My parents had two children. The first they named Pierre, the second, Sylvestre. Those two first names say it all. My brother was smart enough to stay. When we grow up in the shadow of mountains, we do not feel at home in metro stations. We try to get through it. Until one day, the body rebels. For me, that happened when I reached fifty years old. The first time I fainted was underground, between the Pyrénées and Belleville stations. First hospitalization. They alluded to burnout as a result of strenuous hours and long journeys in public transit. The second time I fainted, they advised me to get a car and opt for the relative quiet of traffic jams. The third time, the company therapist intervened so I’d be able to work remotely, in the cool of the early mornings near the gray stone. Because my wife works in Paris, we couldn’t go back to the Pyrenees. So we withdrew to the north, at a reasonable distance from the capital. We bought an old house facing the horizon. In this hamlet where the land is affordable, a few scattered huts house depressed city-dwellers linked to the world by their high-speed Internet or destitute retirees living their last days as cheaply as possible.
Once I was nestled in the heart of nature, the dizzy spells became more infrequent, but I had definitively exhausted my human capital. I could no longer tolerate people. For a long time, I concealed this handicap from those close to me by claiming that chronic fatigue confined me to the village, then to the house. The horizon drew closer …
Stifled by that enclosure, my wife and my daughter fled, each on the arm of a savior. My affliction worked its way into my life in an insidious manner and it wasn’t until it destroyed my family that I finally confronted it.
So I had to push my boundaries. Alone. For two years now, I’ve inched back toward civilization. I exchange two or three sentences with my neighbors and I can drive my car again, as long as I avoid big cities and human contact. I am what they call antisocial.
I would have liked to come to Lozère. Truly. I would have gone alone. During our years together, I never discussed that part of my life with my wife. This attitude will seem juvenile to you coming from a man of my age, but it’s because I know that no woman (nor any man, I can assure you) wants to learn that she was chosen because her husband lost all hope of finding the love of his youth again one day.
Don’t think I’m a bad person; I’m not saying that I regret the years spent or the joy experienced with my partner and my daughter; I will admit that the love I described and which so moved you has not manifested in my life since that time long ago when I wrote those pages. I am sure that my wife would have been perceptive enough to understand that if I had put this text in her hands. But there is no chance of that happening now, since we’ve been separated for four years …
I know that I wasn’t clear about this, and I don’t deny creating false allusions to a family life. Since your first letter, I thought that a correspondence with a single man would cause more problems for you than a literarily motivated discussion with a married man who is supposedly stable. Since I wanted to continue writing to you, I preferred to keep quiet about my situation. I was silent about my affliction and my isolation for the same reason.
I fulfill my professional obligations at my own pace and without any administrative oversight. The reports I submit aren’t read for several weeks, and I assume from this that my work no longer holds much value for the firm that employs me. I suspect the human resources manager has found a dead-end street for a deranged individual. I’m not bitter. One day, I might even start to develop a limitless admiration for a society so organized that it has a solution for each problem, a lid for each pot, and an administrative pigeonhole for each individual, no matter the irregularities they develop …
There you have it. Now you will better understand my inability to join you in Lozère. I will be with you in spirit but I cannot do more than that.
Sylvestre
from Anne-Lise to Sylvestre
RUE DES MORILLONS, JULY 23, 2016
Dear Sylvestre,
Thank you for entrusting me with what you shared in your last letter. I found it very moving, and once more you’ve managed to make me smile …
Men always think they can triumph over their roots … that’s not the case. Our roots infiltrate us from birth and we gain nothing by trying to hide them. Now that you’ve accepted it, can’t you move forward, even if it means dragging around your past? Do you need to live in permanent confinement to hear the sound of the wind and feel the power of nature? And even if you do, come to Lozère! I called William, who confirmed what I suspected: the hamlet we’ll be in is only four houses, one of which is occupied full time … His farmhouse is very large and extends down a slope as fine as the summits of the Pyrenees. On the inside of the house, there are lots of rooms and you can have an entire wing to yourself to escape to if our chatting becomes unbearable. This place was made for you, Sylvestre, so bring along your misanthropy and act like a curmudgeon, it won’t be an issue. Once there, you’ll find unusual people whose wounds are real even if you don’t know about them yet. We can’t move forward in life without getting some scars along the way. Come see us, and you’ll feel less alone in your sadness.
If you come by car, you will drive through a silent country, full of scattered villages forgotten by the capital and you will see that there exists an entirely different France from the one of those people who spend their Sundays at Auchan or their paid leave on the beaches of the South. Seeing all of this might do you a world of good …
We are preparing your room. See you next week.
Your friend,
Anne-Lise
from William to Anne-Lise
BLOSSOM AVENUE, FLUSHING, JULY 24, 2016
Dear Anne-Lise,
I’m thrilled that you’re planning this trip to Lozère and I will make sure to get through all my meetings as quickly as possible. I am excited by the idea of a trip shared by book lovers … I told my neighbor, and she is happy to have people nearby for a few days and will figure out getting permission for my mother to leave. Each time she returns to her house I hope she will have a flash of memory that will return her to me for at least a few hours … So far, that’s never been the case.
I take it that Maggy spoke to you about me, which makes me quite happy. If my gray eyes brought me moderate success at twenty years old, they are no longer enough to guarantee me the attention of women. I hope to be noticed more for my mind and my kindness than for the color of my gaze.
Over the last few days, I’ve realized that I do have a certain appreciation for those in exile incapable of pronouncing two words of English, and it’s incredible that it’s taken me so long to realize it … I know I can trust you to keep these words far from the ears of the one who might be frightened by them …
See you very soon,
William
P.S. As you can see, mail manages to fly over the Atlantic no matter the direction of the wind, and I remain convinced that it reaches me faster here than when I am hidden away in Lozère! I’m trying, by writing to you at Belle Poelle, to show you the charms of the Americans, who are not in reality how you think of them in France, with, let’s say, that ancestral condescension toward all those countries lacking a few centuries of history …