Monsieur

by Emma Becker

  I lied. I slept badly last night, constantly waking up and checking the time. At six, I finally got up, had a shower and fell asleep again at nine thirty. Every time I closed my eyes, I had spasms in the small of my back from all the anxiety. I dreamed of you. I even thought it was real, that you were lying in the bed next to me and I could feel your thigh between my legs, and got all aroused. When I opened my eyes, I saw I was alone and the sun had barely risen. My heart was beating wildly when I was waiting for you to arrive. Mind you, it behaved in a similar way later. But it made me feel better. I was back where I’d wanted to be for the past five days.

  I’m now going to have a lie-down before I cook myself something for supper (a prospect as entertaining as having toothpicks inserted under my nails). I will write to you again at greater length afterwards . . .

  Ellie

  PS I’ve just had my bath and I found one of your hairs. Guess where. Easy, eh?

  A good thing my mother is still asleep. I would have found it pretty awkward to explain why I had dressed like this on a Wednesday morning during the student strikes. At eight o’clock. Without even being conscious of it, I’d done myself up like the perfect tart. The world surrounding me may be unaware of it, but I’m not. It’s the way my legs hurt from wearing these heels, and my skirt’s designed to be pulled off in one movement.

  I stop a taxi, the posh way to reach the opulent Marais district. I’m already late anyway. By at least twenty minutes. All the way to the Gare de Lyon, I alternately watched the cab’s ticking meter and my watch. My mobile phone didn’t ring. Afraid. I can’t even be a proper mistress. I’m twenty, I’m jobless, I spend my life sleeping: I should always be on time for Monsieur.

  And then, I don’t know how, everything changes. I see the Saint-Paul church, its slate roof bathing in the warm early-morning sun, all the fools in their two-piece suits strolling like robots to their tiny offices, while I’m sitting here, oblivious, in my skirt and high heels, travelling to the man who had me years ago (or was it just two days ago?), to watch him perform in his surgical scrubs, laughing in the face of danger personified by the doctors and nurses who dined at my uncle’s when I was only five, my head in the clouds. I must talk to someone. I must call someone or I’ll start to scream: it’s happiness, stage fright. If not I’ll explode into a million pieces. I must call Babette. It’s ten to nine and she’ll kill me, but no matter.

  Babette must have gone to bed late and smoked a lot with her boyfriend. Her voice has the charm of a betting-shop manageress’s.

  ‘Is it important? If not, I’m falling asleep while you’re talking.’

  ‘Don’t go back to sleep. I must share this amazing moment with you!’ I’m like a cat on hot bricks, watching the rue de Rivoli speed by outside the cab window.

  At the other end of the line, Babette is shaking herself awake. Knowing her, she’s already sitting cross-legged and lighting a Lucky Strike. I like Babette. Ines would have hung up on me without a second thought.

  ‘Guess where I am?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue. Somewhere that makes you happy.’

  ‘I’m in a taxi, near Saint-Paul. I’m about to watch Monsieur at the clinic, operating.’

  Seconds pass, and Babette is totally silent. I’m dismayed.

  ‘And . . . I don’t know . . . I just had to tell someone . . . explain how madly happy I feel. Not that it seems to have had any effect on you.’

  ‘May I point out to you again that I’ve just woken up? So, you’re going to see Monsieur, then?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘But you saw him yesterday!’ she shrieks, as if it were now her turn to be agitated. ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘I promised him I’d go to the clinic and watch him operate.’

  ‘And you’re trying to justify the fact that you give in to his every whim.’

  ‘Maybe . . .’ I admit, red-faced but proud to have become his whim.

  Whims are so underrated: the way they consume you from the inside, evidence of immaturity; it’s easy to forget how vital they can be, the craving they represent for beauty or more. After all, I’m only twenty. What more could you expect of me? I don’t care that I have to rise at seven thirty in the morning on a strike day to fit into Monsieur’s timetable, so that he can see admiration as well as desire in my eyes. But Babette doesn’t share my view. ‘You’ll kill me,’ I tell her. ‘There I was, flying through the cloudless sky like a seagull, and you’re taking aim at me all the way.’

  ‘Not at all. Anyway, you know that you and him, it can’t go anywhere. Might as well enjoy it while it lasts.’

  ‘Did you have to say that?’

  The driver manoeuvres the taxi into the rue du Roi-de-Sicile (we’re getting so close and my whole body is on edge), and Babette bursts out laughing. Then she says, ‘I just don’t want to have to pick up the pieces. Anyway, go ahead and let Monsieur pinch your tits under those awful blue pyjamas.’

  ‘So I have your blessing? On the right, here, please.’

  ‘Sure. Although I know I’ll regret that when you come to me with tears in your eyes, but we’re all fallible. We can’t predict the future, can we? Who cares? Two seconds of pleasure versus two weeks of pain? Just go for it.’

  ‘OK, I have to hang up. We’re almost at the clinic and you’re giving me the creeps.’

  ‘Go and get drunk with happiness.’

  I can’t help laughing, but I sense that Babette’s last words will come back to haunt me. I get out of the taxi, almost stumble, and there I am, at the clinic. Remember, Ellie, when you were only ten you hated to be brought here, and now a few years later you’ve actually spent thirty euros to get to the place faster.

  Those were the days, when I tried to hide around the corners in corridors to escape the visits: twenty minutes of being stroked by patients who gushed at the sight of the cluster of little blonde girls hanging on to Dr Cantrel’s coat, in rooms stinking of ether and pain, and as a bonus, the occasional sight of enormous, bleeding lines of stitches across the knees of sobbing old women. I can remember how my sister Louise was unable to eat the piece of chocolate she had been offered by the nurses, arguing it must taste like the scabs she had seen on the shin of an Algerian workman. We spent hours – or so it felt to us – in the waiting room, Alice hiding from the doctors behind Philippe’s legs. Disgusted as I was by the spectacle of wounds and the heavy smell of medicine, I was endlessly fascinated by the way others looked up at him with respect and gratitude. You could be a famous surgeon and still run around the Luxembourg Gardens with a swarm of brats in your wake, or take hold of our small hands, sticky with popcorn, to guide us across the rue de Rennes. It was only, many years later, when I visited the clinic that I realized we had a doctor in the family. That was also the first time I came across Monsieur, or at any rate the anonymous pair of grey eyes he then was.

  Another real-life-encounter memory. It’s all coming back to me, like a dream, or maybe even a sequence from a good erotic movie. An evening party on the occasion of my uncle’s birthday: I was barely eighteen, and we must have ignored each other.

  (How curious it is that the men we love already exist in their own right before our perception changes them and they enter the familiarity of our world.)

  How nice it would have been if he had already known then that the plump, blonde schoolgirl sitting at the table across from him would one day encircle his body with her legs. I can almost feel the tension in the air: halfway through a formal conversation I could have whispered in his ear, ‘I will become your mistress,’ then moved away from the table, still wearing my school uniform, leaving him to guess at the shape of my breasts under the T-shirt, and what the whole body he would caress two years later actually looked like. Sliding like a snake between tables and chairs, spreading my smell across him, like a spell, as my hands waved in the air. It would have been nice to be able to watch him silently, and then, under the cover of innocence, speak to him, make him laugh, imagine myself naked against him. I can pi
cture an evening spent moving together from room to room, not daring to do anything. Then, in a neglected corner of the house, Monsieur and I would begin to debate literature, he sitting in a deep armchair, me cross-legged on the bed at the other end of the room. The door wide open, he would not have tolerated any suggestion of impropriety, even though those few stolen minutes away from the other guests would have been full of unspoken cravings deep inside our guts. Monsieur understands perfectly what lies behind a young girl’s eyes, when she is at an age that makes men reluctant to respond to her smiles. He is one of those men who recognize the way blushes spread across cheeks, the initial listlessness clouding the eyes, and responds accordingly, already so cleverly aware of what lies in wait beneath the mask.

  Go and tell your uncle that that’s why you’re standing in front of the clinic today.

  I call Monsieur. I can hear his smile when he says, ‘I’m on my way, darling.’

  A blonde secretary stares at me, as if she has overheard our conversation. I have absolutely no intention of justifying my presence to her. I turn to the window and gulp the last drops of my coffee, suddenly filled with the anguish of Tuesday morning. The silence in the small blue room is so oppressive that I start humming as I read the hygiene warnings Blu-tacked to the wall. Someone is walking about behind the door on the left, which leads to the operating theatre. A few steps away from me, the secretary is restless, shuffling her paperwork. I wish my whole face could be pixellated, fearing she might recognize me as Dr Cantrel’s niece and want to chat. Fortunately, just as she is about to open her mouth, the mysterious door half opens and Monsieur emerges, regal in surgical scrubs, his hair beneath a blue skullcap. I feel him draw back from taking me in his arms, even though I rush towards him, my cheeks on fire and my eyes shining, as if my lights have been switched on. Monsieur’s smile is like a caress, even though his hands remain in his pockets.

  The clinic’s geography is such that we are invisible to others as we walk a few metres down a twisted corridor. In a flash Monsieur is all over me, his mouth assaulting mine, his tongue working with such speed and determination I almost faint, and lose all sense of place and time. I submit to the urgency of the kiss. It speaks to me, says, ‘I can’t resist.’ I understand where the subtle mix of repulsion and magnetic attraction comes from: while I’m fascinated by the fact I’m having an affair with such a brilliant and sensual man, I can also see how pathetic it is for him to sleep with such a young girl behind the backs of his wife and kids. Maybe I made it too easy for him or Monsieur isn’t much of a seducer. Maybe he tries not to resemble those old guys hanging around the school gates whose hearts are broken by a nymphet. There are times when I see so much pain in his desire that I’m unsure whether I should be flattered or take pity on him. I feel a form of power surge through me, which overwhelms me. Should I use it?

  In the changing room Monsieur hands me a pair of pyjamas and watches me with close attention. While I attempt to find some privacy behind the wobbly shelves, he seizes my handbag. ‘I’ll put it in the locker, darling. Just keep your mobile.’

  For an instant, my heart stops. Hidden by the locker door, I mumble: ‘What did you call me?’

  ‘I call everyone “darling”,’ Monsieur explains, and I feel like slapping his face.

  A nurse helps me stuff my ponytail inside the white skullcap. I now look like an egg. Facing a large mirror I try to improve my appearance while keeping an eye on Monsieur. Even though I am trying to be discreet, I’m sure the short brunette standing next to me notices my efforts to look a bit sexier before Monsieur turns to me again. She doesn’t seem concerned about it, which suggests to me that I’m not the first young girl to pass through this changing room on the arm of Monsieur. He’s unlikely to compromise himself with the young women in blue coats, but no doubt they whisper about his activities behind his back. Monsieur is not the type to be bothered or embarrassed, or to look away when he sees someone he lusts after. He has no fear; this is his kingdom. Women can chatter away to their hearts’ content, but for now he’s dragging me towards the cavernous lift carrying the operating staff to the theatre. Surely they know this is a moment of truth. And, of course, as soon as the doors close Monsieur, so immense next to me in the restricted space, pins me back with a kiss that tastes of so many forbidden things, but that’s nothing in comparison with the long fingers slithering beneath my pyjama jacket, the feeling I have of slowly collapsing into a hot bath and my muscles turning to jelly. This man is like a symphony of inquisitive fingers spreading across my breasts and inside my trousers. I put up a token struggle, my face flattened against the side of the lift, Monsieur’s growing erection grazing the small of my back. The problem is that desire is rising fast inside me, triggered by his feverish groping. As the lift doors open, I’m panting hard. Any observer would have concluded in a flash that I was getting wetter by the minute at the mere thought of that eternal cliché: a masked anonymous medic seeking to enslave me by trying to grip my wrists behind my back. Not a single word passes between us, the quiet broken only by our uniforms rustling, a silent dialogue.

  ‘Do calm down, Monsieur! Not here, not in the lift, not in the clinic!’

  ‘I’ll do whatever I want with you, right here and now, whether you like it or not.’

  ‘Please, I beg you, stop!’

  ‘Quiet, learn to give yourself! At least a little!’

  The whole scene lasts about six seconds, but I’m praying no one will notice that the eminent surgeon has a pronounced hard-on, and the small masked blonde girl at his side is evidently responsible for it.

  As soon as the doors open, I recognize some of the orderlies and anesthetists. It’s extraordinary how elegant and noble Monsieur looks, cruising down the corridors of the surgical block; he’s lost the superior air he usually wears, as if he owns the place. Just the way he moves, spreading his particular scent that even the ether can’t obscure. There is something magical about Monsieur’s movements as he strolls from room to room, leaving his mark.

  I find a corner where I am out of the way while he introduces me as a literature student here to research a paper on the body (I can imagine the obligatory face-to-face discussion with Monsieur behind the locked doors of his study). It’s crazy, all these women here at his beck and call, instinctively adjusting his scrubs, preparing his instruments, voicing his name as they soothe the nerves of the first patient. All the kindness, the lack of condescension Monsieur displays in the presence of the person now lying on the operating table is unlike his usual rather cynical attitude. How can he move so quickly from arrogance to this? He’s now bending over the table, whispering instructions into his microphone, such a benevolent picture of kindness I’d be willing to have my nose shattered into a thousand pieces if only to be smiled at like that.

  ‘Can we go ahead, Doctor?’ a nurse asks, opening a pack of sutures.

  And the ballet begins. Beneath his surgical mask, teasing me, Monsieur reminds me: ‘If you begin to feel faint, you can always walk out and sit in the corridor.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I answer, with a dire attempt to emulate his honeyed smile. ‘I don’t faint easily.’

  His gaze is insistent, so, in a tiny voice, I add: ‘Some years ago, not that long, I wanted to become a pathologist.’

  ‘A pathologist?’

  His eyes are like fingers touching my skin under the surgical blouse, almost laughing because this tiny blonde girl with her pink bum and careless words had considered spending her life in the realm of dead, silent flesh.

  ‘How amusing,’ Monsieur says, with irony, while my cheeks grow redder by the second. Then, holding his scalpel, he leans over the man sleeping below him, as if suddenly aware that his tone almost betrayed us. The fear and awe inside my chest are coming to the boil at the elaborate precision of his movements. Amazing. Now that I am aware of this, I will be able to concentrate better on the ways in which he manipulates me, assess whether his surgical skill can be detected among the folds of our sheets.
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br />   ‘If you happen to faint,’ Monsieur continues, without glancing at me, ‘we have everything here to bring you back to life.’

  ‘Blood won’t make me faint.’

  ‘Oh, there are many reasons for fainting – pain, hunger . . .’

  Still not looking at me, his large hands dancing above the operating table, hesitating briefly between instruments, he continues his inventory, but I already know where it’s leading.

  ‘. . . fear . . .’

  I lower my eyes, red under the surgical mask. Would he dare?

  ‘. . . pleasure . . .’

  I bite the inside of my cheeks and blood floods my mouth.

  ‘. . . and oppression.’

  His large grey eyes fly across me, watching me attentively, defying me.

  ‘Although, technically, there is little difference between fainting and a swoon.’

  I try to pull myself away from this invisible battle of wills, oddly fascinated by how Monsieur is playing with me, echoing every perverse word I have used in my text messages to him. I suspect he is grinning under his mask, as he returns to his work, and my heart pounds. God knows how many times this morning he’s almost given me a heart-attack.

  He doesn’t allow the nurses to put in the sutures, stitching the wound himself with fierce, gentle determination.

  ‘Just imagine how important the nose is. The way it punctuates a face. The size and beauty of the scar are of paramount importance.’

  Monsieur says ‘beauty’ where others would have used ‘appearance’: a subtle nuance that transports me back to a moment in the small blue room. He was caressing my hips, and I noticed that my naked skin was caught in the unforgiving glare of a band of sunlight. But I couldn’t have cared less. I smiled. ‘Are you looking at my stretch marks?’

  And Monsieur, ever serious, whispered into my neck: ‘They’re pretty, you’re striped. Like a little tiger.’

  As soon as he puts down his instruments, a nurse reminds him of the visits to be made on the lower floor. Back to the lift, and its intolerable pressure. Before he’s even touched me, I feel his hardness against me, a hardness that will only increase when, a few hours later, I send him a text full of my usual filth. I savour the intoxicating aroma of coffee on his breath. On the ground floor, I’m shaking with need next to him. ‘But what the fuck am I going to do? Tell me.’