Monsieur

by Emma Becker

  I can easily imagine the coldness of his incomprehension, the anguish that fills him as he confronts all the topsy-turvy sentences that refer to him, ‘Monsieur’ written down a thousand times in a thousand different ways. My notebooks are like the walls psychopaths deface, every available inch covered with photos of victims, cuttings from newspapers, locks of hair. He enters the lair, noting how I’ve retained so many details of us that he now no longer remembers. Maybe he thinks I’m pathological, but as far as I’m concerned, this was the only way to be objective about our affair and also to keep him alive, as the fire he lit inside me just won’t go out, despite his absence. I watch him woefully as he feeds on my secrets, enters the pink and black little-girl world I have unwittingly brought to life. I am already indignant at the prospect of how he will judge it.

  Closing the final notebook, he knits his brows and exhales a long, long sigh, with all the finality of a guy presented with a fait accompli.

  ‘How do you refer to me in your book?’

  ‘As Monsieur. You already know that.’

  ‘What sort of job have you given me?’

  ‘Surgeon. I’ve already told you I couldn’t change that. It’s you.’

  Once again Monsieur sighs with dismay, whispering as if to himself: ‘Everyone will know.’

  I feel like screaming, but say softly, ‘You’re not the only surgeon in Paris.’

  ‘I’m the only one who is known for his appreciation of erotic literature.’

  ‘So what? Should I make Monsieur a doughnut vendor who reads pulp thrillers?’

  The outline of a smile appears on Monsieur’s lips, defusing the tension.

  I come to realize that, having read these two pages, it’s not just that Monsieur is scared: he understands that the clever idea of getting me to write a book about our relationship has now turned against him. Of course, it makes him nervous. I can no longer read on his face what he is thinking. Staring at him through my eyelashes, I ask: ‘You hate me now?’

  ‘Me, hate you?’ he remarks, with a look of genuine shock. ‘Why should I hate you, sweetie?’

  ‘You don’t approve of anything I do or show you.’

  ‘On the contrary, I approve of everything you do.’

  ‘You think I’m trying to land you in the shit?’

  ‘You’re not landing me in the shit,’ he answers (translate as I will not allow you to land me in the shit). ‘I just don’t want to hurt anyone. Understand?’

  ‘I have as much to lose as you do.’

  ‘I have nothing to lose! There’s no point in hurting people. That’s why you must change all the names.’

  ‘I will.’

  Discreetly, I pull the notebooks back to my side of the bed. Now, it’s just Monsieur, me and our now unfamiliar bodies. Chin tucked into the fold of his armpit, I am no longer listening to his darling voice commenting on my book. I silently study his features. Monsieur is beside me, but kilometres away, his tirade against the supposed rashness of my book now just a detail. He is on this bed, and so am I, but we (the abstract but instantly recognizable concept of ‘we’) have missed the boat.

  ‘I have to leave,’ he proclaims, at ten to eleven, a mere half-hour after his triumphant arrival.

  ‘You’re kidding.’ I jump off the bed, staring at him with incredulity. ‘Now? You’ve only just arrived!’

  ‘I know, but what can I do? It’s all I could manage. Actually, I almost didn’t come at all.’

  Half an hour. That’s what I get for my efforts. I pout, which seems to affect Monsieur as, still naked on his knees in the tangle of sheets, he groans. ‘Don’t look at me like that. You know that if I could do otherwise I would.’

  ‘That’s just it. I don’t know. All I can do is think I know.’

  ‘So accept it. I have no choice.’

  I respond bitterly: ‘You sure haven’t courted me much of late.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Last weekend, for instance.’

  As he doesn’t appear to understand, now busy looking for his trousers, I continue: ‘I remember the first times we saw each other. You had as much work as you do now on your plate, but you made time. You spent your life on the phone to me, sending me texts. And now, fuck all. Until the very last moment, I was even unsure whether you’d turn up today.’

  ‘I do what I can. It’s lack of time, for everything. You can’t imagine how it is. I’m working fourteen hours a day, think of that.’

  ‘I’ve always known you were busy. That’s not what I’m talking about.’

  ‘These days it’s worse.’

  Holding his trousers in one hand, Monsieur is deep in thought. Then he asks: ‘When did we start seeing each other?’

  ‘It began in May,’ I answer mournfully, unable to look him in the eyes and control the horrible thought flashing through my mind: Monsieur passed through my life like a ghost.

  ‘May . . . Must have been the recession. I had less work.’

  Monsieur, his beautiful eyes so accustomed to lying, insolently holding my gaze. I recognize this shaky form of poise. Like him, I am capable of lying, but Monsieur doesn’t know this, believing he owns the copyright to every subterfuge in the book.

  I light my joint again in an attempt to fill the awkward silence. Clumsily exhale the smoke.

  ‘Do you distrust me now?’

  Isn’t it preposterous that you can brush away your whole life with one swipe of the hand, like emptying a table of hot dishes? But it isn’t funny. It would take only a word or two for Monsieur to antagonize his wife, alienate his children, become the object of ridicule at work and be laughed at by his friends. I am twenty, just a clumsy sketch of a woman, and I have the power to do all this. It’s like holding a gun. Sometimes I’m dying to pull the trigger, but my conscience keeps my fingers away from the firing mechanism.

  Monsieur kneels in search of his second sock, his face turned towards mine. ‘No. No, I don’t distrust you.’

  ‘You’d never say so, but I see it in your eyes. Monsieur worries the hell out of you.’

  ‘If you changed all those things people close to us might recognize, why should I be distrustful? Hell, on the contrary! It’s your first novel! I always encouraged you to write, no?’

  ‘True.’

  ‘All I’m saying is, we still have some time before they start printing thirty thousand copies. Time enough to make the characters opaque.’

  ‘Thirty thousand copies seems a lot,’ I remark, eyes glazed.

  I probably look the picture of disappointment, and Monsieur moves over to stroke my knee.

  ‘Believe me, you’re a born writer. I knew it from the moment I read your piece in Stupre.’

  ‘Oh, by the way . . .’ I grabbed my bulging handbag, from which the pink cover of my last copy, duly inscribed, had been peeping out.

  With a broad smile, Monsieur took the magazine, folding and unfolding the yellowing cover, exploring every page with expert attention. ‘It’s beautiful!’ he exclaimed, and for those two words, repeated over and over again, I would have given him my life.

  Why did I attach so much importance to Monsieur’s approval? Every compliment he bestows on me has always been measured, distilled, analysed, formatted, and I’m not even talking about the dreadful flattery with which he bombards me while I squirm below him as we make love, an immediate consequence of all the cum accumulating in his brain. When Monsieur says something is ‘beautiful’, the word is filled with brightness.

  ‘I wrote you a great dedication.’

  While others would only see the words ‘cock’ and ‘cunt’, you truly saw Lucie, and understood her. So I place this copy in your expert hands. ‘For Monsieur C.S., Ellie Becker.’

  His charming lips parted, uncovering a row of superbly white teeth.

  ‘It’s for me?’ Monsieur asks shyly, surprisingly coy.

  ‘I promised I’d give you a copy.’

  ‘This magazine is great. Thank you.’

  I already imagine my slot in the
library on the Île Saint-Louis, among the ribald books in which Monsieur conceals my letters. No one can even guess at the assortment of fictional orgies permanently taking place in that study, which in my mind is alternately a boudoir and a castle. All the great books are there, their dust communing with the fat smell of old pages, a thousand concepts battling away, overlapping. And, from tonight, I will be there too, with my vagina-pink cover still carrying the smell of printer’s ink and my quiet teenage fantasies.

  But it’s already eleven and Monsieur has to leave. The few minutes we have left are spent looking for his clothing scattered across the room (not that I remember such a tornado occurring on his arrival).

  ‘Don’t look so sad, please.’

  ‘I’m not sad. It’s just been too short.’

  ‘I know. For me too.’

  I crawl away and sit near the desk, pretending to look for something on my laptop. Monsieur carefully laces his ankle-boots, his face serious. Then, upright and solemn, he rises, takes hold of his sunglasses and casts his eyes across the room, the deserted bed, the crumpled sheets. I already know what he is going to say once he’s completed his visual search for things that might have inadvertently fallen from his pockets: ‘You’ll check everything after I’ve gone?’

  His final words at the end of every single encounter, as I’ve only just realized.

  ‘I’ll check.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He moves, disturbing the blanket of air that surrounds us, and it already feels cold, like outside. Dragging poetic currents in his wake – the smell of me on his precious clothes – as I close my eyes against the growing pain. It’s taken me months to get Monsieur here for just an hour and it’s going to take me twice as long at least to manage it again. I’m exhausted at the mere thought.

  ‘Did you have company yesterday?’ he asks, as he stumbles over a Japanese restaurant’s carrier-bag.

  ‘My girlfriends.’

  ‘Which ones? Babette and Ines?’ Monsieur ventures.

  ‘My sister and our girlfriends. Lucy, Flora, Clémence.’

  ‘They knew why you were here?’

  Monsieur’s worried eyebrows, almost a caricature.

  ‘They knew I was waiting for you, yes.’

  ‘Do they know who I am?’

  I’m silent for a moment, horror-stricken that Monsieur might be hoping I did not confide in my best friends. Me. A girl. I manage to stammer: ‘But . . . of course they know who you are!’

  ‘They know my name?’

  I lie: ‘No. They only know you as Monsieur.’

  Just half a lie: that’s how they refer to him, if only because, traumatized by the two crushing syllables of his first name, I do.

  ‘You have to be careful. Rumours can spread so fast.’

  ‘I know my girlfriends well. They have no contact with people who know you.’

  Monsieur sighs again, with undue exaggeration. ‘How can you be sure? This is Paris.’

  ‘Trust me.’

  Why should I? Monsieur might have asked himself. We wouldn’t be discussing the matter of trust if I’d kept my mouth shut. But he leans towards me and gently kisses my forehead. ‘I have to go.’

  I give him what I hope is a dirty look. ‘So go.’

  Monsieur steps away.

  ‘You want to see me again?’

  ‘Of course.’ And, still motionless and holding my gaze, he adds: ‘When we met each other, I had less work on my plate. Now the recession is over, or it seems that way, business is picking up. Which is welcome . . .’ His eyes travel from my neck to my hips. ‘Or unfortunate, whichever the case may be.’ The lust warming Monsieur’s features fades to make way for a cold, dispassionate medical mask. ‘It’s just the way it is.’

  I nod, displaying neither sorrow nor joy.

  ‘Let me kiss you, anyway,’ Monsieur pleads, as if I intended not to.

  His lips have already lost their indolent warmth. Everything about him now belongs to his wife and his clinic. My tummy brushes against him and I whisper: ‘So call me, then.’

  ‘I will.’

  He is visibly ill at ease in making me this promise, after so many false ones. He looks like my sister does when our grandmother gets her to promise to send a postcard during the holidays: a two-minute phone call is too much of a challenge so a three-word postcard is like a mountain to climb. Grandmother already knows she is unlikely to get any written news of our holidays and, to make it worse, is already smiling and forgiving us. Through her eyes, I stare at my ungrateful godson who’s come along in the line of duty and picked up his present. Quite right, too, that the miserable sod should feel guilty as he walks down the stairs. Compared to what I might have said or done, he’s getting off lightly.

  Unable to watch him leave, I get back into bed, facing the mirror, and tuck myself between the sheets. I try to sleep, but keep thinking of Monsieur in ways that make it impossible. More to the point, I can’t find the way! I can no longer imagine the torrid scenes that usually accompany me on my journey to sleep. The gap between fantasy and reality, that cruel abyss, is acting as a censor to all my daydreams.

  I stare at myself, holding the remains of the joint in one hand. Ash falls across the sheets where the smell of Monsieur lingers, elusive, between the folds. The bites on my thighs are no longer a gift, the spreading heat in my stomach just a memory, an expression of his lust and the way he takes advantage of me. Barely two minutes following his departure, I already feel the emptiness of need. All the prayers and supplications in the world would fail to move Monsieur, who will be incapable of clearing some five minutes for me in his busy timetable, should the sudden wish to fuck assail him.

  I already know what I will tell Babette on the phone. The guy is a monster. He doesn’t love me, has never loved me. He’s the worst kind of bastard, always unwilling to let me know until the last minute whether he’s coming to see me or not. He gets here late, leaves early, and in between accumulates recriminations, almost blaming me for the fifty-six minutes we spend together, as if I’ve stolen an hour from him, with a knife to his throat. The guy lands on my doorstep overflowing with all the compliments I’ve paid him throughout the summer, full of the hope I’ve invested in him, the case of fantasies in which I’ve assigned him the leading role, and dares to stand in front of me full of his own importance. He mounts me before I’m even wet, making fun of my desire to communicate. I’m writing a book about him, but all he sees in me is the danger I pose, ready to consume his marriage, his life, danger advancing towards him on gifted literary legs and in search of revenge, and he pisses off with the audacity to make me further promises, letting me pay for the room even, but I forgive him, Babette. I forgive him everything. I am in love.

  OCTOBER

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Yes, it’s me.’

  ‘Who’s me?’

  ‘But . . . me!’ I frown, like a customer of the Martinez Hotel in Cannes, who feels she has no need to give her name.

  ‘Who? I can barely hear you, sorry.’

  ‘Ellie!’ I spit out indignantly.

  ‘Ellie?’

  ‘Yes!’

  Shuffling at the other end of the line. I can hear Monsieur’s shoes elegantly clattering along the hospital tiles.

  ‘I’m sorry. Who’s that on the line?’ There is a sharpness in his voice. Which I don’t recognize.

  Hurt, I repeat: ‘Ellie. Can’t you hear me?’

  ‘Look, listen, I’m at the clinic, it’s a bad line and I haven’t time to struggle over the phone for long, so who are you?’

  ‘Ellie!’

  ‘Ellie who?’

  ‘Becker. Ellie Becker!’ I’m red with shame, my mood turning black, spoiling the rest of my day.

  It’s humiliating enough to have your dress accidentally tucked into your tights or to tumble down the steps in the Métro, but it’s something else altogether not to be recognized by a man you’re writing a book about.

  ‘Ellie Becker,’ Monsieur repeats, his voice wa
rming. ‘Hello. How are you?’

  ‘How many Ellies do you know?’ I ask him, annoyed.

  Monsieur bursts out laughing, and it’s like a slap in the face in the middle of lovemaking.

  NOVEMBER

  Friday. I recall it with utter precision. I was rather proud to have engineered a meeting with Monsieur but I hated myself. There was no real need to see him, no urgent reason. This was something I was inflicting on myself, the texts putting off the rendezvous ten, twenty, thirty minutes, standing waiting in the cold on rue François-Miron. I was like those smokers who’ve undergone six dreadful months without a cigarette, then allow themselves one puff and instantly regret it. You should never stop smoking. Guilt is already enough of a burden to have to add to it. Babette, whom I’d called to take my mind off my freezing toes, had responded with a lengthy sigh.

  ‘So, where are you right now?’

  ‘I’m . . . outside. Waiting for Monsieur.’

  ‘Outside? It’s bloody freezing!’

  ‘If I go into a café, I won’t be able to smoke.’

  ‘Since when have you been unable to function without a fag?’

  ‘Since the advent of Monsieur. I’ve been waiting for half an hour. Seeing how anxious I am, that’s a fag for every five minutes. You do the sums.’

  ‘Is he late or is he standing you up?’

  ‘He had a call from the hospital just as he was leaving. I’m the one who agreed to wait, Babette.’ I sniffed discreetly. ‘But I’m catching a cold here.’

  ‘That’s so unlucky, the call from the hospital,’ Babette remarked.

  ‘You said it. Absolutely.’

  ‘But why are you waiting for him? He’ll chat to you for barely ten minutes on the street corner, then fuck off.’