The discovery of a new wrinkle, of another stage in the general slide, the irremovable dark circles, all that could be shared, and now be subjected to critical – and comical – analysis.
L. confided that she couldn’t meet someone over thirty without immediately wondering how old they were. For several years, age had been the first question she asked herself about any person she bumped into or was introduced to, male or female, as though it were a primary, unignorable piece of data, to evaluate the power relationship, seduction, complicity. For my part, I’d noticed that as I got older, young people often struck me as younger than they actually were. That was, according to L., precisely a sign of age, no longer being able to distinguish between someone of twenty and someone of thirty, whereas they were perfectly able to tell and distinguish between each other.
What fascinated me about L. was that none of this inner questioning showed in her way of being. Nothing in her appearance or her behaviour betrayed any worry or self-doubt. It seemed to me, on the contrary, that the way she dressed, moved, laughed, was flamboyant proof that she was entirely at ease with the woman she was.
The power of attraction L. exerted on me was probably all of this: I admired her for her clear-sightedness about the world and about herself, but also for her ability to bluff, to play the game.
One evening, as we were walking side by side down the middle of the boulevard Richard-Lenoir, L. told me that in the early nineties she’d seen a film by Pascale Bailly called How People Cope. The title alone had seemed to her to sum up her state of mind, her permanent questioning about other people that she couldn’t free herself from: How did they cope? According to what rhythm, with what energy, by virtue of what beliefs? Because at the time, when she observed them, other people seemed to her to be coping much better than her. Had I seen the film? As I didn’t answer, L. pursued her train of thought, talking about another film from around the same time, directed by Laurence Ferreira Barbosa, with an equally good title: Normal People Are Nothing Exceptional. That film was mainly set in a psychiatric hospital, and she’d loved it.
I stopped dead.
I remained speechless for a few seconds, searching her face for a clue.
L. was looking at me, taken aback. It had just got dark, lights were coming on in windows, gusts of wind were whipping up the dead leaves, which sounded like crumpled paper.
I think I felt at that moment a sort of dizziness, which I couldn’t identify as being related to pleasure or fear.
Not for the first time.
Yes, I’d seen both films, and for quite private reasons they were part of my personal pantheon. That L. should be talking to me about precisely those two, both of which had remained somewhat private, was a troubling, even stunning coincidence, to the point that it crossed my mind to wonder whether she had read or heard somewhere my precise memory of them. But we had no mutual acquaintances and I didn’t ever recall talking about them in the press.
Yes, I’d also often wondered how people cope. And in truth, if these questions had changed, they had never gone away: how do people manage to write, love, sleep through the night, vary their children’s diet, allow them to grow up, let them go without clinging on, visit the dentist once a year, play sport, remain faithful, not take up smoking again, read books and comics and magazines and a daily paper, not be completely out of touch with music, learn to breathe, not expose themselves to the sun without protection, do their shopping once a week and not forget anything?
This time, I needed to be sure. I looked straight into her eyes and asked L. why she had told me about these films. Had I already mentioned them? She looked surprised. She’d brought them up because they were films that had affected her. And also because, to tell the truth, she was still asking herself that sort of question. That was all. That was why she thought of them.
We walked on in silence.
Did she also experience permanent doubts about the way she behaved in the world, sometimes hesitant, sometimes over the top? That fear of not being able to find the right rhythm, strike the right tone? The feeling of taking things too much to heart, of not knowing how to keep yourself at a safe distance?
Or had L. adopted my worries as she might have adopted a disguise, in order to hold up a mirror in which I could recognise myself?
When I pondered these questions, I always eventually told myself that I had no reason to doubt the similarities between us or relinquish the reassurance that they gave me.
L. observed other people.
In the street, in parks, on the metro.
L. had no hesitation about taking herself as a subject of study, with a clear-sightedness that delighted me.
It wasn’t enough for L. just to ask the questions; she also suggested answers.
L. was well able to laugh at herself.
L. had theories about everything: matching clothes to your age; the imminent renaissance of the press; the return of heritage vegetables; the best way to stop hiccoughs; telepathy; the use of concealers; the advent of domestic robots; the evolution of language and the use of dictionaries; the effect of dating sites on relationships.
One morning as I was getting ready to leave the apartment, I heard Gilles Deleuze’s voice on the radio. I shall reproduce the sentences that I noted down from memory a few seconds after this short archive clip was broadcast:
If you don’t grasp the little grain of madness in someone, you cannot love them. If you don’t grasp their point of craziness, you miss out. Someone’s point of craziness is the source of their charm.
I immediately thought of L.
I thought of L., who had perceived my point of craziness, and vice versa.
Perhaps that is what any encounter is, whether of lovers or friends: two forms of craziness that recognise and captivate each other.
20
On days when she was sure she wouldn’t bump in to François, L. would come to my place for dinner or a cup of tea.
Autumn drew on and as I wasn’t writing, I made do with living. I’d stopped chaining myself to the computer at a fixed time. I’d declared a kind of truce, to give myself time to find another book, to let it take hold of me. I often thought of words I’d read somewhere, though I couldn’t recall where: stories lie buried in the ground, like fossils. They’re relics from a pre-existing world. And the writer’s task is to use the tools in her toolbox to carefully remove and extract them, as intact as possible.
That’s why I looked down at my feet as I walked, probably on the lookout for a little shard beneath the paving stones that would give me the strength to dig.
When winter began, it became difficult for me to go near the keyboard.
Not just to open a Word file, but also – progressively, insidiously – to answer emails, to write letters. I cannot date the very first time I felt a horrible burning sensation in my throat as soon as I sat in front of the machine. I know that it recurred more and more strongly: an acid reflux that took my breath away.
I bought antacids at the chemist’s.
To go on using the computer, I had to trick my body, tell it in the clearest possible way that I wasn’t going to attempt anything, nothing that had anything at all to do with writing. I adopted a casual, temporary position. I didn’t put the cursor near the Word icon at the foot of the screen. These were the only stratagems that enabled me to face the machine.
Fortunately there were notebooks. Notebooks in which I continued to jot down words and arrange them: tiny beginnings, scraps of sentences plucked from silence, shapes sketched in broad strokes. The notebooks were in my bag. This was the idea that I was clinging to: the fossil was caught in the pages, in the fibre of the paper; the fossil was waiting for its moment. A title, an association, some notes made from life that would make sense when the time came, and would carry me with their echo. A mine, a treasure, and all I would have to do was dig down when I was ready. I told L. about this one day when she expressed concern about what I was doing.
I was with her the day someone rif
led my bag on the metro. I’ve forgotten what made us take Line 4 at rush hour and can find no clue. We were crushed together, swallowed up in a compact mass of bodies, both jostled around and thrown into one another by the rhythm of the carriage. So of course I didn’t notice anything. We parted when we changed trains and I took Line 3, which was equally busy, to go home. It was only later that evening, when I was looking for a packet of tissues, that I realised my bag had been slit with a box-cutter from top to bottom, its full length. I immediately thought about my notebooks. Gone. The pocket that contained my credit card, my cash and my ID had also disappeared. Someone had taken it all (the texture of the notebooks would make them look like a long purse or card wallet), or else they’d only taken the money and the notebooks had then fallen out through the gaping hole. I rummaged in my bag. My hand explored each corner over and over, in a desperate, absurd repetition. I kept saying aloud: it can’t be, it can’t be. And then I started to cry.
Later, I rang L. to tell her what had happened and to check the same thing hadn’t happened to her. Her bag was intact. But now that she thought about it, she had seen two men behind us whose behaviour had struck her as odd. The kind of men who take advantage of the crush to rub up against you.
L. gave me the number of the banks’ card-cancellation service.
L. expressed concern about how I was.
L. asked if I wanted her to come round.
I went to bed right after I hung up. There was nothing else I could do. I’d heard myself tell her in a controlled voice that it wasn’t the end of the world. It wasn’t the end of the world. My notebooks had disappeared and I felt as though both my arms had been cut off. But that was ridiculous, excessive, disproportionate. That was the proof, if proof were needed, that something wasn’t right.
PART TWO
Depression
Inside him a voice whispered for the first time:
Who are you when you write, Thad? Who are you then?
Stephen King, The Dark Half
21
‘I know you watch those series with your children and that you’ve seen the best ones. So please stop and think for a minute. Compare them. Look at what people write and what they film. Don’t you think you’ve lost the battle? When it comes to fiction, literature was outdone long ago. I’m not talking about the cinema – that’s something else again. I’m talking about the DVD box sets on your shelves. I find it hard to believe they’ve never kept you awake at night. Have you never thought that the novel – or at least a certain kind of novel – might be dead? Have you never thought that the screenwriters have pipped you to the post? Or nailed you to it, even. They’re the new omniscient, omnipotent creators. They’re able to create from scratch three generations of families, political parties, cities, tribes – whole worlds, in fact. They can create heroes that people relate to, that they think they know. You see what I’m talking about? The intimate bond between the character and the viewer, the feeling of loss or bereavement they feel when it’s over. You don’t get that with books any more; it happens elsewhere now. That’s what screenwriters do best. You’re the one who was talking to me about the power of fiction, how it can extend into reality. But that’s no longer the stuff of literature. You’re really going to have to face it. Fiction is over for you novelists. TV series provide a much more fertile terrain for fiction and an infinitely larger audience. But there’s nothing sad about this, believe me. It’s actually excellent news. You novelists should be delighted! Let the screenwriters do what they’re much better able to do. Writers need to return to what makes them stand out, to what matters. And do you know what that is? No? You do, of course you do. Why do you think readers and critics wonder about the autobiographical element in literary works? Because today that’s its sole raison d’être: to give an account of reality, to tell the truth. The rest doesn’t matter. That’s what readers expect of novelists: that they’ll lay their guts out on the table. A writer needs ceaselessly to question his way of being in the world, his education, his values. He has perpetually to question the way he uses the language that was passed down to him from his parents, and the one that was taught to him at school, and the one his children speak. He must create a language that is his own, with distinctive inflections, a language that links him to his past, his history. A language of belonging and liberation. The writer has no need to manufacture puppets, no matter how flexible and fascinating they may be. He has enough to occupy him within himself. He must continually return to the damaged terrain that he’s had to traverse to survive; he must return tirelessly to the scene of the accident that turned him into this obsessive, inconsolable individual. Don’t fight the wrong battle, Delphine, that’s all I want to say to you. Readers want to know what’s gone into books and they’re right. Readers want to know what sort of meat’s in the stuffing, if there are colourings, preservatives, emulsifiers or thickeners. And it’s literature’s duty now to play it straight. Your books must never stop examining your memories, beliefs, suspicions, your fear, your relations with those around you. That’s the only way they’ll hit home and resonate.’
That’s what L. said one evening in an empty café near the town hall in the 20th arrondissement.
It had got dark and we had stayed on, at the back of a room with walls covered in 1950s advertising posters, bathed in light. Somewhere a radio station I couldn’t identify crackled away. I reflected that this café was probably the last remnant of a bygone age, the only one in the district that had resisted the assault of a trendy makeover, which was claiming the streets a little at a time. A tiny island of resistance that would soon fall.
I’d listened to L. without trying to interrupt. L. was exaggerating, schematising, systematising, but I didn’t have the strength to respond.
No, I didn’t want to abandon the territory of fiction to anyone. But I looked at my hands and my hands were empty.
No, I wasn’t ruling out returning one day to a form of autobiographical writing, whatever it might be called. But it only had meaning if it was possible to express the world, to reach the universal.
In any case, I was exhausted.
So that’s what L. said and I listened, half-amused, half-stunned.
Her speech forced me to reflect on what I’d always refused to theorise. Her convictions had collided with the modest edifice I’d built to give meaning to my work or at least to enable me to talk about it.
And her words insinuated themselves into the heart of the doubt that I’d become unable to formulate.
L. told me one day that I’d written only two books. The first and the last. The four others were, in her opinion, just a regrettable diversion.
22
In the course of the autumn, Louise and Paul came back for the weekend two or three times, together or separately. A new bond was forming among us, one that had been modified by distance and missing each other. An intense, chatty relationship that was a continuation of all the years we’d spent together, yet also different. My children had grown up. I remained a mother full of emotion and wonder.
François was juggling various projects and had just started work on a second season of his documentary series, a long-term project that would again mean many weeks abroad. I was familiar with his insatiable curiosity, the entire days he spent reading, his appetite for travel. And fundamentally that suited me very well; our joint commitment to what we were trying to make; the will – or the illusion – to be able to simultaneously handle what can and cannot be shared. François respected my need for solitude, my independence, my moments of absence. I respected his choices, his whims, his constantly renewed enthusiasm.
L. called several times a week to let me know she was in the area. In truth, she was never far away. And I always invited her up. Because amid the confusion that I refused to name, I found her presence reassuring.
L. brought flowers, pastries, bottles of wine. She knew where to find the cups, tea, coffee, the corkscrew and the stemmed glasses. She would wrap my shawl around her, light
my lamps, select the music.
When I took a call in her presence, L. would stay. She didn’t pretend to look at her own phone or flick through the paper as most people would do. Instead, she’d nod as I spoke or furrow her brow. She was silently taking part in the conversation.
L. gave me a selection of new notebooks in three different sizes made from recycled paper. In the largest she’d written a little message of encouragement that I’ve forgotten, expressing faith in me. I can’t find it now, as I threw them all away.
Every week she asked me how I was getting on with my work and reminded me she was available if I wanted to discuss it. As I had little to say about mine, she told me about hers. She’d just begun the autobiography of a famous actress. Three months earlier, she’d had to compete with two other highly sought-after ghostwriters. Along with the others, she’d met the actress at a party organised by her agent. Then the actress had made her choice. L. had probably found the right words and demonstrated the intuition about other people that continued to fascinate me. L. loved talking about the pleasure she got from giving shape to the material that the actress provided. She talked about this woman with the tenderness of a creator, as though the actress didn’t exist outside the work they’d begun together, as though it were up to her to reveal this woman to the world, and to herself. L. was happy, and felt that she was now at the peak of her profession. Of what mattered. Because L. was not satisfied with just being chosen. She wouldn’t write for just anyone. She felt entitled to turn down some collaborations and chose the people she wanted to work with. People, she confided, who had a destiny. Who had fallen, gone under, who had suffered and bore the scars. That was what interested her. Writing about how they picked themselves up, repaired and rebuilt themselves. Her role was to stage, put into words, highlight the material they entrusted to her. It was their soul that she put on the page, and when they thanked her, she always came back to this: all she had done was make their soul visible to the naked eye.
Based on a True Story Page 10