although perhaps not quite in the same way
he just told us: we are always better
when we tell something for the second time.
So imagine this story better told.
I bet you can.
Now imagine Tatiana’s reaction.
She’s bound to be upset.
is he/isn’t he a criminal
is the limoncello blurring her judgment, how can she tell
is this really the right context
for a last drink
in his attic flat?
No.
He will have tears in his eyes, and so will she.
He’ll be shattered.
He didn’t think it would be so hard to tell her
what happened.
‘I understand.’
She will be shaken.
She’ll need some time to think about what she’s heard.
‘I understand.’
They’ll understand each other. It will be all right.
He didn’t murder Lensky.
Well, not quite.
But his friend died all the same.
And he rejected Tatiana.
He screwed up more than one thing that summer.
Looks like the boy who liked to give lessons
learned a hard one.
Oh Eugene!
My darling. How could it have taken you so many years
to understand
that protecting yourself from your fears
is no protection at all
in the end?
EUGENE Still here, are you?
You do seem to enjoy this kind of scene.
ME Oh, I wouldn’t miss it for anything.
EUGENE And telling me that I was wrong.
Thank you for the sermon.
ME I’m teacherly sometimes like that.
I like people to learn their lesson.
EUGENE Do you despise me?
ME Despise you? I’m only beginning
to find you rather interesting.
EUGENE Liar. I know you’ve always been
head over heels in love with me.
ME Don’t flatter yourself, mon chéri.
Maybe a little, but not much. Where were we?
Oh yes.
Now that they both remember,
more memories will come. Of the worst
of that past,
and of the better. Perhaps.
We’ll see.
Until then, they will go their separate ways,
for now.
There will be no pillow talk tonight
nor any of the fun that comes before it
(sorry to let you down).
But don’t be angry, all right?
In the next chapter,
we will find them again, a few days later,
and the situation will, once again,
have changed a little bit.
5
It grew colder and colder in grey Paris.
In the mornings, the gutters were furry with frost;
then the black night faded to reveal
a sky that was platinum, smooth as ice,
that flattened surfaces, turned façades hard.
Around noon,
it snowed. The white sky
suddenly
opened its eyes
and big fat snowflakes started to fall.
Paris looked fluffy, and a little more welcoming:
about five in the evening,
you could finally go out again.
Tatiana went out almost every evening:
instead of going home after working at the library,
she saw lots of friends, all over the city,
sending out texts at random:
‘Hey Cam r u free for dinner?’
‘Hello Martin, fancy a drink?’
and if the answer was yes, she’d get an Uber to Camille
or a metro to Martin,
or to Paul or Marco or Gabrielle or Zacharie or Farah,
and they would crowd around little tables
and play Tetris with plates of tapas,
talking about their lives, the jobs of some,
the studies of others,
the unemployment of the unfortunate,
who were thinking of moving because it was
too stressful in the capital,
the huge wave of break-ups among their friends,
romantic carnage of the mid-twenties –
even Stéphane and Laurine,
who’d been together since school –
and all of this distracted Tatiana in between
texts from Eugene.
Because,
while at first they’d kept respectfully apart
as if Lensky’s ghost was haunting
the space between them,
as if the wind from that lost summer had
cooled their hearts,
as if they needed some time for the past
to trickle out of the present,
after just a few days of guarded silence
one of them – who knows which? –
had texted the other:
I really liked that evening we spent together
And oh the relief in the other’s face then …
me too thank you again for dinner
and the walk yes it was nice to walk around
it’s good we talked about what we talked about
good thing yes I needed to remember
I feel like lately I’ve thought a lot about that summer
and so things began quite cautiously,
but little by little, ice melted,
ghosts receded,
death died – a little –
and they wrote more and more
until they were writing to each other almost constantly,
thumbs tapping frantically;
and they talked not of love
or the past but of Paris today,
and all it had to say,
because it was incredible, the number of things
that made each one think of the other:
each street corner spoke of their affinity,
each show they saw on TV,
that’s exactly what we were talking about the other night
each image in their heads just had to be shared.
hey I listened to that song you
told me about. it was beautiful. did you hear …
today’s special at the restaurant next door to my flat
is a calzone –
you think they’re trying to lure you over here?
I saw a girl wearing the same scarf as yours –
how weird!
I hope she didn’t steal it from you
It was unbelievable, how everything seemed glued
together by signs and clues,
countless little coincidences;
the two of them read the universe like a horoscope, their
destinies marked out in the happy alignment of circumstances.
on France Info they were talking about a new film
on the life of Monet
you know that two-euro coin you said looked fake
the other day
well the vending machine just spat it out.
look what I just found at the library
[photo of a copy of La princesse de Clèves]
Breaking news! A book in a library!
Forgive me for being a little cynical,
but I think they would be too, with a little more distance.
At that moment, though, they were ecstatic
and exhausted
from the never-ending surprise of being reminded,
every two minutes,
of the other’s existence.
For now, neither of them dared
to suggest another meeting;
in any case Tatiana was going to San Francisco
in a few days
for a symposium, she’d told him;
&
nbsp; she had things to prepare –
though exactly what,
she wasn’t clear –
and Eugene, so he claimed,
was very busy with work
(though evidently not so busy as to prevent him
sending her a text every thirty seconds),
so obviously it wasn’t the right moment.
But to compensate for this,
Tatiana was more sociable than ever, hence all her visits;
she was more affectionate, more tactile, in a glut
of hugging and kissing, attempting to replace the missing
Eugene with anyone and everyone.
And yet, even at the restaurant,
she would never let go of her phone,
glancing at it discreetly between mouthfuls of sushi
to see what he had sent her now.
And then:
Okay, that’s enough, I think.
I won’t reply until after dessert.
Or at least until I’ve finished this drink.
Each of them made up little rules:
No more texts until tomorrow morning
otherwise he might think I’m getting clingy.
No more exclamation marks!!! My next
response has to sound cool and detached.
They invented complex systems
of punishment:
If he doesn’t reply in the next ten minutes,
I’ll wait an hour before I reply to him.
Her message was so short,
I’m not going to send her anything tonight.
Oh, so I don’t get a text this morning?
Fine. No problem.
But he’d better not expect anything from me.
But soon, one of them would surrender,
and then a telephone would vibrate,
quivering deep inside a pocket
like a small creature having a coughing fit,
and all their reproaches would be forgotten, quick:
there was a new message from him/her;
its light illuminated her/his face, and – miracle of miracles –
it was longer than the one he/she sent before,
or more enthusiastic or less dry,
or laced with ambiguities to explore
finding it hard to work today –
I keep thinking about something else …
or blowing all the fuses
in the fantasy factories
of their brains
yeah me too I just went on Amazon
and bought a couple of things
that I might show you someday if you’re lucky
or hemmed in with little hints of tenderness –
a dear here or an xxx there,
like the sweet stuff at the heart of a pain au chocolat,
and occasionally, the ultimate treat, one of them
would risk
the word love, when they signed off,
which with any other friend would be
normal enough,
but which, like a sudden detonation
at the end
of an ordinary text,
left its recipient palpitating, eager to raise the stakes,
damp fingertips racing in little labyrinths over the screen
to sign off this time with love and kisses,
and now neither of them would be able to sleep,
writhing in imagined versions of the sultry snogging session
hinted at by that and kisses
and everything that would follow on from that
meeting of mouths.
In moments of lucidity between
the successive tidal waves of desire unleashed
by each text, they would think
OMG I feel like I’m fifteen
WTF is wrong with me
They felt as if they were each possessed
by a passionate teenager who woke them late
and refused to let them go to sleep at a reasonable time,
who directed their dreams and rewrote their texts
and forced them to reread a ridiculous number of lines
from old poems, etc.
They’d thought they were adults now,
measured and mature,
until this fifteen-year-old squatting in their brains
took over their thoughts and – even worse –
sent teenage hormones streaming through their veins.
Eugene, more used to lust,
controlled his libido without too much fuss,
but Tatiana, rarely troubled before by such desires,
felt uncomfortably heavy, uncomfortably hot,
constantly moist in every fold of skin,
slippery with sweat and other liquids,
wet from the roots of her hair to her armpits,
from the backs of her knees
to the space between her thighs,
and it seemed to her that every part
of her body – her mouth, the tip of her breasts,
her heart,
the palms of her hands,
the back of her neck – were connected to her vagina by
an invisible cord
as tight as the string
on an archer’s bow,
which was plucked by the slightest thought of Eugene,
and then, like a series of bells, her entire being
would chime within.
Hot and itchy, sticky in places,
Tatiana’s body was no longer her own; it seemed to rise
like bread freshly kneaded,
her nipples rubbing uncomfortably against her bra,
while – it seemed to her –
her belly was a soufflé,
her thighs éclairs, and she hungered for herself,
wanted to share
her flesh with Eugene,
dreamed of him devouring
her from head to toe,
and she felt
the hems of her skin
opening delicately
to welcome him in.
It was far from ideal, having these kinds of thoughts
in the middle of the library, or the metro, or the street,
but she had no say in the matter; even whipped by cold wind,
if she thought about him,
she felt herself swell in sultry heat.
So it has to be said, she did struggle a bit
to concentrate on her thesis that week.
Then the moment arrived when she had to force
this adolescent body
to pack its bags,
so she could focus
because
she was going to dinner
at Olga’s house that night, and tomorrow
she would leave for San Francisco
early in the morning.
Tatiana had never been afraid of flying, but now,
out of the blue,
electrified by a sudden sense of fate,
she wondered if she ought to write
a text, saying goodbye
to Eugene,
just in case.
I’m taking the plane tomorrow, just so you know,
because if we crash or there’s a terrorist attack,
it would bother me never to have confessed
that I’ve been thinking about you for days now
and that I’m happy you’re back in my life at last.
As not all her reason had deserted her, however –
most of it, yes, but a little bit remained,
just the faintest trace in a corner unoccupied by her
teenage squatter – she held herself back,
and told him instead:
I’ll miss not being able to text you for the next few days.
I’ll send you an email or two though, of course.
And I’ll tell you all about it when I get back to Paris.
Bon voyage he replied.
I hope the films on the plane don’t suck, for once.
She sent him love and kisses too, in response.
*
Olga, that night, had pulled out all the stops;
when Tatiana arrived, she’d already given the girls
their little desserts in haste;
they’d both gone pee-pee,
and she’d brushed their teeth
with the sparkly blue Frozen toothpaste.
So all that remained was to give a goodnight kiss
to Mama, Papa, Aunt Tatiana, and all their cuddly toys,
and while Olaf, a string pulled from between his
bottom cheeks,
squeaked ‘Let It Go’
to send them to sleep,
Olga opened the oven
and took out a large quiche Lorraine,
then she opened the door of the fridge –
covered in magnets and drawings, coupons for frozen food
and the form for the swimming pool,
a note from the school about lice –
and, on a plate, she piled various types
of cheese:
a Chaussée aux Moines
a Saint-Agur
a sad-looking demi-Camembert
then resuscitated a wilted salad with a vibrant vinaigrette
opened a bottle of Merlot, slammed a baguette
onto the Plexiglas table Dinner’s served!
And her husband, who was very nice,
joined them, his left ear discreetly turned towards
the news on TV.
Olga was an otorhinolaryngologist
(an ear, nose and throat doctor, in other words);
she took careful note of her sister’s glittering eyes,
her glowing cheeks.
‘Are you ill?’
‘No, no, not at all.’
‘You look like a glowworm! Do you have a fever?’
‘I’m absolutely fine, I promise.’
A palm on her forehead verified this verdict.
‘You must be stressed, then, or maybe just excited.
Oh, San Francisco! You can’t wait, I bet?’
‘Exactly – that’s it.’
‘There’s a lot at stake on this trip, I suppose?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Well, you look very happy anyway …
why so quiet?
Here, have some salad.
What’s up with you? You’ve hardly had a bite!’
Tatiana, knowing full well how hard it would be
to hide from her sister the way that she felt – the waves of
horniness, the hot
wishes, the hollowing and wallowing within her when she
woke and walked and worked and hoped, every hour, the
worries, the wanting, the howling in her head –
In Paris With You Page 14
