The Erotic Potential of my Wife

by David Foenkinos

  Somewhere, a generation was skipped.

  Hector had a big brother, a very big brother: twenty years older than him. It could be said that his parents’ obsession was the polar opposite of accumulation. They had contemplated Hector’s conception (which gave a subject to this tale, so thanks are due to them), the day that Ernest (the brother in question) left the nest. One child at a time. And if menopause had not taken away this theoretical momentum, Hector would have had a younger brother or sister who would surely have been called Dominique. This concept of the family was taken as original, and as often with everything that appears original, nothing is. We were in a place that was barely exciting, a place where time is required to understand things. This surpasses all praise for sluggishness. To summarise: Ernest was born, he had made his parents very happy, and when he was leaving they had thought: ‘Hold on, that was good … And what if we made another?’ It was as simple as that. Hector’s parents could never concentrate on two things at once. Ernest was very shocked when told the news, he who had dreamed of having a younger brother or sister when he was a kid. Having a child as soon as he left could have been considered sadistic, but, as we know, sadism wasn’t their style.

  Hector saw his brother once a week when he came to eat the family soup. It felt good to be a foursome. There was the atmosphere of a Bach quartet, minus the music. Unfortunately, these meals did not linger. Ernest talked about his business, and no one ever knew the right questions to prolong his stay. They had a certain incompetence in the art of rhetoric and conversation. Hector’s mother – let’s call her by her name this time – Mireille (writing this, we realise we always knew she was called Mireille; everything we had learned about her was typical of a Mireille) dropped a tear when her older son left. Hector was jealous of this tear for a long time. He understood that no one cried for him because he returned too soon. For a tear, the separation needs to be at least two days. It would’ve been almost possible to catch Mireille’s tear, weigh it, and know exactly when Ernest would come back; oh, this is an eight-day tear! A heavy tear, the bubble of depressive lives, through which we see Hector in the present time, this time of narrative uncertainty, to face a terrible epiphany: though he is now an adult and comes to slurp soup once a week, his mother does not cry for him. Suddenly, her weightless tears are the heaviest burden that his heart has ever had to bear. We are faced with the certainty that his mother prefers his brother. In a strange way, Hector almost feels good; we must try to understand, it is the first time in his life that he finds himself faced with a certainty.

  Our hero knows that what he feels is wrong; it is palpably simplistic. His parents have a stunningly narrow range of emotions. They love everyone the same. It is a simple love that extends from a sponge to their son. This good son, thinking himself the least favourite, had treacherous thoughts towards his parents, hatred even. Some days, he dreamt that his father gave him a couple of hard slaps; the image of a red mark on his skin would have made him feel alive. At one time, he had thought of provoking reactions in his parents by becoming a problem child; he never dared to in the end. His parents loved him; admittedly in their way, but they loved him. Therefore he had to play the role of good son no matter what.

  Parenthesis about Hector’s father in order to know why his life is only moustaches, and outline a theory that considers our society exhibitionist

  His father sighed from time to time, and these sighs revealed the extent of his role in his son’s education. In the end, it was better than nothing. This father (let’s say it straight: this Bernard) had sported a moustache very early on. It was in no way indicative of a carefree attitude, as many people would lead us to believe; a lot of thought had gone into this moustache, it was almost an act of propaganda. To understand this Bernard, let’s allow ourselves a short break, it will last as long as a sigh. Bernard’s father, born in 1908, died heroically in 1940. The word ‘heroic’ is a great mantel. Everything can be hung on it. The Germans had not attacked yet, the Maginot Line was still virginal, and Bernard’s father and his regiment had a small village in the east under siege. A small village where there lived a woman weighing 152 kilos who wanted to profit from the regiment’s passing. Though men usually didn’t want her, she had more chances in times of war, in times of abstinence. To cut a long story short, Bernard’s father decided to attack the mountain, and due to the sliding of a sheet, in a rotary motion whose horror we do not dare to imagine, there occurred what is commonly referred to as suffocation. This story (quiet now!) had been spared from his family, by masking everything with the word heroic. His son was only ten. Bernard was thus raised with the cult of his father as a hero, and slept underneath a portrait that covered that of the Virgin Mary. Every evening and every morning, he blessed this face curtailed by death, this face adorned by a moustache full of vitality. We do not know exactly at what moment the damage took place that led Bernard to be marked by his father’s moustache for the rest of his life. He prayed to no longer be smooth-cheeked, and sanctified his first hairs. When his face had the honour of accommodating a dignified moustache, he felt himself become a man, become his father, become heroic. He had relaxed with age, and wasn’t angry upon noticing a certain virgin terrain on his sons’ upper lips; each lived the life of hair he chose. Bernard thought that all men had become beardless, and that it was a mark of our modern society. He liked to repeat that ‘we live in the least moustache epoch there is.’ ‘Our society cuts the hair, it is pure exhibitionism!’ he shouted. And always, after these rants, he would return to his intimate thoughts, encumbered by nothing.

  During his uneventful adolescence, Hector regularly visited his brother. He sought advice from him to better understand their parents. Ernest told him that there was no user guide, apart from ‘maybe making Mum believe you love her soup’. He should not hesitate to resort to the little respected domain of the sycophant when he wanted to go to a sleepover. (‘I think I will need to take a thermos of your soup, Mummy.’) Except that Hector had no friends, at least not friends that would invite him to sleep over.

  His relationships were limited to trading cards in the playground. No sooner had he reached eight years old that his reputation as a formidable collector was established. Thus, Hector asked for advice from his brother, and very quickly this brother became his mentor. It is not that he wanted to be like him, but he was like him. More precisely, he looked at his life telling himself that it would perhaps belong to him. Everything relied on this ‘perhaps’, because in truth his future was a blur to him, it was a paparazzi’s shot.

  Ernest was a big dull man who had married a short rather exciting redhead. Hector was thirteen when he met his brother’s future wife, and he dreamed that she would take charge of his sexual education. He didn’t realise that our lives had become twentieth-century novels; the epoch of the epic deflowerings of the nineteenth century had ended. He masturbated wildly, thinking of Justine, until the wedding day. Family – there was something sacred in that idea. A short time later, Justine gave birth to little Lucie. When her parents were working, he often babysat the little girl, and played dolls with her. He could not believe that he was someone’s uncle. And faced with that child, he was unable to conduct a perfectly normal life; in the face of innocence, we see the life that we are not living.

  Hector had studied law without being very dedicated. Nothing interested him apart from making collections. (If only collecting could be a career!) He was hired as an assistant in his brother’s firm, but since he had not graduated, this post risked being the pinnacle of his career. In a way, this was a relief, as he then would avoid the anxieties of career planning and, even more of a relief, the office politics of all these lawyers with teeth that needed filing. He had noticed that success always comes with beauty; certain female lawyers had breasts and legs that would ensure them magnificent appeals. Hector would shrink in his chair when they passed next to him; of course this was useless, because even if he’d been two metres tall they still wouldn’t have noticed him. I
n any case, women only interested him in the obscurity of his bedroom a few minutes a day. He sometimes cheated on his masturbation by going to see a prostitute, but this did not have much importance for him. During all these years, women were resting in the back-room of his excitement.1 He would look at them, admire them, but did not desire them. Well, let’s be frank, when Hector believed he did not desire women, he actually believed that he could not arouse desire in them. He would repeat that his time was completely taken by his passion for collecting; even if anyone doubted the evident evidence, we could still bet the first lover of his body would sweep him into a horizontal position.

  He thanked his brother for getting him a job, and this brother mechanically answered: ‘Between brothers, you have to help each other.’ Hector was lucky to have a big brother that was like a dad.

  Let’s go back to when Hector was eating his soup. He has not been to visit his parents for six months. They are not looking at him. The atmosphere is incredibly jovial, his return is a day of celebration. What joy to see him again after such a prolonged trip! ‘And Americans, do they sport moustaches?’ worried Bernard. Like a good son, Hector detailed the incredible moustaches of Californians, blond and bushy like Scandinavian kelp. They were swimming in good humour, a beautiful good humour where cheerful croutons could be dipped, and it is within this feeling of latent happiness that Hector had the idea that it might be time to tell the truth. It was less an idea than being unable to contain his suffering any longer. His heavy heart could no longer bear it. For the first time he would be himself and not hide behind the ill-fitting costume his parents had designed for him. He would be relieved, and would finally be able to end the masquerade and not suffocate anymore. When he got to his feet, his parents looked up.

  ‘So, I have something to tell you … I tried to commit suicide … and I wasn’t in the United States, but in convalescence …’

  After a moment of silence, his parents started to laugh; a laughter that was the opposite of eroticism. ‘That was so funny!’ They clucked at their chance of having such a gentle and comical son – Hector of Hectors – comical son! This son who had (what’s the word?) a slight credibility problem. He had been classed in the ‘good son’ category, given that he came to eat even when he was not hungry. And good sons do not commit suicide; in the worst case, they cheat on their wives when she goes on holiday to Hossegor. Hector stared at his parents, there was nothing nuanced to read in their faces; their faces like telephone directories. He was condemned to be their cliché. In their eyes he saw the reflection of who he had been the day before. This bond imprisoned him indefinitely.

  His mother loved to accompany him to the doorstep, like a stewardess at the end of a flight. He almost felt the urge to say thank you, while promising to fly again soon with this airline. The soup airline. Once downstairs, he always needed to walk a few metres to no longer hear the heralding tick-tock of death.

  ______________

  1 We make an exception here for the six days of a semi-torrid fling with a Greco-Spanish woman.

  4

  Hector is in the trough of the wave, in the trough of the ocean, in the trough of the Universe. There is good reason to feel small.

  After this blasted semi-final where it was concluded never to trust Swedes who are not blond, he had cried about the absurdity of his life. However, a positive feeling emerged from his disgust: and it is from disgust that one can progress. Hector found a bench; once seated his ideas began to stabilise. The pathetic floated all around him. Hector could see apparitions of Swedish heads, so much so that he had to close his eyes to avoid a Stockholmian whirlwind. Nixon was nothing but a good-for-nothing who had really deserved his Watergate. Nixon was his moment of hitting rock-bottom. Hector sighed and made a major resolution: he would stop collecting. He had to try to live like everyone else, hold off and not accumulate things anymore. In the flash of a moment, he felt as relieved as never before, and yet it only lasted the flash of a moment, because the memory of all the previous resolutions that he had never adhered to came to his mind, like a depraved undertow. All those times he had promised himself, on his knees crying, to stop everything. And every time he had fallen off the bandwagon, seeing a coin, then another, then another. His conclusion was simple: in order to abstain, he had to stop accumulating altogether, to stop having twos of anything, to concentrate zealously on uniqueness.

  We were at the beginning of 2000, which was a handicap for Hector. He could not stand Olympic years, judging them nefarious for all the meagre exploits the rest of us try to achieve. He especially resented that collectors’ competitions weren’t recognised as Olympic sports. (Even if only to be humiliated by a non-blonde Swede – as long as it took place under the Sydney sun.) He was trying to occupy his thoughts, so as not to have to confront his struggle at that moment. He went home, and put his calendar on his desk. He noted the date: 12 June, day one of the Olympics. He clenched his fist as though making a passing shot on a match-ball.

  Afterwards, he spent a more or less peaceful night.

  And even dreamed that a brunette whispered to him: ‘Make a wish and that’s it.’

  On the difficulty of concentrating on uniqueness

  The next morning, he made his first mistake by turning on the television. Almost all products were offered in twos. There were even ‘two-for-one’ offers and his heart began throbbing. He changed channels and landed on TV-Shopping where the moderator was explaining that for ‘one more franc’ we could have a printer with the computer; might as well say that one franc was nothing but symbolic dust. Nowadays, to sell a product, two needed to be offered. We had gone from a consumption society to a double consumption society. And, as for glasses, they were flogging four pairs in so-called box sets for all seasons, as though the sun had become an all-powerful celebrity in front of whom you need to accessorise accordingly. In this particular case of quadruple consumption, the active incitement to collect was flagrant, criminal.

  Later that morning, Hector went to work. With a certain dose of anxiety, he confessed his resolution to his brother. Ernest kissed him hard and hugged him as hard; he was proud of him. If their parents have never really grasped the seriousness of the situation, on the contrary, Ernest had always been very worried by his little brother’s passion: no sex life, a professional life that solely relied on familial support (‘Between brothers, you have to help each other’), and hours spent accumulating cheese labels. In spite of his big size, Ernest was quite sentimental. He dropped a tear. In the throes of his emotion, he assured him of his full support, and of all his love. ‘You have to admit your illness before beginning to heal.’ He loved saying these momentous slogans. Then he went to deal with a case of the highest importance. He was one of those in charge at Gilbert Associate and Co. (pronounced Guilberrte – it’s English), a firm founded in 1967 by Charles Gilbert. Those in charge of Gilbert Associate and Co. often had to deal with cases of the highest importance.

  At work, everyone liked Hector. He was an exemplary employee who always did his work with a smile. If young women did not look at him, women who were not as young were moved by (it should be confessed) his pretty lamb’s head. When the news of his resolution did the rounds of the firm, a great unspoken compassion surrounded the brave Hector. Employees had witnessed the collector’s frenzied crises on many occasions; he had often left traces of his fever in his wake. And this unspoken compassion turned into a telethonesque compassion. The whole afternoon people came to pat him on the back, and many offered him their tuppence worth. ‘Good luck,’ ‘Our hearts are with you,’ ‘My brother-in-law quit smoking last week,’ ‘My wife no longer satisfies me in bed’; in short, he had the privilege to listen to all the weaning experiences of the legal milieu. He was the spoiled child of the day.

  A secretary who was almost as much a redhead as she was old placed a basket on Hector’s desk; it was money! There had been a collection to encourage him in his ordeal. In the US collections are customary for operations not covered by
Social Security (because there is no Social Security) and, as a result, dollars were often gathered for kidney transplants and such like. In a way, Hector was having a life transplant. That evening, in his room, Hector stared at the money and reflected that this sum was the price to pay for healing. It was a thought that did not mean anything, but he was seeking to fill himself with musings verging on incoherence to avoid thinking about any stamp or cocktail stick. As he had the habit of counting sheep before falling asleep, he was rather unsettled. To fix things, the sheep was followed by a horse, then the horse by a seahorse, then the seahorse by a red squirrel, then as our goal is not to make our reader fall asleep, we end here this enumeration which lasted a good part of the night. For the record, it was the otter that knocked him out.

  The days passed without a hint of collecting. Hector began to believe in his until now unused aptitude for quitting. Nevertheless, people warned him: ‘The first days are always the easiest.’ (His brother’s sentence, of course.) Days were made easier because he suddenly found himself at the heart of a wonderful enthusiasm. People sought to support him like a political candidate, the lawyers were careful not to ask him anything twice the same day. And a secretary was assigned to ensure that he never dealt with files that were too similar to each other. Hector took on the role of royal child who systematically had to be entertained in different ways. We could wonder why there was such collective enthusiasm. It is true that they all had affection for him, but was that a sufficient reason?

  It seemed that it was not. In a super-competitive professional context stuck on appearances, an employee’s weakness (more precisely, an employee who poses no danger to the hierarchy) unites rivalries in one fell swoop. Hector was like a new coffee machine in a tyre factory. A new social fabric was materialising around him. And, to top it all, what was happening was not escaping the eyes of the director of human resources, who would soon preach what he considered a radical method: nothing was worth more for the profitability of a company than hiring a depressive in an underling position.