Voice Over (3 page)

When she starts to walk, she understands that she is drunk. His hand guides her around the vibrant bodies planted in the studio, out over the paved courtyard, now cold and deserted. Very few people in the street: it must be late. At the edge of the pavement they stop to wait for a taxi. Above all, she mustn't allow this pause to give too much room for thought; be bold, don't retreat. An image of him asleep against Ange's silken shoulder appears in her mind for a few seconds before dissolving into the gelatinous mass of her brain. They are rolling forwards. She has no memory of getting into the taxi now gliding along between the façades of unlit windows. Waves of orangey light from the streetlamps crawl up the windshield and are whisked off overhead. The rear-view mirror holds the driver's alert gaze; other vehicles are passing them. She has opened the window a crack, the fresh air helps her to sober up slightly. Renée is talking and waving his hands, turning his head in her direction from time to time. All of a sudden he no longer strikes her as mysterious or attractive, instead just terribly alien. She doesn't give a damn about what he is saying and lets the words fade without holding on to a single one. She knows now that it
is not a question of her listening, only of her following. A great deal of air lies between them, and their two joined hands can do nothing about it. They are both realizing that they don't have the slightest need of each other. How to describe her presence in this taxi, alongside a seasoned female impersonator, on her way to an unknown destination? Misplaced? Pointless? She thinks about how she could give him the slip. Tell the driver to pull over, mumble an excuse, and ignore Renée's vexed stare. But she does nothing of the sort. The ambition that has possessed her all evening is holding her back: to pursue what she has started to the very end.

 

 

She is sitting on a navy blue sofa. The windows are shrouded by thick curtains. On a shelf stands the framed photograph of a man in his forties. Sleep is beginning to exert its gentle hold. Renée has served her a drink; some kind of liqueur, she doesn't catch the last word. It'll make her feel better, he announces as he comes over. He is without his glasses now and avoids meeting her eye. Tiny beads of sweat pearl his forehead. He straightens the magazines that are strewn across the low table, adjusts the flowers in the vase; all this in a series of automatic, measured, and precise gestures. Then, without warning, he takes a firm hold of the top of his long mane and tugs. The black wig stays in his fist. A down of fine hair covers his skull. A lot less sexy, no? He finds that hilarious. The mouth, nose, and eyes are still there, but the top of his head has now shrunk. His most certain feminine attribute, his luxuriant head of hair, is an inert mass on his knees. Without it, his shaved skull resembles a convict's. She senses that with his face freed of its surrounding curls, he is revealing to her an intimate part of his
body, without the slightest embarrassment. There are certain situations in which a man and a woman end up looking the same. She can't help noticing Renée's last remaining signs of femininity: the make-up, the way he crosses his legs, holds his cigarette. She clings to these arbitrary distinctions, not wanting him to revert fully to being a man. He has his head down, he combs the hair of the wig with slender fingers, then his eyes stare off into the distance. She worries that it will all go wrong now, that he'll realize the inappropriateness of their presence in that apartment. To rouse him from his torpor, she pipes up. I really liked the songs. Of course you liked them, how many singers like me have you heard? And he mimes flicking back a now-absent lock of hair. They exchange a look. He leans in to kiss her. The wig slips to the carpet. She has never kissed lips with lipstick before. She feels the hands undoing her clothes; wants to resist because she understands now that this is not what she came for. But the arousal in her lower body draws her to Renée. He stands to remove his own clothes. The torso is smooth. Her eyes fix on his groin to see what will appear once the boxer shorts are off. The thin legs flex; the piece of cloth drops to the ground. Before her is an erect penis. He says, I'll be right back, before coming right back with a condom already on. He lies down on top of her. Briefly, the smell of rubber dominates then blends in with the smell of the room, of their secretions. She doesn't move. She wants it yet doesn't want it; or rather wants it with a woman who has a penis. A woman like the one she thought she had met. She wants it with the intuition, the sensitivity that she imagines such a creature would possess. But what penetrates her is a man, who comes with a single brief sigh. The thin body collapses onto the breasts he hasn't touched. She may have come,
but she isn't sure. Gently, she caresses Renée's back. For a minute they lie motionless. Then Renée gets up, removes the condom, picks up the wig. Come to bed, darling. Again the word stings. She does as she is told.

She is woken by the hushed modulations of a voice. Sitting up on the edge of the bed, she spots her clothes carefully folded on a chair. Her tongue is furred, her head aches; slowly she gets into her clothes. Spruce and already dressed, Renée is on the phone. A silent good morning, a gesture in the direction of the table, as the lips mouth help yourself. On the table are the tea, the orange juice, and the croissants. The perfect breakfast. All that's missing is the husband, she muses. Sitting down, she pours the tea into a cup and blows on the steaming liquid. The black hairs of Renée's wig dangle and shift against his back during the course of his telephone conversation. The long silences, punctuated by the word yes, prove that the person at the other end of the line is either very talkative or very upset. I'll come, Renée keeps saying; yes, I'll come, I promise. You promised me, she whispers to her unheeding cup, reproducing her indignation of the night before. Renée turns round, looking falsely annoyed at being stuck on the phone while his guest is up and about. She picks off a piece of croissant, chewing it diligently to reduce it to a saliva-soaked paste, which she doesn't swallow but goes on chewing. Eventually, Renée hangs up; what remains of the croissant goes straight to her stomach. Is it good? I'm going to have to leave pretty soon. His words come out detached, devoid of purpose, leaving her with the unpleasant impression that it is her mother who is talking to her. She imagines him with an apron round his waist. Renée is already putting on a jacket and writing his number down on a scrap of paper. He asks her if she
can get a move on. They're outside his building; she doesn't recognize the surroundings. I'll call you, he says, kissing her cheek. He points out the way to the nearest métro station and strides off in the opposite direction. As she passes a dustbin, she throws away the slip of paper.

 

 

She walked by the métro station but didn't go down into it. She continued walking without knowing the way, letting her intuition guide her. She made quite a few conscious detours so as not to arrive home too quickly. She didn't see many people out, then remembered it was Sunday. In a bistro, she sat for a long time over an insipid coffee, staring at the glass of water which they had been reluctant to serve her. Sitting at a Formica table behind a window filled with grey light, she did nothing. She didn't watch the passers-by, since there were hardly any to speak of. She remained motionless, while inside her chest a kind of acid swirled, alive with currents. Afterwards she got up for no other reason than to continue walking. Images played over her body, passing right through her. They followed an order she could not control, but whose logic could only be hers. It was not a process that could be mastered but a dream logic without absurdity, as if she were improvising a sequence on an infinite keyboard, every note of which corresponded to a crucial moment in her life. She listened: contractions, surges, wavering. She was gliding from one emotion to the next, although none had any real focus. She was colliding with things that were painful, pressing her lips to disembodied mouths. She was kneading slack, thick skin that wasn't hers. She was crawling on beds of perishing flowers whose perfume was that of a beloved person. She was twisting about in every direction searching for a pair of eyes that would
recognize her, rolling around between blue thistles that tickled the tender soles of her feet and made her laugh impatiently. She was walking. When she reached her landing, it all suddenly stopped. She had to make a conscious gesture to find a key to open a door. Then there was only a single reality.

 

 

A small red light is blinking in the semi-darkness of the living room. She takes off her shoes and coat, stretches out on the carpet. She is tired. From the floor, the furniture looks gigantic; its straight edges map bands of darkness across the walls. She reaches out an arm and presses the play button on the answering machine. The recorded voice lodges itself in the corners of the walls, in the folds of the pillows, under the high and the low tables. The voice says it is calling to see how she is, that it hopes she enjoyed the party, that it has something to offer her, that she has to call back. There's a beep, followed by silence. Inside her something swells, triggering a sense of wellbeing. Her finger is still on the button. She presses, and the voice repeats the same message. She ought to go on listening until it no longer has any effect on her. Create the antidote through repetition. So that in case he eventually started talking to her in a direct way, she could survive. After hearing the message four times, she takes her finger off play and picks up the phone. She barely has time to say a few polite words before Ange, in top form, monopolizes the conversation, without the least intention of relinquishing it. This weekend they're having a dinner party at their place, his place, Ange corrects herself, they would really like her to come. She doesn't know what to say; she is disappointed. A dinner party to which others will be invited, and once again she is denied exclusive access to him. When at last
Ange stops talking, she screws up her courage and asks to speak to him. He's gone out, says Ange, but she'll pass on the message. She hangs up. There is still no light on in the room. She lies down on the bed, fully dressed. The last sound she hears is the gurgling of her stomach.

 

 

She undresses, showers, gets dressed again, and goes out. The platforms in the métro are packed with commuters champing at the bit. Ready to push aside anyone that gets in their way, they charge forward when the doors open, pouncing on the handful of free seats. Their only master is time. Everything they do is fast, to claw back the fleeting minutes, as if they stood to gain a bonus, to push back the end of their lives. She is wedged upright between two stony shoulders that have no intention of budging to give her more room. She can smell the reek of strong scent, feel someone's breath on the back of her neck, the tension of mute, sweating bodies packed into a narrow carriage, bodies too close to inspire in each other anything but a mutual sense of suppressed revulsion. She shifts a little to keep the blood flowing in her legs. Someone gives her a dirty look for not knowing how to keep still, for disrupting the smooth progress of the journey. Inside the station, commuters are gathered around the departure boards. Many are alone. They're waiting for a number or a letter to appear before rushing off to the platform from where they'll set out. She recognizes the voice of her colleague announcing the 7:10 TGV as she heads towards the small door marked “Staff only,” which they refer to as the stage door. The last time she took the train was over two years ago. She can't remember the exact date, only the price of the return ticket. Six hundred and
twenty-four francs to go from Paris to Montpellier and back to bid goodbye to a friendship. Montpellier was where Marion lived. Perhaps she still lives there. She doesn't know. Has made no attempt to find out, not since the day she held Marion in her arms before boarding the train and promised to keep in touch more often. Call me. Yes, yes; you too; of course. At the time they believed what they were saying. And yet, in that instant, she also knew that it was goodbye, that the parting would be final. A dissonance in their voices, their stares, a suspect rush of mutual warmth—and she understood that their friendship was ending for good. It made no difference whether she said it or not. Take a good look at her, she had told herself, because you won't see her again. She wanted to keep with her a particular image of her friend; the last image seemed critical. And so she had tried to commit Marion's face to memory. Today she wonders if it might not have been that look, taken by Marion to mean that she should leave, which led to their breaking off relations. Perhaps. Behind the window of the train that has been in the station too long, there is Marion with her yellow T-shirt and tiny bag, clutching her sunglasses. That is when she realizes there is nothing harder than looking into someone's eyes through the window of a train. It's no longer possible to touch that person, no longer possible to talk. There is only the look in the eyes, the intuition that the other person's feelings more or less match your own. And seeing the expression on Marion's face had made her want to cry, Marion who was condemned not to follow the train, to stand stock still on the platform, to recede until she disappeared from within the frame of the carriage window. They both stood there, smiling for all they were
worth, struggling to contain that ridiculous pressure expanding the walls of their chests. By the end, they were just doing one thing: waiting for the damn train to leave. She had almost forgotten it was the last time. And the moment the carriage jolted into motion—the relief. At last Marion was gone from behind the window; her eyes were no longer there, tempting her to climb back out and explain what by now seemed inevitable. There was only an unvarying succession of houses, then fields, then hills. The serenity inspired by a world now devoid of human forms, a world that was but did not seek to be. She clearly remembers how there had been no one next to her. She vowed eternal gratitude to the SNCF ticket-seller who chose that particular place for her. She imagined him at his computer screen, telling himself that he could save the little lass from being squeezed in or getting bothered at lunchtime by some person in the next seat taking out his sandwich of soft bread and moist ham. She imagined that the ticket-seller had recognized her voice and granted her that small favor. Delighted, she had lifted the central armrest. Two whole seats to herself. Relief at leaving Marion behind had lasted a good hour. Travelling through space without moving from her seat no doubt catalyzed that feeling of buoyancy. Gazing out at the landscape sucked back by speed, she had dozed off. The need to take stock became apparent only when she awoke. Sleep had given her back a clear head.