13
She invites me to watch a play with her at one of the Cartoucherie theaters. She waits for me at Château de Vincennes Métro station, on Line 1. She’s wearing a dress that doesn’t suit her at all, as usual. She greets me with a raucous laugh and talks the whole time we’re walking through the Bois de Vincennes park. It’s getting dark. She talks, and talks, a complete motormouth. She’s alive. She asks me about my work, about the high school where I teach. She stops talking only when the lights go down. Our knees touch in the dark.
14
The theater is called Théâtre de la Tempête. That’s it: tempestuous.
15
She was blown away by the play. She wants to go and congratulate the actor in the lead role. I watch her approach him, impressed by her easy confidence. She talks to him with impetuous enthusiasm. He smiles. She asks me if I’m tired or if we have time for a drink. She adds that okay so Château de Vincennes Métro station isn’t the best place in the world for drinks. But there is that one bar, Les Officiers. She goes in. She sits down. She asks what draft beers they have. I say the same, exactly the same, when the waiter asks what I’d like. She looks sad, a bit deflated, I’ve never seen her like this. She asks if we can go out for a cigarette. She looks at her feet. It’s quite chilly, in the dark night. She blows her smoke up at the sky, making a cloud to join the clouds. She looks me right in the eye. She says I think I’m in love with you.
16
She makes the beginnings of a gesture, a backward step, like a dance move, almost smiling as I stammer oh right, but, I didn’t realize. She says she’s going to smoke another cigarette, to celebrate this, her daring, her courage, the match flares in the darkness, the smell of sulfur will always and for ever be the smell of that admission and the relief of it, the smell of an unsayable reality finally said, the smell of the truth laid bare, brought ashore, laid at my feet like a gift.
Sulphur is one of the chalcogen elements. It’s a multivalent non-metal, abundant, unremarkable and insoluble in water. Sulphur is best known in the form of yellow crystals and is found in many minerals, particularly in volcanic regions. When it burns it gives off a strong unpleasant odor. Sulfur is an element, not a compound. Atomic number: 16. Symbol: S.
17
It’s all about Sarah, her mysterious beauty, the sharp lines of her gentle bird-of-prey nose, her pebble-like eyes, green, but no, not green, her unusual colored eyes, her snake eyes with their drooping lids. It’s all about Sarah the impetuous, Sarah the passionate, Sarah the sulfurous, it’s all about the exact moment when the match flares, the exact moment when that piece of wood becomes fire, when the spark lights up the darkness, when burning springs out of nowhere. The exact moment is tiny, everything turned upside down in barely a second. It’s all about Sarah, symbol: S.
18
Sulfur. From the Latin sulfur, sulfur, the thunderbolt, fire from the sky. Suffer. First person singular. I suffer. From the Latin suffero, to bear, cope with, endure. Particularly in the sense of being chastised by someone, punished for something. Being subjected to a sentence.
19
She offers me this admission, like a gift. And walks off into the night. A few days later, she says yes when I suggest going to the cinema. An Alain Resnais film has just come out. It’s called Life of Riley. She’s there early. She’s wearing too much makeup on her eyes, her eyes with their drooping lids. So it’s March. She nods when I say it’s nearly spring. She’s hungry, very hungry. She asks if we can go for a bite to eat, before the film. She orders a buckwheat pancake, and buttermilk. She wants a beer after that. She orders a half of their strongest beer. The waiter asks me what I’d like. The same, exactly the same. She tells me about her last concert while we drink our beers. She describes it clearly, explains the things I don’t understand. She catches my eyes hovering over her, perusing every tiny detail of her body, and her face. She asks me what I’m thinking. I dodge her questions. I don’t want to answer. She doesn’t give up, go on, say it, what are you thinking. I don’t answer. There’s that admission, like a gift, between us. My lowered eyes. It’s all about that, the thundering silence and the fluffy white days you float through when you offer someone the truth.
20
More beers, after the film, the strongest they have, and for me too, the same, exactly the same. More matches struck, lighting up her snake eyes, just for a moment, before the darkness wraps around us again, on the pavement where we go out to smoke. More stubs tossed away nonchalantly. More stories told. After a while it’s so late the manager tells us we must go to bed. He’s closing up. It’s the middle of the night, and he’s tired.
Life of Riley is a French comedy-drama co-written and directed by Alain Resnais. Running time: 108 minutes. The cast includes Sabine Azéma, Hippolyte Girardot and André Dussollier. It’s Resnais’ last film, he died on 1 March 2014.
I don’t remember anything about it.
She walks slightly ahead of me on the boulevard du Montparnasse on that March night. She doesn’t seem as drunk as I am. She’s alive. She doesn’t see that I’m making a point of following her footsteps, that my mind’s in a fog and the road surface is pitching slightly. All at once she spins round, very quickly, and puts her mouth to mine.
She hails a taxi. She strokes my thigh in the back of the cab. Her eyes shine. She climbs the two flights of stairs to my apartment behind me, so close to me I can feel her breath on my calves. She comes into my apartment. She pours herself a glass of water. She takes off her makeup, next to me, in the tiny bathroom. The mirror shows our two faces: surprised but also serious, terribly serious. She slips under the duvet, next to me, in the wavering light of the dawning day. She whispers that she’s never made love with a woman. She asks and you. I say me neither, the same, exactly the same. She strokes my face, my neck, my breasts.
21
Her perfume. Her smell. Her neck. Her hair. Her hands. Her fingers. Her buttocks. Her calves. Her nails. Her earlobes. Her moles. Her thighs. Her violet vulva. Her hips. Her navel. Her nipples. Her shoulders. Her knees. Her armpits. Her cheeks. Her tongue.
The next day she leaves me on a street corner, on the way to the school. She tilts her chin at me and launches off down the pavement. She leaves me, unaware that my hands are shaking, and they don’t stop shaking all day, incredulous at what they did, at what they touched. She leaves me, unaware that at the end of the morning I make an appointment with the doctor, incapable of working any longer, that he signs me off sick for two days, that I dive under my duvet in the middle of the afternoon to sleep in the smell of her. The next day I open up my sicknote to send it off. The doctor wrote: Change in general state of health.