22
Making love with a woman: tempestuous.
23
Over the next few days all I think about is what happened, images come and go the moment I close my eyes. I never thought I’d touch a woman’s body, that I’d like it to distraction and would think about it constantly, day and night. She’s always on my mind. She haunts me, naked, divine, a ghost that makes my veins swell, makes my snatch slick. It’s a revelation, an illumination, an epiphany.
24
After the first night, being away from her is an aberration.
25
She writes to me, a lot. In the separate lives we lead, words whizz back and forth all day, and late into the night. She writes to me, I reply, she writes again. She asks me questions, do I like it too, have I been obsessed about it ever since too. My answers: yes, yes. Yes. Life around me no longer exists. Neither does the outside world. There’s only her now. Her, her snake eyes, her breasts, her bum.
She disregards her schedule whenever she can, to see me. It’s always the same arrangement. She comes to my place, my apartment. She whispers when I ask her not to speak so loudly because my child’s asleep in the next room. She lets the exquisite pleasure of supper last that little bit longer, every time. She tells stories. She looks me right in the eye as she drinks her glass of wine. She smokes out of the window. And then she can’t take it any longer, she comes over to me. She breathes my smell, breathes me in. It’s all about that: the sulfurous, suffering, tempestuous breath.
She doesn’t know that her smell ties my stomach in knots. She doesn’t realize that nothing interests me any more, nothing and no one. She has a pain au chocolat in the morning, with a latte. I start having a pain au chocolat in the morning, with a latte. She wears mascara every day. I start wearing mascara every day. She uses crude words I don’t know. I adopt them into my vocabulary. She presses her breasts against mine as soon as we’re alone together, and she hugs me till I can’t breathe, as if she wishes we could be just one body. She goes on tour with her quartet. She goes off to Brussels, and Budapest. She writes to me the whole time. She asks if it’s hard for me too, always being separated. She begs me to wait for her, she promises to come back as soon as possible. She’s captain of the ship in this tempestuous storm. I become a sailor’s wife.
26
A happy coincidence in the calendar. The quartet is playing in Venice just when I’m going there for a holiday. I’m traveling with a girlfriend and tell her that an acquaintance of mine, Sarah, is also in Venice and it would be nice to see her. We arrange to meet on the Campo San Bartolomeo one April afternoon. On the appointed day my friend and I get lost in the labyrinthine streets of Venice. I’m worried we’ll be late. I walk quickly. My heart beats furiously, my head aches weirdly, my temples hurt. I chivvy my friend, who’s ambling, spellbound by the city. I haven’t seen Sarah for several days. In this Italian light such a long way from my apartment in Paris, it seems almost impossible that this thing we’ve been living for several weeks – our mouths sealed together, our bodies cleaved against each other – can be real. It suddenly feels impossible that this thing can be going on. I even wonder if she exists, if Sarah does, or if I dreamed her up.
Campo San Bartolomeo, sometimes called Campo San Bortolo, is a small square close to the Rialto. It’s very busy and very popular, and is one of the local Venetians’ favorite meeting places. In the middle of the square stands a bronze statue of Carlo Goldoni, a seventeenth-century Venetian dramatist, founder of modern Italian theater and author of, amongst others, L’incognita (The Unknown Woman), La putta onorata (The Honourable Maiden), La dama prudente (The Prudent Lady), La donna stravagante (The Extravagant Woman), La donna bizarra (The Bizarre Woman) and La donna sola (The Lone Woman).
There’s no one on the Campo San Bartolomeo. Well, yes, hundreds of people, busy Venetians, tourists of all nationalities, groups, children, probably all very glad to be here, in Venice, on an April day. But no one. I study every face, and don’t find her. I was sure of it, I invented her, I invented the whole thing, it doesn’t exist, none of it, it doesn’t exist, all of it, her bum, her breasts and her snake eyes.
I don’t know this but she arrived early, she’s looking for me too, scanning the crowd, scouring every corner between the pink buildings, she’s too hot under this April sun, she’s frightened she invented me, that none of it exists, she’s waiting, her stomach hurts. She sees me, harpoons me with her eyes, nothing else exists any more, just our eyes meeting, on the Campo San Bartolomeo, our bodies drawing closer to each other, like magnets, as if possessed.
She gives me a discreet sign, a wink, while my friend’s looking away, then she gets up to go to the bathroom. I get up too, claiming I need to make an urgent phone call, I leave my friend immersed in a tourist guide. She’s waiting for me against the basin in the toilets. Her lips taste of Campari, her tongue of green olives. She devours me. She whispers at last, at last, at last, at last, at last.
My friend, when we come back red-cheeked and giggling: “Well you took your time!”
27
Before catching her plane she organized a treasure hunt in Venice. She left me messages with clues, riddles and enigmas to solve. I find little presents she’s dotted here and there. I give my name at the counter in a patisserie, as instructed. I’m then served freshly squeezed orange juice and jammy biscuits, along with a letter. It’s springtime and the light is fiercely beautiful, the sun laps at the canals, the city is intoxicating. She loves me, it’s written in black and white. She loves me.
28
She’s nearly thirty-five. She’s cheerful, irresistibly funny. She’s enthusiastic, exhilarating, theatrical. She’s amazed by everything, interested in everything. She’s always eager to learn. She has a small body, wears size eight clothes. Sometimes size six. She dies of pleasure when she has real Iberico ham. As a general rule, she loves charcuterie, all meat. She’s a carnivore. She speaks good Spanish and knows Madrid well but has a special affection for Italy. One of her favorite things in the world is Brahms’ Piano Trio No. 1. She has no patience with anything. She wants everything, instantly.
29
She goes on tour with her quartet all over Europe. She writes to me from Hungary, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Switzerland. Between tours she has a few days, sometimes only a few hours, to pop home, unpack her bag, pack it again, change her scores and check everything’s all right in her apartment. She skips sorting out her bags, preferring to spend the time with me. She says it doesn’t really matter if she doesn’t go home between two flights, that she’ll buy new clothes in the next city so she has clean things to wear. She turns up at all hours of day and night, she takes off her midnight-blue leather jacket, she undresses, she throws herself onto my bed straight away, she devours me. The next day she drinks a latte, and nibbles on a pain au chocolat. She checks the time of her train, or her plane. She gets dressed. She puts on her leather jacket. As she leaves with her violin case on her back and her bag in her hand, she puts her arms around me and buries her nose in the crook of my neck. She breaks down and cries every time. Very softly at first, then louder and louder. She clings to me, she sniffs, she sobs. She has mascara all over her cheeks, snot on her face. She says she doesn’t want this anymore, this life, that it’s pointless, that she wants to stay here, go to the cinema, have supper with me in the evenings, do normal things from a normal life. She makes a point of the word normal. Her voice is deep suddenly, a disconsolate voice. She strokes my cheek, she kisses me one last time, she leaves mascara on my collar, a smell of midnight-blue leather on my hands. And then, again and again, she leaves.