Voice Over (19 page)

 

 

Back home after their meetings, she feels that she has finally taken on the proper dimensions, that she fits into the mass of things around her. She has no desire to go out, for time passes more quickly inside the confined space of her office and her apartment. Simple, immediate household chores consume a certain chunk of it; talking into the microphone requires enough concentration to occupy her for long stretches. The unpredictable nature of a night-time outing, on the other hand, would be more likely to slow the passing of the hours. When she travels between her apartment and the station, she discovers that she has points in common with every person she sees. Everything, from the cellular organization of the body to the
functioning of human beings, seems perfect to her. She tells herself that in others as well such a feeling must reflect their level of satisfaction. She concludes that her future will be a delicious, never-ending repetition of their meetings. As for her past, she hardly gives it a thought. When she does, the rite of passage strikes her as an anecdote from a part of her life that no longer needs to be remembered. She feels strong enough to accomplish whatever she wants. She is happy, and nothing can go against her any more.

 

 

After refusing at first, he now agrees to answer her when she asks for news of Ange. But his comments remain terse and never refer to Ange directly but rather to the state of their relationship. We had a row yesterday, she bought me a new shirt, she wants us to move, we had a pleasant evening. Afterwards, she never knows if she has the right to go on asking questions in order to find out more about a particular subject. She is curious to learn about the ups and downs that occur when a man and a woman live together, which is something she has never experienced. But the idea that she might be jealous of Ange never crosses her mind.

 

 

On the night she was almost mugged, he held her in his arms for a while and told her that he couldn't stay because there was a chance Ange might wake up. He just wanted to make sure that she was all right. I almost got my face slashed for a cigarette. He had frowned, and she had told him the story. Why hadn't she given him the cigarette? She could have, but she kept thinking that she really didn't have a choice. And besides, it was impossible to predict how the man would have reacted if she
had given him what he wanted. As she talked, she was searching for a valid excuse to keep him there. In the end, she had to resign herself to going back up to her apartment and exulting in her joy alone. When he returned to his place, Ange must have still been asleep. She pictured him sitting at the kitchen table under the ceiling light, half-listening to the nocturnal rumblings of the building. Coldly, staring into space, he must have tried to figure out the reasons for what he had just done. He was not unhappy with Ange, she was the woman he needed, that's what he must have thought. So what was wrong with his life? Was he bored? Were there any minor problems in their relationship which they had failed to detect? Giving in to sleep, she worried that without any clear answers he might decide to distance himself from her in order to make his questions go away. Three days later, he called to see how she was doing and to ask if she wanted to meet him for a coffee.

 

 

She doesn't have a single photograph of him. One evening, feeling at loose ends, she takes a few blank sheets of paper and a pencil from a drawer, and tries to draw him from memory. She was never very good at drawing. In her first sketch, he looks like a wizened old man whose eyes, nose, and mouth are in the wrong place. In the second, which she chooses to simplify, he is transformed into a fellow with vacant eyes, expressionless lips, and too much hair on his head. She thinks back to the drawings of Ivan's patients and tells herself that they were much better at it than she is. For the third drawing, she decides to close her eyes and let her hand trace the image that is forming on the inner wall of her eyelids. When she is finished, the page is covered with a jumble of lines that contains bits of faces here and
there, some of them spread out, others overlapping. This last portrait strikes her as the best, and that is the one she keeps.

 

 

She hesitates for a long time before making a decision. She's thinking about an article of clothing but isn't sure what he likes. She goes to several men's shops. She runs her fingers along the edges of perfectly folded shirts, piled up according to colors, like unique, precious objects. Sales assistants glide over to her in silence and show her the best-selling items of the season. With practiced gestures, they ask what size she's looking for. She shrugs, embarrassed at taking on a role she suddenly realizes isn't hers, and leaves, saying she'll think it over. She considers buying a novel. She goes into bookshops, where she feels lost amongst the billions of pages set out along dozens of aisles of shelving. She doesn't remember the names of the authors he's mentioned to her. She pulls down books at random, reads in a low voice titles that ring no bells, studies their front and back covers, and returns them to the shelf, biting her lip. She looks for customers who remind her of him and sneaks a glance at what they are buying. But at the last minute, she doubts whether their selections are the correct ones.

At the café the next day, she proudly presents him with a house plant wrapped in a large sheet of cellophane paper, with a length of frizzy ribbon stapled to the top. He scarcely glances at it, and she has to say to him, it's for you, so he understands that she has just given him his first gift. He stares in disbelief at the packaged greenery before him. Eventually he tells her, with an apologetic look, that he won't be able to take it home. Ange will think I bought it for her. She replies that it doesn't matter, as long as he keeps it in his apartment. He still refuses on the
pretext that offering plants to people is not his style. Reluctantly, she puts the pot down on the floor. When the meeting is over, she deliberately leaves it behind.

 

 

A few weeks ago, I went to the gare du Nord during my lunch break. My gare du Nord? Her use of the possessive seems to amuse him. Yes, he'd had a coffee in a paper cup leaning against the counter of one of those fast-food stands. You came to the station to drink a coffee? Wait. He spent a good fifteen minutes wondering what had possessed him to come. Then he recognized her voice, amplified and projected on all sides through the loud-speakers. It was odd, I felt moved, I wasn't expecting that. She's not sure that she follows. He found her voice deep and assured, as though it belonged to a woman who was older and—at first he can't find the right word—more confident. After listening to about ten of her announcements, he tried to figure out what had led her to choose that line of work. He must say that he feels a certain pride in knowing the person who addresses that enormous crush of people, as proud as he would be if he were a close friend of someone famous. That's going a bit far, she'll begin to think he's making fun of her. Not at all, he went there to listen to her and came away with the impression that he knew a little more about her. She now feels touched by his declarations. All the same, she can't understand why he hadn't let her know he was coming.

 

 

She looks at herself in the small mirror above the washbasin in the café toilets. She has never asked herself too many questions about the aesthetic quality of her face. Since men are capable of desiring her, she supposes that it's not without appeal. But neither
does she receive flattering comments about it. From this, she concludes that she is somewhere around average, which is fine with her. Yet that afternoon, for no particular reason, she gets a sudden urge to know what he thinks. After the Île Saint-Louis episode, he has never again said that he finds her beautiful or pretty; nor, for that matter, has he ever complimented her on her appearance. She doubts she should read too much into it, but for the first time she'd like him to say something to her, that her eyes have a special shape, that her lips are full, that her nose isn't too long, that her chin isn't too pointed, even if he has to lie to do so.

When she goes back upstairs, a woman in a grey suit is standing at their table. The two of them are talking. The woman's red lips pout sensuously every time she opens her mouth. She has one hand on her hip, the other curled around her neck. She doesn't dare go back to the table; motionless, she stands there with her eyes fixed on them. A waiter carrying a tray asks her to move to one side. She uses the opportunity to conceal herself behind one of the columns in the room. They talk for a few more moments, then the woman leans down, kisses him on both cheeks and walks off with magnificence, brashly imposing her beauty on the world. She returns to her seat. Interrogating him about his opinion of her physical attributes now strikes her as futile. He asks her if everything is all right. Who was that? A friend of Ange's, she lives around the corner. She feels her heart tighten. Just as well that I wasn't with you, then. He shrugs, saying that they'll go to a different café next time.

 

 

The thought has of course crossed her mind, several times. She imagines him imagining the roundness of her breasts, the color
and size of her aureola, the color of her pubic hair. She imagines herself naked before him. His feared and precious hands upon her. She thinks an intense physical understanding might develop between them; she thinks that she can do without his body. She thinks he doesn't want to disrupt the intimacy he shares with Ange. Then she tells herself that he doesn't really want her, that she isn't attractive enough to him, at least not as much as Ange. As long as there are no sexual relations between them, he can look Ange straight in the eye and swear to her that he has never been unfaithful. But as long as there are no sexual relations between them, he can't stop anticipating them, even idealizing them. If she had given him more clues about what she wanted, he probably would have gone along, but she fears her own reactions and believes she can protect herself by following his lead. She won't take the initiative; she won't complain if he doesn't make a move. As if testing him, she wants to give him as many reasons to make love to her as not to. But she also knows that if they go on seeing each other, they will soon have to go a step further to make or break themselves as a couple.

 

 

He licks off the traces of coffee lining his upper lip and assumes a grave expression. Sylvie has asked for a divorce, Maxime is devastated. She can't help smiling. That's hardly surprising. She said it without malice, he gives her a hard look. He obviously isn't pleased with her response to Maxime's tribulations. I really don't see what's so amusing about it. And he takes the opportunity to break off physical contact with her. Now that it is uncovered, her hand feels cold. She is about to admit that she hasn't shown much compassion, to apologize and quickly change the subject, her opinion even. But he goes on. Sometimes
you really do have strange reactions. The word is like a dart, boring straight into her chest. His first chance and already he has adopted the common opinion of her. She feels like singing. A song she heard that morning on the radio, which she would have liked to dedicate to him and which she can't get out of her head. You're just too good to be true. Can't take my eyes off of you. Only he might find her attitude inappropriate and use it as further evidence in support of his weirdness theory. She looks for another way out: a good old argument to eject him from her life. She'll tell him that he's just like the others, even if she doesn't think so and doesn't have anyone to compare him to. He'd roar back that Ange is far better and leave her to the mercy of the waiter. But instead, she makes do with biting the top of her right thumb and letting her eyes wander about, avoiding his gaze. He knocks back his coffee and shakes his head. You have to admit it's weird that you get a kick out of it, no? His tone is cutting, almost vengeful. I don't get a kick out of it, I just find it rather ironic. She feels the tears welling in her eyes. Then explain to me what's so ironic about my friend's wife walking out on him. She could spill the beans. The champagne at the Hotel Lutétia, the lowering of the zip in the taxi, the brightly colored cocktails at the private club, the immaculate, palatial apartment. She has no idea how he would react, but it would serve him right. She now realizes that it's up to her to define the nature of the bond between them, either by speaking or keeping silent. She's not used to justifying herself, nor does she have the heart of a snitch. But he is demanding an explanation.

One night as she was leaving the station, she had run into Maxime by chance. He hadn't recognized her straight off, and so she had had to remind him of the circumstances of their
meeting, the famous dinner party where she had passed herself off as a prostitute. Maxime had admitted to her that he hadn't believed her story. He had invited her for a coffee, as a reward for her effort in creating such a character. Once they had found themselves a table in a local bistro, Maxime had seemed troubled. She'd asked him if he was all right, and he had started telling her about the crisis his marriage was in. She'd listened, and he had ended up telling her that he was seeing another woman. He wanted to end the relationship but his mistress wouldn't let him. She'd wished Maxime luck, and that was the last they'd seen of each other until they all met up in the bar, where she had asked him if he'd broken it off, which had led to his angry outburst. That's it.

He goes on staring at her in silence, looking for an expression that might allow him to verify the truthfulness of her account. You see, she concludes, if there was someone else involved, Sylvie may have found out about it. Thanks to you! She frowns, she hadn't seen things in that light. She very much doubts that she had the slightest role in this divorce. That he should point an accusing finger at her is completely unfair. She looks down. She could stand up, tell him she's at the wrong table, and walk off without a second thought. And yet she remains glued to her chair, her mouth twitching oddly until she is able to add, I might turn out to be responsible for your splitting up with Ange, but I'm certainly not to blame for what's happened to Maxime. Her words appear to take him by surprise, to force him to reflect on what they are doing, as if he were suddenly required to look to his left and his right at the same time. But the problem with eyes is that they both move in the same direction. Maxime and Sylvie, he and Ange, it's not the same, she'd better get that straight. He
raised his voice; she's starting to despise this moment, this fit of anger pouring down on her even though she has nothing to do with it. She also has to understand that he and Maxime are different; Maxime has always had a soft spot for women, whereas he is the faithful sort . . . usually. He forces himself to finish his sentence, adding the last word in order to regain his balance. Then he stops, betrayed by his own self-description. Usually, she repeats in a quiet voice. She wants to believe that he needs time to accept what is happening.