The Erotic Potential of my Wife

by David Foenkinos

  Ernest had always been sturdy. Adept in the complexities of life, there he was transforming into a Sunday wreck. And it was the worst possible Sunday, the one when they take an hour away. He was catching up on all the years when he had not mourned himself. The poor man was digging himself into a tunnel … And his daughter! Little Lucie, my God, he would never see her again! He would not even be there when she would come home early in the morning with the red eyes of an inert and depraved teenager. There it was, everything was finished. You should always look at the nails of the woman that you sleep with. What an imbecile! He would only have his work left. He would dive in tomorrow to drown under the files. With regard to his divorce, the saying was already known: cobblers often have the worst shoes. It was the same in this case; lawyers plead their own cases terribly. They often marry among themselves to cancel out this effect. Ernest would ask Berthier to take care of him. He was a fine man this Berthier. Moreover, as a hardened bachelor (Berthier had reached the degree of celibacy where the existence of women is forgotten), he would do everything to speed things up. Between men who were going to be bored stiff in their lives, you needed to help each other. No really, this Berthier would be perfect. He even would have deserved a mention earlier in the story.

  Hector was very disturbed by his brother’s rough patch, and even more so because of a peculiarity. Ernest, until now the quasi-Olympic champion of happiness, was sinking at the precise moment when Hector was finally seeing life through rose-tinted spectacles. His parents had not wanted two sons at the same time; in other words, they could not both be simultaneously at the same place in their lives. It was almost as though the wheel had turned and that Ernest was going to live, to Hector’s great pleasure, a life of depression. Their life as brothers was schizophrenic.

  This suggestion of the wheel that turns between the brothers did seem rather absurd, because Hector was not on his best form. Ungrateful periods always lurk behind the joys. This could well seem ridiculous, especially in this context (such a beautiful Brigitte, a company in full expansion, a child on the cards for later), but Hector did in fact seem feverish. He was going around in circles since that morning, and felt incapable of escaping these circles. Brigitte, in a light dress that every summer deserves, had just left the apartment. Hector did not really look like much. He did not even harbour the beard of the tired man; his hairs, hardly masterful, resembled employees on a Monday morning. Even an oyster would have been bored in his company.

  A little later, we find him sitting in his armchair again. Atrocious thoughts are circling his mind. Facing the window washed the previous Saturday, or was it a more distant Saturday (the memory occurred so often he’d forgotten when it originally happened and how long it’d been since he’d ‘never felt so happy’), he remained silent. Evanescence captured, sensuality caught, he could have died that day. As Thomas Mann wrote: ‘He who has contemplated Beauty is already predestined to die.’ Brigitte’s window washing was a bit like Hector’s very own Death in Venice. But Hector did not know who Thomas Mann was, so he could survive. Lack of culture saves many lives. Oh, that Saturday afternoon! Mythic moment where time, with respect for such beauty, should have stopped! Hector, facing the window, always and again facing the window, shed tears of joy. Was it possible to love a woman so much? A woman in all the strength of her fragility. It was this moment that he recalled in memory. This moment of washing that he’d not chosen just as love at first sight is not chosen. If all couples return endlessly to the place where they met, Hector was of course allowed to relive the moment where Brigitte had washed the windows. This moment would be the pilgrimage of his love.

  So, he spent the day dirtying the window.

  Dirtying a clean window, while trying to give the impression that it became dirty naturally, is not an easy feat. And Hector, before reaching the true perfection of natural illusion, had tried several formulas in vain. Through successive trial and error, he had just reached perfection for what must really be considered a new art form. His victorious composition was the following: a few fingerprints cleverly disposed, a fly caught in full flight then squashed right away (speed is of the essence, because an antagonised fly, with its final jolts, creates a more authentic mess than a fly that is already quite dead), a bit of dust from the street and, to crown the lot, an indispensable and light trickle of spit …

  Hector was speaking on the phone with his brother: ‘Someone’s lent me a studio for the time it takes to get back on my feet. So that’s already done.’ Hector made a play on words, and Ernest laughed to make believe that he had understood – when Brigitte came home from work. As soon as he hung up he justified his absence from work with a headache. Brigitte gave a hint of a smile:

  ‘You’re as much a boss as I am, you don’t need to give me any excuses!’

  There was no time to lose. Brigitte needed to spot the dirt on the windows. He was immediately faced with one of the greatest challenges of our humanity: trying to make somebody discover something she has no intention of seeing. Hector, in such a rush, thought of saying, in the least conspicuous way possible: ‘Oh look, the windows are dirty.’ But he rejected this idea, it was not possible. She would definitely have asked him why he, who had stayed home all day, had not given them a wipe … This could easily deteriorate into a domestic argument and should therefore be avoided. He had to lure her into the living room, and make her discover the pot of roses. After, he was more or less sure that she would clean right away: she would never allow such a window to survive. But it was interminable, the longest day ever. Brigitte had billions of things to do in the kitchen, or in the bedrooms, and when, finally, miracle of the night, he succeeded in luring her to the trap of the living room, she did not once look in the direction of the windows. As though she was doing it on purpose, the bitch. Hector pranced in front of the window, bobbing his head. She laughed at his silliness. ‘My husband, the comedian,’ she thought. He bitterly regretted not having forced his hand, not having spat out a kind of incredibly visible phlegm. There might still be time, she would only have to turn her back and he would pounce to dirty the window some more! Far too perturbed by the situation, far too exhausted by his yearning, he felt incapable of waiting any longer. He therefore opted for the most mediocre solution, and grabbed Brigitte by the waist. He suggested they gaze at one of the most romantic views there is from the bay window.

  ‘Darling, if you raise your eyes, you’ll be able to see something rather peculiar …’

  ‘Oh really, what?’

  ‘Well, you know that we can see the building opposite …’

  ‘Yes, and?’

  ‘And, and, it’s crazy … And look, you can see what is happening in the apartments.’

  ‘Well yeah … That’s what you call having two buildings face to face. Say, your headache, it’s not improving … (After a time.) But this window is absolutely disgusting!’

  (Climax: when the hunter captures his prey; the ecstasy of the warrior in his conquest, life is as gentle as sentinels on your skin.) Without surprising anyone, he adopted a small, pitiful tone to wonder:

  ‘Oh really, you think it’s dirty? Me, I hadn’t really noticed …’

  ‘I don’t know what you need … I have never seen such a disgusting window!’

  Brigitte busied herself with the gentle ease of women who are never caught unawares. Hector, unable to restrain a small erection, walked backwards three metres to slump into his armchair. He looked like an ice cube sliding to the bottom of a gin and tonic, just before floating. Brigitte, not being endowed with eyes in the back her head, did not notice. She did not see her husband, or the trail of saliva that escaped, drool spreading on an otherwise innocent tie.

  It was then.

  It was then that the telephone rang.

  Hector did not allow himself to be disturbed, nothing else existed anymore. Brigitte, after three rings, turned around and asked whether he planned to answer before the death of the caller (so Brigitte was a funny woman). She did not spot the
drool – the size of which was impossible to miss – because they were still in blind love.

  ‘Yes, I’ll get it,’ he quickly said. He could not irritate her; it was as though she were pregnant. The person calling at the worst possible moment deserved at the very least to have his hands ripped off, and his vocal cords, and his hair. Hector was walking backwards, his eyes transfixed by the performance. He lifted the handset, let it agonise in the air for a few seconds, and hung up, humiliating its very purpose.

  ‘It’s a mistake!’ he shouted mechanically.

  He went back to sit down. Suddenly, without really knowing from where it came, emotion submerged him. Sobs swept across his face, just as Magritte’s men fall from the sky. Hector did not regret anything. The beauty of that moment had just repeated itself. Without the surprise from the first time, there was, however, more magic this second time, an incredible dose of apprehension, an anxiety of the deception, and, in apotheosis, it was the ravaging of relief and recovered adrenalin. The clean window, the red curtain. Brigitte came down again from the stepladder, but could not move because Hector had thrown himself at her feet and was whispering ‘thank yous’. It inevitably concerned a manifestation of her husband’s formidable sense of humour, so she too began to smile. She began to smile like a woman who finds the one she loves an idiot.

  4

  Laurence lifted the dish to get a nose-full of the aroma from the veal paupiettes. She felt good in her comfortable kitchen, and took advantage of this evening among friends to decompress; she would soon be in the finals of a competition critical for her international career. Her coach had given her ten days off, but she had not been able to stop herself hitting the ball, working on her mythic wrist stroke; well, we know. It was Marcel’s brilliant idea to invite Hector and Brigitte for dinner. She was happy to see her husband’s friend again. She did not really know why, but for almost two years now he had studiously avoided her. Well, she did have some doubts, actually. Hector was scared stiff of her since the testicle fondling incident. However, from her point of view, this had only been an expression of affection. So it was also to straighten things up that she called him to the kitchen.

  Socially, he could not refuse.

  He entered the kitchen and witnessed the paupiettes’ preparation, his face white and blood cold. Or the opposite.

  ‘Can I help you with something?’

  ‘Yes, I would like for us to have a chat, one second … well, you see … I don’t understand why you’ve been fleeing me all this time … When you left for the United States, I thought that it was because of me …’

  In saying what she had just said, Laurence advanced slowly but surely towards Hector, she’d wanted to pacify their relationship, excuse herself for her sexual aggression; however, upon seeing him, this best friend of Marcel’s, a low impulse itched at her, an irrepressible impulse like in the time of Racine tragedies. She then rushed towards him, Phedre of paupiettes, and in wanting to catch Hector’s testicles once again, her hand collided against a hard surface. In anticipation of that evening, and due to an all-in-all justified apprehension, Hector had protected his crotch with a footballer’s shell. Laurence screamed, and immediately, everyone crashed into the kitchen. They rushed to the emergency room, and the diagnosis was unambiguous: Laurence had sprained her little finger. The next morning, this was largely related in sports newspapers: Laurence Leroy forfeits final. The two fans she had in Evry cried.

  Hector felt guilty. All professional athletes should have the right to fondle the testicles of those they find attractive – with no aggravation. Gérard, before Ouarzazate-Casablanca, must have had a field day. He felt so guilt-ridden, and this burden was too heavy to carry (let’s not forget that he already had to bear his abnormal attraction to the Brigittian window washing). The morals of the French would be lowered because of him. With horse riding and fencing, ping-pong is one of our biggest sources of pride. We are a physical people! Yet now we were nothing more than a bunch of sprained little fingers.

  What has just been related is not quite exact, and this hors-piste of reality must be attributed to Hector. His imagination has travelled towards the worst. Laurence had indeed injured herself, but thanks to her friend the physiotherapist, she had been able to heal, and would take part in the final. Phew!

  She was nevertheless mentally weakened, and for the first time in twelve years, she asked Marcel to accompany her. Far too emotional to follow the matches of his darling, he had never wanted to come. In the context of the sprained little finger, he would have to overcome his anxiety. To confront this situation, he had no solution other than beg his friend Hector to go with him. Even though ping-pong was by far the sport that interested him the least in the world, his ongoing guilt pushed him to accept. They would leave this Saturday for the whole day. Hector asked Brigitte if this absence, the first in since six months, at least bothered her. Not at all, she quickly reassured him; she was a woman perfectly able of improvising a whole Saturday, just like that. And then, on the sly, with the most innocuous voice there is, she added: ‘I will take the opportunity to do some cleaning.’

  The sentence immediately lingered in the air and became the only air in Hector’s head. How could he think of anything else? She would do some cleaning, she would do some cleaning. Big flushes of anxiety attacked him. He did not dare ask the question haunting him; he did not dare ask the details of this cleaning. But she stopped any interrogation in its tracks because she added that she would clean the windows. At that moment, and in a totally brutal way, he thought about his suicide attempt. And then, he tried to pull himself together, he was a man after all! The first idea that came to his mind was to clean the windows himself on Saturday morning; at least he would be sure that she would not do it in his absence. Or he could announce to Brigitte that it would rain heavily on Sunday, the announcement would render an enterprise to clean the windows null and void, rain water loved to humiliate clean windows. Dozens of parades were invading his mind, nothing could cause him more anguish than not assisting to a potential wash, it was just not conceivable. He found himself in front of a mirror, and thanks to this vision, he cut short the zigzagging parade of his mind. He was shaking, and in this movement, he was dropping beads of sweat. He felt as though his fate was escaping him again, and that he was becoming a heap of flesh prey to obscure demons. An eternal return was wriggling in him.

  We had (sorry) underestimated Hector’s propensity to be twisted. It has to be said that the decision he had just taken was somewhat shocking; in any case, for all those who had been unable to reach the initial levels of his neurosis. When he saw himself shaking and sweating a few minutes ago, he had just had a revelation: he should never prevent Brigitte from washing the windows. His problem was not that she was cleaning, but rather that he was not there. Therefore, he considered that he had no other choice than to leave a camera in a nook in the apartment. A secret camera of course, and he would take delight in the images upon his return. There, he had his solution. On Saturday, he could go with a clear mind and support Marcel who was supporting Laurence. Until then, he did not go to work, and bought sufficiently adequate equipment. He did not regret all these moments spent reading magazines about the most up-to-date technology and modern furniture; he was even satisfied that this time was finally paying off. During all these steps, he did not once think back to the old Hector, the one who obsessed on acquiring a specific object. How did he manage not to understand the point to which he had relapsed? His illness, in catching up with him, had blindfolded him.

  Thankfully we still had a friend who, again and always, was going to explain our life to us. However, Marcel was not having an easy time of things. Selfishly, he knew that if Laurence had the misfortune of losing the match, the atmosphere at home would be unbearable, and he could always dream of seeing a real shepherd’s pie again. It was obviously not Marcel’s principal thought, and his whole heart united itself in cosmic waves with the sub-God delegated to the affairs of ping-pong. He was not be
ing haughty: small stomach pains were harassing him. And it is finally because of this discomfort that the two friends ended speaking about the cleaning of windows. Wishing to distract, and thus hoping to diminish the gastric slippages of his friend, trying by all means possible to concentrate on this man who was almost asphyxiating him, Hector thought he was doing well in recounting his latest exploits. So he started to explain how he had hidden a camera on the top of a cabinet, a camera that would be set off at every movement in the axis of a dirty window. His attempt was crowned with a great success as Marcel, shocked by what he had just heard, stopped all his farts short. Aggrieved, he asked for some additional information: how did all of this start, how did such a crazy idea come to him, and so on. The explanations barely over, he uncovered the atrocity of his diagnostic.

  ‘Hector, you have plunged back!’

  In a first instance, Hector thought swimming pool. Then, he took his head out of the water to understand the figurative meaning of the words ‘plunged back’. He required silence to digest the terrible announcement. Everything tallied, every morsel of his new passion stuck, moment by moment, to his earlier life. This devastating fascination for a moment of his wife, and this irrepressible urge to relive it. He then enunciated this sentence, disconnecting every syllable: ‘I collect the moments when my wife washes the windows.’ Hector repeated this sentence 112 times. The sweat, the frenzy, he was collecting a moment of his wife. Again and again, the shock of the evidence. And the more he thought about it, the more he wanted a small hit of cleaning of windows; he was already addicted. He tried not to cry, and yet how to not think of this terrible question: was it possible to be another man? In meeting Brigitte, he had believed reaching the wonder of uniqueness, the woman of all unique women in each of her gestures, unique in her unique way of biting her lips, of passing her hands through her hair in the morning, with her grace and elegance, woman of women, unique in opening her thighs. And yet, nothing could be done, always the same mess, gnawing and absurd, always to lead this life of a worm in reduced earth.