The publisher for whom I’d written the Maupassant preface (or rather, for whom L. had written a preface that I’d put my name to) organised regular public events at the Théâtre de l’Odéon. When the reissue of the book came out, the editor rang me to check I hadn’t forgotten about my event, which had been arranged when I signed the contract. The event was to take place in the small Roger Blin room, which accommodates a hundred people. It would last about an hour and would begin, if I was happy with this, with me reading an extract from the novel. The interviewer’s questions would then focus on my reading of the book, the appeal of the author to me, the idea being to make people want to discover or reread this less well-known Maupassant novel.
When I hung up, my first instinct was to call L. and ask her to go in my stead. I kept going through to voicemail. As though this phone number was reserved for me and would be unobtainable as long as she remained angry. I didn’t leave a message.
Once again, I was committed. The event had been announced on various sites; it was much too late for me to pull out. And when I stopped to think about it, it was completely out of the question to ask L. to impersonate me. I knew several people at the publishing house, and readers I’d already met in bookshops were likely to come. In this environment, L. wouldn’t last two minutes before she was unmasked.
The night before, I reread the novel and the preface L. had written. I didn’t sleep a wink. On the evening of the event, I arrived early to chat with the theatre’s literary adviser, who was preparing to interview me. He tried to reassure me (I must have looked especially tense) and ran through the format with me again. And then it was time for us to take our places on the little stage in front of the audience.
The room was full. I read an extract from the novel that lasted about ten minutes. When I looked up, I saw her.
She was sitting in the third row, dressed like me. I don’t mean in the same style of clothing, I mean dressed exactly like me: same jeans, same blouse, same black jacket. Only the colour of her ankle boots, which were a shade darker, differed from mine. I wanted to laugh. L. was playing a joke. L. had dressed up and had decided to be my understudy, like in films. L. was signalling to me that in the event of a problem, she was ready to jump on stage and replace me at the drop of a hat. She gave me a discreet wink. No one but me seemed to have noticed her little game.
I have only a vague memory of discussing the book. My answers were mediocre and, as the hour ticked by, I felt as though I was sinking into bland opinions of the utmost vacuousness. I looked at L., who was now in the middle of the audience. In spite of myself, I came back to her attentive, impassive face, which reminded me of the deception I was indulging in. In spite of her smile, in spite of her repeated nods (as though encouraging a child in a school show), I couldn’t suppress the thought that her place was here on the platform, and that her answers would have been so much more focused than mine.
After the event, people lingered briefly before drifting off. I signed some books, chatted with a few people. In the distance, I saw L. mingling with a little group, then talking to the editor who had commissioned me to write the preface. I shuddered. No one seemed to have noticed her. No one seemed to have noticed that L. resembled me, or was imitating me. L. blended in to the background, arousing neither surprise nor suspicion. And then it struck me that the whole thing was nothing more than pure projection on my part. A narcissistic fantasy. An interpretative hallucination. L. wasn’t dressed like me – she was dressed like most women of our age. Who was I, who did I think I was, imagining that L. had done this to copy me? What I needed to face up to was this: I had developed a disproportionate fear of L. True, L. was a rather intrusive friend, but she’d tried to help me, advise me, and in return all I had shown her was mistrust and suspicion. No one but me thought her strange, and I was the only person casting worried glances in her direction.
Later, when the room had emptied, I went for a drink with the people from the publishers. We sat around a large table in the café nearest the theatre. I was happy to be there, in good company. The atmosphere was simple and warm, I felt good.
After about ten minutes, I saw L. pass the café window and give me a sad wave. And then she disappeared.
The next day, I tried to call L. several times, but her mobile always went to voicemail. Then, one evening she sent me a text to say she was thinking of me, and she’d call me as soon as she could ‘see things a bit more clearly’.
We’d lived together for several weeks; we’d shared the same bathroom and dozens of meals; we’d acted in such a way as to make our various moods coincide – and then L. had left. No trace of her remained in my apartment; no item of clothing or object left behind, no little note stuck to the fridge. She’d taken everything, packed it all up and left nothing.
A couple of weeks went by without leaving any trace in my memory. I didn’t turn on my computer once.
And then François had to go abroad again.
I could have called my friends, got back in touch, let them know I was happy to be contacted and available, but I didn’t have the energy. I would have had to tell them about L., explain why she’d come to live with me, why she’d had unrestricted access to my computer. I would have had to admit that I was unable to write, my phobia undiminished. Or else, I would have had to lie, and admit I was the author of that stupid message that had distanced them from me.
So I found myself alone, prisoner of a lie that offered no possibility of turning the clock back.
44
One morning in October, I found an anonymous letter in my mailbox. The envelope was the same as before. I reproduce the contents here:
Delphine,
Even when you were a child, you already caused fear. You exuded unease. Everyone could see it and talked about it. Everyone. You didn’t get over it. In fact, it just got worse. Because now madam is in the literary world.
But no one is taken in any more. Your moment of glory, your little tricks, your contemptible cheap shots: over. No one feels sorry for you any more. Every day I have to listen to unpleasant comments about your publications, everywhere, in shops, in the street, at dinner parties. Everywhere I hear mockery, sniggers. You don’t take anyone in any more. And no one could care less. About your stories and your jokes that amuse no one but you. I know your childhood and adolescence were very disturbed, pathological even; you’ve described them very well. The masses were knocked out by your book. But it’s over.
Shit-stirrers like you always end up chewing their own fingers. Your behaviour is just making your psychiatric condition worse. You think all you have to do is withdraw from the media spotlight and people will forget why you’re sleeping with him? Your number’s up for good. And the worst thing is you haven’t realised.
I put the typewritten sheet back in the envelope and filed the letter with the others. Anxiety seeped into the apartment like a pool of blood.
I could no longer deny that the letters hurt me, made me feel soiled.
I didn’t say anything to François, or to anyone.
I didn’t talk about my throat feeling permanently constricted, nor the acid invading my stomach from the moment I woke and then spreading throughout my body.
A few days later, in the metro, two teenagers who had just come from the cinema sat down opposite me. One of them was explaining to the other that the film they’d seen, according to what he’d read on AlloCiné, was closely based on reality: it was almost all true. The second one nodded and then said with surprise, ‘Have you seen how many films are coming out that’re based on true stories? You gotta wonder if those guys’ve run out of inspiration!’
The first one thought for a moment, then said, ‘Nah . . . it’s cos reality’s got the balls to go much further.’
That phrase really struck me, a phrase from the lips of a kid of fifteen, in Nikes that looked like they’d been designed for walking on another planet; this phrase that was so banal in his words, but expressed in such a particular way: reality’s got balls. Reality possesses a
will, its own dynamic. Reality is the fruit of a superior force, far more creative, bold, imaginative than anything that we could invent. Reality was a huge plot steered by a demiurge of unequalled power.
Another evening, as I was coming in, I smelled L.’s perfume in the lobby of my building. I put it down to coincidence, or perhaps an olfactory hallucination.
When I opened the door to my apartment, the lights from the street illuminated part of the living room and projected the shadows of the furniture onto the floor. I didn’t turn on the lights immediately and I probably sensed someone was watching me, because I went over and looked out the window. In the stairwell of the building opposite, I thought I could discern a human form. As my eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness, and tried to make it out, my impression turned to certainty. Someone was standing there, completely still. The timer on the stair lights had gone off and this person probably thought they could no longer be seen. From this distance, it was impossible to make out their face, or even tell if it was a man or a woman.
I stayed there for a moment, peering into the darkness, trying to make out a sign, a garment, a body shape. And then the figure withdrew and vanished completely.
I closed the curtains and stayed still a moment longer behind the opaque fabric, watching through a tiny gap for the figure to return. But it didn’t.
The next morning, when I looked out of the window in daylight, I wondered if I had imagined it. Everything seemed so normal.
A couple of hours later, as I was leaving to go to the market on boulevard Richard-Lenoir, I fell on the stairs. It’s hard to describe this fall. I think I simply forgot that I was going downstairs. For just a fraction of a second (a tiny instant of disconnection), I put one foot in front of the other as though I was walking on a level surface. I landed with a dull thud about ten steps down, on the landing below. After a few minutes, I realised I couldn’t get up. One of my neighbours called the fire brigade. They parked their truck outside my building and got me to lie on a trolley. They carried me to their truck. A little crowd of curious bystanders had already gathered around it, held back by one of the firemen. Just as the doors were closing, I saw L. rush forward from the crowd, looking panicked. The firemen told her they were taking me to Saint-Louis hospital and she called to me that she’d get her car and meet me there.
At that moment, I didn’t wonder by what chance she had turned up like that, at exactly the right moment. I was happy to see a familiar face, someone I hadn’t needed to call for help, who’d shown up at the perfect moment, popping up from nowhere as if by magic.
L. found me in A & E half an hour later. Normally, friends and relatives aren’t allowed in the treatment areas, but L. had rapidly persuaded someone to let her through the swing doors to be beside me. Nor did it take her long to find a chair and sit down beside the trolley I was on. I asked her how she’d managed to get in and she said she’d told the junior doctor on duty that I was suffering from severe depression and it would be better if she were there to reassure me. I didn’t know if that was a joke or what she actually believed. In any case, I knew her powers of persuasion.
My foot really hurt, but apart from some bruising, everything else seemed to be working. The emergency was relative, and I waited a good while before being taken for X-ray. All this time, L. stayed with me. I hadn’t seen her for several weeks and I have to admit that I was pleased to see her. The last conversations we’d had were consigned to the past and I couldn’t find it in myself to be annoyed with her. I think that at that moment I’d completely absorbed the fact that L. was odd, neurotic, over the top and unpredictable, but I didn’t realise the extent of the danger. I knew a fair number of people who were odd, neurotic, over the top and unpredictable, and I, too, was probably all those things. And anyway, the suspicions I’d had about her may have been groundless. Yes, in the hope of helping me to concentrate, she’d taken it upon herself to send that email to my friends. Perhaps she hadn’t realised the significance of what she’d done. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to fall out with her definitively over it. Because there was all the other stuff. All that she’d done for me. For weeks, L. had offered me her help, her presence and her encouragement.
And once again, here she was beside me, showing her ability to understand, reassure, say the right thing. Within minutes we had re-established the complicity that bound us.
It was while we were waiting there that L. began to open up to me for the first time.
I couldn’t say how the conversation came round to this. We were probably talking about hospitals, hospital life, and L. alluded to the fact that she’d spent several months in a psychiatric clinic. I asked her about it. At first she was vague and then she told me about it. After her husband’s funeral, she lost her power of speech. All of a sudden, overnight. Without warning. She woke up one night with aching bones and short of breath. She had a fever. Under the sheets she could feel the heat her own body was giving off. She thought she’d caught a cold or some sort of virus. She stayed in bed and waited for morning. Through the window, she watched the lights come on in nearby buildings and the sky turn from black to grey. When her alarm went off, she got up to make tea. And there, alone in the kitchen, she tried to speak. As though, by intuition, she’d already grasped what was happening to her. No sound came from her mouth. She looked in the bathroom mirror. She brushed her teeth. She examined the back of her throat and felt the glands in her neck. She tried to cough. Nothing, not even a whisper. Her throat wasn’t inflamed and her glands weren’t swollen. She spent the day at home; she didn’t go out. She tried to speak several times, but didn’t manage to make a sound.
After a few days, people in her family became worried that they hadn’t heard from her. Someone took her to a clinic; she didn’t remember who.
She stayed for six months. She was twenty-five. She tried as far as she could to avoid taking the medicines they gave her. She was shut up in silence, as though a wad of cotton had become lodged in her throat, where it grew and enveloped her entirely. A soft, compact material that protected her.
One day she realised she couldn’t remain mute for the rest of her life. That she would have to make the journey back and recover her power of speech. That she was going to have to confront this thing. For several days, she practised speaking alone at night, under the covers. She whispered, quietly articulating short words, with her hands over her mouth so as not to be heard.
Hello.
Is anyone there? Yes.
Me.
L.
Alive.
Able to speak.
The warmth of her breath in her hands. Catching the words one by one, gently. Then she knew that she would recover the power of speech and would never again stop talking. She uttered new words.
It was a Tuesday when she spoke for the first time. The nurse came into her room with her breakfast. The sun was projecting the shadow of the window bars onto the wall by her bed. The young woman spoke to her in the cheerful tone you hear in hospitals, clinics and retirement homes, anywhere that healthy people look after the powerless. She put her tray down on the over-bed table.
L. watched her. She wanted to say something. The memory of a poem that she had learned suddenly came into her mind: ‘I’ve dreamed of you so much that my arms, accustomed to being crossed on my breast while hugging your shadow, would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body.’
That made the nurse stop, and she said in the same tone: ‘Isn’t that marvellous? You’ve got your voice back.’ She wanted to smile at her, but she burst into tears. Not sobs, just silent, involuntary tears that rolled down her cheeks.
Jean was dead, but she was alive.
L. had finished her story. Her emotion was palpable.
She’d spent six months of her life without uttering a word. I could tell how painful this memory still was for her.
I think that it was at this moment that the idea first came to me.
Because of this story, this first confidence.
While
injured, damaged, terrified people kept arriving all around us, people who were suffering, whose lives had collapsed, for the first time the idea came to me that I would write about L.
It was a project in itself. An adventure. I would have to do the research and that wouldn’t be easy. L. didn’t readily give of herself. She knew how to keep her secrets.
But suddenly everything was clear. It all made sense. The strange way we met, the speed with which she’d come to occupy such a place in my life, and even my fall on the stairs. Suddenly things fell into place, found their raison d’être.
Suddenly I could no longer think of anything but this: a novel about L. What I knew about her. Her whims, her phobias. Her life.
It was obvious. Inevitable.
She was right. It was no longer the right time to create entirely invented characters and shake them around in a vacuum, like poor, worn puppets.
The time had come to recount real life.
And hers felt more like a novel than mine.
L. went back to the waiting room while I had my X-rays. They revealed a non-displaced fracture of the fifth metatarsal.
A little later, I left A & E with my foot immobilised by a splint that extended to my knee.
L. fetched her car. We’d turned down an ambulance, which would have meant waiting at least another hour.
She carefully helped me ease into the front seat. We stopped at a chemist’s to buy the painkillers and crutches prescribed by the hospital.
According to the doctors, I would need to keep the splint on for at least four weeks before I could put my foot down.
L. remained silent in the car on the way back to my apartment. After a time, she pointed out that with six flights of stairs and no lift, and with François away, my life looked like it would be very complicated. For starters, it wouldn’t be easy to haul myself upstairs, with only one foot to put my weight on. And once I’d got up, going back down again would be out of the question. For someone like me, who couldn’t bear a day without going out, it was looking tricky.
Based on a True Story Page 19