Voice Over

by Celine Curiol

  Outside the door to the men’s toilets, Mr. Merlinter is standing in front of her. You want to go away? He observes her with impatient eyes, which blink repeatedly as though he wanted to change the image on his retina that obstinately remains the same, in spite of his obvious efforts. This morning she happened to pass him in the hall and rather than going to see him in his office, which would have felt like an official visit and forced her boss to adopt an attitude appropriate to his rank, that is to say, busy and unbending, she preferred to approach him before he disappeared into the toilets, thereby offering the lovely possibility of keeping their talk short. Even though he isn’t supposed to involve himself in the private lives of his subordinates, Mr. Merlinter has not been able to resist the temptation. Feigning an air of detachment, he had to enquire just what she was intending to do with herself during the time off he might or might not give her. I need a holiday. She used the magic word on purpose. All the girls in her office say they need a holiday. Impossible therefore for him to fault her for the uniqueness of her request or the abnormality of her behavior. As well as blinking, Mr. Merlinter’s eyes are now darting back and forth between her and the toilet door handle. How many days? Four. She said the right number. The day before, after packing the previous tenant’s red and white bag, she had rehearsed her speech, so as not to be tempted to reduce it when confronted by her boss’ inquisitive look. Four . . . Mr. Merlinter half-opens the door as if to confer with the people who might be inside. Mustn’t flinch now. Mr. Merlinter has one foot on the tiled floor. Four is fine, but even so check into whether you have that much time coming to you. Of course, she says. The door has already closed behind him.

  She hesitates. Then, on the day before the trip, she decides to ask one of her co-workers, a fairly calm and courteous woman who sits to her right, if she has ever been to London. The woman ponders for a few seconds, surprised to be consulted on the matter or perhaps surprised that she is being consulted at all. It’s nice if you like to walk, there are monuments, but the people aren’t much fun and it rains all the time. No matter, they’ll stay indoors. In bars, which won’t be much of a change for them, or at the hotel, if in fact he’s planning for them to stay at a hotel. There must be plenty of museums, he’ll certainly want to go to them. She won’t refuse, even if she always ends up feeling painfully bored in such places, burdened by a sense of obligation to admire all the works on display. As for monuments, she’s not too keen on those either. Big Ben, that’s the name that comes up whenever London is mentioned. She imagines that it must be more or less what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris. She makes a mental note to slip her umbrella into the sports bag. One of the ribs has come loose, but it still keeps the rain off pretty well. They’ll just have to huddle together. He’ll put his arm around her neck, she’ll slip hers around his waist. A fine and beautiful cliché, worthy of the best romances of her age, which she will be all too happy to imitate.

  That same evening, she checks the contents of the sports bag for the fifth and final time, and adds the umbrella. She is lifting her leg to step into a special London-departure bath, and just like that the telephone starts to ring. She rushes forward with little steps, holding one hand over her crotch, supporting her breast with an arm, stark naked in the middle of the living room. Yes hello, it’s Olivier Chedubarum. Talkative, in high spirits. She eventually understands that the photographs are ready and that he wants to show them to her. I’m off to London tomorrow. How she has adored saying those words, with a hint of weariness in her voice, as if it were all one to her, as if it were no more than a dull, routine occurrence that she was obliged to mention. It’s her revenge, a way of lifting her nose at the entire world, which continues to play its tricks, uncaring, and which has now delegated a single spokesman to her in the person of Olivier Chedubarum. With him? Yes, with him. She’s said it, she’s in heaven. Now someone will know they’re going away, alone, the two of them together. Olivier Chedubarum suggests meeting up that very evening so he can give her copies of the best photos. She hesitates, she has to get up early the next morning. But at that moment everything seems so perfect that she has no desire to deny herself anything or to act for purely rational reasons. A last little outing to mark the occasion, to celebrate her departure. The water in the bath is untouched and cold when she approaches the Père-Pinard, a café on the Place des Halles at seven o’clock.

  She recognized the phrase. It’s my birthday, I’m forty today. She imagines . . . the idea delights her; she’s about to say to him, look, I know you, realizing that he said it on purpose to pull her leg, to make a joke about the past, to invite her along to the café. She turns around: Momo isn’t talking to her but to a tall, fine-looking girl who is firmly shaking her head. And when his eyes sweep over the place where she is standing, he doesn’t stop, doesn’t notice her. Point taken. That day, Momo had stumbled onto her by chance, because she had been the one to turn around, not because of who she was. She doesn’t dare go over; she keeps on walking in the direction of the café, trying hard not to think about it any more.

  A cardboard folder is on the table. Olivier Chedubarum stands up, she sits, the waiter sets down two glasses of wine in front of them, the file is opened. What Olivier Chedubarum then shows her causes her to gape. She sees a sister, a cousin, a likeness, but it’s not her, not fully. The look in the eyes is hers, but not the expression, which is fierce, severe, and doesn’t correspond to anything in herself. Perhaps others have always seen her like this and she simply hasn’t known it. She picks up one of the photos to study it more closely. There is a small luminous dot, slightly out of focus, the drop of water that had landed on her upper chest and left a trace on the film before it fell. The tomatoes are the tomatoes she had seen in Olivier Chedubarum’s hands. And yet her face is not the face she thought she had presented to the photographer. Gone is the sense of well-being she had experienced in the glow of the enormous lamps. Nevertheless, it had seemed to last for a long time, long enough to be captured on film. You don’t like them? It doesn’t seem to be me. Olivier Chedubarum bursts out laughing. You look good, though. A nice way to say the image flatters her, that she looks better in it than in real life. That’s not what I mean. But how to explain it to him? She wonders if the result would have been the same if the pictures had been taken by a different photographer. It might be Olivier Chedubarum’s eye that has transformed her, but how can she be sure? Actually, you can keep them. Olivier Chedubarum shakes his head. I’ll end up believing you think I’m a bad photographer. She doesn’t know a thing about photography, she’s in no position to judge, it’s not that, it’s just. Take them anyway, stick them in a drawer, one day you’ll wind up liking them. She shrugs her shoulders. After all, she’s off to London tomorrow, that’s what counts, the photographs are of no importance. To please Olivier Chedubarum, she tucks the folder away in her bag. He then orders another round and starts telling her about how he covered the student riots in May ’68 and managed to have his first photographs published in the national press.

  She has lost track of how long she’s been listening to Olivier Chedubarum. Yawns twist her mouth out of shape, but she is unable to control them. She has had several glasses of wine, or maybe only one, which she is finishing off now. She has to go home. Her legs are dragging her down. She is in a taxi. She has said goodbye to Olivier Chedubarum, she no longer remembers what he said to her. This time tomorrow she’ll also be in a taxi, but in London, with him. As she lies down on her bed, she thinks of a bushy-haired puppet called Big Ben.

  She opens her eyes. Remembers. Sticks the face of the alarm clock up against her bleary eyes. Several long seconds go by before she can focus on the slender hands. When she finally makes them out, the world around her suddenly shrinks, leaving only the narrowest slit through which to try and escape the inevitable. 8.10, ten past eight in the morning. Horrible horror. How could she have let it happen? If she had the time, she’d punish herself by giving her head a good bang against her bedroom wall, but she only has tw
enty minutes to get to the station. She puts on the clothes she finds on the floor, then her coat, slings the sports bag and her handbag over her shoulder, looks for her keys, hears objects dropping to the floor without knowing what they are, finds her keys on the kitchen table, battles with her feet and shoes to get the former into the latter, glimpses 8:15 somewhere, opens the door, locks the door, rushes down the stairs, in the street, quick glance to the right, to the left, hesitates, searches her mind for the shortest route to the station, begins to run. The bags knock against her sides, she does her best to hold them in place, but the tighter her grip the harder it is to run. She brushes up against several passers-by, who give her long stares, she would like to shout insults at them, she sprints at the crossings to avoid red lights. Her heart is knocking around in her chest. Fire spreads across her forehead, temples, cheeks. A stitch is stabbing her in the belly, she breathes out forcefully to soften the pain. Her legs are weighed down by the alcohol still circulating in her blood, her stomach is begging for food, her brain distracts her by churning out thoughts. Don’t miss that train, no matter what, don’t stop, get as far as customs, want it enough to make it, even if you have no more breath, keep running until the end, until the meeting place, run, don’t stop, find him, go faster, faster still, get there, don’t miss that train. Her métro pass isn’t in her bag, her métro pass is in her bag. She feeds her ticket into the machine and starts running again. People are in front of her, they don’t get out the way, they’re stupid and slow, wrapped up in themselves, wearing earphones, deep in conversation, they all want to stop her from getting there. Excuse me. She calls out the words from a distance so they’ll reach their target before she does and she can run past the obstacles without slowing down. She has to stop on the platform to wait for the métro. The tracks go all the way to the station. She’d climb down into the tunnel and start running in the dark and the damp to get there on time. The beating of her heart resounds in her eardrums, every fold of her skin is brimming with sweat. The whoosh of the train, the approaching headlights. She gets on. She would like to do something to make the ride go faster. She forces herself to catch her breath, she’s bright red. Several passengers watch her as she bends over, hands on her knees. Finally the letters “gare du Nord” glide past through the windows. The doors open. She runs out onto the platform, up the escalator, along the corridors, spots the signs marked “Eurostar,” she knows the way, she’s on home ground, she’s been here hundreds of times, she’s about to collapse. She enters the station concourse. People, too many people, people everywhere. She threads her way, avoiding the groups that come streaming towards her, the kids lounging around on the floor. Don’t miss the train, so close. She looks up. The clock shows 8.55. Impossible, that can’t be right, she keeps going, staggers up the last steps, barely ten yards to go before customs. The platform is empty. No one, not a passenger in sight, he’s nowhere to be seen, he isn’t there, no one but the customs people in their glass cages. She goes over. As if from thin air, a woman in a blue uniform rises up in front of her. Boarding is over, Miss. She has no more breath, no more saliva, no more words. She puts out her hand, her head is spinning, her ears abuzz. You can’t go through, boarding is over. Do you hear me?

  She has sat down on the ground. Her heart is threatening to pop through her chest. Everything is turmoil inside her. From emotion, exhaustion, anger, disgust. It feels as if her hair is standing on end, her body is a solid mass, racked by shudderings that keep changing its shape. She wishes she had the power to turn back the clock, to start again. Barely half an hour, a mere half-hour and she would have been all right. Where is he now? If he had stayed here, he would have waited in front of customs to tell her they weren’t leaving any more. The fact that he’s not here means he took the train. And on that train he is brooding over his resentment, while she has no way of explaining to him what really happened. He must think she changed her mind and missed the train on purpose, out of cowardice. That thought is more than she can bear; because he’s gone, she has to leave and find him. She struggles to her feet. She heads over to the Eurostar counters. She’ll take the next train. With a bit of luck, he’ll still have enough confidence in her to guess what happened and wait at the other end. She manages to get a seat on the 10:00 am Eurostar. At a fast food stand, she has a coffee and in quick succession wolfs down two warm pains au chocolat shining with grease. She is so exhausted she can hardly think ahead. Now and then a recurrent, fleeting image, always the same one, flashes through her mind, her mad dash, her feet pounding on the concrete, step after step. Most of the time, though, all the while keeping an eye on the clock, she distractedly observes two pigeons circling around each other, small automatons oscillating under the weight of their heads and tails.

  After the French customs officer there is a British customs officer, a stiff and expressionless woman who compares her identity card photo against the living duplicate it represents. He came through this gate earlier, and the official probably looked at him in the same way, with that air of professional detachment. She could describe him to her and be assured that he was here before. Excuse me, I’m looking for someone, I was wondering if you saw him pass through, he took the nine o’clock train. The customs woman slowly lifts her eyes to meet hers and frowns, visibly surprised that the subject under examination possesses the power of speech. He’s tall, or at least taller than she is, a bit taller, well that’s not to say that she’s very tall, she’s average, he’s got brown hair too, not very dark but not very light either, the kind of brown that people with brownish brown hair have, his eyes match his hair, a little greener, not that he has any green in his hair but there’s something luminous about his eyes, which she associates with a hazelnut brownish sort of green, a good-looking guy basically, though perhaps not in the strictest sense of the word, it’s more that he’s to her liking, it’s hard to explain what she likes, anyway he can’t be too bad-looking, on account of Ange, who wouldn’t like a man whose looks didn’t go well with hers, he often wears a suit, but probably not today, since he’s not on a business trip, although yes, he’s meant to be on a business trip so he’s bound to be wearing one to look the part or perhaps he slipped it into his bag to feel more comfortable, but on that point she can’t say for certain. Several syllables come out of the customs officer’s mouth, coagulate into a mass of sounds that approximates a real but incomprehensible sentence. Eventually the official raises her eyes in exasperation. English. English, oh yes she’d forgotten, the English speak English, that’s only logical. She knows a few basic words of English. Let’s see, some polite phrases, the numbers up to ten, how to say her name, how to say I don’t understand. He must speak the language, that’s what matters, he’ll translate. The customs official motions for her to step aside and make way for the people behind. She joins a group of passengers moving forwards with determination then waits with them in front of a glass wall through which railway tracks and empty platforms can be seen.

  Where is he? Right now, still on the train, if he has taken the train, he has taken the train. Where else would he be if not? He would never have gone home without letting her know first, he wouldn’t be nasty enough to punish her like that for being late. Of course, he could have waited for her so they could have taken the next train together. But he must have thought they might have trouble getting two new seats or that changing the tickets would cost too much. He must have hesitated then decided not to change the plan, thinking she would have the presence of mind to do the same.

  The doors open, the travellers surge forward, the platform fills with a chaotic flow of humanity, the train is taken by storm. She is shoved along right up to the steps of her carriage. Pushed by a bulging stomach, she narrowly misses getting smacked in the forehead by the bony elbow of the grandmother in front of her. She has looked at them often, on café terraces, surrounded by their suitcases and their laughter, under the departure boards, heads tilted back, standing in line, their mouths half-open, by the platform entrances, being met
, embraced, surprised, kissed, tears streaming down their cheeks, by the ticket machines, puzzled, conscientious, examining the front and back of their tickets again and again, and she had thought them so happy, so serene, so charming. And now to her great disappointment they are behaving like vulgar métro passengers instead of appreciating how lucky they are to be setting off in a straight line and not travelling round in circles. And even if he’s not by her side, even if she’s starting to get worried, a wave of joyous excitement washes over her as she steps into the carriage. She wants to talk to them, to shower them with smiles, but they’re all busy attending to their suitcases and their tickets. Everyone is blithely bumping into everyone else.

  Modern is the word that comes to her as she surveys the interior of the carriage. The floor and windows are clean, the seats comfortable, the lighting low, the colors match. It feels as if she has shrunk and stepped into a model. Her seat is next to the window. Perfect for watching the landscape rush by. She stows the sports bag on the overhead luggage rack, imitating a young woman she has seen doing the same at the far end of the carriage. She decides to keep her handbag on her lap. A man has put a briefcase under the seat next to hers, has sat down, and without giving her a glance or exchanging a word has opened a thick book. The Best Marketing and Communication Techniques. Several people hurry by on the other side of the window. She wonders why there are no seatbelts on trains. A sensuous voice she doesn’t recognize announces that they are leaving. The platform glides slowly backwards.