Based on a True Story

by Delphine de Vigan

  We were among the first to arrive. We greeted the host and looked at the prints on the wall, which included a series of black-and-white portraits from the sixties that I liked very much. A drinks reception had been arranged. I was glad I’d come. I took a glass of champagne and looked around. It was time to converse, exchange opinions over a drink, show sociability. While I hesitated over plunging in (it’s true that you lose the power of speech if you stay at home), I saw some writers and journalists I knew arrive. People I should, at very least, greet. But instead of going up to say hello, I saw myself retreat, an absurd movement of withdrawal and panic, retreating as I might have done if I’d been overcome with dizziness on a ledge 60 feet above the ground, flattening myself against a solid surface. Back against the wall. Exactly like when I was at parties aged fifteen and an invisible force would push me to the edge, the periphery, the margin. Blending in to the background rather than risking being seen. That evening, the same force pushed me out of the circle, unable simply to say, Hello, how are you? An angry voice in my head said: Shit, Delphine, you’ve done it dozens of times, you know how to do it, be straightforward and natural, be yourself. But it was too late. It was off to a bad start, I was adrift. Across the room, François had turned round and was looking at me with concern.

  In less than two minutes, I had travelled back thirty years and become once more the timid, aloof girl who couldn’t play the game.

  This was what I had come to as a result of not writing, of not being able to write; this was what awaited me if I didn’t find a way out: unprecedented regression.

  I’d lost count of the number of people I should have called back, to whom I’d promised a drink, lunch, dinner; people who, in normal times, I would have been delighted to see, but not now – what could I tell them? That I no longer had the slightest idea, the slightest inclination. I wonder if I haven’t been on the wrong path from the start. I wonder what I’m doing here, in the middle of nowhere. I’m a broken-down writer. It’s such a cliché I don’t even dare express it. Broken-down, yes, I’m sorry. It’s pathetic, but no, it’s not a question of time or success or anything like that; it’s so much deeper. I can’t explain it; it has to do with the very essence of writing, its raison d’être. Perhaps I was wrong from the start, perhaps there’s nothing for me to do here. I missed a turning in the road that it would have been wise to take, another life, yes, a different kind of life, less presumptuous, less vain, less exposed. I don’t know why I’m saying this. Tiredness probably, but it sometimes seems to me that some strange particle has got into my brain and the transmissions, the connections, the desires are scrambled, all the things that didn’t work too badly are now prone to jolts and breakdowns. So I prefer to remain alone, you see, stay on the sidelines for a while. Don’t hold it against me. I’d be happy to hear your news if I didn’t need to give you mine in exchange, but I’m well aware that that’s not how it works.

  One morning I got a call from the editor for whom I’d agreed to write a preface for Maupassant’s novel, Notre Coeur, which was going to be republished in a literary classics series. I should have delivered my text a few weeks earlier, but I’d buried my head in the sand and not given any sign of life.

  The young woman was getting worried. The book had been announced in the catalogue and couldn’t be postponed again, especially since a lot of secondary school teachers had already planned to put it on their syllabuses.

  When I hung up, I was seized with panic. Writing a preface was manifestly beyond me. I wasn’t even capable of writing an email to ask for more time or to withdraw. Worse, dozens of unanswered messages had accumulated in my inbox, most of them unopened.

  That afternoon, I experienced a sort of final jolt (a few days previously I’d read a scientific article on the final jolt of dying cells, which is probably why that expression came into my mind). I couldn’t give in without having tried: going for broke, as they used to say on a game show my grandmother watched when I was a child.

  I must at least write this preface. I’d agreed to do it. If I didn’t keep my word, if I didn’t stick to something, I’d lose control.

  I was familiar with the novel. I’d read it several times. I could pull it off; I had to pull it off.

  I turned on the computer, determined to honour the commitment I’d made.

  I forced myself to keep breathing long enough for the machine to launch its main applications and bring up the Office icons. I tried to adopt a relaxed attitude, the attitude of someone who’s not terrified by the idea of facing the blank page with a silent cursor blinking in the middle. I opened the file the publisher had emailed me, which contained the questionnaire I was supposed to fill in. But I’d scarcely had time to see the page come up before I was seized with an overwhelming nausea. I rushed to the waste-paper bin and threw up. I couldn’t get my breath back. I had to get away, that’s what I felt, as far away from the keyboard as possible so that this would stop. Between retches, doubled up, trying to drag the waste-paper basket with me, I crawled to the bathroom. Once I had closed the door, I threw up the last of the bile in the basin.

  When I’d rinsed my face and brushed my teeth, I saw my pale face in the mirror. I looked like someone who had just glimpsed the worst. The image of the computer, the thought of the computer, gripped my skull like a vice.

  Then I realised I was at the bottom of the pit, right at the bottom.

  It wasn’t just an image. I saw myself very clearly at the bottom of a pit whose smooth sides made any attempt to climb out in vain. I saw myself – for a few seconds I had this vision of myself in terrifying detail – at the bottom of a pit full of earth and mud.

  Today it’s tempting to think that this vision was nothing other than a premonition.

  I came out of the bathroom and called L. for help.

  I called her, and no one else, because at that moment she seemed the only person able to understand what I was going through.

  L. arrived within half an hour.

  She took off her coat, made tea, then made me sit in the armchair by the window. L. asked me for my computer password.

  L. sat down in my place, at my desk.

  L. said: ‘We’ll start by answering your mail and then we’ll write the preface.’

  L. read out the diplomatic expressions she used to explain a refusal or postpone a reply. From her lips, it all seemed so simple. So fluent.

  L. told me she’d also get in touch with people I knew who’d contacted me in recent weeks and whom I’d apparently not answered either. Then she wrote a letter to the residents’ association in my building, which I had let slide.

  Lastly she came to the preface.

  The text I had to write would be presented as an interview. That was the idea behind the series: a contemporary writer explains why he or she loves a reissued classic. L. read out the structure suggested by the publisher, fifteen or so questions I was supposed to respond to. She seemed happy with that. That was lucky; all I had to do was talk to her about the text and she would take care of knocking it into shape. After all, that was her job, and in two or three days we’d have it done.

  L. replied to the editor to propose a delivery date.

  L. came round again the next day, and the day after that.

  I told L. why I liked the novel. I sat in the armchair by the window, quite close to her, while she wrote.

  On the final day, just after she’d printed out the text so that I could look it over, L. picked up a pen to jot down some detail that had just occurred to her.

  Leaning over the manuscript, and probably feeling relief at having finished, L., who had told me she was left-handed (and had been in my presence), held her pen in her right hand and wrote perfectly legibly.

  Yes, I should have expressed surprise.

  Yes, I should have asked L. why she was suddenly writing with her right hand.

  Yes, I should have asked why she had suddenly started wearing ankle boots like mine.

  I should have thanked her and made clear
that there was no need for her to come back the next day, as we’d finished.

  That evening, while L. was still at my apartment, the editor acknowledged receipt of the preface. It was just what she wanted; she was delighted.

  Then I did something I often do with my friends: I gave L. a hug of gratitude. I felt her body stiffen in contact with mine. L. withdrew from the embrace and looked at me, moved: she was very happy she could help and free me up from a few things, if that would enable me to refocus on the essential.

  She repeated that phrase: refocus on the essential.

  29

  Now that I’m setting out the facts, reconstructing them more or less in the order in which they occurred, I’m aware of a sort of pattern emerging, as though in invisible ink, the gaps that offer a glimpse of L.’s slow and confident progress, strengthening her hold by the day. And with reason: I’m writing this story in the light of what this relationship turned into and the damage it did. I know the fear it plunged me into and the violence with which it ended.

  Now that I’m able once again to sit in front of the screen (in what state is another story) and even if that ability remains fragile, I’m trying to understand. I’m trying to establish links, connections, theories. I’m well aware that this commitment may encourage the reader to develop a certain mistrust towards L. A mistrust that I didn’t feel. Surprise, amusement, perplexity, yes. But not mistrust. Mistrust came much later.

  François went back abroad to complete his documentary and I entered a period of great isolation.

  This period lasted several months and I find it hard today to delineate it.

  I have to admit that reference points get mixed up, confused, all the more so since my diary reveals nothing: the pages I’m turning over now are blank. The only exceptions are Louise and Paul’s visits, their initials marked in blue pen, and a few weekends when I left Paris to visit them, a breath of fresh air that got me out of my torpor.

  Once the preface had been written and sent off, I agreed to L. coming round to impose a little order. She’d noticed that correspondence and bills were piling up on my desk, sometimes unopened, and was worried they would become overdue.

  L. signed some cheques and bank payment orders on my behalf, and answered numerous letters (insurance, union, bank . . .), then dealt with the bills I’d let slip.

  L. looked after answering the various requests that continued to come in, mostly via my press agency.

  I watched L. turn the computer on, open a pad of writing paper, choose an envelope of the appropriate size, sort my emails; in short, act as though she were at home, and it all seemed simple. To tell the truth, she was using her left hand again, with an ease that would have been hard to fake, which was why I came to believe that I’d been mistaken the day I thought I saw her writing with her right.

  ‘You’ve reached a point in your life where it’s getting dangerous to give your trust,’ she declared one morning after she’d spent nearly an hour on my computer.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because I’m well placed to see the traps that are laid for you. I’m well placed to know what your publisher, your friends, your family, your acquaintances expect of you now. And what they’re doing to lead you there, all the while pretending to stay out of it.’

  ‘But all those people have very little to do with each other and probably expect different, even contradictory, things of me.’

  ‘I’m not so sure, Delphine. They’re all encouraging you to lead a particular sort of life without taking the risk that you are. To go back to your old ways in a sense, to the nice, compassionate stock in trade that was your literary trademark.’

  ‘I don’t get what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I just want to draw your attention to it. It might be time to show a little discernment in the way you approach the outside world. None of the people you consider close have any idea what you’re going through. None of the people you think you’ve chosen as friends knows what a struggle you’re engaged in just now. Who’s worried? I mean, who’s really worried?’

  I still didn’t see what she was driving at, but I couldn’t let her get away with saying whatever she liked. ‘The people who love me are worried, or at least are interested because I’m worried. They’re interested to the extent that’s reasonable, the way people are interested in the life of someone they love and wish well.’

  ‘OK . . . if you say so. That’s not the impression I got, that’s all. Few people put themselves forward if you don’t call them up. Few people cross the barricades we’ve planted in the unstable, marshy ground of our trenches. Few people are able to come and look for us where we really are. You’re like me, Delphine, you’re not the sort who asks for help. At best, you may mention afterwards, ideally in passing, that you’ve been through a tough time. But as for asking for help in the present, at the time when you’re sinking, or drowning, I bet you’ve never done that.’

  ‘I have. I do. Now I do. For concrete things that I know this person or that can help me with. It’s one of the things I’ve eventually learned to do.’

  ‘But don’t you think that real friends are ones that you don’t have to call?’

  ‘I don’t know what “real friends” means. Either you’re friends or you’re not. And when you’re friends, there are times when you can force the barriers and other times when that’s harder.’

  ‘But have your friends been able to break down the barriers, to impose at the right moment, without asking?’

  ‘Yes, of course. That’s happened several times.’

  ‘For instance?’

  ‘I’ve got lots of examples.’

  ‘Tell me just one.’

  ‘Well, for instance, when the father of my children and I separated a long time ago, I went through a strange time. It happened in stages without me realising, after I moved out. Gradually I stopped phoning my friends, asking after them, I let days and weeks go by. I was hunched over my pain. I hibernated. I hid myself away to shed my skin; I don’t know, it was a form of detachment I’d never experienced, as though nothing counted any more apart from the children. I had no strength. It lasted a few months. Most of my friends continued to keep in touch, to call me, show they were there, even at a distance. One Friday night in March at about eight o’clock, after Louise and Paul had gone off to their father’s for the weekend, the bell rang. I opened the door. Chloé and Julie were standing there with a birthday cake and the candles were lit. They started singing on the stairs. I could see them both smiling in the candlelight. Their smiles said: we came anyway, it doesn’t really matter what state we find you in. I didn’t cry, but I was very moved. What really got me, you see, what still gets me when I tell the story, is the cake. Because they could have got a tart from Picard or any baker’s on my street. But they didn’t. Hundreds of miles away, they’d made an almond pithivier with perfect sugar icing. They’d transported it in a box, taking all the necessary precautions. They’d thought of candles and a lighter (neither of them smoked), they’d arranged to meet in the same carriage on the TGV (one of them was coming from Nantes and the other from Angers) and then they’d taken the metro and come up the stairs with their overnight bags. Once they were outside my door, they put the candles in, lit them and rang the bell. I was so moved, seeing them at my door for my birthday, with a homemade cake. It was like a promise of a life where there would always be indulgence and kindness. It was a promise of great joy.

  ‘A few years later, when my mother died, Tad and Sandra, the childhood friends I’ve told you about, who lived far apart, caught the train to Paris. They took time off work to pay their respects to my mother, to help me, to be with me.’

  L. had been listening carefully, without saying a word. She smiled.

  ‘Those are nice stories. But they’re from before.’

  ‘Before what?’

  ‘Before all this.’

  She cast her eyes around without indicating anything in particular. I didn’t ask her to explain; she
gave the impression she hadn’t understood.

  ‘What would be interesting now would be to see who might come to your door on a Friday night when you haven’t asked for anything. In your opinion, which of your friends would show up unexpectedly?’

  ‘Now it’s different. Now I have François.’

  ‘Where?’

  I pretended not to have noted the irony.

  ‘In my life. My friends know that. They know I can count on him.’

  ‘That’s good. OK, I imagine it’s different. Let me say, between ourselves, I’m not sure anyone can protect you from yourself. But OK. And maybe that explains ultimately why no one’s too worried by your silence.’

  I had no desire to continue this conversation, which I considered unfair and cruel. Could I allow myself to remind L. that not only did her friends not phone on her birthday, they didn’t even come round when she invited them? Could I allow myself to tell L. that she came across as someone very alone, someone who had created a huge void around her?

  I reckoned that L.’s bitterness stemmed from her own loneliness and that made me sad. I couldn’t hold it against her. L. had lost her husband. Something serious had happened in her life, cutting her off from most of her friends. L. was projecting onto me things that didn’t apply. But in her way, she was trying to help.

  It was almost noon and L. said she had a lunch appointment.

  She left, having advised me to get some fresh air; I looked like death.

  It was only a few days later that I came to the conclusion that L. was right. Apart from François and the children, it had been some time since anyone had written or phoned.

  30

  That was most likely how L. established herself in my life, with my consent, by a sort of gradual process of enchantment.

  I’ve often tried to identify the flaw that made me so vulnerable. So permeable.