Obviously, Marie had forgotten this dinner. The stigmata of last night’s attack materialize again. Her vagina hurts, it’s burning and painfully swollen. All her joints are stiff, her knees and wrists ache. Maybe she should see a doctor. It’s eight thirty, time to go to work.
When she’s downstairs she looks for her bicycle in the building’s small inner courtyard. Gripped with sudden panic, she rings the caretaker’s doorbell. “Hi, sorry to disturb you, but did you see my bicycle?” As she asks the question she remembers: the remains of her bike are still at République. And then she was raped. She backs away slowly. “I’m so sorry, I remember now. I left it at work.” The caretaker smiles at her, thinking she must be working too hard and is tired this morning.
* * *
—
The day seems to go on forever. She wishes she could slip away and lie down, sleep for a lifetime. She sits facing her elderly customer with a rigid smile on her face. And yet the woman is promising a handsome investment, more than three hundred thousand euros of life insurance. With this contract Marie could make her grand entrance into the top three of the sales team for this quarter. Her coworkers will be full of admiration and the CEO will congratulate her personally. He raped her yesterday evening. Marie can’t stay upright on her chair any longer. Her lower back hurts, the pain in her vagina is radiating up to her stomach, wracking her guts with sharp spasms, swelling and subsiding, making it difficult for her to concentrate. “Is that your husband in the photo?” It was four years ago when Laurent arranged a romantic trip to Venice for their anniversary. They were happy. Marie had asked a tourist to take their picture in the Piazza San Marco. At the last minute the ice cream Laurent was holding fell right down the front of his shirt, making his wife and all the witnesses in the background laugh. Marie thinks about the dinner this evening. She doesn’t know how she’s going to hide everything from start to finish without arousing suspicion.
She’s having lunch with Hervé today. He tells her how helpless he feels with his wife and daughter. Yesterday they had the nerve to open the cage that housed a turtledove he found six years ago in the woods in Orne. When he came home at the end of his day’s work he found the cage empty but for a few feathers, and his wife and daughter laughed in his face at his despair. Marie finds this unbearably sad and wonders just how much pain you can cause another person without suffering any physical consequences. The two women are being so cruel, surely Hervé’s distress will eventually spill over into violence. A good gunshot in the head to each.
* * *
—
Laurent comes home earlier than usual so he has time to get ready for dinner. Marie is rummaging frantically through her walk-in closet, she has no idea which dress to wear for dinner. Too dark an outfit would only emphasize her mood. Something too colorful might be misinterpreted as a sign of happiness. Pants are out of the question, her vulva can’t tolerate the pressure of thick fabric. She can’t wear panties, just very fine pantyhose. Laurent notices this when she takes off a dress for the tenth time. He comes over to her from behind, strokes her breasts, and plants a kiss in the crook of her neck. “You’re very sexy in your pantyhose…We could get to work already, you know…We still have a little time.” She’s forgotten about the baby. The plan that so thrilled her only two days ago now seems laughable, stupid, disgusting.
Laurent is turned on, she can feel him hardening against her buttocks. She lets him have his way, can’t see any alternative. She’s never rejected him, he’d think it was odd if she did now for no obvious reason. Being tired won’t always be an excuse for escaping her conjugal duty, especially if they’re still planning to have a baby. Laurent lowers her pantyhose, turns his wife around in his arms and lays her down on the bed. His hand slips inside her, strokes her with slow circular movements. He kisses her, explores her mouth with his tongue, takes a handful of her hair, pinches her nipples between thumb and forefinger. Marie is frightened it will hurt. She prepares for the pain she will feel when he penetrates her, taking a breath in and letting it out slowly. He drives into her. Her body tears on the inside as if a great heated file were being inserted into her vagina. Her mouth twists and she groans in pain. Laurent pushes harder. Every thrust of his hips, the least undulation is torture. She suddenly feels as if she is being drained of all her blood, she can feel her organs sliding downward inside her, a gaping wound opening up in her stomach. Laurent plunges a finger into her anus and she screams. He pulls it out. She feels raped all over again, by her husband. He’s not noticing her, is tormenting her body, inflicting superficial pain to escape the confines of an excitement that’s become all too familiar. Now there’s no distinguishing between the two situations. Her rapist’s sadism feels to her just like Laurent’s, the husband who doesn’t notice her suffering. “I’m coming…Wait, I’m coming…” He comes inside her. She’s going to throw up, represses it. A few vestiges of her lunch come into her mouth. She smiles at him, puts her arms around him, breaks away. He watches in silence as she gets up. He can’t possibly know that this second ordeal endured by his wife marks the end of any compromising on her part.
This dinner is a bad idea. On the way there Marie thinks about how she’s going to say hello to her friends, about the moment when she has to sit down at the table, evading certain questions, certain forms of eye contact. Paul and his wife Sophia live in the Monge neighborhood. Marie and Laurent had hesitated for a long time before settling on their apartment in Charonne; they’d been offered an exceptional property on the rue Daubenton but didn’t yet have the funds to afford it, much to the disappointment of Marie and Sophia, who’d been friends for years and liked to go to the Sunday market together on the rue Mouffetard.
“Are you staying in the car, or what?” Agreeing to make love with Laurent before the meal was also a bad idea. Her body had begged her to stop but it was too late and now she must simply wait for the pain to subside a little. Marie finds it hard to get out of the car. Her husband slams the door, doesn’t notice the trouble she’s having. “I do like Charonne but you gotta admit this neighborhood’s quieter. It’s better for kids.” He still hasn’t given up.
Paul and Sophia have a three-year-old son and live in a large duplex apartment. He’s a gynecologist and she a dental surgeon. Marie has always found it practical having friends with a medical bent, but this evening she’s wary of Paul’s experience. After the rape she thought of the sexual diseases she might pass on to Laurent and the psychological trauma of abused women, but she hopes she can forget, erase all the suffering of this period. She’s going to take refuge in her work and her marriage. Perhaps the longing to have a child with her husband will resurface in a few days, stronger than before.
Sophia appears on the landing looking radiant in a loose-fitting orange tunic. She takes Marie warmly in her arms. A delicious smell of Middle Eastern spices hangs in the air in their living room. “I made a couscous—Granny Zara’s recipe!” Sophia was born in Morocco. She’s proud of her roots and makes a point of passing on a few words of Arabic to her son so that he’s familiar with his second culture. Paul is not very enthusiastic about this and thinks it will end up giving the child identity issues. “There she goes again! We’re not in the medina now, baby!” They tease each other, laugh about it, understand each other. Marie envies their natural intimacy. Maybe Paul would have known straightaway, unlike Laurent.