Brigitte always turned up in a really vivacious way; and, before sinking back to his daily nothingness, her father would sigh: ‘Ah, that’s my girl!’ She would go out shopping for groceries with her mother, she always brought gifts to enliven the place. During her last visit, Brigitte’s mother had alluded to their wish to leave France, to go to a home in Toulon. It would clearly be a great deal more difficult for her and her brother to go to see them; was that not a distancing strategy, like plopping down in front of death’s door? She did not really want to think about it, she was focusing on concrete things. She spoke again about Mrs Lopez, the adorable cleaning lady her mother had fired for an obscure reason: ‘She does not know how to do anything as it should be!’ It was maybe a way of punishing herself for not being able to do it anymore. Brigitte lost her temper and said that they really needed to find someone else. They weren’t really going to embed themselves in filth? She asked her father what he thought: he did not give a shit. So Brigitte did not have any other choice than to give the place a quick hoover, and dust the furniture. When she saw the filthiness of the windows, she did not dare. She smiled, especially in remembering the dinner at Marcel and Laurence’s. And then, she launched into it. The context was so different!
In seeing his daughter get busy, her father got angry at her mother: ‘Next week, I don’t want to hear anything about it, you are going to call Mrs Lopez!’ That was exactly what Brigitte wanted, to put some life back into this place, get her father to invest himself once again in their daily lives. She washed the windows so well that her mother was surprised … She said to herself ‘You would think she does this every day’ without knowing how right she was. Her husband kindly asked her for something to drink; it had been almost three decades that he had kindly asked his nagging wife for anything. His throat had suddenly become dry. She was thirsty as well. However, she was sure she had drunk a glass of water not five minutes ago.
After two minutes of tremendously efficient washing, Brigitte turned around. The vision reminded her of Marcel and Laurence. Her parents, for the first time since so long, were sitting next to each other. United in contemplation.
‘How beautiful you are, my daughter!’ exclaimed her mother.
The father, for his part, felt embarrassed, encumbered by a sensation as gentle as it was unhealthy. He could not allow himself to admit it – it was his beloved daughter – but it seemed to him that he had felt a slight twinge of excitement. She had such a gentle way of cleaning the windows, so … how to say it … well … so …
‘Maybe we don’t have to call Mrs Lopez … if you don’t mind my darling … you could clean the windows from time to time …’
Brigitte had perceived emotional fragility in her father’s tone. His feverishness was touching, Brigitte agreed to do it. She had punctuated her agreement with a delicious pout, in the manner of naughty girls who are always forgiven. After having washed the windows, she kissed her parents with tenderness. She felt that something strange had happened. You could believe at that moment that they were finally going to be happy. Her father made an effort that had seemed inhuman to him until now, in pulling himself off his armchair to sit down straight at his wife’s side; on the porch, they made signs together to say goodbye. On the way home, Brigitte let sweet thoughts drift inside her. It seemed to her – and it was a sublime lunacy – that she suddenly possessed the gift to keep them alive.
7
There was an hugely erotic je ne sais quoi in her. Brigitte washed windows like no other. After having seen her parents in such a happy flush, she admitted the oddness of what had just happened. After her husband, the addict, and her friends who wanted to make her return, it was the third time that she provoked pleasure close to orgasm by washing the windows. Her father had had the same look as Hector. She had felt discomfort that was diminished immediately: she unconsciously knew that she alone was responsible for the transient fascination provoked. Every human being had to possess a fabulous erotic potential, but rare were those who were able to find it. After her frustrating adolescence, and her first years as a woman where she had thought herself unable to appeal to a man, she had become a sensual power. Excitement was slowly rising. Everything was making sense. People stared at her in the street, she was hopping, and seconds later, she was still. People probably thought she was insane.
Hector did not want to have a siesta today. He tried, in vain, to find something original to do. Thankfully, Brigitte walked in, shouting: ‘I am incredibly erotic! It’s my fault!’ As the man of the house, Hector assumed his responsibilities. He stroked his wife’s hair. He had to reassure her straight away; had he not detected in her the beginnings of hysteria? It’s true that was not very clear; everything was getting muddled in her brain, she was trying to explain to her husband that he had not relapsed. Since they first met, and as he had hoped, he was no longer affected by compulsive hoarding. He tried to make her sit down, and to serve her a glass of aged bourbon, but there was nothing he could do, she was shaking him, repeating: ‘But don’t you understand?’ He shook his head, worried. She finally understood everything (women) while he needed a bit more time to understand (men).
So Hector had never relapsed. In meeting Brigitte (the woman’s body was unique), he had been cured from compulsive hoarding. But, poetically, he had fallen for the only woman who possessed an incredible erotic potential when she washed windows. In wanting to relive this moment at all costs, in going as far as filming the important moment, he had thought himself irremediably affected, though he had never been a man as much like every other.
It was not possible to love passionately and desire to accumulate more objects. Hector had always been persuaded of this. He was a reassured man who had just learned of the end of his illness on the day when he was trying to avoid a siesta. From today, Brigitte would never again wash the windows; he had to be weaned off them. The couple studied possible methods, and six months later Brigitte was not washing the windows to satisfy her husband’s desires anymore (they used an American method that spaced out the washes – Americans had the art of considering obvious techniques). Brigitte occasionally, without telling Hector, washed the windows for her own pleasure, like that, as a kind of masturbation. On those days, when he came home, he felt that the windows were clean; his old reflexes. He tried not to think about it, it was not always easy. The bonded couple were faced with other beginnings of relapses from time to time, and they thwarted them with grace.
Everything was now in the past.
Brigitte and Hector formed a stable union that had resisted terrible events. They were beautiful (in any case, they found each other attractive), they were relatively wealthy, they no longer had any real psychological problems (two or three phobias persisted here and there but they certainly would not deserve a book), and they had redecorated their apartment a short time previously. So the project vaguely alluded to on numerous occasions and always pushed back resurfaced at the right moment: the project of making a baby. The expression seemed heavy, terrifying. People called it the fruit of love. To have a child, they first needed to make love. Brigitte calculated the correct dates, explaining to Hector that it was always better to procreate on a Thursday. It was a day that he was fond of. He rested himself properly on Wednesday, and rendered a great performance on said day.
Hector had never been as proud as the day when he found out he had aimed right. The announcement was celebrated fittingly, and Brigitte was going to grow larger progressively. She wanted to eat strawberries, and was nauseous. Hector did not like strawberries, they made him nauseous. The future parents were thinking about their child’s future, about his brilliant studies, and the soft drugs he would perhaps be allowed to smoke. From the seventh month, Brigitte became really very fat. She was asked whether she was harbouring a football team (people are often very funny). The couple stayed at home all the time. Hector went grocery shopping, and in the supermarket aisles, he did not even think about collections anymore. His child. He only thought about his
child. They had decided not to find out the gender. Hector had an irrational fear of everything that concerned biology; he had not accompanied his wife during the sonograms.
And it was highly unlikely that he would be present at the birth.
But when the day arrived, she begged him to stay by her side in the labour room. Drenched in sweat, and with anarchic cardiac palpitations, he bravely overcame his anxiety. His wife could be proud of him; then, he thought it was more up to him to be proud of her … Brigitte let out screams, her legs akimbo. So that was it: the miracle of life. The midwife announced that the cervix was half dilated, which meant that there was still one half left to defeat.
So the cervix was opening millimetre by millimetre; every human being, on arriving on Earth, acted like a star. We were an occasion, a happy occasion. The child was profiting from its final moments of great fulfilment, and he was right because there were few chances that he would one day experience the same sensations again; unless he were to bathe naked in freezing water after having drunk three litres of Irish whiskey. Hector stepped outside. Everyone was there: his mother, Brigitte’s parents, Gérard, Ernest and his family, Marcel and Laurence … Maternity drew in all the protagonists. They were supporting Hector, reminding him that fathers are the adventurers of modern times. He liked that turn of phrase; he asked himself who the idiot was who had come up with such bullshit, but it was agreeable to him. And it is true that he looked like an adventurer with his three-week beard (he could not shave anymore because, in solidarity with Brigitte, he too had prepared a suitcase to take to the hospital on the day of the birth; he had put his toiletry bag in that suitcase). He thanked everyone for coming, and promised to return as soon as there was some news. What a man he was, you could count on him in the great occasions. He was going to become a father, and he felt that it was a role that fitted him.
Brigitte screamed, so the epidural was intensified. Hector was by her side once again, he appeared serene. He thought that his wife was beautiful like a woman who is about to give birth. She was pushing harder and harder. The midwife cut a strand of hair from the child whose sticky head. Hector contemplated this strand with such a powerful emotion … In an ultra-fleeting way, he could not prevent himself from thinking about Marcel’s collection. It was a reflex from his previous life that he did not entirely master; even if he no longer collected anything, he continued to think about collections very often. Well, it was within the space of a second, then he thought: if it’s a girl, here’s a strand that would be the jewel of Marcel’s collection … And he concentrated once again on his child’s progression; this extremely intelligent baby had aligned himself perfectly to get out. The second midwife was applying pressure on Brigitte’s stomach to help the child get out. The head finally appeared, almost in its entirety; it looked like a cone. Hector could not see anything of his child yet, and already it seemed like grace incarnate to him.
Accompanied by cries from the push, the child came out and also cried. It was placed on his mother’s stomach … it was a girl! Hector shed the most beautiful tears of his life. He went out one second to shout in the corridors: ‘It’s a girl!’
He gazed at the marvel emitting little cries in her mother’s arms. My daughter, my daughter, Hector could not think about anything else. He had just reproduced himself. His daughter was alive; alive and unique. He had read in specialised books that children stay on their mothers a few minutes before they are taken for their first bath. Strangely, the scene had not lasted longer than thirty seconds. The second midwife had taken his daughter without even asking him to come. Many books explain that if the father is present, he gives the baby its first bath. And here, nothing. No one had even looked at him … He had hardly had the time to observe his daughter. He was still holding Brigitte’s hand, and she suddenly squeezed it very hard, screaming. It was as though they had gone in reverse.
In the waiting room, all the family were embracing each other. A girl, it was a girl, they were repeating in chorus. Hector was not wrong: they were going in reverse. His mind foggy, he could not yet mentally put his finger on what appeared like a strange concept to him. Brigitte who was bordering exhaustion was supported by a new nurse, she needed courage. She squashed Hector’s hand. He was finally able to discern the evidence: twins! She had not said anything to him, but she was not pregnant with one but with two babies! This time, he almost fainted. The midwife advised him to sit down. His emotional state was bothering everyone. He thus observed the birth of his second child. This time, it was a boy! Hector kissed his wife, and like for the first daughter, the baby was placed on his mother’s stomach.
‘But you had not told me anything …,’ spluttered Hector.
‘No, it was a surprise, my love.’
Hector threw himself in the corridor and shouted: ‘It’s a boy!’
This new announcement plunged everyone in confusion, and especially Gérard who was examining this insane equation from every angle: ‘But it’s a girl, or is it a boy … It can’t be a girl and a boy … Well, yes sometimes, it can happen … But not so young … Or else …’ He asked a nurse passing by for an aspirin.
Drunk with happiness, the father on a cloud and the mother in a daze, the parents had just settled in another world. Hector wanted to follow his son in the room where he was being bathed, but, once again, a midwife took the child. In a small voice, Brigitte confessed to Hector: ‘I did not tell you everything …’
‘What?’
‘We’re having tripleeets!’ A contraction hacked the word.
Brigitte went back to push with the little strength she had left. She was an exceptional woman, three children in one go. Hector looked at her as though she were an extraterrestrial. He loved her in a superior love. Courageous, she brought a second girl to the world and, relieved, burst into tears. The little girl went to join her big brother and big sister for the medical exams, and a few minutes later, the midwife announced that the three babies were doing wonderfully. She added that she had rarely seen a delivery of triplets occur so easily.
The three children were placed side by side; they seemed identical like three pieces from a collection. Hector could not believe he was the progenitor of these three human beings. He kissed his wife, and in that kiss he bestowed all the courage they would need. Fathers are the adventurers of modern times, he thought back to this expression. With three children in one stroke, he at least deserved the designation of hero.
End
November 2002 – August 2003
Ouarzazate–Casablanca
The author thanks the Centre National du Livre for its help.
David Foenkinos is a recipient of the Hachette Foundation’s Young Writers’ Grant 2003.
First published in France by Editions Gallimard in 2004 as
Le potential érotique de ma femme
This English translation published in 2008 by Telegram
ISBN: 978-1-84659-045-0
eISBN: 978-1-84659-179-2
Copyright © Editions Gallimard, Paris, 2004
Translation copyright © Yasmine Gaspard, 2008
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The Erotic Potential of my Wife Page 11