David Foenkinos
The Erotic Potential
of My Wife
Translated from French by
Yasmine Gaspard
TELEGRAM
London Beirut
For Victor
How to reach you, sensual wave,
You who give me wings …
M
In vain, reason denounces to me
the dictatorship of sensuality.
Louis Aragon
A Kind of Life
1
Hector had the face of a hero. One felt he was always ready to act, to face the dangers of our vast humanity, to ignite the feminine masses, to organise family holidays, to hold conversations in lifts with his neighbours, and, if truly feeling in good shape, to understand a film by David Lynch. He was a kind of hero of our times, with chubby calves. But there he goes deciding to commit suicide! What a hero he’s turned out to be. An acquired taste for the dramatic had made him opt for the Metro. Everyone would know of his death, it would be like the media preview of a film that’s bound to flop. Hector listened politely to the tannoy announcements telling him not to buy tickets from touts; something useful to remember should his suicide attempt fail. Not knowing anything about him yet, we hoped a little for this failure, even just to know if it was possible to judge someone by appearances alone. It’s crazy what a hero’s face he had. His vision was blurring, thanks to the sedatives he’d swallowed. Better to die sleepy. Ultimately this proved lucky. Hector passed out, eyes vacant. He was discovered motionless in the corridors of the Metro, closer to Châtelet-Les Halles than to death.
His slumped body resembled an aborted foetus. Two paramedics who looked like doped-up athletes (we are wary of faces now!) came to deliver him from the eyes of commuters delighted to witness a plight worse than their own. Hector was thinking of one thing only: in failing in his suicide, he had condemned himself to live.
He was transferred to a hospital that had been freshly repainted. Sensibly, ‘fresh paint’ could be read everywhere. He was going to have to spend several months here, bored to death. Very quickly, his only pleasure became a cliché: staring at the nurse while dreaming vaguely of stroking her breasts. He was drifting to sleep thinking of this, while at the same time admitting to himself that she was ugly. In this vegetative state disgrace seemed mythical. This judgement seemed too harsh; the nurse did appear sensual between two shots of morphine. And there was this doctor who passed by from time to time, like people pass by in a party. These encounters rarely exceeded a minute. It was necessary for the doctor to take care of his reputation by looking busy (it was about the only thing that he was taking care of). This incredibly tanned man would ask him to stick out his tongue in order to come to the conclusion that he had a beautiful tongue. It was good to have a beautiful tongue, it felt good to have a beautiful tongue, but a fat lot of good that would do Hector. He was not quite sure what to expect, he was a great depressive who was whimpering from the bottom of a pit. It was suggested that family or friends be contacted if ‘sir’ had any. (Discreetly, the possibility of hiring some was put forward.) These options were rejected by less-than-polite silence, but let’s skip over that.
Hector did not want to see anyone. More precisely, and like all invalids, he did not want anyone to see him as he was now. He was ashamed to be a fraction of a man between nothingness and less than nothingness. He occasionally called a friend, making believe that he was abroad: ‘The Grand Canyon is just wonderful, what ravines!’ Then he would hang up, because he was the Grand Canyon.
The nurse found him pleasant; she even told him that he was an unusual man. Would you want to sleep with a woman who found you unusual? Now that is a key question. Ultimately, no. Let’s just say that women never sleep with him. She was interested in his story; well, what she knew of his story, that is, his medical file. It is not saying much that there exist more glorious selling points. Does she exist, the woman who will offer you her body because she likes the way you never miss your DT Polio booster? ‘Oh, how you turn me on, precise man of vaccines!’
Often, the nurse would rub her chin. In those moments, she took over the role of the doctor; to be sure, there was room for this role. She would then come much closer to Hector’s bed. She really did have an erotic way of repeatedly caressing the white sheet with her hand, her well-groomed fingers like legs on a staircase, climbing its whiteness.
Hector was released at the beginning of March, though essentially the month had no importance, actually nothing had any importance. The concierge, a woman whose age could no longer be deduced, feigned to have been worried by the tenant’s absence. You know, this way of being falsely worried, this way of imagining yourself back in 1942, with a voice so high-pitched that, close to a railway track, it could derail a train.
‘Mister Balanchiiiine, I’m so happy to see you! You see, I was so worriiiied …’
Hector wasn’t naïve; he had been absent longer than six months, so she was trying to score her Christmas presents. He feared taking the lift in case he bumped into a neighbour and had to explain his absence. He dragged himself up the stairs instead. But his heavy breathing alerted his neighbours, who pressed their eyes to the peepholes in their doors. As he made his way, doors opened. It was not even Sunday. This building was tiresomely idle. And there was always an alcoholic neighbour – with whom he shares as many points in common as two parallel lines – who forced him to drop in on him. Just to ask ‘How’s everything going?’ three times, and for Hector to respond ‘Good, and you, how’s it going?’ each time. Unbearable familiarity. After convalescence, it would be nice to live in Switzerland. Or better even, to be a woman in a harem. He faked liver pains to excuse himself, but inevitably his neighour would ask, ‘Tell me you didn’t bring back cirrhosis from your travels, did you?!’
Hector managed a smile and continued his journey. He opened the door, turned on the light. Nothing had moved, obviously. But Hector could feel that many lives had passed, he could smell the reincarnation. Dust had watched over the place, before boredom drove it to reproduce. You could inhale the procreation.
Night fell, like every evening. He made himself a coffee to give his insomnia an air of normality. Sitting in his kitchen, he listened to cats creep along the gutters; he didn’t know what to do. He was thinking about all the mail he hadn’t received. He glanced over at a mirror he’d bought in a second-hand shop; he could distinctly remember that day, and the memory scared him. Just as the scent of a person can be smelt by looking at a photograph, the fever he’d suffered that day overpowered him once again. The important thing was not to think about it; he was cured. Never again would he go to a second-hand shop and buy a mirror. He looked momentarily at his reflection. His face, after six months of convalescence, seemed different. For the first time in his life he imagined his future to be stable; of course, he was mistaken. But nobody here wanted (yet) to contradict him. But before moving on to his future, we need to linger on his less-than-perfect past.
2
Hector had just unexpectedly experienced the greatest moment of his life; he had come face to face with a ‘NIXON IS THE BEST’ badge from the 1960 US Republican primaries. It was a well-known fact that post-Watergate, Nixon badges were rare.
His connoisseur’s nose twitched delicately, like the eyelids of a teenage girl whose breasts grow faster than expected. This discovery would enable him to win the national competition for the ‘best holder of electoral campaign badges’. It is something few know, but collectors gather for competitions. (It is a real pleasure to share this knowledge.)
At these events, collectors fight about rare stamps and coins in an atmosphere that is as festive as it is dusty. Hector h
ad registered in the badges category, a surprisingly popular category that year (due to the upsurge of pin amateurs, purists stuck by the badge). One had to have nerve to reach the quarter-finals. Hector didn’t show any sign of nerves, he knew he was superior, and, in a cosy corner of his memory, he relived the moment of the Nixon discovery. He was walking, hands in front like antennae, with a fever in his step. The collector is a sick person permanently seeking a cure. For two days he drifted, desperately seeking a badge; it had already been six months since he had obsessed on badges, six months of wild passion, six months where his life had been nothing but badges.
One should always beware of Swedes who are not blond. Hector was impassive. At any moment he could whip out the ‘NIXON IS THE BEST’ badge in front of the Swede’s luminous eyes, eyes that were reminiscent of the suicide rate in Sweden. Even if his name was impossible to remember, his sublime performance the previous year was impossible to forget, because Mister was the reigning champion of electoral campaign badges. In his civilian life, the Swede was a pharmacist in Sweden. It was said that he had inherited this profession – a collector’s professional life often fits like an oversized suit. As for their sex life, it is as calm as a dunce during school holidays. Collecting is one of the rare activities that doesn’t rely on seduction. Accumulated objects are barriers like a horse’s blinkers. Only flies can see the cold sadness that emanates from their eyes, the sadness that is forgotten during the euphoria of a competition.
The Swede, at that moment, was even forgetting the very word ‘medicine’. His parents – who raised him with the love that a syringe has for a vein – suddenly held no sway. The public held its breath, it was one of the most nail-biting finals ever to grace us. Hector met the look of the Pole he had eliminated in the semi-final. He could sense his anxiety, that he still had not accepted his defeat. Hector wondered how the Pole ever thought he stood a chance with a Lech Wałęsa badge.
The Swede’s empty head held few distractions, so he remained calm. He rubbed his temples from time to time; it was so obvious how he was trying to destabilise our Hector. Ridiculous attempts. Our Hector was strong. After years of collections, he was sure of his Nixon; it would certainly have warmed Nixon’s heart to know that Hector would win thanks to him. Nevertheless this wouldn’t make it into the history books and it wasn’t likely that the night’s performance would diminish the blight of Watergate. However, things proved not so simple. (Remember: do not trust Swedes who are not blond.) The bastard brought out a Beatles badge. The public stifled their laughter. But far from being fazed, the Swede explained that it was a campaign badge for head of the ‘Sergeant Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band’. The poor man must have got word of Hector’s Nixonian jewel and had not found another tactic than to confuse the jury – Swedish vermin. And his plan seemed to be working, since the jury (in all honesty, a bearded man) began to smile.
Hector protested, but in a way that can only be described as ridiculous: he clenched his teeth. He didn’t know how else to protest. But let’s cut to the chase: the cheat’s tactic was found very original, and Hector was declared the loser. He handled it with dignity, making a slight head movement towards the winner and then leaving the hall.
Alone, he began to cry. Not because of his defeat, he had already had so many highs and lows, and he knew that a career was filled with such moments. No, he cried because of the absurdity of the situation; to lose to the Beatles was laughable. It made him realise his entire life was absurd. For the first time, he felt the strength to change, a strength that would allow him to break free from the crazy cycle of collecting. His whole life, he had been but a heart beating to the rhythm of his discoveries. He had collected stamps, diplomas, paintings of moored ships, Metro tickets, first pages of novels, plastic drink mixers and cocktail sticks, corks, moments with you, Croatian maxims, Kinder Surprise toys, paper napkins, charms, rolls of film, souvenirs, sleeve buttons, thermometers, rabbits’ feet, birth certificates, seashells from the Indian Ocean, noises at five in the morning, cheese labels; in short, he had collected everything, and every time with the same excitement. His existence was frenetic, with spectacular periods of pure euphoria and extreme depression. He could not recall any moment of his life where he had not collected something, where he had not been looking for something. Nonetheless, with each new collection, Hector always thought it would be his last. But systematically, he discovered in his fulfilment a source of non-fulfilment. He was the Don Juan of things.
Parenthesis
This last comparison is the right one. People often say that there are ‘ladies’ men’; Hector can be thought of as an ‘objects’ man’. Not to compare women to objects, but obvious similarities can be noted, and our hero’s anxieties can be reflected in the anxieties of two-timers, and of all men transfixed by feminine rarity.
Ultimately, it is the story of a man who loved women. Hector was sometimes torn between two collections. Some examples: after six months of a life dedicated to cheese labels, he would suddenly fall for a rare stamp, and be devoured by the impulse to leave everything for this new passion. Sometimes the choice was physically impossible, and Hector endured months of anguish juggling two lives. It was then necessary to keep each collection at opposite ends of the apartment, and massage the feelings of individual items. Hector conferred human attributes to these objects. He often witnessed the jealousy of a stamp towards a birth certificate. Admittedly, these were times when his mental health left most to be desired.
In addition, each collection stirred different emotions in him. Some, such as the pages of a book, were more sensual. Some collections, sensitive ones, of great purity, once gone, became fabulous sources of nostalgia. And other more carnal collections, one-night collections, so to speak, touched on more brutal and physical spheres. That’s what it was like with the cocktail sticks. One cannot make a life with a cocktail stick.
Of course, he had sought treatment before to prevent himself from starting a collection, to abstain; but nothing helped, it was stronger than him. He would fall for something and feel the irrepressible need to collect it. He had read books; all told of the possibility of repressing or exorcising a fear of abandonment. Some children who are neglected by their parents choose to collect as a form of reassurance. Abandonment is a time of war; the fear of lacking leads to accumulation. In Hector’s case, it could not be said that his parents had neglected him. Nor could it be said that they had smothered him. No, their attitude stagnated between the two, in a kind of timeless lethargy. Let’s see.
3
Hector had always been a good son (we have seen, and, in some cases, appreciated how he approached his suicide attempt with discretion; there was something caring in telling everyone he was in the United States). He was a good son anxious to make his parents happy, to lull them into the illusion of his success. In front of their door, he put the finishing touches on his smile. His eyes were ringed by rings. When his mother opened the door, she did not see her son as he was but as she had always seen him. If our family relationships are films seen from the distorting closeness of the first row, Hector’s parents were seeing them from inside the screen. A parallel can be drawn between the need to collect and the need to be noticed as a changing being (one could simply say living).
We will return to this hypothesis later.
By and large, we will return to all hypotheses later.
The composure required not to shatter the myth of the accomplished son is formidable work. These things are easier to imagine than to achieve. To make believe that we are happy is almost more difficult than to actually be happy. The more he smiled, the more his parents relaxed; they were proud to have such a happy and caring son. They felt as good as when electrical household appliances outlive the end date of their guarantee. In the eyes of his parents, Hector was a German brand.
Today, he finds it more difficult than ever. Admitting to the suicide attempt is on the tip of his semi-blue lips. For once, he would like not to pretend, to be a son in front of hi
s parents, to cry tears large enough to wash away the pain in a torrent. There’s nothing he can do; as always the smile on his face blocks and fetters the truth. His parents were always passionate about their son’s interests. For them the word passion is a flash feeling, an orgasm of the smile. (‘Oh really? You found a new soap holder … That’s fabulous!’) And it would stop there. It was real enthusiasm (Hector had never questioned it), but it seemed to perch perilously on the peak of a Russian mountain, and after exposure, it fell dramatically into a silent void. No, that is not quite right: his father occasionally tapped him on the shoulder to express his pride. Hector, in these moments, wanted to kill him; without really knowing why.
Hector ate at his parents’ even when he was not hungry (he was a good son). Meals took place in silence hardly disturbed by the gentle slurping of soup. Hector’s mother liked making soup so much. Sometimes, our lives should simply be reduced to one or two details.
Here, in this dining room, no one could avoid the grandfather clock. Noise of terrifying loudness, and precision, owing to the precision of time, could make you go crazy. It was this movement that punctuated the visits. This loud movement of time. And the waterproof tablecloth. But before the waterproof tablecloth, let’s focus on the grandfather clock.
Why do pensioners love noisy clocks so much? Is it a way of savouring the remaining crumbs, of relishing the last slow moments of a beating heart? Everything could be timed at Hector’s parents’; even the time remaining for them to live. And the waterproof tablecloth! The passion of all these old people for waterproof tablecloths is just incredible. Breadcrumbs feel at peace there. Hector smiled slightly to show his appreciation for the meal. His smile resembled the dissection of a frog. Everything was stretched out, grotesquely, to accentuate the traits as though they were coming directly from a pop-art painting. This likeable absence of finesse is a common trait of belated children. His mother was forty-two at his birth, and his father almost fifty.
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