78
She smiles at me when the child falls asleep on her, dribbling over her breasts during The Rite of Spring, which the three of us have gone to together. She helps me make the child’s Advent calendar, she’s six and a half when she hides surprises, she’s a child, I’m in love with a child. She makes an orange-flavored cake, chicken curry, a tagine with preserved lemons. She’s thrilled to be celebrating Christmas with me for the first time. She tries on a dress in a shop, she drags me into the fitting room, closes the curtain behind her, makes love to me standing up against the mirror. She insults me in an overcrowded Métro, she says she can’t take any more, that honestly, this needs to stop. She comes to the Turkish baths with me, she lets herself be washed and massaged in the haze of steam. She buys two kilos of clementines at once and gobbles half of them in the Métro on the way to Les Lilas. She dances the best part of the night at a birthday party we’re invited to. She’s alive.
She asks for more rum in her mojito in a bar in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. She puts on a completely different voice to say for God’s sake I ordered a mojito and I’ve basically got minty lemonade, can you explain that. She pretends not to notice that I’m sitting there opposite her, flushed scarlet with shame. She winks at me when the waiter comes back with a glass full of alcohol. She clinks her glass against mine to drink to freebie highs. She says here’s to you, my love. Then her face darkens. She wants to end this relationship, she’s not joking this time, this is for real. She says I don’t want to hear from you. She says I won’t contact you. She drinks her mojito through the straw. She says you’re stifling me. She watches me cry, her face hard and her arms crossed.
79
It’s all about Sarah, her cruel, unfamiliar beauty, her austere bird-of-prey nose, her flinty eyes, her murderous, killer eyes, her snake eyes with their drooping lids.
80
She doesn’t call me. She doesn’t run after me in the street, in the corridors of the Métro. She doesn’t write to me over the coming days, she doesn’t say we should go to the theater, go to see the sea, visit a garden, drink tea, eat Japanese. She doesn’t ask for my news, she doesn’t ask for news of the child. She doesn’t know that my whole body’s burning, that my head is a permanent inferno, that I’ve never felt such a powerful, gnawing physical pain. She goes out of my life just as she came into it, with gusto. Victorious.
In the evenings I come home from school talking to myself under dark skies that are all blue and pink. I shake from missing Sarah. I spend my days crying, tears roll silently down my cheeks, then my neck, and come to die on my breasts. My eyes are puffy and my cheeks burn with salt. I go to see Mamma Roma at the cinema, in one of the cinemas we used to go to, I shiver with cold, my teeth chatter, I don’t understand the film at all, not at all. I walk through Paris for ages, in the rain. I talk to myself, like a lost soul. I walk around Paris, a lot. I often run, for the bus, after pigeons, after her. I walk around the city. Did we trawl up and down it all that much, enough for every street corner to bring back a memory of you? Isn’t there a single fucking façade, a single fucking café, a single fucking tune, a single fucking pedestrian crossing, a single fucking color in the sky, a single fucking cinema, a single fucking trend, a single fucking beggar that’s not haunted by you, you witch? I take a night train to the fairy-tale house, the house where we danced the boogie-woogie. I go to Marseille, I take the bus to Malmousque, I howl at the steely rocks, I howl till my lungs are raw. I’d give anything to have her here with me, in her panties, swimming in the icy golden water. I do the rounds, hauling my carcass onto Marseille’s buses, visiting my Cité radieuse – that’s what they call it, the “radiant housing development.” Radiant, yeah, right. Radiant, my ass. Up on the roof overlooking the whole city, my head spins when I think I could just jump because her silence is making me so demented. I lie down on my back on the roof of the Le Corbusier building and cry for a long time, to the astonishment of tourists who carefully step round my body, without a word, with an obsequious smile.
It’s March. The first of March, the first of Mars, like the god, like the planet. March, Mars, Marseille, the city of healing, the city of resilience, the astral city. My body’s burning, even without any sea water. All these scars, and this fire in my belly when I catch glimpses of you, and every night the images of you that I see gliding over the ceiling like comets, and the Maison du Fada building, which you would love, and my wanderings through the stench, which you would find moving. The light’s right in my eyes, strong bright light, so white and so direct, almost acidic. The light on Mars pierces right through bone, pieces the skeleton back together again, patches up the soul. It’s good knowing you share the same cosmos.
81
In another medical dictionary. Latence: after a physical trauma, the time that elapses between the event and the appearance of repetitive trauma syndrome. This apparently silent period is frequently typified by withdrawal, difficulty adapting, depressive states or, conversely, paradoxical euphoria. Usually lasting several weeks to several months, it can be very brief or can last for years.
82
A sudden realization at Marseille station. It’s March, two years after the sparking match, the smell of sulfur and the admission offered up like a gift. It’s March, it’s several weeks since I’ve heard the sound of her voice. She said I don’t want to hear from you, I won’t contact you. She’s exhausting but I’m dying without her. I can’t do this, it’s too hard. I hold my breath as the phone rings unanswered, once, twice, three times. And then she picks up. I hear her voice. She says hello. She says hello. She’s alive. She sounds sad, a bit dejected, she’s got her miserable voice on, the voice I know well, muted, clouded, stripped of all love and all nastiness. My heart constricts. It’s suddenly rather cold on Platform 2 at Marseille station. There’s a silence, a very long silence. I can hear her breathing and I wish I could swallow it. I look at my feet, and then at the sky. Over there, above the trains, there’s a cloud sailing to join the other clouds.
She says I wanted to call you, you know, but I couldn’t do it, because I need to tell you, I’m not well, it’s serious, I’ve got breast cancer.
II
1
It’s a spring almost like any other, a spring to depress the best of us. A weird spring, full of hot nights and cold rain. Here in this clammy room, I just can’t take my eyes off her naked body and waxy scalp, her cadaverous profile. For one last time I study every part of her body, this body I love so much. I want to etch it into myself forever, her claw-like toes, the delicacy of her ankles, the touching curve of her calves, the softness of her thighs, her strange hairless snatch like a baby’s, or an old woman’s, her forgiving stomach. I want to etch into myself forever how beautiful her breasts are, both of them. I don’t want to look at her face. I’m frightened of seeing her sleep. I’m frightened of seeing her die. I’m frightened of wanting to kiss her one last time. I’m frightened of waking her up. I’m frightened she’ll come back to life.