Voice Over

by Celine Curiol

  Grey houses, shut windows covered by whitish curtains, long electric wires, the bare, black trunks of trees that seem to have been planted haphazardly to make it look as if they were spared when the city was built. A female voice announces the existence of a bar at the center of the train and lists a whole range of sandwiches and refreshments. She is hungry but doesn’t want to disturb her neighbour, who is engrossed in his reading. If he leaves his seat to go to the toilet, she’ll take the opportunity then. Outside, the woods and the walls in the foreground are flowing by too fast for her to see them. Stretched between barely perceived poles, supple and sinewy telephone wires attract and repel one another. She has to look into the depths of the landscape to see the things she wants to see, for them not to disappear at each moment. She likes the gentle, barely perceptible motion of the carriage. He too is on a train, miles ahead of her, but on the same track, bound in the same direction. Her eyes close, she presses her handbag against her body. She is on a train, she is going away somewhere, he is at the end of the line, waiting for her.

  A feeling that something has touched her. While opening his briefcase, the man next to her has jogged her with his elbow. She is awake now. He has stood up and, swaying back and forth, has walked down the aisle to the far end of the carriage. To her relief, she discovers that her handbag is still on her lap. On the other side of the windows, huddled rows of brick houses are slipping along, accompanied by murmurs and sighs, the zipping of zips, the rustling of pages and plastic bags. The people outside are as invisible here as they were on the outskirts of Paris. London would therefore be nothing but a single long row of identical houses, all of them deserted. Her mouth is dry, her body is as stiff as the seat she has slept in. The voice from the loudspeaker announces their arrival at Waterloo station. She remembers now that the same voice spoke while she was asleep. She hadn’t managed to open her eyes then, to regain consciousness and understand what it was saying. Without her noticing, the train went under the sea, travelling through a dark tube to avoid the water by plunging below it. An under-channel crossing. She thought it was going to be a unique experience but, to her great disappointment, she hasn’t felt a thing. Back when the tunnel was being built, she had wondered if it would be possible to see anything through the walls, algae, fish, one of those marine creatures that live deep below the surface. Later, she’d been sorry to find out that the tunnel didn’t pass through the sea but under it, through dense, blinding, solid, reassuring earth, the same earth in which it is customary to put the dead.

  He is waiting for her now, somewhere inside the station. He probably walked around for a while to stretch his legs, then sat down somewhere in a café where he can watch the fresh arrivals. Very soon, they’ll be together again. She can’t imagine anything else.

  The jolt of the brake has sent the passengers tipping forwards. She retrieves the sports bag, inserts herself into the Indian file shuffling its way off the train and falls in step with the passengers trotting along at different speeds in the same direction. After the platform come level corridors, followed by an inclined walkway leading to the customs booths. Her country is a member of the European Union; she is in London, hundreds of miles from home, to meet someone who is her only reason for being here. She doesn’t know what she’ll be doing in the hours ahead, any more than what she’ll be doing in the days ahead. She gives no thought to what she has done before this, to the chain of events that has led her to this place. Her two feet are on the ground, at a precise point on the globe, but until she crosses the London border, she will still be in a parallel dimension, in the timeless space of the journey. She walks past the booths, attracting no attention, free. She is on the other side now. The other side of the sea, the other side of a symbolic border, the other side of herself perhaps. She walks down a wide corridor, passes through doors. Dozens of anonymous people are gathered there, necks craning, arms crossed. Their eyes see her, then turn, looking for someone else, until they raise their arms and rush forward, lips ready, to the elected being they’ve been waiting for. She feels a slight contraction in her chest, which increases the further she walks. She can’t see him. Not to the right, not to the left, not on the chairs, not by the pillars. The palpitations are constant now. An escalator takes her up to the main concourse. So many people, never him. It feels as if her head has swollen, her bags have shrunk. She wanders around, retraces her steps, peers over railings, gets up on tiptoe, walks in and out of cafés, shops, hidden corners, scans, searches, turns places upside-down with her eyes. And then suddenly she stops, overwhelmed, for she knows only one thing for certain now: he is not there, he is no longer in a place where she can reach him, except inside herself, inside her body which is here, although she is alone.

  She has sat down on the floor, against a wall. At the gare du Nord, she had seen them sprawled out like that in some out-of-the-way corner. They would settle down on the filthy floor amid streams of spilt liquids and pieces of crushed chewing gum, exposed to the freezing, dusty draughts, in the middle of the frenetic bustle of a crowd intoxicated by the thought of departure. They’d stretch out under the reproving stares of the busy people to show they had no strength left, not even to go a few yards further along to find a bench or the cushioned seat of a drinks stand. She’d assumed they were homeless or broke, waiting to sneak onto a train without a ticket. Now she is in the same position, no higher than a man’s knee, like a dog. An ethereal female voice starts talking above their heads. She can’t follow the words but knows that the voice is announcing the next train, the time, the number, the departure or arrival platform. An English woman is sitting behind a microphone and performing the same task she does in Paris. Later on, she will leave her office and might walk past her, she with her ass glued to the floor, and glance at her briefly, wondering what that woman with a sports bag can possibly be doing there by herself. And then, all of sudden, a silhouette, a familiar gait, the fleeting certainty that. But no, her hope collapses like a botched cake and she sinks back into her hole at the sight of the atrociously unfamiliar face. And so it continues, as she lets herself fall into the trap, tortured by the thought of his presence trying to incarnate itself in one of the bodies around her, a body that is never the right one. In the end, she becomes hypnotized by the parade of passing shoes. She would like a hand to touch her on the shoulder, for it to be his, and for that to be the end of the matter. The episode would become a little story they could spend the rest of their stay looking back on with laughter. But nothing of the sort happens. No one recognizes her, and she recognizes no one. She is in an unfamiliar city, and there is no place in it for her except with him.

  Trains are leaving in the other direction, their noses pointed straight at Paris. There is nothing to stop her from taking one. Her bank account would go into the red, but in three hours she’d be back at the starting gate, where her old habits would be waiting for her. She would push open the door of her apartment and use up the last of her strength pretending nothing had happened. But going back is worse than staying put. She lacks the courage to make the trip, and when she returns, to confront the deluge of too many questions, the necessity of acting on what she discovers, whether he is in Paris or not. By staying, she will be able to pretend that their trip was not a total failure, she can give herself a small breather before being forced to swallow the truth in one gulp.

  Every thirty minutes she has stood up, patrolled the station on her stiff legs, searching for the slightest clue, then returned to sit down in the same spot again, this corner of wall and floor. After seven hours of surveillance rounds, she leaves the station, slightly dazed, hunger in her belly. The night is pierced by the glow of headlights and streetlamps, not very different from the ones in Paris. In front of her is a stretch of pavement, a succession of roads and a staircase leading down to a grim-looking underpass that she feels incapable of going into. A black vehicle in the shape of an estate car with the word Taxi lit up on its roof. She signals to the driver, who pulls over on the other side of t
he street. The traffic doesn’t slow down. After several attempts, she manages to cross at a run. She climbs into the taxi, which strikes her as over-spacious, more suited to bearing coffins than upright living people. Far in front of her, the driver has said something. She can only see the back of his head. Hotel. She articulates the word clearly, hoping to compensate for her lack of a British accent. An incomprehensible question from the driver, who turns round with a not very friendly look on his face. She wants to tell him that she’s had a hard day, that he could at least be polite, but all she has at her disposal is the word hotel and whatever patience she has left. Eventually, the driver takes off with a comment that ends in a sigh.

  The bridge they take stretches across a wide river. Along its banks, lights from buildings of every kind, glass towers, domes, stone façades, historical moments set in the dominant materials of their days. She has never seen such a jumble of heights and styles. She never would have guessed that London looked like this. After the bridge, she closed her eyes. She doesn’t know where this man is taking her; she has entrusted herself to him, has given him the task of deciding what her next stop will be. If he pulls over and orders her to get out, she’ll do it because she will have nothing to say to him, no recourse to language to defend herself. She can gesticulate and utter sounds, but she will never convince him of anything by the precision and sharpness of her words. She hasn’t felt so vulnerable in a long time.

  The taxi has pulled up outside a building with a white façade, its front entrance flanked by two columns. On a small metal plaque on one of them she reads Beaumont House. She is ready to get out when the driver cuts her short. He says only one word, money. She understands, but she realizes to her horror that she has no money on her, at least not the right sort. Nevertheless, she takes her purse from her bag and from her purse a 20-euro banknote, which she holds out to the driver as innocently as she can. He shakes his head. She pretends not to understand. Pounds, not euros, pounds, not euros, the man says, hammering out his words, completely exasperated. Her head is going to explode. She so wishes he were with her; he could explain the problem to this idiot. She would like to sleep and forget everything. Her eyes close, her body topples sideways, and she feels the cold leather of the seat pressing against her cheek. To stay there, stretched out for ever, rocked by the motion of the taxi taking her through London for all eternity. The door by her head has been flung open, a chill draught tickles the roots of her hair. The driver bombards her with words, demented, meaningless words, and drags her out of the car. She is standing on the pavement, her sports bag and handbag at her feet. The taxi has disappeared.

  She has to ring to be let in. When she hears the buzzing in the lock, she pushes the door. A voice calls out, she follows it. She enters a small lounge furnished with two floral-patterned armchairs and a vending machine. No one. Jutting from a wall, she spots a small wooden counter with someone sitting behind it, a thinnish woman with short, sad hair, and a pair of glasses perched on the end of her nose. The woman is hunched over a magazine and fiddling with a bunch of keys. Behind her is a room filled with two paper-strewn desks. As she goes over, the woman gives her an odd sort of elongated smile before she starts to emit, as if in a nightmare, monstrous, incomprehensible words. Ai-don-un-deur-stin-de. The woman appears to grasp the message, holds up an index finger with a pointed nail and raises her eyebrows questioningly. She responds by tucking in her thumb and showing her four other fingers. She’ll be staying here four nights. The woman goes to rummage in a drawer and comes back to show her a bank card. She takes hers out of her purse and hands it over.

  Flesh-toned tights and grey mules precede her up the stairs, which groan beneath a thick layer of carpeting. At the top, the woman opens a door: a tiny room just large enough for a toilet. They take a second, narrower staircase that leads straight up to the first floor. They reach a landing where there is barely enough space for the two of them. There are three doors, one of which is the door to her room. The woman pushes the light switch, motions her inside, says a few words with her stiff smile, and withdraws after placing the keys on the night table. She hears the door close, the woman’s faint cough, nothing. Her first silence in the weak glow of the ceiling light. For a moment she remains where she is standing, looking around the characterless room, which doesn’t have a single redeeming feature. Walls that are too bare, a ceiling that is too high, robbing the enclosed space of any sense of protection, a yellowish wardrobe and desk, which have been touched by too many hands but have never belonged to anyone. In one corner is a dismal sink; on the other side, an ugly and cumbersome plastic shower unit. And floating in the midst of it all, the mingled odors of a cleaning product, the starch from the sheets, stagnant water, enclosed air. First, open the window—or rather, in this case, pull up the window. As she leans over the railing, she sees that the hotel looks onto a small park. The fragrant humus is a relief, an olfactory balm, and for several minutes all she wants is to breath in its smell.

  She opens the wardrobe doors, the desk drawers, all of them sadly empty, all waiting to be filled to give the occupant an impression of being at home. If he had been there, she would have removed her few things from the sports bag for the sheer pleasure of storing them next to his. Alone, there’s no point. The television set is shut away in a special cabinet opposite the bed. She turns it on, flicks through the channels with the remote control: an English version of the same cathode-TV mush. She has no desire to know what is happening in the immense elsewhere, the opinions of strangers, the dramas of invented characters. In any case, she doesn’t understand a thing. She switches off, the screen swallows back its images, the deluge of aural soup comes to an end. Barefoot on the bed, curled up in a fetal position, she looks for a way to stop the current of speculation that keeps bringing her back to the same question. Why didn’t they find each other? She has two answers and can’t decide between them: an unfortunate cluster of circumstances or the result of an intentional act. She swings from one to the other, going back and forth as monotonously as the pendulum of a clock. Unlucky, cursed, predestined, irresponsible, she tries out these adjectives on herself in an attempt to explain her role in what happened. She has missed her entrance cue, the play will go on without her, she is standing in the wings, flabbergasted that she has failed at the very moment when she most needed to prove her competence. There ought to be a special probe to inspect the inside of her head, that undifferentiated, infinite space that sits miraculously within the confines of her skull. She isn’t sure, but there might be something like an immense clod of dust jamming up a tiny gear. Something not quite right, as they say. She thinks she ought to be thinking about something else, but in thinking this she can’t help thinking about the matter she is thinking about. Try to get some rest. She slips a pillow under her head, a hand under the pillow. Find the best position for sleep. Images march through her mind; above all she must not focus on them. She hears the muffled hum of a car engine in the distance, she’s almost there, she feels her consciousness melting away. But she has to re-open her eyes, brought back to reality by a noise that wasn’t there before, a breathing, a panting, on the other side of the wall. And the more she concentrates, the more she hears it, rhythmical, provocative. Two people are getting it on in the next room. She doesn’t want to know, she doesn’t want to listen, she doesn’t want to hear love, she doesn’t want to know that it exists, she wants to be left alone. She could, but doesn’t dare bang on the wall. Instead, she resigns herself to staying stretched out on the bed, staring up at the ceiling light that undulates through her tears, imagining that dozens of tiny elves have tied her body to the mattress.

  She wakes up. The light from a streetlamp is shining on the ceiling of the room, now plunged into darkness. She doesn’t remember switching off the light. Her stomach gurgles. She thinks she hears the sound of a key in a lock.

  She wakes up. Her mouth is dry. She gets out of bed and shuffles cautiously over to the sink. She brings her lips close to the tap. The water s
mells of bleach. Through the window, she glimpses a dark shape moving about in the park.

  She wakes up. She can no longer ignore the promptings of her bladder. The door creaks as she opens it; the light makes her squint. She goes down the stairs as quickly as she can, afraid that she might meet someone. The timer-light sounds like the chirping of a cricket. The floor tiles in the toilets are cold. She thinks she has stepped on something wet. She doesn’t dare sit down on the seat and pees standing astride the bowl. She finds no paper to wipe herself with.

  She woke up. Day had dawned outside.

  She left the room, carrying her handbag with her. At the front desk, she saw a pair of hands poking over the counter; she didn’t drop off her key. To her surprise, she noticed that all the houses around the park were identical, with their white façades, their columns, their raised front entrances, and their large windows. She wondered if the occupants all dressed the same, so as not to stand out. She headed right, although she could just as well have headed left. The few people passing by at that moment were all going in the same direction. She decided to do what they did, they obviously knew where they were going. She reached a crowded road, with shop fronts on either side. Unable to read the instructions, she had to try several combinations of buttons before she could withdraw four hundred pounds from a cash dispenser. She didn’t know how much a pound was worth, but four hundred seemed to be an interesting number, probably because of the four. She then stopped in at some kind of café after reading, with the satisfaction of having understood, the word sandwich on the window. All the tables were empty, except for one, where a woman sat resting her elbows. She chose to sit as far away from her as possible. The place smelled of fried butter and cigarette smoke. A waitress took her time before coming over. She said sandwich and the waitress said something in response. She shrugged her shoulders, the waitress returned with a menu, she pointed randomly at the first line. A few minutes later, a mound of bread, ham, and cheese landed in front of her. She ate because she was hungry, the sandwich oozed mayonnaise. She noticed that the other customer had the face of a witch and was rolling cigarette after cigarette, half-smoking each one before stubbing it out in the ashtray, which she engaged in intimate conversation, without uttering a sound, merely by moving her lips. She left, feeling rather ill, and set off in search of a supermarket. Since she was afraid of getting lost, she decided to keep to the main commercial street. She ended up going inside a place that went by the bizarre name of Sainsbury’s, where she bought a dozen tomatoes, carrots, oranges and apples, a dozen yogurts, five packets of vacuum-packed cold cuts and two cellophane-wrapped loaves of bread. It took her a certain amount of time and struggle to get it all back to the hotel, after she lost her way turning into what she thought was her street. She made a dash for the stairs to avoid being spotted by the owner of the hotel. Back in her room, she put the yogurts and cold cuts inside two plastic bags, which she placed on the windowsill. The rest of the food she put away in the cupboard. She then brought a chair over to the window and settled down to observe the park and the street. The aim was simply to observe, perhaps even to comment on what she saw if she felt an inclination to formulate a thought, but above all not to reflect on anything that had to do with her. Seen from above, the people didn’t look very different from the ones in Paris. She noticed a few squirrels in the park, as well as a bird she had never seen before. When the light started to fade, she was still in the same spot.