Voice Over

by Celine Curiol

  She’s done. The actress has covered her mouth with her hand. She doesn’t feel anything in particular, only the satisfaction of having said exactly what she wanted to say at the moment when she wanted to say it. She stands up. There is nothing to add. To continue would be superfluous. Their two hands shake. They won’t see each other again.

  She has never considered the rite of passage as something traumatic because no one has ever been shocked by it. Lonely people have no misfortunes, only stories that are never told. But this time she has told something that she had kept to herself for over fifteen years, since the days when she and Marion would sit together every afternoon on a bench at the lycée, not doing anything in particular. While speaking, she had had no sense of removing a weight from her shoulders. The rite of passage is not a memory that could be hidden away in some distant corner of her brain because of neuronal deterioration. It is a physical imprint, practically a substance that has leaked into her bones, muscles, and blood. Like DNA, whose coded helixes determine our individual characteristics, it is part of every cell in her body. She can talk about it, but she will never be able to get rid of it.

  When she returns home, she has the impression that the apartment has grown larger. The objects have not moved, but their arrangement appears to have been altered, as if each one had been turned several degrees to the left or the right. The smell seems different too. Perhaps something happened here while she was gone; an event that left olfactory traces too diffuse to detect where they came from. Stretched out on her bed, she closes her eyes and imagines that the city has ceased to function. The city is still on the other side of her windows, but nothing is happening, not a breath of wind, not the slightest movement. True silence. The sort that can only be tasted in the deepest countryside in the dead of night. What to long for now? It has taken one day for the thing to happen that only twenty-four hours ago had seemed impossible. What she accomplished—confiding in the actress—took place without the least premeditation. Years spent in the same mental groove, and then, all of a sudden, a chance to move on, a chance that perhaps had always been there or that had been created by a particular set of circumstances. She has already adjusted to her new dimensions and so naturally that even she is surprised.

  Final thought before falling asleep. Above and beyond all else, the good fortune she has at last been given.

  He’ll call her soon; she no longer has any doubts about that. This certainty should dispel her concerns, she ought to be reassured. They have come to a turning point, the most delicate and hazardous moment of all: he has proved that he is not indifferent to her. Before this, everything could have broken apart without deeply altering their lives. Now waiting has been transformed into an idea of what might blossom between them. It feels exactly as if someone were permanently trying to scare her, except no one is ever around. She is entirely consumed by the thought of what is to come; she sifts through facts, imagines possibilities. She wants to explore all avenues in order to guard against making a wrong move when the time comes. Her feelings at this point are so absolute that they can only lead to perfection. By sheer faith, she thinks she can defy the unpredictable. What she overlooks in all her forecasts is that the intersection of their respective desires will never produce the expected result.

  Towards the end of the morning, she returns to the street market. She walks the whole length of it, without paying attention to the goods on display and blindly charts her course to the accompaniment of the merchants’ arias. Two euros, two euros a pound, last peaches of the season, beans, beans, ladies, the best beans in town. Buying nothing, present in this atmosphere of harangue and transaction, engulfed, borne along by two opposing currents. She allows herself to be pushed along by the movement of the crowd, the sudden eddies, the halts, the momentary gaps. To be there like everyone else, but without a reason, without resisting. She is expelled at the other end of the long tunnel of tarpaulins and trestles, opposite a flower stall. As those around her walk off, she stops in front of the buckets and the bouquets. The florist in a long dark-blue apron is cutting the tips off the stems with a pair of garden shears. To make them wilt more slowly, now that they’ve been torn away from the plant they grew from. Amputation to prolong life, she’s never quite understood it. Something is tugging at the bottom of her trousers. A small fist at the end of a small arm, the crown of a child’s head, a child who hasn’t realized yet that he’s clinging to the wrong leg. He thinks he’s safe, even as he holds on to a stranger. At her mercy, boundless trust. She doesn’t dare move, in case he panics. The child is captivated by the flower seller’s gestures. If she gently slipped her hand into his, would he notice that it was an unfamiliar hand that was holding him? She feels tempted to find out. To see how far she could get before he looked up and, in terror, caught sight of her face. He would start to cry; she reconsiders and drops the experiment. A woman with her back to her is buying a bunch of roses. The mother. She’ll stand there without moving until the woman sees him and smiles at her son’s mistake, so the terror will pass quickly. But when the woman turns around, it is not her son that her eyes fix on but her, incredulous.

  Because of the sunglasses she doesn’t recognize Marion right away. But Marion recognizes her. The dark glasses lend her the air of a Hollywood star who has slipped into a market for a taste of local color. She wonders if those brown lenses are the ones through which Marion sees the world best. Marion calls the boy, who realizes his mistake. Without taking his eyes off her, he lets go of the trouser leg and moves away with little steps, his head screwing round as he goes. No trace of fear; only a kind of intrigued curiosity, as if he had just discovered a new species of animal, which he was surprised to have been able to approach without danger. On one side, there is the little boy and Marion, who is looking her up and down; on the other side, she stands there wondering what the best attitude to adopt would be. Between them, the flower seller, who has resumed cutting the tips off the stems. Do something, move, dispel the awkwardness, break the tension of this unexpected encounter. She could head back the way she came. Pretend not to have seen or recognized her old friend. She’d be swallowed up by the crowd. There’d be no one to hold it against her, no explanation to give. Before, she would have avoided the confrontation; she would have done it without hesitating. But just now, something stops her from turning away and propels her forward. She takes a step. Emotion and reproach alternate in Marion’s eyes. She lowers her gaze and forces herself to smile at the child, who has shoved a thumb into his mouth and is sucking it with abandon. Either of them could or should have called the other, but the one who thinks she’s the victim turns the other one into the culprit. At the court of broken friendships, she would be taken before the judge in handcuffs, without the right to a lawyer. In her defence, your honor, she was powerless. No clemency. Sentence is handed down: to write ten thousand times “to be loved is a responsibility.” She wouldn’t dare say that she hadn’t known. She is now only a metre away from Marion. The child has lost interest in her, he’s rubbing the soft petal of a flower between his fingers, the tranquillizing effect of touch. For a few seconds, she would like to be in his place. She imagines taking Marion’s hand and being engulfed by a wave of serenity. But the situation is urgent, usual words must be found. Why not rewind the film, start again from scratch as if it were the first time? Don’t even think about it. If they hadn’t already known each other, they would never meet. Marion is asking the child not to play with the flowers. They don’t belong to you. The child looks up at his mother to gauge the seriousness of the order then retracts his hand. She is about to say that the flowers don’t mind but realizes that it is hardly an ideal way to begin under the present circumstances. She can feel Marion hesitate between acting spontaneously or taking refuge behind the resentments of the past. It then strikes her that every story is determined by its opening lines. Which is why such sentences are so hard to pronounce. He’s pretty well-behaved usually. The signal. Marion is talking to her at one remove. The child is
the intermediary in a hesitant attempt at communication. She has no choice but to follow the lead. He’s cute. She already knows they won’t get very far like that. If there were a dozen or more kids, that might keep them going a bit longer. She watches the child hopping from one foot to the other as he plots his next expedition. She finds it fascinating that Marion could have given birth to him. To have that strength, to have the determination to take on that particular role. And for the rest of her life to protect, to worry, to manage to keep the threats at bay. To believe in the miracle, whether from ignorance or conviction. She looks for resemblances, traces of the mother’s personality in the child. But the little boy’s bearing seems quite distinct from Marion’s. A little person in his own right. It is only over time that the mother will put her stamp on him. For now, the degree of kinship can be seen in the degree of obedience. She knows that it is customary to compliment parents on their children. She’d like to tell Marion how impressed she is and to sound sincere. For she is impressed, even if it seems that the existence of the child makes the rupture of their friendship even more final. She’d like to do the right thing, play by the rules for once. No missteps; to use the opportunity to show that she means well. Even if there can be no follow-up, she would like Marion to feel that she doesn’t disown their past. Things turned out the way they turned out, that’s it, like the wind, the pressure of actions and reactions. She can’t explain, it’s too tricky, she’d get tangled up and only make the situation worse. By going through the child, she can no doubt show Marion that she still cares. She softens her voice. Do you like the market? For a few seconds the child stares back at her without blinking then, very brusquely, buries his head in his silent mother’s coat. Silly kid. She represses an urge to pull an extremely ugly face. Have you left Montpellier? Of course she’s left Montpellier, you idiot, she’s right there in front of you. Awkwardness makes you say the most ridiculous things. Marion moved two years ago, her husband works in Paris. She is about to say, you should have let me know, but she catches herself in time. She’s not used to asking questions; it makes her feel like a private detective who’s found her client’s girlfriend and is checking her identity. And you, are you working? Marion motions her chin at the child, who is again sucking his thumb. I look after him; it’s a full-time job. A smile flits over Marion’s lips, and without looking at him she runs her hand through the child’s hair. Suddenly, she feels, how to put it, inappropriate, extraterrestrial, entirely unsuited to her gender and species. One day, a man had confessed to her that he envied women solely for their ability to have children. She had called him a misogynist, he hadn’t understood. She wants to ask Marion at what moment did it become impossible for her to hold back, but the question wouldn’t sound right. At best, Marion would say, it comes, it gets to you in the end, it even becomes an obsession. She hears Marion calling to the child. Timothé. Immediately it reminds her of the jingle in the advert for Timothei shampoo. Timothé! The child puts back the large red apple he was about to make off with and returns, dragging his heels. A successful display of authority. And you, how are you doing? Marion must be saying to herself that things haven’t changed, that the passage of time has been no help, that she’s still on her own, struggling, husbandless, childless, haunted by bad luck. In addition, she doesn’t have much to tell, she’s bound to disappoint. And soon it will be that Montpellier look again, that sorry helpless stare which means, I understand, but which can’t understand, and which, in its deliberate sympathy, chains her to the past. When she replies, fine, Marion thinks about it, and even if Marion didn’t think about it, she’d think that she was thinking about it, which comes to the same thing. She can say whatever she wants, argue that time has gone by, but the changes Marion perceives in her will pass through the filter of the incident confessed to years earlier, and it still stands between them, even after a marriage and a child, and perhaps for these two reasons even more so than before. She’d like to say to Marion, forget it. But she would still have to manage to answer the question, and her head is spinning and she has an increasing desire to throw up. She must have turned pale, for Marion has let down her guard somewhat, she addresses her by her first name. Soothing familiarity. She could talk about him; Marion would no doubt see it as a positive element in her life. But what to say? That there is a man who . . . who what? Kissed her by mistake at a party and hasn’t laid a finger on her since. Who lives with an angel but spends his evenings bored stiff in front of the television, this last fact as yet unproven. Who refused to go to the theater with her but managed to speak to her on the telephone for almost five minutes, his words making her feel that her life has changed. She puts herself in Marion’s shoes: at best, she’ll find it amusing, at worst it will confirm what she already thought. Wait a second. Marion rushes after the child, who has trotted off in pursuit of some pigeons. She watches her go, sees her catch up to him just as he reaches the curb. She is left standing there alone, looking off in the direction of her vanished friend. The flower-seller asks her if she needs any help. She shakes her head but can’t move from the spot. This is the moment, the longed-for opportunity. To escape. A few strides would be enough for her to disappear into the crowd of market-goers. And so bring an end to their pathetic and disturbing encounter. She turns her head. Marion is busy talking to the child, pulling him by the arm. She makes a run for it. Stifflimbed, intent, one step at a time, she reaches the central alley of market stalls. Marion has perhaps seen her by now, but her decision was made a long time ago; there’s no turning back. One more yard, and she is swallowed up by the crowd. She’s safe. When she’s sure that she is well hidden from view, she looks back. By standing on tiptoes, she can just make out Marion turning round and round, eyes on the lookout. If she waved to her now, if she walked back, it would be easy to invent an excuse. She’d pretend that she had never meant to leave. I went to have a look at something. But she doesn’t have the strength for that. She watches Marion hoist the child into her arms and walk away from the market. How long did Marion spend looking for her? A minute at the very most. Is that how she should measure what she meant to her friend? She imagines Marion recounting the incident to her husband. I suppose it’s too late to do anything. And Marion won’t have any reason to hold her tongue, the rite of passage will come spilling out, beyond her control and without her permission. She feels her stomach tighten at the thought of it. By now, Marion and her son are two tiny specks in the distance.

  There’s a message on her answering machine. He wants to get together with her. Anywhere will do. She’ll go. They’ll see each other. Alone at last. They’ll talk. She’ll have to find a topic of conversation. She can tell him about Noémie. She’ll ask him what he would do if Ange disappeared. No, let’s see. She’ll ask him what he would do if she disappeared. Too dramatic. She won’t ask him anything. She’ll just say, it’s strange not knowing if someone is alive or dead. Too heavy as a starter. She’ll talk to him about the weather. Too banal. She’ll talk to him about the place where they are. They’ll comment on the look of the people they see going by. She could teach him the staring game. No. He’ll find it childish. Or else he’ll kiss her and there won’t be any need for them to talk. No. He won’t dare, not in public, not at the risk of running into by someone who might know him or might know Ange.

  She presses the play button. A woman’s voice. Panic. Ange has discovered everything and is challenging her to a duel. Marion has got hold of her number and wants an explanation because she doesn’t understand why she treated her like that. But the voice says neither Ange nor Marion; it says her name. For a few seconds, she thinks that she has left herself a message but has forgotten all about it. She is suffering from a split personality. Schizophrenia is the medical term for it, if memory serves her right; so that could be the problem. But as she listens, she realizes that it’s not her voice. I got your number from Maxime, I’m sorry to disturb you like this, I wanted to tell you . . . The voice stops. I wanted to tell you that I’ve left him, I wanted to say
thank you. The actress then takes several seconds to hang up. The red light stops blinking. She could almost cry. Not from sadness or joy. Something else, but she doesn’t know exactly what. It’s not every day that someone says thank you to her. For the duration of the message, the roles were reversed. She became another person’s guardian angel. And that despite the fact she never thought she could protect anyone from anything, least of all without knowing about it.