a great deal of tenderness. Loving hands, I said to myself, firm, strong, but loving. A father’s hands.
He left, wishing me good luck. His cup of coffee sat there on the edge of the deck for two days. I looked at it sometimes from the kitchen window.
Jon had left me a lot of money. I quit my job and started travelling again. Learning to wander the world again. Letting my solitude radiate everywhere, Japan, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Australia, walking eight hours a day in order to say here I am, with my nuclear solitude, my core that keeps bursting and my lethal cloud that could suck you all in. Whatever the city, I thought of our warm bodies, naked or clothed, joined or separate, our two bodies like laboratory specimens in a preservative solution. Organs of purplish flesh floating peacefully. My skinned body turning, following his skinned body with my eyes. Even in death, mine I mean, the one that comes every second since he’s been gone, even in dissection, even under the scalpels of those seeking to know what our desire was made of, I kept my eyes fixed on him.
From time to time, a stranger would appear in my garden to make sure the almond tree was healthy and growing. He also took the opportunity to look at the lawn, the flowers and the shrubs. He gave them his love freely, moving among them with ease, touching them, speaking to them in a low voice. Who benefited the most, the plants, him, or me?
If he caught me at the window, he would just wave. If I opened the door to speak to him, he’d answer politely and take the opportunity to announce that it would soon be necessary to fertilize this plant or prune that one. After a while, I ended up going with him on his rounds. I asked him questions about what he was looking at, what he was looking for, and he patiently explained everything in detail. If I discovered a suspicious spot on a leaf or a new insect clinging to a stem, I’d take it to the nursery for his verdict. He’d recommend the appropriate treatment, and I would carefully apply it. Several days or weeks later, he would appear in the garden to see if the problem had been solved. And over time, over three years in fact, by following and asking questions, I ended up learning a lot. Every morning I’d go out barefoot in the dew and find the calm of my garden. I spent several hours a day caring for my plants or just being there. My solitude remained, but it was tangled up with the solitude of the trees.
Seen from the outside, Édouard’s life had hardly changed when his wife left. At any rate, everything between us was the same. He’d come by the house from time to time or I’d see him at the nursery, that was all. Except his view of landscaping was gradually changing. Sometimes he would suggest removing a species that was too ornamental and replacing it with one that was wilder or that was native, to use his term. His way of moving around among the plants had also changed. He no longer had the assurance of a healer, but rather the hesitancy and attentiveness of someone searching. It was during this time that I surprised him lying on the ground under the almond tree with his ear pressed to the trunk, looking up at the foliage.
The day my father died, I went to the nursery to buy a second tree. When I told Édouard the news, he hugged me. In six years, that was the first physical contact we had. A few months later, on a stormy night, I took his arm as we were leaving a restaurant. He didn’t bat an eye. I think things were unfolding at a pace that suited him. Today, ten years later, we could touch each other without restraint, simply following our impulse. Especially me, I’d say. In fact, yes, I tended to be the one who’d put a hand on his thigh or plant a kiss on his cheek. With time, we had become the only source of contact and warmth for one another.
Édouard had a way of being close to me—even brushing up against me sometimes—without ever desiring me, which might have been disturbing to another woman but suited me perfectly. He sought my presence, he wanted my body by his side, but he didn’t lust after me. The feeling was mutual. A few times, however, for no apparent reason, my mind had raced faster than I would have liked and sexual images had appeared to me—but always briefly and without arousal. Once, for example, on a hot summer day, when I was walking toward him at the nursery, before seeing me, he’d tilted his head back and taken a deep breath, and for a fraction of a second, I’d seen him moving between my legs, his eyes half closed, about to come inside me. I wondered if he thought of me while masturbating. I even wondered if he masturbated at all. At any rate, his quiet presence satisfied me completely.
Then he introduced me to Michel and Claire. I liked them right away, mainly because of their love for him. It was as a result of these encounters that my view of Édouard began to change. He talked more, so I was able to learn about his ideas, his childhood, the women he’d loved—including the mysterious Betty. I was at his side, always ready to defend him against Michel’s sometimes clumsy attacks. At these moments, he and I could reach a level of understanding that was positively disconcerting. We gave the impression of being a couple. That awoke something in me, but it wasn’t love.
One evening when Édouard came by to pick me up, when I saw him park his car in the driveway, I instinctively smoothed my pants over my bum. At the very moment I was doing this, I saw myself from the outside. What I saw in that fraction of a second was an aging woman who had deserted her body, abandoned it. I could spend hours caring for the physical, palpable mass of a shrub, but I had neglected my own mass, my own substance. Over the years, I had put up a wall around me, and this gesture of smoothing my pants over my bum was the long-awaited sign that I didn’t want to stay walled up forever.
The day I let Édouard sleep at the house, I had already been afraid for a while. I hadn’t visited him in the hospital because that fear was spreading and touching me in new places. I was terrified by the thought of what might happen in my heart when I saw him. I kept saying to myself, “no, it’s not possible, I can’t let myself get caught.” I already missed the tranquillity of my withdrawal and I thought of Jon with an intensity I hadn’t felt for a long time. That evening, the telephone rang. I recognized Édouard’s number on the call display and my heart started to race. I hadn’t intended to answer, but at the third ring, I asked myself what it was that was bothering me so much. And it was Michel, asking, “What do you think of the samba, Simone?”
I turned on the faucets of the bathtub and sat on the edge watching it fill. This everyday act suddenly felt like a rite of passage. I got into the water and washed my fifty-four-year-old woman’s body with care, as if to get closer to it. I dried myself slowly, looking at myself in the mirror with a stranger’s eyes. My breasts had sagged over the past ten years, but they could still be quite sexy. Especially when I squeezed them between my forearms or cupped them in my hands. My nipples were nice and perky, and I liked their size. I had once been an excellent lover. I knew how to do things. Above all, I knew how to forget everything—shyness, scruples, shame—and let myself be swept away by desire. With the right partner, I was ready to go anywhere, into the shadowy areas as well as the bright light.
I chose my clothes carefully. Putting on an old pair of panties—they were all I had—I told myself I’d have to take them off discreetly, without being seen. In the car, I took the bottle of wine Édouard handed me. I knew exactly why I needed that swig. I looked at his face, so strangely serene, as he abandoned himself to the caress of the wind, his eyes closed. His distress was temporarily soothed and his wild body clothed in a nice civilized suit. He would have to bring to the emptiness of my bed his special connection with the things of the earth, and what he was learning about the invisible world day after day.
From that moment on, my every action took superhuman effort. But when Édouard undressed in front of me, and when his penis swelled in my mouth, I realized I had forgotten Jon a long time ago. It was in mourning for myself that I had been shut away. I had been keeping vigil over my own body for ten years, tending to my remains by murmuring low masses and lighting the same lamps again and again, day after day.
I dozed off for a few minutes, and when I woke up, Édouard was gone. I looked for him in the house. I l
ooked out the kitchen window, thinking I’d find him in the garden. To no avail.
I took a few more steps, trying to define what I was feeling. Was I anxious about his disappearance? My mind wouldn’t respond, as if suddenly my body wanted to monopolize the space. I still had the exact feeling of Édouard’s penis inside me. The space he had opened a few minutes before hadn’t completely closed up again. My breasts were so sensitive that just the touch of the air aroused me. I sat down on the couch with the cold leather against the hot skin of my thighs, my bum, my back. A thousand little electric sensations sizzled and crackled on the surface of my body. I felt them all with such precision that I burst out laughing.
I come from far away.
11
I SWITCHED OFF THE HEADLIGHTS before turning into the parking lot. That’s the advantage of having an old car—in recent models, the lights go on as soon as you turn on the ignition. It’s handy when you’re planning to break in somewhere. I cut the engine and got out. No alarm system, just barbed wire charmingly festooning the top of the metal fence—but I was used to that.
I was on the other side in no time. I went down the annuals aisle to the shed in back and got to work. Picked up a bag of fertilizer, threw it over my shoulder, trotted about fifty metres and dropped it on the ground. On the ten or eleventh trip, with my heart starting to pound in my ears, I thought of the nurse with the electrodes. I would have liked her to see what I was capable of, night after day, without a wink of sleep, spurred on only by desperation.
The storage shed was of average size, and since the various piles of bags weren’t very high, sound travelled freely. My breathing, the sound of my footsteps, the rustling of my clothes and the grunting accompanying my effort echoed from the corrugated metal and hung in the air. The fifty-metre distance seemed like a race through myself. I was both inside myself and outside. The stuff of humanity crossing the stuff of sound. Completely soaked under my suit, I had no intention of stopping until I dropped to my knees. Anything so as not to think about what had just happened.
A Slight Case of Fatigue Page 7