I was worse.
I was one of those girls who are said to have a blank gaze, simply because behind our expressionless masks we hide our true contempt for all the jousting, for all those tinsel princesses and papier-mâché knights in shining armor. And for ourselves, above all. My self-contempt was equal to my disdain for them. A pretty picture.
But it didn’t show, at all.
I know what people said about me in those days. She’s nice. She’s easygoing. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Quiet. Reserved. A little empty, maybe. Having said that, you can always count on her.
And in bed, did any of that cross his mind, Philippe Leduc? No. He would only have been thinking about his erection, which he had trouble maintaining. He must have been conjuring images of girls who were flashier than me—famous actresses, rocker chicks in leather pants—and his only aim would have been to stay hard, as long as possible. And to what end? Not for my pleasure, surely, he couldn’t have cared less. Not even for his own. Just out of pride. So he could say, “Sure, I scored.”
Don’t you think we might have missed something then, Philippe?
Because our bodies were a good fit; because there were times you managed to forget your fear, your obsession with performance, because our skin would touch and the tenderness that came from that caress surprised both of us. We didn’t know that life is long, that our alliances would change, and that, anyway, over time we’d lose that urge to boast. We didn’t know we might have been a good match, one of those couples who understand each other intimately, who exchange knowing glances when other people go on and on.
Do you at least remember what it was like afterward?
After lovemaking. My hand on your chest. The sweat on your shoulder. My fingers going down then up again. Neck, belly, cock, still damp. Your chest rising and falling. And your eyes. The thankfulness as you looked at me. Really looked, deep inside me.
And everything was so easy afterward. Conversation flowed. Moving naked around the room—it all seemed natural. I liked your body. That’s why I remember it so well. Before you came along there were other bodies that left me indifferent, but others still that almost made me want to laugh. None that caught my imagination. And afterward, it was the same old story. I admired Luc’s body, of course—he seemed to be made for sex. But never again would I find that sense of the familiar that I had with your body.
I’m talking to you, Philippe. This is a declaration, from twenty-seven years away, this is a declaration even though you don’t look at all the way you used to, even though no one notices you anymore, and you’ve sunken into the anonymity of your fifties where we seem to go all gray and hazy—hardly anyone notices, except for the occasional cruel comment: “He must have been a handsome man,” “I’ll bet she was stunning.”
I’m talking to you and you can’t hear me.
I’m trying to be ironic.
I’m trying to stop this little wave that is building inside and which is threatening to swell and turn into a breaker just as we reach the port—the Gare de l’Est, thirty minutes from now, I’ve just glanced at my watch. Thirty minutes left to dive in, into the flotsam of the years gone by, and hope to find a piece of wood, a roof, a boat adrift—to start everything all over again.
What on earth am I saying?
Anything but that.
Remember the last night in London. Remember the tone of his voice in the room that night. And all the preceding afternoon. How impatient he was. You weren’t interesting anymore. He wasn’t attracted to you anymore. Words hurled like javelins. Hurtful comments, about the way you dressed, your lack of polish, of shine, “an ant in a patch of grass, not even the Queen ant, oh no, anything but, just one ant among all the other ants, the ant par excellence, no critical distance, no ambition, nothing to make you stand out among the others.”
I remember every word.
Which doesn’t surprise me.
I had buried them in my memory. I’d struggled against them, but I knew very well that I hadn’t destroyed them.
Where did it come from, all that scorn? Couldn’t you simply have come out with a few harmless statements, just acted embarrassed, and told me it was over? Remained dignified? I would have rolled with the punches. Sure, I’d become attached, after four months—but I was still realistic. I had always known that sooner or later you would get tired of me.
You wanted to go back to Camden Town. We had been there the night before; I thought it was kind of seedy and not all that interesting. I sighed. I would have preferred to wander around Chelsea or Belgravia. Wander aimlessly, to see how the locals lived, to allow myself to melt—you were right, and that’s what hurt the most—allow myself to melt into the background. I sighed, and you exploded. The famous last straw. Or the straw that broke the camel’s back. Or the ant, forever lost in the haystack.
The ant.
Did you know I still think about that, a lot?
You never imagine that certain phrases can stick, buried in your skin like splinters, and that at certain moments in life they come back and wreck everything.
My grandfather had fought at Verdun. He was very young. A shell exploded a few yards away from him. He had shrapnel in his legs all his life, and from time to time, with the changing seasons, a shell fragment would say, Give him my kind regards.
Those two words were my shell fragments.
Some years ago, maybe eight or nine, Valentine was in primary school, we came home one evening and the kitchen had been invaded by thousands of flying ants. They had built a nest under the sink in a hole in the wall and we hadn’t noticed. Valentine was screaming and there I was, the one who was usually solid as a rock in our family, the one who knew how to lay tiles, mix plaster, change a tire better than Luc, or talk about horsepower and aerodynamics, there I was, the woman who could tell off telemarketers and nosey real estate agents: I went to pieces. Because of some flying ants, treating me like their equal, crawling all over me, welcoming me in their midst, at last you’re back. For a few minutes I lost my mind.
Valentine remembers.
Luc, too.
If he hadn’t come home just in time, I don’t know what would have happened.
And yet I fought it.
I did nothing else, after I got back from London. Everything was very clear in my mind. The things I would no longer put up with. Who I would become. Every decision I made that night I followed to the letter. Those decisions gave structure to my life. Gave meaning to the direction I was headed in. Never again would I be an ant. Never again would I taste that bitterness.
No one, today, would dare to compare me to an ant. Not a single person I know would ever think of such a thing.
The only one who sometimes still feels the shell, the formic acid, the little legs wriggling: that’s me, and me alone—and it’s because of you, Philippe Leduc.
I ought to tell you.
I shift slightly toward you in my seat.
You look so lost. You haven’t even noticed that I’m looking at you. You’re in one of those moments when everything goes slack—muscles, skin, consciousness; your mind wanders and disappointment accumulates, along with feelings of failure. There is only one thing a person feels like doing when they see you like that, you know, and that would be to put their arm around your shoulder and tell you not to worry, everything will turn out all right.
And you must be thinking about the person you never became, that sharp, brilliant man you seemed destined to become. Someone who would leave their mark. Who would pose for magazines. Like Mathieu Coché. Is that what you’re thinking, Philippe? About how you’ve failed—and with a vengeance—and you’ve ended up on the 6:41 train, like me?
Except that thanks to you I am not what I seem. Even if the ant inside me did drive me to travel second class, yet again, when really I could easily have afforded first.
With your face only a few inches from mine, I’m trying to sound you out, but I can’t.
You’re unfathomable, Leduc.
That’s the least of your faults.
We would take the Eurostar.
The Eurostar, which didn’t exist back then, when the two of us went to London.
I had no regrets.
That’s the worst of it, I think. Now I do, of course, but at the time, I didn’t. I thought good riddance, or something like that. Classy. I was very classy, in those days. I was very sure of everything.
She had begun to annoy me, probably even before we left for London. Little things. The way she would stare at the floor while I was talking to her. The fact that she preferred films where nothing happened. This derisive side she had—she would look at me out of the corner of her eye, and I could tell she didn’t believe in flirtation for a minute. Her discreet irony. I needed to be admired. To be set on a pedestal.
I’m not looking for excuses.
And then, she was gaining power.
Insidiously.
She was nothing to look at, with her ordinary face, slightly curly shoulder length hair, and clothes that came straight from a discount superstore. She would listen to me talking. People who listen always end up in a position of superiority; they don’t share their secrets, they remain whole, intact, whereas you’ve allowed your flaws to show through.
And then she—
No, it’s really hard to remember this.
Years later, it’s still hard to come out and admit it.
It’s crazy how sex can still haunt you even after so much time has gone by.
How should I put it? She knew how to relax me? Make me hard? Make me stay hard? Reassure me? All of that at the same time. I should have been grateful. But it was the opposite. I felt sure that some day she would go and make fun of me, in public. Which was idiotic. But when you’re twenty years old, you have no critical distance, your vision is really limited to what’s close-up, there before you.
I was so relieved when she slammed the door that night.
There I was in the London night. Alone and accompanied at the same time. I had a headache. The alcohol made my gestures uncertain—and yet, I was relieved.
One less burden.
And now I don’t understand. I don’t understand myself.
I’ll talk about it with Mathieu.
It’ll be a good topic of conversation, for a start. Maybe by going back over all this old stuff, by bringing the world of a quarter of a century ago back to life, we’ll manage to get through thirty or forty minutes. An hour. And after that, he’ll be calm. Yes, that’s a good idea, I’ll talk to him about Cécile Duffaut.
I’m afraid.
I know I am because the vein on the right-hand side of my neck has started throbbing.
Unless it’s a nerve.
Do we have nerves in our neck?
I don’t know what sort of state I’ll find him in.
My last visit was ten days ago. He wants me to come more often. He wants me to be there every day. He would like everyone to be there every day, but now that he’s in the hospital, the others don’t come anymore. Sometimes they call. They send presents. They send text messages. But they don’t actually go. Something always comes up. They were all ready to go, it was all planned, cross my heart and hope to die, we’ll be there tomorrow afternoon, and two hours before they were supposed to be there, with Mathieu getting more and more impatient, they call and say they’re really sorry, their voices full of contrition, but really, they simply can’t make it, a really important program, an appointment that could change their life, the dishwasher has broken down completely unexpectedly and the kitchen is flooded. Mathieu smiles valiantly (and I feel like shouting: “Mathieu, you’re on the phone, they can’t see you, stop smiling”), then says again in a weary little voice that it doesn’t matter, it’s no big deal, some other time, and he finds excuses for them after all, it’s true, they have to get on with their lives.
I don’t say anything.
I think: with me it’s different.
I’m trying to sound ironic, with limited success. Because it’s true, after all, with me it’s different.
I don’t have anything special to do, other than my job and my divorced family.
Mathieu’s cancer is an event.
I have such a thrilling life.
It started a few months ago now. Not long after he broke up with Astrid. He wasn’t in great shape. He was losing weight, which was normal, he was hardly eating. He didn’t feel like going out, or having people over. He had headaches all the time. Even he was surprised. He didn’t think their breakup would affect him so much.
“How long did it last in all?”
“Ten months. A year.”
“On the scale of a lifetime …”
“I know. That’s why I don’t understand why I can’t get my act together.”
“You’re getting old.”
“I suppose. And besides, you know, when I think of you with your kids, I tell myself that maybe I’ve missed out on something.”
“Well, me and my kids, it’s not as if we’re together all that much. They’ve found a dad who is exactly what they were looking for.”
“Don’t say that. You know very well that everyone only has one dad.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“Well, I’ll never know, since I’m not a father.”
“How do you know? You’ve left your sperm in a fair share of women.”
“I’m being serious.”
“Just look at the life you lead. What would you do with a kid? Kids need stability, guidance, routine.”
“Depends on the kid.”
I broke off the discussion. I could tell it wasn’t going anywhere. To change tack, I said, “Maybe you should see a doctor. You never know, it might have nothing to do with Astrid. It might only be physical.”
Mathieu liked the idea that it might “only be physical.” Some other thing that wouldn’t weigh on his mind. Rational. Explainable. Medical.
He liked it a lot less when the results came in.
He’d lain in bed for hours. He called me. He had a strange metallic voice. Like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz. I took the first train, the same 6:41. It was in the middle of the February school break. I moved into his place. We talked the way we’d never talked before. Whenever I went out to go shopping or just to have a break, he would try to call people he knew, people I’d met at parties. The ones he got hold of were full of sympathy. His life seemed sad to me.
I sat in cafés in Paris and wrote letters to my children. Some day I may send them. But what would they make of them? In the letters I referred to a whole list of unfamiliar names, people they’ve never met, places they’ve never seen. When parents tell their stories it’s anything but clear, and it’s probably better that way. I toyed with the idea of writing a novel, too. I don’t have the talent. Nor, in all likelihood, the desire.
I wonder how Cécile gets along with her children. I see my kids only in brief spurts now that they’ve moved. No, that’s not fair. I don’t think it’s really because of the change, or because of their new stepfather. It’s their age. They’re learning to keep their distance. One day Loïc and I went to visit the cathedral. He was three or four years old. He couldn’t have cared less about the building. All he could see was the yellow balloon I had just bought for him. One of those helium balloons with a white plastic wand. I like hanging around the cathedral. That’s where I kissed my first conquest, behind a pillar. I’ve always thought there was something erotic about churches: the silence, the cool air, the stone, the fact that someone might go by, the feverishness, the transgression. I was thinking back about that moment. I was wondering what had become of that girl I kissed, whom I never saw again—or if I did, I didn’t recognize her. Loïc let go of his balloon, right there in the nave. Up, up, up went the balloon, all the way to the rose window, and then higher still, until it got stuck beneath a gothic arch, way above our heads. It looked tiny. There was no way we could reach it. Loïc was inconsolable. He didn’t want another one to replace it. He went home, crestfallen.<
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The next day I went back to the cathedral. The balloon was still there, hardly visible. I went back every day. I don’t know why. I figured that sooner or later it would burst or deflate and end up back on the ground—and then, I would take the plastic remains to my son. He would smile and keep them. One evening, the balloon was gone. Not a trace, either on the ground or in the air.
Children are like that. Like helium balloons in cathedrals. Let go of them, and they will fly off, but they’re still in sight, you wave to them, you visit them, and they’re way up there, far away, still stuck beneath our gothic arches. Then one day, and you never quite know why, they’re no longer anywhere to be seen.
No.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
You’re not going to start blubbering, on the 6:41 train next to Cécile Duffaut.
Although.
It could get a conversation going.
No.
There are simpler ways.
Drop something.
A book, a tissue, a pencil: she would pick it up, we would look at each other, recognize each other, life flowing into our bodies, and our paths change direction.
“Excuse me, I … I … I mean, my pen—”
“Go right ahead.”
“Ah, there it is … I’ve got it … you … excuse me, but isn’t your name Cécile Duffaut?”
“Mergey.”
“Sorry?”
“Mergey. That’s my married name. Cécile Mergey.”
“Ah, yes, of course, I see. Sorry. I am—”
“I know who you are.”
“Ah. Good. That’s good, yes, good.”
“Is it?”
I know.
I didn’t think I’d react like that.
That I’d be so sharp, and interrupt the conversation before it even got started.
And turn my head so ostensibly to the window—no point dwelling on it now.
The 6:41 to Paris Page 7