She comes back. Celebration time all over again. Nights with no sleep, spent talking and making love and starting again until the birds sing. Suppers with wine and cigarettes, too much wine and too many cigarettes, reunions with kisses delayed as long as possible, put off until she can’t wait any longer, when she eats my mouth like biting into a cherry. Violently. Wickedly.
30
She loves me. It’s written in Venetian ink. Black on white.
31
It’s wonderful finding out that she enjoys exactly the same things as me, reading in cafés, eating Japanese food, going to the theater, getting lost in unfamiliar streets, arranging parties. She lives in the Lilas neighborhood, at the end of Line 11. She laughs when I tell her I’ve become an expert on République station, that I literally fly when I change from Line 8 to Line 11 on my way to her place, because if I miss one Métro it feels as if the world’s falling apart, and I can’t bear to lose just three minutes of our time together. She meets my daughter, they weigh each other up for a while before getting along passably, and then getting along brilliantly. She sometimes wakes before me, spends time with the child in the kitchen, making breakfast, I find it touching and amusing. It’s springtime, life is sweet, I’ve stopped looking at the magnolias’ pale petals when I come out of school. She’s waiting for me, as a surprise, hiding in a corner, out of sight of the students. She doesn’t know that I now listen only to string quartets, that the minute I have any time to myself I watch videos of her with her quartet on loop, that my favorites are the ones where she plays first violin, where her whole face screws up as she plays, where she looks like a monster.
32
In a medical dictionary. Latency: a period of apparent inactivity when symptoms may appear at any time.
33
She doesn’t have any children, she doesn’t know whether she’d like to have any. She reads extremely slowly, a novel can spend weeks on her bedside table. She wears glasses in the cinema, for driving, sometimes to work on her scores. She has two brothers, both younger. She has a father who passed on his love of ceremony, and a mother who passed on her love of parties. She adores her family. She grew up in the Sixteenth Arrondissement, not very far from the River Seine. She votes left, when she votes.
34
There is just one piece of music I listen to that spring that isn’t by a string quartet, “India Song” by Jeanne Moreau. The few opening notes, before her voice comes in, make me cry. When she sings, I sing along with her, my voice hoarse with pain that seems to come from somewhere very deep, pain I can’t explain.
Oh, song, you don’t really mean anything, but you speak to me of her, you say everything there is to say.
35
A party one evening, in a modern building, an apartment I don’t know. Tenth floor, right at the top of a dirty tower block. The lift already reverberates with the boom-boom of overly loud music. Everything shudders. She’s wearing too much makeup, as usual. It’s nearly summer, she’s wearing a long red dress that makes her look bohemian. No one hears when we first ring the bell. She keeps her finger firmly on the buzzer until someone opens the door. Inside the apartment, figures dance in time. Some of her friends are at this party. She introduces me. She says my name, she holds my hand and takes me round the various rooms. She hands me a glass. She drinks. She drinks a lot. She fills my glass every time she fills her own. She’s very soon drunk. She dances, scooping up her hair. She looks into my eyes. The rooms have filled with people, there’s hardly space enough to dance, it’s very hot. She presses herself against me. She doesn’t notice my longing for her, crazed, burning, painful. She closes her eyes, opens them again, she looks at me, she dances, she drinks, she dances, she presses herself against me. She smokes cigarettes on the balcony, chatting to people I don’t know. She makes an inimitable gesture, tipping off the ash from the top of that tall building. She looks away into the distance, her eyes drunk, her eyes wild, gazing beyond the Ourcq Canal that’s visible at the foot of the block. She goes back in to join the party, she drinks, and dances. In the bathroom she kisses me fervently, she moans when I touch her, with the boom-boom pounding endlessly. Everything shudders. She drinks some more, she feels sick. Out on the balcony in the hot air of the middle of the night, she says she wants to go home. She clings to my arm, she’s having trouble walking, she’s drunk. Blind drunk. No taxi driver agrees to have her in his car. The minute they see her, they say there’s no way. She laughs, and cries, she says she’s going to be sick. She leans against me. When we get to her apartment, she strips off her bohemian dress. She’s naked under it, completely naked. She throws up for a long time, her body racked with convulsions, her forehead in the palm of my hand. Afterward she laughs with relief. She showers and goes to bed. She says she’s so sorry, so sorry, so sorry, she ruined everything, she’ll understand if I ever leave her, after what’s just happened. She doesn’t get it at all. To me she’s even more desirable than before.
36
I go home to my place alone, by Métro. My whole body quivering. Days go by, weeks go by, soft green buds just keep on opening on branches silhouetted like lace against sky-blue skies. Not a cloud, ever. Blue in every direction, with Japanese-cherry pink on every street corner. Pools of sunlight on pavements. No gloominess, anywhere. Just joy. This spring is a party that goes on and on. My body can’t get over it. Change in general state of health, again and again. I go up my street, walking more and more quickly, I go through my front door, slam it when I close it. I rummage through my bookcase, eventually dig out the dictionary, leaf feverishly through its pages and, slightly embarrassed, I finally find and read out loud – for my own benefit – the definition of the word passion.
37
She just wears G-strings. Hardly ever a bra. For sleeping she has a selection of baby-doll nighties, including a devastatingly sexy black one in silk-like fabric. She always has a bottle of water on her, she gets very thirsty, she drinks as if her life depends on it, with her eyes closed, not taking a breath. She can sometimes drink a whole bottle down in one. She does a lot of things as if her life depends on them.
38
She rears up over me, her breasts proud and bare, and beautiful, tragically beautiful. Time stretches elastically, almost stops. Everything becomes slow and long. My heart prances in my chest, in my veins, in my temples. Kneeling next to me, she looks like an icon, a religious image. It’s almost as if she’s praying. She’s not touching me. She’s caressing me with her gaze. A brief blessed pause. A sacred moment. Silence. Then she looks into my eyes and drives her fingers into me, deep, very deep, so deep it makes my head spin, my eyes close. She breathes on my eyelids, her mouth very close to mine. She whispers words of love that cut right through me. Her fingers are deep, lost inside me, deep in my belly she plays a music that drives me crazy. She makes my body contort, my back arch, she never stops. She goes deeper and deeper, faster and faster, until I’m just a rag doll, a puppet.