by Anna Gavalda
MYRIAM AND FANNY leave regular messages on my answering machine: Beeeep ‘How do you turn on the oven?’ beeeeep ‘We got the oven on but now we’re wondering how to change a fuse because everything blew. …’ beeeeep ‘We’re ready to do what you said but where do you keep the torch? …’ beeeep ‘Hey, how do we call the fire service?’ beeep…
*
I think they’re exaggerating a little, but – like all people who live alone – I’ve learned to check and even hope for the little red blinking message light when I come home in the evenings.
I don’t think anyone escapes that.
AND THEN SUDDENLY, your life speeds up like crazy.
And when I lose control of a situation, I tend to panic. It’s stupid.
So, what do I mean by ‘losing control of the situation’?
Losing control of the situation is very simple. It’s having Sarah Briot show up one morning in the room where you make your living by the sweat of your brow and seat herself on the edge of your desk, hitching up her skirt.
And saying:
‘Your glasses are dirty, aren’t they?’
And pulling a little hem of pink shirt out from under her skirt and wiping your glasses with it, as though it’s nothing.
Then you pop such a glorious boner you could lift the desk with it (with a little training of course).
‘So, I hear you’ve moved?’
‘Yeah, a couple of weeks ago.’
(Ffffff … breathe … Everything’s going fine. …)
‘Where are you now?’
‘In the tenth arrondissement.’
‘Oh! That’s funny – me, too.’
‘Really?!’
‘That’s good – now we’ll be on the same metro. …’
(It’s a start.)
‘Aren’t you going to have a housewarming party or something?’
‘Yes – yes, of course!’
(News to me.)
‘When?’
‘Oh, well, I don’t know yet. … You know, I just had the last of my furniture delivered this morning, so …’
‘What about tonight?’
‘Tonight? Oh, no, tonight won’t work. The place is a mess, and … and then, that doesn’t give people much notice, and …’
‘You don’t have to invite anyone but me. Because, you know, I don’t care about the mess – it can’t be any worse than my place! …’
‘Oh … well … well, if you want. But not too early, then?!’
‘Great – that way I’ll have time to stop by my place to change. … How about nine o’clock – does that work for you?’
‘Nine o’clock, great.’
‘Okay, well, see you later, then? …’
That’s what I mean by ‘losing control of the situation.’
I left early, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t straighten up my desk before I put out the light.
The concierge was watching for me: ‘Yes, they delivered your furniture, but what a business to get that couch up six flights!’
‘Thanks, Madame Rodriguez, thanks.’ (I won’t forget your Christmas bonus, Madame Rodriguez. …)
Three little corridors shaped like a battlefield. … It has its charms. …
PUT THE TARAMASALATA in a cool place, heat up the coq au vin, over low heat, okay … open the bottles, set a makeshift table, race back down to the convenience store to get paper napkins and a bottle of mineral water, set up the coffeemaker, take a shower, put on cologne (Eau Sauvage), clean your ears, find a shirt that’s not too wrinkled, turn down the lamp, unplug the phone, put on some music (Rickie Lee Jones’s Pirates album – anything’s possible with that … but not too loud), arrange the throw, light the candles (well, well …), breathe in, breathe out, don’t look at yourself anymore in the mirror.
And the condoms? (In the drawer of the bedside table – isn’t that too close? … And in the bathroom, isn’t that too far? …)
Dring, dring.
Is it fair to say I have the situation in hand?
Sarah Briot came in. Pretty as the day.
Later in the evening, when we’d had a few good laughs, eaten well, and let some dreamy silences set in, it was clear that Sarah Briot would be spending the night in my arms.
Only I’ve always had trouble making certain decisions – and yet, it was really time to put down my glass and make a move.
As if Roger Rabbit’s wife were sitting right next to you, and you were thinking about your savings plan. …
She was talking about I don’t know what and looking at me out of the corner of her eye.
And suddenly … suddenly … I thought about this couch that we were sitting on.
I began really, intensely, steadily to wonder: How do you open up a Clic-Clac?
I thought it would be best to begin by kissing her fairly passionately and then to tilt her back deftly in order to lay her down without incident. …
Yes, but afterwards … with the Clic-Clac?
I could already see myself getting silently worked up over some little latch while her tongue tickled my tonsils and her hands searched for my belt. …
Well … for the moment, that wasn’t exactly the case. … She was even beginning to stifle the beginnings of a yawn. …
Some Don Juan. What a disgrace.
And then I thought of my sisters. I laughed inside thinking of those two harpies.
They’d have had a ball if they could have seen me just then, with Miss Universe’s thigh up against mine and me with my domestic little worries about how to open a sofa bed from Ikea.
Just then, Sarah Briot turned to me and said:
‘You’re cute when you smile.’
And she kissed me.
And then, at that exact moment, with 54 kilos of femininity on my knees, all sweetness and caresses, I closed my eyes, threw my head back, and thought with all my might: ‘Thank you, girls.’
Epilogue
‘MARGUERITE! WHEN ARE we eating?’
‘Screw you.’
Since I’ve been writing stories, my husband’s started calling me Marguerite – for Marguerite Duras – as he taps me on the bottom. He tells everyone at dinner parties that he’s going to stop working soon, thanks to my royalties:
‘Listen … as far as I’m concerned, no problem! I’m just waiting for it all to pan out, and I’ll go and pick up the kids from school in my Jaguar XK8. It’s all set. … Of course, I’ll have to massage her shoulders from time to time and put up with her little crises of doubt, but hey … that coupé? … I’ll take it in dragon green.’
He keeps raving about it, and people don’t know how to take it.
They say to me, in the tone you’d use to talk about a sexually transmitted disease:
‘Is that true – you write?’
And I just shrug my shoulders, holding out my glass to the master of the house. I grumble out a No, whatever, almost nothing. And Mr. Excitable, whom I married in a moment of weakness, just keeps laying it on:
‘Wait. … Didn’t she tell you? Sweetie, didn’t you tell them about the prize you won at Saint-Quentin? Hey! … Fifteen hundred euros, you know!!! Two nights at her computer, which she bought for seventy-five euros at a charity sale, and fifteen hundred euros fall into our laps! … What more could you ask? And I’m not even telling you about all her other prizes … huh, Pumpkin, let’s stay humble.’
It’s true that at these moments, I really want to kill him.
But I won’t.
First of all because he weighs eighty-two kilos (he says eighty – pure vanity), and then also because he’s right.
He’s right – and what will become of me if I start believing in it too much?
I quit my job? I finally say some nasty things to my co-worker Micheline? I buy myself a little zobi-skin notebook and I take notes for later? I feel so alone, so far away, so close, so different? I go and meditate at the tomb of Chateaubriand? I say: ‘No, not tonight, please, my head’s bursting’? I forget to show up at the chil
dminder’s because I have a chapter to finish?
You should see the kids at the childminder’s from five-thirty on. You ring the bell, and they all rush to the door, hearts pounding. The one who opens it is inevitably disappointed to see you, since you’re not there for him, but after the first second of despair (mouth twisted, shoulders drooping, and blankie trailing on the ground again), he turns to your son (just behind him) and yells:
‘Louis, it’s your mum!!!!!’
And so then you hear:
‘Well, yeah … I doh.’
BUT MARGUERITE IS getting tired of all these pretences.
She wants to be clear in her own mind about it. If she’s going to have to go to Combourg to track down Chateaubriand’s grave, she might as well find out right away.
She chose some stories (two sleepless nights), she printed them out with her antiquated machine (more than three hours to do a hundred and thirty-four pages!), she clutched her sheets of paper to her heart and took them to the copy shop over by the law school. She stood in line behind noisy students perched on high heels (she felt old and frumpy, our Marguerite).
The salesgirl asked:
‘A white binder or a black binder?’
And there she was, fretting all over again. (White? That’s a little too much like a goody-goody communicant, isn’t it? … But black, that’s way too self-assured, more like a doctoral thesis, isn’t it? … Misery of miseries.)
Finally the young woman loses patience:
‘What is it exactly?’
‘Some stories …’
‘News stories? About what?’
‘No, not news stories … short stories, you know? … It’s to send to a publisher. …’
‘… ??? … Yeah … well, okay, that doesn’t really tell us what colour binding …’
‘Use whichever one you want – I’ll leave it to you.’ (Alea jacta est.)
‘Well, in that case, I’ll give you the turquoise, because at this moment it’s on sale: four euros fifty cents instead of five twenty-five … (A turquoise binder on the chic desk of an elegant Left Bank publisher … oops.)
‘Okay, go with the turquoise.’ (Don’t stand in the way of Destiny, my girl.)
The girl lifts up the cover of her big Xerox machine and manhandles the packet like so many cheap handouts on civil law: there you go, I’ll just turn it this way and that for you, and there you go, I’ll just dog-ear the corners for you.
The artist suffers in silence.
As the girl takes the money, she picks up the cigarette she’d left on the cash register and asks:
‘What are they about, your stories?’
‘Everything.’
‘Oh.’
‘…’
‘…’
‘But mostly about love.’
‘Oh?’
She buys a magnificent manilla envelope. The sturdiest, most beautiful, most expensive one, with padded corners and an unassailable flap. The Rolls-Royce of envelopes.
She goes to the post office and asks for collectors’ stamps – the prettiest ones, the ones that show works of modern art. She licks them lovingly, gracefully presses them on, casts a spell on the envelope, blesses it, makes the sign of the cross over it, and utters some other incantations that must remain secret.
She goes up to the letter slot marked ‘Paris and suburbs only.’ She kisses her treasure one last time, turns her eyes away, and abandons it.
Opposite the post office, there’s a bar. She leans her elbows on the counter, orders a calvados. She doesn’t really like them, but hey, she has her status as an accursed artist to uphold now. She lights a cigarette, and from this moment on, you could say, she waits.
I DIDN’T SAY anything to anyone.
‘Hey – what are you doing with the key to the mailbox on a chain around your neck?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Hey – what are you doing holding all those Castorama fliers?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Hey – what are you doing with the postman’s satchel?’
‘Nothing, I’m telling you! …’
‘Wait … are you in love with him or what?!’
No. I didn’t say anything. Can you see me answering: ‘I’m waiting for an answer from a publisher.’ The shame.
Anyway … it’s crazy the junk mail you get these days – it’s really just whatever.
AND THEN THERE’S work, and then there’s Micheline and her fake nails poorly attached, and then there’s the geraniums to bring in, and then the Walt Disney tapes, the little electric train, and the season’s first visit to the paediatrician, and then the dog moulting, and Robert McLiam Wilson’s Eureka Street to measure the immeasurable, and then movies, and family and friends, and then still other emotions (but nothing much next to Eureka Street, it’s true).
Our Marguerite resigned herself to hibernation.
THREE MONTHS LATER.
Hallelujah!
Hallelujah! Hallelu-u-u-u-jah!
It came.
The letter.
It’s a bit light.
I slide it under my sweater and call my Kiki:
‘Kiiiiiiiikiiiiiii!!!’
I go to read it all alone, in the silence and meditation of the little wooded area next door, which serves as a toilet for all the dogs in the neighbourhood. (Note that even in moments like this, I remain lucid.)
‘Madame blablabla, it is with great interest that blablabla and that’s why blablabla I would like to meet with you blablabla, please get in touch with my secretary blablabla I’m looking forward to blablabla dear madame blablabla. …’
I savour it.
I savour it.
I savour it.
The vengeance of Marguerite has struck.
‘Honey?’ I ask my husband, ‘When are we eating?’
‘??? … What are you asking me for? What’s going on?’
‘Oh, nothing – it’s just that I won’t have much time for cooking anymore, what with all the fan letters I’ll have to answer, not to mention the festivals, the conventions, the book fairs … all those trips all over France and in the overseas territories, my God. Come to think of it, I’ll have to start getting regular manicures soon, because, you know … for the book signings, it’s important to have impeccable hands. … It’s crazy how people get hung up on that. …’
‘What are you raving about?’
Marguerite lets the letter from the elegant Left Bank publisher ‘escape’ onto the potbellied stomach of her husband, who’s reading the classifieds in Auto Plus.
‘Hold on … hey! What is this?!’
‘Nothing – I haven’t had it for long. It’s just something I have to tell Micheline. Go and make yourself handsome: I’m taking you to the Aigle Noir tonight. …’
‘The Aigle Noir!?’
‘Yes. That’s where Marguerite would have taken her Yann, I suppose. …’
‘Who’s Yann?’
‘Pfffff, forget it. … You don’t know the first thing about the literary world.’
SO I GOT in contact with the secretary. A very good contact, I think, because the young woman was more than charming.
Maybe she had a fluorescent pink Post-it stuck in front of her eyes: ‘If A.G. calls, be very charming!’ underlined twice.
Maybe …
The poor dears, they must think I sent my stories to others. … They’re afraid someone’s going to beat them to it. Another publisher, even more elegant, situated on an even more chic street on the Left Bank, with a secretary who’s even more charming on the phone and who has an even cuter arse.
Oh, no, that would be too unfair.
You see the disaster if I hit the big time under another imprint just because what’s-her-name didn’t have a fluorescent pink Post-it in front of her eyes?
I don’t dare think about it.
The appointment was set for one week later. (We’ve all wasted enough time.)
The initial pragmatic concerns were soon out of the way: taking an afterno
on off (‘Micheline, I won’t be in tomorrow!’); making arrangements for the kids – but not just anywhere, in a place where they’ll be happy; informing my love:
‘I’m going into Paris tomorrow.’
‘Why?’
‘On business.’
‘Is it a romantic tryst?’
‘Same difference.’
‘Who is it?’
‘The postman.’
‘Ah! I should have known. …’
… Leaving the one truly important problem: what am I going to wear?
Something that says true future writer, devoid of elegance because the real life is somewhere else. Don’t love me for my big breasts; love me for my substantive marrow.
Something that says true future bestseller-writing machine, with a perm, because the real life is right here. Don’t love me for my talent; love me for my tabloid potential.
Something that says woman-who-eats-up-elegant-men-from-the-Left-Bank, get it while it’s hot, because the real life is on your desk. Don’t love me for my manuscript; love me for my stunning marrow.
Hey, Atala, calm down.
In the end, the stress is too much for me – you know, this really isn’t the time to be thinking about playing footsie and losing a stocking on the rug. This is undoubtedly the most momentous day of my tiny existence, and I’m not going to jeopardise the whole thing with some outfit that’s undeniably irresistible but totally cumbersome.
(Well, yeah! A mini miniskirt is cumbersome.)
I’ll wear jeans. Nothing more, nothing less. My trusty 501s, ten years old, barrel-aged, stonewashed, with copper rivets and the reddish label on the right buttock. The pair that have taken my shape and my scent. My friend.
Even so, I get nervous when I think about this elegant, brilliant man who juggles my future in his slender hands. (Publish her? Don’t publish her?) … Jeans are pushing it a little, I have to admit.
Oh … nothing but worries, nothing but worries.
Okay, I’ve made up my mind. Jeans, but with lingerie to knock your socks off.
