Mend the Living (13 page)

J
uliette is in her room. From her window, if she turns slightly to the side and stands on tiptoe, she can see the roof of the Limbeau’s building – the first time Simon came over, into her girl den, he pressed himself against the pane and then suddenly turned toward her, we can see each other, you know, and he carefully directed her gaze until she could make it out, among the marquetry of grey surfaces that stretched out below, a zinc-coloured roof strewn with chimneys where gulls were gathered: look, right there – she casts a soft eye toward it now.

They’d had a fight that night. Still, there they were, naked, lying face-to-face, squeezed together beneath warm covers, so tender that they continued to caress each other after making love, and talked to each other in the darkness, oddly voluble, their words always clearest in these moments, then the swoosh of a text had pierced the calm, and the sonar echo didn’t make her laugh this time, she took it as a hostile intrusion, the surf session was on – 06:00 downstairs at your place. She didn’t have to wait for him to read the message to know what it was about and to realize that he’d been waiting for this sign since the start of the evening; something in her grew tense, then she sprang up from the bed and got dressed again tight-lipped, underwear, T-shirt, what’s up? he asked, lifting himself onto one elbow, frowning – but he knew what was up, don’t play dumb she should have said but she just murmured nothing, nothing’s up, while her face grew veiled with bitterness – then he too pulled on his clothes and joined her in the kitchen, where everything went downhill.

Today, in the silence of the empty apartment, leaning over the beginnings of the three-dimensional labyrinth she’s building inside a Plexiglas case, she thinks back to it again, how had she slipped so easily into that awful role, the role of the woman who stays behind while the man goes out and enjoys the world, that conjugal pose, that adult thing, that old-people thing, when she’s only eighteen; how had she been able to slide to that point, insisting, stay, stay with me, by turns loving and violent, in intonations that weren’t her own but those of a fragile and passionate actress, a cliché, reminding him that she had the house to herself this weekend, her parents weren’t coming back until Sunday night and they could be together, for a long time, but Simon dug his heels in, that’s what it’s like, you always decide at the last minute, that’s how it is with surfing, he too playing the man, and they got stuck, barefoot on the tiles, eyes hard and skin marbled; he tried to take her in his arms, a sudden rush, his hands touching her slim waist beneath the tank top, her hip bones a little pointed, but she had made that brutal gesture, pushing him away, fine, go, don’t let me hold you back, and so he left, all right, I’m going, even slammed the door behind him, after saying, with a final look, I’ll call you tomorrow, after blowing her a kiss on the doorstep.

She’s been working on her labyrinth regularly since the new year – all the grade twelve students taking a visual arts elective are required to present a personal project at the end of the year. She began by building the Plexiglas case, one cubic metre, two panes of which would only be placed once it was finished – she had studied samples of material for a long time before choosing – and now she was building the interior. Diagrams in various scales are tacked above her desk, she studies them, moving closer to the wall, and then places a sheet of white foam board on the work table, prepares the pencils, two metal rulers, clean erasers, a pencil sharpener, and a hot glue gun, goes to wash her hands in the washroom before pulling on a pair of transparent plastic gloves given to her by the hairdresser down the street – they were tucked away in the colourist’s cart under trays of dye, between the rollers, multicoloured clips, and little sponges.

She begins to notch the foam board, using the paper cutter to slice sections that she numbers, following the template she traced to the millimetre. Once the maquette is done, these should display a rhizomic starring, complex interlacings where each path crosses another, where there is no entrance, no exit, no centre, but an infinity of paths, connections, branchings, vanishing points, and perspectives. So absorbed in her work that she starts to hear a light hum, as though the silence was vibrating, saturated and enclosing her in a jewel case, placing her in the centre of the world – she loves to draw, mould, cut, glue, sew, has always loved this, her mother and father often bring up the collaged menus that she made before she even knew how to read, those little papers she tore up and assembled all day, those mosaics of material sewn with thick strands of yarn, those puzzles, those mobiles that grew more and more sophisticated and that she balanced with Plasticine, and as they think back on these things, they conjure up the creative child she was, meticulous, passionate, an amazing little girl.

The first time she presented the transparent case to Simon, showing him her project, he asked, perplexed: is it a map of the brain? She looked at him, surprised, and answered, sure of herself, speaking fast: in a way, yeah, it is, it’s full of memory, coincidences, questions, it’s a space of chance and encounters. She didn’t know how to tell him to what extent she experienced all this, each work session causing a kind of detaching that took her far, far away, from her hands, at least, as they moved beneath her eyes; her thoughts escaped as the strips of cardboard piled up on the table and then found a place in the case, glued to the structure with repetitive movements – the pressure of the index on the pistol trigger dosing exactly the right amount of this hot white substance whose odour slowly got her high – drifting slowly toward the lines of the labyrinth, into a mental space where the hyperprecision of memory mixed with spirals of desire, the great reverie, and always coming back to Simon at the end of the path, coming upon the outline of his tattoo, the lines and dots, the fine scrolls calligraphied in green ink, inevitably ending by meeting him at the whim of an image, because she is in love.

The day stretches out in Juliette’s room and little by little the white labyrinth opens a passage to that September day, that first day, the matter of the air slowly taking form when they were finally walking side by side, as though invisible particles were coming together around them under the effect of a sudden acceleration, their bodies sending a signal to each other once they’d passed the high-school gates, in the aphonic, archaic language that was already the language of desire; and then, letting her girlfriends go on ahead, she slowed so she would be alone on the sidewalk when Simon came to fall into step with her, making him out in her mental rear-view mirror, standing up on his bike, right foot on the left pedal, then gliding to earth to escort her, one hand on the handlebars pushing the bike, all this just to talk to her, all this just so they could talk to each other, do you live far from here? I live up on the hill, and you? Close by, just around the corner; the light is wildly clear after rain showers and the sidewalk is scattered with yellow leaves shaken from the trees, Simon sneaks a sidelong glance, Juliette’s skin is so close, fine grained beneath the blush, her skin is alive, her hair is alive, her mouth is alive as is the lobe of her ear pierced with some gimcrackery, she’s drawn a line of eyeliner beneath her lashes, a fawn, do you know François Villon, the
Ballade des pendus
? he shakes his head, don’t think so, on this day she’s wearing raspberry Chapstick, My brothers who live on after us, Don’t harden your hearts against us too, do you know it or not? Yeah, I do, but he doesn’t know anything, can barely see, he’s blinded, thousands of mirrors have formed in the drops of water that vibrate, they tilt their heads toward the ground and slalom between puddles, the bike clinking in unison with the rest, each word and each gesture weighted with audacity and reserve like two sides of the same coin, it’s the blooming, they are contained within the light of a glass roof, they walk along the avenue like princes, all stirred up but going as slowly as possible,
pianissimo
,
pianissimo
,
pianissimo
,
allargando
, engulfed in the amazement that they are for each other, their delicateness is incredible, almost molecular, and the thing circling between them pulses a whirling tempo, so that by the time they’re at the bottom of the funicular they’re short of breath, blood beating in their temporal veins and hands moist, because everything is on the verge of disintegrating now, and at the moment when the bell signals the train’s departure, she kisses him on the mouth, an ultrafast kiss, a fluttering of lids, and whoosh, she leaps into the rail car, where she turns around and presses her face to the window, forehead suctioned to the grubby glass, he sees her smile and kiss the inside, crush her lips against it, eyes closed, hands flat on the glass, purplish-blue lines clearly coding her palms, then she turns around while he stays frozen there, heart impossibly dilated, what just happened? The funicular starts up and tackles the slope, wheezy, stubborn, and Simon decides to do the same thing only with more grace, puts his bike in gear and begins the ascent; the long loop of the turn makes his path longer but he’s pedalling at top speed, leaning low over the bars like a cyclist in a race, his knapsack making a hump on his back, and all at once the sky grows dark, the shadows on the ground disappear, rain again, a maritime rain, heavy, in just a few minutes the pavement streams and the road slides while Simon changes gears and stands up like a dancer, gibbous, blinded by liquid beads suspended along his brow, but so happy in this moment that he could have turned his head up to the sky, opened his mouth and drunk everything that flowed from up there, the muscles in his thighs and calves straining, his forearms aching, he spits, breathes, but finds enough impetus within him to draw the right arc in the final turn at such a perfect angle that he gains speed, reaches the plateau freewheeling, plows into the funicular station while the machine’s cars brake in a strident screeching, skids in front of the doors, soaking, dripping, gets off his bike and bends forward, hands on his knees, head toward the ground, drool on his lips, locks of hair stuck to the perimeter of his face like a young field marshal, he leans his bike against a bench and catches his breath, undoes his coat, the first buttons of his shirt, the rhythm of his heart slows gradually beneath the tattoo that peeks out, his is the heart of a swimmer in the high seas, the heart of an athlete that can lower to under forty beats per minute at rest, bradycardia of an extraterrestrial, but as soon as Juliette passes through the turnstile it all speeds up again, a wave, a surge, hands in his pockets and head tucked between his shoulders, he walks straight toward her, she smiles, takes off her raincoat and holds it up in the air at arm’s length, it’s an awning, an umbrella, a bed canopy, a photovoltaic panel capable of capturing all the colours in the rainbow, and once they’re face to face, she stands up on tiptoe to cover him, and herself with him, both of them contained within this sweetish smell of plastic, and their faces glowing beneath the waxy material, their lashes are navy blue, their lips purple, their mouths deep and their tongues of an infinite curiosity, they’re under the tarp as though under a shelter where everything resonates, the rain pouring down outside forms the sound tableau where breath and hisses of saliva are grafted together, they’re under the tarp as though beneath the surface of the world, immersed in a moist clammy space where toads croak, where snails crawl, where a humus of magnolia, browned leaves, linden seeds, and pine needles swells, where balls of chewing gum fester alongside cigarette butts drenched with rain, they’re there as though beneath a stained-glass window that resembles the daytime on earth, and the kiss goes on and on.

Juliette lifts her head, out of breath, the light has faded, she turns on the lamp and shivers: before her, the labyrinth has grown. She casts a glance at her watch, nearly five o’clock. Simon will be calling soon.

O
utside, the unyielding sky blinds them, livid, shades of dirty milk, and they lower their heads, rivet their eyes to the tips of their shoes, and walk side by side all the way to the car, hands in their pockets, and noses, mouths, and chins buried inside scarves, inside collars. Glacial car, Sean takes the wheel and they slowly manoeuvre out of the parking lot – how many times today through this goddamned gate? They head for the side streets, don’t want to be far from the hospital, just want to escape the world, pass below the waterline of this unthinkable day, disappear into an indeterminate, fibrous space, into a diaphanous infrageography that resembles their devastation.