by Inès Bayard
In the end the two sisters decide to go out for lunch so they can talk. Marie always has a table reserved at lunchtime at the Merlot, a small brasserie on the corner of rue de Bretagne and rue des Archives. The table at the back, the same one she’s had for ten years. Jonathan, her ex-boyfriend from high school, took over the restaurant about five years before she started working at the bank. Roxane hasn’t uttered a word on the way to the Merlot. When walking through Paris it’s never a big deal not to have a conversation; the city takes care of that itself. Passersby yelling on the phone, drivers sounding their horns, shopkeepers talking to their customers, café terraces heaving with people at the slightest ray of sunshine, and the sound of footsteps, a collective bustle on concrete. No one is ever alone in Paris.
Marie doesn’t dare put pressure on her sister and waits patiently for her to open the conversation. Roxane keeps her eyes lowered, toying with a few pieces of meat on her plate. Marie calls the waiter and asks for some more mustard for her steak. She feels a strong pressure on her arm and turns back around. Roxane is now looking her right in the eye, leaning slightly toward her.
“I know everything, Marie. I read the letter on your laptop last night.”
Marie stays silent. She instinctively defends herself by attacking, asking what letter she means.
“I wanted to use your computer to look for a film. The document called MLT. The one that explains clearly that Thomas isn’t Laurent’s son but…Well, I read the whole thing. I know what happened to you. You need to tell Laurent everything, you have no right to do this to him.”
Marie stares at her for a moment. Roxane’s last sentence strikes a chord. A powerful echo that she can’t possibly ignore. An indescribable anger floods through her, she even pictures harming her sister: she’d like to strangle her to keep her quiet or drive a knife into her chest. Or simply rewind and erase the document. She hasn’t had the heart to do that, the letter is the only proof that any of it really happened. She couldn’t make up her mind to delete it. She so clearly remembers writing those words, and the physical and psychological distress she was in. Alone at home. Out of her mind and filthy. Wallowing in her own blood and shit. Roxane would never understand. Her mother betrayed her. It doesn’t matter if it was out of concern, right now her own family is turning against her.
“You know nothing, nothing about what happened. Please, please don’t say anything. I don’t want to tell him now, it would be too much for him. I can’t do it.” Roxane insists, exhausts every argument to persuade Marie to tell the truth. She keeps on talking, and all these words exasperate Marie. The compassion in Roxane’s eyes disgusts her. She needs to shut up now. Roxane tells her she doesn’t have a choice, she must admit to everything. She finally pronounces the word “rape” and Marie feels like slamming her plate in her face. So that the wine sauce dribbles over her exhausted features. And the food goes up her nostrils and suffocates her. She’d fall to the floor and stop talking at last. Marie grasps her sister’s wrist. She squeezes it hard, crushing her forearm. She wants to break her bones. Marie slowly stands up but doesn’t want to make a scene in the restaurant. Her face is very close to her sister’s, her hand twisting her wrist. Roxane makes a few whimpering sounds, her eyes filled with terror. Still gripping hold of her sister, Marie finally makes up her mind to do something and in a quiet but firm voice says: “You listen to me now. Laurent’s not going to know a thing because you’re not going to tell him a thing. This is my business. It was my rape. Right from the start I’ve dealt with it just the way I wanted to. I don’t need any morality lectures from a little bitch like you. I’m not the person I was. Nice little Marie who bakes orange cakes in her beautiful apartment with her nice little husband and her nice little life. I could do anything, you know. None of you know about this, none of you know anything.”
Roxane is frightened of her sister for the first time. Her voice has changed, her intonations, the way she moves and the words she uses too. Marie is right: she’s not the same person. Roxane snatches her wrist free. Marie sits back down slowly and asks for the check. It was a threat, just a threat. Clear and eloquent. Roxane takes her coat from the back of her chair and leaves the restaurant without a word. Marie reels from the shock of the confrontation. She’s never talked like that to anyone. Her legs shake under the table. The damage is done, someone else knows everything.
Her mind becomes confused. She wants to be alone, far away from this commotion. She has only two meetings today, she can make the most of the soft spring sunlight for a few minutes’ walk. She watches children playing on the swings in the Square du Temple. She was a child once too. Innocent, unaware, impatient as a teenager for what life had in store for her. Someone whistles at her. From the far side of the street a group of workmen are grinning as they watch her walk by. She stops for a moment opposite them, her head held high and her eyes steady. They quickly stop whistling. They can whistle at her, they can insult her, they can fuck her and they can rape her, but Marie will never change the way she is.
Laurent is in a deep sleep. Marie can hear his halting breathing and endless snoring, just like every morning. Lying there next to him, she can feel fever spreading through her body. She’s falling sick at last, reacting physically to the stress. She gets the shakes so badly that Laurent eventually wakes up. “What’s going on? Are you sick?” She tells him she’s very cold. He puts his arms around her affectionately, runs a hand innocently over her pussy, his body spooned against hers. His fingers slowly ease into her wet vagina and fill Marie with a pleasure she hasn’t experienced for a long time. The fever is making her delirious, she’s no longer fully aware of anything, is getting close to a point of no return. She doesn’t want to return; she’d like to stay in this infinite dark space, protected from madness by madness.
She’s walking along the boulevard Voltaire alone, her every movement perfectly free. Rays of autumn sunshine project a lovely intense light on the facades of buildings. She takes the time to stop for a few minutes on the corner of an avenue to enjoy the pleasant warmth of it. She’s just turning her face to the sky when she has the sudden sensation that the lower half of her body is going cold. She lowers her head slowly to look at the ground. There’s blood flowing from her neck right down to her feet, her shoes are awash in hunks of liquid flesh stuck to the pavement. She doesn’t move. Her breathing slows gradually, heavily. In the distance she can see the face of a man standing alone, watching her as she contorts on the ground in agony, and not offering her any help. It’s Laurent. Roxane is with her mother and father, standing devastated on a balcony, screaming at Laurent, but he doesn’t hear them. Marie is the only one who understands. They’re telling him the truth. Their words horrify her and keep her pinned to the ground with no possibility of escape. She won’t be able to get away and tell him that it’s all lies. Laurent strains to listen but the screaming is inaudible to him. She still has some time. Marie struggles, soaking the sheets in sweat, rolls right into her husband’s arms while also trying to shake them off. Laurent is still fondling her. He never stops touching her. She fights to stay in this unconscious state, to keep her eyes closed and stay in the dark waters of her imagination. Moans of pleasure mask her tears. Screams. The pleasure of her orgasm brings her out of the nightmare at the last minute.
Mathilde has stopped making eye contact with Marie. For several days now it’s even felt as if she’s avoiding her altogether. Marie has tried to talk to her a few times but she always came up with excuses to get away. Mathilde sent Marie an email a month ago to say that she’d prefer to work on projects alone rather than continuing with the partnerships the directors originally implemented. Their “transfer of skills” has failed. Marie has discussed this with Hervé but he didn’t give her any advice, too preoccupied outwitting his wife’s legal machinations in their divorce case. Their evening out the month before descended rapidly into a nightmare. His wife has met someone and wants to get remarried. She hasn’t just had a fling tha
t lasted a few days but has been leading a completely double life for more than eight years with another man from their neighborhood. She told Hervé that their marriage had only really worked for a few months. After that, she’d realized she’d already stopped loving him. Before making plans for a divorce she’d wanted to have a child with him so that she could get child support and benefit from some material comforts for a few years, while she made up her mind to start looking for work again. When they moved into the new house that Hervé had gone to the trouble of having built for them, Bernard was the first neighbor to welcome them to the area. “I could have imagined just about anyone, but not Bernard. He and I used to go fishing together on Sundays, we gathered up pigeon chicks that had fallen from their nests, and all those barbecues and birthdays, the parties. And the whole time he was fucking my wife. The worst of it is my own daughter knew about it and didn’t say a word. In fact, she covered for them, the little bitch.”
Marie doesn’t want to disturb him with her problems. She’s even planning to ask Laurent to represent Hervé in this shabby divorce case so that he can hold on to his assets. It would definitely be his only compensation.
* * *
—
After lunch, Marie receives an email from the director who is her immediate boss. She’d like to see her in her office at two o’clock sharp but gives no explanation. Marie decides to take all her current files with her, to be sure she isn’t caught out. She knows her sales results for the last few weeks are bad. She’s going to be reprimanded. She takes a deep breath and goes into her boss’s office. Mathilde is sitting facing the director with her head lowered, she does not turn around. “Please come and sit down, Marie.” The tone is abrupt, the atmosphere oppressive. Marie hates this windowless office, its only source of light a terrarium along one wall. Marie turns to look at Mathilde, trying to catch her eye for some explanation for their being here, but Mathilde keeps her head down.
The director turns to Marie first: “So, there seems to be a problem with the way your partnership is working. I’ll make this quick because I have a meeting in a few minutes. You’re going to stop working together because Mathilde has accused you of physical and psychological harassment. She came to see me a few days ago to complain about inappropriate physical contact made here at the bank, unsolicited messages, and violation of her private life. I can tell you that with just one week to go before we need to file our quarterly results, I don’t really have time to deal with this sort of matter. You’d do better to inform Human Resources for them to take care of it, and get the trade union involved if need be. But for now, for the sake of stability at this branch and for the team as a whole, I must ask you to stop all contact. I’ll assign you to different clients, so you won’t have any files in common and won’t have to communicate about anything, until we come up with a more workable solution. But perhaps you have other suggestions?”
Marie is stunned. She sits in silence, staring at a point on the floor. She must defend herself, but she can’t get a single sound out of her mouth. Mathilde doesn’t move, unshakable, sitting bolt upright on her chair. Marie flounders back up to the surface and tries to understand: “Harassment? What exactly are we talking about? I’ve never harassed anyone, never in my life!” Confronted with Mathilde’s silence, Marie jumps to her feet and grabs her arm to shake it. Mathilde tries to protect herself. The director yells at them to stop immediately before she calls a security guard to separate them.
Mathilde shoves Marie back against the glass wall of the terrarium. A small potted palm tree collapses against the glass and Marie loses her balance. “You forcibly kissed me next to the printer! You followed me home to undress me and put me to bed, you exploited my weakness and the fact I’d split up with my boyfriend to get close to me. If you try anything again, anything, I’ll file a complaint. Did you get that? Just one more thing and you’ll end up in jail!”
The director asks Mathilde to leave the office and helps Marie to her feet. Marie grabs hold of the sleeve of her suit jacket. Clinging to the fabric she gazes at her pleadingly: “You know I didn’t do anything. She’s lying.”
Two weeks off work. That’s what HR has recommended, until another branch can take on Mathilde. The only reason Marie managed to hold on to her job is that she has been with the bank a long time. She hasn’t dared tell Laurent what’s really behind all this. She’s not sick and not particularly depressed but told him she just needed a few days’ rest to get away from her bosses’ remonstrances about her weak sales figures. And, as usual, Laurent believed his wife. Thomas now plays virtually no part at all in Marie’s life. She has renegotiated the contract with the day nursery behind her husband’s back, and they now keep Thomas right through till eight thirty. Sometimes Marie doesn’t feel like picking up her son after work. She wishes she could leave him to rot at the nursery. She’d abandon him there overnight if it were possible. Laurent asked his wife whether she would have Thomas at home for these two weeks, thinking it might cheer her up a little. She retorted tartly that she would rather not. She wants to make the most of this break from work on her own. He didn’t press the point. Marie has had a dozen messages from Roxane, begging her to confess everything to Laurent straightaway. Marie never replies. She doesn’t want to act in haste, with no concrete solution at hand.
Alone at the apartment, she tries to piece the whole story together, from the first time she met Mathilde to now. The director of Human Resources took the young woman’s accusations very seriously, as good as forcing Marie to allow her access to her work emails and then to have a consultation with the psychiatrist employed by the company. The psychiatrist asked Marie how she felt about various examples of harassment, in both professional and private situations, and then asked her to remember any tiny details that could compromise her in this case. It all felt totally absurd to her. Surely Mathilde just wanted to take her job. The fact that she too was a victim of rape must be what triggered this whole fake harassment story.
The days go by with no real change. She gets up in the morning and goes to bed in the evening. Life is an eternity, nothing moves and nothing changes. It’s easy to end up believing what everyone else believes. It occurs to Marie that she is part of a large organization, and that she personally contributes to the workings of a system that’s now starting to betray her. When her maternity leave left her unfit to work on her own, she needed a partner, a double, a second younger, prettier Marie who could handle the client files and cope with new computer programs that she didn’t understand. Marie was a mother, good for nothing: a womb, a vagina—but she had long since stopped being a woman. She sits on the sofa facing a big open window and can’t imagine living any other way. This neighborhood she once so loved has become dull and lifeless. Like dead provincial streets where no one ever goes. It’s like being on one of those endless roads, with no bends, no intersections, no possibility of escape, no alternatives. Where there’s a feeling that everything’s all mapped out already, where whatever happens—and usually nothing happens—you just have to stay within the lines and force yourself not to overstep them. Marie is now one of those people who just don’t think. Her life is difficult, constrained, but that’s simply the way it is. Now the only thing she’s learning is hate.
I found this in the mailbox. What does it mean? Did the bank make you have a psychiatric assessment?” The mechanism is running amok, suddenly and for no reason deciding to dish out clues to her husband and family. She won’t give in to panic. She’s going to stay calm and, in a neutral voice, say that it was just a routine consultation as part of a public health campaign about harassment in the workplace. She chooses her words as if someone else were dictating them to her. Laurent doesn’t ask any more questions but says she has every right to refuse to comply with this sort of thing on the grounds of patient confidentiality. Marie feels like laughing out loud, but clenches her jaw and balls her fists to avoid showing the beginnings of a smile. She knows better than anyone about patient
confidentiality. She ends the conversation by kissing her husband and making him promise never to open her mail again without her consent. If it’s franked by the bank it’s always for her, better to be absolutely clear on that.
* * *
—
On Mondays Marie always feels as if she’s come home from vacation and is going back to work. Before getting to the office she drops Thomas at the day nursery. While she was off sick, Laurent’s mother insisted on having the child for a full week. Marie made sure the nursery staff believed she herself had been alone with her son for the whole period. She doesn’t know why she lies. Lying feels good to her, unburdens her of her reality. She never finds the courage to be directly honest, preferring to lie a little before revealing the truth through a number of minor details. Making a lie plausible is a complicated business. There must be no slipups.
The new nursery director introduces herself to Marie: “I’m Brigitte Renate. I wanted to have a word this morning. Do you have time for a coffee? Just five minutes.” She’s a heavy lady and she doesn’t let go of Marie’s hand or stop staring into her eyes. Marie knows she has no choice and agrees to go with her. Unlike the other mothers, she’s never been beyond the lobby. She always waits on the sofa until a member of the staff brings Thomas to her at the agreed time. She’s been invited to have a look around the nursery several times and to go into the playroom to see her son but she couldn’t do it. The smell brought back too many bad memories: the disinfectant wipes they used at the maternity unit, the smell of warm milk, the rustle of plastic antibacterial overshoes. In the corridor, about a hundred children’s drawings are displayed alongside public health posters about vaccinations and the dangers of flu for newborns. The doors are decorated with big stickers of daisies and teddy bears. Marie knows that everyone at the center likes talking about her. She hears whispering and muttering, sees the faces and false smiles.