In point of fact, yes, I would prefer that. Let's say it gave me a greater sense of this as a new beginning. A first beginning in my case, truth be told, and in her case too, I suppose. It becomes habit, being alone, being independent, and this is not always a good habit. If I wanted to live something that resembled the conjugal experience, now, evidently, was the time. Of course I knew the drawbacks of the setup. I knew that desire becomes dulled more quickly when couples live together. But it becomes dulled anyhow, that's one of the laws of life. Only then does it become possible for the union to move on to a different level —or so many people have believed. But that evening, my desire for Valérie was far from dulled. Before we parted ways on the street, I kissed her on the mouth; she opened her lips wide, abandoning herself completely to the kiss. I slipped my hands into her tracksuit bottoms, into her panties, put my palms on her buttocks. She leaned her head back, looked left and right; the street was completely quiet. She knelt down on the pavement, opened my fly, and took my penis into her mouth. I leaned against the park railings. Just before I came, she moved her mouth away and continued to masturbate me with two fingers, slipping her other hand into my trousers to stroke my balls. She closed her eyes; I ejaculated over her face. At that moment I thought she was going to burst into tears; but she didn't, she simply licked at the semen trickling down her cheeks.
The very next morning, I started going through the smaller ads. Somewhere in the southern arrondissements would be best for Valerie's work. A week later, I found something: a large two-bedroom on the thirtieth floor of the Opale tower near the Porte de Choisy. I had never had a beautiful view of Paris before; I had never really looked for one, to be honest. Preparing to move in, I realized that I didn't feel the least attachment to anything in my apartment. I could have felt a certain joy, something like intoxication, at this freedom. On the contrary, I felt slightly scared. I had managed, it seemed, to live for forty years without forming the most tenuous of attachments to a single object. All told, I had two suits, which I wore alternately. Books, sure, I had books, but I could easily have bought them again —not one of them was in any way precious or rare. Several women had crossed my path; I didn't have a photograph or a letter from any of them. Nor did I have any photos of myself: I had no reminder of what I might have been like when I was fifteen, or twenty, or thirty. I didn't really have any personal papers: my identity could be contained in a couple of files that would easily fit into a standard-size cardboard folder. It is wrong to pretend that human beings are unique, that they carry within them an irreplaceable individuality. As far as I was concerned, at any rate, I could not distinguish any trace of such an individuality. As often as not, it is futile to wear yourself out trying to distinguish individual destinies and personalities. When all's said and done, the idea of the uniqueness of the individual is nothing more than pompous absurdity. We remember our own lives, Schopenhauer wrote somewhere, a little better than we do a novel we once read. That's about right: a little, no more.