Hector had just called Gérard, and he had been obliged to find a pretext for this telephone call. Gérard was not the kind of man you call just like that, something concrete was required. Roughly, and in a state of panic, Hector did not find anything other than suggesting a bike ride in the late afternoon. By sweet-talking him, he might have cracked. As we know, he confirmed his sister’s alibi with surprising aplomb, in spite of the cycling temptation. On the other hand, he had not thought through the collateral damage of such an attack. Gérard, with incredible good humour, suggested they go on this bike ride right away; it’s true, why postpone until tomorrow what we can do now? This Gérard was a real moron (now that the marriage was going down the pan, Hector was no longer going to rhapsodise on his brother-in-law’s bikes, and on this race of North African minions that the first doped-up European cyclist could have won), but as he was a moron whose muscular mass was inversely proportioned to his neuronal mass, he should not be provoked, as they say. Hector had to put on some shorts, and they gave him the appearance of a right-wing candidate in municipal elections. He looked in the mirror and found himself thinner, it was not necessary to come closer to spot the protuberance of some of his bones.
Gérard kissed him on the cheek, they are family. ‘I have just done a hundred press-ups with my left arm’, he added by way of welcome. They immediately went to the cellar to take the spare bike that Hector would use, a bike that would reveal itself slightly under-pumped to ensure that the friend didn’t transform himself into a potential rival. In the staircase, they crossed a smiling neighbour; and if usually Gérard was always incredibly friendly, this meeting occurred in disconcerting coldness (an express handshake). You could enjoy cycling with your brother-in-law but to snub a neighbour was not on. Something was amiss. Hector had enough time to perceive incomprehension in the neighbour’s eyes, but let that sensation escape instantly. It was a bit later, when the Bois de Vincennes looked like a merry-go-round because he was turning around it so much, that he was caught up by a double notion:
1) This neighbour was incontestably a friend of Gérard’s that he pretended not to know.
2) If the second notion was even more diffuse, it was on the path to becoming clearer. Hector had the feeling that he had already seen that man; however he had never been to his brother-in-law’s before this business of alibi verification. Was he a celebrity? No, you do not snub celebrities in staircases. His azure eyes, these eyes, he knew him, he knew him from having seen him many times … Ouarzazate-Casablanca! It was one of the cyclists from the podium!
They rode some more, Hector glanced at his watch: that was now almost twelve minutes they were pedalling. Why did time seem so slow while they were cycling? It is the perfect sport for all those who think that life passes too quickly. The calves and thighs in action were airing the mind, it was a wonder that Gérard had remained such an idiot. It was then that, in a very intelligent way (our hero), Hector faked discomfort and stopped on the roadside. As a great professional of sport medicine, Gérard strung a few invigorating slaps together to restore the dying man to health.
‘If you want to continue, go ahead, I’m going to stop,’ agonised Hector.
He blamed this discomfort on his lack of training. After all, he had not committed a sportive act since 1981, on the march to celebrate François Mitterand’s victory like everyone else; François Mitterand was since dead as the result of a long illness hidden for a long time from the French, and he had never had a concrete occasion to perform any sport again. Cycling was suddenly beating ping-pong on his list of despised sports. Gérard seemed at a real loss because, for him, the idea of the family is as sacred as a king; he was not allowed to abandon a family member on the roadside, it was proscribed in the rules of his religion. But as his main God was cycling, he went back for a few solitary circuits. Hector went to sit down on a bench to recuperate, and it was on the bench that the Machiavellian thought came to him: to denounce Gérard. It was every man for himself, and if Brigitte’s whole family was uniting against him, he needed to use the weapons at his disposal, including the basest of them all, denouncement. He was defending his interests like the first animal arriving in times of war. He was not really going to be scratched dirtily and die a slow death without ever seeing the window washing again.
After an effort of three quarters of an hour, Gérard returned, hardly out of breath. He had climbed, and especially gone back down like never before; the regulars of the bistro at the Porte de Vincennes, Chez Kowalski, could even testify of this capacity to go down. It required a minimum of intelligence to lie, and Gérard’s intelligence, so sought-after by all his human attitudes, was only leaving crumbs all over the place. He therefore had not thought of buying some chewing-gum. Hector recoiled his nasal horizon by a few centimetres to be able to follow his brother-in-law’s exploits. He stopped him short:
‘I know you did not win Ouarzazate-Casablanca.’
‘…’
‘And if you don’t tell me who is meeting your sister tonight at five, I will reveal everything to your family … And to all your alcoholic friends!’
‘…’
If Gérard was a tad mythomaniac, everyone accorded in finding him nice. He was not used to being attacked (there had already been a polemic on this race, but the affair had been settled for a long time, and in his mind, buried; of course, lies are Lazaruses always ready to raise themselves in the miracle of a new light …), and that was why his capacity to answer jammed up for a moment. There is a saying that speaks of the calm before a storm – hmm – as soon as he had recovered from what he had just heard, he broke out violently against Hector. He broke two of Hector’s teeth and then stopped:
‘The best thing is to sort this out at my place!’
Hector sought by all means possible to retract what he said, but he had gotten on Gérard’s sensitive nerve. Ouarzazate-Casablanca was his whole life; the pedestal on which he had let his days run. No negotiation was possible; in two beats and three movements, the two samples from this same family found themselves in Gérard’s cellar. A bit earlier in the day, when they had come to find the spare cycle in this very cellar, Hector had not noticed the enormous poster for the film The Silence of the Lambs. Suddenly, in the flash of a second, a vague reminiscence of a pseudo-cinephile discussion came back to him, where Gérard had practically had tears in his eyes in evoking the sequestration scenes of his favourite film.
2
In this space close to agony, Hector thought back to those moments where flesh had finally delivered him from the identical infinity of his life. The unforgettable details of the first moments of his love for Brigitte were misty in the vapour of a sovereign feeling, subtly tyrannical. Although he could almost no longer feel the blows that Gérard was striking him (there exists a strange stage where pain joins sensuality), the blood in his mouth was transforming itself into cleaning product for windows. He was not begging, he was not saying anything. Bound like a bootleg ham, he was awaiting death quietly on a riverbank, with the hope that there would not be any delays like last time. Of course, he would not die; if Gérard had little experience in excessive violence, he knew, and this thanks to his movie knowledge, that all that was required was to scare the infamous traitor who was threatening to speak. He was intending to stop his punches as soon as he would hear the eternal promise of his victim’s eternal silence. But in lieu and place of this silence, was face to a smile. Hector, plunged in an ecstasy judged perverse by his torturer, was discovering a quasi-masochistic pleasure. Gérard did not understand: in The Silence of the Lambs, the victim was not smiling; well, ok, she was being dismembered, but with what he had thrown at him (his fists were hurting him), this brother-in-law smiling with all his teeth minus two seemed like a hallucinating vision. Gérard suddenly began to shake in front of the one he was torturing. And, a minute later, threw himself at his feet:
‘Yes, it’s true … I never won Ouarzazate-Casablanca! Sorry, sorry!’
Hector returned from his
sensual voyage. The pain from the blows suddenly imposed itself everywhere. He promised not to say anything to anyone; in any case, he was not even certain to still possess a tongue capable of forming words. He tried to get up, and Gérard helped him. A great incomprehension about what they had just lived through made them feel uncomfortable. The struggle had opposed two nice men, both of whose sensitivity had been attacked: the potential glory for one, the potential erotic for the other. Two nice men trapped by the ambition to safeguard their lives from sorrow at all costs.
On that common point, they embraced.
Hector went home walking, vaguely finding geographic landmarks in his drift. People were staring at him in the street, which had not happened since the day of his suicide; he could therefore definitely classify that day with the anti-prize list of his glories. He walked into a pharmacy to buy something to disinfect himself with and stick some bandages on his face. The numerous wounds forced him to cover himself almost completely. On his way out, he heard a voice compare him to the invisible man. It was stupid, he could not look like the invisible man, because no one had ever seen the invisible man.
At the bottom of his building, Hector lit a cigarette to the great astonishment of his lungs. He smoked like an adult, swallowing plumes of stillborn smoke. After the cigarette, if no woman was falling from the sky, he could try to continue to live normally. His ideas were taking back a coherent form in their sequence. He was regretting having wanted to blackmail the cyclist. Everything would be simpler if the women we love did not wash the windows. Overflowing with love, he would have resigned himself to this sexual misconduct and would have forgiven her. They could maybe have gone to see a psychologist for unstable couples? They would have been told why they need other bodies so much to advance, why they are carnivores gorging themselves with alien flesh. They would have sat on a couch and the doctor would have also wanted to see them separately. To compare, to close in on the problem; to understand why Hector’s wife, such an erotic woman in her homeliness, felt the urge to be taken standing in the familial living room. There was surely a reason for this.
Hector regained consciousness of his pain. He could not believe that he had thus returned to the glorious times of his pitiful episodes. How had he accepted such humiliation? The window washing was sublime, but did he have the right to lower himself to this point? Just as in the greatest moment of compulsive hoarding, he was squashing his dignity for an object. That was his problem, he did not value himself more than an object. He was nothing, and at the moment where he thought this thought he walked in front of a mirror to really remind himself of his invisibility. I am an object, he thought. To get cured, he would maybe have to try to collect himself! He wanted to smile but his smile was confined in disinfectant bandages. He did not want to go home; he looked to see if the lights were on. No, no one. His wife was maybe having an orgasm at that moment.
Hector had no more tears.
Far from his wife’s hypothetical orgasm, Hector slipped on a soft and odorous mass. There were many dogs in this almost completely Chinese neighbourhood. Four adorable onlookers stopped in front of the non-artistic skating amateur, not to help him up, but to regret in concert to have missed such a fall. He stood up, more frightened than hurt, as they say; but often, we forget that la peur, the infamous fright bone, is very small and located near the hip. At the doctor’s the following Tuesday late afternoon – ‘Doctor Seymour will try to see you between two appointments’ Dolores the temporary assistant said – the radiologist he insisted on seeing, confirmed a fractured la peur.
It had now been a week that he was officially a cuckold. He had the right to count what he wanted. He even had the right to celebrate this title of glory. Many men would dream of being cuckolds, just so that they would also be able to cheat without guilt. Evidently, he was adapting his sudden theories to his state of future hermit. There was no doubt such an end would come for they said that women were far more whole than men. She would leave him then. He would be nothing more than a dumped man. The idea of the empty bed that was etching in his head was making him choke. His love was going to go and leave the sheets cold. Coffee would also be eternally cold. (How on earth could he make the coffee?) He would spend his days in front of the television, and his pyjamas would sport indelible stains. He would forget that he too had been a man capable of shaving in the morning. And no, it’s not possible! He was refusing this destiny of timorous depressive; he needed to consider his life with more ambition. He was going to change, he had to change! Because of love he felt ready to forgo the window washing. He would forgive the hairy body of that other man, the happy body of this other absurd brain. He would forgive the erring of the flesh, the need to entwine together non-stop to exist! Everyone knew the meaning of these deviances. So they should be accepted without seeking to understand.
Take her by surprise, he could not see any other strategy to conquer his wife again. To open her eyes with astonishment. He thought of greeting her with a sumptuous dinner, she who would be returning full of unknown sweat. Adultery could also be cured with love. She had liked Laurence’s roast that other time. Unfortunately his resolution ended with his intention, for he was not in any state to be able to prepare anything by that evening. He would therefore take her to the restaurant, and to celebrate this incredibly surprising outing, she would wear a princess’s dress. The restaurant would be happiness. There would be candelabras that would plunge the evident cracks in their relationship into semi-obscurity. This idea of the evening where everything would start again lifted the spirits that we had thought dead in Hector. He entered his building, forgetting his physical appearance. The odour of dog shit persisted so much that we had the right to wonder what it could possibly have eaten.
Luckily, he did not cross anyone in the stairs.
Unluckily, entering his home with his head in the clouds, he surprised all those who were seeking to surprise him for a good hour at least and who, with this superb art of vigilance, had started to shout: ‘Happy birthday!’ He recognised Marcel, Brigitte, Ernest and the others. You had to be a real arsehole to be born on that day.
3
Hector was exactly the kind of man who cannot stand people organising birthdays for him; in his head, all he could see were conspiracies. They had talked behind his back; they had arranged the surprise like others hatch treacherous plans. Without counting that he had not helped them with his surprising initiative: to go cycling with Gérard, what an idea! The bastards had panicked a little; but they had landed on their feet like pros. He didn’t even know how old he was. All these incredibly good-humoured people would have inevitably baked a cake that would remind him. That’s why they were all there, to celebrate the backwards count, to pack down his false youth in the Chantilly. The atmosphere darkened due to his appearance. People wondered what had happened to him. Hector realised that his appearance had reached a rough patch on the one day when he was finding himself among all the people he knew. This was the incontestable sign of a disastrous social life. Nonetheless, the collective fall in spirits was ephemeral. When you organise a surprise birthday party, you are forced to overplay the good humour (you need to be a guest to be able to sulk). They all felt responsible for inflicting such a humiliation on Hector. So they succumbed to cheesy smiles. Not allowing themselves to be discouraged, the family and friends belted out the classic song. Here, there is never any surprise, people always sing ‘Happy birthday to you …’
As always (it’s a bad habit), Hector wanted to die on the spot. The shame that all were inflicting on him was immeasurable. He who had decided to change, he who had decided to accept the nascent nymphomania of his ladylove, he was being unjustly crushed in his attempt to become a responsible man. They were all playing him, from the beginning. To start with, his parents put him on this earth just to avenge themselves of his brother’s departure. You do not produce two children with twenty years difference, you are not allowed … He was not moving, transfixed in the malaise of being him. At that mome
nt, he would have given anything to have protective objects all around him, immense collections of stamps or cocktail sticks that would hide him from the eyes of others. In the middle of them was his wife, his Brigitte. So she was not with her lover; she still loved him a little. It was a vague sensation, a tiny nuance. Nevertheless he felt the gentle echo of hope: she still loved him … She preferred his birthday to corporal activity with another. Finally, it was not so useless to be born on a specific day, and to celebrate that day. She loved him … He wanted to live his future like a castaway on a desert island on that little piece of love that was left.
Mireille, his mother, approached him to find out what was wrong with her darling. There really needed to be a lot of people for her to call him darling. This brutal return to reality had no consequence other than to make him escape. He clambered down the stairs, but not all of them. In other words, he missed a step, and spilled onto a neighbour’s landing after a rather spectacular forward roll. In the impossibility of getting up, he felt like a wild boar injured by a drunk hunter. Brigitte, who had run after him, squeezed him in her arms to reassure him. Hector was shaking. He had not broken anything but that the roll added to the few disappointments of the day had scared him. This day that was beginning to seem very long to him. ‘Don’t worry my love, I’m here…’ Reading her husband’s pain with precision, she added: ‘Yes, I will tell them to leave.’
So the guests left the aborted party.
The Erotic Potential of my Wife Page 8