Who You Think I Am

by Camille Laurens

  I laugh, nod my head.

  “So it’s a deal, then.”

  I ask for his phone number, and he takes mine.

  “Oh, I have to get off here,” he says.

  “I’ll call you,” I say as he gathers his things.

  “Cool, glad I met you. Speak soon.” And he steps off. I watch him walk along the platform with his bag on his back. As the train sets off again I notice a rose wrapped in cellophane in the metal trash can, tragicomic in this incongruous vase. Is that a bad omen? I don’t even consider it. I think he likes me. I catch sight of myself and my blue-gray eyes in the black window. Yes, he likes me.

  We very soon moved in together—or rather he immediately came to live at my place. He couldn’t afford to pay Paris rents and I had the space, particularly when the kids weren’t there. I’d always promised myself that never again would I make the conjugal mistake of sharing a bedroom. I wanted to preserve the virginal, intense feeling I had when we first kissed, just after the photo session. We stood over his camera temple to temple, looking at the portraits he’d taken, and we turned to face each other at the same moment; our lips touched softly, then his tongue probed my mouth, inside my mouth…He left quite soon after that, he had a meeting. Oh, let it happen again, let it be just as powerful, both slower and faster than normal time, like an accelerated slow motion of the pulse of life, an ephemeral sense of eternity, oh, give me back this beginning again! It was in the hopes of recreating that first time every time that I adapted the living room for Chris to use. If he feels free, he’ll stay, I thought. Love means staying when you have the option to leave. I put the TV into the dining room for the kids, I bought a sofa bed and a desk so he could work on his photographs, he put a sort of Japanese screen between the two rooms, hung his few clothes in my closet, and our life together began. We actually slept together almost every night, mostly in my bed, occasionally on the sofa, I sometimes went and joined him in the middle of the night, waking him with my caresses, he always responded, I attached a lot of importance to his pleasure because it can be confused with love.

  “I can feel your love,” he would say when he was close to climaxing in my mouth, and he’d whisper “my love” in my ear before we fell asleep in each other’s arms, as every coupling reinforced our growing knowledge of each other. But I would often leave again in the early hours, afraid that my puffy eyes and unmade-up face would remind him of what he seemed to forget. And while I pretended to scoff at women’s masquerading, I maintained a carefully affected naturalness, a youthfulness that matched how young I felt inside.

  He asked me to call him Chris rather than Christophe, not knowing I’d been calling him Chris for months, that I murmured his name to myself twenty times a day, and to my pillow, like a teenager. He very quickly took to calling me “Ever”—a silly nickname that grew out of “Clever Claire.” “Ever, my forever, let’s run away forever this weekend,” he’d say when we headed to Dieppe in his car to eat mussels and fries, or we’d drive just for the pleasure of it. “You’re Ever in my dreams,” he’d whisper as he held me to him at night, or, closing his eyes and running his fingers over my face, he’d say, “Ever the mystery,” and that would make me shudder. But I swiftly batted away the thought that plagued me in the early days: he called me Ever to avoid saying the name Claire, the other girl’s name.

  We didn’t go out much, or separately, didn’t mix with each other’s friends, by tacit agreement we kept away from them. He’d sometimes dog-sit for an ex—“she’s just a friend, nothing more,” he said, laughing at my silence—and I very occasionally saw a coworker or a tennis partner but didn’t mention Chris to them. We led what could literally be called a private life. But we didn’t deprive each other of anything, and rarely of our own selves. The apartment was laid out in such a way that he could work in his corner and I in mine. I went off to teach, he went out to take photos, we were soon back home together. When the kids were there, he showed them how best to frame a shot, they listened to rock together or watched TV. I don’t know whether they really got the fact that we were together, because of the separate bedrooms, but they adored Chris—“He’s so cool,” they chorused. It’s true that his casual approach was fantastic for defusing rows. When we were alone, we’d spend ages just lying listening to music or reading, or we’d embark on complicated recipes in the kitchen only to end up in the local bistro. We got along even when there was silence between us, and there was always laughter at the end of every disagreement.

  The question of money came up and was dealt with very early on. He didn’t have any, his parents couldn’t lend him any, he got his tax credits and took on any little jobs that came his way so long as they were related to photography. I already knew all this, but I listened attentively because this was where it was all being played out, I could tell. Something that continues to be so ordinary for a woman—being financially dependent on another person, often an older man—is still an ordeal for a man. And the age difference didn’t help at all. The word “gigolo” hovered nearby, the word “cougar” threatened, they had to be dispelled. So I told him money was a movable thing, that what goes around comes around, I was the one who had it today, he would have it tomorrow, it didn’t matter. He liked this line of reasoning, it meant I believed in his talent, that I was just giving him an advance on his future success. And I did some networking to find him work: pictures of monuments, professional portraits. He meanwhile offered to put together photo portfolios for actresses, and I struggled to stifle my jealousy. He never missed an opportunity to compensate for his lack of funds with little kindnesses: a rose, some croissants, a cocktail at a bar. The rest of his earnings paid for his gas, the upkeep of his car, and his photographic materials. The crook of his neck, the place Claire Antunes had so longed to rest her lips, was soft and warm to mine.

  Two months passed like this, filled with sweet contentment. We were happy in the way you all dream of being. Then one day the trouble started, and it was my fault, entirely my fault, because I’m crazy. This is how. With my degree-level students I was looking at Tasso’s influence on European writers and artists from the sixteenth century onward (teaching, which had sometimes been burdensome to me, was now a pleasure. Everything I did seemed to be immediately balanced by Chris’s presence). So we were studying the story of Renaud and Armide as told by Tasso in Jerusalem Delivered. During the First Crusade the valiant knight Renaud is imprisoned by a beautiful pagan sorceress, Armide. She intends to kill him along with all his Christian companions, but falls in love with him. To secure his love in return, she makes him drink a magic potion which puts him entirely and lastingly in thrall to her. The knight immediately forgets his sacred mission and languishes in the wonderful life the sorceress offers him. She strips him of his armor and sword, and clothes him in sumptuous robes; she arranges feasts, games, and concerts for him, lavishes him with a thousand caresses and invents a thousand exquisite delights. Their love unfolds over many months, steeped in pleasure and idleness. But Godfrey of Bouillon’s crusaders cannot accept their friend’s fate and refuse to abandon him to such a contemptible existence. They eventually manage to reach him while Armide is away, and find Renaud lying on a bed decked in fine fabrics, surrounded by rare sweetmeats and carafes of heady wine. They hold a shield up to him so that he can see what he has become, and Renaud, who now only ever sees himself in the magic mirror held up to him by his beautiful captor, is suddenly confronted with his true reflection, a pampered man sprawled among his cushions, dressed as a gallant, and utterly disarmed. His former companions have no trouble persuading him to rejoin them in pursuit of conquests. He rises to his feet, picks up his arms and prepares to leave with them.

  It is at this point that the legend and, alas, my own narrative meet. Discovering Renaud’s decision, Armide is replete with so much love that she cannot believe her lover—who has been deeply besotted with her for months—could leave her. She thinks that the strength of their passion, constantly reinforced with the tenderest gestures
, is now so great that no spell is needed to sustain it. In Lully’s opera they even sing an admirable duet, I almost cried when I played it to my students:

  No, I would rather lose my life

  Than extinguish my flame,

  No, nothing can change my heart.

  No, I would rather lose my life,

  Than leave the arms of so charming a lover.

  And so, putting her faith in the power of love, Armide throws herself at Renaud’s feet, confesses to the spells she has cast on him, and swears she will abandon them. “I love you,” she tells him. “I betrayed you, I lied to you. But the only truth is that I love you. Keep me with you. For your love, I will undertake anything, I will even convert to your religion if you ask it of me.” Renaud hesitates, gazes lovingly and sadly at the enchantress’s beautiful face, but is pained by such betrayal. In the end, the hero’s duty is stronger than all other emotion. He tears himself away from Armide’s sweet supplications and leaves her forever.

  I told this story to my students and couldn’t get it out of my mind, I was obsessed with it. One question went around and around inside my head: if I admitted to my previous imposture, would Chris still love me? Would he be shocked to have been manipulated like that? Enough to leave me?

  In fact, if I’m to be completely honest, that wasn’t really the question that haunted me. The real one, the only erosive question I had, was this: Was Chris still thinking about Claire Antunes? Whenever he looked thoughtful or seemed distant, less attentive, the idea tormented me. Did he still love her? Did he love her more than me, with a purer love, like Renaud’s for his sacred mission? With an unconditional love? Wasn’t I just a fallback, a consolation for losing her? My jealousy was corrosive.

  In order to escape this overriding fear, I decided to put our love to the test. But I had many more doubts than Armide, even if nothing about Chris’s behavior justified them for any length of time: he showed every sign of tenderness and desire. I had no objective reason to test the strength of our connection. I don’t know why I did it. But I did it. I brought Claire Antunes back to life.

  I made careful preparations, and could think of nothing else; I wanted to ratify our love. First I took out the phone that I’d hidden in a shoebox at the bottom of my closet. I hadn’t terminated the two-euro contract, I’d forgotten to. I charged up the battery and listened, quivering, to the last message Chris had left me months earlier. His sad voice made my heart constrict, but with jealousy—a towering, destructive, deranged jealousy. His past annihilated my present life. So I fine-tuned my strategy. I was well aware that I should abandon the idea, shouldn’t be playing with fire, but I couldn’t back down now, my fear had completely taken over.

  The idea was that Claire Antunes would reappear in the form of a lover’s ultimatum: having been unable to forget Chris for all these months of silence and distance, she had broken up with her fiancé and now wanted to meet him at last, meet Chris and live with him, because she loved him, she was no longer in any doubt of that. She didn’t know what was happening in his life, but if he still loved her too, he should drop everything now and meet her that very evening at the Café Français. She would be there from nine till ten, and no more. He shouldn’t try to call her, he should just come, prove his love by being there. If he didn’t show up he would never hear from her again. So this was the abrupt but thrilling message Chris would be receiving from me, in the form of a text from my secret cell phone, that same evening, as we were sitting down on the terrace of our favorite restaurant, just a block from my apartment.

  At first I only pictured this test as a “double blind”: if Chris went to meet Claire Antunes, of course he wouldn’t find her there and he’d lose me or I’d lose him, I wasn’t sure which. Unless I forgave him. But if the experiment was going to bring an end to my jealous suspicions, I gradually started contemplating confronting him at the Café Français with the gorgeous young brunette whose photo he’d gazed at for so long: my niece Katia. I’d hardly seen her since her suicide attempt, and obviously always in secret; Chris didn’t even know she existed. After a long stay at a clinic in the Southwest, Katia had come to Paris to look for work. She’d been living on the rue Roquette for a month, alone and still depressed. I didn’t actually know what had driven her to taking a whole packet of sleeping pills not long after she’d moved to Rodez. A relationship that went wrong, most likely, but she’d never wanted to tell me about it, and I hadn’t pressed her. Anyway, plagued by my jealous frenzy, I arranged to meet her at the Café Français at nine that evening. In my nightmarish projections, Chris would walk over to where she was sitting at a table near the bar, he would sit down opposite her and take her hands, in rapt silence—dreams don’t often become reality. And the scene would replay ad nauseam until I shook myself out of it to avoid howling with pain.

  Evening comes. I suggest to Chris that we should eat at Chez Tony, a local restaurant we use regularly, there’s nothing in the fridge. “Do you want me to go get pizza?” he asks, putting his arms around me—his belly against my back, his mouth in my hair. I say no, it’s a beautiful evening, it would be nice to sit out on the terrace. Hidden under the paperwork on my desk, I’ve already prepared Claire Antunes’s text on my secret phone, I need only press Send, I could still choose not to, but I do it. Then I close the front door and summon the elevator. We go down, walk to the restaurant, he has his arm around my waist, we sit down, look at the menu. Chris doesn’t check his phone, maybe he didn’t hear the text alert, or, more likely, he’s savoring this moment, not expecting anyone or anything, he looks relaxed. I can’t take it anymore, every inch of me is trembling on the inside, my stomach is churning with impatience to see what he really is, what I am to him, what I am. The mechanism has been set in motion, that same old fear resurfaces, the fear of not being the love object. It’s not me, it’s the other woman: that’s what I’ve always thought, always. One of La Rochefoucauld’s maxims comes to mind, one that I’d set as an essay topic for my students: “In friendship as in love, we are often made happier by the things we don’t know than by those we do.” It’s probably true. But it’s now too late not to know; any second now I’ll know.

  “What time is it?” I ask. “Maybe we have time for a movie afterward?”

  He doesn’t reply, he’s studying the wine menu, a smile hovering on his lips.

  “Can you have a look?” I say, gesturing to his jeans pocket. “I don’t have any battery.”

  With his eyes still on the menu, Chris takes out his phone, opens it almost in slow motion, glances at it, freezes, frowns.

  “Eight forty-two.” His voice is slightly strangulated, or am I the one who’s short of breath? He reads the text, and now his eyes are wavering too, not sure where to look.

  This hurts.

  “Would you mind going to the tobacconist? I feel like having a cigarette,” I say to escape the suffering caused by the sight of him—make him go, make him leave, spare me the spectacle of his indecision!

  He stands up like an automaton, stammers, “Yes, yeah, I’ll go,” puts a hand on my shoulder—such a strong, brusque hand, such a contrast to the sweet sensation it gives me. Through the opening in his shirt I can see the delicate skin of his neck, the crook where I like to rest my lips, I’d like to do that once more before he goes but he’s already walking away.

  “I’ll be back,” he says.

  The waiter comes over, I order a carafe of rosé. When the waiter brings it I fill both our glasses. I take little sips from mine, my eyes pinned on his.

  “I’ll be back.”

  That’s where Claire’s—Madame Millecam’s—novel ends. Or at least the section written in one sitting. Because there’s more in the notebook, as you can see, but after several blank pages, as if to mark the passage of time, and it’s in a different pen and more uneven handwriting. There are lots of crossings-out, unlike the first section. Some paragraphs have been scrapped, completely blackened with felt-tip pen, others are merely legible jottings. Most likely Clai
re struggled to decide on an ending: she’d been so open to the different possible outcomes, done so much dreaming and dreading and fantasizing about her love, her jealousy, her desire and her doubts, that it was probably difficult for her to deign to give it a real ending, that is to say a single ending. Mind you, a film screenplay could easily stop right there—and so could a novel actually: she stays sitting at the restaurant table, holding her glass of rosé. The last shot is cut just before she starts drinking the other glass, or perhaps just after, either could work. The waiting, the despair, and the passing time are measured by the contents of those glasses. Unless you opt for a happy ending where we see him coming back around the end of the street, walking toward her as the final credits roll to Patti Smith’s “Because the Night Belongs to Lovers,” or that other song she loved and sometimes played to me on her iPod during our sessions, “One Day Baby We’ll Be Old.”

  But I’ll read you the end as Claire eventually wrote it—Claire or someone else, I’m not really sure, the writing looks slightly different. It’s interesting because we hear the man’s point of view. It’s Chris who narrates the final section. And given what’s gone before, this ending isn’t without logic, you’ll see why. For me, it was this ending that made me do what I did. So listen—just a couple more minutes.

  I didn’t know what to do when I read that text. Ever asked me to go buy some smokes, which was convenient, I needed to get my head straight. I walked to the end of the street like a zombie, then I checked Claire on Facebook. Her wall hadn’t changed, the last posts were several months old: a photo of Portugal like something from a tourist brochure, really moronic, and that was all. I skimmed through some of our old conversations on Facebook, my legs felt wobbly. Seeing her photo again definitely had an effect on me: that luminous unambiguous beauty, the smile on those plump lips, her perfect teeth, her long dark hair gleaming silkily. And her rounded breasts outlined under her sensible sweater. She could have been a model. The sort of girl every guy dreams of, the perfect trophy girl. The shop was closed, I could have bought cigarettes from the Brasserie Georges but that was a long way, Ever would be waiting.